The Tau'ri and Genocide

[Opener]

1. Arcturus... on a planet?... was it really necessary? Couldn't they just build a small space station, somewhere, and make their tests there?
Nope, not enough drama in case things wrong.

2. Cloning humans, or sort of... I'm not sure that would work. There's that whole "soul juice" thing going on. Besides, the Lantians know Dakaran tech, they know beaming transporters, they can fiddle with the genetics of creatures and, if Merlin's device was older than Atlantis, literally build stuff out of the blue.
My point is that I don't think any cloning could solve the food problem for the Wraith.

Now, I think the retrovirus is the solution. Don't get me wrong, it's been horribly written and is largely inconsistent. It should have been properly identified as a lantian project, because claiming that Beckett invented the stuff was downright nonsensical and truly stupid.

There are not many solutions for the Wraith:

1. Genocide.
2. Go find some subsitute somewhere else (kicked out of Pegasus, and may die en route).
3. Find some kind of mystical well that feeds them, a sort of rift that pours "soul energy" from some dimension of ascension or something, and all the Wraith move their whole civilization in that sector of the galaxy.
4. They all suicide themselves.
5. They all go into hibernation.
6. They all ascend and ironically become the guardians of that galaxy, protecting the humans they once fed upon.
7. Turn into humans.
8. Find an artificial mean, through technology, to feed or stop needing to feed. Something not related to the retrovirus.
9. They turn against each other.
10. They evolve into insects which only need blood.
11. They realize that Guinness a good substitute for... food (which it is).

12. Wraith worshippers

Ultimately what the expedition has done has been self-defense, or they've been provoked, and the same is true for the Goa'uld and the Ori. And even after being provoked and attacked, we still tried to make peace with our enemies, as Weir tried to do in First Strike.

[Lord batchi ball]

Or you could take multiple systems out of phase and then wait for the Wraith to starve.

Or distribute a gum that weans them off of their addication to humans and gets them addicted to ciggerates.

[Opener]

Or get them addicted to the internet and "those" sites.

[Ouroboros]

I somehow picture u running infront of a soilder scream NO DONT HURT THE WRAITH then being fed on Hippy <3

Huh huh yeah totally dude, because like fighting a war and wiping out every last trace of a species are like totally the same goal.

I know stargate's writers think they are but if we believe them then you need supernova levels of energy to make clones and rape is ok, even kinda funny, so long as you don't take it too seriously.

2. Cloning humans, or sort of... I'm not sure that would work. There's that whole "soul juice" thing going on. Besides, the Lantians know Dakaran tech, they know beaming transporters, they can fiddle with the genetics of creatures and, if Merlin's device was older than Atlantis, literally build stuff out of the blue.
My point is that I don't think any cloning could solve the food problem for the Wraith.

the reason we don't know is because they never even tried though. This is what I was talking about in regard to uninvestigated possabilities. They never explored the option of feeding the Wraith in some fashion that would save human lives. They instead immediately appointed themselves responsible for safeguarding every human in pegasus via direct military force, a stance that would and should have got them anihilated realistically were it not for the monumental shield of plot that protects their single tiny base from an entire galactic empire.

This should have been a much more complicated issue than it was. Railguns and beam weapons should not have cut it here. This should have been a challenge mostly for the scientists and the diplomats, (remember when stargate used to have those too?) since it should have been instantly obvious that 1 planet with a billion lightyear supply line vs an entire galaxy on it's home turf is not what anyone with any sense would call a winnable war.

Now, I think the retrovirus is the solution. Don't get me wrong, it's been horribly written and is largely inconsistent. It should have been properly identified as a lantian project, because claiming that Beckett invented the stuff was downright nonsensical and truly stupid.

The retrovirus is what equates to genocide though. If there was a way for them to retain their memories and identities then it would be more grey but as it sits right now the individual who was is entirely destroyed and replaced with another. Were it's effects as permanent as they one day hope them to be it would be no different than death for any Wraith affected.

