Where should Stargate go now?

[gturner]

Since this is a plot point that has been constantly debated throughout the entire run of the Stargate franchise, here's something I would change:

Make the Stargate public knowledge from the very beginning, and actually allow the world to react to the news instead of keeping it a secret the whole time.

That's the kind of thinking I'd want to see from the people I hire to reboot it - don't get hung up on preconceived notions about how a show must be this way or that way. Be daring or don't bother. Maybe that's not the right approach but someone needs to give it a good think-through before coming to that conclusion.

Well, a Stargate reboot does have the really unusual out of screwing continuity all to heck and calling the program "Wormhole Extreme!"

"Of course it's totally wrong. It has to be because this show is a cover for the real show, unless it was the other show that was the real cover, and this one is..."

It might be easier to think outside the franchise and pull in vaguely similar premises from science fiction.

Here are a few ideas:

1) More advanced and diverse human enemies.

The Go'uld kept humans as primitive laborers, but perhaps it would be more interesting if the alien races had been using us because we're adaptable, trainable, and good with technology (as opposed to pushing plows and stabbing people), perhaps much more so than the aliens.

Then instead of constantly encountering medieval villages and Egyptian settlements, we're encountering technically advanced humans who could believe all sorts of crazy things, making them far more dangerous and threatening than the Jaffa ever were.

Stargate used elements of advanced humans many times, but usually those plots were written as a way for us to get some non-Go'uld technology to fight the Go'uld, or to provide a doomed love-interest for Carter. Humans were never a significant adversary on their own till the show ran out of Go'uld and came up with the post-Go'uld Lucian Alliance, which was never very well developed. Basically, all the humans we fought seem to be either still enslaved, free but primitive, or using Go'uld tech. The humans who had advanced were allies, if often irritating ones.

What if there were very advanced humans out there, coming from a variety of alien "owners" (so their technology and cultures would vary more widely), and upon discovering us, they frequently decide to reclaim their Earth homeworld or destroy it before someone else can claim it, or naturally assume that they should be running it?

2) Greater diversity of conflicts

What if the humans often fight bitterly amongst themselves, perhaps in concert with aliens or dragged into alien wars, providing any number of story arcs as needed?

That would allow shades of Babylon 5, including occassionally losing the Earth to hostile forces through direct action, intrigue, and misguided trust of Greeks bearing gifts, while retaining the exploratory character of Stargate (along with fun stand-alones) by not clinging to a single arc.

3) Greater diversity of rules (what works where, and why)

You could make it sort of a meta-science fiction show, where we might encounter equivalents of Colonials fighting Cylons, the Federation fighting Romulans, rebels fighting the Empire, not locking things into a particular type of ship or set of rules. This could prevent the characters from reaching the state where they have everything figured out and all the tech they need, which afflicted SG-1 in the later seasons.

4) Divide the galaxy into zones.

One way to do this is to have the galaxy divided into zones where the rules of physics are slightly different, like Vernor Vinge's "Fire Upon the Deep" to explain why ships and technology don't seem to work universally, why ships in some areas "jump", others warp, some use fusion drives and missiles, and some don't. The nature of the different zones would keep one type of technology and culture from becoming dominant everywhere, and provide a reason for episodes that only work with certain tech (this plot needs a warp core breach, that plot needs a starfighter to jump into hyperspace).

This would have to be spelled out explicitly very early in the show so viewers don't think the writers lost their marbles and are making things up on the fly without any regard to continuity, and would have to be brought up periodically as a reminder, perhaps with plots concerning aliens trying to obtain weapons and drive systems that would let them expand into a neighboring zone.

The one constant would have to be the gate system.

The reboot:

Perhaps the best way to reboot into this would be the discovery that the equivalent of the Ancient weapons platform on Tokara was used to rewrite the rules of physics across local domains, which was done to prevent any one of a number of threats from taking over the entirety of the galaxy just by possessing an edge in just one propulsion or weapon technology. It would be the same as preventing the possibility of a single predator from becoming dominant over a planet by dividing the planet into wildly diverse ecosystems, knowing that no animal would work well in swamps, oceans, deserts, forests, ice flows, and grasslands.

For continuity, the SGC could notice that the Go'uld, Replicators, and other threats were only operating in certain areas of the galaxy, travelling above or below the spiral arms when they crossed certain regions, which wasn't very obvious when the Tok'ra map display only showed the galaxy from the top. Then we notice that the Gate system doesn't seem to extend into any of these areas, either.

As we send ships to try and explore the neglected zones, their drives cut out, and we realize that the physics are changing, and different. Our ships have to back out slowly on reaction thrusters. Probes show that even F=ma and momentum breaks down a little further in, and the speed of light drops dramatically, so the only way across would take thousands of years of low-speed coasting.

