We love Stargate! If you are brand new to the franchise, or just looking for a new way to rewatch the franchise for the tenth time, this guide is for you.

GateWorld has been covering Stargate for 25 years, and here we have assembled what we think is the very best viewing order for every show and movie that this universe has to offer. We’ll show you how to watch through all 17 seasons and four movies in canonical order, keeping the timeline straight while also keeping multi-part stories together. (Here’s where to find the show in the U.S.)

In a previous guide we suggested three different ways to watch Stargate: either a full show at a time, alternating those overlapping seasons, or alternating individual episodes (just like they originally aired). Those are fine options if you don’t mind seeing some things out of order or getting spoiled. But there’s an even better way to enjoy the franchise.

In a nutshell, our Optimized Watch Order prioritizes the original broadcast order of episodes but keeps all the two-parters and other multi-episode storylines clustered together. That way you won’t have to set aside one show in the middle of the action just to keep pace with the other. We also have one or two corrections to make along the way, as a few episodes actually didn’t air in the order the writers intended.

Don’t worry — there are no spoilers in the guide below. Dial it up!

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STARGATE (1994)

The story of Stargate starts with the original feature film, which hit theaters in 1994 starring Kurt Russell as Colonel Jack O’Neil and James Spader as archaeologist Dr. Daniel Jackson. Directed by Roland Emmerich and co-written and produced by Dean Devlin, the movie mixes sci-fi technology, ancient Egyptian mythology, and square-jawed military action.

Even if you are mostly interested in the TV universe, we’d definitely recommend starting here — especially your first time through the franchise. The TV series picks up where the movie leaves off, with several characters (and a few actors) crossing over. In the movie you’ll meet the main characters, see the Stargate opened for the first time, and find out what happens when the first team from Earth finds a planet under the oppressive rule of an alien power.

The first television series, Stargate SG-1, is a straight-up spin-off — picking up the story one year after the events of the movie (although it premiered three years later).

SG-1 SEASONS 1-7

Stargate SG-1 premiered in 1997, and it’s your first stop after watching the movie. Richard Dean Anderson (MacGyver) picks up the role of Colonel O’Neill (now with two L’s!), and Michael Shanks plays Daniel Jackson. The viewing order is also easy here: watch Seasons One through Seven, in whatever order your streaming service or Blu-ray set has the episodes.

Viewers actually have a choice when it comes to the pilot movie, “Children of the Gods.” Between the home media releases and various streaming services there are no fewer than three different versions of this episode:

• The original cut aired on Showtime, and contains a scene with full-frontal nudity. This version appears on the DVD and Blu-ray releases, and (last we checked) is on most streaming services.
• The syndication version includes the scene but cuts out the nudity (using close-up shots instead), and aired on broadcast television and basic cable.
• In 2009 series co-creator Brad Wright revisited the pilot with Children of the Gods: Final Cut, released on DVD and later appearing on streaming. This removes the nudity, recuts other scenes, replaces some of the VFX, and generally brings the pilot in line with the show that SG-1 matured into. (Here’s what is different.)

Any of these is a good choice, but if you can find it we recommend the Final Cut. This version is available as a stand-alone DVD release, and last we checked it is streaming on Pluto TV in the United States. (You’ll know you are watching this version right away because it begins in Earth orbit, with film-style opening credits.)

Among the home media and streaming options there is some further variation on whether the episodes are in 4:3 or 16:9 aspect ratios, and in standard definition or HD. You can certainly stick with whichever edition you have access to. But if you are in search of the best experience currently available, consider picking up the show on Blu-ray or DVD. Those have the episodes in widescreen, edited without hard act breaks. The Blu-ray edition also has an upscaled picture — which helps a lot with these earlier seasons, before SG-1 switched to filming with high-definition digital cameras.

Once you’ve watched the pilot, you have seven seasons of great TV ahead of you before our viewing order gets tricky. Again, for Seasons One through Seven you can follow the episode order on your discs or streaming service. There is some variation (especially in the first half of Season One), but these are stand-alone stories that are not impacted by the differences. (GateWorld’s episode guide lists them by the original broadcast order.)

OVERLAPPING SEASONS

SG-1 got its first spin-off show in 2004: Stargate Atlantis aired on SCI FI Channel for five seasons, and the first three aired concurrently with Stargate SG-1 on Friday nights.

The shows shared writers and a lot of their crew, and even filmed on adjoining sound stages. While the two series stand alone with their own stories, the writers did take advantage of the back-to-back broadcast to occasionally interlink them. You’ll see occasional references to the other show, and there are several crossover episodes.

So what’s the best way to watch them together? That’s where our Optimized Watch Order comes in! We’re going to keep the shows synchronized in their shared timeline and canon, while also keeping all the multi-part stories together to watch in batches. That’s not always easy to spot just from the episode titles, so we’ve numbered and color-coded them in the document.

