When “Stargate” debuted in 1994, it was a modest hit. Roland Emmerich’s film made $196 million on a $55 million budget, turning a decent enough profit and establishing what would become a surprisingly long-running franchise. That franchise would not play out on the big screen, however. Instead “Stargate” spawned a slew of TV shows, which focused on Stargate command sending out various crews to explore forgotten and mysterious corners of the universe using the titular portals.
The first, best-known, and longest-running of these series was “Stargate SG-1,” which tapped MacGuyver himself, Richard Dean Anderson, to play Special Operations Colonel Jack O’Neil — the role played by Kurt Russell in Emmerich’s movie. Show creators Brad Wright and Jonathan Glassner also brought in Amanda Tapping to play the United States Air Force captain Samantha Carter — a member of O’Neil’s crew tasked with exploring the universe and fending off assorted alien threats.
The Sci-fi channel, now “SyFy,” canceled “Stargate SG-1” after season 10, but throughout the series, it’s implied that Jack and Samantha share a personal history that’s never fully explored. Samantha finds herself the object of several of her coworker’s affections throughout the ten seasons, but her relationship with Jack remains mysterious. As producer Joseph Mallozzi explained in a 2008 blog post, “The Sam/Jack relationship was fraught with complications, given that he was her commanding officer. Pursuing any sort of relationship would have been inappropriate for both and would only have really been possible late in the series after Jack’s retirement”. The producer went on to explain that Jack and Samantha finally getting together “was never made canon because, quite frankly, it wasn’t my call,” and that the writers actually attempted as much in season 4 but this section “ended up on the cutting room floor when the episode ran long.”
Now, show co-creator Brad Wright has confirmed that Jack and Samantha’s relationship was almost made canon much earlier than season four of “Stargate SG-1.”
Cut dialogue from the SG-1 pilot suggested a history for Sam and Jack
“Stargate SG-1” never quite made Jack O’Neil and Samantha Carter’s romantic involvement official, but there were hints throughout the show that there was a history between the two. In the season four episode “Divide and Conquer,” for instance, Jack admits during a lie detector test that he cares about Samantha “a lot more than [he’s] supposed to.” But the writers never included anything beyond these kinds of oblique references to shared feelings between the two.
In 2022, however, a full 15 years after “SG-1” went off the air, series co-creator Brad Wright took part in a Reddit Q&A, where he was asked about Jack and Samantha’s relationship. Richard Dean Anderson decided to step back from the series before season 8 to spend more time with his daughter, which meant that Jack O’Neil featured much less in successive episodes. With this in mind, one user asked Wright, if he thought that “Sam and Jack got together in ‘SG1’ after season 8,” to which the showrunner replied, “I’ll say this: There’s a line in my unproduced pilot from O’Neill to Carter: ‘I still have your toothbrush. I’ve only used it once.'”
It seems then, that had this line of dialogue been included in the “SG-1” pilot, viewers would have been a lot clearer on the nature of Jack and Sam’s relationship throughout the series. That said, it’s almost better to leave it as somewhat of a mystery, making the question of how the pair really feel about each other a feature of the series in and of itself.