Amanda Tapping ('Samantha Carter') says, "This is how they controlled it. It took us 15 years and three supercomputers to MacGyver a system for the gate on Earth." Richard Dean Anderson played the eponymous lead in MacGyver (1985). According to one account, Tapping ad-libbed the MacGyver reference while reading for the part of Carter, and that was what clinched the role for her.
Vaitiare Hirshon (Sha're), as Vaitiare Bandera, agreed to be fully nude for the filming of her nude scene even though she was told they would only show her topless. Producers later asked her to sign a release allowing them to include her full nudity, which she didn't realize was in frame. She agreed but only after they shortened the length of her full nude shot.
Early in the story there is an exterior establishing shot of a guarded road leading to a tunnel entrance for the NORAD station at Cheyenne Mountain Complex. That footage really is of the main entrance to the under-the-mountain installation.
Features Vaitiare Hirshon's (as Vaitiare Bandera) first on-screen nudity. She said in an interview she turned down previous leading roles in films like The Bounty (1984) with Mel Gibson when she was 18 because nudity always made her nervous. With this pilot, however, she felt nudity, even full frontal, was justifiable since she really wanted the role after unsuccessfully auditioning for it in Stargate (1994).
Daniel Jackson's wife's name in the film is pronounced Sha'uri, but in the series, it was changed to Sha're. The change was made because Michael Shanks (Daniel Jackson) couldn't pronounce it correctly (as stated in DVD commentaries).