Stargate Origins, Season 1, Episode 8, 9 10

So james and Catherine have clearly been happily busy since they wake up half naked in a tent in time for Asset’s arrival with her Nazi fanpoodles and professor Langford who continues to serve as nazi translator with no objections

The people all bow and scrape before Asset, their god, and for some bizarre reason Brucke the Nazi decides that he wants one of his Nazis to fight one of Asset’s soldier in hand to hand combat to the death to prove whether their minions will die for for their leaders. Which seems… bizarre. Unsurprisingly Asset’s warrior wins because a) he has a spear vs a knife and b) Asset’s arm is armed with medieval weaponry and therefore used to hand-to-hand combat more than the Nazis who are armed with guns.. I have absolutely no idea why he would think this was remotely a good idea.

When he sees his soldier about to die, he decides to shoot the warrior to save his soldier which really annoys Asset but she decides to let it go. And then he murders his Nazi soldier.

Eva is absolutely enraged that he dare kill a Nazi soldier and servant of of Hitler. She is not behind his god claims and is a loyal Nazi. So, y’know, evil either way. She keeps snarling at him from now on and has some pretty good put downs. He’s still promising Asset lots of slaves to convince her to keep allying with him.

Watching all this Catherine does her standard thing of wanting to charge in and get herself killed and James does his thing of stopping her, as he does. This dynamic is getting old.

Asset also makes a big speech about how she can give things to people and how she can take them away - and decides to break her healing stick she had given to the people. She has a tear in her eye while doing it so clearly she does care which is very un-Goa’uldy but there’s still not a lot of explanation of why she did this rather than have it used to heal her downed warrior? Serqet, the hotpants Goa’uld tries to handwave this but it doesn’t make a lot of sense.

What it does do is convince Kasuf and all his people that the Nazi has corrupted their god which I’m assuming is not her goal but who even knows.

Catherine speaks to Kasuf and shows him Stargate symbols so he can lead her to a place where various codes and co-ordinates for the Stargate are. She copies them down - then destroys them so the Nazis can’t use them. Of course when she returns to James and Wasif she realises Asset can just dial it up for them. On the way she tries to talk Kasuf out of his gods, that they’re enslaving him - but he insists they’re free and genuinely worship the gods. It’s hard to convince people they’re slaves when they don’t believe it? That’s the advantage of calling themselves god in the first place.

Waif and James plot how to get to the Stargate - and Wasif is very very very concerned about what the Nazis can do with all the naqueda and the Stargate, while Catherine and James are mainly concerned with each other (Wasif is finally frustrated by this).

Langford finally finds something resembling a spine and doesn’t translate Asset asking if they should kill Catherine et al. Eva continues to give Bruke shit and Bruke continues to be more and more of a megalomaniac. Langford also finally tells Asset that nazis are not nice people and Langford and the Nazi fight, Asset and Sequet just watch to let the humans fight their own battles

Asset also seems to have raided Lady Gaga’s wardrobe while Sequet is still rocking her hotpants.

Stargate Origins: Season 1, Episode 6 & 7

So this rather bizarre, not especially well made but full of pretty people strangeness continues

The Nazis, still bizarrely speaking English, use the professor to translate for them and the professor does so for he is a jellyfish. They want to make an alliance with the Goa’uld for their shiny tech so they show Aset a film reel of Nazi Germany which Aset seems to find impressive and her minion seems to be a bit weird about a projector

Isn’t Goa’uld technology rather advanced and their armies rather larger for them to be that impressed by Nazi Germany?

And why is this Goa’uld impressed by, basically, shadow puppetry? And was she really impressed by a machine gun?

Y’know looking at the main series and this one, I question why the male Goa’uld seemed to wear rather a lot of clothing up to and including metal gold suites while the female Goa’uld wear a few scraps of nothing and, for one of these, daisy dukes.

Laughably the wikia actually says Goa’uld have no concept of gender (despite having queens and rigid gender roles. So hmmmmm)

Aset also notes that Nazi Germany takes many slaves which a) makes Aset thinks humans are ready to be enslaved again and means this show is dancing in dubious dubious territory. And b) this is what the Nazis can do for her: give her lots and lots of slaves

Because last episode she was all; for getting allies to fight Ra has turned into getting slaves to worship her. Her attention span is somewhat limited it seems

The professor also needs to grow a spine.

In exchange she’s going to give them the magic rock lots of Goa’uld tech is made out of which can smash through most things. Because this is pre-energy weapons and the Goa’uld fight by hitting stuff?

Now to the three pretty but inept people

Stargate Origins, Season 1, Episode 4 & 5

Time for more impossibly pretty people to keep investigating the desert land beyond the Stargate (I’m assuming this is Abydos because it looks a lot like it).

