The Rewatch Podcast Finally Has a Name — and a Launch Date: 'A Full Circle,' October 17

23 days ago by Eli Gatewood 4 min read

---

Back in July, Michael Shanks told us he was building a Stargate podcast out of pure post-cancellation spite. Now it has a name, chosen from over 150 fan submissions, a hard launch date, and a format that's a little different than the word 'rewatch' implies.

Michael Shanks and David Read's SG-1 podcast has been a known quantity since July — hosted by Daniel Jackson himself, produced by the guy behind Dial the Gate, born directly out of Amazon MGM's silence on the cancelled revival. What it didn't have was a name. As of this week, it does: A Full Circle, and it's landing October 17.

Voted On, Not Picked

Shanks and Read didn't just workshop a title internally — they crowdsourced it, running through more than 150 fan submissions before settling on "A Full Circle." The reference is doing double duty: it's a nod to "Full Circle," the season 6 finale of Stargate SG-1, and it's also just an honest description of what the show is trying to do — work all the way back through a franchise Shanks has spent a decade being associated with, starting from the beginning.

That's a small detail, but it's the kind of thing that tells you who this project is actually for. A studio picks a podcast name in a marketing meeting. A fandom picks one by committee vote on Patreon. Given that this whole podcast exists because Amazon wouldn't let fans have new Stargate content, letting the fans name it feels less like a gimmick and more like the entire point.

Not Quite a Rewatch

Here's the correction worth making to my own July framing: I called this an "SG-1 rewatch podcast," and that's close but not exactly right. The format Shanks and Read have settled on is closer to an episode debrief — plot, production stories, cast and crew anecdotes — rather than a strict beat-by-beat rewatch commentary. They're bringing in guests from the show's actual cast and crew where they can get them, which tracks with everything else Shanks has said about wanting this to be a genuine archive project, not just two guys reminiscing into a microphone.

The plan is still the same shape it was in July: start with SG-1, and if the format finds an audience, expand into Atlantis and Universe. Given that all three shows were simultaneously topping MGM+'s charts a couple weeks ago, "if it finds an audience" feels like less of an if than it might have back in July.

The Actual Date

Mark it down: October 17, 7 PM Paris time (early afternoon for anyone in North America), kicking off with a launch special — Read interviewing Shanks — before the real work starts with "Children of the Gods," the pilot. Patreon backers get episodes three days early; everyone else gets it free on YouTube after that.

Small thing, but worth saying plainly: nothing about this has happened yet. It's still four weeks out. I'm flagging that because "premiered in October" is exactly the kind of sloppy tense slip that turns an announcement into a phantom event if you're not careful, and this franchise has had enough phantom good news this year already.

Why This Keeps Mattering

I've said some version of this every time this podcast comes up, and I'll say it again because it's still true: nothing about "A Full Circle" forces Amazon's hand on the cancelled revival. It's not leverage, it's not a bargaining chip, it's not going to show up in a boardroom deck. What it is is proof that the appetite this franchise supposedly lacks — the "broad appeal beyond the dedicated fanbase" Amazon said wasn't there — is dedicated enough to vote on a podcast name, subscribe on Patreon, and show up October 17 for a rewatch of a twenty-nine-year-old pilot episode. That's not nothing. Chevron's still not locked on the Amazon front. But four weeks from now, there's a new, real, scheduled reason for this fandom to gather around a Stargate again.