We consult the Asgard database and they never found a solution, having explored almost every conceivable propulsion system. The Go'uld never took things further than that, and both they and the Asgard assumed the whole region would be similar, and assumed that the Ancients never put gates there because the Ancients couldn't get in there, either.

But we discover that the problem is one of the borderlands between zones, where one set of physical laws is being replaced by another set, and that both sublight and FTL propulsion is still possible within the zones, away from the borders, and that there are gate systems within the zones, too. We figure out how to use the Ancients' equivalent of dialing a country code with a password to get between zones and explore what's inside, realizing that the Ancients split the gate system into seperate sections to reduce the chance of a single species takeover, the same reason they'd created the zones themselves. Inside the zones we might discover - a whole new series! ...Stargate Ecosystem...

And then the whole thing is rebooted.

 

[Starkers]

Actually I tell ya where Stargate should go from here...years from now some creator of a brand new show should reference the influence the SG shows had on him/her and how their new show is a bit of a homage. Kinda like JMS with the Prisoner/Blakes 7 etc, or Chris Carter with Kolchak.

 

[Gaith]

Gaith really isn't an "idea" guy so much as a "trash everyone else's idea" guy.

Slander! I have tons of awesome ideas. Like Gods of Allocation, a Sports Night-esque sitcom about the oft-discussed "suits" who decide what movies/shows live or die, and what sort of budgets they get.

There could totally be an episode where one of the guys agonizes over what to do with the Stargate property. On the one hand, it's got strong name recognition, a devoted following, and lots of canon to draw on. On the other hand, it's best known for a show in which military types teleport into Canadi-er, alien forests, and, uh.... from what I've gleaned above... beat some people up?

Meanwhile, the same guy promised his eight-year old daughter he's been neglecting that Johnny Depp will come to her birthday party, but he's doing last-minute reshoots on a movie in Lisbon! Can our hero find an adequately convincing impersonator in time? Find out this Tuesday on... GODS OF ALLOCATION!

 

[stj]

There is a huge problem with any reimagining of Stargate that wants to be grittier or more solemn: The basic premise is completely stupid. Every effort to reimagine SG-1, from the Ori on, broke on this fundamental problem. The viewer can accept the nonsense with willing suspension of disbelief but then he or she cannot simultaneously mentally engage with the supposedly serious drama. The car is either in idle or in high gear. You might keep it up for a two hour movie, but most people's minds wake up for the commercials. (I hope.)

On the other hand, SG-1 was a very successful action/comedy show. It's premise was "We came, we snarked, we conquered!" All the elaborate mythology was just clever writing.

In other words, a reimagined SG-1 should aim for revamping the comedy matrix.

Step 1: Re-do the discovery of the stargate as a civilian project. The original civilian team under Dr. Samantha Carter goes through, falls foul of Ra. When Ra sends troops through the gate on recon, Gen. Hammond sends Col. Jack O'Niell through. The hardbitten soldier saves the civilians and establishes a base on Abydos for further investigation.

Step 2: The new base discovers that Ra wasn't the only one and the key to the gate system. The military can't take over the project because they lack the expertise, so the military has only limited authority and limited resources in the new search for the gatebuilders.

Step 3: Further develop characters and mythologies by stand-alone episodes. If they are decently written the characters will be defined by their actions. And if the writers are half as clever as the original crew, a fun mythology will grow.

But it all depends on the casting and the comedy matrix, as you might call it. G.W. Bailey for General Hammond I think, and Stephen Lang for Col. O'Niell. Tony Shalhoub for Kasuf, to play off Hammond as local leader. Lang would do the badass ticked off at the sloppy civilians who have the upper hand over the tech. Dr. Carter would be an older actress who can do no-nonsense (Sigourney Weaver would be ideal, but maybe Janeane Garafolo) and play off Lang. Dr. Jackson could be gay (Sean Maher, yes, that could work) and really play off Lang. The teams going through the gate would vary, with military members including Kowalski and Freeman, with locals like Skaara and Share insisting they share (like the Russians in the original series.) These would be played by relative unknowns. Dr. Frasier would be a biologist from the university mounting the expedition. She would be friendlier, more tomboyish (culture clash with Abydonians,) maybe played by Amanda Seyfried in Jennifer's Body/Gone mode.

Standard missions would include a scientist, a soldier and an Abydonian "observer." The difference in viewpoints between the three sets would build in conflict for humor (and the occasional real drama sneaked in for variety.) Deemphasizing the physical stakes to Earth would decrease the need for storyline megalomania.

