Stargate: Continuum

The second in Stargate SG-1's direct to DVD movies. The show jumped to DVD movies when their primary source of funding for the show dried up in season 10, which was surprising because they were still getting very good ratings. Deciding to take a chance and rely on their fan following, the show jumped formats.

The first DVD movie "The Ark of Truth" fairly neatly tied up the cliffhanger of the Ori threat. I loved that movie, as it had everything I wanted from Stargate; battles, race against time, character interaction, the works.

Continuum returns to the old protagonist; the system lords, and the last of the big threats; Ba'al, played wonderfully by Cliff Simon. With all his clones dead and his symbiote about to be extracted from his body, Ba'al has an intricate revenge plot set in motion against SG-1, the Jaffa, the Tok'ra and the Tau'ri.

This is a more adult version of Stargate. No! Not like that. It's a bit grittier and with the DVD release they can get away with more profanity. Daniel Jackson even says 'shit'.

Overall, it's good but not quite as good as The Ark of Truth. While it doesn't actively try to scramble your brain with time travel maguffins in the way Bender's Big Score did, it still relies on time travel too much for the premise and conclusion, and frankly Stargate has done better time travel stories in the series. The main difference here is that since there's a longer running time, you get to see how the crew try to adapt to the altered timeline. This is not filler, it's important to the plot, but it is the main difference between this film and the TV show episodes. And that's the problem, because in the final solution (while satisfying) they rely on a plot that they already used in the TV show, and used to better effect.

The banter between the characters is also more subdued because they spend a lot of time apart from each other, which is a shame as it was one of the things I loved about the show.

It was nice though to see Don S. Davis again as General Hammond, in what turned out to be his last appearance.

Score: B
Good, but Ark of Truth was better.

OQ:
Major General Hank Landry: I take it that in your timeline you're not a discredited whackjob living on the fringes of society?
Dr. Daniel Jackson: That really depends on who you ask.

Trivia: The film is dedicated to the memory of Paul McCann, 32, and Anthony Huntrod, 20, of the HMS Tireless, who died in an accident during the filming of the arctic scenes of ‘Stargate: Continuum’.