50 Fun Facts About Stargate

Who directed the original 1994 Stargate film?

He co-wrote it with producer Dean Devlin, and the pair followed it with Independence Day two years later.

Which real-life Air National Guard veteran played Colonel Jack O'Neil in the 1994 film?

He turned the role down repeatedly until someone realised he had only been sent an early draft; the finished shooting script won him over.

Which actor, fresh from an Oscar nomination for The Crying Game, played the alien Ra?

He agreed only after his request for a $1 million fee was accepted, then retired from acting altogether, disliking the fame.

Who played the archaeologist Dr. Daniel Jackson in the 1994 film?

He admitted he was intrigued because he found the script "awful", but signed on after meeting the director.

Which composer, then working in a London video store, wrote the film's score as his first major American picture?

He went on to score five James Bond films, and his Stargate cues became a staple of movie trailers.

Roughly how much did Stargate gross worldwide, against a production budget of $55M?

That warm public reception came despite lukewarm reviews, and the film later topped Billboard's video-rental chart in April 1995.

Roger Ebert wrote that which 1994 film "was made to prepare us for Stargate"?

Ebert gave it one star and still had it on his most-hated list a decade later, though audiences graded it B+ on CinemaScore.

Teacher Omar Zuhdi sued the filmmakers, claiming they lifted the story from his 1984 script titled what?

The suit was settled out of court, though the debate over who first imagined the ring-shaped portal has never fully gone away.

Which two writers, then colleagues on The Outer Limits, created Stargate SG-1?

Each pitched MGM separately without knowing about the other; the studio greenlit the show on condition they work together.

Who took over the role of Jack O'Neill (now with two L's) for the TV series?

He agreed only if his character got far more comedic leeway than in the film and the show was an ensemble rather than a solo star vehicle.

On which US channel did Stargate SG-1 premiere on July 27, 1997?

The two-hour pilot drew the channel's highest-ever ratings for a series premiere; the show moved to Sci Fi in 2002 for its last five seasons.

Stargate SG-1 was filmed in and around which city?

By 2006 SG-1 and Atlantis were said to have brought half a billion US dollars of production to British Columbia.

Stargate Command sits beneath which real peak near Colorado Springs?

Fan questions got so frequent that the real complex put a mock high-security "Stargate Command" door on a closet holding brooms and detergent.

How many episodes of Stargate SG-1 were made across its ten seasons?

The first seven seasons had 22 episodes each; the network trimmed the last three to 20.

With its 202nd episode, SG-1 overtook which show as North America's longest-running sci-fi series?

Doctor Who fans disputed its 2007 Guinness listing, since 695 episodes of the British show were made between 1963 and 1989, just not consecutively.

Teal'c defected from serving Apophis in what rank, the most senior a Jaffa can hold?

He appears in every SG-1 episode except one, more than any other character in the series.

Which planet, orbiting a binary star, is Teal'c's homeworld?

He says he is 101 years old in season four's "The Light", and ages another fifty in the finale.

Which SG-1 star later became the voice of Kratos in God of War (2018)?

He also wrote four SG-1 episodes, including "The Warrior" and "Birthright", and shaved his head at home every day until season eight.

Which SG-1 regular also provided the voice of the Asgard commander Thor?

He did it during season six, when he had left the show over what he saw as the underuse of his character.

When Daniel Jackson's actor left after season five, Corin Nemec joined SG-1 as which alien scientist?

Casting agents had bumped into Nemec by chance in the courtyard of MGM's Santa Monica offices.

In the pilot, Carter jokes it took 'fifteen years and three supercomputers to ___ a system for the gate'. Which word?

The show kept nodding to its cast's past roles, right up to a vignette spoofing the newcomers' old series in the milestone episode "200".

Before playing General Hammond, Don S. Davis was Major Garland Briggs on which cult series?

Davis was a real US Army captain and later a theatre professor; after his death, Stargate named a starship George Hammond in his character's honour.

Both Ben Browder and Claudia Black joined SG-1 from which earlier sci-fi series?

Black's guest turn was so popular that her real pregnancy was written into the plot before she joined full-time in season ten.

The Ori, villains of the final two seasons, are best described as what?

Their preachers, the Priors, got face scarification inspired by remote jungle tribes; Japanese and samurai garments shaped their costumes.

O'Neill's running references to which cartoon reflect his actor's own favourite TV show?

The Wizard of Oz was the other running gag, seeded in one co-creator's scripts from season one.

