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The director's cut has restored some of the cut scenes back into the movie. On first viewing, I found the new additions facinating. But that could have just been because I was seeing them for the first time. On a later viewing, I found that the cut scenes didn't really add anything to the story, and ended up bogging down the movie—probably because the remains that we're shown in some of them is visually confusing and unclear. And that's despite their apparent intention of increasing the tension!

On my last viewing, I was struck by how the movie is a bridge between the themes Roland Emmerich was exploring in Universal Soldier and Independence Day. On the one hand, you have the Sarcophagus (the ultimate expression of technology being used to reanimate the (recently) dead), and on the other hand, there is the overconfident alien(s) engendering to exploit the Earth—or at least the humans of the Earth—for resources.

Of the three films, 'Universal Soldier' had the better bad guy (arguably what makes or breaks these kinds of films). That's not to say that Jaye Davidson's Ra was bad or badly portrayed. He was the right character for SG-1, just not for the movie. Nevertheless, I did like how Ra was never portrayed as being in a rush, and how he appeared to be somewhat bemused by the reappearance of Earthlings in his domain, and the effects of that. I also feel that Stargate handled the defeat of the aliens much better than Independence Day did—what with having Ra's overconfidence and assumptions play as much a role in his defeat as the luck, courage, and resourcefulness of the Earthlings and their newfound allies.

Ultimately, if you've seen the theatrical version of the movie, you don't have to rush out to find the director's cut (you should be trying to find the director's cut of Alien!) If you're a Stargate fan, it may be worthwhile to see it—if only for the alternative take on the Stargate whirlpool damage (or lack thereof) a buried Stargate causes in the ground.

Jackson and SG-1 have been searching for the mythical Ark of Truth amid the ruins on the planet Dakara (season 10's Counterstrike), the first landing place of the Alterans when they arrived in the Milky Way Galaxy. Jackson locates a chest bearing inscriptions in an Ancient dialect older than any he's seen before. Before they can attempt to open it, Mitchell contacts them: they are under fire. Ori troops, commanded by Vala's husband Tomin (season 10's Line in the Sand), soon have SG-1 cornered. Tomin promises to spare them if they surrender. The Prior from Ver Eger (season 9's Origin) joins the Ori troops. He has Tomin blast the chest open. Only a crumbling papyrus lies within. The Prior orders SG-1 killed, but Tomin protests. When the Prior is unable to use his special abilities, he becomes enraged and grabs for Tomin's staff weapon. In the ensuing scuffle, Mitchell kills the Prior. When Tomin questions how it is possible, SG-1 reveals a concealed Prior inhibitor. The Ori troops surrender and are taken back to SGC. Mitchell accompanies Maj. Gen. Landry to his office, relaying Tomin's fear that a coordinated attack on the Earth may be imminent. Waiting there is James Marrick, the new IOA representative assigned to SGC. Marrick insists on interrogating Tomin, despite him having just been debriefed by SG-1. Tomin grapples with the possibility that the ascended Ori themselves were destroyed by Merlin's weapon (season 10's The Shroud), leaving only their followers to fight a meaningless war in their name. Jackson confides that he has been having visions of an exploding mountain and the Ark of Truth—an Ancient device that can make people believe the truth about the Ori—which SG-1 has been searching for. Brainwashing the Priors and the human followers of the Ori may be the only way to stop their brutal, bloody crusade across the Milky Way Galaxy. Tomin tells him that the Ori Book of Origin contains a story similar to Jackson's visions: Ortus Malum, the birthplace of all evil, is a mountain which erupted. Tomin agrees to help SG-1 search for the Ark by contacting the anti-Ori underground. Mitchell is given command of the Odyssey on a special mission into the Ori's home galaxy to find the ark. Should that fail, they will attempt to destroy the supergate (season 9's Camelot) with strategically placed nuclear weapons. Marrick will accompany them and oversee the operation. Arriving in the Ori galaxy, Tomin quickly locates Hertis, head of the resistance. He tells them that Ortus Malum borders the plains of Celestis on the Ori home world. The site has been searched many times by the Priors and those seeking proof to refute them. Jackson suspects that the Ark may still be safely hidden there. Once in cloaked orbit around Celestis, SG-1 and Tomin beam down to search for the Ark. Marrick immediately barricades himself in the Odyssey's Asgard computer core room (season 10's Unending). By the time Mitchell is alerted, Marrick has replaced a command crystal in the core with one of his own. While the others continue their search, Carter and Mitchell return to the ship. They have to stop Marrick immediately, as the activated Asgard computer will alert the Ori warships to their presence. Gaining access to the computer room, they discover that Marrick has synthesized a Replicator!

