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    #16
    Originally posted by DigiFluid View Post

    As much as I love SGU, the "hundreds of thousands of years" line is plainly wrong in the context of the franchise. Destiny cannot be any newer than 3-5 million years old, and more likely fits into that 50+ million years age range.
    Makes sense

    I don't find that particularly unbelievable in this franchise. Many other Ancient constructs have stood and continued to function for many millions of years. Frankly, I think the state of disrepair that we see Destiny in during SGU lends even more credence to the 50+ mya age range just because it's one of the only Ancient constructs we saw in the entire franchise that actually seems like it might fall apart and stop working at any moment. Virtually nothing else we've ever seen has been quite so fragile and decrepit a state.
    I agree also, but I would insist that the decrepit state is due to the fact that no Ancients were left on board to perform repairs, and most of the auto-repair bots destroyed by the smurfs or other factions + there must've been a lot of races that tried to get on board when the ship passed through their galaxy.
    Spoiler:
    I don’t want to be human. I want to see gamma rays, I want to hear X-rays, and I want to smell dark matter. Do you see the absurdity of what I am? I can’t even express these things properly, because I have to—I have to conceptualize complex ideas in this stupid, limiting spoken language, but I know I want to reach out with something other than these prehensile paws, and feel the solar wind of a supernova flowing over me. I’m a machine, and I can know much more.

    Comment


      #17
      The timeline of stargate is really confusing. I believe they increased the timescale of the Ancients way too high. Theoratically Atlantis has flown to the Pegasus galaxy million years ago. Then what were they doing there so long? We know that the space travel is max. 3 weeks or maybe a month with the latest FTL, so even if they have gone slowlier with old technology, it can not be compared to millions of years. Because then we know that life was spreading, they have established new colonies, then they have meet with the Wraith and they were forced to leave the galaxy. You know even the wildest galactical wars don't last for million of years. So I believe it would have been much better if Atlantis left a few thousand (not millions!) years ago.

      Simply just imagine our whole human civilization on a line. We can simply not see how long was the journey before the written histroy. 50-100-200 thousand years? When the first caveman painted their first arts and now we are in space. You know civilizations have risen, languages became dominant then extinct, animals races died out, ice ages happened, but the most important events all happened in the last 2000-3000 years. But if you compare this to the road before it is almost nothing. And definately nothing if it is compared to millions.

      So that is the reason I don't like these million years jump in the SG lore. It is too big and they are unlogical. No building will survive million of years. Maybe the pyramids. But a spaceship? There is no rain, but the metals can still oxydating. And if the civilization of the Ancients is million years old, then what were they doing so long?

      I also don't like that we are the second evolution of them. Evolution, the selection of races, the changes of genes through generations don't happen the same way. Evolution won't repeat itself. So this is also a wrong idea that a dominant lifeform will look exactly the same thousand or million years ago if we suggest that the Ancients were not humans in the first place. You know even the enzyme system can be different, they can develop new tissues (like different organs, different skin or hair colour). So maybe an intelligent race will have two legs, two arms, so basically humanoids, but it doesn't mean they will evolve the same way. Even the different solar systems can influence the local evolution of the human race (the type of the local Sun, the size of the Sun, the size of the planet, the other planets, the number of moons, the % of water, the temperature, the vulcanic activity) just to name a few. But it will never ever happen that two race will look exactly the same if they are separated by millions of years.

      And then the question remains again. If the Ancients were there in the Milky Way for million of years, then what went wrong? What were they doing so long? I know future SG spinoffs could introduce different eras, just I believe they have established too big timescale of evolution for such a race which can travel by spaceships. Not to mention the stargate system, where they can reach any destinantion within moments, so local adaption / evolution / selection must have happened on every planet. That could be a good reason why the evolution of Ancients were slowed down.

      On the other hand. They have established that the Ancients were isolationist race, so they didn't really want to interfere of the evolution of other races. In comparsion to this fact they had many dangerous experiments on Atlantis which has just done the opposite : exploding tumors, forced ascension machine... So if those Ancients lived in the Pegasus galaxy who have fleeded from the illness in the Milky Way, then why would they experiment on such things?
      "I was hoping for another day. Looks like we just got a whole lot more than that. Let's not waste it."

      "Never underestimate your audience. They're generally sensitive, intelligent people who respond positively to quality entertainment."

      "Individual science fiction stories may seem as trivial as ever to the blinder critics and philosophers of today, but the core of science fiction, its essence, has become crucial to our salvation, if we are to be saved at all."

      Comment


        #18
        Originally posted by Platschu View Post
        The timeline of stargate is really confusing.
        I'm in the same boat.

        No building will survive million of years. Maybe the pyramids. But a spaceship? There is no rain, but the metals can still oxydating. And if the civilization of the Ancients is million years old, then what were they doing so long?
        Buildings will definitely not survive million of years. Not even the pyramids, they already started crumbling, slowly but surely. If it wasn't for the high budget allowed to restoration works most of the pyramids would be in a decrepit state, especially the oldest ones. Most of the masonry has to be done by hand, some stones can take months to carve.

        Non-SG universe speaking, spaceships wouldn't last that long absolutely. Space radiation, impacts from micro-asteroids and a ton of other hazards would do quick work of a ship. Space is nasty.

        Destiny is another deal entirely. If we go with the ''cannon'' theory that it wasn't manned for most of its journey, one can assume it was in FTL almost the entire time of these millions of years. That means no atmospheric degradation, no impacts, not even dust can affect the ship. No need for life support systems, that means no air circulation since most of the ship is vented of atmosphere, excluding the gate room.

        If for whatever reason Destiny is damaged in battle, you have the auto-repair drones, which maybe can repair while Destiny is in FTL if they are attached to the ship, we've seen something similar done before in SGA / SG1. I'm sure the team would've found more of them, or there surely were much more than what we've seen, for a ship this size that'd be quite stupid to have only 2 drones available.

        My personal opinion is that I think the seed ships were not only able to manufacture gates, but spare parts for the ship as well. I can't see how a factory that creates gates out of raw material couldn't make parts. So, even with a micro-skeleton crew of 1-2 engineers boarding Destiny each 10-100 thousand years, I'd say she could make it out all the way without a scratch. With the sheer amounts of planets the ships came across, resources wouldn't have been an issue.

        On the other hand. They have established that the Ancients were isolationist race, so they didn't really want to interfere of the evolution of other races. In comparsion to this fact they had many dangerous experiments on Atlantis which has just done the opposite : exploding tumors, forced ascension machine... So if those Ancients lived in the Pegasus galaxy who have fleeded from the illness in the Milky Way, then why would they experiment on such things?
        Well to be fair, the vast majority of these ''what can go wrong?'' experiments were confined inside Atlantis. The Ancients probably thought they'd be the only one dealing with it. A casual chat in Atlantis might've gone like so:

        A: So, what did I miss last week?
        B: Not much, the usual. Oh I forgot, Paul blew up while eating his porridge yesterday morning.
        A: No way? Damn Paul, I told him a hundred times eating that crap would get him killed eventually. What happened?
        B: Something to do with Dr. Dray's recent breakthroughs on exploding tumors I think
        A: Wow, crazy uh?
        B: Yea, nobody saw it coming
        Spoiler:
        I don’t want to be human. I want to see gamma rays, I want to hear X-rays, and I want to smell dark matter. Do you see the absurdity of what I am? I can’t even express these things properly, because I have to—I have to conceptualize complex ideas in this stupid, limiting spoken language, but I know I want to reach out with something other than these prehensile paws, and feel the solar wind of a supernova flowing over me. I’m a machine, and I can know much more.

        Comment


          #19
          Originally posted by Platschu View Post
          The timeline of stargate is really confusing. I believe they increased the timescale of the Ancients way too high. Theoratically Atlantis has flown to the Pegasus galaxy million years ago. Then what were they doing there so long? We know that the space travel is max. 3 weeks or maybe a month with the latest FTL, so even if they have gone slowlier with old technology, it can not be compared to millions of years. Because then we know that life was spreading, they have established new colonies, then they have meet with the Wraith and they were forced to leave the galaxy. You know even the wildest galactical wars don't last for million of years. So I believe it would have been much better if Atlantis left a few thousand (not millions!) years ago.