3. Find some kind of mystical well that feeds them, a sort of rift that pours "soul energy" from some dimension of ascension or something, and all the Wraith move their whole civilization in that sector of the galaxy.

This is another one of the unexplored possabilities. Whatever they feed on is something that can be manufactured naturally by the human body and can be moved from human to Wraith and back again. As such it would seem to have some degree of material tangability to it. It's worth looking into the possability that this "energy" could be manufactured artificially somehow.

This is actually my favorite option because even if the Wraith don't go for it you've just potentially invented an immortality machine.

I'd start looking at how to do this by examining exactly how the sarcophagus and ancient healing devices regenerate the body without directly physically repairing the damage. The process is similar to what happens when a Wraith regenerates on his own or gives life back to a human so it's possible they're related.

8. Find an artificial mean, through technology, to feed or stop needing to feed. Something not related to the retrovirus.

This is the third big thing that needs be be looked into. We already know queens eat normal food as children so they already have all the biological hardware needed to do so. If they can invent viruses that turn them into humans inventing a virus to reactivate a dorment digestive tract should be beyond trivial by comparison.

The question here is if it would work for other Wraith who aren't queens as well. It's not going to work for the noface guys but it likely will for the males, since we've seen one eating food before.

[talyn2k1]

Off point? What thread did you wander into.



Genocide does not require the deaths of non combatants to "count" as genocide, genocide is the extermination of a cultural, religious or ethnic group. In this case with it being an entire species and not just a group from one that's set to be exterminated, what they are doing would actually amount to something even larger in scope than genocide. Calling them genocidal is giving them a break. They'd be genocidal if they only wanted to kill all of the Wraith with the bluish skin or all of the ones from a given part of the galaxy. They've got grander plans than that though.



You can certainly write it so that it doesn't come off as advocating galaxy wide genocide of a sentient species as the best answer. How hard can that be, really now.



It's the rapidity with which they jumped to the genocide that really sticks with me to.

Like I said they have access to technology that could potentially feed the Wraith in such a way that no sentients need be harmed. They also have the knowledge that Wraith, at least queens, can eat solid food for many years and thus at least at one point could be sustained by it.

Rather than focus their efforts in the direction of finding them an alternate foodsource so they'll leave the poor humans alone, which seems like a much easier option, they jump to planning their wholesale extermination with elaborate bioweapons and such. They just show up in pegasus one day, declare the native species evil and say "ok we're going to kill you all now because we don't like the way you're acting over here".

The arrogance astounds.

They're 50 some odd people billions of lightyears away from where they belong and they're not only going to start telling the natives how to act but they're going to start killing them by the species for not measuring up to their personal alien standards of morality.

If the original Daniel Jackson was still around to see acts like this being commited by humanity through the stargate, he'd drop dead on the spot just so that he could start spinning in his grave at lightspeed.

You are of course assuming that if we came up with an alternate food source for the Wraith, that they would be willing to eat.
First is the issue of them being reliant on us 9atleast early on) for whatever this food source is. Even if we teach them how to build the technology that creates the alternative food, we have problem 2...
What if they simply don't want to eat it as they prefer their current food.

Example: I eat meat and I enjoy it. If I suddenly found out that there was an alternative to meat that provided all the nutrients but didn't taste quite as nice, would I stop eating meat? Honestly, probably not.
The sentience of the animal is debatable with a number of species and, honestly, even if it turned out the animal was 'sentient' in some manner, I'd probably still eat it if it tasted nice.
You can flame me for that comment but that is my opinion to which I am entitled.

The Wraith have fed off of humans since their inception. A large portion of their society is built around the hunting and feeding process. If they didn't have that, their society would be altered forever.
Personally, if you gave a Wraith the option to eat a human, or an alternative food, I think he'd pick the human every time.
Not because he's evil, not because he enjoys watching them suffer (although possibly either of these), but because that is what that Wraith has always done and that is how their society works.

