Ok, we know from "exodus" that a Ha'Tak is 6x slower than warp 9.9999 (200,000 x light speed) - there was also a figure about the modified Al'Kesh reaching the Asgard galaxy (in a "few days" I believe) in "new order". So, how do the SG universe ships rank in terms of speed, and compared to Trek warp factors?
All Trek and SG ships have only one speed: The speed of plot. After all, the Enterprise A covered more ground than Voyager did in far quicker time. From the Federation to the center of the Galaxy in just under a day. And back too. Imagine that.
Stargate Ships move much faster than Trek Ships and have fewer warp drive issues with the hyperdrive causing the myriad of issues they have on trek.
The Pegasus Dwarf is about 18 million lightyears away. It took the Prometheus 6 months, the Daedalus 3 weeks and the Daedalus with a ZPM only 3 days.
And we know from "Within the Serpent's Grasp" that a ha'tak can only go ten times light speed. And from "Deadman Switch", we learn that it's not particularly unusual for a cargo ship to have a maximum of twice light speed -- although in "Tangent", Jacob Carter flies one from P2C-257 to our solar system in a matter of hours. Both statements came from Teal'c. Since they are contradicted by all on-screen examples, I can only assume that Teal'c, admittedly not the biggest techie in the world, did not know that much about FTL travel (at least in the first few seasons) and was just spouting off numbers that he thought were impressive. That's about the only way to explain it.
Watched that one the other day, when they realised they were at earth, Teal'c admitted he must have been wrong about the ships' speed - or something like that, I just know the fact was brought up. Indeed. Where did you grab that from? Landry in "SGA - the return" states that pegasus is 2 million LY away, which would place it at about the same distance as the pegasus irregular dwarf.
Rodney stated that in an episode. Since a lightyear is over 9 trillion or so miles 2 lightyears would be 18 trillion miles, but he definitely said "million" so maybe its just a script error?
I tend to not think of this as contradictory, more along the lines of a new type of engine being introduced and disseminated throughout the Go'auld empire. Hence after season one, the use of ships becoming more and more prominent as opposed to gate travel. For example, in season one we see Apophis traveling the gate frequently. He only had two ships to attack Earth and when he lost them it basically knackered him as a system lord and player until he stole Sokars fleet after killing him. but after season one, System Lords started having huge fleets and people were flitting all over the galaxy in no time at all, and the use of the Gate as a means of the Go'aulds moving about decreases.
I considered that, but it doesn't seem reasonable given the way the System Lords operate. If they had only just developed that kind of technology, there would have been a massive expansion of System Lord territories, as they reached out to grab many systems and planets they could never reach before. I don't think onscreen evidence supports this. There is a lot of evidence that tells us ship travel has been common for a long time. Look at Aris Boch, who's apparently able to travel between systems with ease and work for whatever System Lord he feels like. And there are many references to people's fleets duking it out over the years. They couldn't have done so very easily if ship travel was that hard. The only thing that really contradicts this is the fact that Apophis was devastated by losing two ships. I suppose this can be explained by suggesting that this was the last straw after a series of defeats by Heru-Ur, or that he put all of his eggs in one basket by having the majority of his Jaffa crammed on those two ships. I think the real explanation is that the showrunners were originally thinking the same way as you-- that ship travel is supposed to be difficult and gate travel is easy, therefore gate travel is more prominent. They forgot this in later seasons as they introduced more ship-based stuff, hence the inconsistencies.
You're probably right about the actual reason. But I do think there is enough evidence on screen to show that Go'auld ship technology was changing at this point. The quotes in the episode at the end of season one from Teal'c and Carter certainly show it to be a new type of drive, one that can travel at much greater speed than previously. Apophis is described as "loosing and army" when his two ships get destroyed at the end of season one. We never see huge fleets at this point in time and we see Go'auld going through the gate often. When we see them come in ships it is nearly always in single ships. Yet as the seasons go on, as the new drive gets disseminated if you will, and ship travel becomes easier, ships become more predominant and wide spread. I always liked this idea as it shows the progression of technology throughout the show universe over time, just as over the seasons ring transporters become nothing more than a glorified elevator as everyone gets hold of Asgard beam technology, as the computer screens in the SGC go from ctr screens to flat screens, as by the end of the series, and into the later Atlantis series, everyone seems to walk around with those interactive pad things.
Why would they need to? The modern Goa'uld empire was founded ten thousand years ago. They could've been flitting around the galaxy even longer before that. If they had a reasonable amount of stargate addresses, they could easily spread throughout the galaxy that way. They wouldn't have to fly a ship to the opposite side of the galaxy to take over a planet there- They could just ship slaves and material through the stargate and build the ship there. They'd have a handful of ships in every local area, so it would only take months instead of years to fly somewhere. I'm not sure, but I think either the movie novelization or one of the movie spin-off novels that ignored the series said that Ra took a stargate to the planet near Abydos where his ship was, and only used the ship for the last leg of his trip. If I was a young academic in the Stargate universe, I'd probably write a dissertation arguing that the appearance of the Tau'ri on the galactic stage had little to do with the fall of the System Lords, and it owed far more to the rapid advancements in hyperspace technology that occurred at the same time. Either one (weakened) Goa'uld would dominate the galaxy after a series of wars and battles, or the Tok'ra and/or Jaffa revolutionaries would take advantage of the sudden instabilities to make their own moves, but either way, fast ships meant the current balance of power was finished, SG-1 or no.
The reappearance of Anubis was not connected to Humanity, so around the time of season 6 and 7 he would have returned and dominated the Goa'uld. Earth would simply have been another one of the slave planets.
Teal'c also said that knowledge of Goa'uld magic is forbidden. He would therefore not really know how fast the Ha'tak was capable of traveling. There's also the matter of the show getting it's footing in the science fiction universe. Remember when Teal'c told O'Neill to prepare for extreme deceleration and there was this jolt that knocked O'Neill off his feet? It could be that the writers knew how that could be done without and tweaked it.
Teal'c was also Apophis's First Prime, his chief General. While he many not have been told how to build a hyperdrive, he'd certainly need to know how fast they were in order to plan attacks, patrols, redeployments, and suchlike.
^^ In that case technological progress is developing extremely fast in the Stargate universe. They went from ten times the speed of light to intergalactic travel in a few years. But I guess the writers quickly realized that they couldn't really use ships which still need years (months at best) to travel from one star to another... not in a weekly TV show.
I think that Anubis came back in the shadows a few years before SG-1 even appeared on the scene, he having come from partially ascended land had knowledge in souping up the hyper drives and gave the new drives as a way building trust in his allies, ie.. Osirus, Nerti, etc.... Either that or a Goa'uld stole them from "Space Race" aliens around the time of Season 1 SG-1 or during the movie era.