STARGATE SG-1: SEASON 5

The fifth season of STARGATE SG-1 brought with it new challenges, both for the team of Stargate Command adventurers that audiences watched every week as well as for the show's creative personnel. A major new enemy was re-introduced (Anubis), tensions between the SG-1's allies rose and threatened to overwhelm the stability of the Stargate program, and the team lost one of its founding members with the death and eventual rebirth as a higher lifeform of Dr. Daniel Jackson (played by Michael Shanks.) Creatively, the challenges of making the fifth season as rewarding as earlier seasons of SG-1 must have been difficult, especially when you consider that the writers had to come up with a story mechanism that explained the departure of Shanks. They filled this by having Daniel "ascend" to a higher dimension, with the promise of making return appearances in future seasons, and by introducing a new cast member in the form of Jonas Quinn (played by Corin Nemic.) Quinn's introduction happens in "Meridian", the second-to-final episode of the fifth season, and sets the stage for his membership in SG-1 in the sixth season.

If you're not up to speed with what the concept of STARGATE SG-1 is, they're a four-member team consisting of two Air Force officers, an archaeologist and an alien warrior that's switched sides that travel the galaxy through a device that creates wormholes. Their primary nemesis are the Gou'ald, a race of symbiotic creatures that have been using humans for thousands of years as slaves and hosts (they also served for the origin of many of our world's myths of gods and goddesses, so you shouldn't be surprised to bump into, say, Osiris if you gate off-world.) Over the years the SG-1 members have saved the world and forged alliances with groups that are also fighting the Gou'ald, as well as encountered new enemies and re-discovered lost civilizations of humans on distant planets. Unlike most sci-fi television which takes place in the future and on spaceships, the missions of SG-1 happen in the present day and often have ramifications back on Earth.

Looking back at the last fifteen years of TV sci-fi, shows that have made it to five seasons more often than not begin to run out of juice. The team behind STARGATE SG-1, led by Brad Wright, Robert Cooper and Jonathan Glassner, seem to have kept their series chugging along by building a wide tapestry of show mythology, complete with recurring characters and storylines, that they revisit each season. That's not to say that each season will feature the same bad guys or friendly faces again; about half of each season of episodes don't have any connection to prior events but continuity will be mentioned by a character if it's relevant. It's hard to imagine that the now-rich SG-1 universe, with its evil Gou'ald System Lords, friendly Tok'ra, enemy Replicators, wise Asgard and shadowy government and military groups weren't in the original Roland Emmerich film that started this whole ride off ten years ago. It's testament to the creative team that SG-1 has such a diverse universe of aliens, villains, allies and dangling storylines that, seven seasons in and counting at present, the episodes are still entertaining with each season.

MGM continues to improve upon each season of SG-1 that it releases on DVD, and the fifth season features the most bonus material yet. The biggest and best has to be the inclusion of an audio commentary track for every single one of the 22 episodes for season five yes, you read that right: there's a commentary track for every single episode on this five-disc set. Actors Amanda Tapping (Major Carter) and Christopher Judge (T'ealc) are both present, albeit Tapping is only on two episodes and one for Judge. Shanks and series lead Richard Dean Anderson are absent, which is too bad. However, the void is more than filled by the presence of many of the show's key producing and crew members including directors, producers, writers, the show's stunt coordinator, visual effects producer, and director of photography. It's an impressive assembly of the SG-1 team, and they provide tons of information about nearly every aspect of the show's creation. Fans of the series will not be disappointed, although they will find themselves lacking in free time as they make their way through all the episodes! Kudos to MGM for delivering on this under-utilized aspect of TV DVD. (If anyone working in Paramount's DVD branch is reading these words, it wouldn't hurt if you followed MGM's lead for your STAR TREK shows.)

Additional bonus material includes three "SG-1 Video Diaries" which are basically shorts where Tapping, Judge and Shanks carried around a video camera for a day recording what they were doing. The actors seem to be having fun and it's carried through with the final result. Disc one contains still galleries showing moments throughout the season while disc two has a featurette titled "Inside the Tomb", a look at the making of the eighth episode of the season. Disc five also has a tribute featurette to Shanks' Daniel Jackson character which consists of highlights from this and past seasons, as well as interview material with the actor about the journey Daniel took on the show.

Video and audio quality are solid and consistent with a newer program such as this series (season five of SG-1 was filmed in 2001.) The episodes are delivered in widescreen format.

For the die-hard Gaters that have been collecting the series on DVD from the start, season five will probably be the highlight o their collection so far, no doubt due to the 22 commentary tracks. Great storytelling is consistent throughout the season, with perhaps a little more comedy to be found in this season than what we've seen before. (For example, "Wormhole X-Treme!", the series' 100^th episode, features a load of in-jokes which can finally be figured out when you listen to that episode's commentary track.) For fans of escapist sci-fi, STARGATE SG-1's fifth season is still a fun ride.