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nandamai has reviewed a couple of season 8 episodes recently, and it's got me reminiscing. The first Stargate episode I watched was 'Full Alert', which was... a really weird one to start on. For a start, it's 95% gibberish without a working knowledge of Stargate history (NID? The Trust? Goa'uld? Al'kesh? Prometheus? Symbiote poison? Ancient outposts? Snakes? ...wtf?). It's not a typical episode, either - mostly set on Earth, lots of political shenanigans, everyone except Daniel spend most of the episode making phonecalls and looking at computers. Sam and Teal'c have so little to do that I didn't realise they were main characters. And there's a very abrupt ending... Still, somehow I found it intriguing. I liked Jack from the start - casually threatening Kinsey when he breaks into Jack's house and drinks Jack's scotch...
Kinsey: "Who are you calling?"
Jack: "Local sheriff’s a friend of mine."
Kinsey: "I may be disgraced, but I’m not wanted for any crimes."
Jack: "Breaking and entering?"
Kinsey: "Jack..."
Jack: "Shh. It’s ringing."
Then Kinsey disconnects the landline, Jack gives him a long, cool look, calmly gets out his cellphone, and I fell in like.
It was the show's underlying sense of humour that caught my interest (I don't like my sci-fi to be entirely serious). For instance, the scene when Teal'c and Carter are sent off on big, important assignments, and Daniel is left sitting at the briefing room table, with Jack ignoring him, and apparently nothing to do... "I have to pick up my dry cleaning." Hee.
I was prepared for a steep plot-learning curve - after all, I'd done the X-Files thing, and the Buffy thing. I didn't watch any more of the series that was on TV - I'd found out that it was quite far along in the show's run. But it stayed in my mind. A few weeks later, and my boyfriend (with whom I live) was away for a couple of weeks. I had nothing much to do in the evenings (social life? What social life?), so I did some research and decided that the 4th season seemed like a good place to start. I didn't want to start from the 1st season - they're usually a bit iffy - and there was this Sam/Jack shippy thing that intrigued me... I bought the DVDs, stayed up all night, serveral nights in a row, watching it, and by the end of the two weeks I was an addict, and had ordered the 3rd and 7th seasons. Watching it in order? For sissies.
That was exactly a year ago - January '06. Since then I've seen watched seasons 1-8 (I don't have cable and live in the UK), read about seasons 9 and 10, written a bunch of fanfics, and generally leapt feet-first into the Stargate fandom world.
I'm sure this'll have been asked before, but anyone else out there care to share their memories of the first Stargate they watched? Or the first one that got them hooked? What first attracted you to the show? If you're a shipper, how quickly did you latch on to your pairing of choice?
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chasethestars
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Me [heart] Spike.
Me going home now. End of workday here.
Sci Fi was showing reruns in the evenings, and they were in the middle of season 4 when I started tuning in. The first ep I remember specifically was Window of Opportunity. I laughed my ass off. And then I thought, "Hey, this is funny! It's funny science fiction! It's... omg, MacGyver is a funny guy!"
And then I started watching regularly, and I saw, very early on, "Politics", "In the Serpent's Grasp" and "The Serpent's Lair". And my fate was sealed. To this day, I think those three eps are the best story arc ever written in SG-1.
After that, I thought that maybe I'd buy one season of the show on DVD. I never really had a chance after that. The team love was so... *there* and blatant. And I just fell in love with all of them. I bought all the DVD's and stayed up late on work nights watching new eps. God, that was such an awesome time. Still discovering all the wonderfulness!
Oddly, I didn't see Divide and Conquer until I was well into the series, so my attraction to Sam/Jack sort of came out of nowhere. Also, at first I wasn't impressed with Daniel at all, and then I saw Singularity... and I spent the entire episode going, "Awwww! Daniel! Awwww!"
I do remember at one point thinking, "Hey, I wonder if people write fanfiction for this show, and I wonder if anyone pairs Sam and Jack together?" (HAHAHAHAHAHAAA!)
I was so cute back then...
I hadn't watched MacGyver before Stargate - I knew of it, but never seen it. Resisted for the longest time, due to not wanting to be compared to Patty and Selma. But now I own seasons 1-3, and season 4 is being released here soon... D'oh!
