Talk:Stargate

There are SG-1 novels also.--wwoods 16:56, 29 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Alright, I've mentioned them now too. The line I took out didn't actually specify which version of the setting the novels were in and so could have referred to any of them. Bryan 23:22, 29 Jun 2004 (UTC)

BTW, I moved the article on the actual Stargate itself to Stargate (device) instead of Stargate (Stargate) because I felt it distinguished it from the movie's article better that way. It should definitely be a separate article from this one IMO, both since it's a distinct subject and because it can be placed under the Stargate technology category that way. Bryan 05:05, 30 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Could one of you folks who knows something about the books please clarify this bullet point: "The science fiction television series Stargate SG-1 first aired in 1997. Several novels are based on this story of this series. " Do you mean several novels are based on the TV series? Or maybe several novels are based on the TV series as opposed to the film? I'd like to fix the grammar, but I hesitate to change a sentence I don't understand. Salli 01:17, 13 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Contents

1 Show-Universe page 2 "Tau'ri" 3 Stargate "in transit" visual effect inconsistency 4 Canonicity in general 5 Listing insignificant changes

Show-Universe page

Gateworld doesn't specify it's about SG1, so really the link should be moved out here. And yeah there are novels and such which should be listed. Also the link on the Stargate SG-1 page refers to Stargate as the movie, though it should be Stargate. When in doubt, check how Star Trek did it. Should move the stuff about atlantis to this page. Amonst other things.

"Tau'ri"

Many other races refer to Earth's humans as the "Tau'ri", meaning "those of the first world."

Come to think of it, do they -- or is just a Jaffa term?

the new coordinates SG-1 picked up on Abydos had to be corrected for stellar drift before they could be used.

How they 'correct the coordinates' on an essentially digital device is a rock we're probably better off not trying to turn over. --wwoods 09:14, 2 Jul 2004 (UTC)

The explanation for how Stargate coordinates work has always struck me as a little wonky, but I'm pretty sure I recall that being mentioned in the first episode of SG-1. I'll be getting the DVD in about a month so I'll be able to re-check then, feel free to revert me in the meantime if you remember differently. :) Bryan 14:37, 2 Jul 2004 (UTC)

[For some reason this paragraph shows in the preview as having only one level of indentation.]
I remember it the same way, in SG-1. In the movie, Jackson's key insight was that one glyph represented Orion. How that led him to the address for Abydos... In SG-1, I think they dropped the constellation idea, because that let them have the stargates be built by the Ancients, not some Earth-based civilization. The list of addresses Jackson brought back gave them targets to try to reach, though how they correct for stellar drift remains a mystery to me -- give a chevron a couple of lightyears of english as you set it? In "Fifth Race" they do talk of the eighth chevron as analogous to an area code.

I couldn't talk the library into buying them, so I wound up getting all six sets of DVDs myself. If you have any particular questions, I can check.

--wwoods 19:25, 2 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Heh. It turns out that at some point years ago I downloaded the first season of Stargate SG-1 off of some now-defunct website, burned them to CD, and forgot about it. The video files are too highly compressed to make out much of anything visually (an hour and a half in just 44 megabytes), but I just hit the bit where Samantha is explaining how the expansion of the universe has thrown off all the old coordinates except for Abydos because Abydos is the closest to Earth. It's at roughly the 37 minute mark. Daniel also mentioned that he was able to chart some of the coordinates to places in Abydos' sky, so they may still be using the constellation thing. That doesn't necessarily tie the Ancients to Earth culture, because perhaps Earth culture picked up its constellations from the Ancients rather than the other way around.

As for how one might "adjust" such coarse-grained coordinates, Sam's exact quote was: "with this map as a base that should be easy. All we have to do is correct for doppler shift. Then I should be able to arrive at a computer model that will predict the adjustments necessary to get the gate working again." She doesn't actually say that they need to come up with new coordinates, just make an "adjustment." If I may speculate, perhaps this is yet another one of those user interface features that's normally handled automatically by the DHD but which the SGC had to MacGuyver up themselves; a sort of "scaling factor" that tells the Stargate how to deal with the minute change in the curvature of space due to the universe's expansion over time. That's too speculative to put into the article itself, IMO, but it makes me feel a little more comfortable with the idea that perhaps the writers have thought out and kept track of the behind-the-scenes logic better than it may seem at first glance. :) Bryan 07:04, 3 Jul 2004 (UTC)

It was established in a season 6 or 7 episode (the one with the gate virus) that the gates with DHDs dial each other automatically every couple of hundred years in order to update their knowledge of the other gates' locations. This implies each Gate/DHD has a complete set of gate coordinates for that galaxy in them. Presumably even the Goul'd lack the technology to get this information out of the DHD or gate given that there are gates they do not know about. Robertbrockway 09:18, 15 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Stargate "in transit" visual effect inconsistency

