My subconscious totally wants to write for Stargate too!
So, I had a Stargate-heavy dream last night. Atlantis, too, which is odd (although some of SG1 made an appearance)
In the dream, all I can remember was there was some sort of fight that the team had just won. They were heading back to the gate, and Rodney was ready to go home, but Keller said that she was in charge of this mission (because of some strange bet or something), and the mission wasn't over until they all crossed through the gate. So she ordered most of the people on the team through, but ordered Rodney and Shepherd (I think) to stay behind with her and check out some strange mushrooms past the gate and down a hill. Rodney complained that he was just trying to make his life miserable for something and make him do extra work. Anyway, while they were down looking at the mushrooms (blue with white dots), the guys discovered a box of food... a box of human food, from Earth (in particular, it was store brand stuff from my local grocery store), but there was no way there should have been one there. So they went off to investigate and found a little tunnel complex, and through the tunnel they heard noises. They had to squeeze through a very tight fit in the tunnel, having to go single file. When they came out on the other side, what did they see? A big Goa'uld mothership under construction. Huh? Goauld in the pegasus galaxy? (I should note that at this point in the dream, Keller, Rodney, and Shepherd disappeared seamlessly and the plot had only Jack O'Neill and Teal'C from here on) This was clearly a major development, since they shouldn't have been able to come by wormhole. They had to get back and let Atlantis know. Except, that little narrow tunnel complex they squeezed through? It was actually part of the ship in construction, and an automated factory was putting pieces together. Teal'c started to squeeze through, but it was slow, and the machine was slamming the hole shut. He managed to get through, but Jack O'Neill would be trapped behind enemy lines and have to make his own way back to the gate another way. That's about where I woke up.
So, naturally, once I woke up (both while trying to fall asleep again and after I was on my way to work) my mind tried to refine the idea into something that might actually work in the show. Here's what I came up with (which doesn't match the dream very much except in one of the basic ideas).
The team discovers evidence that there's another human group, from Earth, operating in Pegasus, but obviously nobody came through the gate. I didn't actually get as far as plotting how they _discover_ what eventually happened, but here's how it works out:
A Goauld (it doesn't have to be him, but it's easier to talk about the scenario if it's Baal, so let's say for the sake of argument it's him), has taken control of the Trust or a Trust-like organiation/military Black Ops Team (maybe not US military), as and has designed this secret mission to the Pegasus galaxy. Oh, that Baal. With as many duplicates, he's got to have a lot of Baals in the air. Heck, running so many plots, you might say he's got a lot of Baals, period. (Using Baal also makes for funner puns). Anyway, one of more of them is this secret mission, establishing a base in the Pegasus Galaxy. He discovered something in the mission reports that was missed by SG-C, a reference that maybe related to something he knew as a Goauld, that made him realize a planet that's not considered important to the SGC is actually a secret Ancient outpost (like, say, hypothetically, something Atlantis discovered referred to a planet described as "full of nothing but dung monsters", and Baal had in previous writings discovered that Dung Monsters was a code-word for a cloaked ancient project, but the humans have no idea about it). So he's got a target.
What's more, the world is uninhabited (so Wraith aren't interested), and the stargate that had been on the world had been stolen as part of the McKay/Carter Intergalactic Gate project, so there's no longer any stargate access to the world, and so none of the other humans will likely get in his way. Besides whatever technology is in the secret ancient outpost, presumably Baal would want his own Stargate. Sure, he could steal one from another Pegasus planet and put it on the one he wants, but there's a better way to scratch Baals itch. He's a master of gate programming and gate technology, the one who figured out how to make a stargate dial every other gate simultaneously. So, he comes
up with the idea of taking a Milky Way gate and just sticking it inside the Pegasus
galaxy. It is, in a sense, a "Black Gate". It can call out (it just has to dial the gate with the 8th chevron active, which doesn't require extra power since it's close enough to the network), but it doesn't have a 'phone number' (DHD address) of its own, so you can't get _to_ it, under normal circumstances (and remember, only the Atlantis gate has the control system to even _get_ to Earth, no matter how much power is in the system... the Pegasus gate system was probably the first and built without provisions for dialing other gate systems. You couldn't dial it except _maybe_ from Atlantis).
So how do Baal's people get back? He's got a method that, when he calls into the gate, if he wants, he can give it an instruction to call his gate back (it's a software workaround that allows it to call even though it normally wouldn't be able to). It's similar to the forwarding macro (and if the people in Atlantis are smart, they'd realize that McKay's macro means that they could do the same thing if they want, making situations where they can't dial out no longer much of a problem). So if his team are out, they wait for a regular checkin, and if it's time to go, he gets it to dial back, and they come home.