 

[Locutus of Bored]

Each successive Stargate series has attempted to one-up the last. First it was set in the Milky Way, then they went to the Pegasus Galaxy, and then the universe. The natural progression if you continued to follow that pattern would seem to be time travel or the exploration of other realities. But that's been done before both on the various Stargate series and in other scifi franchises.

I think they should take the opposite tack and pull back to the have a more Earth/Milky Way-centric show again, still set in the same universe with no reboot or reimagining, and show the implications of revealing the Stargate Program to the world at large, and the fallout from that revelation. It's frankly something that should have happened in the first series (and did to a lesser extent with the IOA) and is inexcusable that it didn't happen throughout Atlantis and Universe.

By returning to an Earth-based series, you can occasionally have follow-ups with the characters and settings from the three previous series to show us how things are going. Hell, even if you can't book someone from Universe, just have them appear in the body of a human avatar using the stones. CGI sets have made remarkable strides if you can't afford to rebuild the standing sets from the series themselves for a brief appearance.

I'd be interested in seeing how all the medieval and Egyptian themed human planets have come along in the post-Goa'uld-era, and whether they have started to build relations with their human counterparts on Earth and other planets. I'd like to see some missed opportunities or mysteries addressed (like the Furlings) and the return of some classic villains now that Earth is much more powerful (see if the Aschen Homeworld survived for example).

Then you can have different factions on Earth vying for control of the Stargates and alien technology.

Basically bring the show back to its more down-to-Earth roots from SG-1 but use that to explore new perspectives on existing characters, aliens, and tech, while introducing new planets, people, and factions we've never seen before. It's stilla big galaxy out there, and there's no need to go further and further out to tell interesting stories.

 

[Temis the Vorta]

Let's cross Gods of Allocation with Wormhole Extreme (Extreme Gods of Wormhole Allocation?) to make a reality series where teams compete to create the next Stargate series.

On premiere night, the winning team has to put their money where their mouths are, by sitting in a dunk tank on camera and viewers vote whether they deserve to get dunked for their show. If it's on SyFy, they can stock the tank with sharktopuses.

 

[gturner]

Okay, I wrote the short opening scene to set the premise of a new show, using mostly regulars (early tie in) and suggestions from Locutus, stj, and others, to return to the earlier format of an Earth based show, and toss some comedy back in. I think this would be versatile enough to accomodate most all of the suggestions, including revealing the stargates to the public pretty quickly (an early mission could invite an alien attack that can't be explained away), along with a way to have a widely differing look and feel for episodes (fighter planes, space ships, magic powers, or any other revamps of the basics), and keeping any of the earlier SG-1 elements, even the Goa'uld and other enemies we thought were defeated.

I haven't written dialog in a while, but here's the shortest path to set it up.

****** Stargate Ecosystems - opening scene *****

General Samantha Carter entered the briefing room and walked into an ongoing argument between the assembled scientists. Rodney McKay was berating Zelenka, who sat across from him.


Carter rolled her eyes and asked “So what’s up, guys?”


The room quieted, but Rodney’s gaze followed her as she walked to the head of the table, he emphatically said, “I was just explaining to Dr. Zelenka that what he’s proposing is preposterous, just an artifact of the data due to sampling errors and the sparse number of points.”


Zelenka protested. “No, no, no. I’m telling you this has to be real. Whole regions of the Milky Way are not showing up on our trace maps of old ship locations for Goa’uld, Asgard, Replicators, or any other species,” He glanced at Carter and continued, “These same vast regions also don’t have active gate addresses in our database.”


General Carter sat down and asked for more background. Rodney flicked his pencil in the air, sighed, and sat back, while Zelenka turned to face her. “Daniel Jackson and I were looking over the trace maps of Goa’uld ship activity that the Tok’ra tracking devices provide, to see if we could get a better idea of Lucian Alliance shipping patterns, and perhaps bases. Then we were comparing that to our records for old Goa’uld activity, especially from when they fought the Replicators.”


“And?”


“It’s what we were overlooking that was interesting. Viewing our galaxy from above, like we always do, shows an almost even spread of locations and routes, which is what we’d expected. But in 3-D, whole galactic arms and sections of arms are never entered. Not once. We wondered if those areas had ever had Goa’uld bases, and so we cross checked our database of gate addresses. There aren’t even any gates in those areas, amounting to over three-fourths of the contiguous stars in the galaxy!”


Rodney cut in. “Which isn’t that surprising! The galaxy is a huge place and most stars don’t have habitable planets, much less planets with stargates. And Ancients tended to put the gates along discrete paths, as we see with the Destiny, so of course most gateable planets will be clumped together, which is what we see. Of course there’ll be vast stretches of unused territory.”