Which British Columbia campus stood in for the capital of the advanced Tollan?

The local rain was a constant headache for the production, though it could be digitally removed from footage.

Which term did the show's co-creator use for SG-1 fans in 2001, though it never really caught on?

The fan site GateWorld became so trusted that its founder was hired to check the comics for continuity errors.

What is the name of the amnesiac alien behind the TV show in the 100th episode, 'Wormhole X-Treme!'?

Willie Garson played him, and the writers took their cue from the 1999 comedy Galaxy Quest.

In "Wormhole X-Treme!", Michael DeLuise modelled hammy Colonel Danning on which actor?

The part had first been offered to Survivor host Jeff Probst and then to Airplane! star Robert Hays.

Which sibling puppeteers, who also made Team America's puppets, built the marionette sequence in the 200th episode?

The puppets' wires did not show up on camera and had to be re-added digitally in post-production.

In "200", Teal'c says a three-episode series deserved a movie because of DVD sales, a jab at which show?

The writers structured the episode like a Saturday Night Live sketch show and a Treehouse of Horror anthology.

In 'Unending', how many years does SG-1 spend in a time-dilation field aboard the Odyssey?

Teal'c alone stays outside the reversal and keeps his memories, coming away with only a white streak in his hair.

Under normal conditions, a Stargate wormhole can be held open for slightly more than how long?

Holding it longer needs enormous power, such as a nearby black hole.

Introduced in "The Fifth Race", what does dialling an eighth chevron specify?

The extra symbol works like an area code, and the power needed exceeded the whole SGC's output the first time.

How wide were the two full-size Stargate props built for the SG-1 pilot?

The main one is turned by an eight-horsepower motor, and the SGC set had to be built twice as tall as the ring.

Which household appliance did the Ancient Orlin use to build a mini Stargate in Carter's basement?

The rest of the shopping list was 100 pounds of titanium, 200 feet of fibre-optic cable and seven industrial capacitors.

The TV series' "kawoosh" event-horizon effect was created in CG by which Canadian visual-effects company?

The film had done it practically, filming a real swirl of water in a glass tube.

Stargate Atlantis is set in which galaxy?

The city was originally going to be under the Antarctic ice on Earth before the writers moved it to give the spin-off room to breathe.

The Wraith, Atlantis' life-draining villains, evolved from which creature?

They were woken early from hibernation by the expedition's arrival, leaving too few humans to feed on and sparking Wraith civil war.

David Hewlett's Rodney McKay was a last-minute swap for which scientist written into the Atlantis pilot?

Hewlett arrived on set the day after filming started, and the pilot script simply had the name changed.

Which actor, later Khal Drogo and Aquaman, played Ronon Dex on Atlantis?

He had made his debut on Baywatch: Hawaii and learned martial arts for the role.

In the Atlantis series finale, the flying city lands in the Pacific near which landmark?

A planned follow-up film, Stargate: Extinction, had a finished script but was shelved when MGM hit financial trouble.

What is the name of the Ancient ship on which the crew of Stargate Universe is stranded?

It refuels by diving into the outer layer of a star, which terrified the crew the first time it happened.

Which Scottish actor played the Machiavellian scientist Dr. Nicholas Rush?

He kept his Scottish accent for the part and won a Gemini Award for it, having earlier taken a BAFTA for The Full Monty.

Eli Wallace is recruited to the Stargate program after solving a puzzle hidden inside what?

Reaching the ship required dialling a nine-chevron address, something never attempted in the earlier series.

Ming-Na Wen's IOA representative Camile Wray was the Stargate franchise's first what?

She was credited as a regular for two episodes, dropped to recurring, then restored as a regular from "Justice" onward.

The animated Stargate Infinity (2002) is set how many years in the future?

It ran 26 episodes on Fox's Saturday-morning block, and SG-1's co-creator says it should not be considered canon.

Who wrote and directed the direct-to-DVD film Stargate: The Ark of Truth?

It wraps up the Ori storyline on a $7 million budget, and a workprint leaked online three months before release.

In Stargate: Continuum, Ba'al goes back to which year to hijack the ship carrying the Stargate?

The film earned a Guinness World Record for the farthest-north film shoot after its Arctic scenes.

The 2018 web prequel Stargate Origins follows which character from the 1994 film as a young woman?

Ten ten-minute episodes were later stitched into a 104-minute feature cut; the villain is a Nazi occultist.