Now, the team are mostly humans, even though Baals in charge (and in fact, there's probably a couple of him there). They don't know of his nefarious purposes. In fact, I'd like to take a page out of another idea I'd had for a long time, which is that he's actually quite NICE as a leader. He's finally learned the lesson that most Goaulds never do. Yeah, it's great to be feared and treat people like slaves to be disposed of at your whim, but all that means is someone is going to try to topple you sooner or later. If you treat everyone with respect and are (within reason) nice to them, you'll earn their loyalty and they'll work all that much harder to protect you. (In my initial idea it was more an exploration of an idea that a particularly intelligent evil being like a Goauld might 'grow out' of being evil, just simply realizing that it's less efficient and you can get a better society and better stuff for yourself by being benevolent. In this case, he'd probably still have evil goals and would be looking to satisfy them in more pleasant ways that might even be beneficial for many Earth people). So Baal and his Black Gate Group would be running around Pegasus now, occasionally getting in the way of the SGA (and, since they might not even know Baal's involved, they might sometimes decide to work together). Under Baal's direction (I imagine Cliff Simon Baal would be one of the ostensibly lower ranking members, as well as, the symbiote being in the head of the organization (who took a, forgive me, Baal to the head at some point following an illustrious military career), allowing for a surprise double reveal, where they think he's just infilitrating the group which, though not part of the IOA, they think is at least human run. "OMG, You've got Baal on your staff!" "No.. I am Baal!")
However, the Black Gate Group also provides another threat beyond Baal. Because theirs is a milky way gate, and the Ancient Outpost has a ZPM, it's another potential way to Earth for enemy forces. If the Wraith ever took it over, they could use Baal's dialing programs to get into the Earth system.
As to what Baal's purposes are, well, let's look at him so far. He's actually become very unGoauld like in many ways, what with his cloning strategy. You see, he's got all
sorts of clones out there, but for the most part they're perfectly willing to cooperate (when they weren't it was a deception). His Baals are all lined up, which means he's either made them all subservient to a 'real Baal', or more interesting, he's actually changed, gotten rid of some of his ego, and adopted a mindset more like a replicator. He duplicates himself, and doesn't care much if any individual instance is destroyed,
so long as it furthurs his plans, because he can always duplicate himself again. Yes, I realize that one Baal, supposedly Baal-prime, murdered his 'clones', but I like to think that this was a bad Baal, a foul Baal, if you will, who only thought he was the Prime Baal, but that the real Baal was still out there and for the most part cooperates with his clones.
I think Baal, more than anyone else, is poised to use his unique life cycle and perspective to truly form a fusion of different knowledge bases, taking the best of
them and discarding the rest. He once served under Anubis, who was half-ascended, and saw how powerful that made him. So in addition to just plain Pegasus technoexploring, Baal would be spreading himself, trying to gain footholds in species like the Wraith and maybe even the remaining Pegasus replicators. So yes, Baal would try to become a Wraith... and not just a Wraith, maybe he'd even try to take over one of those blue Wraith queens, the ones who can spawn whole armies based on a new specific template. (At this point, I am, in the interests of decorum, going to restrain myself from making a reference to Blue Baals. This is me restraining myself). Not only would he have access to Wraith technology, Ancient technology, Goauld Technology, a secret network of support in the Milky Way, he'd also be potentially founding an entirely new species based on his genetic template. That's a goal worthy of Baal's ego (and hey, is Baal was Baal Zebub, "Lord of the Flies", it would be mythologically appropriate that he, a kind of 'swarm' being already, take over a race based on the hyper-evolution of an insect)
I can recognize that they might not like to include the Goauld in Atlantis as a major element, because they're more SG1's thing, and Atlantis wants to stand on its own, and I kind of agree, but I do feel Atlantis needs a new, non-Replicator enemy, one who can be a significant ongoing threat without making it ridiculous that the good guys keep winning, and in a sense, he's not here as a 'Goauld threat'... here's here as a specific character, who happens to also be a Goauld, and is a threat all his own.
Plus, Goaulded Wraith! Come on!
In conclusion, I should totally write for Stargate!
In other news, they're producing a movie of the first two Hyperion Books. On the one hand, this is kind of cool, as they're great books and I'd love to see how they translate to the screen. On the other hand, I think there's way too much in the books to fit in a movie. I always thought it would make an awesome miniseries (with the first book being told in one hour installments, one for each 'story' and the connective tissue around them, and then another couple of hour installments for the second book). Is there anything so worrying as a half-fulfilled wish? Ah well, we'll see how it goes.
