title: King Lear

text: In 1843, the Act for Regulating the Theatres came into force, bringing an end to the monopolies of the two existing companies and, by doing so, increased the number of theatres in London. At the same time, the fashion in theatre was "pictorial": valuing visual spectacle above plot or characterisation and often required lengthy (and time-consuming) scene changes. For example, Henry Irving's 1892 "King Lear" offered spectacles such as Lear's death beneath a cliff at Dover, his face lit by the red glow of a setting sun; at the expense of cutting 46% of the text, including the blinding of Gloucester. But Irving's production clearly evoked strong emotions: one spectator, Gordon Crosse, wrote of the first entrance of Lear, "a striking figure with masses of white hair. He is leaning on a huge scabbarded sword which he raises with a wild cry in answer to the shouted greeting of his guards. His gait, his looks, his gestures, all reveal the noble, imperious mind already degenerating into senile irritability under the coming shocks of grief and age."


title: King Lear

text: The importance of pictorialism to Irving, and to other theatre professionals of the Victorian era, is exemplified by the fact that Irving had used Ford Madox Brown's painting "Cordelia's Portion" as the inspiration for the look of his production, and that the artist himself was brought in to provide sketches for the settings of other scenes. A reaction against pictorialism came with the rise of the reconstructive movement, believers in a simple style of staging more similar to that which would have pertained in renaissance theatres, whose chief early exponent was the actor-manager William Poel. Poel was influenced by a performance of "King Lear" directed by Jocza Savits at the Hoftheater in Munich in 1890, set on an apron stage with a three-tier Globe—like reconstruction theatre as its backdrop. Poel would use this same configuration for his own Shakespearean performances in 1893.


title: King Lear

text: By mid-century, the actor–manager tradition had declined, to be replaced by a structure in which the major theatre companies employed professional directors as auteurs. The last of the great actor–managers, Donald Wolfit, played Lear in 1944 on a Stonehenge-like set and was praised by James Agate as "the greatest piece of Shakespearean acting since I have been privileged to write for the "Sunday Times"". Wolfit supposedly drank eight bottles of Guinness in the course of each performance.


title: King Lear

text: The character of Lear in the 19th century was often that of a frail old man from the opening scene, but Lears of the 20th century often began the play as strong men displaying regal authority, including John Gielgud, Donald Wolfit and Donald Sinden. Cordelia, also, evolved in the 20th century: earlier Cordelias had often been praised for being sweet, innocent and modest, but 20th-century Cordelias were often portrayed as war leaders. For example, Peggy Ashcroft, at the RST in 1950, played the role in a breastplate and carrying a sword. Similarly, the Fool evolved through the course of the century, with portrayals often deriving from the music hall or circus tradition.


title: King Lear

text: At Stratford-upon-Avon in 1962 Peter Brook (who would later film the play with the same actor, Paul Scofield, in the role of Lear) set the action simply, against a huge, empty white stage. The effect of the scene when Lear and Gloucester meet, two tiny figures in rags in the midst of this emptiness, was said (by the scholar Roger Warren) to catch "both the human pathos ... and the universal scale ... of the scene". Some of the lines from the radio broadcast were used by The Beatles to add into the recorded mix of the song "I Am the Walrus". John Lennon happened upon the play on the BBC Third Programme while fiddling with the radio while working on the song. The voices of actors Mark Dignam, Philip Guard, and John Bryning from the play are all heard in the song.


title: King Lear

text: Like other Shakespearean tragedies, "King Lear" has proved amenable to conversion into other theatrical traditions. In 1989, David McRuvie and Iyyamkode Sreedharan adapted the play then translated it to Malayalam, for performance in Kerala in the Kathakali tradition—which itself developed around 1600, contemporary with Shakespeare's writing. The show later went on tour, and in 2000 played at Shakespeare's Globe, completing, according to Anthony Dawson, "a kind of symbolic circle". Perhaps even more radical was Ong Keng Sen's 1997 adaptation of "King Lear", which featured six actors each performing in a separate Asian acting tradition and in their own separate languages. A pivotal moment occurred when the Jingju performer playing Older Daughter (a conflation of Goneril and Regan) stabbed the Noh-performed Lear whose "falling pine" deadfall, straight face-forward into the stage, astonished the audience, in what Yong Li Lan describes as a "triumph through the moving power of "noh" performance at the very moment of his character's defeat".


title: King Lear

text: In 1974, Buzz Goodbody directed "Lear", a deliberately abbreviated title for Shakespeare's text, as the inaugural production of the RSC's studio theatre The Other Place. The performance was conceived as a chamber piece, the small intimate space and proximity to the audience enabled detailed psychological acting, which was performed with simple sets and in modern dress. Peter Holland has speculated that this company/directoral decision—namely "choosing" to present Shakespeare in a small venue for artistic reasons when a larger venue was available—may at the time have been unprecedented.


title: King Lear

text: Brook's earlier vision of the play proved influential, and directors have gone further in presenting Lear as (in the words of R. A. Foakes) "a pathetic senior citizen trapped in a violent and hostile environment". When John Wood took the role in 1990, he played the later scenes in clothes that looked like cast-offs, inviting deliberate parallels with the uncared-for in modern Western societies. Indeed, modern productions of Shakespeare's plays often reflect the world in which they are performed as much as the world for which they were written: and the Moscow theatre scene in 1994 provided an example, when two very different productions of the play (those by Sergei Zhonovach and Alexei Borodin), very different from one another in their style and outlook, were both reflections on the break-up of the Soviet Union.


title: King Lear

text: In 2002 and 2010, the Hudson Shakespeare Company of New Jersey staged separate productions as part of their respective Shakespeare in the Parks seasons. The 2002 version was directed by Michael Collins and transposed the action to a West Indies, nautical setting. Actors were featured in outfits indicative of looks of various Caribbean islands. The 2010 production directed by Jon Ciccarelli was fashioned after the atmosphere of the film "The Dark Knight" with a palette of reds and blacks and set the action in an urban setting. Lear (Tom Cox) appeared as a head of multi-national conglomerate who divided up his fortune among his socialite daughter Goneril (Brenda Scott), his officious middle daughter Regan (Noelle Fair) and university daughter Cordelia (Emily Best).


title: King Lear

text: In 2012, renowned Canadian director Peter Hinton directed an all-First Nations production of "King Lear" at the National Arts Centre in Ottawa, Ontario, with the setting changed to an Algonquin nation in the 17th century. The cast included August Schellenberg as Lear, Billy Merasty as Gloucester, Tantoo Cardinal as Regan, Kevin Loring as Edmund, Jani Lauzon in a dual role as Cordelia and the Fool, and Craig Lauzon as Kent. This setting would later be reproduced as part of the "Manga Shakespeare" graphic novel series published by Self-Made Hero, adapted by Richard Appignanesi and featuring the illustrations of Ilya.


title: King Lear

text: In 2015, Toronto's Theatre Passe Muraille staged a production set in Upper Canada against the backdrop of the Upper Canada Rebellion of 1837. This production starred David Fox as Lear.


title: King Lear

text: In the summer of 2015–2016, The Sydney Theatre Company staged "King Lear", directed by Neil Armfield with Geoffrey Rush in the lead role and Robyn Nevin as the Fool. About the madness at the heart of the play, Rush said that for him "it's about finding the dramatic impact in the moments of his mania. What seems to work best is finding a vulnerability or a point of empathy, where an audience can look at Lear and think how shocking it must be to be that old and to be banished from your family into the open air in a storm. That's a level of impoverishment you would never want to see in any other human being, ever."


title: King Lear

text: In 2016, Talawa Theatre Company and Royal Exchange Manchester co-produced a production of "King Lear" with Don Warrington in the title role. The production, featuring a largely black cast, was described in "The Guardian" as being "as close to definitive as can be". "The Daily Telegraph" wrote that "Don Warrington's King Lear is a heartbreaking tour de force". "King Lear" was staged by Royal Shakespeare Company, with Antony Sher in the lead role. The performance was directed by Gregory Doran and was described as having "strength and depth".


title: King Lear

text: In 2017, the Guthrie Theatre produced a production of "King Lear" with Stephen Yoakam in the title role. Armin Shimerman appeared as the fool, portraying it with "an unusual grimness, but it works", in a production that was hailed as "a devastating piece of theater, and a production that does it justice".


title: King Lear

text: Lear was played on Broadway by Christopher Plummer in 2004 and Glenda Jackson in 2019, with Jackson reprising her portrayal from a 2016 production at The Old Vic in London.


title: King Lear

text: The first film adaptation of "King Lear" was a five-minute German version made around 1905, which has not survived. The oldest extant version is a ten-minute studio-based version from 1909 by Vitagraph, which, according to Luke McKernan, made the "ill-advised" decision to attempt to cram in as much of the plot as possible. Two silent versions, both titled "Re Lear", were made in Italy in 1910. Of these, the version by director Gerolamo Lo Savio was filmed on location, and it dropped the Edgar sub-plot and used frequent intertitling to make the plot easier to follow than its Vitagraph predecessor. A contemporary setting was used for Louis Feuillade's 1911 French adaptation "Le Roi Lear Au Village", and in 1914 in America, Ernest Warde expanded the story to an hour, including spectacles such as a final battle scene.


title: King Lear

text: The Joseph Mankiewicz (1949) "House of Strangers" is often considered a "Lear" adaptation, but the parallels are more striking in "Broken Lance" (1954) in which a cattle baron played by Spencer Tracy tyrannizes his three sons, and only the youngest, Joe, played by Robert Wagner, remains loyal.


title: King Lear

text: The TV anthology series "Omnibus" (1952–1961) staged a 73-minute version of "King Lear" on 18 October 1953. It was adapted by Peter Brook and starred Orson Welles in his American television debut.


title: King Lear

text: Two screen versions of "King Lear" date from the early 1970s: Grigori Kozintsev's "Korol Lir", and Peter Brook's film of "King Lear", which stars Paul Scofield. Brook's film starkly divided the critics: Pauline Kael said "I didn't just dislike this production, I hated it!" and suggested the alternative title "Night of the Living Dead". Yet Robert Hatch in "The Nation" thought it as "excellent a filming of the play as one can expect" and Vincent Canby in "The New York Times" called it "an exalting "Lear", full of exquisite terror". The film drew on the ideas of Jan Kott, in particular his observation that "King Lear" was the precursor of absurdist theatre, and that it has parallels with Beckett's "Endgame". Critics who dislike the film particularly draw attention to its bleak nature from its opening: complaining that the world of the play does not deteriorate with Lear's suffering, but commences dark, colourless and wintry, leaving, according to Douglas Brode, "Lear, the land, and us with nowhere to go". Cruelty pervades the film, which does not distinguish between the violence of ostensibly good and evil characters, presenting both savagely. Paul Scofield, as Lear, eschews sentimentality: This demanding old man with a coterie of unruly knights provokes audience sympathy for the daughters in the early scenes, and his presentation explicitly rejects the tradition of playing Lear as "poor old white-haired patriarch".


