Dialing from another World

[Major Tyler]

Established Fact: The POO is the only unique symbol on any Stargate, and it is always in the same position on the DHD. That's how they find POO in every episode. All other symbols are the same.

"Real" reason for having the symbol on the Beta Gate: The Stargate props are already premade and I would assume TPTB hoped that the viewers wouldn't care. I think they're right...it's a descrepancy, sure, but one I can easily ignore. Unlike that crap about everyone speaking English!

In-Universe Explanation: The Gate Technicians all got sick of looking at the "Iº" glyph, so they met in Walter's garage one night and made an faceplate. They came into work early and welded it over the old POO and no one was the wiser...except for Siler who to this day glares suspiciously at the control room.

[_Owen_]

Whoops, i meant 38 useable symbols (however many there are besides the PoO).

And yes, there must be an 'A' symbol on the Antartic gate because we see that gate in use at the SGC throughout Seasons 4 and 5. I'm pretty sure that we've seen them lock in Chevron 7 at the 'A' during Seasons 4 and 5.

If you see a symbol that you haven't seen before, than it's more likely that the symbol in question is the PoO for that location. SG-1 lucked out in Prisoners where that happened to be the case.

Major Tyler is correct, there was no "A" symbol on the Beta gate. If you watch the episode "Solitudes" of Season one, you will see that the symbol is clearly not the trademarked "A." I agree with Major Tylers' explination of why the "A" symbol was on the gate.

In the show Stargate SG-1, there is only two gates, there is one gate that is permantly used in the SGC, and one they use on location, it is incredibly likley that they simply continued using that gate, this was an oversight, or they simply hoped that we wouldn't notice.

Owen Macri