Stargate: SG-1 and Made-for-Cable in An Earlier Age

In line with the unhinged exaltation of made-for-premium cable production, recollection of its history seems to run along the lines of "In the beginning, there was The Sopranos . . ." And as one might guess of recollections amid unhinged exaltation, this misses a lot. Premium cable was quite a different place before 1999. Some of it would seem to have been ashamedly swept under the rug since--as HBO has done with its sex-themed content (the documentaries that ran after 11 P.M. on that channel, the softcore shows that caused some to jokingly refer to Cinemax as Skinemax). Other such material has been more enduring even as cable moved on, as with Showtime's not insignificant contribution to the '90s "golden age" of science fiction teleivison. After all, it was here that we got the revival of The Outer Limits, the tie-ins to big-screen hits Stargate and Total Recall that were Stargate: SG-1 and Total Recall: 2070, and the miniseries Tales From a Parallel Universe, out of which emerged Lexx.

Some of this fare is actually consistent with, if nothing else, premium cable's more daring and edgy image. The critics may not have loved it, and so far as I can tell there has been no revaluation of the show in the quarter-century since it went off the air, but Tales From a Parallel Universe/Lexx was certainly both (with a good deal more on its mind, I would add, than much of what gets talked up to the skies). By contrast Stargate: SG-1 was relatively safe in its approach, most obviously in the showrunners' taking a page out of the then-still reigning Star Trek's book in turning the movie into a series, with "dialing out" taking the place of warp drive. The safe approach extended to the more sensationalistic content. Thus was there action a-plenty, but the violence not generally needing to be edited down for over-the-air television. Meanwhile the showrunners also eschewed sex for the most part. (Indeed, such an element as Bobbie Phillips' dance in "Brief Candle" was unseen again, Vanessa Angel's turn as Anise a rarity, and many a fan of the show likely pleasantly surprised at the hints of what they were missing when they saw the pictures from Amanda Tapping's shoot for Femme Fatale Magazine.) In fact, basic cable channel Syfy's Stargate spin-off Stargate: Universe leaned much more heavily on sex than its premium cable predecessor--on sexual tension, sexual relationships, and plain and simple sexiness--for its dramatic and visual interest (and caught some flak for it).

That tameness may seem surprising, but it was by no means accidental. If the series aired on Showtime the show's maker MGM apparently wanted a show that it could easily syndicate, and got it, episodes soon on over-the-air TV as well, usually without the necessity of any censorship, while when Showtime ceased to give the show a home after season five the series moved to the Syfy Channel without a hitch. By contrast the situation was very different a few years later, as J. Michael Straczynski attested when describing his time producing and writing the series Jeremiah for the same MGM-Showtime team-up. MGM still wanted a show it could syndicate easily and profitably the way it had Stargate, while Showtime, displaying "HBO envy" in that era when The Sopranos was new, wanted something thoroughly R-rated, between which promoters of irreconcilable visions Straczynski was caught in the middle, making for what he characterized as the worst experience of his life in TV production (which is saying something after the truly cowardly--and disgusting--way that the management of TNT treated him while he was making the Babylon 5 sequel Crusade). At any rate Showtime's interest in science fiction of any kind was fading fast, and Jeremiah didn't make it past season two, dooming the syndication hopes regardless of what kind of content the show had, as the network went on beating its own path, all as even the original Stargate's run chugged along for several seasons, even before taking into account the spin-offs and the reruns. It is all a reminder that in those days TV was a smaller world, the economics of cable TV more constrained, syndication and its revenue stream mattered a lot, and the situation brought with it different imperatives and different results, such that there was much more to the scene than the "Sopranos Studies" to which those who thought Tony Soprano would replace George Washington on the dollar reduce the matter.