I have some questions about the new Stargate Universe on SyFy.

Cafe Society
1

SGU is my first foray into the Stargate series and I have a few questions that have probably been addressed in earlier incarnations of the program. I hope that some of the 'Dopers can help me with them. So far, I am enjoying this series, though I understand it is quite different than previous series. It reminds me of ST:VOY, which I know that many 'Dopers don’t like. Still, I think this series has some promise.

My questions:

[ol]
[li]When/Where was the first Stargate discovered?[/li][li]Do we know anything about how they work?[/li][li]What are these “chevrons” that people keep mentioning?[/li][li]What does it mean to “dial up Earth” or some other destination?[/li][li]How much power do the gates require? Was the Icarus base for some unusual experiments with the gates?[/li][li]Why was Icarus destroyed? Who did it? What was their gripe with the humans? Clearly, the base was fortified – why did they set up a base there if it needed such fortification?[/li][li]I get that they gated to Destiny by using the Icarus base’s superior power supply. However, why can’t they gate back to Earth? There seems to be a trail of gates behind them. Why can’t they just jump to a gate within range of Destiny, then jump to a gate in range of that gate, and so on, leapfrogging all the way home?[/li][li]How do the communication stones work?[/li][li]Were these made by the same “Ancients” that built the gates? Were they discovered around the same time?[/li][li]Does the headquarters (SG1?) have a crew that simply mans the stones much like switchboard operators?[/li][li]In the most recent episode very minor spoiler how did the stones know to put Chloe in the girl’s body, Eli in the skinny dude, and Col. Young in Col. Telford’s body? Do they somehow detect a user’s sex and rank? What if a female officer uses the stones while an enlisted man is minding the switchboard?[/li][li]Does the general public know about the gates, stones, etc.?[/li][/ol]

Other questions may occur to me as this discussion goes on. Thanks for your help.

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Stargate wiki

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Tau’ri, humans from Earth, rediscovered the Stargate in the early 90’s. It was left alone until one of the Baddies from the original series (SG-1) came back and that started the Pilot of that series.

[quote=“Drum_God, post:1, topic:517010”]

[li]Do we know anything about how they work?[/li][/Quote]
There’s some conflicting information but basically, “They create a stable wormhole and demolecularize you and send you to the destination.”

[quote=“Drum_God, post:1, topic:517010”]

[li]What are these “chevrons” that people keep mentioning?[/li][/Quote]
Chevrons are symbols, they denote part of a stargates “address.”

[quote=“Drum_God, post:1, topic:517010”]

[li]What does it mean to “dial up Earth” or some other destination?[/li][/Quote]
Put in that stargates “Address”

[quote=“Drum_God, post:1, topic:517010”]

[li]How much power do the gates require? Was the Icarus base for some unusual experiments with the gates?[/li][/Quote]
The gates normally have a self contained power supply in the DHD (Dial Home Device, so far not seen in Stargate Universe – Present in both Atlantis and SG-1, the Pegasus and Milky Way galaxies respectively).

More power is required to gate to a stargate outside of your own Galaxy (which is why it was necessary to use a ZPM, or Zero Point Module – a special power source – to dial Atlantis).

[quote=“Drum_God, post:1, topic:517010”]

[li]Why was Icarus destroyed? Who did it? What was their gripe with the humans? Clearly, the base was fortified – why did they set up a base there if it needed such fortification?[/li][/Quote]
Where isn’t a factor, with hyperdrive engines.

Who did it, so far from what we’ve seen on screen, the Lucian Alliance, they’re mentioned in Stargate SG-1 as a criminal organization. They have no gripe with humans, they are human.

Their gripe is with the Tau’ri, the Humans of Earth. Why? Because we’re technologically superior, morally superior, and we get in the way of their profits and drug dealing – think of the Lucian Alliance as a super powerful criminal & Drug cartel and the Tau’ri as the United States, since the US leads the Stargate Program.

[quote=“Drum_God, post:1, topic:517010”]

[li]I get that they gated to Destiny by using the Icarus base’s superior power supply. However, why can’t they gate back to Earth? There seems to be a trail of gates behind them. Why can’t they just jump to a gate within range of Destiny, then jump to a gate in range of that gate, and so on, leapfrogging all the way home?[/li][/Quote]
They’re in an entirely different galaxy, in a different part of the Universe. They lack sufficient power.

The Power required to gate from one galaxy to another is enormous. More than Tau’ri (or anyone, for that matter) are typically capable of generating.

[quote=“Drum_God, post:1, topic:517010”]

[li]How do the communication stones work?[/li][/Quote]
The same way Hyperspace works – FOR THE PLOT!

They replace you and the person your talking with’s personality. This was a technology discovered in the original series, it’s an ancient technology that we couldn’t get right the first few times.

