New StarGate series Prime Video.

[Christopher]

Likewise, based on the comments from Martin Gero since this news broke that Stargate's appeal is that it takes place in "our world" I'm interpreting that as meaning the Stargate program will still be a secret in this series.

Oh, I hope not. That's just what I hate about the secrecy trope, this absurd need to pretend a work of science fiction or fantasy takes place behind the scenes in the real world. I mean, we all know it isn't real! We're watching it on the bloomin' teevee! And the whole purpose of science fiction is to explore how scientific, technological, and cultural innovations change the world. Keeping it all buried to maintain the absurd pretense of a real-world status quo is squandering the potential of speculative fiction.

I find it far more interesting when genre shows allow the world to be transformed by their speculative premises. The 4400 was a good example of that. So was iZombie in the later seasons where the zombies were outed (although the show changed so much that the lead character became more or less superfluous to the stories). X-Men Evolution was a far more boring show in the first two seasons where mutants were secret than in the latter two seasons where they were exposed to the world.

 

[Gepard]

I mean, we all know it isn't real! We're watching it on the bloomin' teevee!

Ah, but it allows the fantasy that, by watching the show, we're in on the secret. We know what's really under Cheyenne mountain, even though those normies don't. We're special. That's part of the appeal.

 

[Christopher]

Ah, but it allows the fantasy that, by watching the show, we're in on the secret. We know what's really under Cheyenne mountain, even though those normies don't. We're special. That's part of the appeal.

But again, the appeal of science fiction is exploring how innovation changes the world. I find that far more interesting. Stories about secrecy are too limiting, because they're dominated by the need to keep the secret, and the need to keep hitting the reset button to preserve the "realistic" status quo.

And in this day and age, with so many powerful people engaging in constant lies and corruption, I am completely over the plot device of government or military protagonists keeping secrets from the public "for their own good."

 

[Paul Weaver]

I think the main reason they kept it a secret from the public is that from a world building stand-point, it would be an utterly world altering revelation with far reaching societal consequences. Part of the appeal of Stargate has always been the contemporary setting, and you can't really do that credibly anymore if the program is made public.

The problem is as SG1 progressed

It should be lauded for actually seeing the world progress, both in the tactics and equipment the SGC used, but I thought that Moebius had an interesting line. In the gateless world, Daniel's camera as described as

"The technology is somewhat different to what is commercially available today, but we managed to charge the battery"

Which implied there had been progress in the civilian world after 7 years of the stargate progress.

The problem I think SG1 had was Prometheus. Until then I could believe a scrappy sub-basement group with small technical spin-offs and a team of 100 or so that know the truth.

Once you start having massive space ships you’re stretching the realms of credibility.

Russia/China relations as depicted in seasons 4 through 7 (watergate though disclosure) were reasonable for c.2000 politics.

The more I think about it the more I think the right way forward would be a complete reset.

 

[Noname Given]

...Once you start having massive space ships you’re stretching the realms of credibility....

Yeah, even today in the real world everyone believes the UFO incidents are ALL secret Government technology - and the Governments have made the announcement this is so - thus no one still believes they may be Extra Terrestrial in origin... oh, wait...

 

[Gepard]

But again, the appeal of science fiction is exploring how innovation changes the world. I

That's one of the appeals; it's not the only one.

 

[Christopher]

That's one of the appeals; it's not the only one.

I was speaking for myself.

 

[The Wormhole]

Of course, the important thing to remember is this show is the first new Stargate in over a decade and a half and it's going to be trying to be accessible to people who never watched SG-1 or the rest of the franchise before. Looking at Gero's comments in this context, it suggests that the lead characters for this series will be audience surrogates who are just learning about the Stargate for the first time. For this to work, the Stargate will have to be a secret to explain how these characters know nothing of it. I can sort of see this, in the first episode we're introduced to some sort of military special forces badass or brilliant civilian scientist who catches the eye of someone at or connected to the SGC and are subsequently recruited, leading to the new audience learning about this world at the same time as this character.