          Simply just imagine our whole human civilization on a line. We can simply not see how long was the journey before the written histroy. 50-100-200 thousand years? When the first caveman painted their first arts and now we are in space. You know civilizations have risen, languages became dominant then extinct, animals races died out, ice ages happened, but the most important events all happened in the last 2000-3000 years. But if you compare this to the road before it is almost nothing. And definately nothing if it is compared to millions.
          I think you're oversimplifying, personally. Building a whole new civilization from scratch would be a monumental task.

          Before even attempting any large scale exploration, they'd:
          - have to face new local environmental issues and find a way to make life sustainable for the immediate future
          - have to face new local stellar issues that threaten survival
          - very quickly need to find food resources adequate to feed the population of the city
          - have to find a way to make a limited gene pool survive for more than a few generations

          These issues alone could well take generations to resolve, before life in the city could be considered stable and sustainable.

          Once the very basic needs of survival were met and they decided to explore, they would need to find the material resources necessary to do that exploration -- and searching out the resources they need would chew up the reserve resources they have on hand.

          IIRC Atlantis's long-range sensors (the city's, not the relay network that would not have been in place at the beginning of their Pegasus tenure) only really covered the star system they were located in. Early, pre-gate network exploration would have to be done by ships -- ships that take time and scarce resources to build -- probably largely exploring by trial and error. How many hundreds or thousands of years would it take before they had a detailed survey of even their own galactic neighbourhood?

          Now let's skip ahead a little bit: life. To the best of our knowledge, Pegasus had no analogue of the Milky Way's Dakara device, so it would appear that humanoid life in Pegasus was seeded 'manually.' And then had to evolve 'manually.' That by itself is a millions-of-years-long process -- and without a Dakara device, that seed of life would have to have been planted on many worlds one at a time, even if the gate network had been built and distributed.

          And what about the gate network? You can't send a gate through a gate to a world that doesn't already have one, so they'd have to drop off a gate on every single planet they wanted one on. Assume Pegasus has a million stars, but you only need gates in 10% of those systems. That's still a hundred thousand trips you'd have to make just to drop the things off, never mind travel time, navigational hazards, technical issues of getting them set up, etc etc.

          And we have no idea what happened in that interim. Did the Lanteans build colonies across the galaxy? To some extent, yes (The Tower, Inferno, etc.) But who else did they run into in those thousands or millions of years? It's such an easy number to say on paper, but a million+ years is a long damned time. They could have fought millennia-long wars with, say, our universe's equivalent of the Daedalus Variations aliens, and those conflicts would be forgotten dust by the time the Atlantis Expedition showed up.

          I'm rambling a bit, but my point is more succinct: yes, the timescales in Stargate are vast. But given what's been depicted or otherwise implied, I don't think they're unreasonable. And given that the SGU gates are a prototype of a device whose later blue versions spanned a millions-of-years timespan, I think it's entirely reasonable to conclude that Destiny is many millions of years old.

          Kinda makes you wonder how comfortable those beds could possibly have been though, doesn't it?
          "A society grows great when old men plant trees, the shade of which they know they will never sit in. Good people do things for other people. That's it, the end." -- Penelope Wilton in Ricky Gervais's After Life

          Comment


            #20
            Honestly it doesn't matter how old is the Destiny as we simply don't know enough details about the Alterans. They could really slowly fly around in the galaxy, adapt to the liveable planets, maybe terraform a few ones or guard the younger races. But we are talking about millions of years. Not just a few decades or centuries. This time is so huge for an advanced, space travelling race that they must have conquered the whole galaxy without proper enemy. Okay, we still don't know which races played a major role in the past or how many gate system exists, how many galaxies were colonized etc. But the main thing is that they could reach any planet by stargates not just be ships. So what were they doing for millions of years? I was talking about this time period / evolution thing in my own brainstorming topic (see Milky Way in 2020 at the fan fiction section). We don't know how big was the dome around the stargate or if they could terraform those planets through the stargate or with ships. Such tools could be interesting in a new spinoff (like wrong experiments, accelerated evolution, changed climate, collapsing ecosystems, rapidly changing landscapes etc.). But we really don't know what were they doing for millions of year. Such a race which was capable of leaving their own galaxy with a spaceship (in Ark of Truth), then they won't fall back to medieval technology level again. So maybe the stargate network was just build and spreaded (by automated seeder ships), but what were they doing until that time? What were they doing on Earth or Dakara? I believe a new SG spinoff should reflect on these distance past questions.

            The stargate could survive millions of years as they are made from naquadah. I am not sure the same happened with the Universe gates as well, because they were merged from pieces and they could even destroy some part of the ring. So I am guessing the naquadah gates (the MW gates) were introduced later.
            "I was hoping for another day. Looks like we just got a whole lot more than that. Let's not waste it."

            "Never underestimate your audience. They're generally sensitive, intelligent people who respond positively to quality entertainment."

            "Individual science fiction stories may seem as trivial as ever to the blinder critics and philosophers of today, but the core of science fiction, its essence, has become crucial to our salvation, if we are to be saved at all."

            Comment


              #21
              Originally posted by Chaka-Z0 View Post
              Yes, but those colonies didn't have that luxury. Again, it is dependent on the fact that Ancients are around constantly for protection.
              What colonies are you referring to? It sounds as if you're saying a third-party is dependent on the Ancients for survival when I'm talking about the Ancients protecting their own through a galaxy-wide support system, so I'm confused.

              I like that theory. They did know exactly where to go did they?
              Indeed. An expanded form of that theory is that the Ori may have learned of the Ancients when the Destiny came through their galaxy. That would explain why they have gate technology when it appeared that the Alterans left while it was still just a planned idea (although, an alternate explanation is that the Alterans were the surviving scientific minds of a once advanced civilization that regressed and was taken over by the religious minded Ori, so that sketchbook represented an attempt to recreate old tech).

              Oh I see. Well yes, physical travel would've been possible, but since dialing out Destiny would use a reasonably high amount of power, the home base could simply dial-in, use the stones and get a status report.

              I based my assumption that stones were available at that time on this logic:

              1- We found a set off stones in Merlin's stash, on Earth, which connects to the Ori Galaxy
              2- The Ancients fled the Ori Galaxy prior to their arrival in the MW
              3- Destiny was launched from the MW
              The technology certainly fits the time period, we just haven't seen it found on the Destiny.

              Fair enough. I have one objection though. This seed ship had been hijacked therefore was way behind its planned route. I'm not entirely convinced that Destiny, in normal circumstances, could've cached up to the seed ship to perform such a maneuver. Sure they could've send commands remotely to pause a seed ship in emergencies, but that would mean stalling the mission possibly compromising it entirely.
              True, but I wasn't suggesting that the Ancients could have used the Destiny in combination with the seed ship. I was saying that the attempted maneuver by Earth implied that Destiny's energy grid would have been able to dial Earth at optimal or near optimal capacity because the combined energy of the Destiny at 40% efficiency minus whatever percentage they used up since last refueling and whatever likely less than optimal percentage the seed ship was at would have amount to less energy than a fully powered Destiny. Does that make sense?

              Why all these safeguards if nobody else but them could possibly know the address? They expected us to take over eventually, that was always clear to me. Just like Atlantis was. But they didn't want the Tau'ri to rush it, they needed to understand much more before possibly grasping Destiny's complex mission.
              Okay so your argument is that they were hiding it from humans? I thought we were talking about the Ancients hiding it from other Ancients previously.

              How is that surprising in the SG universe? They built ships in what seemed like months. An Icarus base in my opinion is far less complex and much faster to build. We're talking about concrete structures on a steady stellar body, not as hard to build as a flying fortress with a thousand systems. Considering this, Icarus base could've built well within a year I'd say, depending on the priority of this project.
              Well it takes a year to build a ship and they do so, undoubtedly, by having different parts built at different facilities and shipped to a central location on Earth. At one point it's implied that they had more than one ship under construction at the same time so they were able to rush the Korolev off the line only a few months after the Odyssey was commissioned.

              Stargate's writers undoubtedly fast track things for the sake their stories. A year is too short a time given the years it takes to build navy warships, and the less than a decade it took them to figure out how to apply alien technology to building their own ships is a stretch as well. But, if it takes a year in the show to build a ship, shipping machines to an alien world through a tiny round hole, putting any together that were too big to fit, (or shipping them by 304 in stages as time allows) doing so with only the manpower your limited funds and the secret nature of your program allows, and then actually digging and blasting through a mountain before laying those concrete structures is going to be harder.