In the dream, all I can remember was there was some sort of fight that the team had just won. They were heading back to the gate, and Rodney was ready to go home, but Keller said that she was in charge of this mission (because of some strange bet or something), and the mission wasn't over until they all crossed through the gate. So she ordered most of the people on the team through, but ordered Rodney and Shepherd (I think) to stay behind with her and check out some strange mushrooms past the gate and down a hill. Rodney complained that he was just trying to make his life miserable for something and make him do extra work. Anyway, while they were down looking at the mushrooms (blue with white dots), the guys discovered a box of food... a box of human food, from Earth (in particular, it was store brand stuff from my local grocery store), but there was no way there should have been one there. So they went off to investigate and found a little tunnel complex, and through the tunnel they heard noises. They had to squeeze through a very tight fit in the tunnel, having to go single file. When they came out on the other side, what did they see? A big Goa'uld mothership under construction. Huh? Goauld in the pegasus galaxy? (I should note that at this point in the dream, Keller, Rodney, and Shepherd disappeared seamlessly and the plot had only Jack O'Neill and Teal'C from here on) This was clearly a major development, since they shouldn't have been able to come by wormhole. They had to get back and let Atlantis know. Except, that little narrow tunnel complex they squeezed through? It was actually part of the ship in construction, and an automated factory was putting pieces together. Teal'c started to squeeze through, but it was slow, and the machine was slamming the hole shut. He managed to get through, but Jack O'Neill would be trapped behind enemy lines and have to make his own way back to the gate another way. That's about where I woke up.
So, naturally, once I woke up (both while trying to fall asleep again and after I was on my way to work) my mind tried to refine the idea into something that might actually work in the show. Here's what I came up with (which doesn't match the dream very much except in one of the basic ideas).
The team discovers evidence that there's another human group, from Earth, operating in Pegasus, but obviously nobody came through the gate. I didn't actually get as far as plotting how they _discover_ what eventually happened, but here's how it works out:
A Goauld (it doesn't have to be him, but it's easier to talk about the scenario if it's Baal, so let's say for the sake of argument it's him), has taken control of the Trust or a Trust-like organiation/military Black Ops Team (maybe not US military), as and has designed this secret mission to the Pegasus galaxy. Oh, that Baal. With as many duplicates, he's got to have a lot of Baals in the air. Heck, running so many plots, you might say he's got a lot of Baals, period. (Using Baal also makes for funner puns). Anyway, one of more of them is this secret mission, establishing a base in the Pegasus Galaxy. He discovered something in the mission reports that was missed by SG-C, a reference that maybe related to something he knew as a Goauld, that made him realize a planet that's not considered important to the SGC is actually a secret Ancient outpost (like, say, hypothetically, something Atlantis discovered referred to a planet described as "full of nothing but dung monsters", and Baal had in previous writings discovered that Dung Monsters was a code-word for a cloaked ancient project, but the humans have no idea about it). So he's got a target.
What's more, the world is uninhabited (so Wraith aren't interested), and the stargate that had been on the world had been stolen as part of the McKay/Carter Intergalactic Gate project, so there's no longer any stargate access to the world, and so none of the other humans will likely get in his way. Besides whatever technology is in the secret ancient outpost, presumably Baal would want his own Stargate. Sure, he could steal one from another Pegasus planet and put it on the one he wants, but there's a better way to scratch Baals itch. He's a master of gate programming and gate technology, the one who figured out how to make a stargate dial every other gate simultaneously. So, he comes
up with the idea of taking a Milky Way gate and just sticking it inside the Pegasus
galaxy. It is, in a sense, a "Black Gate". It can call out (it just has to dial the gate with the 8th chevron active, which doesn't require extra power since it's close enough to the network), but it doesn't have a 'phone number' (DHD address) of its own, so you can't get _to_ it, under normal circumstances (and remember, only the Atlantis gate has the control system to even _get_ to Earth, no matter how much power is in the system... the Pegasus gate system was probably the first and built without provisions for dialing other gate systems. You couldn't dial it except _maybe_ from Atlantis).
So how do Baal's people get back? He's got a method that, when he calls into the gate, if he wants, he can give it an instruction to call his gate back (it's a software workaround that allows it to call even though it normally wouldn't be able to). It's similar to the forwarding macro (and if the people in Atlantis are smart, they'd realize that McKay's macro means that they could do the same thing if they want, making situations where they can't dial out no longer much of a problem). So if his team are out, they wait for a regular checkin, and if it's time to go, he gets it to dial back, and they come home.
