By Jonathan Klotz | Published
Every TV series stumbles a little out of the gate as the cast and crew master the story they want to tell and how the characters should behave in different situations, and the sci-fi greats don’t do no exception. Star Trek: The Next Generation I stumbled with Season 1 Episode 4, “Code of Honor,” and the worst episode of Stargate SG-1 came early with Season 1’s “Emancipation.” It turns out both episodes share the same writer, but the latter is directly responsible for setting the underrated sci-fi series up to reach greatness.
Emancipation is the worst episode of Stargate SG-1
Calling any episode the “worst” usually results in fierce debate among fans, but to the extent that the Stargate SG-1 The fan base is worried “Emancipation” is really that bad. The episode begins with the crew encountering a planet on which women are not allowed to show their faces or dress like men, which seems horrible at first, but keeps getting worse as Samantha Carter d ‘Amanda Tapping is forced to dress like one of their women and becomes property of the tribe. Worse yet, none of the SG-1 crew have protested and, in fact, they like the new outfit.
By the time Carter was sold to the local warlord for 300 gold pieces, whatever message “emancipation” was trying to convey had been lost. There’s the core of a clever story buried beneath Carter’s objectification, namely how the militaristic SG-1 responds to different cultures since this was, after all, their very first mission on a different planet to through the Stargate. Without a prime directive to guide them, “Emancipation” could have been a great episode to show how the series is different from Star Trek, but instead it became the worst episode. Stargate SG-1 and left everyone involved shaking their heads in astonishment and disgust.
It’s not just the fans who hate it
In later interviews, Amanda Tapping was kind to the worst Stargate SG-1 episode, politely saying that he simply “missed the mark.” At the time, the episode’s reception was so poor that the producers and writers banded together and redesigned the character of Samantha Carter, transforming her into an intelligent, capable, multi-faceted character that fans grew to love. know during the rest of the series. Without “Emancipation,” Carter might have been reduced to the token “hot girl” role common in most series, who somehow ends up in a different cosplay outfit every two episodes.
It’s not just the fans who consider “Emancipation” to be the worst episode of Stargate SG-1but also the writers. You can tell, in the second half of season 1, how the actors start to get a handle on their characters and their weird moments, like Jack O’Neil (Richard Dean Anderson) and Daniel Jackson (Michael Shanks) ogling Carter. This misstep had to happen for everyone involved to learn the right notes to hit, it’s just ironic how much it feels like the Star Trek: The Next Generation Season 1 debacle.
The code of honor and emancipation are the same
“Code of Honor” features the crew of the Enterprise encountering an alien culture influenced by an ancient culture, Chinese in this case, compared to The Stargate Mongol, with a female officer, Tasha Yar, believed to be the wife of the local warlord. In both episodes, there is a knife fight in which a woman comes out on top and changes the alien civilization forever. The worst at once Star Trek: The Next Generation And Stargate SG-1 the episodes end with the acquisition of a local factory which promises to be a medical breakthrough.
Katharyn Powers went to two different sci-fi shows and wrote the exact same third episode for both, but she ended her streak by writing “Past Prologue” for Star Trek: Deep Space Ninethe episode that introduced the world to Garak, a simple tailor. At least you can somewhat defend his run of worst episodes ever by saying that when they were written, the characters in both The next generation And Stargate SG-1 were not yet established, so it was impossible for them to act extravagantly and out of character. Then again, arguably the episodes were so bad that it required the characters to be established very quickly to make sure nothing as embarrassing happened again.
Led to the best of Stargate SG-1
If the fans hadn’t experienced the worst Stargate SG-1they could never have enjoyed the best episodes, from “Heroes” to “Windows of Opportunity” or even “200,” which manages to be one of the best celebrations of a show to air within a show. “Emancipation” had to happen, and we can’t all be as stylish as Amanda Tapping, but she was able to go from a Samantha Carter who lets a strange man study her every pore before selling her for Samantha Carter gold. from “Space Race,” which fans saw embrace her need for speed, to “Death Knell,” which puts her in the middle of the action. Every series stumbles, but not every series becomes an all-time genre classic.
