Figuring out Stargate: Does it make sense or not?

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Figuring out Stargate: Does it make sense or not?

Post by Nonamer » Thu Oct 12, 2006 2:51 pm

Is it me, or is Stargate ridiculously inconsistent? I mean you have the Go'auld, who are at the beginning way more powerful than Earth, and they we become way more powerful than them, and they we start kicking the butts of everything from Wraith to Replicators and whatnot. And somehow all the super advance races are idiots, like how the Asgard can't figure how to make a shotgun or that no Go'auld ship is smart enough to install surveillance cameras. By the way a shotgun can actually defeat something that a race millions of years more advanced than us can't defeat. And for all this work the technobabble is arguable worse than Star Trek at its worse.

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Re: Figuring out Stargate: Does it make sense or not?

Post by l33telboi » Thu Oct 12, 2006 6:34 pm

Nonamer wrote:Is it me, or is Stargate ridiculously inconsistent? I mean you have the Go'auld, who are at the beginning way more powerful than Earth, and they we become way more powerful than them, and they we start kicking the butts of everything from Wraith to Replicators and whatnot.


I'd say that it makes some sense. I mean Earth has made a lot of allies during its struggle, the Asgard being the most powerful of them. They even handed over shield and beaming tech, which is the single most effective edge Earth has against its enemies IMO.

But then again, they are wanked out a bit at times. The whole "SG1 saves the earth again." routine is getting old really fast. Basically they just have to top their previous achievements all the time, and this is taking its toll on the story.
Nonamer wrote:And somehow all the super advance races are idiots, like how the Asgard can't figure how to make a shotgun or that no Go'auld ship is smart enough to install surveillance cameras. By the way a shotgun can actually defeat something that a race millions of years more advanced than us can't defeat. And for all this work the technobabble is arguable worse than Star Trek at its worse.
The shotgun thing was stupid, no getting around that part.

The technobabble never really disturbed me to the levels ST did at points though. Most of the time, it has some basis in normal physics, so you catch glimpses of real stuff at times. Not just the "Sub-Space phenomenon" this and "Blopp particle that."

As for other inconsistencies. The things that disturb me most is the ever changing ship-sizes and weapon yields.

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Post by GStone » Thu Oct 12, 2006 7:12 pm

It has always been inconsistent, both character wise and with technology. First you got the Goa'uld coming to Earth and taking humans as hosts and slaves, spreading humanity throughout the galaxy. Then, it's changed to the Ancients reseeding humanity throughout the galaxy, yet all Goa'uld are still using Earth mythology.

The Asgard can have ships that can go ultra fast in hyperspace and can take the beating the energies of hyperspace can dish out at those speeds, yet they are designed to also not be able to survive reentry of a planet? There's a thing called overall technological base of society. And, in 3 galaxies, 'rail guns' are still a viable weapon...after all the uberness out there, like weapons don't get that much better than what we have right now, but speed and shields...oh, those'll be uber great...and, of course, we couldn't spin any of that tech off by taking pieces of it to make other things more advanced.

They show Tauri adapting, yet the Goa'uld are severily lacking in any skills in adapting, as a whole...ever. You can't blame this on arrogance.

The Asgard and the shotgun thing was very idiotic. It follows the line of 'how wonder the mind of a child really is'. 'Oh, we're way too smart to ever just think of something simple. We're so smart, we can only think of things in the most ocmplex of methods, even though the complex methods are made of the simplest ways.'

The security cameras thing is abhorent. It can't be explained away with them being arrogant. They know people revolt. So, maybe a few will design their ships without cameras because their arrogant, but not every single one of them. How about a log and observance of ring usage? Would it kill them to have a passive motion sensor? Giving your men heat sensors to carry isn't a bad idea.