Without a large number of Wraith willing to break from tradition and social habits, even if the food was available they wouldn't go for it.

I agree with the comment from an earlier poster with the Ender's Game reference. Wraith and humans can never co-exist.
We are never going to willingly provide ourselves as food for them, and I highly doubt they will ever chance their eating habits on such a fundamental level. Therefore, the only thing to do is defend ourselves, gain an upperhand on the enemy whenever we can, and kill as many of them as we possibly can.

[Opener]

Ouroboros, you lost me when you said the SG writers think rape is OK and funny.

As far as the war being unwinnable and that we shouldn't have even tried, what about the Viet Cong and the North Vietnamese Army? No one on the planet back in the 60s would have said they'd drive away a country that's far ahead of them in technology, but that's exactly what happened. Technology isn't the only thing that wins a war. There are also the assumptions the other side makes, like when we thought that the Japanese would never attack our ships in port. Pearl Harbor proved that to be untrue.

Our weapons were less technologically advanced than the Goa'uld, but they were tactically superior. A P-90 can kill a man with one shot, but a staff weapon only gets two hits out of three, and that's with a skilled marksman. The Goa'uld were never concerned with this as it was a weapon of intimidation, which suited their nature and their empire quite well.

[Ouroboros]

Ouroboros, you lost me when you said the SG writers think rape is OK and funny.

Did you not watch Irresistable? It was basically an episode about a man who used mind altering "date rape" type drugs to have sex with women presented as a comedy.

Sure I might have exagerrated the position a bit but I was endevering to return the favour.

As far as the war being unwinnable and that we shouldn't have even tried, what about the Viet Cong and the North Vietnamese Army? No one on the planet back in the 60s would have said they'd drive away a country that's far ahead of them in technology, but that's exactly what happened. Technology isn't the only thing that wins a war. There are also the assumptions the other side makes, like when we thought that the Japanese would never attack our ships in port. Pearl Harbor proved that to be untrue.

I think the gap is a little bit bigger here. We're talking more along the lines of 3 WW1 era tanks with some cutting edge modern weapons bolted on vs the entire 1983 Soviet Union.

Event hat probably doesn't accurately convey the scope of the difference that should exist between 1 small secret branch of the US military and an entire galaxy's worth of aliens.

[Ouroboros]

You are of course assuming that if we came up with an alternate food source for the Wraith, that they would be willing to eat.
First is the issue of them being reliant on us 9atleast early on) for whatever this food source is. Even if we teach them how to build the technology that creates the alternative food, we have problem 2...
What if they simply don't want to eat it as they prefer their current food.

Example: I eat meat and I enjoy it. If I suddenly found out that there was an alternative to meat that provided all the nutrients but didn't taste quite as nice, would I stop eating meat? Honestly, probably not.
The sentience of the animal is debatable with a number of species and, honestly, even if it turned out the animal was 'sentient' in some manner, I'd probably still eat it if it tasted nice.
You can flame me for that comment but that is my opinion to which I am entitled.

The Wraith have fed off of humans since their inception. A large portion of their society is built around the hunting and feeding process. If they didn't have that, their society would be altered forever.
Personally, if you gave a Wraith the option to eat a human, or an alternative food, I think he'd pick the human every time.
Not because he's evil, not because he enjoys watching them suffer (although possibly either of these), but because that is what that Wraith has always done and that is how their society works.

Without a large number of Wraith willing to break from tradition and social habits, even if the food was available they wouldn't go for it.

I agree with the comment from an earlier poster with the Ender's Game reference. Wraith and humans can never co-exist.
We are never going to willingly provide ourselves as food for them, and I highly doubt they will ever chance their eating habits on such a fundamental level. Therefore, the only thing to do is defend ourselves, gain an upperhand on the enemy whenever we can, and kill as many of them as we possibly can.

I wouldn't flame anyone for bringing up a good point?

