Microstory 907: Stargate Franchise

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Circa 2006, I went to one of my illegal television streaming websites, which I was just getting into, and tried to start watching Stargate SG-1. Well, the premiere bored be too much, and I gave up halfway through. Four years later, as I was ending my tenure at the University of Kansas, I noticed that Hulu had every episode up for free. Now for you kiddos out there, this was before Hulu was a subscription service. The point of it was to provide a single source for recent primetime television series, from three of the four major networks. For free. It was only later that content providers started expecting people to pay hundreds of dollars for cable, Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon Prime. Anyway, in 2010, I had but 42 days before all 214 episodes Stargate SG-1 were to expire from the old Hulu. I tried the first episode again, and liked it so much that I watched the next episode right away. Then I opened up my Google Calendar, and made up a schedule for how quickly I would need to watch them in order to catch each one before I lost them all. I surpassed my quota, and finished every episode with more than a enough time. Hulu later decided to extend their deal with MGM, which would have been nice to know ahead of time. After that was done, I moved on to Stargate: Atlantis, and—armed with a three-month Netflix subscription as a graduation present from my sister—I was able to watch the first half of the first season of the third series, SGU Stargate Universe, on DVD. I was then able to watch a season and a half of SGU in realtime before it too was cancelled, and we were all left Stargateless. As I recently explained, I don’t read as much as you would expect from a writer. What I do is watch a lot of TV and movies, and that is where I get my inspiration. I don’t need a books to tell me how form sentence or congratulate a verb. I just need to know how to tell a good story, and any good story gets me that. Hell, bad stories give me that too; they teach me what not to do, which is just as important. I remember thinking Battlestar Galactica was the best space opera in existence, until I discovered the Stargate franchise. Whenever I feel down, I can throw on an episode of Stargate. It has opened me up to so many ideas about physics, astrophysics, engineering, anthropology, sociology, psychology, technology, and more. I’m a better writer for having watched the series, and this website wouldn’t exist without it, because my view of the world was so limited before. Now they’re talking about a fourth show to reboot the canon (Infinity and Origins don’t count) and I am all for it. Here’s hoping it becomes more than just talk. Get to the gate.