By Jonathan Klotz | Published
Every television series stumbles a bit in the beginning as the cast and crew get a handle on the story they want to tell and how the characters should behave in different situations, and the greats of science fiction are no exception . Star Trek: The Next Generation stumbled across Season 1, Episode 4, “Code of Honor” and the worst episode of Stargate SG-1 came early with Season 1’s “Emancipation.” As it turns out, both episodes have the same author, but he is directly responsible for turning the underrated sci-fi series into something great.
Emancipation is the worst Stargate SG-1 episode
Calling an episode “the worst” usually leads to a heated debate among fans, but as for this Stargate SG-1 The fan base is worried: “Emancipation” is really that bad. The episode begins with the crew encountering a planet where women are not allowed to show their faces or dress like men, which sounds terrible at first but gets worse as Amanda Carter is forced to do so by Amanda Tapping to dress like one of their wives and become the property of the tribe. Worse, none of the SG-1 crew protested, and in fact they like the new outfit.
When Carter was sold to the local warlord for 300 gold pieces, any message that “emancipation” was trying to convey was lost. Beneath the objectification of Carter lies the core of a clever story, namely how the militaristic SG-1 responds to different cultures, since this was, after all, their very first mission to another planet through the Stargate. Without a Prime Directive, “Emancipation” could have been a great episode to show how different the series is from Star Trek, but instead it ended up being the worst episode Stargate SG-1 and left everyone involved shaking their heads in amazement and disgust.
It’s not just fans who hate it
In later interviews, Amanda Tapping expressed kindness in the face of the worst Stargate SG-1 Followed up by politely saying it simply “missed the mark.” At the time, the response to the episode was so poor that the producers and writers recast and redesigned the character of Samantha Carter, turning her into the smart, capable and complex character that fans had come to know over the course of the series. Without Emancipation, Carter might have been reduced to the token role of “hot girl” that is common in most series, somehow found in a different cosplay outfit every other episode.
It’s not just fans consider “Emancipation” to be the worst episode of Stargate SG-1but also the authors. You can see in the second half of the first season how the cast starts to get a handle on their characters and strange moments, like Jack O’Neil (Richard Dean Anderson) and Daniel Jackson (Michael Shanks) staring at Carter. This misstep had to happen so that everyone involved could learn the correct notes. It’s just ironic how similar he is Star Trek: The Next Generation Debacle in season 1.
Code of honor and emancipation are the same thing
In Code of Honor, the crew of the Enterprise encounters an alien culture influenced by an ancient culture, in this case Chinese Stargates Mongolian, with a female officer, Tasha Yar, who is considered the consort of the local warlord. In both episodes there is a knife fight in which a woman emerges victorious and changes the alien civilization forever. Both the worst Star Trek: The Next Generation And Stargate SG-1 The episodes end with the acquisition of a local plant that promises a medical breakthrough.
Katharyn Powers visited two different science fiction shows and wrote the exact same third episode for both, but she broke her streak by writing “Past Prologue.” Star Trek: Deep Space Ninethe episode that introduced the world to Garak, a simple tailor. At least you can somewhat defend their streak of worst episodes of all time by saying that the characters in both episodes were written The next generation And Stargate SG-1 were not yet established, so it was impossible for them to act completely out of character. And then you can say that the episodes were so bad that the characters had to be established very quickly to ensure that nothing embarrassing ever happened again.
Led to the best of Stargate SG-1
If only the fans didn’t experience the worst Stargate SG-1they would never have been able to enjoy the best episodes, from “Heroes” to “Windows of Opportunity” to “200,” which manages to be one of the best celebrations of a show airing within a show. “Emancipation” had to happen, and we can’t all be as elegant as Amanda Tapping, but she managed to go from being a Samantha Carter who lets a strange man study her every pore before being sold for gold, to becoming a Samantha Carter from “Space Race,” where fans could indulge their desire for speed, to “Death Knell,” where she’s right in the middle of the action. Every show stumbles, but not every show becomes an all-time genre classic.