The Stargate Franchise - A First Timer's Watchthrough

[David cgc]

It's definitely interesting to compare the movie with the series. There are definitely a lot of interesting continuity changes.

There was an SG-1 video game which was being made around season 8 which was cancelled, but the early trailer (minor no-context spoilers for bad guys introduced in season 6 and 7) and promo art showed they were taking advantage of being in a different medium to bring back a lot of the large-scale, elaborate production design from the movie. Jackal guards, Serpent helmets that actually retracted instead of just flipping open, and Ra's pyramid-ship with it's huge open throne room, not to mention more varied and large-scale alien environments that weren't "matte painting and building interiors" or "temperate pine forest." Ooh, and apparently, an unfinished build was leaked several years ago and there are playthroughs on YouTube, so now I have something to look into.

Speaking of the Jaffa helmets, a fun "technology marches on" thing is seeing how they dealt with that as the show went on. In the film, they broke into hundreds of tiny plates and retracted (done with painstakingly hand-tracked stop-motion animation). They punted on the Serpent helmets, as I mentioned, which I guess they were comfortable with because it was a different kind of helmet, because the first time they showed the kind of Horus guards that were in the movie, they cut away and just played the sound effect when they needed to have the helmet retract. A few seasons later, they showed it on-screen, but in extreme close-up and happening very slowly (I'm not sure if it was done on-set or CG, I haven't seen the episode in a long time), and by the end of the show, CGI had gotten to the point where they were able to show a Horus helmet retract in full, exactly as it did in the movie (better, actually, because the helmet didn't suddenly turn from metal to clay).

 

[Silvercrest]

To add lexicon to lecture (so to speak), I did a watch-through of the series twelve years ago and recorded all the phrases spoken in the Goa'uld/Jaffa language, with the intent to break down the phrases and come up with consistent meanings. To do this, you have to look at the whole context of what's being said, rather than just trying to figure out each word as spoken. The onscreen translations, the closed captioning on the DVDs, and some online lexicons give translations, but you can't always use those to get individual definitions. I had a friend once who took the phrase "gal a’quel" (translated onscreen as "hand it over") and assumed that "gal" must mean "hand"! Nope. Languages don't work that way. I needed to go a little deeper than that.

It's harder than you'd think. Some words or phrases are easy because they're given specific meanings, like "taur" = "human". "Kree!" means "attention!", of course. But others seem to be all over the place.

• We're told that Teal'c's name means "strength" while Anise's means "noble strength", so why do their names not resemble each other? I resolved this by making "teal" mean literal "strength", while "ani" means "noble" and "sehe" means "strength of character". In RPG terms (which is why I did the whole exercise), "anise" would equate to "a lot of charisma".
  
• We're introduced at various times to the terms "pel'tac", "teltac", "ha'tak", "tac'monat", "tac'uni'ta'gam'in'ita'lon"
  ("tac" for short — of course!) ... so what the heck does "tac" mean in all these contexts????? I struggled with this and finally differentiated between "tac" and "tak", the latter being pronounced more gutturally. I interpret "tac" to mean "control", though a logical extension is for it to also mean "drive or fly". "Tak" means "hand". (As used elsewhere, "ha" can be taken to mean "judgement".P So "pel'tac" (the bridge of a ship) = "starship control" while "ha'tak (the big Goa'uld mothership) = "hand of judgement".
  
• What is the exact meaning of the word "shol'va"? It seems to mean "traitor", but there's use of "va" elsewhere that seems to be unrelated (and may mean "closed"). I finally compromised by declaring "shol" to mean "one's own kind"; therefore, "shol'va" would literally translate to "closed off to one's own kind". Near enough.
• What word means "god" in this language? You'd think it'd be "goa'uld", but if you listen to the System Lords talk in their own language, they don't use that word very often. There are other words using the syllable "goa", and they don't mean "god", the generally have to do with something being irrelevant. More to the point, it sounds like the System Lords refer to each other as "ona'k", particularly notable in "Fair Game". To keep all this consistent, I concluded that "goa'uld" literally means "no one else matters", a general categorization, while "ona'k" is what they call themselves and it means "coolest of the cool". Those meanings seem the most consistent with all the usages.

Most of these tie into other words, which is the point of making them consistent and the point of looking at them so hard. Once you get enough of the words together, you can figure out others. Once I puzzled out "brai" as "finely machined" or "well-honed", I was able to get a new meaning out of Bra'tac's name: "Superior control/coordination". It fits him.

Some of this likely crosses over with the writers' intent; some almost certainly doesn't. A real linguist would probably reverse-engineer this stuff in a very different way and get something more authentic. Plus some of it I basically had to make up to get things to fit, like "the suffic 'c or 'k means 'extreme', while the suffix 't reverses the meaning of the phrase". YMMV. But it was a fun exercise and added something extra to my RPG.

I was hoping to break down the phrasing from the original Stargate movie to add to the lexicon, but it's a VERY different language from the show and has little in common with it.

 

[tomalak301]

Absolute Power

I wasn't really a fan of that episode and I think it has to do with the fact that the episode prior was also an alternate, what if episode. The dream sequence was pretty effective though showing how the evil knowledge of the Goa'ulds absolutely corrupts and a dark path that Daniel could go down, especially by targeting and eliminating Moscow. However, I thought the kid who played Shifu wasn't all that great and it would have been nice to learn something new about the Goa'ulds rather than having him just get up and go. After the interesting revelations in Maternal Instinct, I feel like this episode was a little bit of a let down.

 

[JD]

The show changed so much from the movie, I kind of wish they had pulled a Buffy, and done a book or comic that told a version of the movie's events that was more consistent with the show.

 

[David cgc]

Absolute Power

I wasn't really a fan of that episode and I think it has to do with the fact that the episode prior was also an alternate, what if episode. The dream sequence was pretty effective though showing how the evil knowledge of the Goa'ulds absolutely corrupts and a dark path that Daniel could go down, especially by targeting and eliminating Moscow. However, I thought the kid who played Shifu wasn't all that great and it would have been nice to learn something new about the Goa'ulds rather than having him just get up and go. After the interesting revelations in Maternal Instinct, I feel like this episode was a little bit of a let down.

There was a deleted scene paying off that "Where's Teal'c?" subplot in the dream, where we found out evil!Daniel had him imprisoned and was transfusing Teal'c's blood into him so he could use a Goa'uld hand device.

 

[DonIago]

Absolute Power

I wasn't really a fan of that episode and I think it has to do with the fact that the episode prior was also an alternate, what if episode. The dream sequence was pretty effective though showing how the evil knowledge of the Goa'ulds absolutely corrupts and a dark path that Daniel could go down, especially by targeting and eliminating Moscow. However, I thought the kid who played Shifu wasn't all that great and it would have been nice to learn something new about the Goa'ulds rather than having him just get up and go. After the interesting revelations in Maternal Instinct, I feel like this episode was a little bit of a let down.

I admittedly kind of enjoyed watching Daniel become a tyrant. But as far as the Harcesis arc goes...well...that kind of fizzled, didn't it?

 

[tomalak301]

I admittedly kind of enjoyed watching Daniel become a tyrant. But as far as the Harcesis arc goes...well...that kind of fizzled, didn't it?

Yes. Yes it did. So much promise too.

 

[Jayson1]

I admittedly kind of enjoyed watching Daniel become a tyrant. But as far as the Harcesis arc goes...well...that kind of fizzled, didn't it?

Sort of but the people who was looking out after him stay important throughout the entire franchise but I don't want to make a big spoiler. I hope just saying that wasn't a big spoiler.

Jason

 

[DonIago]

Yes. Yes it did. So much promise too.

I kind of wonder whether the writer(s) who came up with the Harcesis to begin with had any thoughts as to where that might go, and what the decision-making process was that led to this particular resolution.

 

[tomalak301]

There was a deleted scene paying off that "Where's Teal'c?" subplot in the dream, where we found out evil!Daniel had him imprisoned and was transfusing Teal'c's blood into him so he could use a Goa'uld hand device.

Interesting. It almost seemed like the whole Teal'c thing was dropped as the dream went along. We already understood the lengths evil Daniel would go so I am not surprised it was dropped, but it could have been fun if they had left it in.

 

[tomalak301]

I kind of wonder whether the writer(s) who came up with the Harcesis to begin with had any thoughts as to where that might go, and what the decision-making process was that led to this particular resolution.

One of the issues I have with arc-shows is they need to really come to a satisfying conclusion for the entire story to work. This plot point had some really good build up, going back to episode 1 with Shar'e and then Forever in a Day, and then Maternal Instinct. I mean the whole reason for the kid was to keep Daniel interested in helping SG-1 because he saw no point if his wife had been killed. Now @Jayson mentioned that the stuff around the kid might still be important and I don't think that's a spoiler, but I'm surprised Daniel didn't go into another withdrawl or something and decided to leave anyway. What is his reason for staying this time. He's already found the kid or the Knowledge he possesses isn't entirely useful unless he wants to become Hitler or something.