              If you want to estimate the fast tracked TV version for this project as a year in length, that's fine since all of this is dependent on a writer's whim, but then there's still a year between then and the earliest time that Earth could have discovered the 9th chevron address in the Ancient database.

              The issue isn't that this surprising, it's simply that that given that it didn't seem to take Earth long to find the 9th chevron address in the database per Daniel telling us that the Icarus base had been constructed two years prior to the start of SGU, that leaves only a 2 additional year window where it was possible to make the 9th chevron discovery, come up with a plan of action, get approval, find the right planet (if it needed finding), and actually build the base. So it doesn't seem likely that it took much sorting before they learned that there was this 9th chevron address in the database.

              Again gating in to send supplies wouldn't be an issue, there are plenty of ways even at that time of the ''old'' Ancient tech to generate sufficient power to gate in. But as times goes, Destiny would require more and more power to dial out, and a portable energy source comparable to ZPM didn'T exist at the time. There would come a time when the later teams gating in could not be 100% guarenteed of a way back (if we take my previous comment on seed ship dialing). The risks of compromising the mission would be too great, and they could not have this considering Destiny's mission is one of endurance, built to last and never stop. Like here in really cold winters, we had those old trucks that you keep the engine on even when you stop, or it won't start back.
              Okay, well, I maintain that in was always and remains possible to dial back to the Milky Way from Destiny so long as the Destiny's capacitors are at or near 100%. 5-10 million years ago the Destiny's capacitors would have maxed out at more than 40% and the amount of energy needed to dial back would have been less since it would have been closer to the Milky Way so even if they had degraded all the way to ~60%, dialing back then may have been possible without repairs.

              My second point is that because it appears that the Destiny can dial Earth with its capacitors operating at near 100% capacity in present day, at any point in the Ancient's history they could have gotten back by simply fixing the capacitors if they were not capable of storing the required amount of energy.

              This means that if Ancients went to the Destiny with the knowledge of the Ancient council (or assorted friends back home) and if they did not re-establish contact with home, the Ancient council could have dialed the Destiny, asked them what was wrong, and then known that they need to send supplies and possibly personnel through to make those repairs possible.

              The only reason Earth people are trapped on the other side of the universe, in my opinion, is because Earth does not have the capability to send the Icarus base people what they need to effect repairs themselves. This would not be the case for hypothetical Ancients who went there with the backing of their civilization. That's why I was arguing that if Ancients went there, it's likely that they did so secretly or after returning from Atlantis 10,000 years because it makes more sense for them to get trapped under those conditions.

              Keep in mind the O'Neill Capacitor is not generating extra power, its modulating it. Something similar to a Naquadah generator perhaps, but would that be sufficient? I don't think so.
              I don't think that such a device would be useful at all either.

              They also understood (as proven in Atlantis) that hand-feeding us technology and literally having a big button saying *Press here to gate on Destiny* is not a good idea and might end up with us killing ourselves.
              Well, it seemed like by the time they were in the Pegasus galaxy the idea was to help humans advance to the point where they could succeed the Ancients. At least that's what I gather was the intent behind seeding so many worlds with humans and instituting their civilization building "game." The appearance of the Wraith and the Ancient's eventual defeat ruined that. Learning that humans on Earth would be able to reach Atlantis in time to keep it going was a happy surprise for some of them, but not necessarily something they planned for. It seemed like when they left for Earth, their hope was that their own people would be able to return one day.

              If it wasn't for the high budget allowed to restoration works most of the pyramids would be in a decrepit state, especially the oldest ones. Most of the masonry has to be done by hand, some stones can take months to carve.
              Actually, the pyramids would be in a much better state today if they were left alone entirely by humans. At Giza, what you see now are basically their skeletons; the white limestone that was placed over them was stripped and reused (along with some massive sandstone blocks) in the construction of homes and churches. Restoration work can and has also done more damage to some of the smaller ones (the bigger ones are mostly left alone outside of accessibility upgrades to stairs, supports for chambers/corridors, etc). That's not to say they can last for millions of years if left alone--they can't.

              Comment


                #22
                Originally posted by Xaeden View Post
                What colonies are you referring to? It sounds as if you're saying a third-party is dependent on the Ancients for survival when I'm talking about the Ancients protecting their own through a galaxy-wide support system, so I'm confused.
                Any civilizations that SG1 encountered on planets with gates. What I meant by that is, sure the Ancients were there to back them up, but remember their whole ''non-interference'' philosophy. Would they save a planet if a natural disaster strikes? What if they aren't around? Reaching them through the gate might not always be possible, since most invading forces would dial the gate to prevent intruders from coming in or people escaping. There's no way they had enough ships to provide 24/7 protection to everybody.

                Therefore, the colonies being so small and isolated would not stand a chance to mount a significant opposing force, except those that had advanced tech to repel invaders.

                Indeed. An expanded form of that theory is that the Ori may have learned of the Ancients when the Destiny came through their galaxy. That would explain why they have gate technology when it appeared that the Alterans left while it was still just a planned idea (although, an alternate explanation is that the Alterans were the surviving scientific minds of a once advanced civilization that regressed and was taken over by the religious minded Ori, so that sketchbook represented an attempt to recreate old tech).
                Very intriguing, but I hardly doubt that's the case. It'ss been said many times in the show that both Ori and Lanteans were in the same galaxy, evolved together and split up due to divergence in their beliefs and approach to evolution, was it not?

                True, but I wasn't suggesting that the Ancients could have used the Destiny in combination with the seed ship. I was saying that the attempted maneuver by Earth implied that Destiny's energy grid would have been able to dial Earth at optimal or near optimal capacity because the combined energy of the Destiny at 40% efficiency minus whatever percentage they used up since last refueling and whatever likely less than optimal percentage the seed ship was at would have amount to less energy than a fully powered Destiny. Does that make sense?
                Yes it does. I think I was stuck on the premise of SGU that people are stuck on a ship. As I've said before, I think you guys pretty much destroyed my theory so I'll agree with you on that. Although, I maintain that at some point, it wasn't possible to dial out or it became too dangerous to try.

                Okay so your argument is that they were hiding it from humans? I thought we were talking about the Ancients hiding it from other Ancients previously.
                Yes actually I was doing two things at the same time while writing this, sorry about the confusion. I think it was hidden from both, firstly from most of the Ancients' population except a select-group involved in the project, and secondly from the humans by ''Burying'' it in the database as their legacy.

                Also worth to mention that the 9th chevron was never explicitly described it the database, yes? The Icarus folks had no idea where this would lead, there was no description of Destiny whatsoever. Why is that? They must've known we are a curious race, as much as they were, and leaving an apparent mundane piece of information like that would not necessarily trigger further research into it, until later on, when other more important stuff was investigated.

                Well it takes a year to build a ship and they do so, undoubtedly, by having different parts built at different facilities and shipped to a central location on Earth. At one point it's implied that they had more than one ship under construction at the same time so they were able to rush the Korolev off the line only a few months after the Odyssey was commissioned.
                I can agree with that, I guess I'm trying too much to be realistic for a tv show I mean technically, why not just use a Deadalus-class, shoot a couple rockets, and voilà, digging complete.

                The issue isn't that this surprising, it's simply that that given that it didn't seem to take Earth long to find the 9th chevron address in the database per Daniel telling us that the Icarus base had been constructed two years prior to the start of SGU, that leaves only a 2 additional year window where it was possible to make the 9th chevron discovery, come up with a plan of action, get approval, find the right planet (if it needed finding), and actually build the base. So it doesn't seem likely that it took much sorting before they learned that there was this 9th chevron address in the database.
                Assuming Icarus was built for the 9th chevron, that is. Maybe the potential of the planet's core was interesting for scientific discoveries, and later discovered it could be used as a means to dial the 9th chevron? I mean who wouldn't want to investigate a possibly infinite power source? I can see the Generals salivating over that. UNLIMITED. POWER. (insert Palpatine gif here)

                Okay, well, I maintain that in was always and remains possible to dial back to the Milky Way from Destiny so long as the Destiny's capacitors are at or near 100%.

