How SG-1 Dealt With Jack O’Neill’s Deepest Trauma

Stargate SG-1 inherited some serious baggage from the 1994 feature film, which the writers of the television series knew they would have to address. For the character of Colonel Jack O’Neill, that included his deeply personal family trauma.

In the movie Jack (played by Kurt Russell) was in a dark place following the accidental death of his young son, and his marriage to Sarah was hanging by a thread. This backstory put the character into a position where he was willing to sacrifice his own life to stop the alien threat to Earth. But with Ra defeated, continuing Jack’s story on television (now with Richard Dean Anderson in the role) meant giving closure to Jack and Sarah.

The result was “Cold Lazarus,” a first-season episode in which an alien entity duplicates Colonel O’Neill and returns to Jack’s home on Earth in a misguided attempt to heal his deepest pain.

“It was really compelling, and very moving,” actress Harley Jane Kozak told “Dial the Gate.”. She played Jack’s wife Sarah in the episode. And “how does my ‘son’ just ‘metamorphose’ out of [nothing]? What’s up with that?”

In the conversation Kozak talks about Jack and Sarah’s shared trauma, and how she approached her performance. She also reveals what she would have done differently as a parent. Check out this short clip:

While Sarah was lacking all context for the events she was swept up in during the course of the episode, Kozak said that the one thing she’d do differently now is her reaction to seeing (what looks like) her son back from the dead at the episode’s end.

In the end “Cold Lazarus” put Jack face-to-face not only with an alien copy of himself, but then with the visage of his lost child. He then led “Charlie” out of the hospital room and past Sarah, telling her that the boy in front of her was not really their son.

“If a mother loses a 9-year-old child, and the child miraculously appears in front of her — like she can actually touch his hand — I don’t care how much she loves her husband and how compelling that relationship is,” she said. “I don’t think she would take her eyes off that child, until they take him away. Even knowing that he’s not real. I think that the grief and the longing for someone who is dead, to me that over-powers every other response.”

Don’t miss the full interview with Harley Jane Kozak on “Dial the Gate” on YouTube! While you’re there, also subscribe to GateWorld’s YouTube channel for more conversations like this one.