“But the Goa’uld don’t need gates, and their ships would’ve eventually moved into those areas. But we don’t see that, either.”


“The Goa’uld don’t like getting caught on planets without an escape route when a rival system lord attacks!” Rodney shot back.


Carter listened carefully and replied “I don’t think Daniel would’ve told me to be here if there wasn’t anything to this. Has he arrived, by the way?”


“Just arriving!” he said as he came through the door.


Carter beamed him a warm smile, and he smiled back. As he took an open seat she said, “Dr. Zalenka was just filling me in on the unoccupied territory problem.”


Daniel nodded. “Yes. I’ve got some things you’re definitely going to want a look at.”


“More non-data?” Rodney quipped.


“No, Asgard data, and more. My first check was with the Asgard core, now that we’ve got it powered up, and they never explored those regions either, because there’s no way to enter them.”


“What?!” Rodney exclaimed.


Daniel continued, “The Asgard couldn’t figure out how to get a ship to travel through those areas, and the Go’uld couldn’t either, which is why all our traces show Go’uld ships flying above and below the galactic plane when crossing those arms, to get past what they called ‘the zones of death.’”


“Well that sounds ominous.” Carter chirped.


“Well, the Goa’uld were a fear based society, and our friends the Tok’ra forgot to mention that any ship trying to enter those regions loses its drive and power systems."


Samantha asked “You’ve talked to the Tok’ra about this?"


Daniel replied, “Indeed. Malek says ‘Hi’ by the way. As they explained it, Ha’tak motherships that crossed into these regions would just shut down, and even their Alkesh and gliders couldn’t make it back. The Goa’uld realized the death zones corresponded to the vast areas without active gates, so they became reluctant to go anywhere near regions those regions, like sailors avoiding submerged reefs.. There are gates on scattered planets far above and below the zones, so those marked the routes the Goa’uld ships always followed.”


“And that’s why we didn’t notice it on our maps.” Zalenka added, “From high above the trade routes, um, Goa’uld highway system, looks evenly traveled, but from the side huge parts of it are up on stilts to get over areas, of, um, quicksand. Swamps.if you will.”


Carter looked at the assembled faces and asked, “Why didn’t we ever run into this with Prometheus or our other ships?”


Daniel looked at her, thought a moment, and said, “We were always chasing Goa’uld, or running from them, and they stayed far away from the dead zones. We were just lucky.”

Samantha nodded, knowing how lucky they’d been on far too many occasions, and asked, “Is there more?”


Daniel replied, “A lot more. A whole lot more.”


Rodney piped up. “So there’s a bunch of natural areas in a galaxy where ships can’t go, which would explain the lack of gates. That’s interesting to know on an astrophysics level, and I’ll love digging into the answer, but it hardly affects operations.”


Daniel responded. “It might profoundly affect us. I’ve checked the Atlantis database, and the Pegasus galaxy doesn’t have these zones. The Asgard core was unaware of that.”


“What? That doesn’t make any sense.” Rodney said, becoming very curious and sensing that Daniel had once again scooped him.


“The Asgard assumed the zones were natural, but they hadn’t explored the Pegasus galaxy, only their home galaxy of Ida, which the Ancients had already scattered with gates. Ida has these same zones.”


“So some galaxies do, some don’t?” Carter asked.


Daniel perkily replied “It gets even better. The Atlantis database calls them, and this is a rough translation, “protected ecosystems.”


Rodney quietly repeated, “Ecosystems.”


Daniel continued. “Yes, it seems the Ancients were concerned with a lot of different threats, and realized that inevitably one would conquer the entire Galaxy, or even wipe it out. I mean, they fled a galaxy wide plague, and we’ve seen the replicators from the Ida galaxy, Wraith, Goa’uld, Ori. So at least some of the Ancients concluded that the best way to prevent total disaster was to divide the galaxy up into different “ecosystems” where the laws of physics were altered, so one predator wouldn’t be perfectly adapted to all the different environments.”


Carter arched an eyebrow. “Change the laws of physics?”


“Exactly.” Daniel responded.


Rodney’s eyes became very focused, “But that would require a ridiculous level of technology, like, like, “


Carter finished his sentence, “Like the Ancient superweapon on Dakara.”


Daniel nodded, “Or something very much like it.”


Dr. Zelenka finally broke back into the conversation. “So you’re saying that the Ancients changed the laws of physics in different regions, kind of like dividing a planet up into oceans, deserts, forests, and grasslands, so no particular predator can become dominant everywhere.”


