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Stargate SG-1 Season 8 DVD Boxset
01/08/2007 . Source: Geoff Willmetts 
region 2 DVD: pub: 20th Century Fox/MGM MDRP 2846. 6 DVDs 20 hours 33 minutes 20 episodes with loads of extras. Price: £23.89 (UK) if you shop around a bit) stars: Richard Dean Anderson, Michael Shanks, Amanda Tapping, Christopher Judge and many guest stars. Buy Stargate SG-1 Season 8 in the USA - or Buy Stargate SG-1 Season 8 in the UK  check out website: www.fox.co.uk , www.mgm.com/dvd and www.mgmuk.co.uk/stargate-sg1
As with all seasons of 'Stargate SG-1', you can almost feel the production team thinking this has to be the last one so let's tie up the loose ends. With this one, it was thought more so with leading actor Richard Dean Anderson begging off to have more time seeing his daughter growing up. The solution in this case was to promote his to head of Stargate Command, as the leader tends to have less work to do. This also switched Don S. Davies to the occasional guest-star appearance which oddly did give him a lot more to do than normal as I guess things balanced out a little. Samantha Carter (actress Amanda Tapping) also got a promotion and effectively became head of SG-1, even if their missions seemed less important this season. When they did go off-world, they were significant missions expensive to film and all in two-parters suggesting the other episodes were used to off-balance cost. The significance of this was to kill off the Replicators and reduce the Gou'ald threat to near oblivion although it doesn't explain what the Jaffa plan to do about the symbiotes they are carrying when they come to term, let alone what they are going to replace them with in the generations to come. No doubt, there will be a medical facility set up off-world to manufacture the serum that Teal'c and Bratac use, not to mention the problem the lady warrior Jaffas had even if this is never mentioned in the stories here. When I get on to watching Seasons 9 and 10, it'll all be new material to me since the satellite channels took over the viewing. A lot of the recounting above is to help those who are new to the Stargate series at this time.
There is certainly a wealth of interesting stories here, including the introduction of Vala (actress Claudia Black) who explains in the audio commentary how much she was jet-lagged the first few days of filming, even if you could never tell if from her performance. There are also further chapters and endings for Kinsey, Maybourne and the Covenant. Carter also succeeds in actually ditching a boy-friend without seeing him killed first. Hmm...how much more can I say without giving away too much about the stories? The final two-parter 'Mobiius' plays around with time in an oddly satisfying way leaving the way open for the later alternative Earths story in the later seasons. It does raise an interesting question about how much influence they can have on the past to affect the present. You might not want match twinges committed but it could have laid better in-roads to what could and should be changed. Mind you, it would probably wipe out the series from ever starting as well.
There are loads upon loads of extras with these DVDs including stills, behind the scenes stuff and such as well as nineteen audio comentaries. Director Peter DeLuise doing the monkey share with actor Gary Jones being his occasional foil. DeLuise makes an interesting observation about the original bionic series where both Austin and Sommers appear to use their non-bionic limbs for a little support in doing things. Shame he never read Caiden's book about how much re-enforcement was put into Austin's back that was neglected in the series. Telephone directories aren't too difficult to tear in half if you're strong enough, it's just how you tear that is important.
About the only thing that spoils all of this is the inability to turn off the plugs for the series and 'Stargate: Atlantis' at the opening for every DVD. When you're watching an episode a night, it sorely becomes a pain and also means its not doing the job it was supposed to do. If you can live with it, though, and haven't bought this season by now, then now is as good a time as ever.
GF Willmetts
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