i can't get enough of this local color!

[walkingshadow]

when it came to writing up my reactions to my most recent viewing of SGA season one, i started ranting again about everyone in the pegasus galaxy being JERKS, because i get so worked up during "underground" and "the storm/the eye." PEOPLE IN THE PEGASUS GALAXY ARE JERKS, i wrote in all-caps in my notes. (i took notes! of course i took notes. jules

Comments

[zincpiccalilli]

hi there! and wow, you've given me tons to think about in return.

I say we ponder over the mysteries of SGA together! ^_____^

i also think it would take a much more delicate and time-consuming operation to uproot the gate, unharmed, and set it in orbit still functioning...

Agreed. Since I never watched SG-1 and SGA usually takes the stargates for granted, I have no idea what would need to be done in order to move a stargate into space without trashing it. I gather that the stargates are pretty durable though, and the Wraith have already demonstrated a certain facility with Ancient technology (notably in "The Defiant One"), so I think it'd be possible. Not only to control access to the stargate and cut off a means of escape or communication but to prevent the desperate from burying the thing or whatever.

Now that I think about it, assuming the Wraith could do it, putting the stargate in orbit is such a good idea there has to be an explanation for why there aren't more spacegates. Hmm.

makes me wonder how teyla et al. know which gates are safe to dial; i'm guessing a combination of trial-and-error, as you suggest, and a very long cultural knowledge handed down-leading back, i guess, to the ancients themselves.

I was pretty bored and feeling geeky when I typed up these comments, so I did try to come up with ways the Athosians could've used to check stargate addresses for viability before sending someone through. First, I thought MALP-on-a-stick. That was quickly shot down when I realized there's been no sign the Athosians have anything similar to cameras and that the stargate wouldn't rematerialize something on the other side until the entire thing had gone through on your side, which would then make it impossible to retrieve anything. And the Athosians don't seem to have radio equivalents either. Besides trial-and-error and knowledge passed down through the generations, all I could picture was a trained dog/bird/whatever that would go through the stargate and come back before the wormhole closed. It's that or a boomerang device of some sort...

when they say the ancients seeded new life, what does that MEAN?

From the Stargate Handbook, part of Melia's (a.k.a. the hologram lady from "Rising") little speech:...in the hope of spreading new life through a galaxy where there appeared to be none. Soon, the new life grew, and prospered. Here, (as before, we built a system of stargates, so the fledgling civilizations could travel between the stars), exchange knowledge and friendship. In time, a thousand worlds bore the fruit of life in this form.
Sadly, I'm probably as ignorant of the larger SG canon as you (the blind leading the blind, lol), but from what I can gather, humans will eventually be the Ancients and, presumably, with all the fancy ATA stuff. The Ancients sped the evolutionary process and weighted the subsequent development of life in favor of beings like them wherever-Milky Way and Pegasus-they found empty worlds. They possibly also terraformed planets to support human-Ancient life.

nuhiep's A Brief Examination of Biological Concepts in SGA does a much better job speculating about what the ATA gene is than I could ever hope to, but I do have one idea to add in regards to how rare the gene seems to be in Pegasus and gene strength. As I said before, the Ancients are humans who are further along the evolutionary path. Since the Ancients were in the Milky Way first, Earth's people are "the second evolution" and have, simply, had more time than the natives of Pegasus to develop. And without the stuttering effects repeated Wraith cullings that drain huge sections of the gene pool in a evolutionary blink of the eye must have had. So, weak expressions of the gene are the result of evolution while freak mutations or more immediate descent from an actual Ancient are responsible for rare cases like O'Neill and Sheppard.

[walkingshadow]

Not only to control access to the stargate and cut off a means of escape or communication but to prevent the desperate from burying the thing or whatever.

"aha!" i thought. "what a great idea! why don't the pegasus humans do that? they're pretty desperate already." and then i remembered that the wraith don't actually use the stargates to descend upon the planets they're culling, they drive their big-ass hive ships through hyperspace and drop from the sky. as seen in "letters from pegasus" they then dial out from the planet's stargate to keep anyone from escaping.