                My second point is that because it appears that the Destiny can dial Earth with its capacitors operating at near 100% capacity in present day, at any point in the Ancient's history they could have gotten back by simply fixing the capacitors if they were not capable of storing the required amount of energy.
                I think we've argued most of the points in regards to that. Both theories are possible, yet sadly unprovable with the limited knowledge we had in those 1.5 seasons of SGU

                This means that if Ancients went to the Destiny with the knowledge of the Ancient council (or assorted friends back home) and if they did not re-establish contact with home, the Ancient council could have dialed the Destiny, asked them what was wrong, and then known that they need to send supplies and possibly personnel through to make those repairs possible.
                Agreed, that's what I meant when I said sending supplies wouldn't be an issue, if they were on a secret or public project there surely would've been financing for food, equipment, and such. Not to mention there are many opportunities to gather supplies on the seeded planets, during their road-trip. The point we diverge is if the crew was able to gate back, and also when exactly was the threshold when they couldn't.

                The only reason Earth people are trapped on the other side of the universe, in my opinion, is because Earth does not have the capability to send the Icarus base people what they need to effect repairs themselves. This would not be the case for hypothetical Ancients who went there with the backing of their civilization. That's why I was arguing that if Ancients went there, it's likely that they did so secretly or after returning from Atlantis 10,000 years because it makes more sense for them to get trapped under those conditions.
                What about my comments on seed ships manufacturing parts? That's a no-brainer to me, I don't see why spares would even be an issue. Seedships are factories on wheels. I personnally think that is where TPTB were going, but had to rush it due to the notice of cancellation of the show and wrote ''Twin Destinies'' in preparation for the rushed finale.

                I don't think that such a device would be useful at all either.
                The O'Neill device could've been used to dial-in Destiny, if we go with my assumption that dialing in would be possible, but that's not really important.

                Actually, the pyramids would be in a much better state today if they were left alone entirely by humans. At Giza, what you see now are basically their skeletons; the white limestone that was placed over them was stripped and reused (along with some massive sandstone blocks) in the construction of homes and churches. Restoration work can and has also done more damage to some of the smaller ones (the bigger ones are mostly left alone outside of accessibility upgrades to stairs, supports for chambers/corridors, etc). That's not to say they can last for millions of years if left alone--they can't.
                Fair enough. The Machu-Pichu in Peru is experiencing the same issues due to the amount of tourists constantly visiting the site. Now there's a limit and you need to reserve in advance to try and halt the degradation. The human factor also has to be considered, thiefs - wars - bombs - you name it, there are tons of reasons why our monuments can be damaged.

                The Egyptians were a smart bunch, as I'm sure you're aware they basically made the pyramids impregnable with those huge granites slabs to block the passageway to the main chamber.

                I can't remember on top of my head which pyramid / mummy it was, but one of them was stolen a very long time ago, by undermining / digging a tunnel straight to the king's chamber. The tunnel is very precise, it goes around the traps and straight to the chamber. It is speculated that possibly one of the original engineers / builders was in the coup and shortly after the Pharaoh's death, went in and stole the treasures.
                Last edited by Chaka-Z0; 20 December 2018, 08:20 AM.
                Spoiler:
                I don’t want to be human. I want to see gamma rays, I want to hear X-rays, and I want to smell dark matter. Do you see the absurdity of what I am? I can’t even express these things properly, because I have to—I have to conceptualize complex ideas in this stupid, limiting spoken language, but I know I want to reach out with something other than these prehensile paws, and feel the solar wind of a supernova flowing over me. I’m a machine, and I can know much more.

                Comment


                  #23
                  Originally posted by Chaka-Z0 View Post
                  Any civilizations that SG1 encountered on planets with gates. What I meant by that is, sure the Ancients were there to back them up, but remember their whole ''non-interference'' philosophy. Would they save a planet if a natural disaster strikes? What if they aren't around? Reaching them through the gate might not always be possible, since most invading forces would dial the gate to prevent intruders from coming in or people escaping. There's no way they had enough ships to provide 24/7 protection to everybody.

                  Therefore, the colonies being so small and isolated would not stand a chance to mount a significant opposing force, except those that had advanced tech to repel invaders.
                  I see. We don't know anything about aliens the Ancients may or may not have promised protection to the Milky Way, but in the Pegasus galaxy human worlds were absolutely vulnerable to outside attack. I don't think it's good to assume that the Ancients wouldn't have protected them from natural disasters if they were aware that one was impending as the non-interference rule is an ascended safeguard to designed to prevent ascended beings from ruling over lower plane people. While still on the physical plane, Ancients manipulated the development of human civilizations and presumably the difficulty that some ascended Ancients had with accepting the new rule was because they were used to using their power to interfere in their pre-ascended days. And, of course, if they thought it best to left a human civilization afflicted by natural disaster die, all gates would either be spacegates or require the ATA gene to work. Placing them on planets with humans is hugely interfering.

                  Protecting human worlds, though, was obviously difficult because the Ancient's defense network was not designed to include humans. There were some populations who lived in proximity to Ancient facilities, but overall most humans lived on their own worlds and could only receive Ancient protection via ship, which is problematic because of what you said about the Ancients not having enough ships to protect all human worlds throughout the galaxy. This not only led to the downfall of untold human civilizations, it also allowed the Wraith to grow in strength and ultimately reach a point where they could drain the Ancient's resources that they had allocated for their own defense, so seeding humans throughout the galaxy proved to be their downfall.

                  Very intriguing, but I hardly doubt that's the case. It'ss been said many times in the show that both Ori and Lanteans were in the same galaxy, evolved together and split up due to divergence in their beliefs and approach to evolution, was it not?
                  Sure, but if contact was re-established 5-10 million years ago because the Ori found a way to infect the Ancients with the plague, it's possible this contact was facilitated by the seed ships. The Ancients, in their hubris, may have thought that the Ori were too primitive minded to be an actual threat to them and thus it's possible they may not have programmed the seed ships to give the Ori galaxy wide berth. Mind you this is not my theory, it's one I've seen other people put out there, and I am repeating because it's technically possibly, although obviously not demonstrated by anything within the canon.

                  Also worth to mention that the 9th chevron was never explicitly described it the database, yes? The Icarus folks had no idea where this would lead, there was no description of Destiny whatsoever. Why is that? They must've known we are a curious race, as much as they were, and leaving an apparent mundane piece of information like that would not necessarily trigger further research into it, until later on, when other more important stuff was investigated.
                  Well, it is a frequent complaint by the Atlantis expedition that things in the Ancient database lacked useful details, which would have helped them more easily understand X. But, you're right that it's odd that the Destiny's address would be in the database without any information (specs and whatnot) on the Destiny itself. I was previously focusing more on the angle that it lacked instructions on how to get the 9th chevron to work before, which is more expected as they leave out instructions with regularity. So I agree that a desire to hide information may be one reason for the lack of data about the Destiny itself. Another explanation that I will just throw out there is that the information may have been so old that the data related to the Destiny project may simply have been lost and thus not carried over when Atlantis' database was put together.

                  I mean technically, why not just use a Deadalus-class, shoot a couple rockets, and voilà, digging complete.
                  Creating tunnels by blasting into a mountain requires precision and specific explosives. Rockets would just create a mess.

                  Assuming Icarus was built for the 9th chevron, that is. Maybe the potential of the planet's core was interesting for scientific discoveries, and later discovered it could be used as a means to dial the 9th chevron? I mean who wouldn't want to investigate a possibly infinite power source? I can see the Generals salivating over that. UNLIMITED. POWER. (insert Palpatine gif here)
                  I looked over the transcript for the premiere again and realized that the details given are more specific than I originally remembered. Previously, I thought Daniel just said that the Icarus Base was established two years ago, but no...

                  JACKSON: ... Icarus Base was established on a planet discovered two years ago to have a uniquely powerful core. The entire purpose of the project is to hopefully one day dial the nine chevron address found in the Ancient database.

                  RUSH: Look, it took us two years to find this site. The properties are unique. This may be our last chance.

                  In actuality, they spent two years looking for the planet, which means they started looking for it around the start of Atlantis' season 2. This makes sense as it's the earliest they could have pulled the 9th chevron address out of the database, so it appears that they realized then that their best hope would be to find another naquadriah planet (they must have somehow learned at that point that more than one was created by the Goa'uld). The planet was then found around the start of Atlantis' season 4 and it was "established" around the same time, which means that Daniel was actually giving us the time when Earth started building the base. So construction was completed at some point in the two-year gap between then and the start of SGU. Experiments, though, may have started earlier as they didn't necessarily need the underground facility to be completed to start tapping into the planet's core, so they may have operated out of a temporary surface base for a bit.

