What do you think of the Destiny?

[Brent]

Yay or Nay?

Personally, I'm going for Yay right now. I kinda like it. At the beginning of the episode tonight they showed it coming in from a distance, and it looked very stealthy and slick. It is certainly a lot bigger than I thought it would be, seems like a lot of room to explore inside it. I also so hints of ancient Ancient design in it, like the design found on other ancient devices we have seen in the milky way galaxy from millions of years ago. Also, it appears the ship has a form of AI, it was able to know they were in trouble when he told them and found a planet and dialed it!

Apparently this ship is not the gate seeder ship, those ships (and there were several of them) were sent out ahead of this ship. I hope we get to see one, I want to see a Stargate manufactured and put on a planet.

I hope they lock down WHEN it was sent out though. From reading, it is supposed to be millions of years old. But in the episode they indicated thousands or hundreds of thousands of years. I hope this is just them guessing, and they will reveal more about it later.

[Kaijima]

I think it's pretty good. It seems like a LOT more work was put into the design and the sets than the cobbled together Ancient warships from Atlantis, which were frankly boring designs. It does feel as if they're on a spaceship. It may also be working precisely because this Ancient ship, while advanced, is old enough so that it's only a little bit ahead of human technology (Stargate humans, with their own alien-derived spaceships). So, they're not trying to think up something that should be 10,000 years more sophisticated than present day human science.

I actually get a rather The Black Hole vibe from the ship, and IMHO that is a very good model to emulate! The megaship in The Black Hole really created a sense of vast, creepy isolation in the void that few sci-fi movies or tv shows have ever equaled. With the apparently increased CGI effects budget, I hope they can show some massive spaces inside the ship and outside it, and have some lonely EVA scenes. In my view, the show would be smart to go with the angle of portraying the humans on the ship as tiny and lost inside a hostile void; but rather than take the BSG route of neurotically focusing on smelly sweaty people crammed together in tin cans, go the opposite route. I want to see some serious agoraphobia and rapture of the deep.

[bigdaddy]

Looked too Earth human like, but otherwise it's nice.

I don't like the gate room through, rather boring but that awesome room with the windows is very very nice.

[Brent]

I noticed they are now calling it simply "FTL" since it isn't hyperspace. I wonder about the specs on it now, like how fast it can go, what kind of FTL is it. Apparently it can travel pretty fast to get that far out there.

[Kaijima]

Brent wrote:

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I noticed they are now calling it simply "FTL" since it isn't hyperspace. I wonder about the specs on it now, like how fast it can go, what kind of FTL is it. Apparently it can travel pretty fast to get that far out there.

Actually, bear in mind that the ship has been out there for 100,000 (?) years. It might actually be an inferior, early form of FTL that "only" travels a few times faster than light. Over that span of time, a slower ship could have gotten that far, I figure.

Based on the visual effects (including the effect inside the ship when they dropped out of FTL) I wonder if it's the Stargate universe equivalent of warp drive, where a space bubble is being formed and squeezed before and behind the ship, thus there is somewhat of a red shift and stretching effect on visible light.

Potentially there's plot fodder here. For instance, it might be possible for an object (like a shuttle) to detach from Destiny while it's in FTL and transition to normal space once falls behind the "warp bubble" rather than being lost in hyperspace. By the same turn, it might be possible to more directly tract the Destiny while it's in FTL if you have the right technology or even intercept it before it comes out of FTL.

Also, just to throw it out there: if they ever gain some degree of control over Destiny, I'm going to say that a major plot that comes up will be Earth pestering them to try and catch a gate seeder ship that's somewhere ahead of them, because actually getting hands on a ship that manufactures Stargates would literally be the golden goose.

[Brent]

^ you know what, I am thinking it may be inferior, and you know what, it makes me think of the original Goa'uld FTL we saw at the end of SG-1 Season 1 when they gated aboard the Goa'uld ship and it entered FTL, if you recall, it had a similar shift in light that was noticable on board, plus, it was slow, only a few times the speed of light Teal'c said, this was before the Goa'uld somehow got Hyperspace speeds... So... maybe THIS form of FTL the Destiny uses is the same type of FTL the Goa'uld originally stole from Ancient technology!

