Earliest possible "Stargate SG-1"?
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Well, working from the canon laid down in the movie and "Torment of Tantalus" I could potentially see a program starting up in the mid-late 60s, at the behest of Erich/Eric Gruber (Heinrich Gruber's actual son) and a much younger Catherine Langford, and working from Heinrich's personal notes (more inclusive than Paul Langford's altered notes, since Paul would want to eliminate any mention of Ernest Littlefield's actual fate, including the fact that the gate worked), run at first by ARPA. Of course the first mission would be to Abydos, because Heinrich had expunged the address from his notes and the record keepers weren't forthcoming, which gives them a lot more addresses. With a lot of gate addresses in hand, and not much military interference, the project gets a better start than OTL, right up until Ra shows up, at which point they get a rude and rather bloody awakening, and the program gets taken over by the military.
Irwin Allen cheese or Sliders seasons 1/2 cheese?
I could see a Desilu production, with Star Trek levels of seriousness, exploring worlds via stargates. Take Roddenberry out of the picture, inspire somebody to put together a feasible pilot, and you've got a show. It might not age well, but it wouldn't be a Batman-type parody.
There's a couple of hurdles to the pilot:
1) Getting the concept of contemporary 1900's gates when they'd require FTL or ancient astronauts (human or otherwise).
2) Making this sell to a studio. Desilu is the one that seems most natural to me.
If its not using a natural phenomenon, like black holes or some handwavium, there needs to be a physical artifact for the star gate. Which means space travel over interstellar distances, which means ancient astronauts. You can get there without Chariots of the Gods; you can have the series creator come up with the concept out of whole cloth through inference and practicality:
How do you travel to different worlds without having to use model spaceships every week? You have a giant ring that sends you from one world to the next. Same set piece both for "home" and for the exotic world of the week. How can you explain it? Aliens visited Earth once upon a time, who knows what happened to them, and now we can use this thing we found in the ground to explore the rest of the universe.
Having a marketable ensemble cast explore a veiled message world of the week seems to be the concept. Partially military, partially civilian, possibly with Scrappy Doo idiocy like Wesley Crusher cropping up. I don't know about a Goa'uld or Jaffa analogue.
The timing works out quite well. Lots of original syndicated TV series came out in the mid to late eighties.
Star Trek: the Next Generation - 1987
Friday the 13th - 1987
War of the Worlds - 1988
Superboy - 1988
Dracula: the series - 1990
A Stargate TV series could probably fit in quite well on syndicated TV, and have a good chance of surviving.
Honestly, I don't see any of this happening, since that's OTL canon. How far into the series was it before any of this was conceived?MattII said:
IMO, that depends on who produces to begin with.Brasidas said:
Agreed. I haven't seen any SF Mark VII ("Dragnet" & "Adam 12"), but Jack Webb was a serious guy; maybe Cayuga Productions (which did "Twilight Zone"). With somebody like Gene Coon or Rod Serling as Executive Producer, it could not only survive, but actually be good.Brasidas said:
What else was Desilu doing at the time? (Calling Brainbin...Brasidas said:
)I would sincerely hope to avoid The Wesley.Brasidas said:
As for the rest, agreed. Low budget (none for miniatures, little for fancy effects) means problems need to be solved "in the typewriter", which means many solutions will be close to OTL's "Stargate": humans, seeded by *goa'uld (no appliances for aliens); Earth-like worlds (limited need for matte paintings); human-derived cultures (easy costuming). The major cost in appliances or FX is likely to be *goa'uld; how much did the "glowing eyes" gimmick cost to do? Would it be cheaper to make a "parasite" that can be attached at need?
Then there's the big questions: what network? And how good are the ratings? Enough it survives the first season? Enough to get to 100? Good enough to create a cult following to rival "ST:TOS"?
Garrison
Donor
The networks hated the female number one on Trek and in the end Rodenberry dropped her to keep Spock. You might get the civilian version of Samantha Carter we saw in the mirror universes but she's going be spending a lot of time getting rescued.
Bear in mind that in the 60s and 70s you can forget the kind of big plot arcs and character development of the OTL show, TV was much more 'episodic' than we would expect nowadays.
Looking at the sci-fi of the 60s outside of Trek and at the shows made after TOS and before TNG 'cheese' is almost inevitable.
That had as much to do with Majel sleeping with Gene as being Pike's XO. Don't forget, this was the era of Barbara Stanwyck in "The Big Valley", so a strong female character wasn't impossible.Garrison said:
"Stargate" OTL wasn't notorious for season-long story arcs (let alone the likes of "Burn Notice"). A continuing villain wasn't out of the question IMO.Garrison said:
Regrettably likely. The question is, who produces? If the producer is okay, the writing is likely to be reasonably good. (Judge "Dragnet" or "Adam 12" or "Ironside" against the competition, which is mostly pretty forgettable.) That being true, the show could be a modest success (if not a smash), enough to make it to syndication. (As to the chances of movies or spinoffs...)Garrison said:
historynutty
Banned
That's one way of doing it.
I'm wondering if couldn't have used Heinlein's The Puppet Masters (1951), or maybe Jack Finney's The Body Snatchers (1954), as inspiration... OTL, Finney's led to the 1956 film. I'm not sure RAH would have sold the rights, so soon after "Destination Moon".
The Puppet Masters (1951) has social elements which would horrify/repulse any general movie or TV audience before about 1990.
Note, I'm not suggesting an adaptation, only using the idea of alien parasites or symbiotes as invaders (or continuing bad guys), in keeping with OTL's goa'uld. (IDK if that would require buying the rights to the book or not...but it'd probably be a good idea.)