 

[thribs]

Has anyone read the post movie novels? The books that came out after the movie but before the series. I’m curious on what they’re like.

 

[David cgc]

At this point, where else is Daniel going to go? He doesn't have a life to go back to on Abydos with Sha're dead. Shifu is fine. His career on Earth is moribund since all the proof that he isn't a quack is top secret. He's got friends and a fulfilling career at the SGC, so he doesn't really need a personal mission to justify staying anymore.

And to be fair, while the Harcesis arc does sort of fizzle, it does branch off into one of the major arcs for the rest of the series, as well as both spin-offs.

 

[tomalak301]

Prodigy

This episode went from Air Force recruitment video (Even got the general himself at the time as a cameo) to fighting off electric mosquitoes in that 44 minute span. That cadet was kinda annoying. She may have appeared smart, but she didn't have any discipline. I was hoping Carter would have given her a good wake up call when they went through the Stargate but Haily just didn't develop all that well. I'm not sure if we will see her again (I'm not sure if I want to see her again), but it doesn't matter who was right or not. What matters is the positive outcome.

I hate to say it, but heading into the finale, Season 4 feels like it's back in a little bit of a Lull again. This has been a pretty inconsistent season, and that makes me sad.

 

[Jayson1]

One of the issues I have with arc-shows is they need to really come to a satisfying conclusion for the entire story to work. This plot point had some really good build up, going back to episode 1 with Shar'e and then Forever in a Day, and then Maternal Instinct. I mean the whole reason for the kid was to keep Daniel interested in helping SG-1 because he saw no point if his wife had been killed. Now @Jayson mentioned that the stuff around the kid might still be important and I don't think that's a spoiler, but I'm surprised Daniel didn't go into another withdrawl or something and decided to leave anyway. What is his reason for staying this time. He's already found the kid or the Knowledge he possesses isn't entirely useful unless he wants to become Hitler or something.

I was speaking more about the aliens. They will be used a lot more and you will find out more about who they are.

Jason

 

[Jayson1]

Prodigy

This episode went from Air Force recruitment video (Even got the general himself at the time as a cameo) to fighting off electric mosquitoes in that 44 minute span. That cadet was kinda annoying. She may have appeared smart, but she didn't have any discipline. I was hoping Carter would have given her a good wake up call when they went through the Stargate but Haily just didn't develop all that well. I'm not sure if we will see her again (I'm not sure if I want to see her again), but it doesn't matter who was right or not. What matters is the positive outcome.

I hate to say it, but heading into the finale, Season 4 feels like it's back in a little bit of a Lull again. This has been a pretty inconsistent season, and that makes me sad.

She will return and the other science guy will as well and actually become a fan favorite character. I actually liked Haily and even wanted to see become a regular on a show but it never happened. Also I think this is the season where in a couple of episodes they switch from film to digital to film the show. The overall look actually gets better IMO.

Jason

 

[David cgc]

I hate to say it, but heading into the finale, Season 4 feels like it's back in a little bit of a Lull again. This has been a pretty inconsistent season, and that makes me sad.

The next one ("Entity") is kind of rough, IIRC, but the last two episodes of the season are a lot of fun. One of them is probably an all-time great, one of those moments fans will use to sell people on the series.

 

[tomalak301]

The next one ("Entity") is kind of rough, IIRC, but the last two episodes of the season are a lot of fun. One of them is probably an all-time great, one of those moments fans will use to sell people on the series.

Entity was ok, but nothing worth commenting on. I'm watching Double Jeopardy now and the Comtraya guy is back. I love that they are doing a follow up to Tin Man.

 

[tomalak301]

Double Jeopardy

They are going to end season 4 strong, and it starts with an episode that was a follow up to Tin Man. I was so happy to see Harlan (The Comtraya guy) again, and the banter and the fight between the two Jacks was hilarious. It ended with a pretty big moment where both Teal'c's help to kill Cronus, and the robot versions of SG-1 go out in a blaze of glory. This was a lot of fun and now I'm really looking forward to the finale. Evidently it's a 3 part episode so I guess I'll watch them tomorrow.

 

[John Clark]

Has anyone read the post movie novels? The books that came out after the movie but before the series. I’m curious on what they’re like.

The Bill McCay ones?

I thought they were entertaining but obviously vastly different from what the series would turn out to be like. I think I've still got all of them and probably should reread at some point.

Spoiler: Spoilers

No Sam, Teal'c or Hammond. Hathor played a much larger role as did the Abydonians.