It isn’t a stretch to say that Colonel Jack O’Neill is synonymous with Stargate.
Along with Daniel Jackson, Jack was a hold-over from the 1994 feature film.
Played by actor Richard Dean Anderson, he was the man who led the SG-1 team
through the gate on new adventures each week. But what’s a long-running show like Stargate
to do when its leading man chooses to reduce his role after many years of hard work? Even
before RDA finally retired after eight seasons, the writers’ room needed to do some creative
thinking to adapt to his reduced time on set. Stargate filmed in Vancouver, British Columbia,
while the actor spent his weekends at home in California. After the show moved to SCI
FI Channel with Season Six it found a new lease on life. But Anderson wanted to prioritize spending
more time at home with his young daughter. So for Seasons 6 and 7 he agreed to continue on, but with
an increasingly reduced shooting schedule that had him in Vancouver for fewer days each week.
That continued on into Season 8, when Anderson's time was reduced even further. As a result,
the show’s writers spent these three years thinking up clever ways to keep Jack
O’Neill as the star of the show ... while also sidelining the character for numerous stories.
It was done so well that, if you aren’t looking for it, you might not have noticed
them all. But once you realize what was going on behind the scenes — well,
the actor’s absence for some or all of an episode starts to get conspicuous.
#12 – Skewered (Season 2, Episode 13)
Before we get to RDA’s reduced schedule starting in Season 6, it’s worth noting one prominent
episode that saw Colonel O’Neill sidelined early in SG-1’s run. It’s the Season 2 “Spirits,” which
gave Captain Samantha Carter her first chance to command the team off-world after the Colonel
was injured at the start of the episode. The Salish fire a trinium dart through the
Stargate, penetrating the glass window of the S.G.C. control room and skewering Jack’s arm.
This was the writers’ creative solution for Anderson’s paternity leave. The birth of his
daughter Wylie had him away from set for several days. The episode’s shooting schedule was arranged
to keep Jack in the second half, when the Salish Spirits are running around Stargate Command.
But because of Jack’s injury he never goes off-world, freeing the actor from this
episode’s days shooting on location. #11 – Jack Falls Deathly Ill
(Season 6, Episodes 4-5) In the episode “Frozen,”
the discovery of an Ancient woman beneath the surface of Antarctica exposes SG-1 to a deadly
illness — probably the same plague that nearly wiped out the Ancients millions of years ago.
Although Ayiana manages to heal the rest of the team and the scientists at the research
outpost before she dies, Jack is not so lucky. He reluctantly agrees to take on a Tok’ra symbiote
in order to save his life — which explains why Jack is entirely absent from the next episode,
“Nightwalkers.” This is the first episode in which Jack O'Neill doesn't appear at all.
But he comes back in a big way: Anderson returned to set to film “Abyss,” in which
O’Neill is imprisoned and tortured by Baal. It’s one of the character’s best episodes ever.
#10 – Accused of Murder! (Season 6, Episode 14)
Jack is at the center of the plot for Season 6’s “Smoke and Mirrors,” but because he's
arrested on suspicion of murder Anderson is barely in the episode at all. The Colonel
is arrested at the beginning of the first act, and authorities have hard evidence implicating
him in the assassination of Senator Kinsey. The rest of his team set out to clear Jack’s
name, and the episode follows them while Jack cools his heels in jail.
The team exposes a rogue N.I.D. agent and a cabal of businessmen known as The Committee as the ones
behind the assassination attempt, and Colonel O’Neill’s good name is cleared. Jack returns
at the end of the episode for a reluctant photo op with the still living Senator.
#9 – Mini-Jack? (Season 7, Episode 3)
Maybe the most brilliant example of writing out Richard Dean Anderson but still focusing
the story on Jack O’Neill is the Season 7 episode “Fragile Balance.” Here the
role of the Colonel is essentially recast: actor Michael Welch plays a teenage version of Jack.
Young Jack is taken into custody when he tries to access Stargate Command, and (despite Welch’s
dead-on impression) his friends take a bit of convincing that he really is who he says he is.
Eventually SG-1 discovers that this isn’t their Colonel after all. He’s a clone of Jack,
engineered by the Asgard Loki, who didn’t end up fully mature because
the Asgard had put a protective lock on O’Neill’s DNA to prevent manipulation.
It's an entertaining Jack episode that gave Anderson the episode off. But he did
return at the end to meet his double face-to-face, sending young Jack off to live a life of his own.
