I have been watching the reruns on and off from “Wormhole X-Treme” (which was quite amusing) onward. When the Stargate movie was run, I watched that too…but I still have several questions about the stuff I missed from the beginning.
The Go’uld. Apparantly they are Evil Guys with symbiotes. So which is evil, the symbiote or the person? And are the Go’uld symbiotes in any way related to the Jafa (?) ones? I saw one episode in which several system lords were gathering in a Round Table Discussion of Doom, and for some reason they were eating (in chunks, not swallowing whole) symbiotes. Why? Was the bad guy in the Stargate movie a Go’uld?
Stargate, tech, and stuff. Has anyone been able to figure out how the stargates work? The rings appear to be teleportation devices, but where to the rings themselves come from? Are they like the transporter on Star Trek, being able to beam from anywhere to anywhere, or are there only some transport points. And are the rings related to the stargates at all? Is hyperspace in SG1 the same as subspace in ST - i.e. different ftl speeds are attainable based on the ship? Are there navagational difficulties like in Babylon 5? Why do some of Our Fearless Heroes use projectile weapons while others use ray guns? And it’s not just preference - sometimes, for example, one character will use one and in another situation use another.
Apparantly all the races in Earth’s locality are parallel-evolved humans. Are there any non-human aliens around besides the Asgard? And speaking of the Asgard, why are these obviously much more highly advanced folks running from the replicators if Our Fearless Heroes are able to at least survive every time? And why do they want to help Earth, but cannot because of some neutrality agreement? (cf that asteroid episode) They’re obviously more advanced than to Go’uld.
And if someone could summarize the first who-knows-how-many seasons, I’ll be much obliged.
I’ve only seen up to season 6’s “The Changeling” so please don’t spoil anything
My question about Stargate is, why the hell is it on so damned often? I don’t particularly like the show, but every time I turn on SciFi, or Fox, or our local NBC affilate, there it is! It’s becoming as ubiquitous as Law & Order reruns and spinoffs, or as The Simpsons used to be…
It’s the symbiote that’s evil.
The Jaffa are humans, modified to be a life support for the growing larva. This process takes a while, and in the meantime, the host enjoys a greatly improved immune system and healing. If the symbiote is removed, the host dies.
The larva aren’t considered to be “people” by the Goauld, and are produced in massive amounts. I didn’t see the episode where the system lords were eating the larvae, but I wouldn’t be a bit surprised.
The bad guy in the movie was Apophis, and he’s the ongoing uberbadguy in the series, as well (if I recall correctly).
The Stargates are a network of artificially-generated wormholes, created by the Ancients, a race of (apparently originally human-like, or even humans) aliens, who have “ascended”, and aren’t around anymore.
The Rings are some sort of weird teleportation system, used by the Goauld, and apparently work on a completely different system (it appears that the traveller is turned into energy and broadcast to the target).
FTL is done through hyperspace- a separate dimension, apparently. It’s grayish. Nothing seems to happen in hyperspace.
Humans use projectile weapons because they’re much more efficient than the Goauld weapons, which are designed primarily to inspire terror. There was an excellent scene where they showed just how much better a P90 is than a Staff weapon. Occasionally, SGC will use the Zat guns, which are good for stunning.
All the human-looking races are actually humans, transplanted by the Goauld to be slaves and hosts. As a general rule, they’ve forgotten about Earth.
There have been a few non-Asgard races- the Nox, for example, and the Unas (the original hosts for the Goauld).
Why do the Asgard lose against the Replicators, while Humans survive? 'Cause the Asgard don’t know how to fight anymore, and don’t use kinetic energy weapons like we do, apparently the only thing the Replicators can’t defend against.
The Asgard signed a neutrality agreement so there wouldn’t be a war. The Asgard are more advanced technologically, but they don’t know war anymore.
Whew… that’s a tall order. I suggest you look for a good website. It’s good stuff, some of the best SciFi I’ve experienced. It shouldn’t be as good as it is.
The Goa’uld are the symbiotes/parasites. When they’re young, they live inside the Jaa’fa (who are the Goa’uld’s slave warriors, taking the place of their immune system, and making them stronger, more able to heal, and immune to disease. Then, when they become adults, they bury into a person’s brain, and take control of that person. There’s a rebel faction among the Goa’uld called the Tokra, who believe that it’s morally wrong to do that to sentient beings, so they only take hosts with their consent, and both the Tokra and the host share the body. Sam’s father has a Tokra inside him, who is one of the leaders of the Tokra underground.
The bad guy in the original Stargate movie was an alien who possessed an Egyptian boy and became worshiped as the god Ra. He wasn’t identified as a Goa’uld in the movie (the movie didn’t really go into any detail as to what the alien was), but was one as far as the TV series was concerned (It’s all very van Danikenish. Read Chariots of the Gods if you’re wondering where the Stargate creators got their ideas.).
