A veteran of the first exploratory team from the movie Stargate, Dr. Daniel Jackson is an anthropologist and linguist and an expert in ancient and current cultures; he speaks over 20 languages, including ancient Egyptian. He had originally been contracted by the military to decipher a mysterious hieroglyphic cartouche. His subsequent translation of it allowed the Earth's first discovered Stargate to be opened. As a member of SG-1, Dr. Jackson's humanistic approach was often in conflict with Colonel Jack O'Neill's militaristic style.

Some saw Dr. Jackson as a soft, brainy, clumsy scientist who carried a wide-eyed enthusiasm with him through every mission, but he earned the heartfelt trust and respect of O'Neill and all the others — never more so than after sacrificing his worldly existence to save millions of lives in Kelowna, a country on the planet designated P9Y-4C3. He ascended to a higher spiritual plane in place of death. Even before this, he had been considered like a deity to the people of Abydos, the planet on which he'd chosen to stay following that first SG mission. Later banished from Ascension, with no memory of the experience, he returned to human form and rejoined SG-1.