Follow that master list for a complete index of each episode. But here’s the shorthand version:

• Start SG-1 Season 8 with the two-parter “New Order.”
• The Atlantis two-part premiere “Rising” comes next.
• There is a tiny continuity fix early in SG-1‘s eighth season: watch “Covenant” before “Affinity.” They were originally written to air this way, and if you just stick to the airing (or streaming) order a character will know something they technically don’t learn until the next episode.
• This tweak is optional, but we’ve moved 8×13 (“It’s Good To Be King”) a few episodes later. It’s not strictly necessary, but if you wait until after Atlantis‘s “Before I Sleep” then the SG-1 story will make a little more sense.
• Good news! There are no more pesky crossovers until you reach the end of the season. Be sure to finish SG-1‘s “Moebius” before you start Atlantis‘ “The Siege.” In fact Atlantis ramps up to its finale with a multi-episode arc, so we’re going to finish “Moebius” before we start that.
• Seasons 9 and 2, respectively, also aired together. We can alternate most of these (keeping the two-parters together), or you can binge-watch a bunch of one show and then switch back to the other if you prefer.
• As we move from this season into Seasons 10 and 3 we’ll have a 3-episode arc for SG-1 (through “Flesh and Blood”), and a 3-episode arc for Atlantis (through “Misbegotten”). They aren’t related to each other, so take these episode clusters in any order you wish.
• SG-1‘s tenth and final year does not wrap up the main story, so follow the last episode with the movie Stargate: The Ark of Truth to get some closure!
• Note in the guide that we held off on the Atlantis Season 3 finale, “First Strike,” until now. There’s a good reason for that. Dig into this multi-part story now, after you’ve finished Ark of Truth, and continue all the way through the Season 5 premiere, “Search and Rescue.”
• Although the SG-1 movie Stargate: Continuum arrived on DVD only a few short months after The Ark of Truth, it’s actually set here in the timeline — after “Search and Rescue.” You can watch it now, or any time the mood strikes as you are making your way through the fifth and final season of Stargate Atlantis.

STARGATE UNIVERSE

Continuum is the final SG-1 story (so far!), and while Atlantis was meant to continue with movies of its own … those never came to pass. As of this writing, that story concludes with the fifth season finale, “Enemy at the Gate.”

But it’s not the end for the Stargate story! The franchise continued with the 2009 premiere of the third series, Stargate Universe. This show was ahead of its time in many ways, and holds up very well on today’s TV landscape. But know going in that it is intentionally different in its approach to storytelling and cinematography, trading its predecessors’ action-adventure tone for a darker character drama.

SGU aired for two seasons before it was cancelled by Syfy Channel. The only thing of special note in our Optimized Watch Order is for the completionist: during the first season the studio also produced 34 “kino” shorts, which were released on the official Web site and later on DVD and Blu-ray. (Today you can also find them on YouTube.) They are canon.

Most of these are brief looks at the characters’ everyday life, so they are good to watch as you make your way through Season One. A few tie in directly with an episode (notably, this one is an epilogue to the episode “Time”). So if you plan to binge them all at once we recommend waiting until after episode 17 (“Pain”). This will avoid any spoilers, and also knock them out before we begin the storyline that will lead into Season Two.

WHERE DOES ORIGINS FIT?

Technically the 2018 Web series Stargate Origins would come first in a timeline order viewing. Origins is a prequel story that streamed exclusively on MGM’s “Stargate Command” service, originally in 10 short installments. Today you can find the 90-minute movie cut Stargate Origins: Catherine on digital storefronts and streaming platforms. (As of this writing, it’s streaming free in the U.S. at Pluto TV.)

Origins didn’t have any involvement from the producers of the original TV franchise, which ended in 2011. It’s a low-budget production made for the Web, with relatively loose connections to the rest of the franchise. As it is a prequel, Origins‘ writers attempted to tell a self-contained story that did not impact what would come later.

Many of the references are in there for long-time fans and would be lost on newcomers who start here. There’s a case to be made that it is entirely skippable. But we would recommend putting it at the end of your viewing experience, for the sake of completeness, and recognizing this project for what it is … but certainly not starting a first-time viewing with it.

CONCLUSION

The Optimized Watch Order has become our favorite way to watch through the Stargate franchise. And it’s worth saying that the shows are largely episodic, so if one show is up next on the watch list but you’re in the mood for the other one … well, you’re probably fine to watch it. The Optimized Watch Order allows for a lot of flexibility. Just recognize that when a string of episodes from one series are bunched together in the document, it’s because they are telling a unified story.

We should also note one more television series we’ve left off the list: Stargate Infinity. The animated series aired for a single season and isn’t canon — more like licensed merchandise than a part of the Stargate story. The live-action writers were not involved in the show, which aired on Saturday mornings during SG-1‘s sixth season. Infinity is set in the future, and if you’re a completionist you can watch it pretty much any time — but if you wait much past SG-1 Season Five some elements of Infinity start to make less sense (in that characters in the future don’t know things they clearly should know).

Seventeen seasons, four movies, and more than 350 episodes of amazing science fiction — Stargate has secured its legacy as one of the great sci-fi universes. And it will continue! Although the franchise is not in active production right now, with Amazon acquiring the rights through its purchase of MGM in 2022 it is only a matter of time.

Stargate will be back. And we’ll be ready!

What’s your preferred method for watching through the Stargate franchise? Have you tried the Optimized Viewing Order? Post in the comments below!

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