The Origin of Wraith Mental Abilities (Or Who were the Ancestors of the Wraith?)

[Rise Of The Phoenix]

Could some advanced Humans (not Ancients) not have experimented with ways of extended their life span, with the Wraith becoming the final product of their experiments?
Using the Irratus Bug's healing abilities, but everything went wrong, perhaps with some Wraith contaminating the advanced Humans and eventually spreading to the general population or feeding off of them, stealing their technology, perhaps torturing those that understood it to learn everything they needed to know to build ships and other tech.
The Wraith obviously didn't get their technology over night and something as advanced as even basic hyperdrive could take centuries or even thousands of years to perfect a basic drive.
I always thought it strange that the Wraith would not use their ships to cull the galaxy especially if they had the tech to defeat most of their enemies and this would IMO explain why they didn't attack the whole galaxy sooner and why they were hibernating when the Ancients first found them.

[thekillman]

the mental power might not be pre-given but rather the result of the genetic mix. seeing how preciously little wraith DNA the Hybrids have, i think its actually a local advancement of the brain as opposed to superadvanced human brains.


its possible the Iratus hybridized with more races than humans. maybe there were much more advanced ancient wraith, some human wraith, and possibly other iratus hybrids. they interbred and finally stabilized into the wraith.

the telepathy seems a rather natural power: its tied into their brains as a passive connection to their bretheren, whearas people like Teyla have adapted minds which actually subconsciously blocked the telepathy and needed to connect on their own. the wraith most likely have a subconsious telepathic emmitor array to connect with wraith, while they have a conscious one aswell that allows influencing of Humans.

conclusion: its a combo of iratus and humans

[Crazy Tom]

Hasn anyone considered that the ATA gene just didn't make it form the Ancients to the Wraith?

It's a little, tiny, miniscule, pattern in your DNA, nothing major, so the chances of it being passed on are very small.

[Ouroboros]

I wonder, since we're living in a universe where viruses can remove tattoos could they have genetically manipulated in their own telepathy as a means to control those clones? The clones are the product of technology so it can make some degree of sense if some sort of mass genetic engineering campaign went on gradually around the same time they were first invented to enable increasingly larger numbers of "normal" wraith to "utilize" the new clones.

We were told recently that the clones basically have no free will of their own. They're just tools for the other wraith to manipulate.

[Quadhelix]

The sudden appearence of advanced telepathic abilities in the hybrid species is just one of the reasons why I think the whole human/bug theory is bunk.

None of the parent creatures had powers like that. It would make more sense if they were ancients contaminated by the Irratus bug not humans.

There is something known as "Hybrid Vigor." In other words, the Iratus bug's DNA might have contained a gene that reacted with a gene in the human DNA to produce "psychic" abilities, despite the fact that neither of the original creatures had such abilities.

[thekillman]

its what i said.

[some runner guy]

I think that, as iratus bugs developed, they developed natural signals to differentiate members of a colony, in much the same way ants are able to tell different members of different colonies apart. as they fed on ancients, they began to gain minor mental abilites. they may have focused this into connecting with members of their own hive. further development saw an increase in this mental power. on the eve of their grasping sapience, they may have gotten creative, and started using this mental link on ancients and humans. they found this had desireable effects, and started experimenting further, expanding their mental abilities, and giving themselves mind control powers. however, since their minds still retained a beastial nature, they saw no point in mastering the focus required for telekinesis or elemental control, and their natural healing ability detered them from practicing on healing each other. their only goal was to further master mind control and manipulation for the purposes of more effectively capturing food, or interrogating captured ancients.
anyway, that's my two bits.

[Guest750]

since this is a sci-fi the writters probably thought it would be cool if they had telepaphy.

Refined it.

[arelyss]

my guess is that the wraith were in the beginning humans relocated by the ancients on a planet with iratus bugs. when those bugs contamined the humans - future wraith - some individuals got those mental abilities as due to the bug's poison /drug.

[Mister Oragahn]

I wonder, since we're living in a universe where viruses can remove tattoos could they have genetically manipulated in their own telepathy as a means to control those clones?

Well, the tattoo could actually be an elaborate form of skin pigmentation, and with the ability to regenerate tissues, it's possible the body, as it undergoes mutation due to the plot-retrovirus, neuters the modified for this tribal pigmentation.

Huh. Sorry.

As to the mental abilities, we notice that in general, most Wraith don't seem to display them.
Which makes me wonder if some Wraith are descendants of Lantian lineages and infections, notably as they probably bloomed during the war, and if a great many of others are just infected humans, with greater abilities due to mutations.

Or perhaps they're all partially genetically engineered to some degree.

[Ouroboros]

Well, the tattoo could actually be an elaborate form of skin pigmentation, and with the ability to regenerate tissues, it's possible the body, as it undergoes mutation due to the plot-retrovirus, neuters the modified for this tribal pigmentation.

Huh. Sorry.

As to the mental abilities, we notice that in general, most Wraith don't seem to display them.
Which makes me wonder if some Wraith are descendants of Lantian lineages and infections, notably as they probably bloomed during the war, and if a great many of others are just infected humans, with greater abilities due to mutations.

Or perhaps they're all partially genetically engineered to some degree.

I'm wondering now if the best explanation to account for Wraith goon power differences isn't just to assume the season 1 goons were mostly the troops of the keeper(s) that monitored the hibernations, with the crappier non keeper troops supplanting them later on by virtue of being much more numerous and thus progressively more often encountered.

So those guys that came back to life more often and could telekinetic people, create mind illusions and ignore being tased were what they were due to the superior genetic manipulation techniques used in their creation.

The ones that appeared later as the troops of all the other queens who woke up were less flashy because the queens who made them didn't have the same level of skill in manipulating the technology. We know the queens "create them" somehow so it seems logical that they'll reflect their creator's skill level in some way. If their creator is skilled with genetic manipulation and Wraith tech in general they'll come out better, if she's not then you get back to that reason why a hives computer would need to have safeguards that try to automatically prevent someone flying it into a planet.

[Mister Oragahn]

I'm wondering now if the best explanation to account for Wraith goon power differences isn't just to assume the season 1 goons were mostly the troops of the keeper(s) that monitored the hibernations, with the crappier non keeper troops supplanting them later on by virtue of being much more numerous and thus progressively more often encountered.

So those guys that came back to life more often and could telekinetic people, create mind illusions and ignore being tased were what they were due to the superior genetic manipulation techniques used in their creation.

The ones that appeared later as the troops of all the other queens who woke up were less flashy because the queens who made them didn't have the same level of skill in manipulating the technology. We know the queens "create them" somehow so it seems logical that they'll reflect their creator's skill level in some way. If their creator is skilled with genetic manipulation and Wraith tech in general they'll come out better, if she's not then you get back to that reason why a hives computer would need to have safeguards that try to automatically prevent someone flying it into a planet.

That's also a good reason. Only writer fiat plot would have the audience believe all tribes are at the same level, genetically or socially.

Also, isn't it funny how when the heroes plan to crash a hiveship into a planet, it moves at snail pace for dumb audience dramatic shot, but when they're trying to prevent a hiveship from hitting a planet, it comes in muuuuuuuuch faster, and is shown to perfectly handle freefall reentry without breaking a sweat, and that despite having already lost its ass.