Stargate SG-1 (1997) - 64 mistakes in entire show

Revealing: As we know, the watery image of the event horizon is projected onto a blue backdrop. In "Origin" the third episode of season nine, Ger'ak comes through the Stargate and we can see the image of the event horizon, though faint, around and above the Stargate itself and is not confined to normal area for the event horizon. Blatantly visible if you look for it on the airing of the episode on the Sci-Fi network.

Continuity: When Teal'c attacks the blonde Jaffa, the Jaffa has a staff weapon, but the shot changes when Teal'c hits the Jaffa and the staff has disappeared.

Factual error: Before SG-1 switched to P90 PDW's, they carried MP5 submachine guns. They were often shown with a full magazine taped upside down to the one in the weapon, so that to reload, all they have to do is remove the magazine, turn it over and insert the full one. Team members were also shown doing just that in several fight scenes. Problem is, real special ops troops are specifically taught in training never to do this. It's far too easy to damage the lips on the spare magazine, rendering it useless. There are clips that will hold magazines upright side by side, but its easy to see on screen they weren't using them.

Continuity: In Season 8 - Threads, when Sam is talking to Jack in his backyard (barbecue scene), the back door behind her opens and closes between shots.

Continuity: Season 9 Episode 13 "Ripple Effect": When "Desert Camo" SG-1 returns to their dimension through the Stargate, we hear 5 "slurps" indicating someone passing through the gate, however there are only 4 members on the team.

Continuity: Season 9, episode 14 "Stronghold": When Bratac has cleared the gate in his alkesh, there is a shot of the gate from nearly side on. There is now a wormhole, despite the SGC dialing it less than a minute before.

Continuity: Season 10 Episode 15: In the scene where Teal'c and his friend are ambushed offworld, he shoots back without first "opening" his staff weapon. After firing back, it is suddenly opened.

Continuity: Season 7: Lost City. When they are about to blow up the ancient device at the ruins, Col O Neill sticks a wad of C4 to the wall in the corner, when the shot changes, the explosives have moved approximately 6 inches to the left.

Revealing: Season 10 episode 4 - The Insiders. When Baal is making his escape right before the Symbiont gas is released there are two shots of Baal clones entering into a room. In both shots one of the Baal clones is not Cliff Simon.

Continuity: In the episode "The Shroud," during the scene where Jack is talking to Daniel aboard the Odyssey, there is only 1 star on each of his shirt collars, indicating that he is a Brigadier General, instead of the proper two stars for a Major General, as he does in every other scene of the episode.

Other: Season 8, Episodes 16 & 17 - "Reckoning" The Replicator ship on which Daniel is being held prisoner is supposedly made entirely of Replicator blocks (a fact established in earlier episodes), yet only the walls of the set are made to look that way. The floor, visible repeatedly throughout the episode, is simply a concrete slab painted the same gray color as the block walls.

Plot hole: Anytime an SG member starts acting weird or something happens that is "impossible", SGC personnel always act skeptical about it. Considering what they have seen in the course of the show, "that's impossible" should have long ago fallen out of their vocabulary. And while I realize that Sam and Daniel are scientists, they have seen enough examples of incredibly advanced technology that they should be far more open-minded when looking for explanations.

Plot hole: Throughout the whole first season and some of the second, Walter or someone else in his position, counts the time it takes for something to get to its destination from when it enters the wormhole. They tend to say something like "Object should reach destination in, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1." But after the first season or two they stop and it is not brought up until later when it is said that travel through a stargate is almost instant, and in one later episode Carter says that it takes about 0.3 seconds on average to travel through a wormhole and that the travel time from the last team to come through the gate was over three seconds and that was a long time. That must mean that 5 seconds would be like traveling from another galaxy in a different dimension through a black hole.

Factual error: Earth's Stargate is dialed up more then once in series 1. Mostly in the first episodes, the passive gate is also shown with a rotating dialer ring when being called. This is not correct. The called gate only illuminates the chevrons. (This is classed as a 'factual' mistake within the show, not a 'continuity' error, and the option to change type has been removed.)

Continuity: Kawalsky's rank changes. At the beginning of the episode, he wears the rank insignia of a Captain. However, when his is in dress blues for mission briefing he has on Major insignia. Then in the meeting after the Abydos, he's back to wearing Captain bars.

Factual error: Carter claims that the gates shift position because of the expansion of the universe. Gravity sources within a galaxy completely compensate for such expansion. The gates would still experience "stellar drift", which is mentioned earlier in the same episode. Stellar drift occurs because stars orbit the galactic center independently.

Revealing: When Daniel, Jack, and Sam first meet the robed Jaffa in the woods, you can see the camera light in Daniel's glasses.

Revealing: When Apophis' queen goes back into the female Jaffa, it is obvious that the film footage was just played in reverse.

Other: When O'Neill first goes to visit Teal'c in his cell the symbol of Apophis on Teal'c's head is upside down.