I'd say the technobabble has gotten as bad as Voyager, only it isn't as much. You see this with Carter, like there's something wrong with her brain and she can't boil complex thoughts into simple forms. It's like they deliberately make things longer than it has to be. Their continued running gag of Carter so often being long winded with tech has always been bad for the show. From a technological standpoint, the technobable is even worse than Voyager's example because at least Voyager was long winded, but it still meant something that was consistent most of the time. These last few years, it's pretty much been 'it's subspace' and they leave it at that. Not even a hint of what why or how. Voyager at least gave you a little something to figure out what was going on by using subapce or any of the other tech. Leaving it at just 'it's subspace' is bad writing.

The other inconsistency I can think of off the top of my head is the stagnant evolution of characters. It's been 10 bloody years. It's inconsistent with how people really are. Jack is the same, so is Carter. Teal'C has barely changed. He's just a reference source of US pop culture, blurting crap out. Jackson is the only one that has had any growth, like everyone else is devoid of any potential to change. It's rare that you would find anyone that would be that stagnant over 10 years, yet we've got three right here. And you can't explain it with 'some change quickly or some take a long time to change'. Even those that take time to change show some smaller changes over time, while generally being the same. You could have plucked these 3 from any point in the past and put them in any other part of the show's run and just told them what to catch up on and they'd have made the same choices.

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Post by Nonamer » Thu Oct 12, 2006 11:43 pm

Speaking of ten years of SG-1, SG Atlantis became all the ugly aspects of SG-1 after the first season. In fact the season finale of the very first season before it went totally downhill. That whole premise of a ragtag bunch of early 21th century humans surviving against a fleet of super advanced aliens is bullcrap plain and simple. How they managed to get every complicated system up and running and solution to every problem in miracle time is impossible. The whole time they should be baffled by how the ships works and that should've taken years all by itself. Realistically, the Wraith should've crushed everything easily during that fight, Earth help and Asgard tech or no.

By the way, McKay, Sheppard and Co's ability to figure out Atlantian tech is also insanely beyond anything even witness in history. It wasn't more that a few months before they were able to tap random glass plates like they were trained from years do that. And whenever a ship breaks down they just open a panel and stick a few tubes together with some glass plates and the ships works again. That's borderline absurd even when you're familiar with the tech and were trained to fix them. To reverse engineer that stuff and still figure it out in record is well into deus ex machina territory. All of this went from somewhat tolerable to obscene after the first season.

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Post by GStone » Fri Oct 13, 2006 2:39 am

But, you have McKay and Zelinka, bub. :-P

The Ancients were the fourth (or is it the first) race and the Asgard were one of the others, but their tech pales in comparison, so it couldn't be from being taught by the Asgard. Even understanding the blueprints Jack made of the stargate wouldn't be enough to get a good understanding of Ancient tech. The only other thing I thought they had found was the repositories.

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Re: Figuring out Stargate: Does it make sense or not?

Post by Mr. Oragahn » Mon Dec 04, 2006 12:31 am

Nonamer wrote:Is it me, or is Stargate ridiculously inconsistent? I mean you have the Go'auld, who are at the beginning way more powerful than Earth, and they we become way more powerful than them, and they we start kicking the butts of everything from Wraith to Replicators and whatnot. And somehow all the super advance races are idiots, like how the Asgard can't figure how to make a shotgun or that no Go'auld ship is smart enough to install surveillance cameras. By the way a shotgun can actually defeat something that a race millions of years more advanced than us can't defeat. And for all this work the technobabble is arguable worse than Star Trek at its worse.
They tried to replicate the film's centerline to milk the audience.

Basically, find a way to explain how an alien with plenty of advanced tech still gets owned by a group of terrans armed with sticks and rifles.
Plus a nuke.

To some extent, it worked rather well, and could pass with the Asgards (though you got to wonder how they didn't figure out that mere KE was enough to destroy replicator bonds... a missing hit in an atmosphere, a fireball, psi, blast, KE and voilà).

The Ori are medieval, kinda like the Goa'uld, who above all were extremely paranoid and seemed to be too occupied playing gods than leading true wars for most of them.

The worst came with the Wraith and Lantians, and now the Asurans.

SGA's scripiting is dramatically bombing, and all three races are dumbed down to unbearable extremes.

That's why I hate it when fans ask for more stories about the Ancients, because you know that the writers will screw up, and mystery is thousand times better than a freaking gambit.

