When Brad Wright and Jonathan Glassner had been tasked with making a TV spin-off primarily based on Roland Emmerich’s 1994 “Stargate” film, they turned to MacGuyver himself, Richard Dean Anderson, to play Particular Operations Colonel Jack O’Neil — the function performed by Kurt Russell within the movie. “Stargate SG-1” due to this fact benefitted from a casting increase earlier than it even hit the airwaves in 1997. Nevertheless it wasn’t simply MacGuyver that helped the present develop into the long-running cult hit it was.
Alongside Anderson’s Jack O’Neill, Amanda Tapping’s United States Air Pressure captain Dr. Samantha Carter helped flesh out the central forged. However relatively than merely offering a romantic curiosity for the male lead, Carter was an integral member of the “SG-1” group, each bit Jack’s equal. That stated, there was at all times the implication of some type of romantic entanglement between the 2, even when the writers by no means actually adopted by way of on it.
All through its 10 seasons and 214 episodes, “SG-1” hinted at Jack and Sam being extra than simply colleagues. Within the season 4 episode “Divide and Conquer,” Jack is even compelled to confess that he cares about Sam “much more than [he’s] speculated to” throughout a lie detector check, which seemingly hinted at a deeper relationship to be revealed because the present went on. Alas, the Sci-Fi channel canceled “SG-1” after season 10 and the pair by no means formally bought collectively. However why? What prevented the writers from following by way of on this very apparent love story?
The Sam and Jack kiss that nearly was
From the very starting, the romantic emotions between Jack and Sam had been a part of the “SG-1” DNA. Unproduced dialogue from the “SG-1” pilot really hinted at Sam and Jack’s romantic standing, with the latter referring to Sam leaving her toothbrush at his place. However that dialogue was reduce, and the present continued to minimize the duo’s apparent attraction all through the remaining seasons.
Author and season 3 story editor Heather E. Ash spoke to The Companion in 2023 in regards to the “SG-1” writers’ determination to by no means comply with by way of on bringing Sam and Jack collectively. Ash did really write a season 4 episode that might have seen the pair kiss, however solely as a part of a weird storyline during which the SG-1 crew was brainwashed into believing themselves to be miners on an enslaved labor planet. “Beneath the Floor” allowed Ash to jot down the characters from a contemporary perspective, freed from their shared historical past, however the kiss, which was as the author famous, “going to be the primary time they type of gave in to the attraction,” was dropped.
As soon as once more, even inside the context of the characters being amnesiac and enslaved, overt shows of affection between Jack and Sam did not make the ultimate reduce — although the pair had been briefly proven kissing in an earlier season 4 episode, “Window of Alternative,” the place Jack embraces Sam simply as a time loop leap erases the entire thing from reminiscence. In response to Ash, eradicating the kiss from “Beneath the Floor,” and usually avoiding making Jack and Sam official, was all a part of an effort to maintain the present from falling into clichéd tropes.
Stargate resisted Jack and Sam’s relationship to keep away from a ‘sexist’ trope
Although it confronted strain to embody extra nudity from its authentic community, Showtime, when it first began airing, “Stargate SG-1” really steered away from that type of tawdry content material as a lot because it may. Co-creator Jonathan Glassner has spoken about not being thrilled on the thought of extra nudity within the collection, and as soon as Amanda Tapping pushed again towards the skimpy costumes she was initially required to put on, “SG-1” turned a a lot much less needlessly horny affair than it in any other case would’ve been.
That resistance to sexist tropes additionally appeared to increase to Jack and Sam’s relationship. As Heather E. Ash informed The Companion:
“Not each male-female duo needs to be romantic. It is a trope I am fairly finished with. I am type of bummed that Scully and Mulder, you understand … they made them succumb to ‘Sure, they will be romantically concerned as a result of they work collectively as a result of they’re women and men.’ We did not actually wish to go there. It is a trope, it is type of sexist. Let’s simply name it out. It is actually sexist and really, very male gaze in that bizarre thought that women and men can solely be round one another in a sexual method.”
Ash additionally alluded to Tapping’s resistance to Showtime’s lurid requests, with the author including, “I do know Amanda did not wish to cope with it and he or she was very very like, ‘Thank God, there is a lady on set on set, a girl who appreciates science.'” Certainly, even the kiss in Ash’s episode, “Beneath the Floor” was, in her phrases, designed to have the viewers suppose, “‘Oh, they’re gonna kiss and it is like kissing my brother,’ you understand, like ‘Again to the Future.'”