("The three greatest names in the history of television: Richard. Dean. Anderson.")
I think it was the Macguyver factor, as I had yet to appreciate the merits of RDA. I wandered in just as one of the prisoners suicides in front of the kawoosh and only his smoking boots are left behind.
I cracked up laughing - cos you know that's a pretty funny image, and sat down to watch. I was hooked, but the following year I went on my backpacking around the world adventure that lasted 4 years :P and really only picked up watching again in season 7.
Last year JB HiFi (in Australia) had a sale on DVD box sets and you could buy an entire season of Stargate for $39.95 as opposed to $89.95. I got season one as a present for the youngest bro.
Well... we marathoned episode after episode and when we got to the season cliffhanger, we drove back to the store and bought season 2 :P And we've kept doing that up until season 6 - for some reason no-one has the season 7 box set GAH! I'm going to have to order it.
I've come a bit late to the fandom (as opposed to my Buffy Days) but it's a thriving one, and fanfic is my form of crack, I'm very very addicted :P
Fanfic. It's so more-ish...
Then I moved to a city that had it in syndication on Saturday afternoons and I'd flip past it occasionally. The first one I ever noticed was Maternal Instinct. I recognized that it must be that show my friends kept going on about, watched about twenty minutes, and wasn't impressed. Sometime later I came across the middle of A Hundred Days, and yeah, the S/J jumped right off the screen at me, so I made a bit of a mental note to watch the next one if I was around -- and it was Shades of Grey, which for a newbie was just confusing and sad.
It wasn't until I happened across Enemies, much later, of course, that I really became intrigued. What were these bugs? Why on earth was Carter's father in space? Wasn't Teal'c a good guy before? Had anything ever happened with the S/J ship? Hey! This is actually funny! Then I went online looking for info and downloads and S/J fic, and I was screwed. I actually had a terrible time finding fic I liked at first, which is the main reason I started writing. (I really, really didn't want to get involved in a new fandom. Whoops.)
In the middle of all this of course was the SDJ mess, which a Danielite friend was obsessed with, and I heard all about the petitions and the letters and the ship/slash wars and how Sam/Jack was ruining the show long before I was a regular viewer. I wish I hadn't known. It wasn't a good filter through which to enter a fandom.
And, heh, I remember seeing Jacob turn up for the first time, and being completely confused, too. That's the problem with watching the show ass-backwards, I guess.
And since I figured that was just a huge rip-off of the Trills on DS9 (to the best of my knowledge), I didn't bother ever watching for longer than a few minutes.
Then one day at work a couple years ago I caught most of "Entity", and my inner shipper antennae started quivering. The ship ALWAYS sucks me in, and I picked up on the Jack / Sam vibe immediately.
After that, I caught Divide and Conquer, and I was hooked. I watched every episode that repeated on the SciFi channel, and bought season 4 on DVD.
Eventually I bought seasons 1-7 in one, shady-looking set from China or some such, and watched them all in a row from beginning to end. lol.
Out of order? Ack!! I couldn't do it. ;) Although I did avoid watching the last half of season 7 for a very long time (even after watching seasons 8 and 9) because I couldn't stand the idea of Pete. Still haven't watched the episodes with him in them in that season. *g*
Alas, recently I've fallen out of the fandom a bit. I quit my 2nd job back in August, and haven't watched t.v. since. lol...consequently, I don't even know when the rest of this season will be on (if it isn't, already).
I always seem to get hooked by ship, too - my boyf. is bewildered as to why I watch sci-fi for the romance. I like the romantic bits in Stargate, Aliens, Terminator... not traditionally seen as chick-centric. Why, he asks, do I not just watch straight romance? Or straight sci-fi, forget the romance? I... have no good explanation. Except that romance w/out guns and spaceships and aliens to pep it up is... booooooring. And vice versa. :D
Apparently they don't think "I wanna introduce you to a personal friend of mine. This is an M41A pulse rifle. Ten millimeter with over-and-under thirty millimeter pump action grenade launcher..." was romantic. *g*
And...that was actually the first fanfic I meant to write. It would've been a (total) re-write of Alien 3, but I just never got around to it. And now I keep getting sucked into other fandoms. lol.