title: King Lear

text: "Korol Lir" has been praised by critic Alexander Anikst for the "serious, deeply thoughtful" even "philosophical approach" of director Grigori Kozintsev and writer Boris Pasternak. Making a thinly veiled criticism of Brook in the process, Anikst praised the fact that there were "no attempts at sensationalism, no efforts to 'modernise' Shakespeare by introducing Freudian themes, Existentialist ideas, eroticism, or sexual perversion. [Kozintsev] ... has simply made a film of Shakespeare's tragedy." Dmitri Shostakovich provided an epic score, its motifs including an (increasingly ironic) trumpet fanfare for Lear, and a five-bar "Call to Death" marking each character's demise. Kozintzev described his vision of the film as an ensemble piece: with Lear, played by a dynamic Jüri Järvet, as first among equals in a cast of fully developed characters. The film highlights Lear's role as king by including his people throughout the film on a scale no stage production could emulate, charting the central character's decline from their god to their helpless equal; his final descent into madness marked by his realisation that he has neglected the "poor naked wretches". As the film progresses, ruthless characters—Goneril, Regan, Edmund—increasingly appear isolated in shots, in contrast to the director's focus, throughout the film, on masses of human beings.


title: King Lear

text: Jonathan Miller twice directed Michael Hordern in the title role for English television, the first for the BBC's "Play of the Month" in 1975 and the second for the "BBC Television Shakespeare" in 1982. Hordern received mixed reviews, and was considered a bold choice due to his history of taking much lighter roles. Also for English television, Laurence Olivier took the role in a 1983 TV production for Granada Television. It was his last screen appearance in a Shakespearean role.


title: King Lear

text: In 1985, a major screen adaptation of the play appeared: "Ran", directed by Akira Kurosawa. At the time the most expensive Japanese film ever made, it tells the story of Hidetora, a fictional 16th-century Japanese warlord, whose attempt to divide his kingdom among his three sons leads to an estrangement with the youngest, and ultimately most loyal, of them, and eventually to civil war. In contrast to the cold drab greys of Brook and Kozintsev, Kurosawa's film is full of vibrant colour: external scenes in yellows, blues and greens, interiors in browns and ambers, and Emi Wada's Oscar-winning colour-coded costumes for each family member's soldiers. Hidetora has a back-story: a violent and ruthless rise to power, and the film portrays contrasting victims: the virtuous characters Sue and Tsurumaru who are able to forgive, and the vengeful Kaede (Mieko Harada), Hidetora's daughter-in-law and the film's Lady Macbeth-like villain.


title: King Lear

text: A scene in which a character is threatened with blinding in the manner of Gloucester forms the climax of the 1973 parody horror "Theatre of Blood". Comic use is made of Sir's inability to physically carry any actress cast as Cordelia opposite his Lear in the 1983 film of the stage play "The Dresser". John Boorman's 1990 "Where the Heart Is" features a father who disinherits his three spoiled children. Francis Ford Coppola deliberately incorporated elements of "Lear" in his 1990 sequel "The Godfather Part III", including Michael Corleone's attempt to retire from crime throwing his domain into anarchy, and most obviously the death of his daughter in his arms. Parallels have also been drawn between Andy García's character Vincent and both Edgar and Edmund, and between Talia Shire's character Connie and Kaede in "Ran".


title: King Lear

text: In 1997, Jocelyn Moorhouse directed "A Thousand Acres", based on Jane Smiley's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, set in 1990s Iowa. The film is described, by scholar Tony Howard, as the first adaptation to confront the play's disturbing sexual dimensions. The story is told from the viewpoint of the elder two daughters, Ginny played by Jessica Lange and Rose played by Michelle Pfeiffer, who were sexually abused by their father as teenagers. Their younger sister Caroline, played by Jennifer Jason Leigh had escaped this fate and is ultimately the only one to remain loyal.


title: King Lear

text: In 1998, the BBC produced a televised version, directed by Richard Eyre, of his award-winning 1997 Royal National Theatre production, starring Ian Holm as Lear. In March 2001, in a review originally posted to culturevulture.net, critic Bob Wake observed that the production was "of particular note for preserving Ian Holm’s celebrated stage performance in the title role. Stellar interpreters of Lear haven't always been so fortunate." Wake added that other performances had been poorly documented because they suffered from technological problems (Orson Welles), eccentric televised productions (Paul Scofield), or were filmed when the actor playing Lear was unwell (Laurence Olivier).


title: King Lear

text: The play was adapted to the world of gangsters in Don Boyd's 2001 "My Kingdom", a version which differs from all others in commencing with the Lear character, Sandeman, played by Richard Harris, in a loving relationship with his wife. But her violent death marks the start of an increasingly bleak and violent chain of events (influenced by co-writer Nick Davies' documentary book "Dark Heart") which in spite of the director's denial that the film had "serious parallels" to Shakespeare's play, actually mirror aspects of its plot closely.


title: King Lear

text: Unlike Shakespeare's Lear, but like Hidetora and Sandeman, the central character of Uli Edel's 2002 American TV adaptation "King of Texas", John Lear played by Patrick Stewart, has a back-story centred on his violent rise to power as the richest landowner (metaphorically a "king") in General Sam Houston's independent Texas in the early 1840s. Daniel Rosenthal comments that the film was able, by reason of having been commissioned by the cable channel TNT, to include a bleaker and more violent ending than would have been possible on the national networks. 2003's Channel 4-commissioned two-parter "Second Generation" set the story in the world of Asian manufacturing and music in England.


title: King Lear

text: The Canadian comedy-drama TV series "Slings & Arrows" (2003–2006), which follows a fictional Shakespearean theatre festival inspired by the real-life Stratford Festival in Ontario, devotes its third season to a troubled production of "King Lear". The fictional actor starring as Lear (played by William Hutt, who in real life played Lear onstage at Stratford three times to great acclaim) is given the role despite concerns over his advanced age and ill health, plus a secret addiction to heroin discovered by the theatre's director. Eventually the actor's mental state deteriorates until he seems to believe he is Lear himself, wandering into a storm and later reciting his lines uncontrollably. William Hutt himself was in failing health when he filmed the TV role and died less than a year after the third season premiered.


title: King Lear

text: In 2008, a version of "King Lear" produced by the Royal Shakespeare Company premiered with Ian McKellen in the role of King Lear.


title: King Lear

text: In the 2012 romantic comedy "If I Were You", there is a reference to the play when the lead characters are cast in a female version of King Lear set in modern times, with Marcia Gay Harden cast in the Lear role and Lenore Watling as "the fool". Lear is an executive in a corporate empire instead of a literal one, being phased out of her position. The off-beat play (and its cast) is a major plot element of the movie. The American musical drama television series Empire is partially inspired from King Lear.


title: King Lear

text: Carl Bessai wrote and directed a modern adaptation of "King Lear" titled "The Lears". Released in 2017, the film starred Bruce Dern, Anthony Michael Hall and Sean Astin.


title: King Lear

text: On 28 May 2018, BBC Two broadcast "King Lear" starring Anthony Hopkins in the title role and Emma Thompson as Goneril. Directed by Richard Eyre, the play featured a 21st-century setting. Hopkins, at the age of 80, was deemed ideal for the role and "at home with Lear's skin" by critic Sam Wollaston.


title: King Lear

text: The first recording of the Argo Shakespeare for Argo Records was "King Lear" in 1957, directed and produced by George Rylands with William Devlin in the title role, Jill Balcon as Goneril and Prunella Scales as Cordelia.


title: King Lear

text: The Shakespeare Recording Society recorded a full-length unabridged audio productions on LP in 1965 (SRS-M-232) directed by Howard Sackler, with Paul Scofield as Lear, Cyril Cusack as Gloucester. Robert Stephens as Edmund, Rachel Roberts, Pamela Brown and John Stride.


title: King Lear

text: "King Lear" was broadcast live on the BBC Third Programme on 29 September 1967, starring John Gielgud, Barbara Jefford, Barbara Bolton and Virginia McKenna as Lear and his daughters. At Abbey Road Studios, John Lennon used a microphone held to a radio to overdub fragments of the play (Act IV, Scene 6) onto the song "I Am the Walrus", which The Beatles were recording that evening. The voices recorded were those of Mark Dignam (Gloucester), Philip Guard (Edgar) and John Bryning (Oswald).


title: King Lear

text: On 10 April 1994, Kenneth Branagh's Renaissance Theatre Company performed a radio adaptation directed by Glyn Dearman starring Gielgud as Lear, with Keith Michell as Kent, Richard Briers as Gloucester, Dame Judi Dench as Goneril, Emma Thompson as Cordelia, Eileen Atkins as Regan, Kenneth Branagh as Edmund, John Shrapnel as Albany, Robert Stephens as Cornwall, Denis Quilley as Burgundy, Sir Derek Jacobi as France, Iain Glen as Edgar and Michael Williams as The Fool.


title: King Lear

text: Naxos AudioBooks released an audio production in 2002 with Paul Scofield as Lear, Alec McCowen as Gloucester, Kenneth Branagh as The Fool, and a full cast. It was nominated for an Audie Award for Audio Drama in 2003.


title: King Lear

text: In October 2017, Big Finish Productions released an audio adaptation full cast drama. Adapted by Nicholas Pegg. The full cast starred David Warner as the titular King Lear, Lisa Bowerman as Regan, Louise Jameson as Goneril, Trevor Cooper as Oswald / Lear's Gentleman / Third Messenger, Raymond Coulthard (Edmund / Cornwall's Servant / Second Messenger / Second Gentleman), Barnaby Edwards (The King of France / Old Man / Herald), Ray Fearon (The Duke of Cornwall), Mike Grady (The Fool), Gwilym Lee (Edgar / the Duke of Burgundy), Tony Millan (The Earl of Gloucester / First Messenger), Nicholas Pegg (The Duke of Albany / Gloucester's Servant / Curan) and Paul Shelley (The Earl of Kent)


title: King Lear

text: Japanese composer's Toshio Hosokawa's opera "Vision of Lear" premiered on 19 April 1998 at the Munich Biennale.


title: King Lear

text: Jane Smiley's 1991 novel "A Thousand Acres", winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, is based on "King Lear," but set in a farm in Iowa in 1979 and told from the perspective of the oldest daughter.


title: King Lear

text: The 2009 novel "Fool" by Christopher Moore is a comedic retelling of "King Lear" from the perspective of the court jester.


title: King Lear

text: Edward St Aubyn's 2017 novel "Dunbar" is a modern retelling of "King Lear", commissioned as part of the Hogarth Shakespeare series.


title: King Lear

text: On 27 March 2018, Tessa Gratton published a high fantasy adaptation of "King Lear" titled "The Queens of Innis Lear" with Tor Books.


title: King Lear

text: The 2021 novel "Learwife" by J. R. Thorpe imagines the story of Lear's wife and the mother of his children, who is not present in the play.