If we're setting it in the 60s/70s, the original SG1 startup is unviable, so I was trying to come up with an alternative.
That's just it: you're presupposing the TTL story would remotely resemble OTL canon.MattII said:
That, I agree with. In fact, I suspect it'd look more like OTL's later "SGA": more manpower on the SG teams, & much more firepower. (Unless the show budget is pared way down.) That might require a shift in attitude, away from paying star wages to an ensemble approach; I'm far from sure that's credible.MattII said:
I'm just trying to find a viable story. And in this case, what would you suggest as a starting plot?
Honestly, I hadn't thought that far. I tend to an accidental discovery of the Gate, with evidence of aliens (a skeleton?). Maybe better, uncovering the Gate, followed almost immediately by jaffa coming through. In essence, throw the USG, & the viewer, in the deep end from the outset. I expect the direction of the show TTL would be very different, so beyond parallel (initial) casting & a similar general direction (aliens posing as ancient gods), I wouldn't expect much else to be the same.MattII said:
Having thought a bit, I am troubled by the prospect of this turning into religious propaganda.
Recall the ending to the 1953 version of "War of the Worlds" (or even, I might say, the end shot of "Omega Man"). That would dismay me... In this era, I fear, that would be the standard response.Open Wormhole D
POD: ABC execs do not demand a lighter tone to Voyage to the Bottom of Sea and the idea in the show's pilot of a SPECTRE like organization headed by Dr. Gamma is pursued as a recurring villain. The organization is eventually named STARLING. Middle of Season 2 there is a 2 parter wherein the Seaview finds the lost city of Atlantis on the ocean floor. There is some conflict STARLING to control Atlantis which has some alien tech. One of them is a large ring that Seaview goes through at the end of part 1. It then finds itself in the ocean of a distant alien planet, has an adventure then comes home at the end of Part 2.
Ratings for the show are significantly better than OTL. Allen wants to do a space series and for a while considers Lost in Space but decides instead to create a spinoff of Voyage. In another 2 part crossover Seaview goes back to Atlantis and returns to Planet X and sets up a permanent outpost. The military leader of the team is either Navy or Marine. His name is O'Neill and played by Robert Vaughn. There is a foreign civilian expert played by David McCallum. Leo G. Carroll plays the site commander but his boss is Admiral Nelson back on Earth who makes a small appearance every third episode. Soon a nerdy Lt. (jg) Cathy Connors USN is introduced (this was a character in the 1961 film version of Voyage where she was played by Barbara Eden but in the spinoff series it will be Stefanie Powers)
Planet X outpost is given its own flying sub and at first its adventures are only exploring its own planet but later in Season One of the Spinoff more alien tech is discovered. One of them is a robot which is hostile at first but is eventually reprogrammed and becomes a member of the team. It likes to wave its arms and yell, "Danger, Danger". However more important they find a much smaller stargate that is on land and not underwater. Eventually they discover how to dial it allowing for adventures on still more planets.
Initially the villains are STARLING, mad scientists, monster of the week and an occasional Commie spy. However one staple of Voyage was episodes where the crew fought each other. To facilitate these plots Allen is enchanted with the idea of an alien parasite that can possess people. All sorts of episodes with Crane and Nelson shooting at each other! Fantastic! So the spinoff runs into them and they make their way back to poor Seaview.
However when the spinoff makes it into its third season Allen is again enchanted with another AWESOME idea
Vampires from Outer Space!
POD: ABC execs do not demand a lighter tone to Voyage to the Bottom of Sea and the idea in the show's pilot of a SPECTRE like organization headed by Dr. Gamma is pursued as a recurring villain. The organization is eventually named STARLING. Middle of Season 2 there is a 2 parter wherein the Seaview finds the lost city of Atlantis on the ocean floor. There is some conflict STARLING to control Atlantis which has some alien tech. One of them is a large ring that Seaview goes through at the end of part 1. It then finds itself in the ocean of a distant alien planet, has an adventure then comes home at the end of Part 2.
Ratings for the show are significantly better than OTL. Allen wants to do a space series and for a while considers Lost in Space but decides instead to create a spinoff of Voyage. In another 2 part crossover Seaview goes back to Atlantis and returns to Planet X and sets up a permanent outpost. The military leader of the team is either Navy or Marine. His name is O'Neill and played by Robert Vaughn. There is a foreign civilian expert played by David McCallum. Leo G. Carroll plays the site commander but his boss is Admiral Nelson back on Earth who makes a small appearance every third episode. Soon a nerdy Lt. (jg) Cathy Connors USN is introduced (this was a character in the 1961 film version of Voyage where she was played by Barbara Eden but in the spinoff series it will be Stefanie Powers)
Planet X outpost is given its own flying sub and at first its adventures are only exploring its own planet but later in Season One of the Spinoff more alien tech is discovered. One of them is a robot which is hostile at first but is eventually reprogrammed and becomes a member of the team. It likes to wave its arms and yell, "Danger, Danger". However more important they find a much smaller stargate that is on land and not underwater. Eventually they discover how to dial it allowing for adventures on still more planets.
Initially the villains are STARLING, mad scientists, monster of the week and an occasional Commie spy. However one staple of Voyage was episodes where the crew fought each other. To facilitate these plots Allen is enchanted with the idea of an alien parasite that can possess people. All sorts of episodes with Crane and Nelson shooting at each other! Fantastic! So the spinoff runs into them and they make their way back to poor Seaview.
However when the spinoff makes it into its third season Allen is again enchanted with another AWESOME idea
Vampires from Outer Space!