                  What about my comments on seed ships manufacturing parts? That's a no-brainer to me, I don't see why spares would even be an issue. Seedships are factories on wheels. I personnally think that is where TPTB were going, but had to rush it due to the notice of cancellation of the show and wrote ''Twin Destinies'' in preparation for the rushed finale.
                  It would make a hell of a lot more sense if the Destiny's parts are not actually older than Atlantis and instead have been replaced many times since then with its latest iterations of parts being on their last legs because a planned refit hasn't had an opportunity to occur yet. Maybe that's what the seed ship was doing in the drone galaxy. Brody thought they were able to catch up to it because it experienced a system failure, but it actually could have been on its way to meet the Destiny or it could have been waiting for it only to end up being taken over by aliens. The Destiny takes a slow, non-direct path so a seed ship could get to it and then back into a lead (meaning, past the point where Stargates have already been placed) by simply plotting a direct course with stops made only to refuel.

                  It's not an optimal design, though; frankly, the Ancients should have built a support fleet to follow the Destiny around for that purpose if indeed it needs spare parts every so many thousands of years to keep operating. Not only would they be right there when new parts are needed, but the Destiny would have added muscle on hand to protect itself if need be.

                  The O'Neill device could've been used to dial-in Destiny, if we go with my assumption that dialing in would be possible, but that's not really important.
                  It has only been used to allowed for a connection to be made to the Ida galaxy, which appears to be closer than the Pegasus galaxy. I don't see how it could possibly dial the other end of the universe. That's quite the device if so.

                  I can't remember on top of my head which pyramid / mummy it was, but one of them was stolen a very long time ago, by undermining / digging a tunnel straight to the king's chamber. The tunnel is very precise, it goes around the traps and straight to the chamber. It is speculated that possibly one of the original engineers / builders was in the coup and shortly after the Pharaoh's death, went in and stole the treasures.
                  I'm not familiar with the one you're referring to, but there's an often told story about the Caliph Al-Ma'mum who, in the 9th century, ordered his works to dig a tunnel into the Great Pyramid at random, which just happened to lead to the spot where the ascending and descending passages meet and thus gave a direct path to the Pharaoh's chamber. This tunnel now serves as the main entrance through which tourists enter. Recent scholarship, however, has called into question these claims and suggests that the tunnel was actually made centuries earlier by someone who knew exactly what they were doing.

                  Comment


                    #24
                    Originally posted by Xaeden View Post
                    I see. We don't know anything about aliens the Ancients may or may not have promised protection to the Milky Way, but in the Pegasus galaxy human worlds were absolutely vulnerable to outside attack.

                    Placing them on planets with humans is hugely interfering.
                    It is.

                    One thing that always bugged me is this: how exactly does the native populations know the addresses of other worlds? That was waved off in the show pretty much, but apart from the Cartouche on Abydos we've never seen any other written tablets or stones with information. I guess one could make the point that the knowledge was transferred from older generations to the next by word to mouth, but the knowledge would eventually be lost over the years.

                    Protecting human worlds, though, was obviously difficult because the Ancient's defense network was not designed to include humans.
                    Assuming that most of these populations weren't seeded by the Ancients, I could agree with that, which is a question left unanswered. If they were all or most of them indeed seeded there, that'd be kind of ridiculous that they didn't plan any sort of protection network. But again, they didn't really seem to care about the long term implications of their actions.

                    Long range scanners etc could detect enemies and teams dispatched to deal with it. It could work until they meet a foe that's too numerous in numbers (Wraiths).

                    This not only led to the downfall of untold human civilizations, it also allowed the Wraith to grow in strength and ultimately reach a point where they could drain the Ancient's resources that they had allocated for their own defense, so seeding humans throughout the galaxy proved to be their downfall.
                    Not to mention that they are somehow responsible for the birth of Wraith race as well. I still don't understand why they didn't round up all the civilizations and put them on the same planet, or on a couple planets in the same system. Surely that would've cut the food supplies of the Wraith and help provide protection to all humans. I guess they waited too long and realized it was too late to do anything, as the Wraith had their cloning tech ready.

                    Sure, but if contact was re-established 5-10 million years ago because the Ori found a way to infect the Ancients with the plague, it's possible this contact was facilitated by the seed ships.
                    Hadn't thought about that. The fact they sent the plague to the MW means they clearly knew where it was.

                    The Ancients, in their hubris, may have thought that the Ori were too primitive minded to be an actual threat to them and thus it's possible they may not have programmed the seed ships to give the Ori galaxy wide berth. Mind you this is not my theory, it's one I've seen other people put out there, and I am repeating because it's technically possibly, although obviously not demonstrated by anything within the canon.
                    Interesting, but I would find it hard to swallow as a fan, personally. They escaped the Ori galaxy, either because they didn't want to fight or because they were losing the fight. Now I don't think the Ancients would've been as stupid as not to insert a couple macros in Destiny's flight path to skip this galaxy. The theory could work, on second thought, if the Ori were somehow able to detect Destiny or the Seed ships in FTL using some unknown tech.

                    Well, it is a frequent complaint by the Atlantis expedition that things in the Ancient database lacked useful details, which would have helped them more easily understand X. But, you're right that it's odd that the Destiny's address would be in the database without any information (specs and whatnot) on the Destiny itself.
                    Yep. Makes me think about the ''Don't press the Red button'' thing.

                    I was previously focusing more on the angle that it lacked instructions on how to get the 9th chevron to work before, which is more expected as they leave out instructions with regularity. So I agree that a desire to hide information may be one reason for the lack of data about the Destiny itself. Another explanation that I will just throw out there is that the information may have been so old that the data related to the Destiny project may simply have been lost and thus not carried over when Atlantis' database was put together.
                    Agreed, it was pretty obvious in the whole SG franchise that the Ancients wanted us to learn for ourselves. It is possible, but I think that losing data about such an important project is hard to believe. The whole mission is about collecting data, literally, it would be quite idiotic if an Ancient IT guy went : Ugh Boss, sorry but David screwed up and corrupted all our backups.


                    Creating tunnels by blasting into a mountain requires precision and specific explosives. Rockets would just create a mess.
                    Of course it was a joke

                    With a little creativity, I think we could recreate more or less the Tok'ra tunnel tech. Miners digging mineshafts drill long holes in the rock, insert dynamites in tube and blow them up at regular intervals, making it much easier to remove the rocks. Why not do the same, but with Asgard transmitters? Beam up a couple bombs and you can shape an underground base to your exact specifications. ez pz.

                    I looked over the transcript for the premiere again and realized that the details given are more specific than I originally remembered. Previously, I thought Daniel just said that the Icarus Base was established two years ago, but no...
                    Thanks for that intel, I completely forgot about that.

                    So construction was completed at some point in the two-year gap between then and the start of SGU. Experiments, though, may have started earlier as they didn't necessarily need the underground facility to be completed to start tapping into the planet's core, so they may have operated out of a temporary surface base for a bit.
                    It is settled then. Makes much more sense now.

                    It would make a hell of a lot more sense if the Destiny's parts are not actually older than Atlantis and instead have been replaced many times since then with its latest iterations of parts being on their last legs because a planned refit hasn't had an opportunity to occur yet.
                    Very interesting, Destiny could've been built as a ''sandbox'' in preparedness for future advancements, which makes sense considering the longevity of its mission. I like that idea very much. A little bit like the 90s cars, you could swap whatever parts (hell I remember we swapped Corvette engines in trucks, B18 engines in Civics, etc.). These cars were easy to work with and customize, which is not the case anymore with the ''computerization'' of our modern cars. Everything has to be tuned by the central computer now and most parts aren't repairable, you need to buy a new one.

                    But still, I need to point out that EVEN if that was the case for new parts, they could've been replaced by an older part all the same, with lower performance of course. The fact they would incorporate Atlantis-grade tech doesn't mean the parts couldn't be replaced by Destiny-grade tech.