I bet you could make a lot of interesting episodes exploring these issues huh? They're huge and complex issues dealing with everything from nature vs nurture to socially learned behaviors to the quality of humanity itself. You could fill seasons with this stuff, and you could do it intelligently and actually create something with some meaning to it in the end. I don't doubt that there would be many Wraith who would resent the idea of the alternate foodsource and/or the idea of help from humans. I also don't doubt that there would be others who would be more open minded to the idea of not starving to death, the weaker clans who can't compete for the food as well, or those who wanted the advantage of unlimited food over their rivals.

It's easy to be nice and ethical toward the "friendly" aliens who give us technology and help us better ourselves just out of the kindness of their little alien hearts.

I'm not pretending it would be easy to co-exist with the Wraith, but wiping them out entirely isn't going to be easy either, barring the discovery of some sort of "Ark of Genocide" of course. I dare say it would also be a great deal more interesting to watch the "we can't just kill them all with our 3 ships" solution play out as well.

That's the other big side of this for me. Just killing them all as the "solution" in addition to being morally questionable and unrealistic in terms of sheer practicality also wastes so many opportunities for interesting stories.

[kymeric]

Huh huh yeah totally dude, because like fighting a war and wiping out every last trace of a species are like totally the same goal.

I know stargate's writers think they are but if we believe them then you need supernova levels of energy to make clones and rape is ok, even kinda funny, so long as you don't take it too seriously.

Wow, if its pissing you off that bad you prolly shouldnt watch. We all have issues but geeze. CLONES! RAPE! GENOCIDE! Whos sits around thinking about rape or genocide or the power requirement for clones. I MEEN SRSLY

[ciannwn]

You are of course assuming that if we came up with an alternate food source for the Wraith, that they would be willing to eat.

The Wraith do whatever the scriptwriters tell them to. If TPTB ever decide that a group of Wraith are willing to eat an alternate food source they'll devise an alternate food source and produce a group of Wraith who are willing to eat it.

Example: I eat meat and I enjoy it. If I suddenly found out that there was an alternative to meat that provided all the nutrients but didn't taste quite as nice, would I stop eating meat? Honestly, probably not.

What if there were very few animals left on the planet and humans were at war over who gets to eat meat? Would you prefer to starve to death rather than eat the alternative?

A large portion of their society is built around the hunting and feeding process. If they didn't have that, their society would be altered forever.

Societies do alter forever. I'll give one real life example Many English and Scottish people are descended from Border Reivers. A few centuries ago clans and families in the Anglo/Scottish border area were raiding each other and stealing cattle, sheep and anything else which could be carried away. It was a way of life which no longer exists.

My remote ancestors were hunter gatherers because that's what all humans did thousands of years ago. The nearest I get to humans' original way of life is going round a supermarket and putting food and other items in a basket.

Were the Wraith a space faring race from the moment they came into existence? If not, their way of life would have altered every time they made significant technological advances.

Without a large number of Wraith willing to break from tradition and social habits, even if the food was available they wouldn't go for it.

They would if it was in the script.

Wow, if its pissing you off that bad you prolly shouldnt watch. We all have issues but geeze. CLONES! RAPE! GENOCIDE! Whos sits around thinking about rape or genocide or the power requirement for clones. I MEEN SRSLY

A lot of posters in these forums agree with Ouroboros about the rape issue in 'Irresistable'. I'm one of them. There's a topic where people nominated contenders for the worst SGA episode and 'Irresistable' had the dubious honour of being the winner.

Spoiler:

When it comes to the clone bit, TPTB presented us with a plot device to explain how the Wraith were able to overcome the Lanteans with sheer numbers. They managed to acquire three Z.P.M's and build an enormous complex that required all three in order to operate but the power was no longer available because the Wraith couldn't use this facility when they were fighting the Asurans. Todd aquires three more Z.P.Ms but the cloning facility ends up destroyed along with its power source. No Wraith gets an army and the Atlantis expedition don't get Z.P.Ms which will last for more than 5 minutes yet again.

