By Jonathan Klotz
| Published
Stargate SG-1 was a SyFy Original series which means the budget never came near to the cost of an average episode of Blue Bloods, and the most expensive part of the series was the massive, life-size handcrafted Stargate itself with a total cost, in 1995, of $100,000. That’s why when Colonel Jack O’Neill was golfing through an open Gate in the episode “Windows of Opportunity,” everyone on set held their breath and had to place their trust in Richard Dean Anderson. Anderson was holding with actual golf balls, directly at the expensive prop, but as with everything involving the time loop episode, it came together perfectly.
Windows Of Opportunity
The time loop is a common trope for any long-running series, and when Stargate SG-1 Season 4 came around, it was finally time for the show to put its own fun twist on the concept. O’Neill and Teal’c (Christopher Judge) find themselves in a time loop after exploring a planet experiencing a massive solar event. Alien archaeologist Malaki (Robin Mossley) triggers a strange device, trapping O’Neill and Teal’c, they’re the only two who realize what’s happening, which presents a problem given the solution is hidden behind translating ancient runes.
Every day, Jackson (Michael Shanks) is trying to decipher the meaning of the runes they photographed on the surface of the planet, but with only 10 hours in each, there’s not enough time. O’Neill and Teal’c try to help Jackson but eventually give up and decide to take advantage of each loop remaining self-contained so that whatever they do in one has no impact on the next. What comes next is one of the best sequences in Stargate SG-1 and has cemented “Windows of Opportunity” as a fan favorite.
That’s why the pair start playing golf with the active Stargate, much to the chagrin of the other SG-1 officers, in one of the best images of the entire franchise. Teal’c starts slamming the door back into the airman instead of getting hit by it at the start of every loop, and most impressively, O’Neill takes up pottery (with his improvement each loop a brilliant visual gag), and juggling. Turns out, Richard Dean Anderson is a skilled juggler and “Windows of Opportunity” was his one chance to show off his hidden talent on screen.
A Fan Favorite Episode
The time loops culminate with O’Neill leaving Stargate SG-1, and immediately kissing Carter (Amanda Tapping), the memory of which he carries with him once they finally solve the puzzle behind the loops. It’s a fun moment in an episode filled with them, so it’s no surprise that the talented writing team of Paul Mullie and Joseph Mallozzi would go on to write the beloved episodes “Wormhole X-Treme” and “200.” In a quick moment of smart storytelling, they even included a line at the end about how long the Tok’ra had tried to get ahold fo them, three months, which means with some quick back of the napkin math, if each loop was 10 hours, and they spent three months trapped, O’Neill and Teal’c looped a total of 216 loops (90 days time 24 hours is 2,160 hours, divided by 10).
“Windows of Opportunity” sticks out among all the other episodes in the entire franchise, as thanks to the efficient method of filming the time loop it came in under the required run time, requiring Anderson and Judge to fill in the time with improvised scenes. In doing so, amazingly, this is the only episode of Stargate SG-1 in which every scene that was filmed made it to air, nothing was left on the cutting room floor. The end result is an all-time comedic episode that still holds up today and a testament to how lucky everyone was that Ricard Dean Anderson didn’t end up breaking the most expensive prop on the set.
