Continuing Stargate

[Dark lord me]

if caldwell is in it the Daedalus is in it and if the Daedalus is in it we cannot lose. HOOORAH! plus the Aurora. and whatever else is in it. HOOORAH!

although knowing you we will get our a***s handed to us on silver fraking platters

Apollo and well they have a lot more ships now so 2 wont make a big difference

[s09119]

Apollo and well they have a lot more ships now so 2 wont make a big difference

Well, the Aurora will be there too, so his statement wasn't entirely wrong haha.

[Crazy Tom]

Well, the Aurora will be there too, so his statement wasn't entirely wrong haha.

Will the Venii be making an apearance?

[Lt. Col. Mcoy]

Tsk, tsk, Tom. You said the forbidden word.

[Commander Thor]

three things

1: forbidden word? venii?

2: the Daedalus is like the best it has defeated most of the hives we have come across. and if im not mistaken the Daedalus got the original asgard beam weapons didn't they?

3: hurry up please

[Crazy Tom]

three things

1: forbidden word? venii?

2: the Daedalus is like the best it has defeated most of the hives we have come across. and if im not mistaken the Daedalus got the original asgard beam weapons didn't they?

3: hurry up please

1. Shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.

2. That's the Odyssey

3.

[s09119]

1. Shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.

2. That's the Odyssey

3.

1. Yes, shhhhhhhh

2. It was, in fact, that Odyssey... which was destroyed by the Ori at the conclusion of Season 11.

3. Sorry, sorry! I'm working on it, master!

[Crazy Tom]

Just tell me and I'll be quiet!

[Lt. Col. Mcoy]

He did tell you.

[Crazy Tom]

He did tell you.

Ooooooooo....

[Dark lord me]

Okay now you have me wondering about the ( forbidden race ) can you give me a link to where i can read more about them (other then that one episode

[Elitenova]

Is the stray asgards make an appearance on the show to declare war on the Alliance and align themselves with the Der'Kel. Cool Stray asgard, that's screen name for Halo.

[Crazy Tom]

Okay now you have me wondering about the ( forbidden race ) can you give me a link to where i can read more about them (other then that one episode

*starts talkign to himself* You know, it's realy amazing, you think some couldple thousand years of evelution would hve bestowed our species with the... creative intelect, and... logical thinking; that would enable an induividual to use Google....

Odd isn't it?

[s09119]

14x15 "The Higher Planes"
Synopsis: An offworld accident leaves Vala near death, and the Ancients intervene on her behalf... though not necessarily to save her.

Spoiler:

SG-1 is walking along the base of a mountain offworld, heading in the direction Daniel says the stargate is. As they make their way towards home, Mitchell brings up the now-highly-publicized execution of the Serrakin pilot Warrick, an old friend of Samantha Carter's who she helped compete in the Loop of Con Garat ("Space Race"). According to Alliance intelligence, he was being tortured ever since the fall of Hebridan in an effort to extract precious information about the galaxy's defenses, but now he seems to have outlived his usefullness; as long as he lived, he was a symbol of rebellion and the hope for victory to the surviving Hebridanians living offworld. With his death, the Der'kal no doubt hope to crush the movement opposing them in what used to be Hebridanian space.

Carer wipes at her eye, not showing any tears yet but obviously distressed by the news (which they must have heard just recently). She mutters that at least Warrick died honorably, not betraying his people and becoming a man worthy of the tales that will doubtless be told about him. Coming up beside her, Daniel puts his arm around Sam's shoulder, reminder her that with all the false god's they've taken down over the years, there has to be at least one halfway-decent one out there that will take pity on Warrick. Though not really comforted, Carter smiles at her old friend and thanks him for the attempt.

Rounding a bend in the path, Vala tries to cheer everyone up by pointing out that one of the Jaffa's most prominent festivals is coming up, and Teal'c has invited all of them to Chulak to celebrate. Frowning, Cameron asks if she's referring to the "Day of Tik'al," something their old comrade often spoke about this time of year. When Vala replies yes, Jackson quietly explains that that particular holiday celebrates the art of, literally translated, "beating the daylights out of one another." After that revelation, Vala's enthusiasm for joining in on the festivities evaporates.

Suddenly, a low rumble can be heard from higher up the mountainside, and the team pauses. Carter mentions that the local villagers on this planet did warn them that the mountain pass was unstable, but that there's never been any real problem with rockslides... but Mitchell recommends be on their way regardless. As they begin to move away from the immediate side of the cliff-face, though, a flurry of blouders break loose and immediately rocket down toward SG-1. Carter notices it just in time, and shoves Daniel out of the way, then reaches for Mitchell and Vala to pull them out, as well. Cameron manages to grab her hand and stumbles to the side, but Vala is unable to get a good grip and trips to the ground. Helpless, her teammates watch as she is completely cut off from them by a stream of massive rocks.