                    Not to mention that if we Earthlings, in the 21st century, have the 3d printing technology, I can't see why they wouldn't have access to something similar or improved. The only possible issue would be the required materials, specific metals and elements, but again they went through so many systems they would've found a little bit of everything, stored in the Seed Ships cargos.

                    Also in ''Twin Destinies'' the parts we see there being replaced do not look at all like Atlantis level, they look like old parts you'd find on Destiny. Cosmetics is not really a strong argument, but that's what we got to go on.

                    Maybe that's what the seed ship was doing in the drone galaxy. Brody thought they were able to catch up to it because it experienced a system failure, but it actually could have been on its way to meet the Destiny or it could have been waiting for it only to end up being taken over by aliens. The Destiny takes a slow, non-direct path so a seed ship could get to it and then back into a lead (meaning, past the point where Stargates have already been placed) by simply plotting a direct course with stops made only to refuel.
                    Probable, but I think the simplest explanation is the best here. The seed ships had to refuel at some point and it was clear that the Drones were waiting at every stars in this galaxy. It was damaged, possibly used a diversion by the Ursini and then highjacked.

                    It's not an optimal design, though; frankly, the Ancients should have built a support fleet to follow the Destiny around for that purpose if indeed it needs spare parts every so many thousands of years to keep operating. Not only would they be right there when new parts are needed, but the Destiny would have added muscle on hand to protect itself if need be.
                    I like to believe that Destiny's mission was more on the covert side, having such a big fleet would draw too much attention. All three ships were basically flying solo the whole time, with occasional contacts perhaps.

                    I'm not familiar with the one you're referring to, but there's an often told story about the Caliph Al-Ma'mum who, in the 9th century, ordered his works to dig a tunnel into the Great Pyramid at random, which just happened to lead to the spot where the ascending and descending passages meet and thus gave a direct path to the Pharaoh's chamber. This tunnel now serves as the main entrance through which tourists enter. Recent scholarship, however, has called into question these claims and suggests that the tunnel was actually made centuries earlier by someone who knew exactly what they were doing.
                    Well that seems to be exactly the one
                    Spoiler:
                    I don’t want to be human. I want to see gamma rays, I want to hear X-rays, and I want to smell dark matter. Do you see the absurdity of what I am? I can’t even express these things properly, because I have to—I have to conceptualize complex ideas in this stupid, limiting spoken language, but I know I want to reach out with something other than these prehensile paws, and feel the solar wind of a supernova flowing over me. I’m a machine, and I can know much more.

                    Comment


                      #25
                      Originally posted by Chaka-Z0 View Post
                      One thing that always bugged me is this: how exactly does the native populations know the addresses of other worlds? That was waved off in the show pretty much, but apart from the Cartouche on Abydos we've never seen any other written tablets or stones with information. I guess one could make the point that the knowledge was transferred from older generations to the next by word to mouth, but the knowledge would eventually be lost over the years.
                      Almost nobody knows addresses in the Milky Way. Village planets largely view the Stargate in religious terms and are surprised/amazed when someone comes through, there's an episode where a guy finds an address to an Unas world by randomly dialing the gate (quite the feat, btw), and even with how advanced the Aschen were, they only knew addresses within their cluster, thus their desire to trade for more. This makes sense because of how the Goa'uld just dumped humans on planets and wrote off populations that rebelled and abandoned others. THus, bsent their own cartouche that survived the centuries, such people were largely isolated until Earth came along.

                      In the Pegasus galaxy there does appear to be a large degree of address trading going on. I would likewise assume that many have been passed on down from the time of the Ancients. Oral tradition is actually pretty damn good at passing information. Look at the length of epic poems like "The Odyssey." That was passed down orally for a long time before it was written down. The written version is not the same as the early recitations--certain things were intentionally changed, while other changes may certainly be due to error--but the amount of data that was memorized and retained is impressive.

                      If a few addresses get lost or a few symbols get confused among a single population because of the deaths of key people, as long as they can still gate to trading partners, chances are there will be those who can fill in any blanks if addresses are freely exchanged and shared.

                      There are also plenty of populations who having written language. They might not carve symbols into stone in a dramatic fashion, but we've seen village planets with papers and books. There are also plenty of people who are or have come from advanced societies. You have populations like the Satedans who might have traded gate addresses for resources prior to their destruction and after their destruction the few hundred survivors may have done likewise. Same with the Travelers who we know actively cultivate trade partners and probably have an extensive library of gate addresses in their ship computers.

                      Assuming that most of these populations weren't seeded by the Ancients, I could agree with that, which is a question left unanswered. If they were all or most of them indeed seeded there, that'd be kind of ridiculous that they didn't plan any sort of protection network. But again, they didn't really seem to care about the long term implications of their actions.
                      The running theme with the Ancients is that they are filled with hubris. They probably never imagined an enemy who couldn't be quickly subdued by the arrival of a few of their battleships. Some number of human worlds were also purposely seeded with the intent that they be left alone. We know this because the hologram from the pilot told us that they seeded humans on the Iratus bug world, let it be for a long stretch of time, and after checking back in later on they discovered that this had unintended consequences. I suspect the Ancients monitored and interfered with some worlds and left others to develop on their own, only checking how humans had advanced after long stretches of time passed.

                      Not to mention that they are somehow responsible for the birth of Wraith race as well. I still don't understand why they didn't round up all the civilizations and put them on the same planet, or on a couple planets in the same system. Surely that would've cut the food supplies of the Wraith and help provide protection to all humans. I guess they waited too long and realized it was too late to do anything, as the Wraith had their cloning tech ready.
                      That's... not a good idea.

                      1. Once the Wraith are enough of a threat to warrant such an extreme idea, they'd be desperate and would concentrate all their efforts on the single point of attack provided to them. If they didn't think they could wipe out the Ancient's defending forces and reallocate humans throughout the galaxy, they would likely do suicide runs designed to wipe out all the humans like their drones do in darts when their Hive or Hives are taken out.

                      2. Without energy-to-matter convertors to feed them all, they'd die. The Ancients have never been seen with that technology, only the Asgard have.

                      3. This is a "noble" trail of tears scenario. You're advocating taking people from their homes and forcing them into refugee camps because their Ancient superiors think it's best for them. Humans are stubborn, attached to what they've built, and not necessarily as capable of seeing the big picture as the Ancients would be. You'd 100% have people fighting the Ancients and needing to be forcibly marched through the gate for this to work. Then you'd have people fighting each other on the planet you sent them to, requiring the Ancients to deploy "security measures," which are basically targets for insurgencies to go after.

                      4. You're potentially talking about hundreds of billions, maybe even more than a trillion people considering there were hundreds to thousands of human worlds with some percentage of them being at various advanced states 10,000 years ago (the Athosians had cities) and the Wraith, who need to feed 3-4 times a year, had enough food on hand to amass enough numbers to threaten the Ancient's technological superiority.

                      Interesting, but I would find it hard to swallow as a fan, personally. They escaped the Ori galaxy, either because they didn't want to fight or because they were losing the fight. Now I don't think the Ancients would've been as stupid as not to insert a couple macros in Destiny's flight path to skip this galaxy. The theory could work, on second thought, if the Ori were somehow able to detect Destiny or the Seed ships in FTL using some unknown tech.
                      Well, they didn't escape a superpower. They decided to pack up and leave rather than continue to try to co-exist with technology hating religious fanatics. It's hard to predict that they would see the appearance of the Stargates and find a way to use them to target you billions of light years away. How would they even power one of those gates to dial the Milky Way, let along figure out how to use one with the absence of DHDs? If the seed ships proved the Ancient's undoing, it probably happened because the Ancients weren't able to conceive that ascension was possible at the very early stage of their development when the Destiny was built as ascended Ori were likely responsible.

                      Of course, if ascended Ori were responsible, it's possible that the seed ships did avoid their galaxy, but were detected flying through neighboring galaxies.

                      but I think that losing data about such an important project is hard to believe. The whole mission is about collecting data, literally, it would be quite idiotic if an Ancient IT guy went : Ugh Boss, sorry but David screwed up and corrupted all our backups.
                      Maybe, but as people have mentioned, the idea of the Ancients as a civilization spanning tens of millions of years leaves A LOT of unaccounted for time. Their civilization could have fallen to an enemy at some point after the Destiny was launched, requiring them to rebuild from the ashes.

