Characters changed and villains performed a complicated square dance as the major plots took some unusual turns in the ninth season of this popular TV show. Jack O’Neill (Richard Dean Anderson) took over command during season eight of the SG1 project from Colonel Hammond as the Col. Was bumped upstairs to Homeland Security. O’Neill takes another bump in pay grade and title as he joins Hammond at Homeland Security (to allow star Richard Dean Anderson to exit the show). Colonel Cameron Mitchell (Ben Browder) every bit the wise ass as O’Neill steps in filling his shoes nicely and altering the dynamic to the SG1 team while Major General Henry Landry (Beau Bridges) steps in to become the new commander. Unfortunately for Mitchell the old team doesn’t want to play ball anymore at least with him—they’ve all requested reassignment and/or are busy involved in other ventures. This allows Vala Mal Doran (Claudia Black) to briefly join Mitchell and the result is “Fargate” as many fans have referred to it. Although some of the players have changed the game remains the same—investigating new worlds and thwarting any attempts to enslave/destroy Earth via the Stargate portals. In this case the new threat (the Goa’uld were neutralized earlier by O’Neill and his team) are the Ori a race that believe they are literally gods and who will stop at nothing to allow their representatives the Priors to convert the rest of the Universe to their religious beliefs. ***

The series captured the sensibility of both series with the addition of the two cast veterns from “Farscape”. It’s too bad the show was cancelled with season ten as there was a hint of new vitality coming to a series that managed to stay remarkably fresh for much of its ten year run (the longest every Sci-Fi TV show besting “The X-Files” by a year). The story arc established for the ninth season offered a lot of potential that was developed fairly well with season ten. It’s a pity that the show didn’t continue or at the very least use the new cast members for a spin-off of their own. ---

Image & Sound:

As with season eight the ninth season is presented in widescreen and looks quite good with a crisp, sharp presentation. We do get occasional compression artifacts in the form of ghosting and edge enhancement but overall the show looks extremely good with a nice color palette. As with previous seasons the 5.1 format is used very well particularly during the action sequences. ---

As with many previous sets we get commentaries for all 20 episodes included here. The commentaries range from fair to quite good depending upon how involved the participants are in discussion. We also get a number of featurettes. “It Takes A Crew to Raise A Village” which provides background on the set building for the episode “Avalon”. “SG-1 Directors Series: ‘Avalon’ Featuring Andy Mikita focuses on director Mikita discussing the challenges of shooting the series, his preparation and the changes on the series. “Inside the Stargate Prop Department”, “Inside the Stargate Special Effects Department”, “An Introduction to Ben Browder”, “Profile of Producer Brad Wright” are all additional featurettes and vary from quite good to fair. There are additional “Director’s Series” on each disc focusing on one respective director for an episode featured there. The special features are scattered throughout the discs which might account for some of the additional compression artifacts. If they had been handed off to a sixth disc the compression artifacts might have been less an issue but as mentioned they aren’t distracting. We also get a photo gallery and production design gallery as well. ---

Final Words: