Prime Video’s Forgotten Sci-Fi Miniseries Is So Good, You Can Rewatch It Multiple Times

For those who love Stargate, it’s no secret that we’ve been waiting for the franchise to continue for some time. After Amazon canceled its planned revival earlier this year, fans finally have another reason to be hopeful. Last month, news broke that WandaVision creator Jac Schaeffer is developing a new Stargate series for Amazon MGM Studios, potentially bringing more adventures across the galaxy — and through the gate — to Prime Video. But several years back, in honor of Stargate SG-1‘s 20th anniversary, MGM briefly revisited the franchise in a mythology-rich 10-part miniseries that aired across several weeks in 2018. If you’re looking for a quick sci-fi-flavored binge on Prime Video this weekend, look no further than Stargate Origins.

‘Stargate Origins’ Calls Back to the Franchise’s Roots While Telling a Standalone Story

Stargate Origins was originally released on the now-defunct streaming platform Stargate Command, which was devoted entirely to the Stargate franchise. However, since the streaming platform folded and Amazon purchased MGM, the entire franchise catalog has been folded into Prime Video — which is great news for fans looking for a new binge. Although the last entry in the franchise to date, Stargate Origins is a prequel that takes place even before the original Roland Emmerich-directed film.

• The Wachowskis’ 1999 film won four Academy Awards, including Visual Effects and Film
  Editing.
• Bullet time was shot with a rig of roughly 120 still cameras firing in sequence around the
  actors.
• Keanu Reeves trained in martial arts for about four months before a frame was shot,
  recovering from neck surgery the whole time.
• It opened the same year as Fight Club and eXistenZ, in a run of films about not trusting the
  world in front of you.

• Mad Max: Fury Road won six Academy Awards in 2016, more than any other film that year.
• George Miller storyboarded the entire film as roughly 3,500 panels before there was a
  script.
• The chase was shot almost entirely practical in the Namib Desert, with real vehicles and
  real stunt performers.
• Anya Taylor-Joy and Chris Hemsworth carried the prequel, Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, in 2024.

• Blade Runner 2049 won Roger Deakins his first Oscar for cinematography, on his fourteenth
  nomination.
• The film also took Best Visual Effects, 35 years after Ridley Scott’s 1982 original.
• Villeneuve shot it on large-format film and kept the fog and rain practical on set wherever
  he could.
• Three short films by Luke Scott and Shinichiro Watanabe bridge the 30-year gap between the
  two movies.

• Denis Villeneuve’s Dune won six Academy Awards in 2022, including Cinematography and
  Original Score.
• Hans Zimmer turned down Christopher Nolan’s Tenet so he could score Dune instead.
• Dune: Part Two arrived in 2024 and brought in Austin Butler, Florence Pugh and Christopher
  Walken.
• David Lynch’s 1984 version and Alejandro Jodorowsky’s unmade one are both their
  own legends by now.

• The 1977 original won six Academy Awards plus a special achievement award for sound effects.
• John Williams’ score was recorded by the London Symphony Orchestra and became the
  best-selling symphonic film soundtrack ever.
• Andor took the galaxy somewhere colder and earned Emmy nominations for drama series in both
  seasons.
• The saga now runs across eleven feature films and a growing shelf of series on Disney+.

Set in 1938, several years after Professor Paul Langford (Connor Trinneer) and his team first discovered Earth’s stargate in Giza, the miniseries begins with a brief flashback to the 1994 film’s opening before jumping ahead several years to Langford and his daughter, Catherine (Ellie Gall), who struggle to understand the strange glyphs on the alien device. While Catherine would play a role in both the original feature film and SG-1, this prequel presents viewers with her own adventure through the gate, arriving on the world of Abydos decades before Daniel Jackson (James Spader, Michael Shanks), Jack O’Neill (Kurt Russell, Richard Dean Anderson), and their team would arrive there.

Whether you’ve seen all of SG-1 or only the original Stargate movie, you’ll find yourself up to speed for this standalone prequel. The 10-part miniseries — consisting of 10-minute episodes that run around an hour and 40 minutes total — sets up many of the events in the first film after the professor is forced through the gate by a crazed Nazi occultist, Wilhelm Brücke (Aylam Orian), who aims to use the power of the gods to give the Third Reich an edge on the rest of the world.

In an effort to save her father, Catherine recruits her boyfriend, Captain James Beal (Philip Alexander), and Egyptian native Wasif (Shvan Aladdin) to jump through the gate, finding themselves on an adventure through the stars. In many respects, Stargate Origins comes across as a revisionist pulp story that seems to infuse 1930s speculative fiction with material meant for 2010s audiences. However, you feel about some of that, Origins is rife with inspired references to and set-up for the original motion picture, which featured an older Catherine played by Viveca Lindfors.

‘Stargate Origins’ Was the Final Entry (Thus Far) in the ‘Stargate’ Franchise

While the 10-minute episodes are a perfect way to binge the series over a short weekend, folks wishing to enjoy the miniseries all in one go can do so just as easily. For those unwilling to click “next episode” every 10 minutes (or if you just want a more seamless transition), Stargate Origins was re-edited into a “feature cut” by MGM titled Stargate Origins: Catherine. The re-edited version features a revised score and some updated effects, though the story itself doesn’t change. Of course, if you’re looking for something more like Stargate Atlantis in quality, you’ll be out of luck.

While Origins is fun for what it is, the low-budget production is a bit uneven in terms of its performances, adds some strange character choices, and is more akin, in some respects, to a tie-in web series rather than something of the caliber of SG-1 or its spin-offs. But if you love Stargate, it remains a must-see, if only on the basis that it’s another entry in the overall series — one that ties so directly to the foundation of the franchise.

Of course, if you’re looking to jump into the Stargate franchise and wondering if Origins is a good place to start, despite the name, we wouldn’t recommend it. The best order to watch this sci-fi extravaganza is by starting with the 1994 Stargate film. Although the feature was meant to be the first in a trilogy of Stargate movies, the franchise went a different direction entirely by transitioning to television in the form of Stargate SG-1, which picked up with the characters from the original film and continued their interstellar adventures.

At least watch the first movie before diving into Origins (which, again, steals its opening scene directly from the 1994 picture), but if you’re looking to better understand the world, SG-1 is the perfect follow-up that will help set the stage for this quick prequel. Of course, with another Stargate series now in development at Amazon MGM Studios, fans may eventually have a new adventure to look forward to. There’s no premiere date yet, though, making Origins an easy way to revisit the franchise while we wait.

Stargate Origins is available for streaming on Prime Video.