                      I like to believe that Destiny's mission was more on the covert side, having such a big fleet would draw too much attention. All three ships were basically flying solo the whole time, with occasional contacts perhaps.
                      They don't need to be flying alongside the Destiny, they just need to be "on hand" to assist in emergencies and perform repairs. A repair fleet could mostly remain within the void between galaxies, dipping into the outer edges of a galaxy only to refuel and collect raw materials, all the while being within a reasonable distance to provide added muscle if needed.

                      Without the Earth crew, the Destiny likely would have encountered the drone fleet by itself and, in the previous galaxy from season 1, it didn't manage to be covert enough to avoid the attention of an alien species all on its own.

                      Comment


                        #26
                        Originally posted by Xaeden View Post
                        Almost nobody knows addresses in the Milky Way.

                        In the Pegasus galaxy there does appear to be a large degree of address trading going on. I would likewise assume that many have been passed on down from the time of the Ancients. Oral tradition is actually pretty damn good at passing information.
                        Right. Put that way it makes sense.

                        Some number of human worlds were also purposely seeded with the intent that they be left alone. We know this because the hologram from the pilot told us that they seeded humans on the Iratus bug world, let it be for a long stretch of time, and after checking back in later on they discovered that this had unintended consequences. I suspect the Ancients monitored and interfered with some worlds and left others to develop on their own, only checking how humans had advanced after long stretches of time passed.
                        Come on, not even one small turkey-peeking in all those years? One patrol ship for a quick stop in orbit? The Ancients in their pride most likely didn't consider the Wraith as a threat for a long time. I'd suggest the wraith played the long-con and exploited the Ancients negligence.

                        They could've secretly fed on neighboring planets and use tactics similar to those of the Genii or the Cylons in BSG.

                        That's... not a good idea.
                        Hmm maybe you'll see things my way.

                        1. Once the Wraith are enough of a threat to warrant such an extreme idea, they'd be desperate and would concentrate all their efforts on the single point of attack provided to them. If they didn't think they could wipe out the Ancient's defending forces and reallocate humans throughout the galaxy, they would likely do suicide runs designed to wipe out all the humans like their drones do in darts when their Hive or Hives are taken out.
                        Desperate times, desperate measures. What did they have to lose? The hologram tells us that at some given point in time, they were quickly overwhelmed without much hope of saving anybody. Leaving the humans on their planets or trying to save them all is a death sentence anyway. Some would be killed, the rest farmed.

                        If you take their food supply away from them, even for a relatively short period of time say a couple months, it's over for them. We've seen what happens when the food is scarce, civil wars all over. This would be even worse, nothing left anywhere for them to feed except Wraiths.

                        They should've retreated using the gate using small teams, evacuate everybody to Atlantis and/or relocate them in the surrounding system. Funny thing in Stargate is that evacuations can be done literally in a couple hours. Just zip in and out of the gate.

                        I wouldn't engage the Wraith unless its to buy time to use the Aurora-class fleet to destroy my own labs, facilities and other infrastructure that could possibly fall into enemy hands. In and out, quickly. Todd says in an episode that the Ancients were careless and basically left ZedPMs scattered all over the Galaxy. They used those to power their clone facilities presumably. Take that away from them, they lost their number superiority.

                        All they had to do was last long enough just like a medieval siege. If Atlantis by itself was able to last so long under fire from their whole armada, I can't see why a fleet of Aurora-Class + support from Atlantis couldn't keep them at bay long enough to defeat them. Famine and civil wars would've finished the Wraith relatively quickly. Worse comes to worst, evacuate as many humans as you can towards Earth and self-destruct Atlantis after. That would be the Dunkirk of SGA.

                        The Ancients were an incredibly intelligent race indeed, but not so advanced in warfare and combat strategies. I guess this is what happens when you're on top of the food chain for too long, you forget what it is to fight for survival. The Asgards faced a similar problem when confronted with the Replicators.

                        2. Without energy-to-matter convertors to feed them all, they'd die. The Ancients have never been seen with that technology, only the Asgard have.
                        We haven't seen how they feed themselves exactly either. I could see something like the Aschen have, a couple farm planets that could easily funnel huge quantities of food straight from the gate. I'd rather not focus on this particular point, since the whole air/food/water aspect wasn't really something TBTB put too much importance on throughout the whole franchise, to the exception of maybe SGU in ''Air'' and a couple other episodes. It's always assumed everybody's fed and well pretty much.

                        3. This is a "noble" trail of tears scenario. You're advocating taking people from their homes and forcing them into refugee camps because their Ancient superiors think it's best for them. Humans are stubborn, attached to what they've built, and not necessarily as capable of seeing the big picture as the Ancients would be. You'd 100% have people fighting the Ancients and needing to be forcibly marched through the gate for this to work. Then you'd have people fighting each other on the planet you sent them to, requiring the Ancients to deploy "security measures," which are basically targets for insurgencies to go after.
                        Absolutely, I'd say at most 50% of them would come willingly, the rest would have to be forcibly removed or stunned, which can be done without much harm done. The rest that run away would probably end up getting doggybagged for Wraithsnacks, which would convince the most stubborn eventually to hop-in the Ancient train.

                        Keep in mind I am not suggesting this lightly, this is war, nasty guerilla war. As Churchill named it, the ''Ungentlemanly warfare'' has to be employed when faced with certain destruction. We are talking about the survival of the human species in the galaxy, it is a last stand moment. The outcome of what I suggest could not possibly be any worse than what happened in the canon.

                        4. You're potentially talking about hundreds of billions, maybe even more than a trillion people considering there were hundreds to thousands of human worlds with some percentage of them being at various advanced states 10,000 years ago (the Athosians had cities) and the Wraith, who need to feed 3-4 times a year, had enough food on hand to amass enough numbers to threaten the Ancient's technological superiority.
                        Still as we've discussed previously the amount of people isn't that great if you consider how many planets a single system solar could have, that would be potentially habitable in SG-verse. Most of them are small settlements of a couple thousands, sure it is a LOT of people still but nothing compared to us on Earth. You could settle them all on a couple systems or so. They wouldn't like it, but I'm sure getting your life sucked out of your chest is convincing enough to leave your home behind. Some will stay inevitably.

                        Well, they didn't escape a superpower. They decided to pack up and leave rather than continue to try to co-exist with technology hating religious fanatics. It's hard to predict that they would see the appearance of the Stargates and find a way to use them to target you billions of light years away. How would they even power one of those gates to dial the Milky Way, let along figure out how to use one with the absence of DHDs? If the seed ships proved the Ancient's undoing, it probably happened because the Ancients weren't able to conceive that ascension was possible at the very early stage of their development when the Destiny was built as ascended Ori were likely responsible.
                        I am not dismissing that they might've encountered Destiny, and backtracked its way back to the MW. I think that would be a very interesting plot twist. What I was trying to say is that the Ancients surely knew what the Ori were capable of, I mean, they were on the same level prior to their departure it's safe to assume they would discover similar technologies as well.

                        Of course, if ascended Ori were responsible, it's possible that the seed ships did avoid their galaxy, but were detected flying through neighboring galaxies.
                        Could very well be, and maybe that would be explained by the fact that the Ori might've achieved ascension way before the Ancients, somehow cheating their way in. Anubis did it, I'm sure the Ori cheated their way quick enough, they seemed power hungry.

                        Maybe, but as people have mentioned, the idea of the Ancients as a civilization spanning tens of millions of years leaves A LOT of unaccounted for time. Their civilization could have fallen to an enemy at some point after the Destiny was launched, requiring them to rebuild from the ashes.
                        Which is why I think there are so many possible scenarios, there's too much left for interpretation.

                        They don't need to be flying alongside the Destiny, they just need to be "on hand" to assist in emergencies and perform repairs. A repair fleet could mostly remain within the void between galaxies, dipping into the outer edges of a galaxy only to refuel and collect raw materials, all the while being within a reasonable distance to provide added muscle if needed.
                        They would need to be flying alongside, the Destiny is constantly moving, never stopping. At some point even in Hyperspace speeds you would need days if not weeks to reach the ship. That would mean pretty much condemning these ships to a constant life on the road, they couldn't go back to resupply because that would be going all the way back out to catch up to the ship, if that's even possible (we don't know if they had discovered hyperdrives yet).

