Author: Alison

Sex, Gender Issues, and Stargate SG-1
By Charlotte Miller

“…we try to make the stories that we tell within this big franchise as socially redeeming as possible….for our writers and myself, the heart of good storytelling always comes down to, What’s the message that we’re trying to get across here?”–Stargate Executive Producer Michael Greenburg in a recent interview.

Literary science fiction has long proven itself a worthy platform from which to address issues of social concern, and much of television?s science fiction programming has continued that tradition. More than thirty years ago, the original Star Trek ventured where no American television series had gone before to present many viewers sight of their first interracial kiss, and allegories echoing the issues equality and racism. More than a television franchise alone, Star Trek created some of the most culturally significant programming of its time, and, in our modern day, Stargate SG-1–the progenitor of the Stargate franchise–has the potential of becoming a worthy inheritor in that same tradition.

Now in season eight of the phenomenally popular television series, The Powers That Be behind Stargate SG-1 have distinguished themselves with the return of an onscreen relationship that often carries a “not-so-heterosexual” subtext.

The friendship between Jack O?Neill and Daniel Jackson has been, for many viewers, the heart of Stargate SG-1 since the inception of the series, and is an extraordinary supportive and understanding example of intense same-sex bonding. While both men have been married to women in the past, it seems beyond doubt to many viewers that the closest and most important relationship for both men at present is the one shared between them, and, while the bonds forged between Jack and Daniel appear to be particularly strong, they are not the only examples of same-sex bonding on SG-1.

Perhaps the particular strength of the Stargate franchise is the willingness to not rely on gender stereotyping in the portrayal of its male characters. Both Stargate SG-1 and its sister series, Atlantis, boast extraordinarily unique male characters. SG-1’s Daniel Jackson and Atlantis’s Rodney McKay, arguably the most popular characters on both series, exhibit characteristics not often associated with males on action-adventure or science fiction series. Both are emotionally driven. Both are more likely to talk than reach for a gun, and, while brilliant, both are also flawed and very human.

SG-1’s Jack O’Neill, while on the surface cut from the cloth of gender stereotype, becomes something more over the course of the first seasons of the series, emotionally open, communicative, even touchingly vulnerable where children are concerned and in his relationship to Daniel Jackson.

It is perhaps in this bending of gender roles and issues of sexual preference and same-sex bonding that the Stargate franchise has found its forte. Not only are the issues present within the series, but, to the great credit of all involved, they have at times been openly embraced both by the actors involved and The Powers That Be behind the series.

Michael Shanks, the actor portraying Daniel Jackson, openly speaks with fans about the less-than-heterosexual subtext often present between his character and that of Jack O’Neill, and has stated openly on one of the series DVDs that their bantering style of communication is due in part to “homosexual tension.”

The Powers That Be behind the series, such as Executive Producers, writers and showrunners Robert C. Cooper and Brad Wright, producer, writer and director Peter DeLuise, and producer and director Martin Wood, have acknowledged, both directly to fans at convention appearances and in the DVD commentaries, the emotional bonding between the two male characters, and the at-times homosexual nature of the relationship as it is seen by many viewers, and they have not been loath to play to this viewpoint.

Perhaps one of the primary charms of the characters of Jack O?Neill and Daniel Jackson, as well as the relationship between the two men, is the fact these same Powers That Be have never found a need to clarify the actual sexual preference of either character, or the true nature of the relationship between them. They are simply male characters involved in a close, caring, often physically demonstrative relationship, not male characters limited by any preconceptions of sexual identity, sexual self-definition, or sexual preference.

This is especially significant considering views expressed by showrunner Cooper concerning his own personal discomfort at seeing men touch other men?s faces, and perhaps it speaks much to events that have transpired on the series throughout the years.

While the Jack and Daniel friendship was a significant part of the series throughout its first three seasons, the opening of season four found the introduction of a red-herring of a relationship between Jack and Sam Carter, the female subordinate in his chain of command as USAF colonel and commander of the SG-1 team.

Concurrently, The Powers That Be behind Stargate found it necessary to begin limiting the role of Daniel Jackson, pushing that character into the background and minimizing or eliminating from episodes the caring relationship that had existed between Daniel and Jack throughout the years.

Instead of the emotionally open, caring Jack whom viewers had come to expect, they were all too often presented with a Jack straight-jacketed into male stereotypes. So too were viewers suddenly presented with a Sam Carter adapted to stereotypical female norms, at the same time they were introduced to a sexily clad female character in an attempt to appeal to a younger male viewing audience.

Michael Shanks, unhappy with the wallpapering of his character and Daniel?s exclusion from the team, left the series at the end of season five, engendering the shout literally heard round the world as an unprecedented groundswell of support rose in demand that he and his character be returned to the series.