Other elements that piss me off to no extent is the bad choice of actors for certain characters, the complete disastrous management of certain characters (especially in Atlantis), VFX fuck ups, and how the Wraith potential for an incredible enemy is completely left unexploited and actually dismissed in favor of a even less interesting redux of the Replicators.

I'm not far from getting sick of humanoid replicators who behave like humans instead of like machines only sporting a human shape.
I guess it's that whole asuran masochistic desire to look like their creators, grow a personnal ID, ascend, and yet kill all Lantians on sight.

Talking about Lantians. What's the best way to get rid of Replicators?

Obliterate the whole planet with a ZPM? Make the nearby sun go nova?
Crush the planet into a black hole? Send the whole planet into hyperspace and create an explosion there? Create a mini Dakara?

No. Bring a few ships, fire hand grenade level missiles or whatever and hope that no replicator debris will "survive".
I mean... sure.

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Post by GStone » Mon Dec 04, 2006 12:44 am

Remember back in early SG1, Carter asks Teal'C how fast they're going in a ship and he says 10x the speed of light. But...the Goa'uld are supposed to be all over the damn galaxy and are fighting wars with each other. How the damn hill are they supposed to fight a lot with each other when they had ships only going 10c? It'll take them forever.

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Post by Nonamer » Mon Dec 04, 2006 1:56 am

Stargate's technically plausibility literally went downhill after the first season. Of course it wasn't too bad for a few seasons, but lately it's been totally unwatchable. Seriously. I haven't watched any of it in a while, because I was too turned off by the absurdities of SG from what I saw near the end.

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Re: Figuring out Stargate: Does it make sense or not?

Post by l33telboi » Mon Dec 04, 2006 7:53 am

Mr. Oragahn wrote:hand grenade level missiles
I doubt this. Whenever these drones attack capital ships, they seem to burrow through them, going in on one side and then exiting on the other, causing explosions here and there. This is seen in SGA 3x01 and the finale of SG1 Season 7 finale.

Further support for this is the episode "The Tower" in atlantis, where McKay riggs a drone to burrow through a couple of meters of solid dirt. There is no evidence of explosions, just a neatly dug chute where the drone had gone through.

Oh, and Anubis' ship's shields didn't even so much as try to repell them, meaning that they could have some form of primitive shield bypassing mechanism. I say primitive because in SGA 3x11, we see a drone hitting a puddle jumper shield and being repelled by it. But then again, if the Anchients designed the drone, then it would stand to reason that they would have incorporated defence against them in their own shields.

Further more, it is speculated in the show that the reason the Ori have not attacked Earth directly is because of the Anchient weapons platform. But that's just speculation so nothing solid there.

But you are right in the fact that they can also be used to simply detonate without causing much other damage. This is used in "The Tower", as well as against Wraith darts often enough.

It could even be that the drones are only as powerful as their powersource. In "Lost City", they need a ZPM to power the chair and the anchient weapon. The chair almost definetly controlled other vital systems, so that could explain the massive power requirments, but neither did O'Neill even try to activate the chair without one, or rig some form of bypass.

And later on in SGA 3x01, there's an Anchient warship powering the drones. In both those examples, the drones were shown to emitt extreme damage. Yet when they're fired from puddle jumpers, they seem to give off very little damage.
GStone wrote:Remember back in early SG1, Carter asks Teal'C how fast they're going in a ship and he says 10x the speed of light. But...the Goa'uld are supposed to be all over the damn galaxy and are fighting wars with each other. How the damn hill are they supposed to fight a lot with each other when they had ships only going 10c? It'll take them forever.
Yeah, Carter even goes on to make an estimate of how long it will take for them to reach Earth. A little later they're all standing around, pretty stumped by just how fast they actually did manage to get there. I can't remember what the reason for the faster travel time was in the show, was it because Teal'c was simply wrong, or had Apophis upgraded his FTL?
Nonamer wrote:Of course it wasn't too bad for a few seasons, but lately it's been totally unwatchable. Seriously. I haven't watched any of it in a while, because I was too turned off by the absurdities of SG from what I saw near the end.
The constantly emerging new enemies that are more powerful then anything else in the universe is pretty bad, yes.

