Syfy cancelled Stargate SG-1 because the network was pivoting to putting more effort into their other shows like Eureka which had a more general appeal. The writers snuck this cryptically meta exchange into S10E18 “Family Ties” poking at the network for how they felt the series was being mistreated.
In my opinion, it was a mistake to make seasons 9 and 10 of Stargate SG-1 instead of their original plan of making it a spinoff called Stargate Command. If they would have started fresh as (technically) a new series, I think it would have been overall better for the long term health of the franchise.
Hard disagree on the quality, I loved it even if the first episode of s9 had me a little upset at, first. Much like Mitchell was.
The show 100% improved in their last two seasons, and nobody can convince me otherwise. It was great when it aired, it’s held up well since then.
They had been operating for many years under the “gotta make a cliffhanger that can pivot to a movie in case we get canceled” and then a surprise pickup for another season, when they finally thought they were getting another season the network just decided “nah we want new flashy tech heavy shows more in the next 5 minutes” and they got the surprise too late in the season to flesh out an ending without movies.
While I did enjoy the movies, I feel like they would have worked better as 3-4 episodes each in their own season.
Hell, half a normal season would have probably cost less and did more for the story.
I always loved the minor shade the writers tossed around, and the jokes about various governments always made me chuckle.
Honestly the one bit in the clipisode where they inform other governments of the program where the Chinese ambassador says “the government of China doesn’t hide thing from it people” was hilarious then and it’s double hilarious now, just for different reasons. I’d love to know how writers of the show might have dealt with the last few year. Some may have refused to write for a show glamorizing the US military anymore. I know I would have by now. Or put in so many negative things the producers would fire me.
But yeah, I love all 10 seasons, and if every copy in the world were destroyed, I have 5 different backups of the Blu ray and DVD sets. In fairness those backups also contain the rest of my movies and shows, it’s not just contained to sg1…
I didn’t say anything about quality. I just mentioned that they made a mistake in considering those seasons part of Stargate SG-1 instead of calling them a new show called Stargate Command. They wanted to keep capitalizing on the existing title that had become a household name. But that ended up being a poor decision that did not work their way in the long run. Stargate SG-1 was still prematurely canceled, whereas if it were called Stargate Command, it would have likely continued on for several more seasons.
I don’t think it would have. It’s not like they suddenly switched focus to the planetside operations instead of the teams, or brought an entirely new cast in to be the focus (like with Scrubs). They basically switched two actors out, but otherwise the show was roughly the same as it always was. Airing it under a different name would have hurt more than helped, as it would drive away die hard fans of the show and wouldn’t really bring in new ones as it still heavily relied on previous knowledge of the series.