Entertainment, TV, Television - Army Times

‘Stargate SG1’ ends its TV odyssey tonight

Think of “Stargate-SG-1’s finale as the short goodbye.

The Sci Fi Channel program ends tonight (8 ET/PT) as U.S. TV’s longest-running science-fiction series, after 10 seasons and 215 episodes. But it will return in direct-to-video film form in 2008.

The series, a descendant of the 1994 movie “Stargate,” follows a present-day elite team traveling the cosmos via a network of mysterious wormholes, or “gates.”

The finale title, “Unending,” suggests the real resolution lies in a wormhole yet to be discovered. The episode follows the series formula — a mix of sci-fi adventure, relationships and humor — hinting at how the team members’ lives might play out while positioning them for future adventures.

“Stargate” itself has traveled over the decade, starting at Showtime and moving to Sci Fi. It opened with “MacGyver’s” Richard Dean Anderson as the main acting draw. Over the years, characters played by Christopher Judge, Amanda Tapping and Michael Shanks grew in prominence. After Anderson departed as a regular, “Stargate” got new blood with Beau Bridges and “Farscape’s” Ben Browder and Claudia Black.

“In the beginning, it was: ‘Hey, it’s that guy that played MacGyver and three mooks.’ As the show evolved, it became much more of a team show,” says Judge, who has played Teal’c, a member of the Jaffa species, since the show’s beginning.

“When Ben and Beau and Claudia got here, it really kicked in that there were four, then five, equals.”

Anderson says he asked producers to be patient while he found a way to find the right tone for his character, then-Col. Jack O’Neill.

“I was essentially taking over Kurt Russell’s part. I told [the producers] they had to trust me, because there was no way I could be that stoic on an ongoing basis,” he says. “And I couldn’t make my hair do that.”

Anderson added humor to the role, which paved the way for the introduction of quirks in the other characters, he says.

Success led to spinoff “Stargate” Atlantis, which Tapping joins in its fourth season.

“We never took ourselves too seriously, and we’ve embraced humor,” says executive producer Brad Wright. “And we always had one foot in the here and now, as opposed to being so removed from today.”

Setting the show in the present (the gate-jumpers work from a mountain hideaway) allowed for many pop culture references.

“What’s different is that we began the show borrowing mythologies from ancient Earth cultures,” Wright says. “Within a few seasons, we had developed enough of our own mythology that it became a fabric of cultures and aliens that we could tell stories with.”

“Stargate’s” cancellation after a drop in ratings (averaging 1.8 million viewers this season) led to a fan outcry, an indication that a devoted audience remains. Based on that popularity, two direct-to-video films, “Stargate: The Ark of Truth” and “Stargate: Continuum” (the latter featuring Anderson), are due in less than a year, and more are possible, Wright says.

“I don’t like to actually call the series [finale] an ending. I prefer to call it the ending of a weekly check,” Judge jokes. “But it was time for us to take this next step. We have been looking forward to doing movies for five years now.”

Anderson can’t shake MacGyver

Many viewers know Richard Dean Anderson as “Stargate SG-1’s” Jack O’Neill. But the actor gets more fan shout-outs for “MacGyver,” an earlier series in which he played a secret agent and science whiz who could disarm a bomb with a paper clip.

Fifteen years after its finale, MacGyver was still fondly enough remembered to be the subject of a “Saturday Night Live” running gag this season, “MacGruber.” And the character’s influence is apparent in USA’s new Burn Notice (premieres Thursday), which features an inventive ex-CIA agent who preaches the power of duct tape.

Anderson enjoyed the SNL sketches. “All it took was the font and the mullet” to channel the ‘80s hero, he says.

As to “MacGyver’s” enduring resonance, he says: “There was just something embraceable about the franchise. We created a character who didn’t use a gun to solve problems, who was more pacifist than anything. He was slugging guys, but at least he wasn’t killing them. I think TV was ready to accept that kind of character.”

Anderson has had fun with “MacGyver,” too. In 2006, he reprised the character in a MasterCard “Priceless” Super Bowl commercial and guest-voiced an episode of The Simpsons in which he, Anderson, was kidnapped by Marge’s “MacGyver”-obsessed sisters.

For Anderson, that appearance put an exclamation point on MacGyver’s — and his — place in pop culture. “That, to me, is a completed career.”