Continuity: When Kawalsky is on the operating table, there is a shot of the clock showing 19 minutes after the hour. The next shot is of Carter and Daniel talking, then the shot returns to the surgery and the clock says 23 minutes.

Revealing: When Hathor turns Jack into her first new Jaffa, you can see the line between his chest and the prosthetic that gives him the Jaffa "pouch".

Revealing: When Carter is looking up Hathor on the Internet, the address bar says that the web page is on the C drive of the computer. That is a really stupid mistake, since it is extremely easy to hide the address bar.

Plot hole: After Cassandra has her first "heart attack" you see her in her room. Why isn't there one of those heartbeat monitors in her room?

Revealing: When Daniel is talking to Teal'c in the jail cell, you can see a camera light reflected in Daniel's glasses.

Revealing: When Daniel is talking to the leader of the Tolan, you can see the camera light reflected in his glasses.

Continuity: At the beginning of the episode, O'Neill refers to the planet as P3X-989. When he awakes as an android, he says "Welcome to PX3-989." The P3X becomes PX3.

Continuity: When the Jacks are talking to each other right at the end, the camera goes back and forth from looking over each of their shoulders at the other one. If you look closely, the false Jack's earlobe structure changes when we see him from behind.

Other: When attempting to dial out about 26 minutes into episode, the Earth gate point of origin symbol locks (indicating that all the symbols are finished encoding). But then "chevron 2 encoded" is announced.

Other: Teal'c swipes his security card to open a door. The stripe is facing the wrong way, and he really doesn't even get it in the slot good and the light goes green and he opens the door. It is very obvious.

Continuity: You hear "chevron four encoded" but the third chevron lights up.

Audio problem: Near the very end, when SG-1 have been captured, Daniel says "it's a good day to die", but the subtitles say that O'Neill says the line.

Other: When Teal'c shoots Rya'c with the zat, it is still closed.

Plot hole: Huge plot error: Apophis and Clorell (Skara) should not have survived the explosion in Season 2, Episode 1 (when they attack Earth with two ships). In "Family" they explain that Apophis and Clorell survived by escaping through the stargate aboard Clorell's ship moments after Daniel Jackson did the same. However, when Daniel Jackson escapes through it, Apophis and Clorell are not even on the right ship, and there is 1 second left on the C4 timer when Daniel escapes. They actually show Daniel Jackson escape, and then cut to Apophis and Clorell still aboard their ship. So apparently, Apophis was able to "ring" from his ship over to Clorell's ship, make it to the stargate room, dial an address, and escape through the stargate all within literally 1 second. Is this guy related to The Flash?

Continuity: When O'Neill and Carter arrive at Washington, Carter says "Don't worry, Sir. These were my old stomping grounds." O'Neill replies with "I'm sorry to hear that." But later when the reporter approaches O'Neill in the bar the recording says "My condolences."

Factual error: When O'Neill throws the knife at the system lord at the end, the knife is spinning in the wrong direction.

Plot hole: The team are finding out who could have stolen the weather device from Madrona and find an energy spike at the same time SG2 are on a mission. "But SG2's mission is galaxies away from Madrona" Says Teal'c. At this time the only missions the teams could go on was in our own galaxy and couldn't be galaxies away.

Plot hole: When half of SG-1 return to Medrona to detonate a charge aimed at the gate, why didn't they just go to another planet? As when they went to Medrona, there was a blizzard going on and they also had the natives saying they will arrest them as they still hadn't returned the touchstone. Could have just saved themeselves some hassle.

Plot hole: The NID guys escape because Jack can't kill them. He fires his MP-5 around them to try to make them stop. Is there a reason he didn't bring a Zat gun along? The whole point of this mission was to stop the NID rouge agents without killing them and to capture them if possible. The Zat gun seems tailor-made for a mission like this.

Other: In one scene, someone over a P.A. says something like "The mountain is now on emergency power and life support." but the subtitles say M.A.L.P (the probe they send through the gate) instead of mountain.

Factual error: The star collapsing into a black hole suddenly seems to increase its gravitational pull on the planet that SG-10 is on. When an object collapses to a singularity, the pull it exerts on an object does not suddenly change because the mass, and therefore the strength of its gravity, has not changed.

Continuity: In an early scene "Ma'chello" is lying in the infirmary with a oxygen mask on, it cuts to Frasier and O'Neill talking about him, then cuts back and "Ma'chello" now has nose tubes.

Plot hole: The last two invisible aliens are in the room with Charlie and "Mother". Since both of them can see the aliens, why don't they warn O'Neil that they are there?

Factual error: During SG-1's trip across the nation they show a city-scape of Chicago. Which is evident by the Sears Tower. But the Sears Tower was not build in 1969. Construction started in 1970 and completed in 1973.

Revealing: A couple of seconds before the beginning of the opening titles you can see that the eyelids of one of the dead Limvris are moving.

Revealing: When the village canon touches the hot poker to Teal'c's forehead tattoo, the profile view shows that the edge of the applique used by the makeup artist has separated from Chris Judge's face. It apparently was not glued down securely enough, and this is not an isolated incident. It happens quite frequently throughout the entire series.