Trapped and pinned to the ground, Vala (cut all over her face by the falling rocks) manages to turn her head enough to spy though a crack in the debris, staring at the thin ray of sunlight coming in to her makeshift tomb as the light slowly fades from her eyes. She blinks...

...and everything is different. Vala is now standing up, all traces of injuries gone, in what would appear to be an endlessly white space, with bright light coming in from nowhere at all. The former smuggler's offworld gear is gone, too, and she is dressed in a simple white dress that flows to just below her knees (very similar to what Elizabeth Weir wore when she visited ancient Atlantis in "Before I Sleep"). Glancing around, she looks utterly confused, reaching out and calling for anyone, anyone at all, to give her an explanation as to what's happening.

As if on cue, a female voice greets Vala, and she turns to find a young, stunningly-beautiful woman standing a few feet away, dressed in the traditional clothes of an Ancient. She introduces herself as Madonna, and asks Vala how, exactly, she came to find herself here. Even more confused than before, the SG-1 member explains that the last thing she remembers, she was being buried under a landslide offworld, then gasps, asking if she's become a ghost or some other supernatural being.

Madonna frowns, saying that such things do not exist, then clarifies the situation for her; as far as nature is concerned, Vala Mal Doran is dead. The body she once inhabited, however, no longer resides on the mortal plane. When she was killed by the falling boulders, the Ancients intervened on her behalf and allowed her a sort of pseudo-ascension, indicating a half-entrance to the higher planes of the universe. Here, in what they call Limbo, fallen souls are judged by the collective on whether or not they should be allowed to ascend proper. If you pass the inspection, you may move on. If you do not, you simply cease to exist.

Shocked, and more than a little appalled, Vala says she never asked for this, so what right do they even have to condemn her to death? Speaking rather coldly, Madonna reminds her that, technically, she should be dead now anyway. The decision to intervene was not a popular once amongst the Others, but it was carried out to honor the dying wishes of both Oma Desala and Ganos Lal; to protect the members of the SG-1 team should anything befall them. But that protection extends to an invitation to Limbo only, not a guaranteed entrance to the afterlife itself. Dispensing with the pleasantries, Madonna waves a hand, and the bright white nothingness is replaced by a murky haze that forms itself into a slightly-brighter version of the Atlantis gate room, complete with Ancients walking about going about their business.

Two of the numerous people come up to Vala then, one man and one woman, announcing themselves as Doran and Lyta, respectively. The former stiffly welcomes the human, asking if everything has been explained to her. Still struggling to comprehend the whole thing, Vala shouts that no, everything has not been explained to her, and demands to know why she can't just be sent back to P3X-525. Stepping forward, Lyta quietly sums up the issue with that; from what the Others have seen of Vala's life, it is not an existence that deserves a second chance at mortality in the least. She must prove to them that, somehow, her continued living will be helpful to the galaxy at large and the safety of its denizens.

Pausing in her confusion, Vala asks why the Ancients are even doing this, considering they're insistence on non-interference. Madonna explains that ever since they stepped in to stop the Ori and give SG-1 a chance to defeat Adria ("Amazing Grace"), the Others have been rethinking their position on the matter. On the one hand, they all agree that they cannot influence affairs of universal proportions (such as annihilating the Der'kal or giving Earth ascended-level knowledge), but they now believe it may be permitable to alter small events (such as reviving Vala Mal Doran) without becoming as corrupt as their fallen brethren were. But to be sure, they must verify the "good" reasons for breaking their vow of isolation, and that is why they must carefully examine Vala and all her life's work.

Meanwhile, SG-1 is arriving through the stargate at the ISGC, to a noticeably-worried Dr. Talbot. She asks hem to flesh out the situation Carter explaiend over the radio, and Daniel cuts right to the point, his eyes cold; Vala is dead. He asks if they can have an extraction team to help get her body so they can have a proper burial, a request Talbot grants at once. As Daniel rushes off to arrange the gear they'll need, she turns to the others and asks how he's really doing... Mitchell notes that it took all three of them to stop him from trying to pry all the rocks away with his bare hands.

In the other realms of existence, Vala herself is now seated on a chair inside what looks like the Atlantis briefing room, with several Ascended seated around the conference table, watching her. Both Doran and Lyta are among those on the judging panel, and Madonna stands just behind Vala, apparently not part of the committee. One of the yet-unnamed Ascended stands and opens the first round of questions, asking Vala to explain how she came to be a smuggler on the payroll of the Lucian Alliance. The SG-1 member tiredly asks why she even has to go through all this, since they, as higher beings, should already know those details, but Lyta insists it is more important to understand the "how" and "why" over the "when" and "where."