We know for a fact that they even eat normal food for their entire early lives, they can turn them into humans and remove tatoos with a magic virus but they never bothered to even look into the option of turning back on their already existing digestive tract?

Have to agree with you here. Beckett has a blind spot which makes him think that Wraith's existence will be greatly improved if they're turned into humans rather than Wraith who can eat ordinary food as adults. It's like he thinks humans are much better than Wraith even though he comes from a planet which he admits is far from peaceful.

PERNA: I meant your world. It must be so peaceful there, knowing that the Wraith will not come.

BECKETT: Oh, you'd be surprised how not peaceful it is.

It's not peaceful because humans are still having wars and committing other acts of violence on each other. 'The Game', the Genii, and the society in 'The Tower' indicate that Pegasus humans aren't likely to be a more peaceful variation on the human species. They haven't gone in for full scale wars with each other because of the Wraith.

The retrovirus is what equates to genocide though. If there was a way for them to retain their memories and identities then it would be more grey but as it sits right now the individual who was is entirely destroyed and replaced with another. Were it's effects as permanent as they one day hope them to be it would be no different than death for any Wraith affected.

I doubt that many humans would be happy with having their memories and identities destroyed even though they knew they'd still continue to exist believing that they are, and always have been, someone else.

There's that whole "soul juice" thing going on.

Find some kind of mystical well that feeds them, a sort of rift that pours "soul energy" from some dimension of ascension or something, and all the Wraith move their whole civilization in that sector of the galaxy.

We've had references to strength and life-force. What, exactly, is this mysterious life-force and why should only humans have it? Surely anything that's alive would have a life-force otherwise it couldn't be living?

We now come to the word 'soul'. People often use this word when talking about Wraith feeding but nobody has ever come up with the definition of what a soul is in the context of the Stargate universe.

Here are some definitions of 'soul'.

Soul Definitions

person, as in: Not a soul was in the office when I arrived this morning.
www.business-words.com/dictionary/S.html

the term is used in two senses: it indicates the ego and the spirit-body. In ancient writings man is described as a triune being: body, soul and spirit. According to this the soul is just as much an envelope, animated by the spirit, as the physical body is an envelope for the soul. ...
www.spiritwritings.com/channelingglossary.html

The true identity of a human being, the immortal self that surpasses death and lives on into the other world.
https://www.reiki.nu/treatment/heali...ctionary4.html

spiritual breath; the permanent Self; the highest prin?*ciple of life in the universe; in one sense Brahma, the supreme deity and soul of the universe.
www.theosophy.org/Judge/Student's%20Glossary/Judges_glossary.htm

I think that's enough to be going on with. Do Stargate universe humans have an immortal aspect that survives physical death and goes on to live in another world? There's been no indication that they continue to exist without a body. Ascended beings go to the Higher Planes but they have to turn their bodies into energy in order to achieve this. Laura Cadman's consciousness ended up in Rodney's brain but this isn't evidence of an immortal part because -

McKAY: What happens to the person -- the one who “lets go”?

McKAY (as Laura): They would disappear. I know they would, 'cause I can already feel it happening to me. It's getting harder to be in here. It's taking more of an effort. (As Rodney) Has it always been like that? (As Laura) Past few hours. You haven't felt it too? (As Rodney) Well, of course I have -- I just thought I was fighting with you. Look -- where're we at?

If it's not an immortal aspect could it be related to the Theosophical concept of 'spiritual breath? Until we knew for certain what a 'Stargate universe' soul is, how can we insist that the Wraith are actually feeding on some kind of mystical substance?

I hope I haven't attributed any quotes to the wrong people in this post. If I have please let me know and I'll use the edit facility to correct the mistakes.

[Ouroboros]

The Wraith do whatever the scriptwriters tell them to. If TPTB ever decide that a group of Wraith are willing to eat an alternate food source they'll devise an alternate food source and produce a group of Wraith who are willing to eat it.

