I am the only person on the planet my age that has not watched Stargate SG-1. I have started and am more than halfway through season 1. I have been enjoying it but…hooboyyy…the plot holes…like a woman held in stasis for 2000 years in a Mayan temple that wakes up and speaks…English.
My wife got irritated with me and told me to put my brain to use justifying things instead of poking holes. The one brought up about this is why everyone is always around the Stargate even when the Gra-ould (sp?) regularly come and harvest people. So, in response to her challenge, I came up with why everyone was always around the stargate even if it was dangerous…
See…all these planets were seeded by Earth people 2000-3000 years ago as slaves for these outposts. Several thousand were likely taken to each place. Now, IIRC a human bottleneck genetically is several thousand…below that humans would likely die off. So, say each planet had about 10,000 humans which is close to the minimum. Now, if people set off they would die off as there wouldn’t be enough to meet the genetic minimum UNLESS they could trade people back and forth and so would be…close…to the stargate. It isn’t like Earth where some Englishmen a few hundred years ago could set off anywhere and there wouldn’t be the possibility of human females nearby. Here there would be no one…so they have to stay close. If they didn’t, they would have died off.
As for the sparse populations, it is just a few hundred generations under primitive technology and so, like early Earth history, the growth rate of the human population would be agonizingly slow hence no billions of people.
THERE! I met her demand for that one. Any others people might like to add?
A big plot point of the Stargate movie was having Daniel along to translate. The people they met did not speak English. Having every episode be them trying to figure out how to speak to another group would be boring. Everyone speaks English because they have to.
Speaking English is but one thing, and it irks a little every so often, but the pain of what it would be like if they didn’t would make it sooooo much worse a series, so you let it lie.
We’re part way through Season 3 (rewatch for me), and there are so many plotholes, so you best let it lie. About then you keep asking “why don’t they have one of those. Why don’t they bring that tech which they’ve used previously. why do they that one die when they can help them via this”.
Most interestingly there’s an episode where a hostile force keeps the stargate open for 38 minutes, and it took me a few minutes to work out a defensive protocol where you send teams out to friendly worlds, and dial in at very set precise precise times to keep a friendly stargate open, using random agreed timings to be dialed up and ready at say 34:11 when you know the remote side will be disconnected. You only have to get the stargate back once to regain control.
It helps if you view this sort of thing through the Literary Agent Hypothesis, where what you are seeing on screen is just a version that’s being told to you by a narrator describing the story. They’re skipping over the boring parts where they learn a new language, except when it’s actually important to the story.
It’s not really a plot hole, just a storytelling convention. They just didn’t throw in a handwave like a “universal translator” or Babelfish. If you really do want the language stuff to matter, it does in some episodes later.
Also, maybe some do live in areas not around the Stargate. But they have to keep some nearby to keep the Goa’uld happy, lest they instead fly their giant warships in instead.
If they weren’t scared of something like that, why wouldn’t they just bury their gates, like they did on Abydos?
One conceit of the thing is that all these planets are only really near the Stargate, you could probably go off and get lost somewhere in the middle of nowhere in a cave if you have air transport, assuming these worlds are anywhere near the size of earth.
I wouldn’t go that far, as it doesn’t have any transporter or wormhole technology in it. But it does seem rather sophisticated, with the machinery being so compact. And it has to have very high quality machining to have it so close to the wormhole opening without actually touching it.
I do remember that’s how it worked: it was just so close to the wormhole that there wasn’t enough room for anything to materialize on the other side. I can’t remember if it was nanometers or micrometers away. I do know that it stopped high energy weapons by keeping them from coming through, rather than being strong enough to stop them. And that any technology that could make something/someone incorporeal could still get through.
In the MCU that’s all Stark tech that was explained as nanotechnology. It didn’t start out that way. Ironman had to carry a suitcase with his armor in it.
The Stargate movie is the first time I remember seeing this effect. The Jaffa had helmets that melted back into their armor. The TV show didn’t have that kind of budget.
I always thought that, rather than having a mechanically implausible design like the iris, the whole gate itself should rotate and fit snuggly over a round protrusion in the ground.
Either that or have a cap on a levered arm that comes down from the ceiling to cover it.
If you don’t want to shut it down, you could have a pit and a drawbridge, and any invaders fall down to their death. If you want to be a bit meaner, or nicer, I’m not sure, rotate it upwards, so anyone who comes through then falls back through the event horizon.
If you just want to mess with people, rotate the gate itself 180 degrees, so they come through upside down.
But really, the biggest plot holes that I see is that you have the military who never thinks of strategy or tactics. They send 4 people through to an unknown world. I assume that there are quite a number of SG teams that are never heard from again.
Instead, you send through the largest vehicle that can be made to fit through the gate. That vehicle would have a dialing computer on it, so you don’t have to rely on the DHD, and would also be able to pick up the gate and take it with you, so you don’t have to worry about getting back to it or guarding it. This also gives you options. Inside the gateroom on Earth, you have tons of weaponry ready to be projected through if the team needs support. It wouldn’t be 4 people, it would be at least a dozen or so.
Anyway, sorry, there’s quite a number of “science” things that I can handwave away in the name of a good story. What I have more difficulty with is people who are supposed to be smart doing dumb things.