As if reliving a painful experience, Vala begins telling the story (in flashback) of how, when she was just entering adulthood, her village was attacked by Jaffa loyal to the System Lord Qetesh. At the time, the Goa'uld found its host dying, and desperately needed a younger, more capable body in which to live, so she began scouring all corners of her domain for a suitable replacement. When her minions came to her homeworld, her people put up a valiant fight, but it was no good. Dozens of girls were taken, Vala the being eldest among the group. She details how she eventually taken from her friends and examined by the parasite, who found her beauty and vitality to be exactly what it wanted. After that, Vala's sole purpose in life was to be the vessel for the hideous snake, and for decades she was forced to do terrible things in its name, while on the inside she screamed out for salvation. But after so many years of it, she finally resigned herself to that life, letting her opposition to Qetesh's will fade.

When the Tok'ra at last caught and extracted the snake, Vala didn't know what to do with herself. Her people had passed through the generations, and all those she had known before were dead. The ones that remained knew her only as Qetesh, the evil god that ruled over them with a cruel and iron fist. She wouldn't crawl to the System Lords for mercy, either, and at this point, no one was truly opposing them (it would not be for another year or so that Earth killed Ra and began exploration of the galaxy). So, with nothing left to her, she joined a small band of smugglers who raided the edge of Goa'uld space. It was small retribution for all her suffering, but it was still something.

Vala explains to the Ascended that the smuggling ring would eventually be one the dozens such groups that later formed the Lucian Alliance, though she didn't stay with them for more than a few years. Doran asks the next question, wondering what she did in the years between her smuggling days and her eventual reunion with them following the fall of the Goa'uld. And that, Vala says, is a whole other story...

(Start of "The Higher Planes," see next post for end.)

[s09119]

(End of "The Higher Planes," see previous post for start.)

Spoiler:

After leaving her raiding stunt, she returned to one of the worlds Qetesh had always been fond of; P8X-412 ("The Powers That Be"). Desperately in need of some form of livelihood, and remembering how the people had so despised her when she ruled here, she decided to reclaim her own role, using a stolen Tok'ra device that allowed her to speak like a symbiote. Within days, she had the population mining mass amounts of naquadah for her, and although she knew on some level that it was wrong, she couldn't just stop the operation. She needed the raw materials, and right now, the well-being Vala Mal Doran was all that mattered.

Now the council of Ascended look quite appalled. As one of them puts it, it was simply inhumane to continue working thousands of innocent people to death for something as trivial as money. With them all asking her why she could be so heartless, Vala finally stands up and shouts that she had no choice! She had nothing left to her, and the Goa'uld had taken ever last shred of dignity from her! What was she to do? No one would willingly help a former host to a System Lord, and the Tok'ra didn't have the resources to care for her. She didn't know what Earth was doing, and had no way of contacting the Jaffa resistance. It was this or nothing, and if they want to damn her for her choices, so be it!

In the silence that follows, Madonna quietly suggests they move on. She nods to one of the council, who, after a moment of pause, asks the third question; why did Vala inevitably join the Lucian Alliance, and how did she manage to become an ally of Earth? Although Vala is sure they already know this portion quite well, she outlines how she was eventually approached by members of the crime syndicate who were looking for someone to bring in big hauls on the outer edges of the galaxy. She agreed to it, and began hijacking Free Jaffa escort ships en route to supply drops. When she came across Daniel Jackson and the X-303 Prometheus ("Prometheus Unbound"), it was too good an opportunity to pass up, being twice the size of the typical al'kesh. Ultimately, though, a surviving Goa'uld foiled her plan, and she was forced to settle... nothing. That ultimately cost her good standing in the Alliance, and she later returned to solo smuggling to cover her costs. But when she found an Ancient tablet mentioning great treasure, she knew she had to return to Earth.

Speaking of Earth, Daniel Jackson is in the locker room at the ISGC, punching into his locker and sobbing. After a moment, Mitchell tells him to stop from the doorway. Still sobbing, Jackson turns and yells for Cameron to leave, but the Colonel doesn't so much as move an inch from where he's standing. Still caught up in his emotions, Daniel repeats his order, then runs over and tries to punch Mitchell. The SG-1 second in command takes one hit, then grabs Daniel's hands and pulls them down, pulling Jackson close and telling him that it's alright, that he can just let it all out. With no more energy to fight, he does just that.

