Seeder Ship: What's the Point?

[Checkmate]

After last night's episode, I was left wondering "WTF?"

What's the point of the seeder ship that's apparently not that far ahead of the Destiny? Where does it gain all the naquadah for the millions of stargates it's built? How does it stay ahead of the Destiny after a ~million years if it's busy building and seeding them on all these planets, obviously indicating that it has to actually travel to those planets? Why can't the Destiny itself perform this task as part of its mission?

It just doesn't make any sense whatsoever.

 

[DWF]

Well I doubt if there's millions of stargate produced by the seeder ship, the mission of the Destiny was to find similar humanoid lifeforms to the Ancients. And I don't think we enough infomation about the seeder ship to say it's stupid, for all we know the gates might be some kind pre-fab gates in pieces on the ship. And for all know the ship might be able to mine what it needs as goes along.

 

[David cgc]

Stargates have a long effective distance and a short travel time. The Destiny, apparently, doesn't. By sending out several automated seeder ships, the Ancients could have just one manned follow-up survey vessel that can cover a much larger area than if they actually had to fly directly to each planet through space.

 

[Brent]

It makes perfect sense to me, use seeder ships to seed gates on planets, then followup with a ship behind them to explore those planets, I don't see the problem.

 

[Harvey]

The ship's purpose is rather logical. That it has managed to survive and stick with the Destiny after all this time requires some suspension of disbelief, though.

 

[P0sitr0nic]

The ship's purpose is rather logical. That it has managed to survive and stick with the Destiny after all this time requires some suspension of disbelief, though.

Anymore than a city that remained intact at the bottom of an ocean?

 

[Harvey]

Considering how long the Destiny (and the seeder ship) have been out in deep space compared to how long Atlantis was submerged, I'd say yes. Moreover, Stargate Atlantis didn't put the same emphasis on realism as Stargate Universe has. Atlantis was a show that was about fighting space vampires and evil robots.

But, you're right, the city lasting for so long underwater was a tad unbelievable.

 

[bullethead]

But, you're right, the city lasting for so long underwater was a tad unbelievable.

It's pretty cold once you get down past a couple hundred feet, which helps preserve stuff (people keep finding shipwrecks that are in pretty good condition despite being underwater for decades at least) and there didn't seem to be a lot of sea life where Atlantis was, so there was minimal damage to the structure (which is designed to fly through space, so I'm assuming that it's made out of really strong material). The outer parts of the pier should've been covered with slit though, as the shield started contracting long before the Atlantis team arrived.

 

[Jimmy_C]

Considering how long the Destiny (and the seeder ship) have been out in deep space compared to how long Atlantis was submerged, I'd say yes. Moreover, Stargate Atlantis didn't put the same emphasis on realism as Stargate Universe has. Atlantis was a show that was about fighting space vampires and evil robots.

But, you're right, the city lasting for so long underwater was a tad unbelievable.

Um, the seeder ship sent the Destiny the data to plot its course. It is no accident they are still in contact. They are robots, after all. They'll just do what they were programmed to do.

 

[Harvey]

Very well-designed robots, it would seem. After centuries upon centuries (upon centuries) of travel, the Destiny and all the Seeder Ships are (apparently) still following the same course and still in contact with one another. That's a pretty impressive accomplishment of engineering!

 

[Checkmate]

I think you guys are overlooking the big point.

The seeder ship must be insanely fast. For the million years that the Destiny has been operating, the seeder ship has to have not only stayed in front of it, but has also had to acquire the raw naquadah, process it, build gates, program those gates, visit every single planet within the Destiny's range, judge whether it is a viable planet for seeding, determine a good place to seed it, seed it, then continue onwards while sending the information back to Destiny. And it's had to do that while staying ahead of Destiny for about a million years.

That's what makes it a ridiculous concept. Unless the Destiny takes a break for a few years every now and again to let the needless seeder ship regain the lead (since Destiny should be doing all those duties itself as part of its mission), there's no way that seeder ship can be that fast while doing that much. And it's completely pointless to just have the Destiny sit on its ass twiddling its thumbs. The only way it might is if the Ancients purposely made the Destiny a clunker in the speed department. Which there's no indication that they did, nor any logical reason to have done so.

And having two ships is a bad idea for a mission of this type when they're both specialized vessels. If the seeder ship gets damaged beyond repair, the Destiny's mission is fucked, too. And vice versa. So it's no different than having it all on the same ship.

 

[Harvey]

I think Rush mentioned Seeder Ships, plural, in the latest episode, 'Life.' Which doesn't totally negate your criticisms, Checkmate, depending on how many seeder ships there actually are.