title: King Lear

text: All references to "King Lear", unless otherwise specified, are taken from the Folger Shakespeare Library's "Folger Digital Editions" texts edited by Barbara Mowat, Paul Werstine, Michael Poston, and Rebecca Niles. Under their referencing system, 1.1.246–248 means act 1, scene 1, lines 246 through 248.


title: JoJo's Bizarre Adventure (TV series)

text: , also known as JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: The Animation, is a Japanese anime television series produced by David Production. An adaptation of the Japanese manga series of the same name by Hirohiko Araki, the series focuses on the mysterious adventures of the Joestar family across generations, from the end of the 19th century to modern times. The series was first broadcast on Tokyo MX before entering syndication on 4 JNN stations, BS11, and Animax.


title: JoJo's Bizarre Adventure (TV series)

text: The first season, adapting the first two parts, "Phantom Blood" and "Battle Tendency", aired in Japan between October 2012 and April 2013. The series is distributed in North America by Warner Bros. Home Entertainment and Viz Media, with the former handling the series on DVD and the latter handling the series on Blu-Ray and the merchandising rights. In the United States, it aired on Adult Swim's Toonami programming block starting in October 2016.


title: JoJo's Bizarre Adventure (TV series)

text: A adapting the manga's third part, "Stardust Crusaders", aired between April and September 2014, with a second part airing between January and June 2015. A covering the fourth part, "Diamond Is Unbreakable", aired from April to December 2016. A covering the fifth part, "Golden Wind", aired from October 2018 to July 2019. A covering the sixth part, "Stone Ocean", was released worldwide on Netflix from December 2021 to December 2022. As of December 2022, the series consists of 190 episodes.


title: JoJo's Bizarre Adventure (TV series)

text: "JoJo's Bizarre Adventure" tells the story of the Joestar family, a family whose various members discover they are destined to take down supernatural foes using powers that they possess. The story is split up into unique parts, each following a member of the Joestar family, who typically have names that can be abbreviated to the titular "JoJo".


title: JoJo's Bizarre Adventure (TV series)

text: On July 5, 2012, at a press conference celebrating the 25th anniversary of "JoJo's Bizarre Adventure" and promoting series creator Hirohiko Araki's then-upcoming art exhibition, Araki and his people announced that an anime adaptation of "JoJo's Bizarre Adventure" was in production and would premiere in October 2012. In August 2012, it was announced that the series would be produced by David Production. The first season of "JoJo's Bizarre Adventure" covered the first two parts of the manga, "Phantom Blood" and "Battle Tendency". It aired for 26 episodes on Tokyo MX between October 6, 2012 and April 6, 2013.


title: JoJo's Bizarre Adventure (TV series)

text: Although teased at in the post-credit scenes of the finale, the of the anime series, which covered the third part of the manga, "Stardust Crusaders", was officially announced in the 47th issue of "Weekly Shōnen Jump" and the fifth "tankōbon" volume of "JoJolion" in October 2013. It was broadcast on Tokyo MX in two parts for a total of 48 episodes; the first from April 5 to September 13, 2014, and the second from January 10 to June 20, 2015. The Japanese broadcast censored scenes of underage characters smoking by overlaying black shadows on them.


title: JoJo's Bizarre Adventure (TV series)

text: In October 2015, at the "Last Crusaders" event for "Stardust Crusaders", of the fourth part of the manga, "Diamond Is Unbreakable", was announced. It premiered on April 1, 2016 and ended on December 23, 2016. An original video animation (OVA) adapting the "Thus Spoke Rohan Kishibe" manga spin-offs to people who had purchased all thirteen Japanese DVD or Blu-ray volumes of the "Diamond Is Unbreakable" anime series.


title: JoJo's Bizarre Adventure (TV series)

text: On June 21, 2018, at the "Ripples of Adventure" art exhibition, a of the fifth part of the manga, "Golden Wind", was announced . The pilot debuted at Anime Expo on July 6, 2018, and formally aired from October 5, 2018 to July 28, 2019 on Tokyo MX.


title: JoJo's Bizarre Adventure (TV series)

text: On April 4, 2021, at the "JOESTAR The Inherited Soul", which featured the cast of main characters from each part of the series, it was announced a of the sixth part of the manga, "Stone Ocean".


title: JoJo's Bizarre Adventure (TV series)

text: With the 2014 premiere of "Stardust Crusaders", American-based website Crunchyroll began streaming the anime series for viewers outside Japan an hour after it aired in Japan. Warner Bros. Home Entertainment released Parts 1 and 2 in a DVD set on September 22, 2015, with an English dub. In July 2016, Viz Media announced they acquired the Blu-ray rights to the series and released it with an English dub in July 2017. On October 15, 2016, American cable block Adult Swim began airing the anime on its Toonami block.


title: JoJo's Bizarre Adventure (TV series)

text: At the 2013 CEDEC Awards, the anime's opening sequence won in the Visual Arts division. The first DVD release of the TV anime was the fourth best-selling animation DVD in Japan for the week of January 28 to February 3, 2013, with 4,510 copies sold. Its Blu-ray version was the fourth best-selling animation Blu-ray for that same week, with 14,860 copies sold. The second volume ranked sixth in both animation DVDs and Blu-rays for the week of February 18–24, with 2,764 and 12,501 copies sold respectively. The anime's third volume was the sixth best-selling animation DVD, with 2,994 copies sold, and the second best-selling animation Blu-ray, with 13,536 copies sold, for the week of March 25–31.


title: Stargate SG-1

text: Stargate SG-1 (often stylized in all caps, or abbreviated SG-1) is a military science fiction adventure television series within Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer's "Stargate" franchise. The show, created by Brad Wright and Jonathan Glassner, is based on the 1994 science fiction film "Stargate" by Dean Devlin and Roland Emmerich. The television series was filmed in and around the city of Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. The series premiered on Showtime on July 27, 1997 and moved to the Sci Fi Channel on June 7, 2002; the final episode first aired on Sky1 on March 13, 2007.


title: Stargate SG-1

text: The story of "Stargate SG-1" begins about a year after the events of the feature film when the United States government learns that an ancient alien device called the Stargate can access a network of such devices on a multitude of planets and in space. SG-1 is an elite United States Air Force special operations team, one of about 20 teams from Earth who explore the galaxy and defend against alien threats such as the Goa'uld, the Replicators and the Ori. The series draws upon Egyptian, Greek and Norse mythology, as well as the legend of King Arthur.


title: Stargate SG-1

text: The series was a ratings success for its first-run broadcasters and in syndication, and was particularly popular in Europe and Australia. "Stargate SG-1" was honored with numerous awards and award nominations in its ten-season run. It also spawned the animated television series "Stargate Infinity", the live-action spin-off TV series "Stargate Atlantis", "Stargate Universe", and "Stargate Origins" and the direct-to-DVD films "" and "". Merchandise for "Stargate SG-1" includes games and toys, print media and an original audio series.


title: Stargate SG-1

text: The plot of "Stargate SG-1" picks up a year after the conclusion of the events recounted in the original feature film. It follows the present-day adventures of SG-1, a military team from Earth. SG-1 and a dozen other SG teams venture to distant planets using an alien portal known as a Stargate, which in the series is housed in a top-secret United States Air Force military base known as Stargate Command (SGC) in the underground Cheyenne Mountain Complex in Colorado Springs, Colorado. In the first eight seasons, the mission of the SG teams is to explore the galaxy and search for alien technology and allies to defend Earth against the Goa'uld, a snake-like parasitic alien race from planet P3X-888 that takes humans as unwilling hosts. As explained in the series' backstory, the Goa'uld had transported human slaves from Earth to other habitable planets across the galaxy thousands of years ago and now pose as gods of old Earth mythologies, particularly Ancient Egypt. SG-1 eventually learns that highly evolved human-like beings, known as the Ancients, had originally built the Stargate network millions of years earlier, before ascending to a higher plane of existence, after which they pledged not to interfere in the lives of other species. The Ori, a faction of the same race as the Ancients who instead use their powers to subjugate other species by religious indoctrination, assume the role of the main antagonists in Season 9 and Season 10.


title: Stargate SG-1

text: The pilot episode ("Children of the Gods"), set one year after the events of the original feature film, introduces the Goa'uld System Lord Apophis (Peter Williams) as the main villain when he attacks Earth's mothballed SGC military base through the Stargate and kidnaps an airman. The SGC is brought back into action when the Stargate is revealed to be part of an interplanetary network connecting countless planets. SG teams are created to help defend Earth against the Goa'uld, who have interstellar pyramid warships and vast armies of Jaffa (hereditary slaves and human incubators to the Goa'uld) at their disposal. Earth's flagship team SG-1, which includes Apophis's defected First Prime (lead Jaffa soldier) Teal'c, initiates several alliances with other cultures in the galaxy, such as the Goa'uld-like but truly symbiotic Tok'ra, the advanced human Tollan, the pacifist Nox, the benevolent Roswell-alien Asgard and remnants of the powerful Ancients. Another alien threat arises in the Season 3 finale ("Nemesis") in the form of sentient machines called Replicators. Meanwhile, rogue agents of a shadowy intelligence agency on Earth, the NID, repeatedly attempt to take control of the Stargate and other alien technology. Despite Apophis's death in the beginning of Season 5, the Goa'uld Empire remains a major foe in "Stargate SG-1" until the end of Season 8. The only influential Goa'uld in the last two seasons of "Stargate SG-1" is the System Lord Ba'al (Cliff Simon), who is defeated in the direct-to-DVD film "".


title: Stargate SG-1

text: After Apophis's defeat in the Season 5 premiere ("Enemies"), the half-Ascended Goa'uld System Lord Anubis (David Palffy) assumes the role of the primary antagonist of the show. This new villain possesses much of the knowledge of the Ancients and their technology. While Earth builds its first interstellar spaceship (the "Prometheus") in seasons Season 6 and Season 7, Anubis creates an army of almost invincible Kull Warriors and wipes out or subordinates most of his adversaries amongst the System Lords. In the Season 7 finale ("Lost City"), SG-1 discovers a powerful weapon in an Ancient outpost in Antarctica that annihilates Anubis's entire fleet and also sets the stage for the spin-off series "Stargate Atlantis". Ba'al subsumes much of Anubis's power in Season 8, while Anubis, who survived the destruction of his fleet in a disembodied form, quietly begins to re-assert his influence. Human-form Replicators begin to conquer the System Lords, but SG-1 finds and adjusts an Ancient weapon to destroy all Replicators throughout the galaxy. Near the end of Season 8 ("Threads"), it is revealed that the benevolent Ascended being Oma Desala (Mel Harris) is responsible for Anubis's original ascension. When she engages Anubis in an eternal stalemated battle on the Ascended plane to prevent his acting on the mortal plane, the Replicators and most System Lords have already been annihilated and the Jaffa win their freedom from Goa'uld rule.