I just rewatched the bit of the first SG-1 episode where the characters travel back to Abydos, and noticed that the "traveller's-eye-view" visual effect is actually still the same as the one in the movie. I presume it was tweaked shortly thereafter since I didn't remember the movie's effect being used in the series until the long-distance dial Jack did later, but this means it's not actually a change between movie and series but rather a change that was made at some point in the series itself. Anyone know more about this? Bryan 06:41, 9 Jul 2004 (UTC)

How can the "in transit" effect be from the travelers’ point of view? Aren’t their molecules supposed to be broken down? How can they see anything at all?--68.228.190.177 23:11, 17 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I think this is just filmmaker's license. In the movie, Jackson stumbles out of the Stargate as if he'd just been on a rollercoaster ride. O'Neill says "It's okay, it's over." It IS what they see, but it's not to be thought about too much. It's a viewer's helper, like when computer screens in movies say "ACCESS GRANTED!!!" --alfakim 16:22, 18 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Canonicity in general

I've been involved in a long discussion over on Talk:Stargate (device) over whether the Stargate in the movie is "the same thing" as the Stargate in the series, with Centrx arguing that they aren't and that discussing the Stargate in just one article was deceitful. I don't think his argument is at all valid, but in the course of looking stuff up on the web I've discovered that some fans of the movie apparently consider the SG-1 series to be somehow illegitimate or non-canon. I'm not familiar with the Stargate fan community, just the show itself, so I don't feel comfortable adding discussion of this directly to the article. Does anyone know any details about this, such as how widespread this apparent schism is? Bryan 06:52, 9 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Please note that I do not mean deceitful, rather false, incorrect, or substantially misleading. - Centrx 20:05, 13 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Sorry, I was trying to be as concise as possible and apparently oversimplified as a result. Bryan 00:41, 14 Jul 2004 (UTC)

The writers/producers of the movie have absolutely nothing to do with the television series. As I understand it, they originally planned to make one or more sequels to the movie, but then the rights to the franchise were somehow removed from their posession, although I do not know if it was actually some sort of shady deal or if they simply sold the rights. The first television series was then produced, and many details from the movie were refuted or retconned. (Having just watched the Ultimate Edition, I can vouch that many things in both the theatrical and director's cuts don't jive well with the TV series.) As I said, I don't know exact details on how it all happened, but I'm pretty sure that's why most people (edit: I should say "some people") view the TV series as non-canon. McGravin 18:42, Jul 15, 2004 (UTC)

I'll start a paragraph on this shortly. BTW, what details were refuted or retconned that are not already listed in Stargate#Retroactive continuity from the film to the SG-1 series? I just got the Ultimate Edition a few weeks back myself and I can't think of anything else offhand. Bryan 23:33, 15 Jul 2004 (UTC)

Hey, there's already a list. Well, let's see... On that list, Abydos was said to be in another galaxy, but not necessarily on the other side of the universe, and Ra was never said to be the last of his species, but merely that his species was dying out. Maybe I'll fix those two details later. Anyhow, the biggest retcon I can recall from the Ultimate Edition to the TV series involves the fossilized guards. In the deleted scenes and director's commentary, they were supposedly sent through the gate after it was buried and therefore beamed into the rock and fossilized. In the TV series, the iris prevents any material traveling through the gate from being rematerialized at all. I'm pretty sure there are other things, but that's the major change that I recall. McGravin 18:00, Jul 23, 2004 (UTC)

Does the iris issue really count as an inconsistency? I notice it's not on the list in the article, which may be just as well since I believe that they profess to have added it sometime in the first episode. Salli 01:17, 13 Sep 2004 (UTC)

They do mention adding it in the first episode. They don't have it initially, but after some unexpected entries they get creative. --[[User:Aranel|Aranel ("Sarah")]] 01:22, 13 Sep 2004 (UTC)

In the TV series, a material that is "less dense" such as water (or in the case of the Giza Stargate, sand) does not stop matter from rematerializing on the receiving end. It is conceivable that the guards ended up drowning in sand once they rematerialized on Earth. The wormhole vortex also could have "carved out" a sinkhole that would temporarily hold the materialized guards until the sinkhole eventually would collapsed.

Listing insignificant changes

Is a wikipedia article really the place to list insignificant changes from the film to the series, such as difference in effects or minor changes in character names - when these changes have caused no mentionable effects? I think it would be better to replace some of the list by a generalization such as "Also some of the character names were changes slightly (Jackson's wife Sha'uri to Sha're, Kawalsky's first name from Adam to Charlie, and such). There were also some minor differences in the visual effects." --153.1.48.94 10:37, 11 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Amen. My favorite:

The visual effect representing the perspective of the traveller as he passes through the wormhole was longer than in the television series.

Jesus. Get a life. 21:51, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC)