Stargate: The Ark of Truth is the first of two direct-to-video sequels to SG-1. This one picks up after the SG-1 series finale and concludes the Ori arc and throws in a number of other callbacks along the way.

Lt. Colonel Cameron Mitchell: It's kind of weird not having a big bad guy to fight anymore.

Lt. Colonel Samantha Carter: Yeah, that’s how we felt when we defeated the Goa’uld. And The Replicators. The first time…

Lt. Colonel Cameron Mitchell: Well Jackson and Vala took care of that.

Vala Mal Doran: That whole Ori thing was not our fault!

Dr. Daniel Jackson: Just take the blame. You get used to it.

On one hand, having more Stargate SG-1 is wonderful. If this were an episode (or even the core of a season), this would be a solid addition. It deals with the fallout of SG-1’s attempted genocide (because even if they’re evil, it’s still genocide) of the Ori by introduction of a new Ancient artifact we’d never heard of (par for the course) which brainwipes people to convince them of the ‘Truth’ (whatever that means). While it’s a decent enough idea for wrapping up the problem of an entire galaxy full of people hell bent on holy war it’s… questionable to say the least. And other than a few bare comments, they don’t really get into it.

On top of that, it’s weak as a movie. It’s already only 90 minutes along, and a rather excessive part of that runtime is establishing shots of mountains and lakes, along with a minutes long scene of Teal’c walking–resolutely, but slowly–across the landscape.

Back on a positive* note, they really do go out of the way to bring back everything they can. In this case the replicators. Not only that, but replicator zombies. It’s a wonderfully terrifying idea that takes something already scary enough and turns it up to 11. It only sort of fits in the world of SG-1, but it would have been great in Stargate: Universe. So it goes.

Overall, it’s Stargate and I do love Stargate. But Unending was an absolutely stellar ending. Really, they could just have left it there.

So it goes.