In October, it’ll have been 30 years since the release of Stargate. On its release, the 1994 movie may have been just another notch on the belts of Kurt Russell and James Spader, but it was successful. It didn’t just launch Roland Emmerich’s career as a director, it also spawned multiple TV shows that expand on different parts of its timeline. If you want the in-universe sequence of events, you’ll need to watch them in chronological order. Fortunately for you, we’ve ordered them below.
The Stargate Premise
If you’re unfamiliar with Stargate’s premise, it helps to know what you’re getting into. It’s sci-fi (obviously) but with a healthy dose of ancient aliens and Egyptology thrown in, making for a unique premise when it first appeared in 1994. Its familiar ancient Egyptian aesthetic was a crowd-pleaser, as later movies like The Mummy would also show. Today, a lot of entertainment still leans on the mysteries of ancient Egypt, from novels to games including those hosted on iGaming sites. That’s why the Great Sahara desert can be found in cash collect slots, for example, because it’s a popular and instantly recognizable aesthetic that is distinct from many other cultures of the ancient world. While old mummy movies were responsible for mainstreaming the ancient Egyptian aesthetic, Stargate would use them in a way that no piece of fiction had ever done before.
The centerpiece of the whole franchise is the stargates themselves – stabilized wormholes that allow people to teleport from planet to planet. The twist here is that one exists beneath the pyramids of Giza on Earth, and the Egyptian pantheon of gods are alien parasites inhabiting captured humans on the distant planet Abydos. They once ruled over Earth’s humans in the region, until an ancient rebellion forced them out. The Stargate franchise follows the reactivation of these portals, this time by curious humans, and the aftermath.
The Stargate Chronology
Spanning 1994 to 2018, there’s a lot of Stargate media to sort through. Here’s a quick briefing on Stargate’s expansive chronology.
Stargate Origins
With a title like that, it’s no surprise this 2018 series is the first in Stargate’s chronology. In the real world, it’s the latest piece of Stargate media, but it covers the initial discovery of the Giza stargate by Catherine Langford and her father Paul. We get to see a young Langford go through the stargate to rescue her father. This was a web series, though it was later consolidated into a 104-minute standalone film called Stargate Origins: Catherine.
Stargate
That leads straight into the beginning – the 1994 movie. Egyptologist Daniel Jackson (James Spader) partners with the US Air Force and Colonel Jack O’Neill (Kurt Russell) to investigate the stargate and what’s on the other side. They get a little help from an older Catherine Langford, who gives them a mysterious hieroglyph, so Origins puts parts of this film in a whole new context.
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Stargate: SG-1 – Seasons 1 to 7
That brings us to SG-1, the long-running series that solidified Stargate as a TV show property more than a movie franchise. It picks up after the film, as we follow the US Air Force discovering the wider universe and the many threats within it.
Stargate: SG-1 – Seasons 8 to 10 & Stargate: Atlantis – Seasons 1 to 3
Fron here, seasons 8 to 10 of SG-1 play out at the same time as the first three seasons of Stargate: Atlantis. This is because it builds off of SG-1’s season 7 finale, spinning off of the original series.
Stargate: The Ark of Truth & Continuum
After finishing SG-1, The Ark of Truth is a movie that wraps up some loose threads left by the series (no spoilers). Then there’s the sequel, Continuum, where the SG-1 team is forced to fight their enemies on a whole new front.
Stargate: Atlantis – Seasons 4 & 5
Once those movies are out of the way, you can dive back into Atlantis. Seasons 4 and 5 pick up where the season 3 finale left off but happen after the two SG-1 movies. SG-1’s O’Neill reappears in this show to wrap up the Atlantis arc.
Stargate: Universe
Lastly, Universe carries on the efforts of Stargate Command following SG-1 and Atlantis. They discover that the stargates can send them to locations outside of their galaxy, quite literally expanding the universe across its two seasons.