title: Stargate SG-1

text: The original SG-1 team disbands after the events of Season 8, but slowly reunites under new team leader Lt Col. Cameron Mitchell after the SGC inadvertently draws the attention of the Ori to the existence of sentient life in the Milky Way; the Ori are revealed to be a faction of ascended Ancients residing in another galaxy that are diametrically opposed to the Ancients' belief in strict noninterference in the lower planes of existence, sapping the energy from untold billions of "lower beings" (non-ascended sentient beings) by means of their worship in a religion called Origin. While the Ori send enhanced human beings named Priors to the Milky Way to convert the galaxy to Origin, Ba'al and some minor Goa'uld infiltrate Earth through "The Trust" (a coalition of rogue NID operatives) to rebuild their power. At the end of Season 9 ("Camelot (Part 1)"), the Ori begin an evangelistic crusade with their warships and effortlessly wipe out the combined fleet of Earth and its allies. The leader of the Ori, Adria (Morena Baccarin), is introduced in the premiere of Season 10 ("Flesh and Blood (Part 2)"). SG-1 searches for the Sangraal, an Ancient weapon that might defeat the Ori, while Ba'al and his clones attempt to find the weapon for their own purposes. With the help of the powerful Ancient Merlin (Matthew Walker), SG-1 finds the construction plans of the Sangraal and sends a working version to the Ori galaxy. Shortly thereafter, Adria ascends. The direct-to-DVD film "" ends the Ori Arc.


title: Stargate SG-1

text: Brad Wright and Jonathan Glassner had worked together on the MGM television series "The Outer Limits" since 1995. Upon hearing of MGM's plan to create a television spin-off series of the feature film "Stargate", Wright and Glassner independently and unbeknownst to each other approached MGM and proposed their concept for the television series. MGM president John Symes greenlit the project on the condition that Wright and Glassner work together as executive producers of the new show. The show was named "Stargate SG-1" after Wright flightily agreed to Symes's pitch question of whether the team should be called "SG-1". MGM released posters titled "Stargate SG-1" within the next week without the knowledge of Wright or Glassner.


title: Stargate SG-1

text: John Symes approached Michael Greenburg and Richard Dean Anderson, former star of the long-running "MacGyver". Anderson agreed to become involved if his character Jack O'Neill were allowed more comedic leeway than Kurt Russell's character in the feature film. He also requested that "Stargate SG-1" be an ensemble show, so that he would not be carrying most of the plot alone as he had on "MacGyver". The American subscription channel Showtime made a two-season commitment for 44 episodes in 1996. Principal photography began in Vancouver in February 1997.


title: Stargate SG-1

text: After Anderson accepted the part, Brad Wright and Jonathan Glassner reviewed several thousand taped auditions and invited approximately 25 promising actors to screen tests in Los Angeles. Michael Shanks, Amanda Tapping and Christopher Judge are said to have gravitated towards each other during the casting process before they knew that they would ultimately be cast. The producers found Judge the easiest to cast due to his muscular presence. Shanks was cast because he did "the perfect imitation of James Spader", according to Wright. The producers knew Don S. Davis from his work as a stand-in and stunt-double for Dana Elcar in "MacGyver" and approached him to read for the role of George Hammond.


title: Stargate SG-1

text: Showtime's announcement that it would not renew "Stargate SG-1" after Season 5 coincided with Michael Shanks's decision to leave the show over concerns of being underutilized. The Sci Fi Channel picked up the show and substituted a new character, played by Corin Nemec. Casting agents had met Nemec in the courtyard of MGM's Santa Monica offices by chance and had offered him the role of Jonas Quinn. Addressing rumors that it had forced Shanks's departure, Sci Fi said in February 2002 that the network had "absolutely never requested that any cast changes be made... and although we regret the loss of Michael Shanks, we think that Corin Nemec will be a great new presence in the cast." Nemec's early appearances, beginning with the penultimate episode of Season 5 "Meridian", failed to win over some of the show's fans. Nemec was willing to continue playing the character after Season 6 or in a feature film or a spin-off series. However, the producers reached an agreement with Shanks to return full-time in Season 7, leaving Nemec with a recurring role. Don S. Davis left "Stargate SG-1" after Season 7 for health reasons, but appeared in a recurring capacity until his death on June 29, 2008.


title: Stargate SG-1

text: Due to prior engagements, Claudia Black of "Farscape" fame could not accept the offers to guest-star on "Stargate SG-1" until the Season 8 episode "Prometheus Unbound". The producers liked the on-screen chemistry between Black's Vala Mal Doran and Shanks's Daniel so much that they re-introduced her in a six-episode story Arc to cover for the maternity leave of Amanda Tapping at the beginning of Season 9. At the same time, Richard Dean Anderson left the show to spend more time with his daughter (his schedule had been reduced incrementally since Season 6). The role of the leading man was filled with Ben Browder (also of "Farscape" fame), who had met with the "Stargate" producers as soon as the introduction of new main characters for Season 9 was discussed. The producers had met him during sci-fi conventions and had previously discussed casting him in other "Stargate" roles. The producers approached Emmy Award-winning actor Beau Bridges directly to play the role of Hank Landry. Claudia Black's guest appearances were so popular with the cast, crew and audience that the actress returned for the last two Season 9 episodes (with her pregnancy worked into the plot) and she joined the cast full-time in Season 10.


title: Stargate SG-1

text: Most of the producers, crew members and guest actors involved in "Stargate SG-1" were Canadian. Creators Brad Wright and Jonathan Glassner were executive producers and show runners of "Stargate SG-1" in the first three seasons, having the final say (besides MGM and the network) on stories, designs, effects, casting, editing and episode budgets. After Glassner's departure, Wright ran "Stargate SG-1" alone for three seasons. Executive producer Robert C. Cooper took over as show-runner in Season 7 when Brad Wright took time off to develop the spin-off series "Stargate Atlantis". Cooper and Wright remained show-runners of their respective shows until the end of "SG-1". Also serving as executive and co-executive producers were Michael Greenburg and Richard Dean Anderson (Seasons 1–8), N. John Smith (Seasons 4–10) and the writer team Joseph Mallozzi & Paul Mullie (Seasons 7–10).


title: Stargate SG-1

text: Although "Stargate SG-1" employed freelance writers, most of the 214 "Stargate SG-1" episodes were written by Brad Wright (Seasons 1–10), Jonathan Glassner (Seasons 1–3), Katharyn Powers (Seasons 1–6), Robert C. Cooper (Seasons 1–10), Peter DeLuise (Seasons 4–8), Joseph Mallozzi & Paul Mullie (Seasons 4–10), Damian Kindler (Seasons 6–10) and Alan McCullough (Seasons 9–10). Martin Wood and Peter DeLuise directed the most episodes, with 46 episodes (Seasons 1–10) and 57 episodes (Seasons 2–10), respectively. Wood and DeLuise regularly made cameo appearances in their episodes and notably played the show-within-a-show directors in the cameo-heavy milestone episodes "Wormhole X-Treme!" and "200". Andy Mikita had been an assistant director since the pilot episode and directed 29 episodes from Season 3–10. "SG-1" director of photography Peter Woeste and camera operator William Waring directed 13 episodes each. Most staff writers and staff directors held producer positions. Several cast members also contributed story ideas and directed "SG-1" episodes.


title: Stargate SG-1

text: "Stargate SG-1" was filmed in and around Vancouver, British Columbia, mainly at The Bridge Studios and NORCO Studios, which offered "Stargate SG-1" tax breaks throughout its run. The cost of an "SG-1" episode increased from US$1.3 million in the first seasons to an estimated US$2 million per episode in Season 10, partly due to unfavorable exchange rates. Many Vancouver area landmarks were incorporated into the episodes, such as the campus of Simon Fraser University, which became the setting of the capital of the Tollan, an alien civilization. Production faced many weather problems because of the moderate oceanic climate of Vancouver, although rain could be eliminated from film. The Season 3 episode "Crystal Skull" was the first episode to be filmed on a virtual set.


title: Stargate SG-1

text: The main setting of "Stargate SG-1", the fictional Stargate Command (SGC) at the (real) Cheyenne Mountain Air Force Station near Colorado Springs, Colorado, was filmed at stage 5 of The Bridge Studios. Martin Wood filmed half a dozen stock shots of the real Cheyenne Mountain complex for use in the series approximately ten days before the premiere of the pilot episode. Although these shots wore out over the years, the producers did not film new shots until the beginning of Season 9, thinking that "Stargate SG-1" would be cancelled after each current year. By then, visitor questions and fan theories about the existence of a Stargate at the real Cheyenne Mountain complex had become so common that Cheyenne Mountain had installed a seemingly high-security door labeled "Stargate Command" for one of their storage rooms holding brooms and detergent.


title: Stargate SG-1

text: The first seven seasons had 22 episodes each, which was reduced to 20 episodes for the last three seasons. Episodes of the first seasons were filmed over a period of 7.5 working days, which decreased to a targeted average of six working days in the last seasons. All episodes were filmed in wide-screen, although "Stargate SG-1" was broadcast in aspect ratio in its first years. The transition to the broadcast of episodes in the wider 16:9 ratio gave directors more freedom in frame composition. The first three seasons of "Stargate SG-1" were filmed on 16 mm film, notwithstanding scenes involving visual effects that had always been shot on 35 mm film for various technical reasons. After a test run with the Season 3 finale, "Nemesis", "Stargate SG-1" switched to 35 mm film for all purposes at the beginning of Season 4. Digital HD cameras were used for filming beginning with Season 8.


title: Stargate SG-1

text: The art department generated all of the concepts and drawing for the prop department, the set decoration department, the construction department, the paint department and the model shop. They also collaborated with the visual effects department. "Stargate SG-1" employed about 200 Canadian union workers, although that number could exceed 300 when new sets were built. Lead production designer Richard Hudolin joined the project in October 1996. Bridget McGuire, "SG-1"s art director since the pilot episode, took over as lead production designer in Season 6.


title: Stargate SG-1

text: Hudolin flew to Los Angeles in 1996 to gather material from the feature film as reference and found the original Stargate prop stored outside in the Californian desert. Although the prop had severely deteriorated, he was able to take a detailed mold for "Stargate SG-1" production to build its own prop. The new Stargate was engineered to turn, to lock the chevrons and to be computer-controlled to dial specific gate addresses. A portable Stargate prop was built for on-location shoots and required six workers and one full day to set up. Since visual effects are sometimes faster and cheaper, a computer-generated Stargate was occasionally used in on-location shoots in later seasons.


title: Stargate SG-1

text: The SGC set had to be twice as high for shooting as the Stargate prop, but one of Hudolin's original plans of a three-level set was rejected in favor of a two-level set. The gateroom was the biggest room on set and could be redesigned for other scenes. Two multi-purpose rooms were frequently redecorated into the infirmary, Daniel's lab, the cafeteria or the gym. The SGC set and all other sets from the pilot episode were constructed within six weeks in January and February 1997, incorporating some original set pieces from the feature film. The SGC set would be largely dismantled in late 2008 to make room for the Icarus Base set of "Stargate Universe".