[quote=“Drum_God, post:1, topic:517010”]

[li]Were these made by the same “Ancients” that built the gates? Were they discovered around the same time?[/li][/Quote]
They were made around the same time, but when they were discovered isn’t exactly specified – that I remember. Most of the ancient artifacts we find look like really old artifacts you’d find laying around earth. Ancients liked to build from stone, apparently. And they built to last.

[quote=“Drum_God, post:1, topic:517010”]

[li]Does the headquarters (SG1?) have a crew that simply mans the stones much like switchboard operators?[/li][/Quote]
They have someone standing by, probably at predetermined times, to make the jump. Headquarters is Stargate Command, based in Cheyanne mountain.

SG-1 is the Flagship Team. Stargate-team 1.

[quote=“Drum_God, post:1, topic:517010”]

[li]In the most recent episode very minor spoiler how did the stones know to put Chloe in the girl’s body, Eli in the skinny dude, and Col. Young in Col. Telford’s body? Do they somehow detect a user’s sex and rank? What if a female officer uses the stones while an enlisted man is minding the switchboard?[/li][/Quote]
It’s a TV show. Deal with it. :stuck_out_tongue:

[quote=“Drum_God, post:1, topic:517010”]

No they do not.

Anytime.

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The wiki has detailed answers, but I’ve been on a bit of a revived Stargate kick since SGU started, so I’ll take a direct whack at the questions.

In the 1920s in Egypt. This is covered in the Stargate movie, which is definitely worth watching if you’re interested in Stargate. Since the creators didn’t anticipate three successful TV shows based on it, there are some differences between it and the TV series that the TV series tries to patch up.

At the time of SGU, quite a lot by my understanding. I missed all of Stargate: Atlantis, the second series, but they’ve had in-show 15 years to study the gates.

It’s clearer on older-style gates from the movie and SG-1. The chevrons are markers that lock the destination symbols into place. I think in the SGU gate there’s only one chevron, the top one, which locks all destination symbols, although this is only off the top of my head and I could be wrong.

Since the gate connects to other gates by plugging in a series of symbols that corresponds to a point in space (plus one extra for the point of origin), it’s very analogous to dialing a phone and establishing a connection to another phone.

The first question I’m fuzzy on, but I do know there have been details given. The wiki should be able to say. The Icarus base one was special, because they were trying to dial a new set of 9 coordinates instead of 7, which had been untested until now.

The Lucian Alliance, and that’s all I know about them. I believe they’re from Stargate:Atlantis or the end seasons of SG-1.

While one gate can dial all gates within the same galaxy, a single gate doesn’t have enough power to cross galaxies. For that you need an FTL ship, like Destiny.

Got me, these were introduced after I stopped seriously watching the TV shows.

It seems so. Telford particularly was adamant about having his turn waiting at the stones for the Destiny crew to “call”.

Again, I don’t have these answers.

Nope. It’s one step beneath Men in Black-level secrecy, and if they had neuralyzers it probably would be up there too.

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The Stargate system was developed by a race of Ancient people, originally from earth hundreds of thousands to millions of years ago. They eventually ascended to a higher plane, where they rarely if ever help humans as it violates their rules, leaving their gates and technology behind. The first Stargate was discovered in Egypt in the 1920s, by the father of a woman who helped start the Stargate program. One man figured it out early on, and was lost for 50 years, but after that no one figured it out until Daniel Jackson, in the movie. You can dial many other stargates from a single stargate, but not all, as you need the correct coordinates and there needs to be a clear shot to the system from your current position (i.e. not through a sun). They work by creating a link between two points in space, the first six symbols (chevrons) on the stargate denoting the XYZ position (each symbol representing a star, and thus by connecting the symbols you create a point to connect to), the 7th is the point of origin, the 8th is the galaxy point of origin, and the 9th connects to destiny. Each additional symbol requires an order of magnitude or more of power to dial.

The only reason the people could dial Destiny in the first episode (which is billions of light years away) was because that planet had some sort of strange power source that could provide such energy. They were attacked by the Lutian Alliance, a recent enemy in the series, which consists of former Jaffa (slaves to the Goauld, the predominant enemies in the series) that are basically a black-market mafia. It was not explained as to why they attacked the planet, maybe they didn’t like the people from earth experimenting in their domain.

