You Can't dial out if you don't know where you are Spoiler:SG-1 - SOLITUDES

[6thMonolith]

Welcome to the forum, GateWarrior!

[_Owen_]

Welcome to the forum Gateworrior!

If the answer that you found is that the symbols were only supposed to be constellations in the movie than it is correct, in the show, they were just symbols, allthough they did form words, which we just recently found out after seven seasons, lol.

Owen Macri

[GateWarrior]

Ahhh... Yes, yes. Something like that.

Thank you both for the welcome.

[_Owen_]

lol. The more the merrier!

Happy posting!

Owen Macri

[Arga]

Something that bugged me for quite a while.

Considering the addresses represent in a way the vector in space to go from one gate to the other, if the 7th symbol is the point of origin, is unique for each stargate and is displayed on the gate itself, it means that every time they go to another planet, the team has to learn by heart the first 6 symbols of the address for Earth before they go on a mission, otherwise they might not be able to come back. Maybe they do it when they are briefed about the mission.. off screen. But it's a little curious they never mentioned it.
It's not like a phone number, that where ever you are, it is always the same digits!

But then, if they had to go from gate to gate until going back to Earth, or are transported to an unforseen planet, in a word, if they are on an unknown planet, I wonder how can they guess what will be the address to Earth... Because they don't know which way to point the wormwhole to.

Does it mean that, dialling towards Earth, the first 6 symbols are always the same what ever planet you are, and what differs is only the point of origin, which is written on top of the stargate ring.?

[NoDot]

Does it mean that, dialling towards Earth, the first 6 symbols are always the same what ever planet you are, and what differs is only the point of origin, which is written on top of the stargate ring.?

YES! THIS HAS BEEN KNOWN SINCE THE BEGINNING OF THE SHOW!

[Major Tyler]

Does it mean that, dialling towards Earth, the first 6 symbols are always the same what ever planet you are, and what differs is only the point of origin, which is written on top of the stargate ring.?

In the movie all of the symbols are different, but in the TV show only the POO is different.

[Tok'Ra Hostess]

[QUOTE]Originally Posted by Arga
Does it mean that, dialling towards Earth, the first 6 symbols are always the same what ever planet you are, and what differs is only the point of origin, which is written on top of the stargate ring.?[/QUOTE]

YES! THIS HAS BEEN KNOWN SINCE THE BEGINNING OF THE SHOW!

Except that Daniel seemed to have no end of trouble dialing Earth from Chulak. He did know Chulak's unique symbol, and tried twice to show it to Jack soon after their arrival. At the end we see Daniel fumbling through his pack for the addy and then, slowly, somewhat clumsily, dialing out. It was seven symbols, FCOL, six of which he'd have known by heart, surely.

Daniel's actions in that escape scene conveyed to me the idea that Earth's addy would have been different, dialed from Chulak, then it was, dialed from Abydos, and not by merely one symbol.

[Seastallion]

Except that Daniel seemed to have no end of trouble dialing Earth from Chulak. He did know Chulak's unique symbol, and tried twice to show it to Jack soon after their arrival. At the end we see Daniel fumbling through his pack for the addy and then, slowly, somewhat clumsily, dialing out. It was seven symbols, FCOL, six of which he'd have known by heart, surely.

Daniel's actions in that escape scene conveyed to me the idea that Earth's addy would have been different, dialed from Chulak, then it was, dialed from Abydos, and not by merely one symbol.

But... Keep in mind that they hadn't quite gotten their television show 'legs' beneath them quite yet in the Pilot. They were still relying heavily on the movie, and then later the show came more into its own. It has been established fact that all stargate addresses (that work) are valid no matter where you dial from, and remain the same until enough time has passed that the address have to be updated to compensate for stellar movements around the galaxy. However, the address recalculations only have to be done once every several thousand years or so. Even in the Pilot this idea was present. Remember they had to feed the old addresses found on the Abydos Cartouche into the computer to be recalculated for revised coordinates. Carter then stated that the computer would be able to spit out about 2 or 3 destinations a month. This was status quo, until O'Neill got the repository of the Ancients downloaded into his brain, and gave the SGC a revolutionary formula for calculating stargate addresses which sped up the new calculations significantly.

Okay, now a response to the thread's basis itself...

Bottom Line: You CAN dial out even if you don't know where you are. Solitudes was a VERY BAD example. They were trying to dial Earth, but they were ALREADY on Earth. So it didn't work. Duh.