Stargate: The Ark of Truth is Stargate SG-1 on a big budget, and it looks grandiose; from the sets to the special effects. The most subtle but striking difference, however, is the lighting. The fill light that brightly lit shots in the TV series is toned down, and places that ought to be bathed in deep shadow are, which changes the tone and nature of certain familiar settings. One of the greatest things in this film is that it brings back so many familiar guest characters from the show. Not only is there Tim Guinee as Tomin and the always wonderful Morena Baccarin as Adria, there are also many, many others, such as Doug Abrahams's one-eyed Prior. Hands down the best scene in the film is Teal'c's conversation with Tomin, as it simultaneously addresses Tomin's past and future, as well as recalling the very first episode of Stargate SG-1 and the continuing burden that Teal'c bares. It is a shame that the rest of the film doesn't allow for characters such as Jackson and the Priors, or Vala and Adria a chance to go into similar polemics to address the fundamental issues in the Ori conflict. Instead, we get a kind of dues ex machina, where everything is cleared up by opening a magic box. It's a shame that too much time was spent on the Replicator subplot, as it would have been much more rewarding—albeit a lot less actiony—to see Tomin returning to his people, and having to deal with the regular citizens who still have retain their hard-line views as they weren't 'fixed' by the magic box.

The biggest complaints about the film is: why bring back the Replicators? While Marrick's justification sounds good on the surface, it doesn't hold up. What is the Ori technology based on? Are the Replicators even interested in it? Their subplot seems to be just an excuse to put the protagonists in peril and show them firing a bunch of guns, without bringing them down to the Ori's level and having them have to shoot and kill innocent zealous Ori followers. While it is reminiscent of some of the subplots in the show—SG-1 is challenged not only by external threats such as the Goa'uld, but also internal threats such as politicians and the NID—the Replicator subplot is wholly unnecessary and gets in the way of the main point of the film: resolving the Ori threat. The final reveal of the Replicator's latest form is also a bit too on-the-nose for the apparent original idea behind the Replicators. While it is a perfectly acceptable source, the initial fun of the Replicators is that the writers took the concept in new and unique directions, and presented the Replicators in a form that is both a thought provoking visual metaphor and ugh inducing.

The one thing that Stargate: The Ark of Truth excels at is depicting the responsibilities that come with being put in command. It's a thought-provoking illustration that runs counter to the romanticized depiction of being in the captain's chair that often appears in other shows, such as Star Trek. In addition to the ensuing character drama, the writers also do a great job of mining it for humour. All-in-all, Stargate: The Ark of Truth provides a conclusion to the Ori invasion arc, so on that level it is more than worthwhile.

