Should a new Stargate show be a reboot or a revival?

[Julien]

What are your thoughts on this?

About Stargate ..

Well, they can start almost anything landing with the deadalous.. as everyone went into cold storage...

So a revival is a reboot..

I thought the show had the Atlantis appeal, where weird new fantastic systems where being worked into ..

Atlantis stopped at the insect wars...

I guess both could even meet.. they answer each other, the great mystery of where they were and why no one was there...

I have a solution for the insect war too, but from my own fiction in my head of reality, so I'm keeping that to myself.

So ya.. those two... Connect.. total revival reboot, clearly...

Cheers

 

[Parallaxis]

You have to reboot it.
There's no other choice.

The SGC was at a Star Trek level 10 years ago. I can't even imagine how far the show would have progressed after another 10 years. The show was supposed to be about present day us going out into space. You can't do that with a revival. It's not possible. The series progressed too far for that.

 

[JD]

Just because that was how the first show started out doesn't mean it's how a new show would have to start. I don't see where the show would have to be about people at a modern tech level, there are still plenty of interesting things they could do with a show set 1- years after where the other left off.

Snyder's Star Wars. The Internet will love that.

I'm not sure if this is why posted that, but just in case you or other people didn't know, Rebel Moon actually started as a pitch for a Star Wars movie that Snyder gave to Lucasfilm, but when they turned him down, he turned it into it's own original universe.

 

[Parallaxis]

Just because that was how the first show started out doesn't mean it's how a new show would have to start.

That's what Brad Wright literally said the soul of the show was. It's what made it different from Star Trek and other SciFi shows. It's present day "us" out there fighting aliens and exploring the galaxy. You can't do that concept with a revival. You lose the soul of the show.

 

[Christopher]

That's what Brad Wright literally said the soul of the show was. It's what made it different from Star Trek and other SciFi shows. It's present day "us" out there fighting aliens and exploring the galaxy. You can't do that concept with a revival. You lose the soul of the show.

Just because you can't see a way to do it doesn't mean it's impossible. It just means you're not a writer with the ability to figure it out. I couldn't figure out how to design a plane, but that doesn't mean a trained engineer couldn't. What defines creative people is that they can see solutions others can't.

 

[fireproof78]

I asked my brother about this, as he and I have both thoroughly enjoyed Stargate, and it led me to think that possibly revival could be interesting. While I still prefer reboot (because I usually do, and don't understand the antipathy to it) I think it could be fun to set up Stargate: Command, and have a transition of command from the USAF to the US SPACE FORCE, or operate under a joint command. Set up a new base out in the galaxy, have them find a subnetwork of gates to explore that are otherwise unknown, due to being on the opposite side of the galaxy.

I think it could be interesting to use a revival Stargate series to explore the Space Force in some way.

 

[The Wormhole]

have them find a subnetwork of gates to explore that are otherwise unknown, due to being on the opposite side of the galaxy.

Which was in fact the original plan for Atlantis back when it was planned to replace SG-1 after it ended. However, when the decision was made to continue SG-1, Atlantis's setting was changed to a completely different galaxy instead.

 

[Parallaxis]

Just because you can't see a way to do it doesn't mean it's impossible. It just means you're not a writer with the ability to figure it out. I couldn't figure out how to design a plane, but that doesn't mean a trained engineer couldn't. What defines creative people is that they can see solutions others can't.

Insert roll eyes emoji here.

Anyway. Here's a Brad Wright quote for clarity...

"One of the things that we love about Stargate is that it's us. It's our military. It's our scientists. It's our people. And we're going out into the galaxy and the universe to discover all the wonders that are out there, and dealing with our own limitations versus things that are far more advanced to us. That's identifiable. It's what we deal with every day in terms of medicine and science and astrophysics. We're just babies. We would always want to maintain that in anything that was Stargate-related." - Brad Wright

An Earth that's been flying Intergalactic spaceships around for 20 years no longer represents "us." That's no longer a society that looks like us. It's gone way too far down the parallel world path. It's diverged too far. There's absolutely no way the Stargate is still secret at that point, mainly because everyone in America is probably directly connected to someone who has worked for the Stargate program at this point. So you've got an Earth with an exposed Stargate, Intergalactic Spaceships, and oh yeah... a base on the moon. That's not our society anymore. It's Star Trek: Enterprise's society.

I don't care what writer you pay to shit-can an excuse for that, it's still not going to be "us." It's not going to work. There's not anyway around that. You'd either have to soft reboot with a time travel or multiverse story, or just hard reboot everything. My view is just hard reboot it all. The SG1 storyline goes back too far in time to not have major plot holes with a time travel reboot because you're still stuck with everything that happened before the point of divergence.

