The Stones

[tomstone]

In the new light of what happened this Episode, the Stones dont seem as simple anymore as they used to be. I am not sure what the Ancients where thinking when making them, but this is just confusing.

This Episode makes the Questionmark even bigger why People are dying when connected to a dying body? I think now we can say for sure that the being itself gets transported with the stones and not just connected and if the concousness can survive, then why is the Person on the other end killed without their concousness returning to them?

That shouldnt be happening in this case, but ever since the Stones where introduced, People on both ends are dying even with the Original Ancient devices. WTH?

I can Imagine the Ancients going "When you get your Host Body killed you should die as well".

[Kaiphantom]

The stones are becoming much like the Star Trek transporters. It's a piece of technology that continues to pop up one-shot issues that serve to create the plot of a story. They can do whatever it is the writers want them to, ie, it's not that far off from A Wizard Did It.

I would have liked to see more restrictions on their use, such as a limited amount of times they can connect, or perhaps time to recharge between uses is fairly long. But as it stands, there is nothing preventing them from bringing more experts aboard Destiny (scientists, doctors, engineers, etc) and fixing the ship. Sure, they can't take data back. But an engineer, making regular visits, will learn to understand the ship's systems and can recreate them back on Earth.

In short, the writers are vague on the stones because they want the stones to be able to do anything they need them to. It's plot convenience, and nothing more.

[Trinary]

On contrary, this episode might be the end of the stone to connect to Earth. Last episode there was question whether the SGC will support Destiny any longer. With Amanda and Ginn integrated into the ship system, it suffice to say both of them is enough to cover Earth and LA side aboard the destiny in any conditions.

With a huge Ancient's library database in the ship computer, both of them able to relay the information without spent hours or days in translating the contents. Kinda Matrix movie, those two could just load up required information from the database an the crew could proceed to finishing the task such as repairing the ship and finding supplies.

To bad the show has been canceled. Otherwise, there may be a lots of new things uncovered from the database could be made a several new episodes which is previously limited due to the time consuming translations process.

[Kaiphantom]

As we see from next episode's preview, this isn't going to be the end of the stone-to-connect to Earth. It's back to working as usual, and Earth is using funds on the Destiny project.

[The Swarm]

Yep, but we do get to see Amanda and Ginn interact with the crew again.... which makes me wonder why they didnt do the same to save Riley!
Becouse once they do reach the end of the mission and they somehow do get omnipotent powers its posible to restore them back.

[Egle01]

which makes me wonder why they didnt do the same to save Riley!

How could have they saved Riley? Have him connect with someone and then kill off both? They couldn't get him free and even if they had, he most likely would've died before making it to the Destiny and into the chair.

[ArchaeoNerd]

I'm still fuzzy on just how Amanda and Ginn were able to be "merged" with Chloe. I don't remember Chloe swapping with either of them... Amanda swapped first with James (who couldn't handle the disability), then Wray, and finally Ginn. As far as I can recall Ginn only swapped with Amanda. How did Chloe get involved?

I know that people can leave an "imprint" on a stone and if it doesn't get wiped off, that person might wind up in a swap they didn't expect, like when James was swapped with a Blue Alien. Of course, this happened very soon after James had swapped with Amanda. In this case quite a lot of time has gone by since the death of Ginn and Amanda, and a bunch of people had used the stones in between. Maybe there is some kind of "buffer" in the stone system that could hold the consciousness of a person whose body had died in the midst of a swap, and then download their consciousness into another person who was using the stones?

ArchaeoNerd

[garhkal]

Yep, but we do get to see Amanda and Ginn interact with the crew again.... which makes me wonder why they didnt do the same to save Riley!
Becouse once they do reach the end of the mission and they somehow do get omnipotent powers its posible to restore them back.

To have done anything with Riley, would have entailed getting him off that planet..

[tomstone]

I'm still fuzzy on just how Amanda and Ginn were able to be "merged" with Chloe. I don't remember Chloe swapping with either of them... Amanda swapped first with James (who couldn't handle the disability), then Wray, and finally Ginn. As far as I can recall Ginn only swapped with Amanda. How did Chloe get involved?

I know that people can leave an "imprint" on a stone and if it doesn't get wiped off, that person might wind up in a swap they didn't expect, like when James was swapped with a Blue Alien. Of course, this happened very soon after James had swapped with Amanda. In this case quite a lot of time has gone by since the death of Ginn and Amanda, and a bunch of people had used the stones in between. Maybe there is some kind of "buffer" in the stone system that could hold the consciousness of a person whose body had died in the midst of a swap, and then download their consciousness into another person who was using the stones?

ArchaeoNerd

Apparently Chloe was near a Sleep state when this happened, therefor allowing the others to enter her. Thing with the Ancients is that we know that they were trained in very deep meditation, so it could be that the Stones where programmed in a way, that would allow someone to open themselfs up to remaining connections in the Stone network.

[Trinary]

I'm still fuzzy on just how Amanda and Ginn were able to be "merged" with Chloe. I don't remember Chloe swapping with either of them... Amanda swapped first with James (who couldn't handle the disability), then Wray, and finally Ginn. As far as I can recall Ginn only swapped with Amanda. How did Chloe get involved?