The pretty Wasif, pretty Catherine and impossibly pretty James go through the Stargate, arrive in Abydos and begin to set up their theme for the next two episodes: Catherine and James argue constantly while Wasif provides the odd word and the odd comic relief. I won’t say he’s cast as the comic relief because that would be like saying one of the three stooges is the comic relief.

They see the alien skies and realise they’re not in Egypt any more, more they can’t figure out how to use the remote to get back to Earth because Earth’s symbol isn’t on the remote. They may also be entering the code wrong.

Lots of bickering, James being in favour of being cautious, Catherine in favour of charging in. Catherine making it abundantly clear she’s not going to obey James and pretty much setting the tone of her doing her own thing. They find the dead Nazi… and a Goa’uld. And Catherine smacks James for suggesting that maaaaaybe her elderly father is dead

(He’s not, he’s imprisoned by other Nazis who are busy taking pictures and occasionally talking in mix of German and English. So that was a useful segment. Writers, each episode is only 10 minutes long, you need to not waste time. We have more bickering)

She’s female, and what seems to be inevitable, the female Goa’uld is wearing what appear to be daisy dukes and some wisps of gold cloth. They fight her and though she’s decided to dispense with Goa’uld technology in favour of a big stick, she easily fights them all, knocking them escape. Luckily for them Catherine manages to accidentally hit a bracelet button activating a teleporter and removing the Goa’uld from the fight. Oh and James has a semi-freak out in the middle of it because he accidentally touches Catherine’s breasts

To which our intrepid explorers think they’ve found a magic stick.

They also run into a young human who is clearly afraid of them (as James proves by yelling “boo” of course) but trying to lead them somewhere. Which they duly ignore and decide to go somewhere else. Oh and they don’t understand a word he says and when Wasif starts to mention he may recognise the language, James and Catherine silence him. Because sensible like that

After managing to exchange names, they follow Kasuf to some tents and are quickly taken prisoner and tied up with lots and lots and lots of bickering. Poor Wasif, stuck with the pretty bickering people.

Wasif manages to free them so they can bicker some more and bicker some more and then accidentally stab Wasif.

Oh Wasif, these pretty people are dangerous for you.

Stargate Origins, Season 1, Episode 1-3

Ok, full disclosure before I begin this - while I’ve always been sort of intrigued by Stargate and caught several episodes, I came to it late and never really set aside the time to catch up on the sheer size of the whole thing. This leaves me aware of the franchises and the basics of it, I know what a Goa’uld is, who Norse Mythology got added in there and a few of the characters but not much beyond this. I looked on this release as a way to enter the franchise without necessarily needing to know a great deal about it given it’s a prequel; but don’t be surprised if I miss more than a few Easter Eggs along the way - do feel free to draw my attention to them in the comments.

So we have Catherine Langford and her dad Professor Paul Langford who have found the Star Gate at an archaeological dig in Egypt. And they’re all enthusiastic about it until 10 years go past, she grows up and they still don’t know a single damn thing about it. Understandably their funding is getting cut because no-one is going to keep paying for a vague shrug and “I dunno”. You can’t write many papers on that either

Despite that, her father is super Disappointed and Upset that she would actually pursue a career beyond staring bemusedly at an object for 10 more years (nor does he or anyone really acknowledge the impressiveness of a woman getting that kind of recognition. Especially if her prime study has been staring confusedly at an object for 10 years).

We also meet Captain James Beale, a British soldier and impossibly pretty man who is sort of dating/courting/whatever you call it back then her. And his friend Wasif, an Egyptian man and another soldier of the British Empire who is largely dragged around by James and forced to do what Catherine wants because James does in an attempt to impress her rather than rely on his great prettiness.

Catherine and her dad’s scholarly confusion is interrupted by Nazis, which just ruin everyone’s day. Nazi Dr. Brucke, his camerawoman Eva and some collected Nazi extras swoop in with guns and menacing threats and generally speaking accented English but occasionally speaking subtitled German… which really I’m going to need Starget Origins to choose. Either have your characters speak accented English and let us assume they’re speaking German, or have them speak German. Otherwise we have weird times where all these Nazis are speaking English to each other

These Nazis capture everyone and hold them all at gunpoint and try to play the whole civilised monster schtick. Dr. Brucke has done his own research and has basically figured out what the Stargate is, how it works and how to make it work.

Professor Langford’s academia looks rather lacking really.

So, the Nazis force Langford to go with them while leaving a token Nazi behind to guard Catherine since Catherine’s safety is being used to convince Langford to be borderline useful. There is lots of creepy touching her and she bites him and he slaps her and it’s all kind of cliched. Someone needs to say “I likes a girl with spirit.”

They leave her with the weakest of Nazis and she escapes, how surprising.