The Stargate Franchise - A First Timer's Watchthrough

IIRC the general idea is that the Stargates aren't just opening wormholes, they're deconstructing matter as it crosses the event horizon, then transmitting that matter through the wormhole for the gate on the other end to seamlessly reassemble. Presumably wormhole travel isn't survivable if you just sent a live subject through...or the throat is so small that nothing larger than an atom or a radiowave would actually fit anyway. Note that there is also a transit time that the traveller cannot perceive, so while it feels subjectively instantaneous, objectively they loose a few seconds with each trip.

Whatever the made-up explanation though, the main take-away is that these are devices with very carefully implemented restrictions, mostly for safety reasons. I mean imagine what would happen if two-way travel were a thing and you dialled a gate that was submerged under an ocean of water, in a vacuum, a poisonous atmosphere, or even with a slightly different pressure. And that's not even including things like radiation or invasive fauna (anyone seen 'The Mist'?) It could cause all sorts of problems at either end.

 

Perhaps the simplest reason to prohibit two-way travel is to avoid the problem of things going both ways at the same time.

 

We see later on there are safeguards for that, though they never go into detail. At one point, when a team had been out of contact on a planet with a Goa'uld presence, they're told to go to the Alpha Site for examination in case they've been taken over. Also, apparently, mature, unbonded Goa'uld are fairly rare, which doesn't entirely make sense considering the number of Jaffa and how quickly they go through Goa'uld (I think it was something like ten to twelve years for a Goa'uld to incubate? Times a Jaffa's lifespan, that means there should be a dozen Goa'uld for every Jaffa that ever lived to old age. Even if most Jaffa die in combat and take their Goa'uld with them, that's still more than one they each raised to maturity, considering how young they start). We get an explanation for that disparity later on, but it's kind of half-assed and silly, though it does work, and fits with the fact that Goa'uld are generally paranoid, power-hungry megalomaniacs.

My point, though, is that Apophis probably doesn't have enough spare Goa'uld that are ready to be implanted that he can just have them lying in wait throughout the galaxy to grab unsuspecting SG-teams. It's not really a body-snatching universe.

And that's still an issue in the show, just only from the outgoing-end (well, I feel like there was a time there was a radiation leak was coming backwards through the gate, and there's another case coming up very soon we can wait to talk about). Normally, though, the gate calibrates itself to the ambient pressure when it's opened, so if you dial a planet with lower air-pressure, it doesn't start sucking out all the air in the SGC. This also allows Stargates to work underwater, but not if the pressure changes or is partial, so you can still have problems if you open a Stargate and then the area it's in floods.

 

Message in a Bottle

I'm currently watching this episode and it's very timely to what we are all going through. An unknown object carrying a virus (Organism) that can infect anyone or anything and the complex has to go into Quarantine (Wild Fire) to stop it's spread.

By the way, I don't want this thread to get political to today's situation, but this was the article I was referencing the other day. Like @JD, I too didn't know it was a real place until just recently.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/ar...Cheyenne-mountain-bunker.html#reader-comments

I also love how scientific this show feels sometimes. It feels like a lot of shows have gone to the action, shoot them up approach, but this show has a curiosity and uses science to tell the story. That is pretty refreshing for a TV show, especially watching it today.

 

yet later

Spoiler

we say the fully grown but unimplanted goa'uld being killed with a bite the back of the neck. Guess it's one way to reduce a challenge to one's powers on the other hand if you're not a plentiful species...

 

That would be the silly solution I mentioned to why there weren't way more Goa'uld than Jaffa.

 

Exactly. The point being stargates don't just poke holes in space-time willy-nilly; they're designed to rather carefully moderate the exchange of matter...to a point, anyway.

Spoiler

It felt weird at the time how they touched on this exactly once and never again, but on reflection it makes a kind of sense. Maybe that's how it's always been from the start. Those that could not acquire hosts were typically consumed by those that could. This drives a process of natural selection that means only the strong get to propagate and they don't overrun their host species, which would lead to a population crash. Replenishing their host's numbers while they're implanted doesn't appear to be an option since harsesis offspring appear to present a problem.
It's never really explained, but if I had to guess I'd say the taboo started not just because they'd retain the genetic memory (as that only matters *after* they get access to technology and start putting on the "god" acts) but perhaps because harsesis are immunised against implantation. That way Goa'uld cannot allow their numbers to grow too high and only rarely selecting a small number of their offspring to take hosts.

 

You'll see this a lot on SG1. The upcoming episode "Matter of Time" (S2x16) is another episode that uses science in a really good way.

I think the show employed some scientific and military consultants to help with accuracy. And yes, it is refreshing. While SG1 is scifi, it still felt really grounded in both scientific and military realism.

 

Just finished it. Great episode. Very exciting at the end and it kinda reminded me of TNG's Evolution.

 

Next episode is "Family". It is a sequel to season's 1 episode "Bloodlines". It is a great Tealc episode. I look forward to your thoughts on it.

 

Yeah, that comes up again several times throughout the series.

I love the Asgard, they become a pretty big part of the franchise as it goes on.
Fun fact: Micheal Shanks, who played Daniel Jackson, voiced 3 different Asgard, Teryl Rothery, who played Dr. Fraiser voiced one, and Peter DeLuise, who was a writer, director and occasional actor for SG-1, voiced one.

Comet shows them on and off.

 

The nudity was mistakenly released on UK VHS with a PG certificate after the BBFC had viewed the version that was supposed to be on it...

 

While I'll never defend clip shows, this is a clip show with a point that continues on.

 

In fact, the establishing shots outside the base seen throughout the episodes were filmed at the actual Cheyenne Mountain Base.

I know they definitely had a military consultant and had the Pentagon actually sign off on the scripts. Though this was done in reaction to some glaring errors in the earlier episodes, like the officer with both Major's and Sergeant's rank insignia on his uniform. Also, the Air Force didn't like the idea they had in the early episodes of having evil military officers as a villain, which is why when Colonel Maybourne is introduced at the end of the first season, he's attached to the fictional NID agency.

 

Family

I have a little bias against Child Actors who have to act angry, so all the Rya'c scenes where he was angry felt very much overacting to me. Besides that, I loved this episode, and learning more about Teal'c's family and the reign Apophis has over the Jaffa. I got a little emotional at the end when they gave Rya'c the electro-shock therapy (I love those weapons by the way, especially in a sense they are like phasers only you don't have to manually control the setting between stun and kill. It's one for stun, 2 for kill, and 3 for vaporize) and they left as a family to the Light/Dark world. I guess this means Judge won't be around for the next few episodes, and we are getting closer to the Tok'ra two parter I might be able to get to tonight.

 

The third shot vaporizes is something else that later gets de-canonized because the writers thought it was really ridiculous. I think it continues to get used for the duration of the second season, but then is never used or mentioned again.

 

I also noticed it gets a little inconsistent as to how effective the first shot is; sometimes it's like a mild electric shock and the person is back on their feet almost right away, other times they're out for the count.

Spoiler

One thing I often lamented in later seasons is that they never really got around to having the SGC reverse engineer either the staff or zat tech into their own weapon. I know a plasma rifle prototype showed up a few times, but nothing really beyond that. You'd think by SGU they'd at least have a zat-like attachment for the various standard issue weapons or something. Maybe the zat props felt too iconic to ditch?

 

That's something that often gets made fun of on the DVD commentaries.

 

So they have an out for Judge to not appear in a few episodes and he's back in the very next episode. I'm a newbie.

 

Spoiler: I'm not sure if this is really a spoiler, but just in case

I just realized Amanda Tapping and Christopher Judge are the only two regulars who were actually in every season.