Far, far away, in the pseudo-Atlantis, Vala tells the council that they know the rest of the story; she was sent to the Ori galaxy and became pregnant with the Orici, Adria. She joined SG-1 after they failed to stop the Ori fleet from entering the Milky Way, and finally helped them find and use the Ark of Truth to end the invasion. And now she's trying to stop a similar scenario involving the Der'kal, a foe far more cunning and, overall, more powerful than any other they've ever had to face.

That's when Doran asks why she's necessary for this war, though. In fighting the Goa'uld and Ori, she had experience and roles that were valuable, surely, but why would Vala returning to life have any impact on stopping the Der'kal? Taken off guard, the SG-1 member doesn't quite know what to say, and the Ascended seize on that to begin pointing out how the immoralities in her life make it clear that she is not worthy of their assistance. And just as it seems Vala's case has been lost, everyone is silenced by a great burst of white light.

Vala turns to see Madonna standing there, her body swirling with the intangible energy pulses that make up the bodies of those on the higher planes. She strides toward the council and orders them to be silent. Then she waves a hand, and the illusion of Atlantis fades, returning the scene to that of Limbo in its true form. Standing in the white nothingness are all the millions of ascended Ancients (and some other species), with the council and Vala standing right in the center of it all. Clearly enraged, Madonna begins speaking, her voice echoing throughout the endless place;

"Here is Vala Mal Doran, smuggler, con artist, petty thief. Host to the Goa'uld Qetesh, and responsible for the deaths of countless innocents on countless worlds. Mother of the Orici Adria, adulteress of the Ori leader Tomin. So sinful, so unworthy, you all say. But here is Vala Mal Doran, freedom-fighter, liberator, heroine. Member of the legendary SG-1, and responsible for the salvation of not one, but two galaxies. Destroyer of the Ori, and faithful ally of those who seek justice. So tragic a life, yet so noble a person, I may not have seen in all my life. She has done terrible things, but there is greatness not only within her, but around her. For she perseveres; she fights the fight that we are too cowardly to enter. Where we stand and watch, she stands and risks all she has to ensure that, one day, all people shall know the freedom she has tasted. We may stand as the pinnacle of evolution, the end-all plateau of all that is and was and ever shall be... but this woman, Vala Mal Doran, is more worthy of our power than any of us could ever hope to be. In your arrogance, you have forgotten that as we fell from grace and ran from our sin, she has fallen and fallen time and again, and still returns to fight just one last time. She has not once asked for ascension, no everlasting life or universal enlightenment... only for the chance to keep fighting. She is the best of what we are, and to bestow anything less upon her would be the ultimate hypocrisy."

She then turns to Vala and takes her hand, and thanks her. For now the Ascended have a chance to see their hubris for what it is, and perhaps, one day, see the need for change. Glancing at the now-silenced council, Madonna says that she take their wordlessness as a vote in Vala's favor, and places her hands on Vala's shoulders. She tells the SG-1 member to close her eyes, and open them once she feels the warm breeze on her face. Vala does as she is told... and a moment later, opens her eyes, to find herself standing in front of the stargate on P3X-525. Glancing around, Vala sees no one, but smiles up at the sky nonetheless, then begins dialing Earth.

At the ISGC, a still-depressed Daniel has assembled a team to extract Vala, and they and SG-1 are preparing to dial out to the planet. Just as the seventh chevron is preparing to lock, though, an offworld activation comes in, and a second afterwards, Vala's IDC arrives. Stunned, Carter orders the iris opened, and everyone stares in shock as the presumed-dead smuggler walks through the event horizon. Without saying a word, Daniel drops the equipment he's carrying and slowly walks up the ramp... then grabs Vala with both his hands and leans into her, sobbing.

Some time later, Vala is sitting in her ISGC quarters, looking over the voice-modulation device she once used to pose as Qetesh. Sighing, she slides it under her bed, then jumps as someone knocks at the door. She opens it to find Daniel there, looking recovered from his earlier hysterics. He hands Vala a box of chocolates (her favorite kind, apparently), and says that both Dr. Talbot and the UN have cleared her for offworld duty again. That said, he still would like to know how Vala managed to convince the Ancients to do this for her. Sitting down on her bed, Vala says that it wasn't easy... but she guesses that their great respect for Daniel himself helped. Either way, she explains how the Ancient named Madonna helped her, but at the mention of that name, Daniel starts.

Jackson asks if she's sure the name was "Madonna." Vala says she's positive, but doesn't understand why it matters. Daniel explains that, in the Middle Ages, Madonna was the Romanticized name for virgin Mary... the mother of Jesus Christ. Understanding the significance, Vala asks if it really could have been the same person who had fought for her to be given life again, and although Daniel doesn't know, he admits if it was, her famous quality of mercy is well-earned. Taking Vala in his arms, he says he's just happy that he got a second chance too... because he's not quite what he would do without her.