But correct me if I'm wrong.

 

[P0sitr0nic]

For all we know, the seeder ship remains a galaxy ahead of the Destiny.

It goes in, does its thing along a SET course thru a galaxy, determining which planets to set a gate on, then goes on, letting Destiny fly thru, and take better readings which were presumably to be used by the Altarans.

 

[David cgc]

I think Rush mentioned Seeder Ships, plural, in the latest episode, 'Life.'

Yes, it's always been plural on the show. I think the only times it was implied they was only one ship going ahead of Destiny was in the prepremiere publicity.

Thought they might indeed be faster. Larger engines, perhaps, that would put out too much radiation to be fitted to a crewed ship.

 

[Harvey]

I wish I hadn't read the pre-series publicty. It makes keeping the facts straight twice as hard--I wonder why so many things were off the mark, considering how many episodes were already in the can before the premiere? I still can't remember how old exactly the Destiny is supposed to be.

 

[Snaploud]

Perhaps the Seeder Ships are self-replicating (ala Deep Space Nine's minefield)... They were probably also sent out much earlier than the Destiny (perhaps thousands of years earlier)...

 

[Lindley]

Von Neumann seeder ships? Now that's actually a very practical idea....

 

[David cgc]

I wish I hadn't read the pre-series publicty. It makes keeping the facts straight twice as hard--I wonder why so many things were off the mark, considering how many episodes were already in the can before the premiere? I still can't remember how old exactly the Destiny is supposed to be.

Well, things started coming out before casting (when half the characters had different names), so I'd imagine a lot of details were in flux, and a lot more were simply misreported by the publicity department and the spoiler hounds. I remember at one point Destiny hearing was the seeder ship, and the follow-up survey vessel was never even built.

 

[Checkmate]

None of that makes any sense.

The Destiny can't be a survey vessel. It's getting all of its survey information from the seeder ship(s), as made evident in the last episode. It also doesn't stay around nearly long enough to survey the planets within range properly. Planets the seeder ships had plenty of time to travel to, survey, build stargates for, and seed. And those ships would need to be able to survey the planets themselves in order to know which ones to seed in the first place.

Even if the seeder ships left thousands of years ahead of the Destiny, which itself is ridiculously unlikely, they'd still have to be capable of unbelievable speeds. Literally unbelievable. As in not at all believable. Even if it traveled ten times the speed of the Destiny, the Destiny would have caught up with it by now considering just how many planets those ships have to survey and seed, not to mention how long it would take to mine (however it does it) the naquadah for all of those gates. Considering how often the Destiny stops and how many gates are usually in range, that's a lot of stops the seeder ships have to make.

And, again, it's all things the Destiny could and should have been able to do as part of its primary mission. It really is ridiculous sending more than one ship out like that. By the explanations you guys are giving, the Destiny doesn't really serve a purpose at all. It's an empty ship that just tags along and stores information from the seeder ships; a task the seeder ships could have been doing. And if a crew of Ancients were needed to live onboard it, it obviously has the processing abilities to create a suitable environment considering how quickly and how often it has to build stargates all on its own.

Then you just have the huge suspension of disbelief required to assume that even one ship lasted a million years, let alone however many fully-functional seeder ships there are trucking ahead at these relatively unbelievable speeds.

 

[Reverend]

Von Neumann seeder ships? Now that's actually a very practical idea....

...right up until the point they evolve into mechano insects and start eating whole planets.

As for the seeder ships being faster then Destiny, when you consider that an unmanned ship wouldn't need to worry about diverting power to life support, gravity, the Stargate itself and would be able to turn down the inertial dampeners and pull off accelerations that while within the limits of the superstructure, would turn a human into very flat chunky salsa.

As for the improbability of the ship surviving in deep space for so long; to be fair it's not as if it still has that factory mint "new spaceship smell", the thing is falling to bits, leaking like a seive and has components decomposing. On top of that space is big, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really, really,REALLY big. As such it is mostly filled with...well nothing much at all, especially if you're spending a good portion of the time in the intergalactic void where a stray electron is a stunningly rare discovery. So, aside from the odd plunge into large burning balls of gas and nuclear fusion, I can't foreseen many naturally occurring eventualities that might threaten the ship.

Indeed, the fact that's it's tough enough to plunge into a star speaks volumes as to the ship's resilience and the AI appears to be more than able to cope with changing circumstances.

As for the impracticalities involved with the way Destiny is stopping only for short periods, remember that it's running on autopilot. I'm sure the ancients intended to be able to pilot the ship themselves.