When Martin Gero announced in November that he would be serving as showrunner for a new Stargate series for Prime Video, he made it clear that he wanted to appeal to die-hard fans of the sci-fi franchise. He broke the news in a video alongside the leaders of a pair of fansites and stressed that he was not making a reboot, instead drawing on decades of canon that span three live-action shows and three films. That turned out to be a problem for Amazon, which Variety reports scrapped the series because “execs were concerned that Gero’s take on the series would not have broad appeal beyond the franchise’s already dedicated fanbase.”
That might seem like bad news, but it’s probably a good thing for the franchise in the long run. Gero, who previously worked on Stargate: SG-1, Stargate: Atlantis, and Stargate Universe, will develop other projects for Amazon. The studio is looking into other ways to bring Stargate back. Hopefully, that will actually wind up being a reboot rather than the legacy sequel Gero wanted to make.
No plot details were revealed about the scrapped show, but I can easily imagine the child of General Jack O’Neill and Commander Sam Carter leading a new generation of Stargate explorers. The new hero has a big chip on their shoulder as they try to live up to the example of their famous parents, who keep making guest star appearances. They’re probably working with a grown-up version of Teal’c’s son, Rya’c, and some new scientist who’s awestruck by Daniel Jackson. There will be some new threat that’s meant to be even worse than the Goa’uld and an enormous number of Easter eggs and references to the franchise’s history.
Gero acknowledged the challenge of the task before him when he promised that the series would be accessible to viewers with no familiarity with the franchise and could even appeal to people who don’t normally like sci-fi. I have a hard time imagining how he could have squared that circle. Stargate was once one of Star Trek’s biggest competitors, and Amazon should use Paramount’s Star Trek run as a cautionary tale. Starfleet Academy aimed to be a hopping-on point for new audiences to mark the franchise’s 60th anniversary, but the showrunners failed their new characters as they focused too much on paying tribute to the series’ past. The series will end after two seasons.
The Marvel Cinematic Universe has been collapsing under its own weight as fans have grown tired of feeling like they need to do homework to watch the latest show or movie. TV viewers aren’t in the market for a series that would be best appreciated if you’ve watched 17 previous seasons. Rebooting the cannon also would let the new Stargate showrunner bring back the Goa’uld, the franchise’s most iconic villains, and fully reimagine what its planet-hopping military science fiction would look like in 2026. The possibilities of a fresh start are why I’m holding out hope that Ryan Coogler’s reboot of The X-Files will be better than Chris Carter’s disappointing 2016 continuation of the series.
The 2001 Stargate SG-1 episode “2010” imagined a world where humanity encountered the Aschen, a friendly alien civilization that supplied them with all the technology they needed to defeat the Goa’uld and to cure most human diseases. But the Aschen used their medical treatments to secretly sterilize most of humanity so they could eventually take over the Earth. Humans got everything they thought they wanted, but at the cost of their own future. Gero’s show feels like a similar trade. It might have been everything that some fans wished for, but Amazon is looking at the long-term success of the franchise. I’m hopeful that this tough decision will pay off in the long run by actually creating a new generation of Stargate fans.
