Since you're getting product from the franchise that produced 10 series of Stargate SG1,  and 4 (soon 5) series of Stargate Atlantis, not to mention the 'other' Stargate film Ark of Truth, you can sit back and be comfortable with production values that put all other shows I can think of to shame.

In fact the team evolved from various individuals including Richard Dean Anderson who have worked on (mostly) successful TV projects since the 80's. Believe me folks,  they're good. There's spoilers after this point,  so if you want to cherish every frame of this video,  stop reading now.  But don't tell me you actually thought SG1 was going to fail or something?

The locations in this particular outing include the Arctic,  with a guest appearance by a nuclear sub and some cool (pun intended) real world tech, plus a cracking story.

The basis is that Ba'al (Cliff Simon's engaging but devious and very bad guy from the series) nips back in time to change history.  The Stargate is never found,  the SG project never started,  and the Earth lies defenceless against the Goa'uld.

The nice part of this trick is that since history has changed, we can throw out all the stuff we thought we knew about everyone in this particular universe, and re-use all the characters (including the formerly dead ones) in a brand new romp.  Like I said - professional.

Claudia Black comes back as her Goa'uld baddy alter ego Qetesh and goes through a whole episode being menacing rather than funny,  which makes a nice change.

The cast of characters is too numerous to mention all individually,  but the recently deceased Don S Davis makes one of his last appearances here as General Hammond.  He's been a part of the franchise for a very long time and he'll be missed.

Richard Dean Anderson is back as typically trenchant Colonel Jack O'Neil, although he's also rudely dead in the first 10 minutes - don't worry it's not permanent.  Then he's alternate timeline -and slightly chubby- (sorry RDA, but I guess we're all getting older) Special Forces Jack doing the Artic rescue.

There's an alien invasion,  everyone pretty much dies except Colonel Mitchell (Ben Browder) who gets to go back in time,  interrupt Ba'al's plans very rudely and save the day.

The story line is tight, technical and funny in the right places and my only complaint about the whole 90 minutes is that it's so slick and rounds off all the loose ends so completely that it just leaves you wanting more.

With all the main characters following up their own projects these days it's not clear whether that will happen anytime soon,  but at least we've got Atlantis for the time being.

This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it

---