 

[Christopher]

Of course, the important thing to remember is this show is the first new Stargate in over a decade and a half and it's going to be trying to be accessible to people who never watched SG-1 or the rest of the franchise before. Looking at Gero's comments in this context, it suggests that the lead characters for this series will be audience surrogates who are just learning about the Stargate for the first time. For this to work, the Stargate will have to be a secret to explain how these characters know nothing of it. I can sort of see this, in the first episode we're introduced to some sort of military special forces badass or brilliant civilian scientist who catches the eye of someone at or connected to the SGC and are subsequently recruited, leading to the new audience learning about this world at the same time as this character.

It's entirely possible to introduce an audience to an alternate present-day world that's openly quite different from our own. Look how efficiently the first X-Men movie or The Incredibles introduced their alternate worlds of superpowered humans, or Alien Nation introduced its near future where alien refugees had become the newest minority class in Los Angeles, or The Fantastic Four: First Steps established its alternate 1960s. It literally only takes a few minutes to set up such a world. So I don't buy for a second that the secrecy trope is "necessary" to introduce the franchise to new viewers. It was already a terrible idea to keep the SGC secret by the later seasons of SG-1, and the fact that it's a decade and a half later makes it even more of a crime against democracy in-universe to keep the public ignorant of something so important to Earth's future.

 

[The Wormhole]

But again, in this case we have the showrunner talking about his favorite aspect of the Stargate franchise being that it took place in "our world." It's not really "our world" even in a fictional context if the Stargate is publicly known.

 

[Christopher]

But again, in this case we have the showrunner talking about his favorite aspect of the Stargate franchise being that it took place in "our world." It's not really "our world" even in a fictional context if the Stargate is publicly known.

I think that's defining it too narrowly. Marvel Comics always claimed to represent "the world outside your window," using real countries and presidents and celebrities and current social trends and so forth, but alongside all the publicly known superheroes and villains and alien invaders and imaginary countries like Latveria and Wakanda and Subterranea. It's not all-or-nothing.

Besides, just because a showrunner has a preference doesn't automatically make it a good idea. In the context of the Stargate universe, it's a terrible idea, because of the monstrous ethical problem it creates if the public is still being cheated out of its fundamental Constitutional right to know what its government is doing in its name. If this is what Gero thinks the new show should be, then I think he's making a terrible mistake -- unless the new show confronts the profound immorality of the government denying the voters their rights and makes it an allegory for the government injustices in the real world right now.

 

[David cgc]

I think that it can still be a contemporary world even once the stargate program is public. @Christopher has already cited a lot of precedents (I'd add For All Mankind, which maintains cultural and historical touchstones with the real world to keep the characters grounded even as science, technology, and politics diverge more and more), I don't think Gero saying that the special sauce of the Stargate premise is contemporary people having space adventures rather than people who grew up in some futuristic society is necessarily incompatible with the stargate program being public in his reboot. Personally, I've got a small hope that the Stargate: Revolution script might be adapted as an interquel novel to set up/promote the new show.

It wouldn't necessarily even change day to day life on Earth to a Star Trekkian level. Like Gibson's line about the future already being here, it's just not evenly distributed. For instance, stargates and ring-transporters are way too small to service a population the size of Earth. So, as an example, even though you could take a ring transporter from New York to L.A., a ticket costs $5,000, so 99% of people have still only ever been on a plane (even a suborbital plane that does the trip in two hours would seem pretty lousy compared to teleportation, especially if airports haven't changed).

 

[Samurai8472]

I believe small amounts of alien tech acquired from stargate travels have been patented by certain companies

The F-302 engines from that one episode were built by an aerospace company so the Stargate earth universe probably has far superior engines than our world for example

Medical advancements. That's been a big one through the series. They've probably patented some medicines they've acquired

Mathematics and physics. All advanced from gate travel

So even if they haven't revealed the stargate they still made an impact on everyday life

 

[Christopher]

I think that it can still be a contemporary world even once the stargate program is public. @Christopher has already cited a lot of precedents (I'd add For All Mankind, which maintains cultural and historical touchstones with the real world to keep the characters grounded even as science, technology, and politics diverge more and more), I don't think Gero saying that the special sauce of the Stargate premise is contemporary people having space adventures rather than people who grew up in some futuristic society is necessarily incompatible with the stargate program being public in his reboot. Personally, I've got a small hope that the Stargate: Revolution script might be adapted as an interquel novel to set up/promote the new show.

I hope you're right, because the secrecy thing is just indefensible by this point -- heck, it was indefensible by the latter few seasons of SG-1.