#8 – Observation Room (Season 7, Episode 6)
SG-1 boards a crashed alien ship and finds the survivors of the Talthans in stasis.
The ship was ferrying refugees from their doomed planet to the new Talthan homeworld,
but now the ship has crashed and power is failing. A desperate engineer downloads a
dozen minds from the ship’s systems into Daniel’s head in an effort to save them.
What follows in the episode “Lifeboat” is an acting tour de force for Michael Shanks,
along with Teryl Rothery putting in one of her best performances as Dr. Janet Fraiser.
And where is Colonel O’Neill during this trial? After he gets a clean bill of health he parks
himself in the observation room, ostensibly there to support his friend ... though he
ends up off screen for most of the episode. As one personality after another emerges and
takes control of Daniel, the scenes frequently cut to Jack watching it all unfold ... though of
course these were not shot contemporaneously. Anderson was able to film his role in a short
window of time. Jack is then brought back in for the resolution at the end of the episode.
#7 – Unas Attack (Season 7, Episode 7)
In “Enemy Mine” Stargate Command runs afoul of a tribe of Unas while attempting to mine
for naquadah on their sacred grounds. Although SG-1 is called in to evaluate the situation,
it’s Colonel Edwards (played here by Guardians of the Galaxy’s Michael Rooker)
who is in command of the operation. Soon Jack is injured in an Unas attack,
and he’s out for the rest of the episode. Pretty much everything you remember about
this episode comes after Jack is sent to the infirmary: Daniel calls on his
old Unas friend Chaka to help mediate the dispute, and after showing deference and
respect to the Unas leader they broker a treaty. Because they share a common enemy in the Goa’uld,
the Unas are going to help mine the naquadah for us.
#6 – Carter’s Side Projects (Season 7, Episodes 8-9)
When the Serrakin pilot Warrick shows up asking for the team’s help to win a space race,
Major Carter is more than up for the challenge. While she and Warrick enter Hebridan’s dangerous
Loop of Kon Garat, “Space Race” sees the rest of SG-1 getting into trouble on the planet Hebridan.
Teal’c and Warrick’s brother Eamon get the B-plot, captured while trying to
expose sabotage and corruption inside the company that sponsors the race.
Meanwhile Jack and Daniel are off doing their own thing for most of the episode, only turning up in
time to see the bad guys get their just deserts. Then there’s the next episode, “Avenger
2.0,” which also follows Carter for the main storyline. Sam tries to help S.G.C. scientist
Jay Felger avoid getting fired by finishing and deploying his “Avenger” computer virus.
The program is meant to completely disable a target D.H.D., taking its Stargate offline.
But when Baal gets his hands on the program he modifies it, resulting in
the failure of the entire Stargate network. Colonel O’Neill and Teal’c spend most of this
episode off-world negotiating with rebel Jaffa leaders. And while they do check in occasionally
by radio, it again allowed Richard Dean Anderson to film all of his scenes in just a day or two.
#5 – A Jaffa Thing (Season 7, Episode 10)
It’s easy to miss the fact that Jack steps out of Season 7's “Birthright” halfway through.
This one is a Teal’c episode through and through, as the team encounters a group
of all-female rebel Jaffa led by Ishta (played by Star Trek‘s Jolene Blalock).
When she meets the team, Ishta more or less ignores O’Neill and addresses Teal’c instead.
Rather than killing their fellow Jaffa to acquire symbiotes for their young girls, Teal’c tries
to convince the Hak’tyl that the drug tretonin will free them from dependence on the Goa’uld.
It’s an emotional and important episode for Christopher Judge’s character. At this
point Teal’c has only recently started taking tretonin himself, and he must prove to Ishta
that he is not less of a Jaffa because of it. The Hak’tyl agree to send four warriors to Earth
for a drug trial, but tragically one of them does not survive.
From the point that the Hak’tyl arrive on Earth, Jack is off doing something else until the
farewell scene at the Stargate. #4 – Not A Diplomat
(Season 7, Episode 14) Former SG-1 team member Jonas
Quinn makes his grand return in “Fallout,” with a story from former cast member Corin Nemec.
The planet Langara is at imminent risk of catastrophe, as the Kelownans’ recent
detonation of a naquadria bomb has begun transforming a deep vein of naquadah into
the highly volatile variant. Basically, the whole continent is about to explode!
Sam and Teal’c join Jonas and his colleague (and secret Goa’uld girlfriend) Kianna in a
massive excavator to try and cut off the naquadria and save the planet.