title: Stargate SG-1

text: Most of the main "SG-1" characters are US airmen and wear authentic United States Air Force uniforms. During missions, the members of the SG-1 team normally wear olive green Battle Dress Uniforms. Richard Dean Anderson and Don S. Davis received a regular military-style haircut on set. Amanda Tapping had her hair comparably short until the filming of the direct-to-DVD films. Playing a civilian, Michael Shanks adopted James Spader's hairstyle from the feature film but cut it short for the Season 2 finale and subsequent seasons. The Jaffa alien Teal'c (Christopher Judge) was the only main character whose look required more than basic make-up. His Egyptian look was reflective of the Goa'uld Ra from the feature film and was complemented with a forehead symbol and a gold skin tone, although his make-up process was simplified over the years. Judge shaved his head at home each day until the producers allowed him to let his hair grow in Season 8. As a trained nurse, key make-up artist Jan Newman could make burns, cuts, bruises and the SG-1 team's other wounds look authentic.


title: Stargate SG-1

text: For the look of aliens, the make-up department collaborated with prosthetics companies from Vancouver and Los Angeles, including Todd Masters. While the human origins of many alien races and human civilizations were left recognizable, the recurring characters who were members of the Unas race required elaborate prosthetics and make-up work. To convey the cultural origins of the various fictional human civilizations living on different planets after their displacement from Earth, the costume designers combined elements of their respective Earth cultures with modern fabrics, elaborate trims and chains to produce a historically rooted yet otherworldly appearance. The look of the Goa'uld such as Apophis was initially based on the look of Ra in the feature film. For the design of the Ori and the Priors in Season 9, the art department looked at Japanese and Samurai garments for costume design. Art director James Robbins found the face painting, scarification and burns of remote jungle tribes mystical and these served as inspiration for the face scarification of the Priors and the Doci. Early ideas to include finger extensions and scarification on these characters' hands were discarded as impracticable.


title: Stargate SG-1

text: "Stargate SG-1" was one of the biggest employers in the Vancouver visual effects market, spending $400,000 per episode. The largest role was played by Rainmaker Digital Effects, whose senior digital compositing artist, Bruce Woloshyn, worked approximately 10 months a year in close collaboration with "SG-1" visual effects supervisor/producer James Tichenor and visual effects supervisor Michelle Comens. Many companies were hired to create the Stargate's water-like event horizon in the beginning, but Rainmaker eventually became the only company to create those visual effects. Rainmaker's regular effects shots included the activation and use of the Stargate itself (with well over 300 event horizon shots in the first few years), the transport rings and the blast shots of the staff weapons and zat guns. They created the visual effects for Goa'uld cargo ships and death gliders on a less regular basis.


title: Stargate SG-1

text: Lost Boys Studios provided visual effects for "SG-1" from the very beginning of the series up to the end of Season 5, and Image Engine worked on the show from Season 2. "Stargate SG-1" and "Stargate Atlantis" were responsible for an estimated 30% to 40% of the business of Atmosphere Visual Effects. James Tichenor considered the few episodes with big visual effects budgets the most likely works to contain visual cues that would impress award judges. "Stargate SG-1" helped win the local post production shops industry recognition, with Season 4's "Small Victories", Season 5's "Revelations" and Season 7's "Lost City" receiving the most visual effects awards and nominations "(see List of awards and nominations received by Stargate SG-1)".


title: Stargate SG-1

text: According to composer Joel Goldsmith, "Stargate SG-1" had a traditional action-adventure score, "with a sci-fi, fantasy flair" that goes "from comedy to drama to wondrous to suspense to heavy action to ethereal". Brad Wright and Jonathan Glassner had known Goldsmith since the second season of "The Outer Limits" before they approached him to work on the pilot episode of "Stargate SG-1". Goldsmith and David Arnold, the composer of the original feature film score, discussed themes for a television adaptation. The main titles of "Stargate SG-1" were a medley of several themes from the feature film, although Goldsmith also wrote a unique end title for "SG-1" to establish the show as its own entity. MGM eventually insisted on using Arnold's score in the pilot episode instead of Goldsmith's, but Brad Wright's 2009 direct-to-DVD recut of "Children of the Gods" uses Goldsmith's original score.


title: Stargate SG-1

text: For each episode's score, Goldsmith simulated a real orchestra with a synthesizer palette of an eighty-piece symphony orchestra for budgetary reasons, although he occasionally used two or three musicians for added orchestral authenticity. Goldsmith's long-time assistant Neal Acree started composing additional music for "Stargate SG-1" in Season 8. The amount of composed music varied between 12 and 33 minutes out of a 44-minute episode, with an average of around 22 to 26 minutes, making the full symphonic score of "SG-1" more time-consuming to create than for general TV shows. Since Goldsmith lived a thousand miles away from Vancouver, he and the producers discussed ideas over the phone and exchanged tapes via Federal Express for several years until the show switched to Internet file transfers.


title: Stargate SG-1

text: Goldsmith's reliance on Arnold's score decreased over the seasons when "Stargate SG-1" departed from the Goa'uld theme and introduced new characters and races. Goldsmith had a thematic approach to races and spaceships. For example, he wanted a mechanical, repetitive musical motif for the Replicators; Gothic, Gregorian and Christian themes were the inspiration for the Ori motif. The Ancient theme was deliberately carried over to "Stargate Atlantis". The end of "Lost City" has a basic melody that would become part of the main title of "Atlantis" per a suggestion by Goldsmith's assistant. Non-original music was rarely used on "SG-1", although Goldsmith chose the aria "Vesti la giubba" from Leoncavallo's "Pagliacci" for season 3's "Shades of Grey". Additionally, Lily Frost's song "Who am I" played in Season 7's "Fragile Balance" and CCR's song "Have You Ever Seen the Rain?" played in the series finale "Unending". A television soundtrack with Goldsmith's adapted score was released in 1997, followed by a best-of release in 2001. In Season 1 Episode 7, "The Nox", the music that played when The Nox appeared was Spinning The Silk from the album Chrysalis by 2002.


title: Stargate SG-1

text: "Stargate SG-1" has had several opening title sequences, which are generally preceded by a teaser act. The credits are normally sixty seconds long. Richard Dean Anderson was the only "SG-1" actor whose name appeared before the show's title. Michael Shanks' name was moved near the end of the opening credits with the appendage "as Daniel Jackson" after his return to the show in Season 7. Some DVD versions of early "SG-1" seasons have different opening credits from the television versions, as do the direct-to-DVD films. Composer Joel Goldsmith adapted David Arnold's "Stargate" feature film score for "SG-1"s opening title theme, which remained the same during the run of "Stargate SG-1" and its direct-to-DVD films.


title: Stargate SG-1

text: The first opening title sequence, used in the first five seasons, shows a slow-pan camera move over Ra's mask. The "Stargate SG-1" producers had run out of time before the premiere of Season 1 and simply re-used the accelerated opening title sequence of the feature film. Ra's mask had been created in the feature film's model shop and had originally been filmed with a motion-control camera. Partly because Ra's mask looked cross-eyed, Brad Wright approached the art department in the following years to produce a new opening title sequence; however, the sequence remained the same until the show's move to the Sci-Fi Channel. During the first five seasons when the show was syndicated, a separate introduction was used; this intro is still used by Sci-Fi for Seasons 1–5. This version uses action shots of the original cast.


title: Stargate SG-1

text: The opening title sequence of the first two Season 6 episodes shows a turning Stargate, for which a Frazier lens was put as close as  inch (3 mm) to the Stargate prop. The opening credits of the following episodes intercut this material with live-action shots of the characters from previous seasons and ended with the SG-1 team stepping through the Stargate. The opening credits stayed the same in the next two seasons except for minor clip and cast changes. The opening credits of Season 9 intercut shots of the Stargate with action sequences similar to the previous opening credits, although the Stargate was visibly computer-generated. The Sci Fi Channel cut the opening credits from sixty to ten seconds in their original broadcast of the first half of Season 9, but reinstated the full opening credits after strongly negative fan reactions. The writers poked fun at this move in "SG-1"s milestone episode "200" in Season 10, showing a five-second clip instead of the full titles. Beginning with Season 10's "Company of Thieves", the last clip of the opening credits shows Vala Mal Doran almost missing SG-1's trip through the Stargate.


title: Stargate SG-1

text: The U.S. Department of the Air Force, through the Air Force Office of Public Affairs, Entertainment Liaison in Los Angeles, co-operated closely with the "Stargate SG-1" producers. Before the beginning of the series, the Air Force granted production access to the Cheyenne Mountain complex to film stock shots. They also read every script for mistakes and provided help with plausible background stories for all characters, ribbons, uniform regulations, hair advice, plot lines and military relationships & decorum on an active military base. The USAF flew up several T-38 Talon, F-15 and F-16 fighter jets to Vancouver for various episodes and direct-to-DVD films. Many of the extras portraying USAF personnel were real USAF staff.


title: Stargate SG-1

text: Two successive Chiefs of Staff of the Air Force, Generals Michael E. Ryan and John P. Jumper, appeared as themselves in Season 4's "Prodigy" and Season 7's "Lost City", respectively. General Jumper's second scheduled appearance in Season 9's "The Fourth Horseman" was cancelled due to ongoing real-world conflicts in the Middle East. The Air Force Association recognized Richard Dean Anderson at its 57th annual dinner on September 14, 2004 for his work as actor and executive producer of the show and for the show's positive depiction of the United States Air Force.


title: Stargate SG-1

text: Several scenes of Season 4's "Small Victories" were filmed aboard and outside a decommissioned Russian "Foxtrot"-class submarine, which had been brought from Vladivostok to Vancouver by a private owner. The United States Navy invited the cast and producers to film aboard the nuclear submarine and at their Applied Physics Laboratory Ice Station in the Arctic for the direct-to-DVD sequel "".


title: Stargate SG-1

text: "Stargate SG-1" takes place in a military science fiction environment and employs the common science fiction concepts of strongly differentiated characters fighting an unequivocally evil enemy (the Goa'uld). However, it links alien races with well-known Earth mythologies, by use of the central Stargate device. Near-instantaneous interplanetary travel allows quick narrative shifts between the politics on Earth and the realities of fighting an interstellar war. "Stargate SG-1" gradually evolves the basic premise of the "Stargate" film into its own unique mythological superstructure, expanding upon Egyptian mythology (notably the gods Apep/Apophis and Anubis as Goa'uld villains), Norse mythology (notably the god Thor as an Asgard ally) and Arthurian legend (notably Merlin as an Ancient ally against the god-like Ori), among others. "SG-1" introduces new alien races (as opposed to alien human civilizations) less often than other science fiction television series and integrates newly encountered races or visited planets in stand-alone episodes into its established mythology while leaving the plotlines accessible for new audience members. Despite the show's extensive intergalactic mythology and science fiction elements, scholar M. Keith Booker considered "SG-1" ultimately character-driven and heavily dependent on the camaraderie among the SG-1 members.