Daniel replied, “Yes, and apparently they couldn’t undo it, either, because once they did it, their Dakara type superweapons couldn’t affect the altered zones.”


Zelenka appended “.. because the rules of physics there were different.”


Rodney, on more familiar territory, said, “And they didn’t do this in the Pegasus galaxy because the Wraith were already everywhere before the Ancients realized the magnitude of the threat.”


Daniel replied, “Yes, I’d assume so.”


“Fascinating.” someone breathed. (Leonard Nimoy in a lab coat?!)


There was a pause while everyone considered the implications, then Carter spoke up. “So, the Ancients created protected regions where ships can’t travel and gates can’t reach.”


Daniel’s eyes narrowed. “Oh, ships can travel there, and there is a way to gate in,” he said flatly, with a slight air of triumph in his voice.


Everyone looked at him, expectantly. Finally Carter asked, “How do you know?”


Daniel met her wide-eyed gaze. “Because the Ancients used to keep an eye on the goings on in their ecosystems. Ships can travel inside, though not with the kind of engines we’re using, and the gate systems inside still work fine. It’s just crossing the outer boundaries that’s nearly impossible.”


“Like fenced in game preserves.” Zelenka muttered.


“What’s inside?” Carter asked.


“Well, the last report dates from millenia ago, but there were some Ancients, Nox, Furlings, Humans, and hundreds of other species, at various stages of development, of course.” Daniel said in a sing-song, matter-of-fact tone.


“So how do we get in?” Carter asked.


“By using the keys to the padlocks on front gates, which they so conveniently left us.” Daniel announced.


“A special dialing protocol?” Rodney asked, his eyebrows raised.


“Exactly.” Daniel grinned.

“Washington isn’t going to like this.” Samantha sighed.


“They never do.” came a chuckled response from the side of the room.


“Jack!”

****

And then you can do pretty much anything you want with it.
​

 

[Gaith]

Let's cross Gods of Allocation with Wormhole Extreme (Extreme Gods of Wormhole Allocation?) to make a reality series where teams compete to create the next Stargate series.

On premiere night, the winning team has to put their money where their mouths are, by sitting in a dunk tank on camera and viewers vote whether they deserve to get dunked for their show. If it's on SyFy, they can stock the tank with sharktopuses.

In other words, The Apprentice: Hollywood Franchise Edition. A show in which contestants think up pitches to moribund properties, then present them, maybe with some cobbled-together "proof of concept" faux trailers. I'd watch the hell out of that show.

 

[gturner]

Okay, I've been thinking about casting for the new series.

To reprise the many SG team leaders, it needs someone with intensity and presence, and an ability to do great action scenes, so Tom Cruise.

For the Daniel Jackson, Rodney McKay type character, Leonardo De Caprio.

For the big, tough alien (Te'alc or Ronon Dex) I'm going with "The Rock"

For the female SG team member, I'm going with Angelina Jolie.

The general in charge of the SGC is Tom Hanks, and he reports to the head of the Joint Chiefs played by Robert De Niro.

The base doctor is Sandra Bullock, assisted by Camron Diaz.

The aging President will be Harrison Ford, and Meryl Streep plays the Vice President.

Johnny Depp, Brad Pitt, and Mark Wahlberg will play Goa'uld system lords.

Will Smith is a federal agent.

I think a budget of $50 million an episode will cover this.

 

[Mister Fandango]

I actually liked that development. Even before that was revealed, I thought it would have been nice if they discovered that the stargates were built by humans from Atlantis.

I hated that they were a different species from Humans, but just happened to be identical in nearly every conceivable way. The whole "second evolution" was just dumb. Humans from Atlantis, a civilization on and from Earth, yes. A different alien race that was also human (or whatever the convoluted backstory was), no. And, honestly, I would much rather they be a truly alien species with Earth just benefiting from what they had accomplished. But then, I hate the whole "humans are actually aliens" and "humans can't accomplish anything on their own, they're the stupid rednecks of the universe" cliches that plagues sci-fi.

Honestly, the movie did a lot right. Humans originating on Earth and then shipped off to alien worlds as slave labor. Language barriers. Stargates that required coordinates to work properly, rather than operating as a universal telephone. An alien that actually came across as alien and formidable, rather than just a bad actor wearing funny clothes. etc.

The language barrier would be easy to handle. It would just require a Jackson-style linguist who struggles to learn what was considered to be a dead language during the first few episodes, but quickly adapts to the new dialects as the series progresses. They could even eventually come across some kind of alien device to aid the rest of the team as the novelty begins to wear off, or even just have them learn the language themselves. The aliens would still speak an alien language, but for all intents and purposes it'd be English for the audience. No different than when movies featuring German or other foreign tongues shift from subtitles to English for the audience's benefit.