I think a constant blackout happened to Chloe under Blue Alien influence and then removed may leave extra room that just enough for Amanda and Ginn consciousness to jump in. Instead of swapping consciousness, by activating the stone without the other end may release the dead people consciousness that trapped in the stone. With Chloe falling into sleep, it made easy for both consciousness to jump from the stone into Chloe's body. That what I was learn from the Fringe. Dead people consciousness were jump into another people that having a near dead moment.

Probably it wont be happening to other people other than Chloe because there not enough room for both consciousness that tied together when they died. May be, the expanded Chloe's brain capability altered by the Blue Alien were strong enough to allows both Amanda and Ginn to jump in.

[Ekras]

Apparently Chloe was near a Sleep state when this happened, therefor allowing the others to enter her.

I dunno.... somehow that just doesn't sound right to me.....

[s09119]

I dunno.... somehow that just doesn't sound right to me.....

We saw something similar happen with Daniel and Vala when they first used them, since there was only the use of a stone on one end. They overrode their hosts for a time until conditions allowed their hosts' consciousnesses to surface in their bodies.

[Ekras]

We saw something similar happen with Daniel and Vala when they first used them, since there was only the use of a stone on one end. They overrode their hosts for a time until conditions allowed their hosts' consciousnesses to surface in their bodies.

Read the sentence again.

[dgh64]

I'm still fuzzy on just how Amanda and Ginn were able to be "merged" with Chloe. I don't remember Chloe swapping with either of them... Amanda swapped first with James (who couldn't handle the disability), then Wray, and finally Ginn. As far as I can recall Ginn only swapped with Amanda. How did Chloe get involved?

I know that people can leave an "imprint" on a stone and if it doesn't get wiped off, that person might wind up in a swap they didn't expect, like when James was swapped with a Blue Alien. Of course, this happened very soon after James had swapped with Amanda. In this case quite a lot of time has gone by since the death of Ginn and Amanda, and a bunch of people had used the stones in between. Maybe there is some kind of "buffer" in the stone system that could hold the consciousness of a person whose body had died in the midst of a swap, and then download their consciousness into another person who was using the stones?

ArchaeoNerd

I don't think Ginn and Amanda's imprints were still on the stones. Eli described their consciousness as "signals" that were getting weaker. Chloe picked them up because she went to sleep while connected, so her own mind allowed the very weak signals to get through.

I agree that the way the stones work is a little inconsistent from one episode to another, but that's the way it's been all along with Stargate. The way the gate itself works, for example, has changed from time to time, with new rules popping up if the gate's close to a black hole or whatever. One of my favorite inconsistencies was when SG-1 was trapped on Thor's replicator-infested ship in Earth orbit, and they beamed the gate from the SGC onboard. Even though there was no power source connected, the gate itself still stored enough energy to dial out once, according to Major Davis. Yet when the Russians had a gate of their own, they could turn it off by just unplugging it and it immediately went dead.

[Dregun]

My theory of the stones.

I think both Rush and Eli are/were wrong on how both Ginn and Amanda got back into Chloe. If we were to think of the stones like a simple communications device it requires direct input (a signal) from both sides to function (much like a telephone). Without 2 people connected their is nothing to transmit and it would explain why someones death would result into the death of the other because the consciousness is being continuously transferred between the hosts...however.

My thought is that the stones have some form of RAM that basically stores the consciousness of each individual into the stone itself and then transfers it through space to the other stone whereby it gets uploaded to the next person. With that being said the consciousness is first downloaded into the stones (thereby wiped from that individual--a clean slate), a copy is transfered and then uploaded to the new host. The downloading is important because at that time the consciousness of a "person" has been removed and placed inside the stone. I believe what happened to Ginn and Amanda was a fail safe in case someone's physical body was destroyed (killed) that the consciousness could still be viable for a new host (or healed host).

Each stone still has the consciousness stored within it while the people are moving about in others bodies. The "signal" Rush and Eli are talking about is simply updating the "backup" stored in the stone with newer memories. Much less information has to be transmitted when you're only dealing with the "present". NOT being transferred between each individual, the stones are the buffer; gathering the new memories from each host and storing them on the stones.

Imagine you're extremely worried about losing your data on your computer, you have 2 solutions for that problem. You could can make regular backups on your hard drive, creating new backups every time you feel it is necessary. Or you could install a Raid 1 drive and make a duplicate of everything you do. If your primary hard drive got destroyed you would be out of luck with option 1, option 2 however allows you to plug into that second drive and now you have your computer exactly the same as it was before. Even if you didn't start with a Raid 1 system you could make a "copy" of your primary hard drive and then the system would add information to it as you'd add information to your primary hard drive.


So what happened during their death is that their consciousness was still stored into the stones (raid 1 hard drive) waiting to be uploaded again into a new host once one of them died. This episode proved that a consciousness could be uploaded into a system (Destiny) so why wouldn't we make the leap that it is how the stones work by uploaded the consciousness into it and then transferring a "copy" of the consciousness to the other stone.

Such a thing would explain the "imprinting" of certain memories as well, since when the stones go to "wipe" the hosts conscious clean it might not get everything cleaned out before it uploads the original consciousness back into the host.

The death of both parties would be the result of the stones going into a failsafe mode and dumping both signals as to not damage the stones so it could preserve the consciousness. The degrading signal that was present during Ginn and Amanda's presence within Chloe was more with the fact that the stones are losing the ability to store those consciousness's for that extended period of time. Storing them wasn't difficult but updating them every time a consciousness would switch made it that much more difficult and possibly started to drain the stones energy/ability to make updates.

Just my theory on the stones.