This Stargate SG-1 Scene Was Written as a Joke But Actually Made it Into the SYFY Series

Stargate SG-1 was a show that often embraced a certain amount of humor in among the sci-fi action, particularly when it came to Teal'c (Christopher Judge), the SG-1 crew's alien team member who often puzzled and delighted in the ways of humans. Giving Teal'c a chance to react to other cultures around him was one of the great joys of the show, and it turned out to be so much fun for the writers that one scene in particular was written just as a goof they were sure would be cut by the network...until it wasn't.

In a Reddit post two years ago, SG-1 writer Joseph Mallozzi revealed that the closing scene of the Season 10 episode "Family Ties" was one that he never actually expected SYFY executives to let the show keep. At that point, news that the long-running series would end had already been announced, which meant that the writers were just wrapping up their story and preparing for the end of the show. It also, according to Mallozzi, meant that there was less general oversight for the series, as everyone was just getting the final episodes out the door. 

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In "Family Ties," much of the conflict centers around the arrival of Vala's (Claudia Black) father Jacek (Fred Willard) on Earth, where he promptly resumes his con man ways, much to to the chagrin of the team. A key undercurrent of the episode, from the very first scene, is the way that the show's non-Earthling characters, like Vala and Jacek, relate to Earth customs and commercial products. To further underline that point, Mallozzi wrote a scene at the end of the episode, in which Teal'c heads out to see a play on Earth. We'll let him explain what happened next:

"Shortly, after SG-1 was cancelled, we stopped receiving network notes," Mallozzi wrote. "As a gag, I wrote a scene into a script that saw our resident alien, Teal'c, inadvertently attend a reading of the Vagina Monologues. I assumed that, when they saw it, they would ask me to remove it..."

Of course, as SG-1 viewers know very well, no one made the writers take the scene out, which means we all got to watch Teal'c sheepishly sit through one of the most famous, and famously frank, plays of the late 20th century, Eve Ensler's episodic discussion of all things related to the female anatomy and more. It's a great SG-1 moment, and it was originally written as a silly gag the writers never thought they'd actually get on TV.

Stargate SG-1 and its spinoffs Stargate Atlantis and Stargate Universe were staples of the early-to-mid 2000s original programming block on SYFY, with SG-1 running for 10 seasons before spinning off into two direct-to-DVD movies.