Image via SyFy Channel
Published Feb 15, 2026, 11:55 AM EST
Lloyd 'Happy Trails' Farley: the man, the myth, the legend. What can be said about this amazing - and humble - man that hasn't been said before? Or, more accurately, what can be said in public? Born in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, Lloyd is a master of puns and a humorist, who has authored one pun book to date - Pun and Grimeish Mint - and is working on a second. His time with Collider has allowed Lloyd's passion for writing to explode, with nearly 1,000 articles to his name that have been published on the site, with his favorite articles being the ones that allow for his sense of humor to shine. Lloyd also holds fast to the belief that all of life's problems can be answered by The Simpsons, Star Wars, and/or The Lion King. You can read more about Lloyd on his website, or follow his Facebook page and join the Llama Llegion. Happy trails!
The list of successful television series based on movies is not a long one, with the likes of Fargo and Friday Night Lights among a handful of success stories. And when it comes to science fiction fare, that list would fill a Post-It note, at best, where for every 12 Monkeys there lies a Minority Report. So no one would have thought anything of it had Stargate SG-1, which continued the story that began with 1994's Stargate, fallen into a wormhole and disappeared. Only the opposite happened, and Stargate SG-1 yielded 10 seasons of sci-fi excellence, launching a franchise, including a new series currently in development.
'Stargate SG-1' Comes Together With a 1994 Movie
Directed by "master of disaster" Roland Emmerich, Stargate sees a U.S. Air Force team, led by Colonel Jack O'Neil (Kurt Russell), and Egyptologist Daniel Jackson (James Spader) becoming the first to venture through the titular Stargate, a large, metallic ring, found years before in Egypt, revealed to open a wormhole to a distant planet. That planet is Abydos, where humans, speaking in ancient Egyptian, are ruled by an alien who has assumed the guise of the ancient Egyptian sun god Ra (Jaye Davidson).
The film was a modest success, earning over $196.6 million against a $55 million budget. But critically, the film had a decidedly mixed reaction, currently sitting at 53% on Rotten Tomatoes. Still, it did well enough that Emmerich and co-writer Dean Devlin were making plans for a trilogy. But a quiet little film called Independence Day (and the box-office dud Godzilla) postponed that trilogy. So MGM moved forward with plans of their own, and hired Brad Wright and Jonathan Glassner, who were put together as a team by MGM Worldwide Television Group president John Symes after unknowingly pitching separate ideas on the project.
According to Wright, Richard Dean Anderson was "the only person we went to for the lead," and he agreed, on three conditions: he wanted to have creative input; he wanted an ensemble cast, reluctant to carry another long-running series on his own as he did with MacGyver; and he wanted more comedic leeway as Jack O'Neill (two L's instead of the one for the film) than what was afforded Russell's iteration of the character. The cast was rounded out by Amanda Tapping, Christopher Judge, and Michael Shanks, who took over Spader's role as Daniel Jackson (and cast after doing a spot-on impersonation of Spader). So in February 1996, filming began on a Vancouver soundstage for the two-hour, $6 million pilot (per The Hollywood Reporter).
'Stargate SG-1' Thrives on Endless Possibilities
Stargate SG-1 picks up a year after the events of Stargate, following the adventures of the military team SG-1, which consists of the two holdovers from the film in O'Neill and Jackson, and two new characters: Air Force Captain Samantha "Sam" Carter (Tapping), who has a background in astrophysics; and Teal'c (Judge), a human genetically modified by the Goa'uld (more on them shortly) as a high-ranking Jaffa, First Prime of Apophis, notable for his strength, rapid healing, and the golden tattoo on his forehead. He joins the team after their first encounter with the Goa'uld in the pilot, defecting in the hopes of leading his race to freedom.
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The mission of the SG teams is to explore the galaxy, via the Stargate, to seek alien technology and reach out to find allies to aid Earth against alien threats. In doing so, Stargate SG-1 utilizes the concept created by the film, using the Stargate to explore other planets and opening endless possibilities. Even the proposed film trilogy would have a far more limited scope of the Stargate's potential, where the only limits placed on the number of planets visited in the series is how many episodes it would squeeze out before cancellation.
That would be 214 episodes (and 2 DVD films) stretched across 10 seasons. And over those 10 seasons, Stargate SG-1 introduced such threats as the Replicators, the Ori, and the aforementioned Goa'uld, a snake-like parasitic race that takes humans - Jaffa - as unwilling hosts. It also expanded on our own mythologies – Egyptian, Greek, Roman, and Norse – to create a rich and deep mythology of its own. But Stargate SG-1's greatest strength may be in its refusal to be self-serious. The series crafted a balance between humorous moments (practicing golf swings by launching balls into the Stargate, for one) and emotionally driven, high-stakes moments. Ultimately, it would be Stargate SG-1 that created the legacy of the Stargate franchise. opening the door for Stargate Atlantis, Stargate Universe, Stargate Origins and the animated Stargate Infinity. And you can now binge that masterpiece on Netflix.
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