The Stargates were, I believe, made by an alien race before the rise of the Goa’uld, but the Goa’uld found them and made use of them. They work by opening a wormhole from one stargate to the next. The rings are a Goa’uld transportation device. You stand on one of the rings, then get transported to the other paired set.
Just to clarify, the races on most of the planets are parallel evolved humans because they’re originally from Earth. When the Goa’uld were overthrown on Earth, they fled, taking their followers and worshipers with them, and so humanity got seeded throughout the galexy. There are non-Human aliens other than the Asgard. For example, there are the Nox, an advanced humanoid alien species dedicated to pacifism and neutrality. There’s also a species that originated on the same planet as the Goa’uld and were their first hosts. The Asgard have a non-aggression pact with the Goa’uld, (they’re too powerful for the Goa’uld to defeat, and they have the replicators to worry about), where the Goa’uld System Lords won’t attack them or any planets they’ve placed under their protection (like Earth…you’ll hear mention of the “Protected Planets Treaty”).
One of the things I like about it - consistency from episode to episode and season to season. If the technobabble magic doohickey solved the problem in episode #15, there’s usually a line about why the same magic doohickey won’t work this time for a similar problem.
Websites? There’s the MGM official website and the unofficial Gateworld.net. Since the SciFi Channel is showing the most recent shows, you might not want to look at their site.
Just to touch on the things that weren’t completely answered (because this is my favorite show and I missed answering the good stuff)…
The rings can only transport short distances (maximum is about the distance from a planet surface to a ship in orbit), and they can only transport in a straight line. If you put another set of rings in the middle while someone is in transport, it will intercept the transmission.
Ships can travel through hyperspace but I think it’s just one speed, no levels of warp or anything. In Stargate you can hyperspace through solid objects, unlike in Star Wars.
Projectile weapons work better against the Replicators (and most other “advanced” weaponry"), who are impervious to energy weapons. So they’ll use projectile weapons in similar circumstances. Also, as demonstrated in an episode, they’re far more accurate and deadly than a staff weapon for example.
The Asguard had evolved so far beyond the need for projectile weapons that they didn’t realize that something so primitive would work on the Replicators. They just kept throwing more technology at them, which of course they absorbed. Basically, the Asguard have forgotten how to “think outside the box.”
And their fight against the Replicators is the whole reason they don’t just come in and kick Goa’uld butt. They’re simply stretched too thin.
The Goa-uld themselves are a life form from a world that did not have an advanced technology, and take on the memories and knowledge of the host.
Since they evolved on the same world as their original primitive hosts, they were in some ways an asset as they could pass on their knowledge to each new host enabling survival.
They can move from host to host, acquiring knowledge, and they can also carry a racial knowledge from every previous ancestor Goa-uld in its lineage.
The highest evolved forms of life are the risen ones, who have left their corporeal bodies and have moreless become pure, and ultimately enlightened beings of intellect.
Being risen is not a matter of genetic evolution, it is a matter of enlightenment, and it appears that pretty much any techniclay adavnced sentient being is capable of achieving this state, all except the Goa-uld(except one Goa-uld that attained enlightenments temporarily and was basically kikced out of this risen state for some unspecified crime or failure)
The risens have a very Bhuddist outlook and have explained that the Goa-uld are incapable of achieving enlightenment because of their own nature.
Every time there has been an encounter between one of the ‘risens’, some of which are the ancients but not all by any means, the Goa-uld are destroyed or defeated.
I take that to mean that the Goa-uld in their natural state and from their home planet are actually pretty primitive in nature, they have not had time to evolve moral codes etc and their basic personality is what makes them seem so evil, they are really just primitive creatures(with basic primitive motivations) with highly advanced knowledge stolen from more evolved hosts.
Hyperspace travel in Stargate varies widely in speed.
In one episode SG1 blows up a star to destroy the fleet of Apophus, but the blast hits just as SG1 tires to make a Hyperspace jump, and this sends them some immense distance, Apophus also followed SG1 ship and got pushed the same place.
The replicators that somehow found their way onto Apophus’s ship take control of it, and start it on its way back to his home planet, meanwhile they modify the Hyperspace drive and instead of centuries of travel at the ships usual speed, they increase the speed and reduce this time to mere hours.
(SG1 on their little Tokra cargo ship sneak onto Apophus ship to sabotage it)
In another episode the Pheonix, which is the first earth Hyperdrive ship, gets itsels lost which takes many many hours, or days even, and the Asgard take it back by pulling it into some sort of traction beam, and it takes literally a couple of seconds of Asgard hyperspace drive to achieve this.
Lastly, Jack O Neal, having taken posession of some of the ancients knowledge, modifies the drive unit of a Tokra cargo ship to pick up a power unit from former outpost of the ancients on another planet, to plug it into the ancients Antartic outpost whose power unit is missing.
He changes the hyperdrive to such an extent that the vessel travels much faster and hyperspce turns a purplish hue rather than the obviously much slower greyish hyperpsace hue.
This was in the last episode of the most recent series, there may even be a faster version of hyperspace which takes on plaid hue.
