Religion has been an on-going topic on this series since the beginning.  The major bad-guys at the beginning were the Goa’uld.  They pretended to be Gods & demanded worship.  Our heroes, of coarse, eventually defeated them (after 7 seasons or so) and clearly unmasked the Goa’uld limitations & mortality.  All was well with the universe, or so we thought!

Along the way, our Stargate SG-1 heroes came into contact with ‘The Ascended Ones’,  these beings really did seem to have divine characteristics.  Kind of like the Mormon theology of “as man is, God once was; as God is, man may become”.   One of the major SG-1 characters- Daniel Jackson, actually died during one episode and ‘Ascended’–going on a ‘sabbatical’ for an entire season.  Never fear, he violated some Ascended rule or another, helping our SG-1 heroes out of a tight spot, and was kicked out of the fellowship the next season and regained his mortality and coveted position on the SG-1 squad once more. And so it went yada, yada, yada…

Now comes the important part– in the last season, our heroes were battling a new threat to the universe– ‘The Ori’.  When the Ori’ came to a new planet, they would heal the sick, present their Book of teachings, teach about their faith and organize their converts.  The Ori’ teach that their way is the ‘only way’ to become ‘ascended’ in the life to come.  Sound familiar?  At some point on every planet, they demand that the entire population convert or die.  Then they would proceed to send a plague that killed every unbeliever.  On those planets that totally rejected their religion & leadership, the entire face of the planet was devastated.  Nice guys, nice religion–another ‘religion of peace’.  Next, they are planning to threaten planet Earth.  Should be interesting to see how the writers resolve this story-line.  It is always interesting to me how real current events seem to find their parallels in TV & movie fiction.

MGD

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