The stargate dialing would be the main reversal I'd make, though. The first season or so would have the team struggle to figure out how to dial back, but it would become easier and easier as time went on. Mostly because they'd come to understand more about how the system works, how to use the gate itself to determine where they are relative to Earth, and/or with all the complicated maths involved becoming almost second nature to them. Again, they could find some kind of navigational device to help them figure out where in the galaxy they were in order to assist with the dialing procedure. Tons of opportunity for stories there alone.

I'd also want to make sure that any FTL capabilities that existed in the show were painfully slow. It would take weeks, if not months, to travel from system to system, and months if not years to assemble a fleet. There'd be a reason everyone would want to get their hands on the stargates, and not just because it would be a small convenience compared to just flying wherever they want to go.

Finally, I'd get rid of the Asgard. At least as the guardians of Earth as they were originally presented. If the Ghouls (another concept I'd abolish; it was painful seeing the series trying to imply that the ghouls, wraiths, and other bogeymen of myth and legend were these alien species, but never actually going there) were intimidated enough by the Asgard to leave a powerhouse planet like Earth alone, why would the Asgard just stop there? Especially when Earth wasn't even the actual home of the Ancients, which was the whole point of their guardianship.

Oh, and a final finally: I'd get rid of nearly everyone who worked on the old franchise behind the scenes. It needs fresh blood more than anything else.

 

[gturner]

I actually liked that development. Even before that was revealed, I thought it would have been nice if they discovered that the stargates were built by humans from Atlantis.

I hated that they were a different species from Humans, but just happened to be identical in nearly every conceivable way. The whole "second evolution" was just dumb. Humans from Atlantis, a civilization on and from Earth, yes. A different alien race that was also human (or whatever the convoluted backstory was), no. And, honestly, I would much rather they be a truly alien species with Earth just benefiting from what they had accomplished. But then, I hate the whole "humans are actually aliens" and "humans can't accomplish anything on their own, they're the stupid rednecks of the universe" cliches that plagues sci-fi.

I think nuBSG went down the wrong road regarding the evolutionary backstory, too. It was perfectly set up to be an advanced culture descended from ancient Greek and Egyptian cultures, which heavily implies that the humans got to the twelve colonies either with the help of aliens or perhaps Atlanteans or something, abandoning us to develop without them. It pretty much screams that they know they were colonies - from Earth, which was the whole freakin' plotline, and the only question was whether they here arrived now or in our future.

They took that plot, loaded it into a fighter bay, and launched it into space.

Honestly, the movie did a lot right. Humans originating on Earth and then shipped off to alien worlds as slave labor. Language barriers. Stargates that required coordinates to work properly, rather than operating as a universal telephone. An alien that actually came across as alien and formidable, rather than just a bad actor wearing funny clothes. etc.

The language barrier would be easy to handle. It would just require a Jackson-style linguist who struggles to learn what was considered to be a dead language during the first few episodes, but quickly adapts to the new dialects as the series progresses. They could even eventually come across some kind of alien device to aid the rest of the team as the novelty begins to wear off, or even just have them learn the language themselves. The aliens would still speak an alien language, but for all intents and purposes it'd be English for the audience. No different than when movies featuring German or other foreign tongues shift from subtitles to English for the audience's benefit.

I thought an excellent nuBSG plot would have the Colonials encounter human space travelers from Earth, and reveal (contrary to most sci-fi conventions) that since the Colonials came from the same general culture and had radio for thousands of years (probably since they got to the colonies), that they'd have ended up speaking only one language. They'd have been speaking only one language for so long that they would have lost the concept of foreign languages, along with the ability to think about the structural elements of their own language, since that comes either directly or indirectly from studying a foreign language.

So when the totally mono-lingual Colonials encountered someone speaking English, they'd hear us babbling incoherent noises and naturally assume that we didn't know how to speak. They would probably believe this for quite some time, perhaps until some little Colonial child in the easy language acquisition phase, after hanging around the chittering strangers for a few months, started spontaneously translating for them. That could be cute. Perhaps we'd recognize lots of Greek roots in their words, too.

A complement to that plot would be that English is even more dominant in Earth's future, at least to where no space ship would be flying without some officers who speak English, Russian, or Mandarin Chinese. Add in Halo's "Cole Protocol" where all navigation data is ejected upon encountering aliens (so as not to tell them where Earth is), and you'd have an Earth ship (with its database of all known ship types ever built by humans) that encounters a warfleet that doesn't match anything we've launched, whose radio emissions don't match anything we use, and who don't respond to standard calls in common spacefaring Earth languages. It would be a hostile advanced alien encounter requiring a complete wipe of all computer data, setting the stage for a long get-acquainted period.