Exactly. It's more a question of them apparently not wanting to take the show in that direction and instead preferring to present the genocide of their species as the best answer. It's something that's been done numerous times before with the Ori, both replicators, the Goa'uld etc, all species that were largely contrived into being so "super evil" from humanity's perspective that we had to fight to heroically wipe them from existence. That's a writing choice to keep setting up the situation that way and that's mainly what I take issue with, the message that that sends. It's especially bad in the case of the Wraith as I've noted because of how human like they are. Like I said earlier depicting them as irredeemably evil, even despite contary examples from the same show, and showing how to beat them we need to wipe them all out is a very small step removed from saying the same thing about human cultures who might hold beliefs radically different and directly and agressively opposed from our own.

"Oh boy convincing these people to lay off us is going to be really really hard and take really really long so lets just kill them all and mutter about how it was the "only way" instead."

Like you said it's the writers who set up the scenario and choose how events are going to play out and be depicted and I don't particularly care for this depiction. I find it unrealistic, self contradictory, and rather worrisome that it all seems to be constructed to artificially create a situation which argues for the use of genocide as the best means of winning a war against sentients.

Spoiler:

When it comes to the clone bit, TPTB presented us with a plot device to explain how the Wraith were able to overcome the Lanteans with sheer numbers. They managed to acquire three Z.P.M's and build an enormous complex that required all three in order to operate but the power was no longer available because the Wraith couldn't use this facility when they were fighting the Asurans. Todd aquires three more Z.P.Ms but the cloning facility ends up destroyed along with its power source. No Wraith gets an army and the Atlantis expedition don't get Z.P.Ms which will last for more than 5 minutes yet again.

The thing that sticks with me about it is we have cloning now. It's in the news fairly regularly, and how many ZPMs or other planet exploding power sources have you seen laying around lately. It just seemed like a really lame forced way to try and explain something, the war, through magik tech (again) but then artificially limit the use of the magik tech.

"Oh yeah we did it with cloning, but not a real cloning, it was cloning that required planet 'splodin' energy to work for some reason. Why didn't we build a giant row of hiveship reactors to power it instead of relying on batteries we don't know how to make, because we're not allowed to think of something that obvious"

Have to agree with you here. Beckett has a blind spot which makes him think that Wraith's existence will be greatly improved if they're turned into humans rather than Wraith who can eat ordinary food as adults. It's like he thinks humans are much better than Wraith even though he comes from a planet which he admits is far from peaceful.

He's not the only one. Everyone on base seems to think that human life is inherently superior to any other form of intelligent life for some reason they never attempt to explain.

What reason would a Wraith have for wanting a "superior human body" he wants to give up his millenia old immortality, eternal good health and telepathic abilities in exchange for a life expectancy of less than 100 years and a body that will inevitably fall apart long before that?

I doubt that many humans would be happy with having their memories and identities destroyed even though they knew they'd still continue to exist believing that they are, and always have been, someone else.

I doubt it to, I only pointed out the possability of allowing them to retain their memories but be human as that would at least be a somewhat greyer area than what the virus is doing now, which is really no different than outright killing them.

There's still no question though that even doing that would be taking a great deal from them.

[TheAccended]

"He's not the only one. Everyone on base seems to think that human life is inherently superior to any other form of intelligent life for some reason they never attempt to explain."

Its always bothered me about Stargate how the writers seem to belittle artificial life forms as nothing but mindless machines and that its ok to wipe them all out. The Asurans for example were a trully alive in the sense that they could think outside of their own programing, had the same emotions as humans and had the ability for self sacrifice, in the case of Fran. You could even say their programming to kill the Wraith was a base instinct built into them the same way human beings have a built in instinct for violence among other things.

Not all the Asurans were evil, some of them just wanted to be left alone to discover their own path to enlightenment.

