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34 of 35 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Finally the REAL complete Season 8 with the full length, 65+ minute "Threads"!, June 24, 2006
As it states across the top that it is the complete eighth season, they have finally added the unedited Threads episode! With no mention of it on the outer box, I wonder if they are downplaying it and don't want to admit the previous blunder.
Anyway, this season was a very solid year for SG-1, and with the exception of the real dud, Avatar, where Teal'c gets stuck in a virtual reality device (oh, my, how many times have we had this storyline beaten to death in the sci-fi world), I enjoyed every episode. We had a healthy dose of humor injected episodes: Affinity, Prometheus Unbound, Zero Hour, and Citizen Joe. We had some team altering dramatics, including yet another death to an SG member. We had the return of old enemies (Anubis) and some new ones (the replicator Carter). And we also got an incredible finish of 5 startling epsidodes to end the season.
I think that the high quality of the scripts and dramatic episodes helped take your mind of the loss of screen time for Richard Dean Anderson. His moments in the series though, were key, and his presence was well known. Even with less lines, he always managed to throw in his dry wit, especially to Baal in the Reckoning two parter.
The series just keeps proving that it's high quality sci-fi, and well worth owning on DVD with the rest of the series. These new slimline cases are nice, but if you already have the chunkier ones, I see no need to buy these again, unless you are after the longer version of Threads in this Season 8 set.
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38 of 42 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A transition season that brings the original show to an end, July 29, 2006
Season Eight of STARATE SG-1 was in many ways one of transition. Richard Dean Anderson was beginning to end his involvement with the show, but having him sorta in-sorta out upset the balance of the SG-1 team and created an absence at the heart of the show. Over the previous seven seasons, the four members of the SG-1 team had developed considerable chemistry and contributed uniquely to balancing the cast. Despite being a colonel, O'Neill excelled at shooting from the hip and injecting verbal anarchy into things. Sam was always great for the scientific take on things, while Daniel brought an equally scholarly but more historical and humane take on things. Teal'c, meanwhile, brought a Stoic, almost Spartan, slant to the show. But with O'Neill spending most of his time on base as the new head of SG-1, the chemistry was off. This was corrected in Season Nine with Ben Browder--who brought many of the same qualities to the show as Richard Dean Anderson--joining the cast. But in Season Eight, things just aren't quite right.
Not that this interfered with the writing. The ongoing saga of the struggle between humans and their allies against the Goa'uld and the Replicators reached new levels, with the good guys pretty achieving close to final victory against each. But for the first time a few of the episodes were a bit flat and uninspired. STARGATE SG-1's greatest virtue has long been the remarkable consistency of its writing and the continuance of the increasingly complex core mythology. It may have lacked the narrative richness of FARSCAPE or the depth of character development of FIREFLY, but it had the great advantage of producing a staggering number of very good episodes. If its peaks weren't as high as FARSCAPE, its valleys weren't nearly as low (as much as I adore FARSCAPE, which I consider the best Sci-fi series ever, it had some real clunker episodes to go along with some masterpieces). But in Season Eight, we saw for the first time some episodes that simply weren't very good. Luckily, Season Nine would see a return to form.
Hints of good things to come came in the episode "Prometheus Unbound," in which the character of Vala Mal Doran was introduced. Claudia Black, who plays Vala and who appeared on FARSCAPE as Aeryn Sun, is introduced in this episode in a way that pays homage to FARSCAPE. Just as John Crichton first thinks Aeryn Sun is a man before she removes the helmet of her solid black suit, so Daniel Jackson thinks she is a man before she removes her helmet. That is where the comparisons between the two characters end. If Aeryn Sun is disciplined, militaristic, self-denying, repressed, and stern, Vala is feisty, unscrupulous, slutty, tricky, and fun loving. It is as if Claudia Black decided she wanted to do her own version of FARSCAPE's Chiana. The episode is not one of the more important episodes in terms of narrative, but in terms of fun, it is hands down the best episode of the season. The chemistry between Daniel and Vala is great, not primarily sexually but interpersonally, as if each possesses in abundance the qualities the other lacks. Vala was easily one of the best guest characters in the first eight seasons of the show. Luckily, it was decided to have Claudia Black revive Vala as a fulltime character starting Season Nine, although that was interrupted by a real life pregnancy. She has, however, returned as an opening credits character in Season Ten. The show's writers have done, however, a very smart thing in keeping Vala more closely linked to Daniel Jackson than Col. Mitchell, played by Ben Browder. Though there have been a couple of subtle jokes passed between Black and Browder (such as Vala looking at him the first time she is in her presence and wondering if they had met before), the two have more or less been left un-paired. (For those who have not seen FARSCAPE, the series in large part revolved around the star-crossed romance between Black's Aeryn Sun and Browder's John Crichton. Their romance is not merely the great TV Sci-fi romance of all time, but makes many fan and critic lists of the all time great TV romances of any genre.) But in all this I anticipate Seasons 9 and 10.
The main plot developments in Season 8 centers on the victories over the enemies of the first eight seasons. In a way, it also largely ends the show as we have known it. I'm almost tempted to called Seasons 1-8 STARGATE SG-1 Part I and Seasons 9-10 STARGATE SG-1 Part II, so many things change. Season 8 is Richard Dean Anderson's last as a full time cast member, the final season in which the Replicators and the Goa'uld function as the major enemies (though Baal manages to survive, it isn't at all clear that the Goa'uld will ever manage to play a major role on the show again), and the beginning of the shift of the show from Egyptian and Norse mythology in the first eight seasons to Arthurian mythology in subsequent ones. After this season the show--called by many FARGATE for the changes in the cast--would focus on the Ori instead of the Goa'uld. There would be one further change in the show. For the first eight seasons, STARGATE told an ongoing narrative, but it did so through what were essentially self-contained episodes. In Season 9 it would become more and more serial in structure, with one episode more or less picking up on what happened the previous week. There is no question that the serial form is superior to the episode form. Network executives detest the serial form because it makes it difficult to attract new viewers. But given the extreme maturity of STARGATE, perhaps the Sci-fi Channel feels that the show is unlikely to attract new viewers and has permitted the transition to a serial in order to retain the viewers it already has.
So, in some ways this season is the ending of the show as we have known it. And a very good run it has been. What has kept the show going has been a willingness to continually grow and change. And I'm confident that it is what will keep the show going for a few more seasons.
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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Great ending to the original show!, February 5, 2007
Season eight, as you probably know, is the last season with the entire original case. Season nine starts over, sort of, with new main cast members and all new villians.
Without going into detail, I'll say that this season has some of the best quirky humor episodes (namely "Citizen Joe" which was as close to a Sci-Fi comedy as I've ever seen without a laugh track) and an engrossing season finale story that takes several episodes to tell.
The final two-part time paradox episode is baffling at first, but it makes perfect sense if you stop and think, and listen to the episode commentaries, which brings me to the main reason I wrote this review.
Much of the value in the Stargate SG-1 DVD series is in the episode commentaries. They are some of the best I've ever heard on any DVDs anywhere. You'll learn many fascinating and fun things about the production of the show, the people involved, and the immense effort reaquired to produce an epic Sci-Fi TV series. Give the commentaries a try!
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