Whats in a name?

[ShadowMaat]

I'd be curious to see just how advanced a goa'uld brain is. I mean, it has to be the size of what, a grape? And yet a symbiote can remember hundreds to thousands of years of life plus a general genetic memory? Or do they use the host's brain as a storage device for excess memories? I should think that'd be kind of dangerous. You wouldn't want to store anything important in an outside brain because if anything happened to it, you'd be screwed.

But then, how come rescued hosts don't complain about "that memory of swimming around and around and around..." or "getting shoved into that Jaffa' pouch! Ugh!" Most of them, in fact, have only scattered goa'uld memories and only from the time the goa'uld was occupying his/her body.

[Torley]

Yes, it is truly fascinating.

For its size, a Goa'uld brain must be extremely dense and extremely efficient, and the product of biological evolution over a relatively short thousands of years, if not longer. Something interesting I thought up is the following: you know how they have many tales of Egyptian and other ancient scribes who memorized many scrolls by rote and have what we would nowadays call "photographic memory"? Maybe they were all Goa'uld! For example, wasn't Apophis' host originally a humble scribe or something? I think that was mentioned in one eppy but I'm not sure.

The Goa'uld interfaces with the human brain, but it takes it over so conceivably, maybe the Goa'uld has a biological way to use the human as backup if necessary (the "blending" of Tok'ra would seem to support this idea of shared memories), but can delete the memories if the snakeything is compromised.

I wonder if Tok'ra, Asgard, or any others have been working on a device to be able to extract Goa'uld memories. We know Goa'uld can do it to humans and Asgard at least with spikey balls and interface it into the ship's computer, so maybe the process can be adapted?

[Mr Prophet]

I have a theory - theory 6f - that the Goa'uld not only use their host's brain for much of their data processing and storage (note that Goa'uld in Unas hosts seem to be pretty basic in their thinking) but also their bodies for manufacturing their genetic memory strands. That's why a host retains memories that the symbiote never accessed during their tenancy and a harcesis has genetic memory; that memory is held in the host's DNA.

Once manufactured, the mimetic DNA is absorbed back into the symbiote, which is how it retains memory across hosts and passes memory onto its children. On the other hand, the mimetic DNA in the host body explains how a Goa'uld in a male host could pass his heritage onto a Goa'uld child through the genetic code of his host.

[Jprime]

I have a theory - theory 6f - that the Goa'uld not only use their host's brain for much of their data processing and storage (note that Goa'uld in Unas hosts seem to be pretty basic in their thinking) but also their bodies for manufacturing their genetic memory strands. That's why a host retains memories that the symbiote never accessed during their tenancy and a harcesis has genetic memory; that memory is held in the host's DNA.

Once manufactured, the mimetic DNA is absorbed back into the symbiote, which is how it retains memory across hosts and passes memory onto its children. On the other hand, the mimetic DNA in the host body explains how a Goa'uld in a male host could pass his heritage onto a Goa'uld child through the genetic code of his host.

Bit like the way a virus uses a host bacteria to create duplicates of itself by inserting its own DNA?

[Mr Prophet]

Bit like the way a virus uses a host bacteria to create duplicates of itself by inserting its own DNA?

More like the way a computer program uses other sectors of memory to write information.

[Polyglot]

I have a theory - theory 6f - that the Goa'uld not only use their host's brain for much of their data processing and storage (note that Goa'uld in Unas hosts seem to be pretty basic in their thinking) but also their bodies for manufacturing their genetic memory strands. That's why a host retains memories that the symbiote never accessed during their tenancy and a harcesis has genetic memory; that memory is held in the host's DNA.

Once manufactured, the mimetic DNA is absorbed back into the symbiote, which is how it retains memory across hosts and passes memory onto its children. On the other hand, the mimetic DNA in the host body explains how a Goa'uld in a male host could pass his heritage onto a Goa'uld child through the genetic code of his host.

Dude, that post was awesome. I wonder if the writers/producers have worked it all out this deeply? I would venture to guess that this forum would be a great place to get some of that "technobabble" they need for the show. If anybody's got Stargate theory all worked out and dissected, this would be it.

~Polyglot

[thefurryfurling]

i tend to think that the queen gives names to her/its offspring. in the ep Cure the Queen obviously has full control over what she passes on and the DNA of the larvae.

[iluuuuuvjack]

It's all so confusing !
Do you reckon the writers have even bothered to think about in this much detail? There's probably some totally simple explanation for it all, that we havnt thought of...
maybe...

[shelsfc]

It's all so confusing !
Do you reckon the writers have even bothered to think about in this much detail? There's probably some totally simple explanation for it all, that we havnt thought of...
maybe...

Maybe it's all just a huge coincidence....