Stargate Needs To Be Given The Disney Treatment
Stargate needs to follow in the footsteps of Disney's Star Wars and hard reset the canon for new fans.
It must be a challenging time to be a Stargate fan, the franchise that, as The Simpsons so memorably put it, is everyone’s third favorite of the four “Star” franchises: Wars, Trek, Gate, and Search. There hasn’t been an official Stargate series since 2018 and Origins could only muster a collection of streaming-only 10-minute episodes. But we recently confirmed that there is a new Stargate series in development, which makes for a rare opportunity for what is necessary but will enrage fans: give the franchise the Disney treatment and wipe the continuity clean.
Stargate needs to have the kind of hard reset that Star Wars fans experienced in 2012 when George Lucas sold his galaxy far, far away to the House of Mouse for over four billion dollars. While fans were cautiously optimistic at first, that turned to horror as Disney announced that the Star Wars Expanded Universe was being declared non-canon, relegated to “Legends” status. With the stroke of Kathleen Kennedy’s pen, decades of beloved characters, storylines, and concepts were turned to ashes.
At least, that’s what it seemed like, judging by the ferocity of Star Wars fan reactions. The merits of the J.J. Abrams-led sequel trilogy and the multiplying Disney+ series like The Mandalorian and Ahsoka can be debated (and will be, endlessly), but it cannot be denied that Disney resetting the Star Wars universe gave it a chance for a new start, one accessible to new fans of the show who would be bewildered by the dense history of the Yuuzhan Vong, Darth Caedus, and more clones than you can shake a gaffi stick at.
Stargate has found itself in the same predicament. The compounded lore of SG-1, Atlantis, and Universe (not to mention books, video games, an RPG, comic books, and direct-to-DVD movies) is so convoluted that it will undoubtedly deter any but the most curious of new fans. At this point, Stargate has become a closed loop: anyone who would be a fan of the show is already a fan of the show because it’s so complicated.
That makes it much more challenging to get a new show made. Why would Amazon greenlight a new Stargate series if you have to be conversant with decades of lore, alien species, characters, and plots just to get into it? If a new Lord of the Rings series has to struggle to retain a third of the viewers who began watching it, what chance does a franchise like Stargate have?
When Disney declared years of Star Wars canon void, it gave the franchise a chance to attract new fans. Stargate needs to do the same thing: reduce the concept down to the original movie and let fans pick up things as a new series goes on. If it can manage something like its own Baby Yoda, so much the better.
But the funny thing is, even though Disney wiped the slate clean so it could introduce the New Order and a desert rat named Rey, the canon didn’t really disappear. Slowly but surely, the new Star Wars shows are incorporating fan-favorite elements and characters like Bo-Katan, Grand Admiral Thrawn, and the resurrection of Boba Fett along the way, but at a pace that newcomers can understand. Even if Stargate hard resets, it can always follow that same path, bringing back the good as it attracts new fans and doing away with the rest. And it should.
