History Film / StargateContinuum

* SpannerInTheworks: Ba'al had no way of anticipating that SG-1 wouldn't be erased from history (as it was sheer dumb luck that they were inside an active wormhole when the changes to the timeline occurred).

-->'''Daniel:''' (''three hours into the ceremony'') I think we're getting to the end.\\
'''O'Neill:''' How can you tell?\\
'''Daniel:''' Well, the crimes they're listing are starting to sound familiar.

* OhCrap: Ba'al gets a fairly spectacular one at the end [[spoiler:when he steps through the Stargate and sees his dead Jaffa and Mitchell pointing a gun at him.]]

Unlike ''Film/StargateTheArkOfTruth'', which acted as the [[TheResolutionWillNotBeTelevised "true" series finale]], ''Continuum'' is a standalone story. As SG-1 and General O'Neill attend the execution of the System Lord Ba'al (or so they think), the real Ba'al goes back in time to destroy Earth's Stargate as it is transported by sea to the United States -- coincidentally by Cameron Mitchell's [[IdenticalGrandson Identical Grandfather]]. While the Stargate is saved, everyone aboard the ship is killed, resulting in it being stranded in the Arctic and the Stargate lost. As the Tok'ra city vanishes around them, SG-1 rush for the Stargate to find a different Earth -- one where the Stargate program was never launched and Earth is now defenseless against Ba'al, who used his knowledge from time travel to defeat the other System Lords.

** DownplayedTrope in alternate Teal'c case. While a group of Tau'ri sharing personal information about him is not enough to immediately convince him on its own, he agrees to help them when they tell him that the Jaffa are free in the original timeline. At the very least, it made their story more credible, and temporal travel isn't as outlandish to an alien culture as it would be to a human from planet Earth.

*** Landry believes Mitchell even without the recitation. He has, however, presumably been shown several days worth of interviews of each of them where they've been trying to slam the TrustPassword into the face of everyone they come into contact with.
** DownplayedTrope in alternate Teal'c case. While a group of Tau'ri sharing personal information about him is not enough to immediately convince him on its own, he agrees to help them when they tell him that the Jaffa are free in the original timeline.

* TheSlowPath: Ba'al and Cam both arrive years before the main continuity. Cam presumably does not survive the wait.
** Cam also has to wait out a whole ten years [[spoiler: to kill Ba'al because of the treachery of Qetesh interrupting the favorable time travel window]].

* ReforgedIntoAMinion: Before his execution, Baal notes that he regrets that Teal'c never became his [[TheDragon First Prime]]. In the altered timeline, he persuaded Teal'c into serving him instead of Apophis before he became the latter's First Prime, with the promise of a Free Jaffa nation within his empire.

* WeHaveReserves: When Qetesh arrives at Ba'al's TimeMachine with her flagship, she starts portal spamming Jafa mooks one wave after the other. While SG-1 and the alternate Teal'c manage to hold them off for a bit, they are eventually overrun.

** DownplayedTrope in alternate Teal'c case. While a group of Tau'ri sharing personal information about him is not enough to immediately convince him on its own, but he agrees to help them when they tell him that the Jaffa are free in the original timeline.

* TrustPassword: Subverted twice:
** O'Neill refuses to buy it, partly because what Daniel tries to use as proof -- O'Neill's son, Charlie, shooting himself -- didn't happen in the alternate timeline.
** Landry believes Mitchell even without the recitation. He has, however, presumably been shown several days worth of interviews of each of them where they've been trying to slam the TrustPassword into the face of everyone they come into contact with.

* StockFootageFailure: Even though there are a lot of CGI scenes including an aerial battle, some of the scenes involving the [=F15's=] are comprised of stock footage that obviously doesn't match. Even though the dialogue suggests the planes are loaded with minimal weapons and with multiple fuel tanks, the stock footage scenes show them with various loadouts ranging from minimal weapons but no fuel tanks, to nothing at all. The stock footage scenes are also varied in terms of quality, some look particularly low resolution or zoomed in.