[ciannwn]

Like you said it's the writers who set up the scenario and choose how events are going to play out and be depicted

This is the kind of issue I've been trying to get a discussion on in -

http://forum.gateworld.net/showthrea...t=50504&page=2

TPTB have laid the groundwork for a solution which doesn't involve genocide or turning all Wraith into amnesiac humans. A bit of genetic engineering would just get their digestive systems operating normally so they could live on ordinary food as adults. Would it work? Yes, if the TPTB said it did. We've even met a Wraith who eats food and drinks wine for fun because the taste gives him pleasure.

There's nothing mystical about their longevity or ability to regenerate either -

BECKETT: These cells have none of the normal human inhibiting proteins whatsoever. That gives them an incredible ability to regenerate.

Some of our real world scientists are trying to beat human ageing. One of them is Aubrey de Grey of the Methuselah Foundation.

http://mfoundation.org/

Nothing on the foundation's website suggests that we'll only live for thousands of years if we feed on some mysterious 'life energy'.

The thing that sticks with me about it is we have cloning now. It's in the news fairly regularly, and how many ZPMs or other planet exploding power sources have you seen laying around lately. It just seemed like a really lame forced way to try and explain something, the war, through magik tech (again) but then artificially limit the use of the magik tech.

The Tau'ri are always coming up against this limitation of 'magik tech'. If it's helpful it can only be used once because it gets blown up at the end of the story or has to be dismantled because it's too dangerous to have around.

"Oh yeah we did it with cloning, but not a real cloning, it was cloning that required planet 'splodin' energy to work for some reason. Why didn't we build a giant row of hiveship reactors to power it instead of relying on batteries we don't know how to make, because we're not allowed to think of something that obvious"

Well they wanted to clone hundreds of thousands of warriors at a time in one enormous complex. This is far grander than setting up a lot of smaller cloning factories which you can power by yourself. Maybe they've already got some but they just can't produce enough warriors to create a surplus because they're useless creatures who are easy to kill.

Its always bothered me about Stargate how the writers seem to belittle artificial life forms as nothing but mindless machines and that its ok to wipe them all out. The Asurans for example were a trully alive in the sense that they could think outside of their own programing,

It's impossible to see the Asurans as being anything other than sentient. They weren't programmed to divide into two factions, one of which has the ambition to ascend.

Spoiler:

The Wraith managed to create an original virus which would stop the Asurans attacking them. Rodney's fiddling around with the base code had results which meant that nobody could create a new virus which would stop the Asurans exterminating humans. The only solution was something which required spectacular special effects ending with a big explosion. Well, it's not real sci-fi without spectacular special effects and big explosions, is it.

[Mister Oragahn]

! WARNING !

>> FANBOY THEORY <<

You know, the whole soul-force-life-energy-sucking thing going on could be "easily" explained that way:

1. Ancients are the first evolution of our branch. Nearing ascension, they acquired plenty of supernatural powers, which could be controlled by their minds and bodies. Which means that somehow, to put it bluntly, their organs grew some kind of connection with the higher planes of existence, or something, in order to tap into that pool of power and generate magical feats.
Although I'd like to avoid anything coming close to this, the closest cultural analogy I could find is Star Wars' midichlorians. Those organisms share a symbiotic relation with the living forms in the SW galaxy, and the specimen showing a high concentration of those smaller and essential life forms are capable of using the Force to greater extents.

2. Humans, as the second evolution of that same proto-Alteran branch, have the potential, maybe not as great, to ascend as well. Which roughly means the same potential to grow powers and tap into those planes of existence.
What matters here is the potential. Forced genetic evolution (Priors, Khalek, Nirrti's experiments, Lantian machine, etc.) help us achieve this and unlock that potential.

3. Final and most important claim: the Wraith are themselves a mix of all that. They're both humans, and thus, capable of ascension just as much as us, but the trick here is that they're cursed.
Some of the Wraith have displayed powers which are similar, if not greater than what evolved humans have shown.
Actually, we see that among the Wraith tribes, some lieutnants and queens have those powers, while others don't. They must be on different levels of evolution, and there's a lot of background material to establish here.