Now, the team are mostly humans, even though Baals in charge (and in fact, there's probably a couple of him there). They don't know of his nefarious purposes. In fact, I'd like to take a page out of another idea I'd had for a long time, which is that he's actually quite NICE as a leader. He's finally learned the lesson that most Goaulds never do. Yeah, it's great to be feared and treat people like slaves to be disposed of at your whim, but all that means is someone is going to try to topple you sooner or later. If you treat everyone with respect and are (within reason) nice to them, you'll earn their loyalty and they'll work all that much harder to protect you. (In my initial idea it was more an exploration of an idea that a particularly intelligent evil being like a Goauld might 'grow out' of being evil, just simply realizing that it's less efficient and you can get a better society and better stuff for yourself by being benevolent. In this case, he'd probably still have evil goals and would be looking to satisfy them in more pleasant ways that might even be beneficial for many Earth people). So Baal and his Black Gate Group would be running around Pegasus now, occasionally getting in the way of the SGA (and, since they might not even know Baal's involved, they might sometimes decide to work together). Under Baal's direction (I imagine Cliff Simon Baal would be one of the ostensibly lower ranking members, as well as, the symbiote being in the head of the organization (who took a, forgive me, Baal to the head at some point following an illustrious military career), allowing for a surprise double reveal, where they think he's just infilitrating the group which, though not part of the IOA, they think is at least human run. "OMG, You've got Baal on your staff!" "No.. I am Baal!")
However, the Black Gate Group also provides another threat beyond Baal. Because theirs is a milky way gate, and the Ancient Outpost has a ZPM, it's another potential way to Earth for enemy forces. If the Wraith ever took it over, they could use Baal's dialing programs to get into the Earth system.
As to what Baal's purposes are, well, let's look at him so far. He's actually become very unGoauld like in many ways, what with his cloning strategy. You see, he's got all
sorts of clones out there, but for the most part they're perfectly willing to cooperate (when they weren't it was a deception). His Baals are all lined up, which means he's either made them all subservient to a 'real Baal', or more interesting, he's actually changed, gotten rid of some of his ego, and adopted a mindset more like a replicator. He duplicates himself, and doesn't care much if any individual instance is destroyed,
so long as it furthurs his plans, because he can always duplicate himself again. Yes, I realize that one Baal, supposedly Baal-prime, murdered his 'clones', but I like to think that this was a bad Baal, a foul Baal, if you will, who only thought he was the Prime Baal, but that the real Baal was still out there and for the most part cooperates with his clones.
I think Baal, more than anyone else, is poised to use his unique life cycle and perspective to truly form a fusion of different knowledge bases, taking the best of
them and discarding the rest. He once served under Anubis, who was half-ascended, and saw how powerful that made him. So in addition to just plain Pegasus technoexploring, Baal would be spreading himself, trying to gain footholds in species like the Wraith and maybe even the remaining Pegasus replicators. So yes, Baal would try to become a Wraith... and not just a Wraith, maybe he'd even try to take over one of those blue Wraith queens, the ones who can spawn whole armies based on a new specific template. (At this point, I am, in the interests of decorum, going to restrain myself from making a reference to Blue Baals. This is me restraining myself). Not only would he have access to Wraith technology, Ancient technology, Goauld Technology, a secret network of support in the Milky Way, he'd also be potentially founding an entirely new species based on his genetic template. That's a goal worthy of Baal's ego (and hey, is Baal was Baal Zebub, "Lord of the Flies", it would be mythologically appropriate that he, a kind of 'swarm' being already, take over a race based on the hyper-evolution of an insect)
I can recognize that they might not like to include the Goauld in Atlantis as a major element, because they're more SG1's thing, and Atlantis wants to stand on its own, and I kind of agree, but I do feel Atlantis needs a new, non-Replicator enemy, one who can be a significant ongoing threat without making it ridiculous that the good guys keep winning, and in a sense, he's not here as a 'Goauld threat'... here's here as a specific character, who happens to also be a Goauld, and is a threat all his own.
Plus, Goaulded Wraith! Come on!
In conclusion, I should totally write for Stargate!
In other news, they're producing a movie of the first two Hyperion Books. On the one hand, this is kind of cool, as they're great books and I'd love to see how they translate to the screen. On the other hand, I think there's way too much in the books to fit in a movie. I always thought it would make an awesome miniseries (with the first book being told in one hour installments, one for each 'story' and the connective tissue around them, and then another couple of hour installments for the second book). Is there anything so worrying as a half-fulfilled wish? Ah well, we'll see how it goes.