* ShaggyDogStory: The movie is one of these from Ba'al's point of view. After the fall of the Goa'uld in the normal timeline he has learned from their mistakes as a species. He goes back in time and spends decades uniting the normally feuding Goa'uld into the most powerful empire seen in the franchise's history. [[spoiler:Then Goa'uld ChronicBackstabbingDisorder comes into play and everything falls apart.]]
** The same for the original Ba'al. He puts into action an ambitious plan that involves creating a system to monitor thousands of planetary systems and a computer network to determine [[spoiler:where in time each specific solar flare on which specific planet will send someone who walks through, along with a plan to then dominate all the System Lords in the past, puts his plan into action after the final clone is killed, finds out it has worked perfectly. He is then immediately shot in the head by Mitchell after he steps out of the gate in 1939 to begin the 2nd part of the plan.]]

* ForWantOfANail: Ba'al causes this intentionally, with plenty of resulting changes. The Stargate was lost when the ship carrying it across the ocean to America was lost with all hands on board. One effect of one of those people dying was made explicit. The captain was Mitchell's IdenticalGrandfather, and he [[GrandfatherParadox hadn't had kids yet]]. Unusually, some of it was quite positive--for instance, Jack O'Neill's son, dead in the original timeline, was doing just fine. The interesting thing here is that Jack's son died in a tragic accident which bore no relation to the Stargate program at ''all.'' So the butterfly effect [[FridgeBrilliance must have been at work in really subtle and far-reaching ways]]...
** Zigzagged with the changes to Teal'c's personal history. He's still close friends with Bra'tac and from Chulak. He's also implied to have still served Apophis for a time (based on the alternate Apophis' angry declaration of 'Shol'va'!) before Ba'al poached him. It's also subtly implied his father was still killed by Cronus in this timeline (based on his look of barely-concealed distaste during Ba'al's 'conference call' with Cronus). The downplayed changes to his timeline are justified, as most of Teal'c's formative moments would've preceded Ba'al's timeline divergence.

* CommutingOnABus: Landry, Mitchell, and Vala following the events of the film and in the context of the post-''SG-1'' franchise. While Landry will be mentioned several times on ''Atlantis'' (and Vala will also get a mention), this remains the final on-screen appearances of all three characters.

** Zigzagged with the changes to Teal'c's personal history. He's still close friends with Bra'tac and from Chulak. He's also implied to have still served Apophis for a time (based on the alternate Apophis' angry declaration of 'Shol'va'!) before Ba'al poached him. It's also subtly implied his father was still killed by Cronus in this timeline (based on his look of barely-concealed distaste during Ba'al's 'conference call' with Cronus).

** Zigzagged with the changes to Teal'c's timelines. He's still close friends from Bra'tac and from Chulak. He's also implied to have still served Apophis for a time (based on the alternate Apophis' angry declaration of 'Shol'va'!) before Ba'al poached him. It's also subtly implied his father was still killed by Cronus in this timeline (based on his look of barely-concealed distaste during Ba'al's 'conference call' with Cronus).

* ArtEvolution: Meta example. After having switched over to HD video beginning with Season Eight, ''SG-1'' returned to shooting on 35 mm film for ''Ark of Truth'' and ''Continuum'' (both because of the larger budgets and to play up the cinematic aspect of the Direc-to-Video Movies).

** EndOfAnEra As of 2022, ''Continuum'' remains the very last ''Stargate'' project to be shot on celluloid.

* StockFootage: According to the DVD Commentary, the footage of the alternate President Hayes addressing the nation in the Oval Office was actually originally shot for "Lost City". It was not used in that episode's final cut, but finally reused here.

* ImmediateSequel: ''Continuum'' was originally initially intended to be one to ''The Ark of Truth'' and there was a scene in the original cut's ending serving as a lead-in. However, it was ultimately removed from the final cut.