Besides trial-and-error and knowledge passed down through the generations, all I could picture was a trained dog/bird/whatever that would go through the stargate and come back before the wormhole closed. It's that or a boomerang device of some sort...

the MALP was really the logical action on the part of the SGC, a non-human first-toe-in-the-pond. but even animals and boomerangs wouldn't work: wormholes only go one way; you can't go through and then back without waiting for the gate to close and then dialing again.

thanks for the links! honestly, i should do some homework, though their science makes me cringe and the idea of humans being further along the evolutionary path to ancienthood makes me laugh, or possibly cry, or even both at the same time.

[zincpiccalilli]

and then i remembered that the wraith don't actually use the stargates to descend upon the planets they're culling, they drive their big-ass hive ships through hyperspace and drop from the sky.

Oh, yeah. Forgot about that. ^^;;

Would explain why-assuming the Wraith are responsible for it in the first place-not every Pegasus stargate is in orbit. I'm thinking maybe certain worlds have spacegates for security reasons. From "Rising," it seems the Wraith land the hive ships on a planet before going into hibernation; perhaps before they do this, they drag that planet's stargate into space to prevent hapless humans from stumbling across hive ships protected by only a Keeper and her guards. Then the spacegate planets we've seen thus far were host to a hibernating hive at some point during the 10,000 years after the Ancients left.

even animals and boomerangs wouldn't work: wormholes only go one way; you can't go through and then back without waiting for the gate to close and then dialing again.

Damn! If a civilization isn't capable of building a MALP equivalent that leaves sending people through with orders to turn around and dial back. The risk of explosive decompression probably discourages exploration, huh?

the idea of humans being further along the evolutionary path to ancienthood makes me laugh, or possibly cry, or even both at the same time.

Personally, I don't feel one or another about this. The science is always going to be bad, so I just accept it, try my best to retcon it away, and move on. It's what I do. ;)

[walkingshadow]

Would explain why-assuming the Wraith are responsible for it in the first place-not every Pegasus stargate is in orbit.

but that wouldn't totally explain it. i've been trying to think up ways and reasons for the ancients to have established gates in space originally, rather than the wraith removing them there (because i'm contrary like that), and i suppose this might be a reason against the wraith theory&#namely that if the wraith simply took moved *all* the stargates into space, it would effectively isolate every planet without spaceships (which would be ALL THE PLANETS), allow the hive ships to hibernate undisturbed, and leave this awesome means of interplanetary travel for the wraith alone to exploit. so why would they have moved some gates but not all of them?

The risk of explosive decompression probably discourages exploration, huh?

EXACTLY. exactly. which makes me either admire the athosians greatly, or wonder why they have intel other planets don't.

[zincpiccalilli]

Sorry for the late reply. I had no idea you wrote more. ^^;;

so why would [the Wraith] have moved some gates but not all of them?

Up-thread, you wrote:
i also think it would take a much more delicate and time-consuming operation to uproot the gate, unharmed, and set it in orbit still functioning...

Assuming this is the case, one possible explanation is that the Wraith are too busy feeding, warring amongst themselves, and hibernating to bother turning every stargate on every planet in the galaxy into a spacegate when chances are most Pegasus civilizations will suffer a major culling before attaining space travel anyways. The spacegates serve only as an added security measure for hibernating Wraith hives. This is perhaps optional, too, because I don't remember the stargate on the planet with the hive in "Underground" being in space-though I suppose that particular hive might not have been hibernating as Sheppard's team and the Genii thought but making a quick stop to feed. Or something. Was the thing covered in vegetation like the one in "Rising"?

Now that I think about it, the Wraith probably don't want the humans to get too isolated. Space travel or any other challenge to Wraith power would be a big no-no, but other technological advancements and cultural exchange would allow humans to proliferate throughout Pegasus, living longer and healthier lives. The Wraith would love that, of course.

On a somewhat related note, I recently watched "Rising" with a friend of mine and noticed an odd protrusion on the spacegate. Perhaps where the stargate was once affixed to the ground?

Regarding the Athosians and stargate exploration, either Teyla's people are very brave and/or an extensive record of safe addresses was left by the advanced race they used to be. That is, if "the city of the ancestors" refers not to the Ancients but to the Athosians as they were before the Wraith drove them to a nomadic lifestyle. I never could figure out which it was.