There are times when I really wonder why I sit down to write these reviews. There are other times when I really wonder why I watch stuff just because I kinda liked something that was part of the same series, even if it’s not really the same series and isn’t that great. Stargate: Continuum triggers both of those reactions.
For those not in the know, after SG-1 ended, the producers decided to move on to making direct-to-DVD movies and letting Atlantis carry the torch of the Stargate franchise on television (and, to be fair, Atlantis has been a much better series than the SG-1 episodes produced at the same time). The first, The Ark of Truth (which I’ll get to eventually in this series), wrapped up the Ori story arc from the last two seasons of SG-1 and gave it the kind of finale it should have had in the first place (why they didn’t just turn that story into the season finale instead of making the tedious crap of “Unending”, the last episode, I’ll never know). I also like to use parenthesis a lot.
Anyway, Continuum is a time travel/alternate timeline episode, something the Stargate franchise has never done particularly well. Of course, keep in mind that even Star Trek rarely managed to pull off this theme successfully. As it stands, this is a mash-up of “There But For the Grace of God” and “Moebius”, combining the “nightmare invasion” scenario with the “we’ve got to go back in time and fix it, but the government won’t let us” theme. Mind you, after a series has been running this long, we’re bound to see some elements repeat themselves (and really, there isn’t much new in “regular” science fiction anyway). This, however, is a stock-standard “bad dream” episode stretched out over an excruciatingly dull hour and a half, that does nothing but serve to prove to us that Baal is really and truly dead and they mean it this time, dammit.
Whoops. Guess I should’ve put a spoiler warning or something there. But come on – he’s not really dead, and we know it. If they ever produce more movies from this series, he’ll be back.
See, back around season 8 or so of SG-1, the Goa’uld (the Big Bads of the show) pretty well got their asses kicked by a primitive tribe of hyoomans from a miserable backwater dirtball called Earth. The last of the System Lords with any power left, Baal (charismatically played by Cliff Simon), cloned himself and his human host. I suspect the writers did it because they enjoyed Cliffy’s smugly superior acting as much as the audience does. This horde of clones unlike anything seen since Spider-Man got stuck in the copy machine gave the writers one hell of an opportunity to play with: they got to bump off Baal in every single episode he showed up in, and yet still have him around when they needed him again to provide a bad guy who wasn’t the Ori.
Supposedly, the last of Baal’s clones (or maybe the original – you can’t really tell them apart) died in the last season of the series, but we all knew it was a ruse. Continuum starts off with SG-1 traveling to…somewhere to attend a ceremony to rip Baal out of his host’s skull. Firstly, keep in mind that this is the “new” SG-1, with Mitchell instead of O’Neill and with Vala (Claudia Black) thrown in for…whatever the hell Vala’s job is. Annoying the audience, I think. She’s not really good for anything else. If SG-1 was a D&D adventuring party, she’d be the bard. But on the upside and almost making up for having Claudia Black around, they’ve got the now-General O’Neill along, who finally got off of his ass in Washington to do something useful (my guess is that the DVD sales of MacGuyver were down and Richard Dean Anderson needed a car payment).
As a side note, I really fucking hate Claudia Black. She annoys me. She annoys me as no one outside of Paula Deen or that fast-talking bastard in the Micro Machines commercials does. Over the years Vala has been appearing, she hasn’t grown on me. I hate her now more than I ever have. When I say I hate her, I want you to grasp my full meaning. I’d rather have Jonas Quinn around than her. I have no idea how Farscape fans stand her.
Anyway, the Tok’ra (the good-guy symbiotes who kinda like the Mirror Universe versions of the Goa’uld, but without being from another universe) are ready to vacuum Baal out of his human host. Why they’re concerned for this particular human host when they’ve bumped off dozens just like him in deflating the various Baals (these are the jokes, folks) is beyond me. Maybe it’s some kind of sick token effort at saying “Hey, we’re the good guys!”. The poor guy’s been possessed by a power-crazed alien snake for the last couple thousand years, and has stood by and watched his body commit thousands of atrocities from massacring human slaves to not paying his taxes (Baal spent a fair bit of time on Earth). Frankly, just putting him out of his misery would be cheaper than paying for the years of psychotherapy he’s gonna need to get over that.
As they’re about to sluck Baal out of his host, people start vanishing, starting with Vala. If Baal had stopped at making Vala disappear from history, I would have been glad to let him rule the universe out of gratitude. Then other people start going missing, and it’s apparent something’s badly wrong. Carter, Mitchell, and Jackson make a run for the gate and end up coming out on an Earth where the Stargate wasn’t found. Oh, and they’re freezing their asses off in the Arctic.
As you can probably guess, at some point Baal (or another clone of Baal – whichever it is) has traveled back in time and changed history. Why history doesn’t change all at once is beyond me, but that’s the way it is. And now Carter, Mitchell, and Jackson have to convince a government that (once again) doesn’t really believe things out there in the galaxy are as bad as they are to let them use the Stargate to fix things.