There are similar changes that could be done with language in a Stargate reboot, such as giving the Goa'uld horizontal genetic information transfer (via plasmids) along with inherited memories, so a single Goa'uld could possess anyone on a new planet, instantly understand their language, and pass that understanding to all the other Goa'uld, while we would always have to learn the language the hard way. This same tweak would let all the Goa'uld and Jaffa speak English after the first SG person gets possessed. Their greater speed and versatility picking up language could even be treated as one of their key advantages.

The stargate dialing would be the main reversal I'd make, though. The first season or so would have the team struggle to figure out how to dial back, but it would become easier and easier as time went on. Mostly because they'd come to understand more about how the system works, how to use the gate itself to determine where they are relative to Earth, and/or with all the complicated maths involved becoming almost second nature to them. Again, they could find some kind of navigational device to help them figure out where in the galaxy they were in order to assist with the dialing procedure. Tons of opportunity for stories there alone.

Agreed. Even from where the series sits now, you could posit that the Stargate, as we perceive it, is a cheesy user interface designed for simple operation by children. It looks llike a big easy-button phone, but as you dig into it there are button codes (like star-69 and redial), and below those are fancy user features, and below those are lists of settings (pulse - touch tone, analog - broadband), and below those are an actual operating system, and below that is a CPU with actual program code implementing the easy-button look. Then it could turn out that the Stargate itself is just a end-user device on a central network, with a vast array of servers (the actual phone company), and in turn that's monitored by vast computer farms at an ancient NSA. It looks like you just pick it up, dial a number, and are magically connected to another phone, but that's not remotely what's going on.

I'd also want to make sure that any FTL capabilities that existed in the show were painfully slow. It would take weeks, if not months, to travel from system to system, and months if not years to assemble a fleet. There'd be a reason everyone would want to get their hands on the stargates, and not just because it would be a small convenience compared to just flying wherever they want to go.

The show certainly changed character when it become more ship-based. Having a phone to call around town isn't so important or interesting when you give everyone cars. But perhaps it also kept the gate-to-a-planet scheme from getting too stale.

Oh, and a final finally: I'd get rid of nearly everyone who worked on the old franchise behind the scenes. It needs fresh blood more than anything else.

You have to keep the guy with the big open-end wrench or the system will break down.

 

[Temis the Vorta]

I still say Nazi Gou'alds is the way to go.

 

[Mister Fandango]

I thought they were much better as presented in the movie, with Ra being the last of his species (and, if I'm not misremembering, the only one to have inhabited a human at all).

If anything, I'd rather the series continue on with what the movie was actually trying to do; rationalize where all of our myths and legends originated from. Not just the Egyptian pantheon and later a half-hearted attempt to work in a few other pantheons. Dragons, demons, oni, fey, yeti, sasquatch, etc. could have all been potential story ideas, and pretty good ones, too, if enough time and throught were put into explaining everything. It would certainly have lead to a much more interesting and varied universe.

 

[FPAlpha]

Since this is a plot point that has been constantly debated throughout the entire run of the Stargate franchise, here's something I would change:

Make the Stargate public knowledge from the very beginning, and actually allow the world to react to the news instead of keeping it a secret the whole time.

Pretty much it at this point.

They had the main show that started it all with Special Force teams exploring the galaxy.

They had the spinoff that moved to a different galaxy with the spin that they were cut off from their main support (at least for a while).

Then they tried their hands on their BSG version (which i personally believe was a huge mistake).

They pretty much got everything covered that they can get out of the premise before they have to repeat themselves and have the villain of the season style show ala Buffy and Angel.

The program still being kept a secret is what bugged me after certain points.. they had big ass spaceships in orbit, huge space battles and at one point disappearing skyscrapers from the middle of a city and the world is still believing everything's normal?

Personally i think the premise of the world getting to know all of it could be quite interesting but the way i envision it it may be a bit too serious/political/social commentary in tone to fit in with the rest of the show which is more light weight.

However with the right writing staff and show runner it could be an interesting look into how the world could adapt when thrust into this.. the initial chaos, the power plays and on top of that some main villain for the action part.

However i believe Stargate is dead for the time being as much as Star Trek is dead for TV. It may take a few years more for it to be given any shot at all.

 

[gturner]

I still say Nazi Gou'alds is the way to go.

The trouble with Nazi Goa'ulds is that the Nazis were very good at discipline and following orders, but the Goa'uld system lords are very bad at it because of their enormous egos. The show over time humanized the Goa'uld (still evil, but quirky megomaniacal evil with heavy elements of being a big dysfunctional family), as we got to learn their individual personalities instead of focusing on their Jaffa shock troops, and humanizing Nazi leadership wouldn't work out very well.

