It now seems clear that season 5 of Stargate SG-1 will be remembered as the one in which something went awry with Daniel Jackson. Lots of behind-the-scenes rumors fueled the idea of cast tension, but whatever the problem, his sudden departure from the show was obviously through a quickly contrived scenario. In retrospect, there must have been a problem for some while before the weird penultimate episode ("Meridian"). Michael Shanks looks frequently bored in his rare moments of individual screen time as he infiltrates a Goa'uld meeting and even when making friends with a creature everyone else wants dead. In fact, there's only one point when everyone really seems to be having fun, and that's in the spoof 100th episode "Wormhole X-treme!" Most shows go through a run-around, skin-of-their-teeth period awaiting renewal, and it certainly seems to have affected storylines this year. For example, a next generation of younger SG teams is introduced. Replacements? The most unfortunate aspect of things, however, was that not a single episode managed to stand alone on its own merits. Every single story was dependent on a part of the greater interwoven warring-species threads. Some of the one-off tales were terrific in and of themselves, but it was as if the writers fell into the trap of having to refer to as much backstory as possible, perhaps to ensure loose ends could be easily wrapped up? Ultimately none of this mattered since the show went on for quite a while. --Paul Tonks
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