So the people on Destiny are trying to “dial earth” to return home if they can get enough power to do so. The return trip appears to be impossible at this time, even by tapping into the energy of a sun. They could theoretically leapfrog within their current galaxy, but between galaxies is nearly impossible as the energy requirement is huge, and is usually powered by a Zero Point Module (ZPM). These were invented by the Ancients to power most of their equipment. The communication stones are an Ancient device, and I’m unsure of how they work, just that they’ve been shown in several of the series. In SG1 two of the main characters connected to a far away galaxy using one, and thus alerting a powerful enemy (The Ori) to our existence. But they weren’t really used a lot in the previous series. We’re also not sure how SG1 sets up contact with the stones, but I think they’ve mentioned pre-arranged times for meetings. Or maybe the system alerts you if someone is on the other end. As for how they detect who should enter who, well chalk that one up to answers in previous series such as “how does the Stargate know when to close”…well, it just does. The ancients were smart, and designed them this way. It probably wouldn’t be an issue if a man and woman switched places though, as we’ve seen that before too I believe.

The general public knows nothing about the system. There are a few researchers, industrialists, and politicians that do, and even some other countries (China, Russia who had their own gate at one time), but the world has not been informed. Even attacks on the planet were passed off as meteor showers. It is known that some Goauld and other aliens live among us, and some devious groups of humans are working against Stargate Command as they believe SGC is not proactive or aggressive enough in trying to secure new technologies and destroying our enemies.

If you really want the background rent the movie, and then the DVDs for the first series. I went through them in a weekend or so, occasionally skipping episodes that didn’t interest me.

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Heck, Hulu has the first 8 seasons (of 10) of SG-1.

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I’m going to speculate a bit on the stones, as I don’t think there has been any explanation within the show about how they determine which personalities to exchange when more than one person is available at the other end of the line.

It could be that they automatically attempt to match up with the nearest person who is reasonably similar in gender and age to the person ‘calling’. Unless I’ve missed something, Young has always transferred to Telford, Eli to someone about his age, and Chloe to someone about her age. There may very well be some sort of built-in prohibition preventing a male exchanging with a female or youth with oldster (or vice-versa), but this hasn’t been explicitly stated so far. Nevertheless, we’ve seen in the most recent ep the awkward situations that can occur when the exchange glitches at an inopportune moment, or if someone happens to abuse their privileges (Chloe giving some other person’s body an incipient hangover comes to mind), so the possibility of some built-in safeguards seems reasonable. Heck, what if a dog was the only creature in the room when someone set out to make an exchange? That could be dicey.

Likewise, I don’t think the show has dealt with the issue of what happens if no one is within range of the stones at the time someone wants to make an exchange, either. A sort of intergalactic busy signal, maybe?

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Oh, I’d better mention that I was unfamiliar with the stones until seeing SG-U, so perhpas something in the previous series contradicts my speculation.

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The stones popped up a few times during the run of SG1(Citizen Joe and a few episodes towards the end with Daniel and Vala). They seem to be making up rules for them as they go along in this series though.

I think there was an episode of Atlantis where Mckay and one of the female soldiers switch bodies with the stones, but that may have been with another piece of ancient technology though.

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Has some great features to bring you up to speed on the mythology of the show

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When was the 9th chevron discovered? I watched the movie, SG-1, and part of Atlantis. Were there any significant revelations in Atlantis that I should know about?

12

Wait…the Stargate network is still secret?

After all this time, including the Atlantis exhibition which is multinational, primarily civilian, and kept the team stuck in Pegasus for years before they were able to begin transiting back to Earth occasionally?

The Atlantis team must have the most uncurious loved ones ever…

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Some, if not many, loved ones of Military Families get clued in. Young’s family, Weir’s family, even McKay’s family, etc.

Others, like Shepherd’s, aren’t.

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Wait… the Gate is still secret?

Wasn’t there a film crew wandering around at one point for a TV series? Stargate Extreme or something like that?

It’s been a while since I watched (my TiVo has seen SG:U but I haven’t) so I may be forgetting something.

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Wormhole Extreme was a cheesy cover story, and an in-joke between the producers of the show and dedicated fans who would joke around that Stargate was real, and actually a cover-show for a real program.

The film crew that was wandering around (two occasions, actually) is different. One of them was for the President of the United States, the other was a News Crew… and the News Crew one, needless to say to say for dedicated fans, didn’t end well.

There is one journalist who actually helps cover these things up, and did so in an episode where one mega-capitalist tried to expose the entire program (with evidence of a giant space battle and a battle over Antarctica).

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As an occasional watcher and casual fan of the franchise, the continued secrecy of the StarGate program is beginning to defy credulity in my opinion.

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The average guy in the street doesn’t know we have FTL?

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New fans definitely need to see the movie with Kurt Russell and James Spader. It does a great job explaining the mythology of the series.

Sure, the tv series came up with new gimmicks, but the movie is the best starting point. I loved watching Spader figure out the stargates the addresses and so on.

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Yes and no.
Yes, it’s difficult to believe that a multinational, ridiculously expensive program is a secret.
No, not really, because people are just plain stupid. :smack: :stuck_out_tongue:

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But they’ve fought off nontrivial alien incursions in Earth’s orbit, have they not?