The Best Vietnam War Movie Inspired Stargate SG-1’s Worst Possible Scenario

By Jonathan Klotz
| Published 58 seconds ago

Stargate SG-1 took a few seasons to find its footing, which is why Season 1 is so uneven, from the R-rated Showtime pilot to “Emancipation,” the cast and crew had to figure out how the show’s world was going to work and where the SG-1 team fell into the grand scheme of things. Episode 6, “The First Commandment,” broadens the world with the introduction of SG-9, except it’s after the unit was wiped out, and now the SG-1 team has to clean up their mess.

In doing so, they re-enact the plot of Francis Ford Coppola’s Vietnam War classic, Apocalypse Now, the first of many times when the series bases plots off the classics. It mostly works, too, except there’s one Samantha Carter-shaped problem at the center of the episode. 

Going Native And Playing God

“The First Commandment” kicks off with the remnants of SG-9, another exploratory unit under Stargate Command, after their leader, Captain Jonas Hanson (William Russ) convinced the native tribe he was a God. His plan is to force the construction of a temple and turn on an abandoned Goa’uld device that will “turn the sky orange.” It’s deduced to be a solar radiation shield, necessary for survival on the planet where the solar radiation levels are so high that it will burn anyone to a crisp if they stay in the sunlight for too long. It’s a simple plot about an officer going native, exactly the sort of thing Star Trek’s Federation designed the Prime Directive to prevent, but it’s complicated by Carter (Amanda Tapping) revealing Hanson is her ex-fiancée.

After saving a native boy from Hanson’s soldiers, Carter is brought face-to-face with her ex, and the problem he faces as he can’t figure out how to turn on the solar shield. He admits that he hope sone day, she’ll become his goddess, mere seconds before threatening to kill every single cave-dweller and then the two of them. Yet, when Carter has the chance to kill him, she hesitates and can’t make the shot. 

Hanson still wants to make a grand display for his followers. An activated Stargate looks like the gateway to heaven to undeveloped civilizations. Using the portal as an execution device, Hanson attempts to drop Jack (Richard Dean Anderson) and Teal’c (Christopher Judge) into one without the safety of an IRC signal. Instead, the solar shield is activated by the team, and Hanson is tossed into the Stargate to his death by his own followers. It’s poetic, it’s a little darker than 90s fans expected of their sci-fi, and it’s proof that early on, no one knew what to do with Samantha Carter.

Stargate SG-1’s Growing Pains

Carter would go on to become one of the franchise’s most important characters, with appearances in every series, and her role only decreased when Amanda Tapping became the lead of Sanctuary. “The First Commandment” puts her in the role of Willard from Apocalypse Now, the assassin sent to take out Colonel Kurtz (Marlon Brando), who, similarly, can’t make the shot (for different reasons, but the spirit is there). Stargate SG-1 could have given her the same role, the same results, without her having been engaged to Hanson. It’s an unnecessary wrinkle that’s close to having her role listed as “girl” back when the writers thought she needed a man to play off of. 

Later seasons would rehabilitate Carter’s character, and there’s a reason why she appears in every series: she became the breakout character of Stargate SG-1. It took a while, and there were some growing pains to get there, but later episodes, such as Season 7’s “Space Race,” let Carter be Carter, and the result is some of the stories in the series. 

Stargate SG-1 ended its run as an ensemble series, with every character important to the team’s dynamics, even after the addition of Farscape stars Ben Browder and Claudia Black. The first few seasons have awkward episodes for each of the main cast, but the end result is worth the journey to get there.