So hard reboot. Rethink everything. Keep Ra alive. Do the "3rd movie Independence Day" thing that turned out to be a semi-myth. Change how the Stargates work. Get rid of the every culture gets a planet of the week stories. Have Space Force take over the Air Force's role. Kiss Cheyenne Mountain goodbye since it's not 1997 anymore. Start over.

 

[fireproof78]

I personally would love to go back to the roots, back to the original film, have it be an Space Force Operation, use current real world military operations and explore the same conceits put forth in the first film. Rethink the original aliens, instead of the Goa'uld. Build it up so that the mythology can carry some weight in regards to the viewpoint of human history. Yes, I know "ancient aliens" is considered old hat by now but it's fun. I don't get the disparaging when you can go back and have some fun with it.

Which was in fact the original plan for Atlantis back when it was planned to replace SG-1 after it ended. However, when the decision was made to continue SG-1, Atlantis's setting was changed to a completely different galaxy instead.

If you go back to the first film it was a different galaxy. So you can offer that up again, or put them on the opposite side of the galaxy. Or more fledgling space exploration, with multinational support.

 

[Parallaxis]

I personally would love to go back to the roots, back to the original film, have it be an Space Force Operation, use current real world military operations and explore the same conceits put forth in the first film. Rethink the original aliens, instead of the Goa'uld. Build it up so that the mythology can carry some weight in regards to the viewpoint of human history

I 100% agree.
Keep the Egyptians, Ra, "us" going through the gate.
Rethink everything else.

 

[Christopher]

An Earth that's been flying Intergalactic spaceships around for 20 years no longer represents "us." That's no longer a society that looks like us.

Not exactly like us, no, but that's the very thing that's interesting about it. It's still our generation with our contemporary attitudes and politics, yet juxtaposed with the recent transformations brought by galactic technology and contacts. That's vastly different from a starfaring society centuries from now. It's both recognizable and unfamiliar at the same time, not just one or the other, and that's the whole appeal.

I don't care what writer you pay to shit-can an excuse for that, it's still not going to be "us." It's not going to work.

The people who get things done are the people who ignore the ones assuring them it's not going to work.

So what if it's not exactly what Wright conceived 20 years ago? I doubt Wright would want it to be. Creators aren't like fans who want everything to stay like it was the first time. Creators want to grow, to challenge themselves, to try new things. And why shouldn't they? Today's Star Trek and Star Wars aren't mere copies of where they started. They've evolved while still being true to their roots. You don't have to stagnate to retain your identity.

 

[JD]

Insert roll eyes emoji here.

Anyway. Here's a Brad Wright quote for clarity...



An Earth that's been flying Intergalactic spaceships around for 20 years no longer represents "us." That's no longer a society that looks like us. It's gone way too far down the parallel world path. It's diverged too far. There's absolutely no way the Stargate is still secret at that point, mainly because everyone in America is probably directly connected to someone who has worked for the Stargate program at this point. So you've got an Earth with an exposed Stargate, Intergalactic Spaceships, and oh yeah... a base on the moon. That's not our society anymore. It's Star Trek: Enterprise's society.

That was what the original series was, but that doesn't mean that is what a new revival would have to be. Hell, they had already started to move past that by the time we go to Atlantis and Universe.
I love the idea of jumping back in 20 years later, with a Stargate program that's operating out in the open.
I'm one of the few people who actually enjoyed Indpendence Day: Resurgence and one of things I liked about it was all of the stuff exploring life 20 years after "The War of 1996". I would love to see a Stargate version of that.

 

[Parallaxis]

So what if it's not exactly what Wright conceived 20 years ago? I doubt Wright would want it to be.

That was what the original series was, but that doesn't mean that is what a new revival would have to be. Hell, they had already started to move past that by the time we go to Atlantis and Universe.

That quote is from the launch of SGU. Wright has always maintained that the core of the show is present day us being out there. A society that looks like the episode 2010 is no longer "us."

https://stargate.fandom.com/wiki/2010_(episode)

You lose the core of the show if you ignore that. You have to reboot this thing if you want to focus in on what makes Stargate, Stargate. Otherwise, you're just doing Star Trek: Enterprise.

Don't get me wrong, I'm sure if you cut Wright a check then he'd be like "revival!" But that still wouldn't make it right. Stargate is about present day us being out there fighting advance aliens. That's the core of the show. That's what made it popular. It has to be as grounded into our reality as possible.