For example, we could say that some tribes, or some generals, lieutnants, keepers or queens, have found either a mystical well of ascension or something, or on the contrary, studied a lantian machine much like the one in Tao, and somehow, either slightly upgraded one or two specimen, or eventually literally upped a whole branch of their own genetic lineage, notably through the queen (and possibly keepers), this all kept within their own tribe.

As a whole, many Wraith could be a mix between humans, insects and something wicked, or plain mutated Ancients. All in all, they'd be afflicted by a curse, some kind of effect, which has their body degenerate if they don't tap power from those higher planes of existence. Somehow, their own bodies would be incapable of doing so, because of the curse. Their own organs, though capable of great feats, couldn't make the connection to those higher planes of existence.
BUT humans could. And that's what they do when feeding on humans. They establish a connection, exchange fluids and enzymes, mutate the humans briefly (Ford's dark eye), and use the humans to tap into those planes of energy.

Each Wraith would be a sort of soul juice bottle: A Wraith is incapable of refueling him/herself without using a human, and use humans to do so, but if the Wraith are strong (full of soul juice), they can be fed upon as well, which explains the Wraith cannibalism, and how feeding upon Wraith (who would contain lots of soul juice if they're healthy) would lead to incredible feats.

Humans don't have soul juice. They'd just have the 'tools' to establish the refueling connection.
What matters to the Wraith is the "ascension potential" explained in point 2. Either the Wraith slightly increase human preys' genome to unlock the necessary paths to those planes of juice - by infusing enzymes and virii, or the humans are already capable of establishing that connection, but can't do it on their own, and the Wraith have the keys to unlock those "natural tools", but need those of the humans, since the Wraith themselves are incapable of doing so.
So in a way, it's symbiotic, but fails to be a true equal sharing because the Wraith keep it all for them when they download that soul juice from that higher plane, and take all the life from the preys as well, because the connection is perverted, and it taxes on the preys' own tissues and fluids, which kills them (the Wraith also take fluids, so they get nutrients as well).


A variation of that would say that the humans already contain some "soul juice", but this needs to be explored... it would explain why we feel tired.

[ciannwn]

! WARNING !

>> FANBOY THEORY <<

An interesting idea but what about Iratus bugs. From 'Thirty Eight Minutes' -

TEYLA: It feeds on your strength, like a Wraith.

TEYLA: My father often told stories of creatures such as this. I always thought he was just trying to keep the children from straying far from our camp.

It's also established that Iratus bugs have the same regeneration abilities as Wraith. Ford has a go at killing the bug.

(He raises his pistol, hesitates a moment, then puts the end of the barrel against the bug. Once he is sure it is in a position where the bullet won't hit Sheppard, he fires. The bullet shoots through the bug. Sheppard screams in agony.)

FORD: Everything we did just hurt you more. The thing just heals itself.

All in all, they'd be afflicted by a curse, some kind of effect, which has their body degenerate if they don't tap power from those higher planes of existence. Somehow, their own bodies would be incapable of doing so, because of the curse. Their own organs, though capable of great feats, couldn't make the connection to those higher planes of existence.
BUT humans could. And that's what they do when feeding on humans. They establish a connection, exchange fluids and enzymes, mutate the humans briefly (Ford's dark eye), and use the humans to tap into those planes of energy.

Why would insects evolve a need to tap into Higher Plane energy?

From 'Instinct -

BECKETT: ... Right now, our best guess is that the Wraith evolved from the iratus bug.

BECKETT: We speculated that they evolved into the Wraith when they began to take on the characteristics of the humans they were feeding on.

According to this, Iratus bugs must have been around and feeding in their characteristic fashion before they came across humans. They are still living in the wild and there was no indication that the planet in 'Conversion' had humans living on it. What do Iratus bugs feed on when there are no humans around and why don't their bodies degenerate with a non-human diet?