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?