You could get around that by making the Goa'uld alot colder and more monolithic, but that was the problem with many of Stargate's later super villains like the Wraith or Ori. Instead of a cast of interesting villains who all hate each other, where we could play them off against each other or cleverly exploit the particular quirks of individual Goa'uld, there was just an evil enemy with no real personality to discover beyond a set of plans for taking over the galaxy and lots of spear-carrying footsoldiers.

The Nazi angle would work, but probably not with Goa'uld, who merely seek to rule, exploit, and be worshipped, and rub other Goa'uld's noses in their success. You could try a set of powerful humans who think their destiny is to purge the galaxy of less evolved humans or less advanced humans, viewing orderly control of it as a worthy goal and their birthright, which could create some interesting moral tension with the SGC which views orderly control of it as a worthy goal and humanity's destiny.

ETA: Did you see the recent comedy movie about a Nazi base on the moon?

 

[gturner]

The program still being kept a secret is what bugged me after certain points.. they had big ass spaceships in orbit, huge space battles and at one point disappearing skyscrapers from the middle of a city and the world is still believing everything's normal?

Personally i think the premise of the world getting to know all of it could be quite interesting but the way i envision it it may be a bit too serious/political/social commentary in tone to fit in with the rest of the show which is more light weight.

I thought they should at least do a crossover with the X-Files where Scully and Mulder knock on all their doors asking questions, and the entire SG-1 team lies their asses off. You could even make an X Files version of the episode and an SG-1 version of the episode. If nothing else, they could just show it as a special feature at Comic Con as an inside joke.

However with the right writing staff and show runner it could be an interesting look into how the world could adapt when thrust into this.. the initial chaos, the power plays and on top of that some main villain for the action part.

They should've gone there, but didn't, perhaps because of the complexities, or perhaps they didn't want to shake up a successful premise.

However i believe Stargate is dead for the time being as much as Star Trek is dead for TV. It may take a few years more for it to be given any shot at all.

Well, perhaps now the trick is to pitch a version of Stargate that doesn't look like a Stargate rerun. Perhaps watching trends for what's hot or edgy would help, like vampires - Goa'uld are like vampires, and just keep coming up with ideas till something looks feasible.

 

[Temis the Vorta]

The enormous egos of the System Lords needs a retcon, since it just turned them into incompetent buffoons, and there's nothing so boring as a lame-ass villain.

I'd rewrite them as being still egotistical and having the fashion sense of a Las Vegas drag queen, but a lot better organized and able to work together and therefore more fearsome.

The best villain is the most powerful one, that way the good guys have an interesting challenge and the writers have to work harder to figure out they can win anyway. No more ass saves via C-4, Stargate's answer to technobabble.

And no, I havent seen Iron Sky yet - is it any good?

 

[gturner]

Iron Sky was pretty amusing, and quite silly. Sarah Palin was President, and sent two astronauts back to the moon for a campaign stunt.

The System Lords did take a long slide into silliness, but they always did Apophis pretty well, even in Mobius at the end of season 8. I liked Ba'al, and the character was well executed, but he was quite a departure from earlier Goa'uld and you could tell he'd be happy to give up being an evil God and just hang out in the hotel bar.

I think changing the Goa'uld weapons need as much attention, perhaps more. The Jaffa are generally inept, dimwitted, slow, and can't hit the side of a barn, kind of like Storm Troopers who can't see anything in their helmets. Perhaps they're adequate for subduing and controlling primitive human societies, but there's no way any advanced species would take them seriously. The Anubis storyline partially remedied that, but his soldiers were even more brainless than the Jaffa.

One advantage of my ecosystem idea for a continuation is that versions of all the existing species (along with hundreds of new ones that couldn't have gone plausibly unnoticed in the canonical storyline to date) would've been trapped in dozens or hundreds of isolated ecosystems millions of years ago, and thus developed quite differently than the versions we've already encountered. The Goa'uld are more recent in the galaxy, but their presence in some ecosystems (along with humans) could be explained by time-travel from a relatively recent gate jump that hit a solar flare. Being stuck, they were expanding their range when the Ancients altered the laws of physics to divide the galaxy into isolated enclaves. So the premise allows multiple attempts at reworking the Goa'uld into a more interesting adversary, especially one with a different visual look and feel so the new show doesn't look like a rerun with a different cast.

 

[stoneroses]

They should rest it or suffer franchise fatigue

 

[JarodRussell]

How about a show starring Ancients. Stargate 1,000,000 B.C.