[geoschmo]

The problem is that Stargate wasn't supposed to have a season 8. They had long planned, and even partially wrote the last great story arc that was going to put the exclamation point on the end of the series and launch the Atlantis series. They didn't orignally intend to run them in parallel. Sci-fi threw enough money at them though to stick around for one more season so a lot of stuff had to be rewritten in a hurry to stretch things out. I think it shows a bit in the quality, but it's still a lot more watchable then most anything else on tv.

I think the last few episodes are going to be really awesome though. Once they can get back to the final showdown with the Ga'ould that they intended for the end of season 7.