I’ve been rewatching Stargate: SG1 (that will be abbreviated as Stargate from now on) lately. It’s a show that, despite its many problems, accidentally offered an amazing accidental metaphor for the Iraq war. But on top of that metaphor I will not mention again in this article, it’s also a very fun show. Even if substance is often lacking, it succeeded in many very important ways, entertainment-wise:
- A stellar cast both when it comes to its main but also its supporting characters
- Lore, lots of it
- Hey, at least Russians are kind of the bad guys in that one
- Evil characters get cool makeup
- Tone and pacing
Although the writing and depth of its character are not as complex as what we could have hoped, especially from the beginning of the show, they are fun and lovable (and not just because I love Amanda Tapping). You do get attached to characters quickly, and when you combine that with the other elements that Stargate does well, you get a very entertaining show.
I am once again going to rant about the superiority of the episodic format with continuity as the pinnacle of the television series because that’s Stargate’s format, and that’s a huge part of why it works. You see, what Stargate lacks in good writing, it compensates with a relatively good continuity that brings some additional warmth. Complete with a good mastery of tone and pacing, and you get a show that works. I will come back to that last point in a second.
Guess what? You can even skip Emancipation (did you know the writer also wrote Star Trek the Next Generation’s Code of Honor?) and other real bad episodes if you feel like it. Mistakes are contained in that badly written episode. Viewing the format through our 2020s lenses reveals an added agency to the viewer: you can just skip one bad episode because it’s not essential to the intrigue. You don’t have equal part of slug, fun and filler in each and every episode because that’s what your 12-hour movie disguised as a series mandate.
Now, let’s talk about tone again. The show is rife with humor. Not just in the fun episodes that you’re expecting me to talk about from the title of this article, but also in the regular episodes. Our characters joke with each other when they’re resting, but also as a way to rebuke the very danger they’re facing. And it works. Tension is increased and released at a pace that makes sense. It just works.
Tone is a facet of writing that I feel is often ignored in a lot of modern shows I’ve tried watching. Humor feels too often artificially inserted, as if some law of writing stated that every 5.37 minutes something funny should happen. Maybe it’s because I’m used to cracking jokes in the face of despair myself, but it feels like a fundamental facet of human existence that is so incompatible with the measured perfection of those modern shows.
Don’t get me wrong, Stargate is very formulaic too; it just runs on a better formula.
I do feel like controlling your tone became over the years less and less important as we delved deeper and deeper into Prestige Television, as the divine vision was poured straight into your Netflix account in the shape of a 12-hour movie pretending to be a television series.
And now, let’s talk about the ultimate relief: the fun episode. You see, between life and death situations, having a little bit of relief on screen helps. But what if this relief was one whole episode? If you’ve only been looking at those 12-hour movies, that very concept must sound crazy! Throw all that drama away!? You didn’t come to watch a comedy. Oh, but you don’t get a say; you’re going to watch that fun episode and like it. Why? Because it’s brilliant. Because it’s beautiful. And, because, counterintuitively, it is still dramatic.
What lies at the heart of the fun episode is context.
You are made to care about our daring adventurers through the main episodes, from the important story-making ones to the planet of the week ones. You care about their struggle, their traumas, losses, and fears. You can see their failing relationships and wish them to be happy.
And that is exactly when you’re ready for the fun. Suddenly you see our protagonists hallucinate this jester character Urgo due to alien intervention and watch shenanigans ensue. That very episode was the catalyst for this article. It was fun, it was refreshing. And that’s far from the only one. Then, in upgrades, our characters are given technomagic super-soldier-making armbands, and shenanigans once again ensue. Oh, and there’s a life-and-death situation in there where two characters have to deal with their affection for each other.
Another favorite episode of mine, Window of Opportunity, sees two of our characters stuck in a time loop, Groundhog Day style. The episode features the usual mystery solving, along with once again our early-show recurring tension of a relationship and many goofy moments. At the end of the episode, you learn that an alien archeologist was using a sci-fi mystery artifact in hopes of being able to travel in time to spend time again with his late wife before being convinced by one of our protagonists, Jack, to give up, bringing us back to the death of his son and feelings of loss.
Is fun actually the correct name for this type of episode? Probably not, but it will have to do for now. Despite these episodes having deep emotional moments, they do retain that less serious characteristic and are still wonderful to enjoy.
