‘The Ark of Truth’ DVD¹ sat on my shelf, untouched, for three months, before I finally watched it. I guess after ten years, I am running out of enthusiasm for the show. Despite the promise of the Ori plot being wrapped up, I was uncertain about this movie.

Within fifteen minutes, I am reminded why. Stargate keeps reusing plots and ideas, far beyond their use-by date. The International Oversight Advisory is back, the same old village set is back,² and SG-1 are looking for an ancient artifact to solve all their problems.

In the next ten minutes, the IOA representative is revealed as petty and annoying, and SG-1 is given command of the ship Odyssey, which, given SG-1’s track record with spaceships, will probably be destroyed by the end of the movie. It’s not a promising start.

These problems are fortunately offset by the quality of acting. Vala’s consistently excellent, with one particular standout moment in my pants near the end. Cam has some great lines at the end of the film. There was a moment when he looked like he was going to have a ‘never give up’ moment,³ but said some witty one liners instead. Sam, surprisingly, is sporting long sexy hair and doesn’t spout technobabble at every possible opportunity.

The direction had some inspired moments too, which was surprising given that it was directed by Robert Cooper who hasn’t shown this flair in the past.

So it wasn’t too bad. I liked the resolution of the Ori plot. It has had some bad moments, but I’ve liked the Vala-Tomin-Adria parts in the past (despite their contrived beginnings) and it was nice to see those wrapped up satisfactorily. Stargate generally doesn’t have enough character moments, so I impressed that Tomin managed to get so much screen time.

It’s a shame the film started out the such an uninspired premise and had to spend the rest of the film working back up to alright. I’m cautiously looking forward to the next one.

1. Yes, I bought it, due to a voice in my head telling me to buy Stargate products, rather than download them. I regret it now, because while trying to watch it on my computer with Windows Media Player, I get this helpful error about DRM or garbled playback. It eventually played with VLC, but it seems wrong that I would have less trouble if I downloaded the file. ↩
2. The same voice in my head kept reminding me of this, I presume in an attempt to ruin my suspension of disbelief. ↩
3. He’s come a long way since then. ↩

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This entry was posted by the illustrious Andy Cocker on Saturday, July 19th, 2008. It concerns such pressing issues as Stargate SG-1, tv. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.