The 7 Best Episodes of Stargate SG-1

Stargate is one of my all-time favorite movies, but somehow I missed the bus on Stargate SG-1 when it originally aired. Now that the show is easily accessible on streaming services, I’ve slowly worked my way through it—and I’ve been missing out!

While there’s a lot of 90s and early 2000s sci-fi TV cheese here (and I’m here for it) there are some truly standout episodes, and would you look at that I’ve put them in an easy-to-read list.

7

Window of Opportunity (Season 4, Episode 6)

To be blunt, this episode is essentially SG-1’s take on Groundhog Day, but that doesn’t do Window of Opportunity justice. The gist is that Teal’c and O’Neill are caught in a time loop after visiting planet P4X-639. They keep getting looped back to breakfast on the day of the mission, and have to figure out how to break the time loop.

Of course, it’s Jackson and Carter who are the brains of the operation, but they aren’t in the time loop so they can’t retain any memories or information that would let them solve the puzzle. So O’Neill and Teal’c have to painstakingly learn an alien language over several months of their time so that Jackson can help them solve the puzzle of ending the time loop.

What makes this episode great is that the unlucky pair use the time for other things as well, such as learning pottery, and playing a few rounds of golf through the stargate. It’s a very funny episode, and it’s also notable for advancing the romance subplot between Carter and O’Neill with an on-screen smooch—which Sam obviously won’t remember.

I read up a little on the production of this episode, and it turns out that the episode was going to run short, so a lot of the wacky inserts that make it fun and memorable are only there because they needed to stuff the episode with random skits to make it long enough—legendary.

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6

The Fifth Race (Season 2, Episode 16)

This episode of SG-1 reminds me a lot of The Nth Degree, a Star Trek: The Next Generation episode where Lt. Barkley gets his brain upgraded by an alien device that gives him all sorts of new knowledge and abilities, eventually making him construct a mysterious device that leads him to an ancient race. In The Fifth Race O’Neill has his brain upgraded by an alien device, which gives him all sorts of new abilities and makes him construct a mysterious device which leads him to a race of ancient aliens—see what I mean?

All jokes aside, this episode is pretty awesome, and it’s one of the most important ones when it comes to uncovering the deep lore of the show. By the way, the “Fifth Race” is us—human beings—who are apparently almost ready to join some sort of alien federation. Dammit, Trek again?

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5

The Torment of Tantalus (Season 1, Episode 10)

This is one of the earliest episodes of SG-1 and really shows off the potential for horror and dread the stargates bring. Dr. Jackson uncovers the fact that the stargate was actually successfully activated once before the events of the original movie, but this leads to a tragic accident where Catherine Langford (the woman who recruits him in the film) loses her lover Ernest in an “accident”. What Catherine didn’t know is that Ernest stepped through the gate, and there was no effort made to retrieve him.

Jackson figures out the address Ernest was sent to by studying the file footage from that day, and they travel through the gate to find Ernest alive, but old and mentally unstable. He’s almost lost the ability to speak, and has been hallucinating that Catherine has been with him all this time. As luck would have it, the place he’s been living in contains important information Jackson wants, but the building is on the verge of falling into the ocean, and the team has to escape, leaving this treasure behind. Luckily Ernest took many notes.

What I like most about this episode are the implications that dawn on you as the story progresses, and how messing with the stargates can go very, very wrong indeed. It’s a good setup for the darker parts of the series down the line.

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4

1969 (Season 2, Episode 21)

You know how in Star Trek there are a few episodes and movies where the crew of the ship go back in time to the 21st century? Yeah? No reason, just asking.

Anyway, in 1969 SG-1 gets sent back to Earth in 1969 due to a freak accident, and then get mistaken for Soviet spies as they try to find a way back to their present. Lots of 60s hijinks. Though weirdly, O’Neill gives his name as “Captain James T. Kirk” when questioned in 1969, which the soldier in question doesn’t seem to recognize. Weird considering TOS came out in 1966, but maybe the guy isn’t a Trekker.

The team hitchhike and catch a ride in a hippie bus with a couple on the way to Woodstock. Spock has to wear a silly bandana to hide the fact that he isn’t human. I mean Teal’c, Teal’c wears a silly bandana.

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3

2010 (Season 4, Episode 16)

Episode 2010 is directly connected to 1969 except we are now in the future, the distant year 2010. About a decade ahead of the “present” timeline of SG-1. Here we see an Earth blessed with technology and peace, thanks to a race known as the “Aschen” who helped defeat the Goa’uld.

Everything seems to be going great, but (surprise) it turns out that the Aschen aren’t as altruistic as they seem, just very patient. So Sam Carter needs to use the exact same method of time travel we saw in the previous 60s episode to send a warning back to General Hammond, preventing Earth from making contact with the Aschen in the first place.

I like this episode simply because it has a cool alien invasion angle that’s quite smart for a TV series from the 90s, and it’s a great example of the writers just having fun with a “what if” style episode that doesn’t really impact anything. Well, except the meeting with the Aschen happens anyway in a later episode, (2001, Season 5, Episode 10) with a smart callback to the man who was Sam Carter’s husband in this episode. So either way, the dark Aschen future is avoided.

2

Fragile Balance (Season 7, Episode 3)

You know those anime storylines where an adult gets to go through high school again, but they have all the knowledge and skills of being an adult? Well, Fragile Balance ends where those plots begin, but with a lot of twists to get there.

The episode opens with a teenager claiming to be Colonel O’Neill showing up at the secret base, and after a lot of back-and-forth it turns out that he’s a clone, and that he’s dying. The plot thickens when it turns out that an Asgardian named Loki has been abducting people for years, swapping them out with a short-lived clone and then returning them later after doing his research. Except, in this case the clone didn’t age correctly, exposing his whole deal.

Thor, another Asgardian alien, manages to stop the degradation in the O’Neill clone, and that version of O’Neill decides to go back to high school, never to be heard from or mentioned again. Also, all the creepiness of a man in a child’s body ogling high school girls is on full display—hey 2003 was a different time, I guess.

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1

Pretense (Season 3, Episode 15)

What’s a 90s/2000s sci-fi show without a court case episode? While it doesn’t quite rise to the level of TNG’s The Measure of a Man, Pretense is a pretty good episode where we get to see a debate about free will, how humans treat livestock, and who has the right to the body of a boy named Skaara—the host or the parasite? It’s not the most fast-paced episode, but I really like it when a series intersperses all that sexy P90 action with something more cerebral.

There are over 200 SG-1 episodes, so I almost certainly didn’t get your favorite episode, and who knows if my opinion will change with repeated future viewings? One thing I can say is that SG-1 has aged pretty well, in the opinion of someone who didn’t watch it when it was airing. Catching up with this gap in my sci-fi history was daunting, but I’m glad I did it. Maybe I’ll even try to find a physical box set to go with my Star Trek collection.