It wouldn't necessarily even change day to day life on Earth to a Star Trekkian level. Like Gibson's line about the future already being here, it's just not evenly distributed. For instance, stargates and ring-transporters are way too small to service a population the size of Earth. So, as an example, even though you could take a ring transporter from New York to L.A., a ticket costs $5,000, so 99% of people have still only ever been on a plane (even a suborbital plane that does the trip in two hours would seem pretty lousy compared to teleportation, especially if airports haven't changed).

I always felt it was a missed opportunity that the intar stun weapons the SGC got from the Goa'uld -- the ones that were modeled on Earth firearms to train Jaffa for infiltration or whatever that was, but that fired stun bolts instead of bullets -- were never repurposed for civilian law-enforcement use. That would've been a great boon, a reliable nonlethal police weapon. They could've just claimed it was an Air Force breakthrough that they were sharing with the police.

 

[Noname Given]

Of course, the important thing to remember is this show is the first new Stargate in over a decade and a half and it's going to be trying to be accessible to people who never watched SG-1 or the rest of the franchise before. Looking at Gero's comments in this context, it suggests that the lead characters for this series will be audience surrogates who are just learning about the Stargate for the first time. For this to work, the Stargate will have to be a secret to explain how these characters know nothing of it. I can sort of see this, in the first episode we're introduced to some sort of military special forces badass or brilliant civilian scientist who catches the eye of someone at or connected to the SGC and are subsequently recruited, leading to the new audience learning about this world at the same time as this character.

So..Stargate Academy...
I kid...I kid...or do I?

 

[valkyrie013]

World learns that for the the past 30 years, we have had access to the stars, and during that time more than a few of those "Aliens" have attacked Earth, some really at the brink.
How do you tell people that? Oh by the way.

Lets say it is made public. Not like the whole world can go through it, its 1 door. And go where? Not many planets are above the middle ages in technology. Be like visiting the Amish. ( i know some are more technilogical)

I would say a slow drip, like some episodes of SG1 were doing. Or say we have starships, but keep the gate secret?

Don't see how to do it without some MAJOR social/religious upheaval.

as for a person? Have like what they did with Eli in Universe. Someone totally new to the experiance.

 

[Aragorn]

All the upheaval will probably go ignored, like how Marvel ignored the actual ramifications of the blip. Or when Star Trek introduces a world-changing piece of technology in one episode that's never mentioned again.

 

[JD]

I can see what Gero was saying, because it is kind of fun to watch a show like the Stargates, and think that this could be happening right now. It's kind of hard to do that if the world in the show has changed so much as to be completely unrecognizable as ours. This doesn't have to be true of every contemporary genre shows, sometimes it can be fun to get a story that looks at an alternate modern world, but that's just not the kind story that Stargate is.

 

[Christopher]

It's kind of hard to do that if the world in the show has changed so much as to be completely unrecognizable as ours.

I don't think that would happen. As David cgc said, the benefits of the Stargate program would be unevenly distributed. Most people's everyday lives probably wouldn't be that affected. They'd just know that Earth was part of an interstellar civilization and interacted with aliens, and that there were descendants of transplanted humans on distant planets, and that might be an interesting thing to hear reports about on the nightly news or watch TV documentaries about, but it wouldn't have much effect on their jobs and social lives and shopping and so forth. There'd be some advanced alien technology in use, but probably mainly by governments and rich people, so little would've trickled down to the general public.

Besides, I submit that later seasons of SG-1 already bore little resemblance to everyday life, because the show rarely dealt with everyday people at that point. When it brought in Earth characters from outside the SGC, they were usually scientists, politicians, or businesspeople who had already been read into the program. That's a large part of why I felt the secrecy trope had become narratively pointless by then, just an old habit that had outlived its usefulness.

 

[JD]

To be clear, I was just talking about the general idea of contemporary genre shows that have things happening in secret, I actually do agree that keeping the secrecy element to the Stargate was getting pretty stupid once we reached the point where we had giant Star Trek style ships, and most of the world's governments knew about it. Once we started having giants ships in orbit and alien invasions and attacks happening, there was almost no way civilians wouldn't have started to notice something was up.
And we already got 17 seasons of the program being secret, so making it public would be a nice way to change things up. And really with the way technology has advanced since Universe ended in 2011, it's even harder to believe they could actually still keep something like this secret.