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Time travel is a chestnut of science fiction — one of those tropes that are just too fun not to do. Honestly they’re one of our favorite types of stories, giving fans a glimpse of the distant past … or a possible future. Our heroes are thrown into a situation where they are completely out of their element.
In the Stargate franchise you don’t need a starship, a TARDIS, or a DeLorean to go back in time — usually just a Stargate and a little bad timing, where the gate’s artificial wormhole passes too close to a solar flare. The result has been a wealth of fun and interesting sci-fi adventures, which have the characters trying to avoid changing the past … or sometimes trying to change it on purpose.
Ready to walk the timeline? Here’s the watch list from Stargate SG-1:
1969
Stargate’s first time travel experiment sees SG-1 thrown back to Earth in the year 1969, thanks to a solar flare bending the Stargate’s wormhole back on itself. After escaping Air Force custody (“It’s Skywalker. Luke Skywalker.”) Jack and the team hook up with a pair of hippies to travel across the United States, in order to locate the Stargate and find a way home.
WINDOW OF OPPORTUNITY
One of Stargate’s best (and funniest) stories finds Jack and Teal’c trapped in a time loop bubble, thanks to an alien scientist and a unique kind of Ancient technology. They repeat the same day over and over again, unable to change their circumstances and break free … being tossed back in time a few hours at the end of every loop.
2010
We know you can use the Stargate and a solar flare to travel in time — but it’s never been workable for Earth to do it on purpose. But with a little help from alien technology, predicting the right solar flare just might be possible. That’s the crazy plan hatched by the former members of SG-1, in a future where they realize that everything has gone horribly wrong since their first meeting with the Aschen.
MOEBIUS
Now on the other hand, when you find yourself a sweet time-travel ship built by the Ancients … who can resist taking it for a spin? It’s a dream come true for Dr. Jackson to witness ancient Egypt firsthand, but the team tries to stay on mission: steal a Zero Point Module out from under Ra’s nose. What could go wrong? What could … accidentally unravel the future of Earth as we know it?
UNENDING
We’ve seen the Asgard use their technology to create time dilation fields, in which time passes much more slowly (in order to try and capture the Replicators). In SG-1‘s series finale Earth inherits the Asgard’s technology and uses it to save the Odyssey from an Ori attack. But as the days turn into years, Carter finally cracks the secret of bending time itself. But there will be consequences.
BEFORE I SLEEP
Atlantis‘s first foray into time travel actually happened back when the expedition first arrived in the city of the Ancients … only that time, the city was not saved. Dr. Weir escaped its destruction by floodwaters using a time ship, and finds herself 10,000 years in the past — when the Ancients themselves were preparing to sink the city beneath the ocean and evacuate.
THE LAST MAN
A solar flare once sent SG-1 back to the year 1969, but an accidental flare in the Pegasus Galaxy sends Colonel John Sheppard an astounding 48,000 years into the future! An interactive hologram of Rodney McKay tells him how everything went horribly wrong after Sheppard went missing, as the team failed to rescue Teyla and Michael stormed across the galaxy with his army of hybrids. But he also has a plan for changing the timeline.
TIME
A routine mission to check out a planet leads the Destiny crew to a shocking discovery: one of their own kinos, filled with hours of recordings of themselves visiting the planet already. While the team reviews the footage and learns the fates of their counterparts, it becomes apparent that a temporal incident has sent this kino back from a future they very much need to avoid.
TWIN DESTINIES
This one is a real head-scratcher: Eli tries to use the power of a star to enable Destiny to dial the Stargate back home to Earth. But now a solar anomaly doesn’t just affect the people going through the gate (which will be paid off in style in the episode “Common Descent”) — Destiny itself is displaced a few hours back in time. So when our Destiny comes upon it, they find a double of Nicholas Rush and a now abandoned ship sinking into the star.
STARGATE: CONTINUUM
SG-1’s final movie adventure sees the sinister Baal, last of the System Lords, pull off his most ambitious plan yet. With what he’s learned from the Tau’ri and his own technology he has built a time machine on the planet Praxeon, which Baal uses to go back in time and prevent Earth from creating its Stargate program. And when Sam, Daniel, and Cameron are insulated from the time change, they have to learn how to live out the rest of their lives on a world very different from the one they knew.
If you make use of this guide in your viewing, let us know! We’d love to hear how you are watching (or rewatching) Stargate according to individual story arcs.
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Not sure why, but I just love time travel!!
I always thought Continuum to be a big budget rehash of Moebius
I like time travel, but i never liked Continuum. It was just a warmed up story and not good enough for a movie.
The episode with Jack and Teal’c stuck in a time loop is my absolute favourite episode! :D