And if your talking about power stats then i have to agree. I love wanking my favorite Sci-Fi shows, but when you're shown something like was shown in the latest episode "Echoes", which suggest the Atlantian shield with a ZPM can take Petatons of damage (as an extreme lower limit). Let's just say that that pretty much fills my wank quota, and then some.

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Re: Figuring out Stargate: Does it make sense or not?

Post by Mr. Oragahn » Mon Dec 04, 2006 6:23 pm

l33telboi wrote:
Mr. Oragahn wrote:hand grenade level missiles
I doubt this. Whenever these drones attack capital ships, they seem to burrow through them, going in on one side and then exiting on the other, causing explosions here and there. This is seen in SGA 3x01 and the finale of SG1 Season 7 finale.

Further support for this is the episode "The Tower" in atlantis, where McKay riggs a drone to burrow through a couple of meters of solid dirt. There is no evidence of explosions, just a neatly dug chute where the drone had gone through.

Oh, and Anubis' ship's shields didn't even so much as try to repell them, meaning that they could have some form of primitive shield bypassing mechanism. I say primitive because in SGA 3x11, we see a drone hitting a puddle jumper shield and being repelled by it. But then again, if the Anchients designed the drone, then it would stand to reason that they would have incorporated defence against them in their own shields.

Further more, it is speculated in the show that the reason the Ori have not attacked Earth directly is because of the Anchient weapons platform. But that's just speculation so nothing solid there.

But you are right in the fact that they can also be used to simply detonate without causing much other damage. This is used in "The Tower", as well as against Wraith darts often enough.

It could even be that the drones are only as powerful as their powersource. In "Lost City", they need a ZPM to power the chair and the anchient weapon. The chair almost definetly controlled other vital systems, so that could explain the massive power requirments, but neither did O'Neill even try to activate the chair without one, or rig some form of bypass.

And later on in SGA 3x01, there's an Anchient warship powering the drones. In both those examples, the drones were shown to emitt extreme damage. Yet when they're fired from puddle jumpers, they seem to give off very little damage.
Woah, man, no worry! :)
It's nothing more than an overexageration. I've been discussing about the lantian drones myself for ages, and I'm fairly open minded regarding the various modes which they can switch to (NDF, brute KE, explosion, prox fuse, etc) and how they seem to both store energy and switch themselves off as a defensive measure (drone hijacking? comms cut?).
My point is that I find the level and method of destruction seen in Progeny totally absurd.

Btw, there's a peak at which the lantian drones seemed rather cool. Lost City, incredible manoeuverability and NDF super armor away. The Tower (shitty episode), cool, various phenomenoms for the same weapons. Condemned, Rising, Siege, No Man's Land, etc., all good. Sateda... what the fuck? Okay, the thing can push an object now (though it was hinted at when we saw the drone in Rising breaking through the ice), so the detonation can be controlled, and the drone can act as a pure hammering rocket/sabot.
Then you get Return pt 2, where those drones suddenly can't go underwater when piloted by Asurans, but can when fired by super hero Sheppard. They're hyper slow when trying to shoot down Sheppard, but they're hyper fast when fired by Sheppard against Wraith, or by O'Neill against Anubis' forces (nearly top speed seen thus far).
Oh, and drones bump against PJ's shields. Semi excusable considering that shields and drones come from the same people. But still. How can we nerf them more I ask?
It's not that I'm asking for wank, far from that.

I hate it when features are extremely plot driven and influenced by main character presence. It so kills credibility.

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Re: Figuring out Stargate: Does it make sense or not?

Post by l33telboi » Mon Dec 04, 2006 8:23 pm

Mr. Oragahn wrote:Woah, man, no worry! :)
It's all good. :)

And thanks for all those other examples of what the drones can do, i had forgot about most of them. Just wrote what i could recall at the time.
I hate it when features are extremely plot driven and influenced by main character presence. It so kills credibility.
Indeed it does.

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