Daniel did return after a year, and for a time in early season seven viewers were treated to a resumption of the Jack and Daniel interaction that for many had become the heart of the series, although latter season seven took on a troublingly sexist and latently homophobic feel as, after an extended absence of focus on the Jack and Sam relationship during the year Daniel had been gone and in the early days of his return, the latter half of the season shifted direction yet again back to that heterosexual and admittedly ?unlikely? pseudo-romance.

This shift in focus to “Jack and Sam” occurred yet again concurrently with the sidelining of the Daniel character, and with an elimination of virtually all caring and concern expressed toward Daniel by any of the characters of SG-1.

Early season eight has yet again seen a resumption of the Jack and Daniel interaction, friendship and bantering so often referred to as “like an old married couple,” and to a degree unprecedented since the early days of SG-1.

Daniel has increasingly become the focus of the series as the season has progressed, stepping up to an unacknowledged lead position of Stargate SG-1 in the reduced filming schedule of series lead Richard Dean Anderson (Jack O’Neill), a position likely to continue in season nine as Anderson has yet to sign for a return to the show.

Although the writing and presentation of the character of Sam Carter continues all too often to be sexist in nature, little has been seen throughout the early part of the season to point toward the “unlikely” Jack and Sam romance.

Yet, as the final episodes of season eight unfold, the troubling pattern established in season four, and reinforced in season seven, begins to emerge once more. The focus yet again in the latter season shifts in the episode Citizen Joe to unacknowledged “feelings” between Jack and Sam.

Immediately thereafter Daniel is separated from his teammates in the first half of Reckoning, is considered missing and presumed dead, and yet again the viewer is treated to an almost total lack of feeling in Jack’s response to the assumed death of his supposed best friend.

Of even more concern is that spoilers for the few remaining episodes of the season focus almost exclusively, for the first time ever, on apparently clarifying Jack’s sexuality once and for all, revealing him to be “caught in bed” with a female passing-fling, and yet again kissing Sam, his female subordinate in the chain of command, with a spoiler released by Richard Dean Anderson hinting broadly that Jack and Sam will get together as a couple only for something to yet again intervene.

Most troubling of all is the fact that Robert C. Cooper made mention on the Lost City DVD commentary that they will be dealing with the “Daniel/O?Neill thing”… “at the end of season eight.” As Richard Dean Anderson has made it clear he is unlikely to sign for season nine, the final view Stargate SG-1 viewers are likely to have of Jack O’Neill will be these final episodes of season eight. However, the handling of these few remaining episodes of the season may tell viewers a great deal more about Mr. Cooper than about General Jack O’Neill.

One of the primary appeals of Stargate SG-1 in its early days was the emotional connectivity of the characters. They cared about one another. As actress Amanda Tapping (Sam Carter) said in 1997, “the beauty of the relationship between the four of us on the team is this great friendship that we have, and this wonderful respect and admiration for each other. Adding anything into that mix would be silly, because I think right now it works as a team of really good friends.”

We cared about the characters because they cared about each other. We cried when one of them was hurt or lost because they cried for one another. We worried over them and bonded with them and ultimately loved them because the love was there each for the other within the members of the team, and sex and gender issues, sexual preferences, and sexuality did not enter into the mix.

That, perhaps, is the heart of the promise of the Stargate franchise. Gene Roddenberry’s epic vision of a United Federation of Planets, a moral concept perhaps best typified in the Vulcan mantra of IDIC, “infinite diversity in infinite combinations,” brought real social worth to the Star Trek franchise. Roddenberry’s realization that we’re all the same beneath the color of our skins echoes over the decades since in haunting metaphors many of us are unlikely to forget.

His vision echoes on Stargate even today, in the interracial kisses shared between actor Christopher Judge (Teal’c) and caucasian actresses, and in the Jaffa Rebellion that so often mirrors the struggle for civil rights. While Star Trek’s Lieutenant Uhuru may have served the position of glorified receptionist on the Enterprise bridge, Stargate’s inclusion of Sam Carter as a full member of the team, and now leader of SG-1, and the command role of Elizabeth Weir on Atlantis, shows how far we have come in the decades since.

Perhaps in this time of debate over gay rights and sexual preference issues, when ignorance and homophobia can still cost people their lives and help to decide national elections, when we’re more concerned about what takes place in our neighbors’ bedrooms than on foreign battlefields, Stargate might find its own vision.

You, Mr. Powers that Be of Stargate, are the voice of our time, just as Gene Roddenberry was of his. When you are being discussed thirty years hence, what is it you will you have said?

Discuss “Sex, gender issues and Stargate SG-1” by Charlotte Miller at our SG1Solutions Forum