Continuity: When Jack passes out in the pit, he has dirt all over his face before he passes out and no dirt at all in the next shot.

Plot hole: When the team manage to cause the cavern to form over the buried stargate they send Teal'c through, but shouldn't the cavern be a vacuum? Air doesn't travel through the gate and the stuff caught in the vortex is destroyed, so Teal'c wouldn't need an oxygen mask he'd need a spacesuit.

Plot hole: When the team manage to create the cavern with the buried stargate they send Teal'c through to drill his way out, but wouldn't it be safer (and significantly faster) to fire a missile or two through and blast their way out? They have no idea how deep the stargate is buried, or under what type of rock, so sending Teal'c with only four hours of air seems suicidal.

Continuity: At the very beginning when the scientists have uncovered a new chevron, it's the "Earth" chevron; a triangle with a circle on top, which indicates the planet of origin of the wormhole. However, ONLY earth should have an earth chevron - all other worlds have their own symbol.

Continuity: When Teal'c walks into the Goa'uld force shield on the planet, he is forced off and he almost does a backflip. You can see that he would have hit the floor head/neck first. But when the shot changes, you see him land on the floor sliding on his back, as though someone had just pushing him over.

Revealing: When Jack and Teal'c are first shown in the fighter when it first enters space, if you pay attention to the stars in the background, they tend to move in a rather jerking fashion.

Revealing: When Teal'c and O'Neill are passing by Juipter (after the failed missile burn), you can see a reflection in the background window of the cockpit. But the reflection is not the backside of their helmets, but instead is the front sides matted on to give the minor illusion of a reflection.

Continuity: In the scene where SG-1 tries to get their note through the gate, watch Daniel. The camera cuts to him just before Jack slides down the zip line, and you can see small dots on Daniel's face - presumably the marks left when shot by the security system. However, Daniel has been taking cover since the alarms sounded and only gets hit when he tries to get to the gate after Jack is brought down. The next time Daniel appears on camera, his face is clear again and stays that way till the point in the scene where he, too, is killed by the security system.

Continuity: Carter and Cadet Haley enter the Stargate and we see them through the "puddle." When they come out on the other side, their positions are reversed.

Revealing: Even after Teal'c is dead, you can see in one shot that he is still breathing.

Factual error: When listing off the items Orlin has ordered online to produce his own stargate, Simmons lists "seven 100,000 watt industrial strength capacitors". Capacitors are measured in farads, not watts. Not to mention that as of now, the world's best capacitors are less than 10,000 farads, not an order of magnitude higher.

Plot hole: Carter says that the chance of depositing the heavy element inside the Katow sun while the element is en route is about 1%. However, hypothetically speaking, the actual chances would be infinitely smaller, in fact it would be near impossible. Simply consider the distance from earth stargate to the Katow stargate, the diameter of an average sun, and the time it takes for an object to travel through the gate (about 12 seconds). Taking the closest star to us (Alpha Centruri), at a distance of 4 light years, this means that the wormhole takes ~443ns (0.000000443s) to pass through the sun (using our sun diameter). Similarly, taking the diameter of the Milky Way as the distance to the furthest star in our galaxy, ~100000 light years, meaning the wormhole takes ~17ps (0.000000000017s) to pass through the sun. This means that the SGC would have to shut down the gate within a a maxmium of 443ns or a minimum of 17ps time gap. As we have previously seen, the stargate takes far longer to shutdown than these miniscule time lengths.

Revealing: When Jack is asking the bald guy where he got the idea for the show, you can see the camera light reflected in the guy's glasses.

Continuity: When Jack is revived in the sarcophagus after being caught, the first shot of this his shirt is in perfect condition, but in the next shot of it, there is a knife hole in the shirt which disappears when he is being taken to the "anti-grav torture wall"

Other: When the hallucinated Jonas is leading Dr. Kieran upstairs, a red light can be seen glowing on his hip where his Beretta is holstered. It looks as if Corin Nemec is carrying an Intar (a training weapon with a glowing red crystal in the grip) prop instead of a normal pistol. Can't be due to a hallucination - Dr. Kieran couldn't hallucinate a Goa'uld training weapon he'd never seen.

Continuity: When Samantha Carter is locked in the storage room on deck 7 and she uses the plasma cutter to make a hole in the door, there is a fingerprint on her visor which appears/disappears between shots.

Visible crew/equipment: When O'Neill, Carter and Quinn meet Teal'c at the ship wreckage, the camera moves to focus on O'Neill. The shadow of a boom mic on the ground follows his path.

Revealing: In the scene where Thor beams onto Loki's ship, as he stands there you see him turn his head. However, if you watch his reflection in the window behind him, his reflection stays facing forwards.

Visible crew/equipment: When Daniel is talking to Teal'c and the other Jaffa, at one point we can see a light reflecting screen reflected in Daniel's glasses, we can even see the silhouette of someone's arm and body in front of the screen.