title: Stargate SG-1

text: The producers embraced humor and wanted "SG-1" to be a fun show that did not take itself too seriously. Brad Wright regarded "SG-1" as a family show with adequate violence as opposed to random or gratuitous violence. Christopher Judge did not consider "SG-1" as a "message show by any stretch of the imagination, but occasionally there are messages there". Aimed at a popular audience, "Stargate SG-1" emphasized its present-day-Earth story frame by frequently referring to popular culture, like "The X-Files" and "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" had done before. Jonathan Glassner had written "The Wizard of Oz" references into his own scripts since the first season, which the other writers imitated after Richard Dean Anderson began referring to the film on his own. O'Neill refers to Richard Dean Anderson's favorite television series, "The Simpsons", throughout the show. "SG-1" makes meta-textual references to the process of writing and filming a science fiction TV series in several episodes and alludes to the main actors' previous TV roles in the pilot episode (Carter: "It took us fifteen years and three supercomputers to MacGyver a system for the gate on Earth") and in a "Farscape" vignette in the milestone episode "200".


title: Stargate SG-1

text: The American subscription channel Showtime ordered the first two seasons of "Stargate SG-1" with 44 episodes total in 1996. The two-hour pilot episode received Showtime's highest-ever ratings for a series premiere with an audience of approximately 1.5 million households in the 8 p.m. Sunday slot of July 27, 1997. According to the "SG-1" producers, a broadcast network would have cancelled "SG-1" after a few episodes, but Showtime put no pressure on the show to "deliver the meteoric ratings the way network shows do". The show was consistently the channel's most-watched program (including theatrical movies), so Showtime ordered a third and fourth season of 22 episodes each in July 1998.


title: Stargate SG-1

text: Since "Stargate SG-1" was expensive to produce, MGM arranged an agreement with Showtime that "SG-1" could air in syndication six months after their premiere on Showtime. All 22 FOX owned-and-operated local stations aired the first seasons after their Showtime debut, providing a clearance of 41% of the United States. The show was also available on non-FOX affiliated stations in other markets.


title: Stargate SG-1

text: The Sci Fi Channel made its largest single programming acquisition of $150 million in 1998 by buying the exclusive basic cable rights to the MGM package "Stargate SG-1", "The Outer Limits" and "". Showtime decided to end its association with "Stargate SG-1" at the end of Season 5, saying that the show still had a sizeable viewership but could no longer draw new subscribers due to its availability in syndication.


title: Stargate SG-1

text: Since "SG-1" ratings were good from a financial standpoint, the Sci Fi Channel picked up MGM's offer to continue the show into a sixth season, yet with a slightly reduced budget. Sci Fi aired new episodes of "Stargate SG-1" in the 9 p.m. Friday slot between "The Dead Zone" and "Farscape", while it aired older "SG-1" episodes in a four-hour block every Monday at 7 p.m. Episodes were broadcast in US syndication six months after their premiere on Sci Fi. The sixth season was supposed to be the show's last, but Sci Fi renewed "SG-1" at the last minute. The sixth and seventh seasons made "Stargate SG-1" Sci Fi's highest-rated original series with an average of 2 million viewers in over 1.3 million households, elevating Sci Fi into the top 10 cable networks in the United States. For the next few years, the producers believed each current season to be the show's last and repeatedly wrote big series finales, but the success of "Stargate SG-1" put off their plans of ending the show to write a new "Stargate" feature film. Sci Fi cut the length of an "SG-1" season from 22 to 20 episodes from Season 8 onwards.


title: Stargate SG-1

text: Originally envisioned as a replacement for "SG-1", the spin-off series "Stargate Atlantis" began airing in tandem with "SG-1" eighth season in summer 2004, setting a series record of 3.2 million viewers for "SG-1" and a Sci Fi record as most-watched episode of a regular series ever (at the time) for "Atlantis" with 4.2 million viewers. "Battlestar Galactica" joined the two "Stargate" series in January 2005, making Sci Fi the leader among basic cablers on Friday nights over the summer of 2005. The producers considered replacing "Stargate SG-1" with a new show named "Stargate Command" after "SG-1"s eighth season, but the Sci Fi Channel decided to continue "SG-1" with a slightly changed cast for a ninth season instead. Season 9's average slipped from 2.4 million viewers in late 2005 to 2.1 million viewers with 1.8 household rating during early 2006, which Sci Fi's Mark Stern attributed to the "tech-savvy, toy-loving, time-shifting audience" whose use of digital video recorders excluded them in ratings compilations. Meanwhile, the decline of "SG-1" 2005–2006 syndication household ratings was consistent with the overall decline in syndicated sci-fi action hours. Sci Fi ordered a record-breaking tenth season of "SG-1" in 2005, but announced it would not renew the show for an eleventh season in summer 2006 "(see Cancellation and future)". The final "SG-1" episode, "Unending", premiered on Sky1 in the UK on March 13, 2007 and attracted approximately 2.2 million viewers on the Sci Fi Channel on June 22, 2007.


title: Stargate SG-1

text: According to Wright and Cooper, the worldwide popularity of science fiction was a factor in "SG-1" success and the good international reception helped keep the series on the air in the beginning. Several newspapers reported in 2005–2006 that "Stargate SG-1" aired in over 100 countries with a weekly worldwide viewership of around 10 million, but "The New York Times" gave different numbers in 2004, saying that the show was broadcast in sixty-four countries with more than 17 million viewers a week. "Stargate SG-1" had a particularly fervent response in the United Kingdom, Germany, France and Australia.


title: Stargate SG-1

text: "Stargate SG-1" aired in the United Kingdom on Sky One with repeats on Sky Two, Sky Three and Channel 4. Sky One broadcast new episodes of the second half of most seasons before their American premiere. Brad Wright found it "almost embarrassing" that "Stargate SG-1" was much more popular in the United Kingdom than in Canada, where the show aired on Space, Citytv, A-Channel, Movie Central and French-language channels TQS and Ztélé. "Stargate SG-1" aired in Australia on Sci Fi Australia and Channel Seven. It aired in India on STAR World India and in Israel on Channel 1.


title: Stargate SG-1

text: On August 21, 2006, a few days after the premiere of "SG-1" milestone episode "200", the Sci Fi Channel confirmed that "Stargate SG-1" was not being renewed for an 11th season. While news outlets cited declining ratings, expensive production and lack of promotion as possible reasons for the cancellation, the Sci Fi Channel's Mark Stern merely stated the decision was not ratings-based. Instead, he said the production staff was given enough time to tie up all the loose ends of the story and "SG-1" cast members were planned to be incorporated into the renewed "Stargate Atlantis". Meanwhile, the "SG-1" producers and rights-holder MGM expressed a desire to continue "SG-1" as a movie, mini-series, or an eleventh season on another network. Brad Wright confirmed the production of two direct-to-DVD films in October 2006, and Amanda Tapping joined the "Atlantis" cast for their fourth season. The first film, "", was released in March 2008 and wraps up the Ori storyline. The second film, "", is an alternate time-line time travel story and was released in July 2008. A special edition of the two-hour pilot episode "Children of the Gods" with re-edited scenes and a different score has also been produced.


title: Stargate SG-1

text: In April 2009, MGM confirmed a third new "SG-1" film that Brad Wright had first announced in May 2008. Joseph Mallozzi revealed the working title as "Stargate: Revolution". The film was planned to be written by Wright and former "Stargate Atlantis" executive producer Carl Binder. Martin Wood would serve as director. The premise of the film would have been the "possibility of the Stargate program going public". According to Wright, the film would center on the Jack O'Neill character and would reunite as many of the "SG-1" cast as possible, depending on the cost of the film and actor availability. The character of Vala Mal Doran would not appear in the film. Amanda Tapping confirmed her appearance in this "SG-1" film and the first "Atlantis" movie in September 2008, and Michael Shanks (Daniel Jackson) confirmed his and Richard Dean Anderson's participation in January 2009. No contracts had been signed by April 2009, but Wright stated that he "can almost guarantee we are proceeding with the "SG-1" movie this year [2009]". Nevertheless, production was put on hold. Wright explained that the late-2000s recession made DVD premieres less lucrative for MGM than in the years before, and he also pointed to the financial crisis of MGM as reason for the delay. Wright and Joe Mallozzi expressed optimism that production would eventually start, until Wright announced in April 2011 that the "SG-1" film project was permanently shelved, along with plans for future "Atlantis" and "Stargate Universe" films and a cross-over film incorporating elements from all three series. By then, neither the "Atlantis" nor "Universe" television series were produced anymore. Still, Wright did not rule out future "Stargate" films, saying; "It's a franchise. "Stargate" is not over. Somebody smart from MGM is going to figure it out and something will happen."


title: Stargate SG-1

text: "Stargate SG-1" was first released on DVD in some European nations in volumes of typically four episodes each, beginning with "The Best of Season 1" as Volume 1 in the United Kingdom in 2000. Each following season was released as six individual volumes (except Season 10 with five volumes), beginning with the first four episodes of Season 2. In 2000, the series was first released in the United States on DVD with only three episodes. The following year, Seasons 1–8 were released in five-disc amaray box sets in the United States. MGM Home Entertainment (Europe) began releasing complete season box sets (including Season 1) alongside the individual volumes in 2002. The British season box sets were usually released half a year after a season's last volume release in the UK. "Stargate SG-1" was also released in DVD season box sets in Australia.


title: Stargate SG-1

text: Most DVDs contain behind-the-scenes features, audio commentaries for nearly all episodes beginning with Season 4 and production galleries. The box sets of the first eight seasons were re-released with slim packaging in all regions, beginning in the United States in summer 2006. A complete series set was first released in the United States in October 2007, containing 50 discs from the ten seasons of "Stargate SG-1" and four bonus discs with content not part of the original sets. More than 30 million copies of DVDs had been sold by 2006.


title: Stargate SG-1

text: On June 15, 2020, Visual Entertainment re-released the complete series, without the films, on DVD. On December 18, 2020, the company released the entire series, again without the films, on Region A Blu-ray.


title: Stargate SG-1

text: New episodes of "Stargate SG-1" were first released on iTunes in the US in August 2006, each time one day after their premiere on the Sci Fi Channel. The commercial-free episodes were priced $1.99 each, while a season pass with twenty episodes cost $37.99. A release on iTunes UK followed in October 2007. All ten seasons of "SG-1" were available on iTunes and Amazon Unbox by January 2008. "Stargate SG-1" made its debut on hulu.com in March 2009, starting with the first season. At first, viewers in the United States could only watch episodes of the first seasons, but as of December 2009 all episodes of Seasons 1–10 were available free of charge with a small number of commercials on Hulu, through January 31, 2011. Free access to all SG-1 episodes continued until July 31, 2011, when the episodes were finally removed. As of February 1, 2011, all episodes of the entire Stargate franchise were available on Netflix's subscription-based online video streaming service in the US. As of August 15, 2012 Netflix removed Stargate SG-1 from its online video streaming service. As of May 2013, Amazon Video has Stargate SG-1 available for online streaming. As of August 2014 SG-1 is available on Netflix UK. The pilot episode "Children Of The Gods" though has been replaced with the 2009 updated final cut with updated CGI and the full frontal nudity removed. As of July 2015, Hoopla Digital, an online library media database, has all ten seasons of Stargate SG-1 available to watch free without commercials, for those who have cards with a participating library. The first two episodes are the edited versions, in which full frontal nudity has been removed. In September 2017, MGM launched its own online streaming service called Stargate Command, making available all episodes of Stargate SG-1 along with Stargate Atlantis and Stargate Universe. The show returned to Netflix in the United States on December 1, 2020 with a TV-MA rating because of the full frontal nudity in the first episode.