SG-1 and Brigadier General Jack O'Neill travel to the Tok'ra homeworld to attend a symbiote extraction ceremony for Baal, the last of the Goa'uld System Lords. When Baal is brought forth, he stops in front of SG-1 and gloats that he is merely the last clone and that the real Baal has a fail-safe plan in the works. Unbeknownst to everyone, the real Baal and a few Jaffa have travelled back in time through the stargate to 1939. They travel to Earth and arrive on the Achilles, the ship that carried the stargate from Egypt to the United States, and immediately set about securing the ship and massacring its crew. They set a bomb on the ship before departing through the stargate. The captain of the Achilles lives long enough to drop the bomb overboard and keep the ship from being destroyed. In the present, people and objects start disappearing, including Vala (Claudia Black) and Teal'c (Christopher Judge). In the confusion, the Baal clone escapes, grabs the extractor, and kills O'Neill with it. Carter (Amanda Tapping), Jackson (Michael Shanks), and Mitchell (Ben Browder) race to the stargate as the skyline of the Tok'ra homeworld vanishes. They are surprised when they emerge inside a dark room, covered in ice and frost. Jackson soon finds life-jackets which indicate that they are in the cargo hold of the Achilles. The ship is now frozen in the ice in the Arctic. Mitchell eventually manages to blow a hole in the ice using C-4. SG-1 manages to escape from the ship just before it sinks into the ocean. Mitchell and Carter speculate that Baal has changed the past in order to create an alternate timeline where the Stargate Program never happened. SG-1 is soon rescued by a team led by "Colonel" O'Neill, who takes them to a base in Alaska to be debriefed. After five days of intense interrogation, they get frustrated and demand a halt to the questioning. The team is brought to meet Gen. Landry, who seems to believe them. They propose changing the timeline back to how it is supposed to be, but Landry promptly refuses their request. From Alaska, the team is separated and provided new identities, as in this timeline Jackson is still trying to convince people about his theories on the pyramids, Carter died in a space shuttle accident, and Mitchell does not exist at all because his grandfather was the Achilles's captain. Despite their warnings on the impending Goa'uld threat, the three are then forced by the authorities to lead separate lives, with no contact allowed between them. One year later, Carter looks up and sees a Goa'uld Al'kesh medium transport flying overhead...

This is Stargate SG-1 on a big budget, and it shows. This film feels much more cinematic in scale, and not merely like a theatrical-length TV episode like 2008's The Ark of Truth does. The main reasons are the return of multitudes of former cast members, the epic scale of the film—both in visual effects as well as filming locations—and the ambitious directing. The film opens with a long take that sees the camera navigate from the gate room, out the left corridor and then into the control room, out the back of that room past the elevator, meeting up with SG-1 at a juncture, and follow them back into the gate room from the right side. It is something that we never got to see on the TV show, and the take is framed so well that we get the sense that the set is much more expansive than it actually is. Another thing that makes Continuum all the more cinematic is that it depicts the protagonists experiencing life-changing trauma on a scale that would be impossible in the TV series. I'm referring here to Jackson's leg being amputated, and the subsequent use of visual effects to remove it in a few key shots, in addition to Shanks's believable performance of a person living with a prosthetic limb. And then there's an actual Los Angeles class submarine that is used not only for a backdrop, but also as a key filming location!

While some of the returning guest stars are literally blink-and-you-miss-it, such as Colin Cunningham (Major Davis) exiting the elevator in the epic opening take, the majority of them get substantially more screen time. The most loaded sequence is when Baal addresses the Goa'uld System Lords. We get not only Baal (Cliff Simon) and his partner Qetesh (Claudia Black), but also Camulus (Steve Bacic), Nirrti (Jacqueline Samuda), Cronus (Ron Halder), and Yu (Vince Crestejo). This is further enhanced when Teal'c brings in Apophis, played by the always engaging Peter Williams! In addition, Continuum brings back not only William DeVane (President Henry Hayes) and Richard Dean Anderson (Jack O'Neill)—who was sorely missed in The Ark of Truth—but also the great Don S. Davis (George Hammond). I've included the names of the actors to highlight that Continuum not only has the characters, but the original actors that played them. The exception is Ra in the Goa'uld System Lords scene, who, if memory serves, was never depicted without a mask covering his face in the TV series.

Perhaps the only drawback to Continuum is that we don't see the heroes giving Baal his just desserts. Yes, Baal is eliminated—twice no less—in at least one rather gruesome way, but it isn't as satisfying as it would have been if it was by SG-1's hands. Nevertheless, the film does a great job of concluding the 'Baal's clones' subplot from seasons 9 and 10, as well as reminding us of just how much fun the show has been, especially in the earlier seasons when the main antagonists were the moustache-twirling, villainous Goa'uld. That's not to say that the Ori or even the Wraith are less compelling antagonists, it's just that the Goa'uld are more fun as the villains you love to hate. Due to that, Continuum's greatest achievement is that it makes us want to go back and start rewatching the series from the very beginning. A must see!