200 (Stargate SG-1) - Cultural References

Cultural References

Most of the episode is devoted to references and allusions to other works, as well as the show itself. The title sequence is deliberately shorter than most other episodes, poking fun at shows like Lost as well as the Sci-Fi Channel itself, which had shortened SG-1's Season 9 opening but changed it back after fans demanded it. When Martin learns that his main actor has backed out of the movie, the SG-1 team offers various suggestions about how to replace him or work around the lack of the actor, referencing Richard Dean Anderson's lack of appearances in the sixth season of Stargate SG-1. Anderson himself also pokes fun at the ending of the eighth season episode "Moebius", which was intended to be the series finale before the ninth season was announced. The final scene of "200", which features interviews with the Wormhole X-Treme cast, was added as an afterthought, and contains comments from the real cast which were used out of context as an inside joke.

The episode also rips on other science fiction shows. Early in the episode, Dr. Jackson asks who would make a movie out of a series that only lasted three episodes, to which Teal'c replies that it had strong DVD sales. This is a reference to the series Firefly, which Fox executives decided to cancel after airing only three episodes (11 total were aired, 14 were filmed), but whose high DVD sales allowed the creation of the feature film Serenity. One sequence is a parody of the original Star Trek series, with SG-1 standing in for the crew of the Enterprise. Brad Wright, the co-creator of the series, fills in as the engineer Montgomery Scott. The episode also takes the series Farscape to task, including its habit of inventing swear words. The Farscape sequence itself is an in-joke as actors Ben Browder and Claudia Black both starred in the earlier series (and indeed Black reprises her original role of Aeryn Sun, though Browder appears as another character, Stark, with Michael Shanks portraying Browder's old character, John Crichton). Several other shows and movies are parodied, including telling the story of the The Wizard of Oz with the SG-1 team – the writers based the scene on a fan painting they had hanging in their office. Other elements make fun of 24's "ticking clock of jeopardy", and an entire sequence with all the characters played by marionettes, in the style of Thunderbirds and Team America: World Police.