Science fiction television series usually demonstrate a particular religious sentimentality.* Star Trek is famous for its atheistic humanism, although in its later years, after Gene Roddenberry died, the show began to take on a more pluralistic, new-age approach, sometimes questioning Roddenberry’s hopeful atheism (this is especially true for the darkest, and second best, Star Trek series, Deep Space Nine). Stargate SG-1 and its spin-offs should be seen as having a Buddhist sensibility. The Buddhism contained in it is only a popular kind, and probably best serves as the backdrop for the show more than as for any ideological purpose of the show’s creators (unlike Star Trek). Yet, one can look at what it has, and see obvious connections to Buddhist cosmology: there are gods who are not really gods, demanding worship like the asuras and there are the “ascended beings,” who, despite the appearance of attaining enlightenment, are more like a deva, or someone having entered a Buddha realm (they are still a part of samsara, although they have moved beyond some of its limitations; one can see that they have not attained full enlightenment, parinirvana, from the fact that they still can be killed, and there is much of the universe and its ways which are beyond their comprehension; we have even seen indication in the show that there are greater levels of existence than that which the ascended beings have experienced).
It is within this backdrop we must now consider the newest Stargate adventure, Stargate:Continuum.
[Youtube=http://youtube.com/watch?v=gP7p0o1sVz8]
Like most Stargate stories, one must go in expecting an interesting, even entertaining story, but one which also leaves many questions left unanswered because such questions get in the way of the entertainment. Stargate has never been interested in dealing with plot contradictions: if they are there, so let them be there, and maybe at some future time, poke fun at them. It’s because such answers would mean the writers are taking the show too seriously. That’s just not the spirit in which the show is meant to be taken.
So what about Continuum? Here we have another time travel story: Ba’al changes history while members of the SG-1 team are away on another planet, watching the extraction of a symbiote from one of his clones. A couple members of the team vanish, and only three of them are able to make it through a Stargate to return to home (Carter, Jackson and Mitchell). There they find the timeline has changed, and eventually have to make their way in the new world they have found themselves in until, a year later, the Goa’uld, led by Ba’al, make their way to Earth. Some of the interest in the story is what they (and Ba’al) do in this alternative Earth, and also what their other selves did or did not do (hint, one wasn’t even born).
The story allows for many who once died in the show to return in cameo shots, and to give us a few more character reference points for most of the show’s main cast. Without giving too much away, the ending is like what one would expect from Russell T. Davies on Doctor Who: after all the set up, the nice reset switch is pressed and things are able to return to normal (more or less). In this way, the story, built up as it did until then, ended on a low note. And it is how the reset switch works which brings to question what happened or didn’t happen; the only way to read the story is as a perpetual time-loop from three different universes in the “continuum.”
Unlike series 9-10, and The Ark of Truth, the Buddhist background for the series is mostly absent in this one. There is no talk of ascension or ascended beings. The relationship between the “false gods” and the rest of the universe is also not an issue in this story; it takes into account that the audience of the movie will be one who has watched the series and knows what is going it. It’s not meant for novices. The in-jokes and humor, which occur less often here in this more somber story, will have little to no relevance to one who has not watched the series and knows all of the main characters from all of its ten seasons. Nonetheless, if you are already enjoy the show, you will find this to be fair, well-thought out two-parter. There are little bits here and there which show it is more sophisticated than normal, allowing it to be special and not just like a normal two-parter.
Hopefully this dvd will be a success and they will be able to do the third (Jack O’Neill centered) story have have planned next.
7/10 stars.
* Doctor Who is a difficult one to figure out, because its worldview is one constantly in flux, changing with each Doctor and, often enough, with each production team. Thus we find Buddhist, Christian, New Age, and Agnostic traditions in the show’s history. The current Doctor, David Tennant, is rather post-modern in that one cannot make one complete narrative explaining his worldview. A part of the strength of his Doctor is that he is constantly looking for that which he cannot understand, because he understands that there is no one narrative strain which he can produce that will explain the universe and all that happens within it. He is constantly open to what is beyond his own comprehension, and indeed, is excited when he finds it.
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In