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Stargate SG-1 Creator Elegantly Explains Why That “Universe” Can Never Truly End
Just like Star Trek, the beloved sci-fi franchise is large enough to contain infinite multitudes.
When a science fiction world grows big and compelling enough to connect with fans across generations, it reaches a kind of escape velocity — one that untethers it from just a single movie or TV series.
That’s right where the extended Stargate story-verse had found itself as Stargate Atlantis — the successful small-screen followup to Stargate SG-1 — ended its five-season series run in 2009. Wrapped amid solid ratings and months before the TV premiere of spinoff series Stargate Universe, Atlantis was leaving the door open for potential TV movie follow-ups that would sadly never come to be.
Brad Wright on why the Stargate universe will always have stories to tell
Just as he’d previously done with Stargate SG-1 alongside eventual The Ark co-creator Jonathan Glassner (stream the SYFY hit series here!), Brad Wright also co-created Stargate Atlantis (with Robert C. Cooper), and would eventually go on with Cooper to create Stargate Universe.
As Wright elegantly explained at the time of SGA’s cancelation, the larger world of Stargate (including, of course, Atlantis) had expanded in scope fully enough to be able to tell stories not just in Pegasus or even on Earth — but in any galaxy where one of the Ancients’ space-leaping portals might open.
“We don’t think that a storyline, or a story ‘universe,’ should ever end, per se,” Wright shared with Stargate fan site GateWorld at the time. “I don’t think that, if this were the real world and there really was a Stargate program, it could happily ever ‘end.’ It always has to go forward for it to remain as hopeful and as forward-looking as I think Stargate is.”
Atlantis ended while its ratings appeared solid, making way for an anticipated movie (tentatively titled Stargate Extinction) that, sadly, never materialized. But the lore world of Stargate indeed would continue onward, from the late-2009 launch of Stargate Universe all the way to the 2018 premiere of the web-based Stargate Origins series.
Wright likened Stargate’s sci-fi versatility to that of the Star Trek franchise, noting that Gene Roddenberry’s iconic 1960s serial had created a world where multiple movies, TV series, and multimedia offshoots always will remain possible — and, more importantly, appealing for fans. Just as Star Trek: The Original Series spawned an endless succession of new Star Trek stories, the Stargate universe — first expressed by Roland Emmerich and Dean Devlin in the original 1994 Stargate film — had taken on a similarly larger life of its own.
“It’s a place in which to tell stories,” said Wright, noting how Stargate SG-1 had itself shifted story threads to forge a new lore chapter midway through its 10-season run. “Once we started creating a broader mythology that we could draw from, and shook up the show a little bit and allowed the characters to evolve, the show could go forward and could grow and fans would stay with it.”
