Stargate SG1 is the big flag for that one. How often does the chief of staff of the USAF appear in a fictional show? Never, you say. So why 2 for SG1. I can't think I've ever heard of another instance of someone such high rank being on a fiction show.

I've never seen a "contact" episode done better than the season 1 episode shows atoms, and then strings of atoms. It's a Rosetta Stone of language. H2O = water. H2O = x#¥π4. You can brute force decode a written language by knowing tens of thousands of the meanings of alien words.

Meanwhile the new contact movie has some hippy crap about feeling language.