== (1.1) Children of the Gods

=== General

So, here we have the pilot for launching the spin-off of the movie Stargate. The logic is quite reasonable: why should there be only one destination of the Stargate? Especially when the gate itself is obviously set up to dial more than one destination. But they led up to that gradually, with a lot of natural confusion as people were acting under their assumptions that (a) there was only one connection and (b) there was only one "Ra-like" being.

One thing that there seems to be much more emphasis in this episode and a few other early episodes, is that when strangers come through the Chappa-ai, they are assumed to be (a) Goa'uld and (b) coming to choose hosts. Later episodes seem to drop the host-chosing idea completely.

Pretty costumes! Pity about the five seconds of gratuitous full-frontal nudity, though.

I've been watching Stargate SG-1 for so long, I'd forgotten that the Jaffa were first introduced here. It's easy to forget, because the distinctive helmet design of the "guards of the god", was so in keeping with the style of the ones in the movie (even though it was a different design, it was still in that style) that I'd forgotten that in the movie, the guards were either human, or we didn't know that they weren't human.

=== Characters

The focus here is on Jack and Daniel -- they are the ones set up as to be driving the action of future episodes; much is made of Jack's affection for Skarra, much more than is mentioned later on. People forget this, because Daniel's motivation is a lot more singular: the only reason he's on SG-1 is because he wants to find Shau're, wheras Jack would have been leading SG-1 even if Skarra had never existed (unless, of course you count the fact that the original mission to Abydos, including Skarra, probably made the difference between life and suicide to Jack, considering his state of mind at the beginning of the Stargate movie).

I do actually think there is continuity between movie-Jack and series-Jack, though it isn't the almost-seamless connection between movie-Daniel and series-Daniel. I explain the difference between movie-Jack and series-Jack by assuming that movie-Jack, suicidal as he is, is very stiff because his duty is the only thing that's keeping him alive. Then when we come to this first glimpse of series-Jack, not only is he no longer suicidal, but he's been retired from the military for about a year (I think it's a year). That's enough time to wind down and become a lot more relaxed.

It's rather amusing when Jack asks Daniel about whether he's figured out the dialing sequence from Chulak to Earth, and Daniel says "yes", and then tries to explain how he figured it out, the context and all that academic stuff, Jack simply cuts him off. Which is perfectly understandable from both their points of view -- they do have different priorities. From Jack's point of view, he's on a mission, on a hostile planet, and he needs to know if they can leave in a hurry. Daniel is still, at this point, even though he has the burning need to rescue Shau're, someone who is fascinated by all these different cultures and wants to share what he's learned, and the concept of "hostile territory" is something which doesn't want to lodge in his brain -- because he faces strangers with the attitude "here comes a potential friend". And that's a very valuable attitude too, as he demonstrated not five minutes later in the episode, when he greets the priests in a friendly manner, instead of them all getting embroiled in a firefight.

Neither Jack's nor Daniel's attitudes are going to be right 100% of the time, but they bring a good balance with having both of them there.

=== Fiddly Details

When Apophis comes through the Earth stargate and kidnaps the blonde, we are carefully not shown how he dials out again. Since there is no DHD connected to the Earth stargate, logically, Apophis ought to have been stranded.

Kawalsky didn't know that Jack was married, or that he had a kid, or that the boy was dead. Why? The most obvious explanation is that they hadn't worked together before the first Abydos mission, and therefore there hadn't been any point or time to mention such things. However this contradicts later episodes which state that Jack and Kawalsky had in fact worked together before.

General Hammond was actually originally opposed to using the Stargate for exploration and alliance-making -- he agreed with Major Simmonds that it ought to be buried -- but had been overruled by the President. Quite a turnaround from later, eh?

Teal'c says that the larval goa'uld gives his people perfect health and long life, and that if he were to lose his, he would "eventually" die. That word "eventually" implies a much longer time than the "few days" which becomes canon later on in the series.