jedibuttercup

Rewatched the Stargate movie recently. It had been awhile. I'd forgotten how many deviations it actually has from SG-1 canon, besides the obvious one of the lead characters being played by different actors. The show itself joked about the spelling difference of "O'Neil with one L", but there were a few other things that caught my attention.

Jack's son's name was Tyler, not Charlie, according to an award seen in the movie; I guess that explains why so many SG-1 fics give his full name as "Charles Tyler O'Neill". (Did they ever actually give him a middle name on the show?)

The movie's events take place in Clear Creek Mountain, not Cheyenne Mountain.

Abydos was on the far side of the known universe in the movie, in another galaxy, most definitely not in our backyard. In the show, Sam says in "Children of the Gods" when she discusses stellar drift: "Abydos is probably the closest planet in the network to Earth. I mean, the closer they are, the less the difference in relative position due to expansion."

In the director's cut version of the movie, Catherine Langford shows Daniel a picture in the car at the beginning and asks if it's of his parents. It shows a couple with a toddler, definitely less than three years old. Daniel says it's of his foster parents. The show's backstory says he was with his birth parents until age 8, so to reconcile them it must mean he has at least one foster sibling out there somewhere.

According to the movie, the pyramid and the cover stones were dated to ten thousand years. According to the eighth season episode "Moebius", the gate was only buried five thousand years ago. One might imagine Ra's rule lasting five thousand years on earth quite easily, but that doesn't explain the cover stone.

The computer screens already have slots for seven symbols on them, not to mention a system set up to (a) report when items sent through the gate were molecularly dematerialized and (b) triangulate the movement of items sent through by means of a signal sent back. Catherine told Daniel it was the first time the gate had been made to work, so how in hell would they have known to prepare for any of that? If you're not a series fan, that's a big plot hole. This is one case in which the show's changes-- see "Torment of Tantalus"-- patch a problem rather than creating one.

Much of the technology is different, though I suppose you could explain that away as having been specifically engineered for a more impressive or more fashionable look for Ra's mothership. Things like the hand devices, the retractable head cowls, and the sarcophagus exist and have much the same purpose in the show as they do in the movie, but the designs and the way they're used vary pretty obviously, unlike more closely copied items like the staff weapons, ring transporters, and gliders.

The dying planet/extinction of species explanation Daniel finds on the wall doesn't really work for the Goa'uld as shown in the series. I suppose you could rationalize it as Ra's previous Unas host being too old to sustain anymore, and him giving an untruthful explanation of his history to the slaves to keep them from thinking they could apply to another Goa'uld to get themselves out from under his leadership. Or, if Abydos really is the source of the first Goa'uld-run naquadah mine, maybe they didn't have working sarcophagi before that, or maybe they hadn't yet found the piece of Ancient technology that was used to create the sarcophagi in the first place... Hmm. Something to think about.

Less of a difference, than an observation: according to my brother, who's now in the air force, the SF wearing his hat inside the building? Very bad form. Of course, he also says the series is also a minefield of egregious rank and/or uniform errors. Probably intentionally most of the time, though, rather than a mistake; it is, after all, illegal to impersonate a member of the armed forces, even if the audience already knows it's an impersonation.