title: Stargate SG-1

text: "Stargate SG-1", particularly during earlier seasons, did very little to attract much in the way of attention from the mainstream media. The show's July 1997 pilot, "Children of the Gods" received mixed responses from publications such as "The New York Times" and "Variety". While there was only passing interest from mainstream publications, science fiction publications such as "Starburst", "Cult Times" and "TV Zone" regularly reviewed and featured "SG-1". Sharon Eberson of the "Pittsburgh Post-Gazette", wrote that ""Stargate SG-1"'s place in the sci-fi universe can be measured in longevity, spot-on cast chemistry, rabid fans who call themselves Gaters and the tough subjects it has tackled", going on to note that the show "had rarely been a critical darling".


title: Stargate SG-1

text: Despite the lukewarm reaction to the pilot, various critics and publications later recognized that "SG-1" had surpassed the 1994 film on which it was based. Writing for The Guardian in 2009, Emily Wilson labeled the original film "pretty dire", believing that the series had far outshined it. Wilson appreciatively teased "SG-1"'s format of visiting "slightly" different, English speaking alien worlds, with similar caves and studio-flat floors, writing that "what makes it good are the jokes, the actors, and the great ideas the writers keep throwing out". "What Culture" believed "SG-1" to be the best entry into the "Stargate" franchise, surpassing both the film and spinoff series, putting it #10 on their 25 Greatest Sci Fi TV Shows of All Time list.


title: Stargate SG-1

text: "Rolling Stone" called the series "one of the unlikeliest success stories in sci-fi TV history", ranking it #36 on their 50 Greatest Sci-Fi Series of All Time list. "SyFy Wire" described the show as "sci-fi comfort food in the best possible way" comparing the way the show examined morality to that of "", placing the show 20th on their Greatest Sci-Fi TV Series of the Past 25 Years list. In 2003, after spinoff series "Stargate Atlantis" was greenlit, "SG-1" enjoyed more mainstream exposure. The July issue of "TV Guide" proclaimed on the front cover "Forget "Trek"! "Stargate SG-1" is now sci-fi's biggest hit!".


title: Stargate SG-1

text: In the show's later seasons, it was broadcast on the Sci-Fi Channel on the same night as the 2004 reimagining of "Battlestar Galactica". "Galactica" was critically acclaimed for its dramatic, often dark, take on science fiction television. "People" called Stargate SG-1 "the anti-Battlestar Galactica", praising it for being accessible, comforting and captivating. According to Melanie McFarland of the "Seattle Post-Intelligencer", "SG-1" records did not earn it "the kind of wide-ranging respect a successful series with a 200-episode run deserves"; "SG-1" rarely occupied a slot on 'best show' lists because the show remained "relegated to the back of the bus in terms of popularity" behind the glory of "Galactica", although every week, the show attracts an average of 10 million viewers worldwide. "IndieWire" lauded the series for its camp, self-aware style, calling this "its saving grace compared to other excellent, but heavy sci-fi series like "Battlestar Galactica"", ranking the show #18 on their list of the 20 Best TV Shows Based on Movies of all time.


title: Stargate SG-1

text: The show has also gone on to be featured on various lists of works considered the best. In 2019, "Popular Mechanics" ranked "Stargate: SG-1" the 14th best science fiction television show ever. "Insider" included the show in their The 19 Best Sci-fi Shows of All Time. "Goliath" ranked "SG-1" #10 in their 15 Favorite Sci-Fi Shows of All Time. "Paste" ranked it #24 out of 100 on their 2017 list of Greatest Sci-fi television. "ShortList" included SG-1 in their 15 Best Sci-Fi TV shows list. In 2011, "IGN" ranked it #19 in their Top 50 Sci Fi Shows of All Time. "Stargate SG-1" ranked #28 on "TV Guide"s Top Cult Shows Ever. In 2005, "SG-1" and "Atlantis" shared the number four spot in a poll about the "most popular cult TV shows" on the British "Cult TV" website. "SG-1" was also included in the list of "17 All-Time Great Cult TV Shows You Say We Missed" by "Entertainment Weekly" in 2009. In a "Digital Spy" user poll, the show ranked as the 4th Greatest Sci-fi show of all time. "Amazon Prime" also conducted a user-poll in 2019, with the show voted the 3rd Greatest Sci-Fi of all Time.


title: Stargate SG-1

text: "Stargate SG-1" was nominated for numerous awards during its ten-season run. Its nominations for seven Emmys in the "Outstanding Special Visual Effects for a Series" category and one Emmy for "Outstanding Music Composition for a Series (Dramatic Underscore)" did not result in a win. "SG-1" won two Gemini Awards, twelve Leo Awards and five Saturn Awards out of over thirty nominations each. "Stargate SG-1" was also nominated for two VES Awards in 2003 and 2005 and for two Hugo Awards in 2005 and 2007.


title: Stargate SG-1

text: Brad Wright used the term "Gaters" to refer to fans of "Stargate SG-1" in 2001, but the term did not become widespread. Some fans' belief that there was a real Stargate device under Cheyenne Mountain inspired writers Joseph Mallozzi and Paul Mullie to come up with their own conspiracy story for Season 4's "Point of No Return". The fansite GateWorld became a major franchise news site with special arrangements with MGM; GateWorld's founder Darren Sumner was later hired to serve as a news editor for the official "Stargate SG-1" magazine and to check "Stargate" comic books for continuity errors with the TV shows before publication. "Late Night with Conan O'Brien" graphic designer Pierre Bernard gained notoriety among "Stargate" fans for devoting several of his "Recliner of Rage" "Late Night" segments to "SG-1". The producers invited him to make cameo appearances in the episodes "Zero Hour" and "200".


title: Stargate SG-1

text: Established in 2000, Gatecon is the world's longest-running "SG-1" fan convention. It is held in the Vancouver area, (plus two in the UK), with more actor and crew member participation than other conventions. "SG-1" conventions by Creation Entertainment were also marketed as "The Official "Stargate SG-1" and "Stargate Atlantis" Tour", which mostly took place in the United States until Creation Entertainment acquired the license for Vancouver conventions in 2005. Wolf Events organized many "SG-1" conventions in Europe, particularly in the UK and Germany.


title: Stargate SG-1

text: "Stargate SG-1" spawned an industry of spin-off products. From 1999 to 2001, ROC published four "Stargate SG-1" novels written by Ashley McConnell. In 2004, UK-based Fandemonium Press launched a new series of licensed tie-in novels based on "Stargate SG-1", although these books were unavailable in North America until 2006 when the license conflict with ROC expired. Titan Publishing publishes the official "Stargate Magazine", while Avatar Press published a series of "Stargate SG-1" comics. British company Big Finish Productions began to produce "Stargate SG-1" audio adventures in early 2008, voiced by members of the "SG-1" cast. A "Stargate SG-1" roleplaying game and a "Stargate" trading card game were released in 2003 and 2007. Diamond Select Toys and Hasbro launched a series of toys in 2005 and 2006, respectively. The planned video game "" was cancelled in 2005 and the futures of the MMORPG "Stargate Worlds" and the Third Person Shooter from the same studio (Cheyenne Mountain Entertainment) named "Stargate Resistance" were made clear in November 2010 following MGM's decision not to renew CME's Stargate license. Four amusement rides are based on "Stargate" – the Stargate SG-3000 theme park ride operating at Space Park Bremen in Germany and at Six Flags theme parks in Chicago, San Francisco and Louisville.


title: Stargate SG-1

text: "Stargate SG-1" spawned the animated "Stargate Infinity", and the live-action spin-off TV series' "Stargate Atlantis" and "Stargate Universe". By "SG-1" tenth season in 2006, "Stargate SG-1" and "Stargate Atlantis" were said to have brought US$500 million in production to British Columbia. MGM executive vice president Charles Cohen described "Stargate SG-1" and its spinoff series as the television counterpart of their "James Bond" franchise, being very profitable and improving their image.


title: Stargate SG-1

text: According to Stan Beeler and Lisa Dickson in their 2005 book "Reading Stargate SG-1", the only science fiction shows to exceed the staying power of "SG-1" are "Doctor Who" and the "Star Trek" franchise, although "The X-Files" and "Buffy"/"Angel" might have comparable longevity. Brad Wright cited continuity in the creative team and fan loyalty as reasons for the show's longevity. With its 202nd episode, "Company of Thieves", "Stargate SG-1" surpassed "The X-Files" as the longest-running North American science fiction series on television, until passed by the final season of "Smallville" in 2011, which was in turn passed by the eleventh season revival of "The X-Files" in 2018. "Doctor Who" fans dispute "SG-1" listing in the 2007 "Guinness World Records" as the "longest-running science fiction show (consecutive)", as 695 episodes of the British show were produced but not shown consecutively between 1963 and 1989. Scott D. Pierce from "Deseret News" said that the series never made a "sort of cultural impact" as "Star Trek" because the show was "pretty derivative" which he further stated it became "more so over the years."


title: Stargate SG-1

text: The astronomers David J. Tholen and Roy A. Tucker enjoyed the "SG-1" arch villain Apophis so much that they named their discovered near-Earth asteroid "99942 Apophis".


title: Stargate SG-1

text: Reflecting on "SG-1" in 2020, Dean Devlin, co-creator of the 1994 original film, recalled that initially he had been very hostile to the series, likening his experience of it to "watching someone else raising your child" and pointing out that the full-frontal nudity featured in the pilot episode was not what he thought Stargate should be about. But he had come to believe, he said, that the passion of "SG-1"'s fanbase reflected the fact that Brad Wright and Jonathan Glassner had created a really good show, thus reaching out to Glassner for the first time.


title: Indra

text: Indra (; Sanskrit: इन्द्र) is the king of the devas (god-like deities) and Svarga (heaven) in Hindu mythology. He is associated with the sky, lightning, weather, thunder, storms, rains, river flows, and war. Indra's myths and powers are similar to other Indo-European deities such as Jupiter, Perun, Perkūnas, Zalmoxis, Taranis, Zeus, and Thor, part of the greater Proto-Indo-European mythology.


title: Indra

text: Indra is the most referred deity in the "Rigveda". He is celebrated for his powers, and as the one who killed the great evil (a malevolent type of asura) named Vritra, who obstructed human prosperity and happiness. Indra destroys Vritra and his "deceiving forces", and thereby brings rains and sunshine as the saviour of mankind. He is also an important deity worshipped by the Kalash people, indicating his prominence in ancient Hinduism.


