The Stargate: Continuum Viewer’s Guide

The wait is nearly over. The long-anticipated movie Stargate: Continuum makes its way to DVD and Blu-ray disc on Tuesday, July 29! GateWorld’s editors had a chance to see the movie early, and while we can’t spill the beans, it does give us the chance to present this handy viewer’s guide.

What follows is a Stargate SG-1 refresher course, a primer in the important points of show mythology to get you back up to speed for SG-1’s biggest adventure ever. Before you sit down to enjoy Continuum, you’ll want to know certain things about time travel, Earth’s allies the Tok’ra, and where things were left with a certain nefarious System Lord.

While Continuum is a stand-alone movie that doesn’t necessarily require a lot of back-story (it’s a good one to use to introduce friends to the Stargate franchise), there are some key episodes from SG-1‘s 10-year television run that we recommend you watch before Continuum arrives. While not absolutely vital, it will help to make the most of your movie experience.

While you will not find any spoilers for the movie here, be warned that you might be able to figure out some things based on what we talk about.

If you would rather skip the primer, we recommend jumping straight to the recommended episodes and our inventory of GateWorld’s Stargate: Continuum coverage over the past year.

Let’s begin!

---

EARTH AND THE STARGATE

Earth has been running the Stargate program out of Cheyenne Mountain now for some 11 years. The Stargate is a piece of alien technology discovered buried in Egypt in 1928. The gate was studied there for years and came into the possession of the United States government, which transported it to the United States at the outbreak of World War II. There the gate was studied, but ultimately boxed.

In the 1990s, a new project to study the device was started by the daughter of the archaeologist who unearthed the gate — now herself an old woman. For help she turned to a struggling, fringe archaeologist named Daniel Jackson (“Stargate” the movie). The Stargate was successfully activated, opening a brand new world of intergalactic exploration.

Stargate Command (“the S.G.C.”) was commanded by General George Hammond for seven years. Hammond was promoted by U.S. President Henry Hayes (“Lost City”), and the base is now under the command of General Hank Landry. In the program’s 11 years Earth has visited countless planets, established relations with dozens of other cultures, found advanced technologies, and even developed its own fleet of interstellar spacecraft. Its enemies have been vanquished, and a new era of galactic peace lies ahead.