I’m going to come right out and say I’m not fond of the mechanism common to time travel in Stargate; it involves a whole lot of skeevy physics and violating wormholes in ways not see outside of Stephen Hawking’s porn collection. And in the show’s universe, you can indeed travel through time, cause a paradox, and get away with it. At least they’ve sort of got a set of rules governing how things work, unlike Star Trek.
Within the alternate timeline, there are some nice moments reminiscent of the “old” SG-1, when humanity doesn’t have flashy alientech ray guns (but not Reagans) and spaceships, and they’re fighting a vastly superior foe. However, those times are (to us fans) long in the past, and it feels just plain wrong to see everything corrupted and reset like that. Maybe that’s what the producers were going for.
The Goa’uld attack on Earth has some nice cameos of characters we haven’t seen in years (such as Peter Williams returning as Apophis for the umpteenth time since his character’s death), some of them twisted in interesting ways. However, by now we’ve seen a couple dozen alternate timeline/universe versions of Apophis, and it’s getting old. At least this one doesn’t have a fucking goatee.
It’s also worth noting that, as is dreadfully usual in these kind of alternate timeline/”bad dream” stories, the writers indulge in bumping off nearly all of the main characters, because everything’s going to be reset in the end and they’ll be fine. Why is it that every story in every franchise that deals with this theme has to turn it into a slaughterfest? Honestly, guys, at least fucking try to be original.
Really, this movie is only for fanboys of the series, and only the most hardcore ones at that. For anyone else, Stargate: Continuum is really just an exercise in tedium. The plot is dull and predictable (and has been overdone), Claudia Black is annoying, and this movie does nothing that couldn’t have been accomplished in a one-hour show. It does get extra points for not having Mitchell end up being his own grandfather, though.
The Chef was born 856 years ago on a small planet orbiting a star in the Argolis cluster. It was prophesied that the arrival of a child with a birthmark shaped like a tentacle would herald the planet's destruction. When the future Chef was born with just such a birthmark, panic ensued (this would not be the last time the Chef inspired such emotion). The child, tentacle and all, was loaded into a rocket-powered garbage scow and launched into space. Unfortunately, the rocket's exhaust ignited one of the spectators' flatulence, resulting in a massive explosion that detonated the planet's core, destroying the world and killing everyone on it.
When the would-be Chef awoke from his torpor, he looked around at the new world he found himself on. His first words were, “Hey, this place sucks." Disguising himself as one of the planet's dominant species of semi-domesticated ape, the being who would become known as the Chef wandered the Earth until he ended up in its most disreputable slum - Paris, France.
Taking a job as a can-can dancer, the young Chef made a living that way until one day one of the cooks at a local bistro fell ill with food poisoning (oh, bitter irony). In a desperate move, the bistro's owner rushed into one of the local dance halls, searching for a replacement. He grabbed the ugliest can-can dancer he could find, and found himself instead with an enterprising (if strange) young man who now decided, based on this random encounter, to only answer to the name “Chef".
His success as a French chef was immediate (but considering that this is a country where frogs and snails are considered delicacies, this may or may not be a significant achievement). Not only was the Chef's food delicious, it also kept down the local homeless population. He rose to the heights of stardom in French cuisine, and started a holy war against the United Kingdom to end the reign of terror British food had inflicted on its citizens.
When the Crimean War broke out around France, the Chef assisted Nikola Tesla and Galileo in perfecting the scanning electron microscope, which was crucial in driving back the oncoming Communist hordes. It would later be said that without the Chef, the war would have been lost. He was personally awarded a Purple Heart by the King of France.
After that, the Chef traveled to America, home of such dubious culinary delights as McDonald's Quarter Pounder With Cheese. He immediately adopted the Third World nation as his new home, seeing it as his job to protect and enlighten it. When the Vietnam War began, he immediately volunteered and served in the Army of the Potomac under Robert E. Lee and General Patton. During the war, the Chef killed dozens of Nazis, most of them with his bare hands.
Marching home from war across the floor of the Atlantic Ocean, stark-naked and freezing, the Chef wound up on the shores of Mexico. He spent several years there, drinking tequila with Pancho Villa and James Dean. He put his culinary skills to the test when he invented the 5,000-calorie Breakfast Chili Burrito With Orange Sauce (which is today still a favorite in some parts of Sonora).
Eventually, the Chef returned to his adopted home of America, where he met a slimy, well-coiffed weasel who was starting up a new kind of buffet - one dedicated to providing the highest-quality unmentionable appetizers to the online community. The Chef dedicated himself to spreading the word of his famous Lard Sandwich (two large patties of fried lard, in between two slices of toasted buttered lard, with bacon and cheese), as well as occasionally writing about his opinions on less-important topics than food.
Every word of this is true, if only in the sense that every word of this exists in the English language.
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