So where is Colonel O’Neill while his team is saving another planet? Back on Earth, Jack doesn’t
have a ton of patience for the petty squabbling of the delegates from Langara’s three rival nations.
When they balk at efforts to unify their people and resettle on another planet,
Jack decides to bail: he puts Daniel in charge of the negotiations, and leaves the base.
It’s a somewhat uncharacteristic choice for the show. Here Jack doesn’t have some
sly plan up his sleeves to get the delegates to cooperate. And he doesn’t have to explain
himself to General Hammond. He just throws up his hands and walks away,
apparently unconcerned whether or not the Langarans are ultimately going to survive.
Jack later returns near the end of the episode to deliver some bad news to the delegates: the deal’s
off. Their resettlement is no longer an option. JACK: “That’s what you get for dickin’ around!”
#3 – Injured in the Line of Duty (Season 7, Episode 19)
Colonel O’Neill is hit by a staff weapon blast square in the torso during an off-world firefight,
seen in the episode “Heroes, Part 2.” While the S.G.C.’s new ceramic armor plate saves his life,
he gets some well-earned R&R to recover from his close brush with death.
The episode that follows is “Resurrection,” written by Michael Shanks and directed by Amanda
Tapping. Like “Nightwalkers” back in Season 6 this one of those rare episodes that Richard
Dean Anderson doesn’t appear in at all. Sam tells Agent Barrett at the top of
the episode that the Colonel is taking some time off, and that’s the last we hear of it.
Then the next episode is “Inauguration,” a clips show where the newly elected President Henry Hayes
is debriefed on the Stargate program. Aside from the flashbacks, SG-1 isn’t in this one at all.
#2 – Frozen in Carbonite (Season 8, Episode 1)
(Yes, yes — we know this isn't actually carbonite!)
The seventh season of SG-1 ends with a heartbreaking cliffhanger: after
sacrificing himself to obtain the knowledge of the Ancients and saving Earth from Anubis’ fleet,
Jack is left near death. His only hope is a stasis chamber left behind by the
Ancients deep beneath the ice of Antarctica. There he is frozen, and with the Ancients’
database in his head the team knows that unless they can get help from
the Asgard they had better not revive him. This leaves Colonel O’Neill completely out of
the first hour of Season 8’s two-part premiere, “New Order.” And it meant that Anderson got an
extra week off before reporting to Vancouver for the start of what would be his final season.
Sam and Teal’c finally convince the base’s new commander to let them take
their modified cargo ship to find the Asgard. But it’s only in the second hour that Thor comes
to Earth, beams up Jack, interfaces his mind with the ship’s computer to build an
anti-Replicator weapon, and revives him to start a new season of adventures.
#1 – Brigadier General (Most of Season 8)
When Stargate SG-1 was renewed for yet another season, it was not a certainty
that Anderson would come back at all. But the writers had one more ace up their sleeve.
Their leading man would return for one final year as a member of the main cast, but again
with a filming schedule that was reduced even further to accommodate his family priorities.
So how do you keep the character on the show but not send him off-world with the
team every week? How do you avoid another year of sticking Jack in the infirmary with an injury,
or sending him fishing during tense negotiations, or tucking him into a broom closet when Kinsey
comes to visit — but instead give him a permanent reason to have less screen time?
Promote him, of course! Jack is promoted to Brigadier General
at the end of the two-part season premiere. Commanding Stargate operations at the S.G.C. is
his new reality for the rest of the season. This new position makes for intriguing
and sometimes awkward growth for the character of Jack O'Neill,
who is reluctant to take the job and sometimes seems like a fish out of water in that big chair.
Jack becomes the decision-maker and quipper-in-chief, while the also
promoted Lt. Colonel Carter now leads SG-1. Some of these early episodes focus on Jack,
to remind the audience that he is still present — particularly episodes 3 and 4,
“Lockdown” and “Zero Hour.” But for the majority of the season Jack's appearances
are relegated to the conference room and the occasional check-in with the team.
At this point Jack had more than earned his retirement. But as Richard Dean Anderson
departed the show, the writers sent O’Neill to Washington to head up the newly formed division
of Homeworld Command — leaving the door open for many guest appearances still to come!
Which of these ideas to keep Jack O’Neill around but write him out of the main action
do you think was the most brilliant? What did you think of the Colonel’s role in Seasons 6, 7,
and 8? Post your thoughts in the comments below! Visit us at GateWorld.net to explore more about
these episodes and the character of Jack O'Neill, and subscribe to the channel now
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