 

[David cgc]

You're putting a lot of words into the mouth of the guy who wrote Stargate: Revolution, as well as the contemporary revival attempt. Say what you will about Stargate needing to be plausibly within the real world to work, but this would've been a moot issue, by Brad Wright's own hand, if SG-1 had ended with any of seasons 5, 6, or 7 (when "Lost City" would've included the Stargate going public, to the point where they filmed the scene of the President announcing it when the story was finally made as an episode instead of a theatrical movie), or if the financial crisis hadn't happened and the Stargate DTV movies hadn't been cancelled, or if COVID hadn't happened (and Amazon hadn't bought MGM) and the fourth SG-1 series was in production.

Personally, I don't see how a reboot can be anything other than a rehash. The franchise was not that creatively unsuccessful, they didn't leave much ground uncovered, and if you depart too much from the original version of the premise, you're just getting something that could just as easily be a spin-off of the existing incarnation. Personally, I don't think the real world has changed so much from how it was twenty-five years ago that a present-day remake would alter the context that much from how it was done in the first place, and, conversely, I don't think the world of Stargate would've changed to become pseudo-Star Trek in less than ten years. There are eight billion people on the planet, and the hole in the stargate is fifteen feet across. It's not going to have that much effect on day-to-day life on Earth. There aren't going to be aliens on every street corner, tourists aren't going to go on a vacation to Chulak. The international relations and military stuff will be where all the differences show up, and that's definitely not an area where the original show was grounded into our reality.

 

[JD]

That quote is from the launch of SGU. Wright has always maintained that the core of the show is present day us being out there. A society that looks like the episode 2010 is no longer "us."

https://stargate.fandom.com/wiki/2010_(episode)

So that means that even with all of the advances made by the beginning of Universe, Wright still saw the characters as "us". It's only been 13 years since Universe ended, and I really doubt things would have advanced so much that they would suddenly lose that. There's a lot more to the characters being "modern" and "us" than just how advanced the technology is, or isn't.

 

[The Wormhole]

I will say one potential obstacle with a revival is given the US does not have such cozy relations with Russia or China in the real world these days, it wouldn't really be plausible to see the three countries running the Stargate program together in a revived series.

 

[Parallaxis]

So that means that even with all of the advances made by the beginning of Universe, Wright still saw the characters as "us".

I think it more means that Wright was willing to cash the check. I have no doubt he would have kept going as long as they paid him. But at some point it wouldn't have been Stargate anymore. It would have been Star Trek Lite.

 

[valkyrie013]

Easy fix, First episode, have them make the Stargate Public.. Why have it public 10 years ago..
Now, what was happening in the show was that they were slow dripping the technology to the public, to suddenly reveal the stargate, aliens etc. cold turkey would create ALOT of Chaos and Mayhem.
So the past 10 years have been relativly quiet, Earth wise, getting things sorted out, slow dripping the tech.
So, it would be the Earth of TODAY, and they reveal the stargate, and show some youngsters get inspired and join the "Space Force" or whatever, and you have your new team going out to explore the galaxy, still ALOT of planets left to explore, even in this galaxy.
See! "US"
Your not going to have flying cars, etc. out in the world.

 

[Parallaxis]

Easy fix, First episode, have them make the Stargate Public.. Why have it public 10 years ago..
Now, what was happening in the show was that they were slow dripping the technology to the public, to suddenly reveal the stargate, aliens etc. cold turkey would create ALOT of Chaos and Mayhem.
So the past 10 years have been relativly quiet, Earth wise, getting things sorted out, slow dripping the tech.
So, it would be the Earth of TODAY, and they reveal the stargate, and show some youngsters get inspired and join the "Space Force" or whatever, and you have your new team going out to explore the galaxy, still ALOT of planets left to explore, even in this galaxy.
See! "US"

I.... I feel like you completely missed the point in every single post I made.

 

[valkyrie013]

I.... I feel like you completely missed the point in every single post I made.

Nope, your screed is that its impossible for it to be contemporary humans, and need to be rebooted. It can be.
Stargate Earth has never been totally "US" and my 5 minute think can make it Contemporary to us modern humans in the show and not be Trek Lite.. so I'm 120% in the Revival camp as a reboot would just rehash way to much.

EDIT:
Okay, how about using a possibility from the Stargate Film sequel.
Daniel Jackson, or somebody, finds Another stargate on Earth, not connected to the current gate network, but one that maybe connects to the gates that the Destiny seed ships have settled in other galaxy's or maybe a whole new network by different ancients. To far to fly with ships, so its back to the gate style, and still being based on Earth. Ta da!