I’ve been thinking about this for awhile, off and on. Most recently while re-watching some Stargate SG1 episodes. For the umpteenth time.
And it’s not that I don’t still love Star Trek!
Because I’m a longtime fan of almost all variations of Star Trek. My favorite is probably Star Trek: The Next Generation. For a lot of reasons. Just saying that up front before the next paragraph.
However while I “grew up” with Star Trek and love it, I think I may have outgrown it. Why? The short answer? The Star Trek universe can get a bit… well, I don’t want to say repetitive but that’s what comes to mind.
But again, why? Well, I think one big problem with the Star Trek universe is that it already has an established Federation of Planets. Even in the new reboot movies the Federation is big and large. I mean they even have a lot more aliens already in the mix. Then there’s Enterprise, a pre-federation series, but even it has it’s share of bureaucratic stuff going on. And there was always this assumption that the end goal would be the aforementioned Federation. The idea of this massive bureaucracy is a concept lurking in the background. Always.
So, even when they say boldly go where no one has gone before, they always have that anchor.
Well, mostly.
But is their very survival at stake pretty much all the time?
Not so much. Oh, don’t get me wrong. There are stories and story arcs in Star Trek canon that are all about surviving. It’s just when the Federation is involved we’re usually talking about surviving the next major battle. Sure, individually any one of the crews of any one of the ships could end up trying to survive the next problem of the week. But that’s what they are, problems of the week. Total annihilation of the Earth/Federation is rarely on the table, however.
Which got me to considering by contrast the original Stargate series, Stargate SG1. Everyone gets dazzled by that big round gate. However the Stargate itself is ultimately simply a means to an end which is going places and gathering information as fast as possible. Because bad guys are everywhere and said bad guys usually want to get control of Earth, the First World in their “universe”.
So the team on Earth has to catch up. Fast. And they do.
See, that “catching up” is the crucial bit to what I’m talking about here.
Yeah, Stargate Command also has people they have to answer to and sometimes those people are extremely annoying. The overall tone is survival, though. From start to finish (and beyond), they’re learning as much as they can as fast as they can. Because they have to. And they do learn a lot.
Star Trek might be about exploring but it’s mostly for the sake of exploration. A noble endeavor for sure. But ultimately? They’re not doing it because they have to. They’re doing it because they want to.
Stargate is about exploring to survive. Every time I re-watch SG1 I’m absolutely amazed at how much they progress and learn and adapt over the course of 10 seasons. More than any science fiction series that I know of.
Let me put it this way, in seven seasons of Stargate SG1, Earth goes from having basically nothing truly space worthy to winning a massive battle over Antarctica — and they are just getting started on their journey to become “the Fifth Race”.
Oh, yeah, there is talk of possibly a new Stargate series.
Makes one wonder what’s left to learn out there. But I’m sure they’re find something.
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