In order to help me convince you a little further, I would like to mention a second television show that is quite adept at that kind of episode: Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
A few episodes come to mind immediately. Many more are applicable, of course, as these episodes are especially numerous on this show. The Zeppo sees most of our cast fighting their most perilous battle yet. All our heroes? No, not Xander, our episode’s protagonist. As a regular, normal human with no supernatural abilities whatsoever, he is not allowed to help in that terrible apocalypse-to-be, despite his best efforts. That is when our action takes place. Xander gets roped up in a solo adventure of his own, where he cruises town with a gang of former undead students of Sunnydale High, hellbent on blowing up that school, Xander’s place of study, and coincidentally where his friends are trying to save the world. It ensues a wonderfully ridiculous chase across town where our hero of the day manages to prevent a bomb from going off. In the end, his good deed will forever remain unknown as the character learns that his self-esteem issues were getting in the way of his friendships.
While totally isolated, this episode works mostly as a breather continuity-agnostic episode; however, that is not the case of the following examples that I will give. The season 4 episode Superstar opens on an altered opening heavily featuring Jonathan, a minor character, that has been there consistently through the series. As the episode progresses, we realize that Jonathan has cast a wish-fulfillment spell that reordered reality around himself as this sort of cool James Bond figure. While this is mostly played for laughs, the episode also explores the protagonist-of-the-week’s deep feelings of inadequacy and isolation. But as importantly for this essay, it’s this character’s goofy point of view that brings into light the big bad guy of the season’s weakness that our heroes will use in the season finale.
This outlines the value of tonal perspectives when building a narrative, a point at which Buffy the vampire Slayer and its sister show Angel excel. This episode also uses the shifted perspective to work on other characters’ relationships, namely Buffy and her boyfriend Riley, as well as foreshadowing later series elements with altered realities and how well another character can blend in pre-existing events.
It’s not the only example: in Tabula Rasa, a not-so-recovering from a terrible drug metaphor addiction, Willow casts a spell that makes the main cast lose their memory. This puts them into fun situations where they’re trying to understand who they are in quite delectable, silly ways. While the incident is funny at the time, all the characters are caught back by the consequences of their respective actions, especially Willow, whose willingness to manipulate others (or, you know, magically drug her girlfriend) rather than work on her issues costs her her relationship.
But this non-exhaustive list, would definitely not be complete without my favorite episode from the show: “Once More, with Feeling”, the musical. I will tell you about my love for musical episodes in a second, but first, I have to explain why this episode is awesome, my love for characters randomly breaking into song aside. In this episode, everyone in Sunnydale uncontrollably starts singing about their deep emotional turmoil, from the random lady getting a ticket to our cast of characters. And let me tell you, this episode is not only entertaining but also packed with development. We get: Buffy going through the motions, depressed after having been pulled from “Heaven” when Willow resurrected her, a yearning for friendly togetherness from Xander, inadequacy as a father figure from Giles, Xander and Anya’s failing relationship due to their mutual insecurities, Tara’s bliss while under magical brainwashing by her girlfriend Willow (yes, she messes up a lot, to put it mildly, that’s treated later in the show) that made her forget all of her mistakes, Dawn’s feeling of not belonging and being a dead weight. And that is just focussing on individual character development. We also get the big ensemble songs about the characters going through the fire and the flames, together, while also being completely and utterly lost.
So much comes out of this supposedly silly episode. That does seem to be a constant of good musical episodes. I am not much of a fan of the extremely precarious typical movie format, and find that the limitations brought by the one-to-three-hour format you get in movies and regular musicals make them less enjoyable to me as a result. But musical episodes are in the greater context of a series with established characters and their struggles. It brings a major tonal shift to the show and an opportunity to explore much. This is what Buffy does. This is what happens in the Star Trek: Strange New Worlds’ musical episode, which forces many characters to face what they would prefer to remain hidden, along with giving us Klingon K-pop. Even when they don’t delve too deeply and mostly stick to previously established themes, like the Daria one, musical episodes still bring a smile to my face.
What I tried to exemplify in this article was how important the freedom to explore different tonalities for a show is. I feel, nowadays, that this is an often forgotten art in the cold, clinical, and perfectly meticulous serious modern shows, where jokes are timed artificially because manuals state that relief must happen. What is lost is the honest exploration of the depth of human emotions—darkness and trauma, yes, but also of joy, happiness, and fun—that grounds characters as human.