title: Indra

text: Indra's significance diminishes in the post-Vedic Indian literature, but he still plays an important role in various mythological events. He is depicted as a powerful hero, and is known for having sexual relations with sage Gautama's wife, Ahalyā.


title: Indra

text: According to the "Vishnu Purana", Indra is the title borne by the king of the gods, which changes every Manvantara – a cyclic period of time in Hindu cosmology. Each Manvantara has its own Indra and the Indra of the current Manvantara is called "Purandhara".


title: Indra

text: Indra is also depicted in Buddhist ("Indā" in Pali) and Jaina mythologies. Indra rules over the much-sought "Devas" realm of rebirth within the Samsara doctrine of Buddhist traditions. However, like the post-Vedic Hindu texts, Indra is also a subject of ridicule and reduced to a figurehead status in Buddhist texts, shown as a god that suffers rebirth. In Jain traditions, unlike Buddhism and Hinduism, Indra is not the king of gods, but the king of superhumans residing in Svarga-Loka, and very much a part of Jain rebirth cosmology. He is also the one who appears with his wife Indrani to celebrate the auspicious moments in the life of a Jain Tirthankara, an iconography that suggests the king and queen of superhumans residing in Svarga (heaven) reverentially marking the spiritual journey of a Jaina.


title: Indra

text: Indra's iconography shows him wielding a lightning thunderbolt weapon known as "Vajra", riding on a white elephant known as Airavata. In Buddhist iconography, the elephant sometimes features three heads, while Jaina icons sometimes show the elephant with five heads. Sometimes, a single elephant is shown with four symbolic tusks. Indra's abode exists in the capital city of Svarga, Amaravati, though he is also associated with Mount Meru (also called Sumeru).


title: Indra

text: The etymological roots of Indra are unclear, and it has been a contested topic among scholars since the 19th-century, one with many proposals. The significant proposals have been:


title: Indra

text: Colonial era scholarship proposed that Indra shares etymological roots with Avestan "Andra", Old High German "*antra" ("giant"), or Old Church Slavonic "jedru" ("strong"), but Max Muller critiqued these proposals as untenable. Later scholarship has linked Vedic Indra to "Aynar" (the Great One) of Circassian, Abaza and Ubykh mythology, and "Innara" of Hittite mythology. Colarusso suggests a Pontic origin and that both the phonology and the context of Indra in Indian religions is best explained from Indo-Aryan roots and a Circassian etymology (i.e. "*inra").


title: Indra

text: Indra is of ancient but unclear origin. Aspects of Indra as a deity are cognate to other Indo-European gods; there are thunder gods such as Thor, Perun, and Zeus who share parts of his heroic mythologies, act as king of gods, and all are linked to "rain and thunder". The similarities between Indra of Vedic mythology and of Thor of Nordic and Germanic mythologies are significant, states Max Müller. Both Indra and Thor are storm gods, with powers over lightning and thunder, both carry a hammer or an equivalent, for both the weapon returns to their hand after they hurl it, both are associated with bulls in the earliest layer of respective texts, both use thunder as a battle-cry, both are protectors of mankind, both are described with legends about "milking the cloud-cows", both are benevolent giants, gods of strength, of life, of marriage and the healing gods.


title: Indra

text: Michael Janda suggests that Indra has origins in the Indo-European "*trigw-welumos" [or rather "*trigw-t-welumos"] "smasher of the enclosure" (of Vritra, Vala) and "diye-snūtyos" "impeller of streams" (the liberated rivers, corresponding to Vedic "apam ajas" "agitator of the waters"). Brave and heroic Innara or Inra, which sounds like Indra, is mentioned among the gods of the Mitanni, a Hurrian-speaking people of Hittite region.


title: Indra

text: Indra as a deity had a presence in northeastern Asia minor, as evidenced by the inscriptions on the Boghaz-köi clay tablets dated to about 1400 BCE. This tablet mentions a treaty, but its significance is in four names it includes reverentially as "Mi-it-ra", "U-ru-w-na", "In-da-ra" and "Na-sa-at-ti-ia". These are respectively, Mitra, Varuna, Indra and Nasatya-Asvin of the Vedic pantheon as revered deities, and these are also found in Avestan pantheon but with Indra and Naonhaitya as demons. This at least suggests that Indra and his fellow deities were in vogue in South Asia and Asia minor by about mid 2nd-millennium BCE.


title: Indra

text: Indra is praised as the highest god in 250 hymns of the "Rigveda" – a Hindu scripture dated to have been composed sometime between 1700 and 1100 BCE. He is co-praised as the supreme in another 50 hymns, thus making him one of the most celebrated Vedic deities. He is also mentioned in ancient Indo-Iranian literature, but with a major inconsistency when contrasted with the Vedas. In the Vedic literature, Indra is a heroic god. In the Avestan (ancient, pre-Islamic Iranian) texts such as "Vd." 10.9, "Dk." 9.3 and "Gbd" 27.6-34.27, Indra – or accurately Andra – is a gigantic demon who opposes truth. In the Vedic texts, Indra kills the archenemy and demon Vritra who threatens mankind. In the Avestan texts, Vritra is not found.


title: Indra

text: Indra is called "vr̥tragʰná-" (literally, "slayer of obstacles") in the Vedas, which corresponds to Verethragna of the Zoroastrian noun "verethragna-". According to David Anthony, the Old Indic religion probably emerged among Indo-European immigrants in the contact zone between the Zeravshan River (present-day Uzbekistan) and (present-day) Iran. It was "a syncretic mixture of old Central Asian and new Indo-European elements", which borrowed "distinctive religious beliefs and practices" from the Bactria–Margiana Culture. At least 383 non-Indo-European words were found in this culture, including the god Indra and the ritual drink Soma. According to Anthony,


title: Indra

text: Indra's weapon, which he used to kill the evil Vritra, is the Vajra or thunderbolt. Other alternate iconographic symbolism for him includes a bow (sometimes as a colorful rainbow), a sword, a net, a noose, a hook, or a conch. The thunderbolt of Indra is called Bhaudhara.


title: Indra

text: In the post-Vedic period, he rides a large, four-tusked white elephant called Airavata. In sculpture and relief artworks in temples, he typically sits on an elephant or is near one. When he is shown to have two, he holds the Vajra and a bow.


title: Indra

text: In the "Shatapatha Brahmana" and in Shaktism traditions, Indra is stated to be same as goddess Shodashi (Tripura Sundari), and her iconography is described similar to those of Indra.


title: Indra

text: Indra was a prominent deity in the Vedic era of Hinduism. In Vedic times Indra was described in Rig Veda 6.30.4 as superior to any other god. Sayana in his commentary on Rig Veda 6.47.18 described Indra as assuming many forms, making Agni, Vishnu, and Rudra his illusory forms.


title: Indra

text: Over a quarter of the 1,028 hymns of the "Rigveda" mention Indra, making him the most referred to deity. These hymns present a complex picture of Indra, but some aspects of Indra are often repeated. Of these, the most common theme is where he as the god with thunderbolt kills the evil serpent Vritra that held back rains, and thus released rains and land nourishing rivers. For example, the Rigvedic hymn 1.32 dedicated to Indra reads:


title: Indra

text: In the myth, Vṛtra has coiled around a mountain and has trapped all the waters, namely the Seven Rivers. All the gods abandon Indra out of fear of Vṛtra. Indra uses his vajra, a mace, to kill Vritra and smash open the mountains to release the waters. In some versions, he is aided by the Maruts or other deities, and sometimes cattle and the sun is also released from the mountain. In one interpretation by Oldenberg, the hymns are referring to the snaking thunderstorm clouds that gather with bellowing winds (Vritra), Indra is then seen as the storm god who intervenes in these clouds with his thunderbolts, which then release the rains nourishing the parched land, crops and thus humanity. In another interpretation by Hillebrandt, Indra is a symbolic sun god (Surya) and Vritra is a symbolic winter-giant (historic mini cycles of ice age, cold) in the earliest, not the later, hymns of "Rigveda". The Vritra is an ice-demon of colder central Asia and northern latitudes, who holds back the water. Indra is the one who releases the water from the winter demon, an idea that later metamorphosed into his role as storm god. According to Griswold, this is not a completely convincing interpretation, because Indra is simultaneously a lightning god, a rain god and a river-helping god in the Vedas. Further, the Vritra demon that Indra slew is best understood as any obstruction, whether it be clouds that refuse to release rain or mountains or snow that hold back the water. Jamison and Brereton also state that Vritra is best understood as any obstacle. The Vritra myth is associated with the Midday Pressing of soma, which is dedicated to Indra or Indra and the Maruts.


title: Indra

text: Even though Indra is declared as the king of gods in some verses, there is no consistent subordination of other gods to Indra. In Vedic thought, all gods and goddesses are equivalent and aspects of the same eternal abstract Brahman, none consistently superior, none consistently inferior. All gods obey Indra, but all gods also obey Varuna, Vishnu, Rudra and others when the situation arises. Further, Indra also accepts and follows the instructions of Savitr (solar deity). Indra, like all Vedic deities, is a part of henotheistic theology of ancient India.


title: Indra

text: The second-most important myth about Indra is about the Vala cave. In this story, the Panis have stolen cattle and hidden them in the Vala cave. Here Indra utilizes the power of the songs he chants to split the cave open to release the cattle and dawn. He is accompanied in the cave by the Angirases (and sometimes Navagvas or the Daśagvas). Here Indra exemplifies his role as a priest-king, called "bṛhaspati". Eventually later in the Rigveda, Bṛhaspati and Indra become separate deities as both Indra and the Vedic king lose their priestly functions. The Vala myth was associated with the Morning Pressing of soma, in which cattle was donated to priests, called "dakṣiṇā."


title: Indra

text: Indra is not a visible object of nature in the Vedic texts, nor is he a personification of any object, but that agent which causes the lightning, the rains and the rivers to flow. His myths and adventures in the Vedic literature are numerous, ranging from harnessing the rains, cutting through mountains to help rivers flow, helping land becoming fertile, unleashing sun by defeating the clouds, warming the land by overcoming the winter forces, winning the light and dawn for mankind, putting milk in the cows, rejuvenating the immobile into something mobile and prosperous, and in general, he is depicted as removing any and all sorts of obstacles to human progress. The Vedic prayers to Indra, states Jan Gonda, generally ask "produce success of this rite, throw down those who hate the materialized Brahman". The hymns of "Rigveda" declare him to be the "king that moves and moves not", the friend of mankind who holds the different tribes on earth together.


title: Indra

text: Indra is often presented as the twin brother of Agni (fire) – another major Vedic deity. Yet, he is also presented to be the same, states Max Muller, as in Rigvedic hymn 2.1.3, which states, "Thou Agni, art Indra, a bull among all beings; thou art the wide-ruling Vishnu, worthy of adoration. Thou art the Brahman, (...)." He is also part of one of many Vedic trinities as "Agni, Indra and Surya", representing the "creator-maintainer-destroyer" aspects of existence in Hindu thought.