I don’t really get the whole gods-as-aliens set-up they have on Stargate SG-1. Oh, I understand it in the Arthur C. Clarke “any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic” way – a concept I think I really started to absorb watching Star Trek’s “Who Mourns for Adonais?” (the Greek gods were really just troublemaking aliens) as a 10 year-old, and later reading the works of Erich von Daniken (aliens built the pyramids, Stonehenge, etc.) at age 12. What I don’t get is why they have the evil Goa’uld posing as gods from almost every polytheistic religion—Greek, Hindu, Egyptian, Shinto, Babylonian—and then they have the only good guys posing as those wacky folks from Asgard.

The Norse pantheon is just as fucked up as any other, full of petty jealousy, internecine rivalry, senseless violence and somewhat disgusting origin stories. The Æsir, who make their home in Asgard, are just as mean and spiteful and all-around human as their less revered counterparts, and yet SG-1 held them up as some kind of pinnacle of all the virtues, a kind of noble cadre of good-doers and benign overseers. The alien race who assumed their identities was, for several seasons at least, the ultimate in extra-galactic allies, a by-word for all that was decent and good in an uncertain universe.

True, the Asgard eventually showed themselves to have feet of genetically-engineered clay, but for a while there, Thor and Heimdall and Kvasir and the rest were almost as revered at Stargate Command as they were in 10th Century Denmark.

Loki, Norse trickster god and renegade Asgard scientist, was the first of that Roswellian gray breed to prove himself unworthy of worship. And now, in Tim Waggoner’s Valhalla, we have another ends-justify-the-means enthusiast: Odin.

SG-1 encounter this long-exiled Father of the Gods on a planet they soon dub Valhalla, whereon two groups of warriors whom Daniel quickly identify as Vikings are waging an endless, eternal war. Odin snagged their consciousnesses as they lay dying after a battle and has forced them to play at least one bloody show daily in the centuries since. You see, he is trying to solve the problem of his race’s slow genetic degradation by developing for them the ultimate in virtual reality immortality: it’s like Rekall Inc. meets the Game Keeper meets the holodeck, and he just needs a few minor tweaks to perfect it.

But, of course, just as our heroes arrive, all of his systems start failing and it is up to SG-1 and Jonas to save his project from complete disaster. Isn’t that always the way? SG-1 are like Jessica Fletcher: wherever they go, disaster strikes, and it is up to them to fix things, and in the nick of time, too. Just as Jessica could well be the world’s greatest ever serial killer, there must be some suspicion that SG-1 occasionally suffer from a little Munchausen’s by proxy.

But, oh, yeah. Jonas. Did I not mention him? Yep, the erstwhile alien team member is back (according to the book’s cover, you could be forgiven for thinking this story is set in the Daniel-less void of Season 6). He needs Sam’s help with his work building an orbital defense system for his home of Kelowna; Sam later decides she needs his help with the Odin problem. So O’Neill and Teal’c (not, as the blurb would have you think, O’Neill and Carter; this cover is just a big fat liar) go to Langara, where the B plot has been merrily ticking along—Replicators, the Tok’ra, Jonas’s love life and other tediums abound—and end up saving that world before bringing Jonas back through the Stargate to save another. Not a bad day’s work.

This book, however, is not even a good hour’s read.

There’s nothing really very wrong with it. It’s certainly not as bad as the ridiculous and confusing SG-1: Roswell (#9, by Sonny Whitelaw and Jennifer Fallon), or the painful Stargate Atlantis effort, Nightfall (#10, by James Swallow), in which you had to wonder if Swallow had actually ever seen the show. The writing’s okay, the awareness of established SG-1 lore is okay, the arcane mythological knowledge is okay, it’s all just… okay. There are moments of the funny (Waggoner does Jack O’Neill pretty well), and other moments of decent enough action (the opening chapter particularly so), but by and large, this is one of those stories that was a real struggle to a) get into b) get through and c) get the point of.

The licensed fan fiction that is the media tie-in novel is supposed to add something to our experience of a show; it’s supposed to evoke for us the joyous feeling of a return to home. And particularly when the show has ended, the tie-in novel becomes a fan’s only authorized solace, a place where new adventures of old friends can be enjoyed; the kinds of adventures perhaps impossible in live action, given the prohibitive production costs (which probably got the show canceled in the first place).

Tim Waggoner’s Valhalla, however, doesn’t fulfill that mission. The characters are there, the Stargate is there, even the very-costly-to-produce factor is there (400 Viking warrior extras would probably be expensive, as would a vanishing chick on a flying horse), but it doesn’t really feel like a return to SG-1.

Or… wait. Perhaps it does. But it’s a return to Season 6, Jonas-y SG-1, and while the Kelownan scientist is a fine fellow, he lacks that indefinable something that makes the other SG-1 members so compelling. Waggoner somehow manages to make Jonas even less captivating in this, the only tie-in novel to feature him, and as a large part of this tale is Jonas-based—including an appearance by the equally as non-captivating Tok’ra—it may be that my general disinterest in him, his homeworld and his troubles has caused me to evaluate the merits of this book unfairly. For all I know, hardcore Jonas-obsessed fans will actually love this book.

Um. If they should exist.

  -- Rachel Hyland