[Peter the Younger]

Brent wrote:

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^ you know what, I am thinking it may be inferior, and you know what, it makes me think of the original Goa'uld FTL we saw at the end of SG-1 Season 1 when they gated aboard the Goa'uld ship and it entered FTL, if you recall, it had a similar shift in light that was noticable on board, plus, it was slow, only a few times the speed of light Teal'c said, this was before the Goa'uld somehow got Hyperspace speeds... So... maybe THIS form of FTL the Destiny uses is the same type of FTL the Goa'uld originally stole from Ancient technology!

I was thinking the same, that this is an older form of FTL tech. Not sure if the numbers work though - if it visited multiple galaxies, it would have be be trucking a lot faster than a few multiples of c, even if it has been traveling for 10,000 years.

As for the design, I dig it. Appropriately fiddly, a nice recognizable shape, and much more interesting looking than I imagined. It does look a little earth-like on the outside, in terms of design, but I chalk that up to its age; it comes from a different era of Ancient civilization, who's to say what the aesthetic of that era was like?

Anybody notice what appeared to be a sizable secondary vessel on the topside? It's visible on the dorsal side in the opening shot. At first I thought it was one of the shuttles, but it's shaped differently, and definitely seems larger. (thoughts of the Captain's Yacht spring to mind.)

[Brent]

Peter the Younger wrote:

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I was thinking the same, that this is an older form of FTL tech. Not sure if the numbers work though - if it visited multiple galaxies, it would have be be trucking a lot faster than a few multiples of c, even if it has been traveling for 10,000 years.

They mentioned at least hundreds of thousands of years old. I hope they narrow it down and find an answer, initial description was it was supposed to be millions of years old.

[Danny99]

I'm going to Nay it, but it was close.

It looks like an oil tanker. I know that it's supposed to be old, but if these are the Ancients that are so advanced with holo screens and floating MALP's, why does the ship look like they scavenged a dump for parts?

[Kpnuts]

canadaboy_32 wrote:

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I'm going to Nay it, but it was close.

It looks like an oil tanker. I know that it's supposed to be old, but if these are the Ancients that are so advanced with holo screens and floating MALP's, why does the ship look like they scavenged a dump for parts?

Bad production designers.

All Ancient ships are fugly

[DarKush]

I liked it. It was different, but pretty cool. I like how they introduced it in the opening shot.

[Alpha_Geek]

It has enough energy for repeated and continuous FTL travel, but not enough for an atmospheric containment field?


The Thors Hammer shape of the craft is intruiging.

[Bluesteel]

canadaboy_32 wrote:

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I'm going to Nay it, but it was close.

It looks like an oil tanker. I know that it's supposed to be old, but if these are the Ancients that are so advanced with holo screens and floating MALP's, why does the ship look like they scavenged a dump for parts?

pssst (whishpers )Canadian guy! Thats the whole point. This ship was delibrartly designed to look old and clunky. Compared to other ancient ships which were designed to look sleek and streamlined.

[Brent]

Alpha_Geek wrote:

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It has enough energy for repeated and continuous FTL travel, but not enough for an atmospheric containment field?


The Thors Hammer shape of the craft is intruiging.

We don't know how long it has been holding that containment field for though, and we also have no idea what powers the ship and what kind of FTL it is, how fast it moves, and the power drain on sheilds/FTL. So, I wouldn't call that an issue just yet until we learn more facts.

[SG-17]

Kaijima wrote:

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Actually, bear in mind that the ship has been out there for 100,000 (?) years. It might actually be an inferior, early form of FTL that "only" travels a few times faster than light. Over that span of time, a slower ship could have gotten that far, I figure.

Based on the visual effects (including the effect inside the ship when they dropped out of FTL) I wonder if it's the Stargate universe equivalent of warp drive, where a space bubble is being formed and squeezed before and behind the ship, thus there is somewhat of a red shift and stretching effect on visible light.

Potentially there's plot fodder here. For instance, it might be possible for an object (like a shuttle) to detach from Destiny while it's in FTL and transition to normal space once falls behind the "warp bubble" rather than being lost in hyperspace. By the same turn, it might be possible to more directly tract the Destiny while it's in FTL if you have the right technology or even intercept it before it comes out of FTL.

Also, just to throw it out there: if they ever gain some degree of control over Destiny, I'm going to say that a major plot that comes up will be Earth pestering them to try and catch a gate seeder ship that's somewhere ahead of them, because actually getting hands on a ship that manufactures Stargates would literally be the golden goose.

I believe that the Destiny is using an advanced Alcubierre Drive, which is essentially Warp Drive as we know it from Star Trek. Very slow compared to Hyperdrive, but still FTL.