                        Without the Earth crew, the Destiny likely would have encountered the drone fleet by itself and, in the previous galaxy from season 1, it didn't manage to be covert enough to avoid the attention of an alien species all on its own.
                        I agree 100%. I like to think that the SGU team saved the ship from certain destruction, you're right the Drones would've destroyed it as soon as it refueled probably. Maybe the show would've revealed that Ascended Ancients somehow influenced Eli, maybe gave him the idea, since they themselves couldn't board the Destiny in any ways, they needed boots on the ground. A rogue ancient like Oma perhaps, the initiator of the Destiny project in ascended form seeing his legacy going down the drain acted in defiance of the collective.
                        Spoiler:
                        I don’t want to be human. I want to see gamma rays, I want to hear X-rays, and I want to smell dark matter. Do you see the absurdity of what I am? I can’t even express these things properly, because I have to—I have to conceptualize complex ideas in this stupid, limiting spoken language, but I know I want to reach out with something other than these prehensile paws, and feel the solar wind of a supernova flowing over me. I’m a machine, and I can know much more.

                        Comment


                          #27
                          Part I:

                          Originally posted by Chaka-Z0 View Post
                          Come on, not even one small turkey-peeking in all those years?

                          ...

                          They could've secretly fed on neighboring planets...
                          That's not what the hologram describes.

                          In time, a thousand worlds bore the fruit of life in this form. Then one day our people stepped foot upon a dark world where a terrible enemy slept.

                          It seems like they did not pay that world any mind for awhile. It's not clear for how long. The first sentence suggests that they seeded worlds over a long stretch of time. Maybe they were still at it relatively recently, so they only left it alone for a few thousand years (they had plenty of other worlds to devote time to) before checking back in and finding the primitive Wraith.

                          This contact may have allowed the Wraith to figure out how to use a Stargate and they may have spent some time raiding worlds on foot before developing space travel. Like the insects they are, the Ancients may have had a difficult time eradicating them all. I've suggested before a purely speculative idea that perhaps spacegates were a partially enacted plan by the Ancients to stop the flow of Wraith through the gate network during this era, and it was halted before fully being enacted because the Wraith developed their first ships. In any case, that they can create Wraith worshipers means they may have been able to fast track their scientific development as they could have put converted advanced human scientists and maybe even Ancients to work, so they didn't necessarily need to spend too much time on the loose in the gate network before they had ships of their own.

                          Desperate times, desperate measures. What did they have to lose?
                          Lives lost, new enemies, and time devoted to a project doomed to failure is what they have to lose.

                          You're actually talking about a long process of years where the Ancients go around, trying to relocate humans from thousands of worlds one-by-one. Transporting millions or billions of people on a single planet through a Stargate takes a long time in and of itself. First you have to quell any resistance using military might. Then you have you line up everyone to file through the gate in 38 minute intervals (and/or drag them through). During which, it's possible the Wraith will find out what you're up to and seek to disrupt your efforts.

                          First they can try dialing in. If they can do so faster than you can dial out, they'll have locked you out for 38 minutes. Do you want to play that game for days, weeks, months?

                          Second, they can launch an attack. How many Ancient ships are going to be sitting in orbit during this whole process? Enough to fend off all the ships the Wraith would be able to marshal in the months that it takes to relocate a high population world? Not if the plan is to do this in any reasonable amount of time as there are thousands of worlds to do this on, so it can only be accomplished in a semi-reasonable time frame by trying to hit as many planets at once. That, though, separates the Ancient fleet into small, easy to beat targets. If you don't separate the fleet and do concentrate them when relocating high pop. worlds, that's also a nice target as the Wraith then would know where a high number of Ancient ships are for months at a time and have ample opportunity to marshal a massive fleet of their own to ambush them. The Ancients then have to either decide to retreat, ending this whole scheme as they're just going to be made to retreat again at some other planet before fully finishing the job, or they would have to stay and try to protect the operation, thus risking the destruction of their ships.

                          Third, because this will take years, the Wraith would have time to catch on and respond in other ways, including leaving ships in defensive orbit around as many worlds as possible. That could mean a small task force that they know they're going to lose to an Ancient assault, but whose purpose would be to get a message out so the Wraith could immediately know what the Ancients are up to and begin marshaling a fleet. It could also mean enough ships to threaten the surface with orbital bombardment if the Ancients don't retreat. Yes, the Wraith would be killing potential food, but remember that the Ancients are not willing to sacrifice humans in the now to destroy the Wraith, even if it means they risk losing and more people will die in the future. Hence why they shut down the Attero device.

                          Fourth, the Wraith have their own territory and getting ships into it to facilitate the relocation of human populations would be even more difficult. The Ancients tried to breach Wraith territory with ZPM powered ships late in the war and lost them. They may have had more luck early in the war, but getting ships into orbit over planets within the Wraith sphere of influence and defending that spot while marching people through the gate is even more difficult.

                          Additionally problematic is that there were very possibly advanced human societies allied with the Ancients against the Wraith. Making enemies of them is not a good idea as it could easily derail the entire war effort if any allies started fighting back against the Ancients or if insurgencies who are now afraid of the Ancient's new tyrannical tactics decided to infiltrate ally human populations and engage in sabotage and bombings. The Ancient facility from "Trinity" was build on a world inhabited by humans. The Ancients probably traded with them, had various forms of interaction with them, maybe even considered them combat allies. That setup was likely repeated on a number of planets and they're nice points of infiltration for outside human groups or even for members of those communities who dislike what they were hearing and fear they would be next.

                          If you take their food supply away from them, even for a relatively short period of time say a couple months, it's over for them. We've seen what happens when the food is scarce, civil wars all over. This would be even worse, nothing left anywhere for them to feed except Wraiths.

                          They should've retreated using the gate using small teams, evacuate everybody to Atlantis and/or relocate them in the surrounding system. Funny thing in Stargate is that evacuations can be done literally in a couple hours. Just zip in and out of the gate.
                          It would take years, actually. There wouldn't be a shift where one day they have worlds to capture humans from and the next they don't. It would be a long process where the Wraith would fight to try to slow down and stop it from happening. As it went on, their food supply would slowly decline, leading to slow declines of their own population.

                          If there was some way to magically make it so one day the Wraith could harvest humans from populated worlds and the next they couldn't, it would still take years. First they would go through their supply of captured humans (they keep a number on hand in stasis pods and had food transport ships during the war), then they would cannibalize their drones. The latter would, at most, cut their numbers in half every few months, but it probably would take longer as they'd ration and conserve. One option would to to keep as many Wraith in stasis in possible when traveling so that they wouldn't need to feed as often.

                          Doing that is a problem today because food is so scarce that Hives mostly travel alone so as to maximize the amount of ground the Wraith can cover as they jump from planet to planet. As a result, they need all their drones to be operational ready as it would take too long to wake them all up from stasis and get them to their darts if a Hive comes under attack. This is less of a problem when they can fly in fleets as they can designate a set number of ships at the head of a fleet to be on active alert. Those could be staffed with Wraith that are always awake and they can spearhead a counterattack while the rest of the fleet wakes up.

                          The war only lasted a hundred years. This is too slow and dangerous of a process to do by the time the war is considered unwinnable any other way. You describe an unrealistically easy process of just sending a few people in and telling everyone on a planet to spend a couple of hours getting through the gate. You don't consider that it would only take a couple of hours for the village planets that exist today, not the high population, city based worlds that used to be around. You also don't consider well enough that human populations are not pawns who, like armies and civilians in a video games, will just go where you order them to. Some people will trust the Ancients and evacuate if desperate enough, but you need warships and authoritarian tactics if you want to do this to everyone (not just stunners as you suggest later).

                          Also: Civil war happens today because there is no other solution absent finding Earth. Here there is: attack, destroy, and stop the Ancients. When they have a goal they can work together quite well, and with the Ancients around they can reduce their own population by sending excess numbers to die attacking the Ancients rather than fighting among themselves.

                          I wouldn't engage the Wraith unless its to buy time to use the Aurora-class fleet to destroy my own labs, facilities and other infrastructure that could possibly fall into enemy hands. In and out, quickly. Todd says in an episode that the Ancients were careless and basically left ZedPMs scattered all over the Galaxy.
                          Not exactly. What he said is that they sent ZPM powered ships deep into Wraith territory as part of an offensive designed to beat back the Wraith. Some of those ships were captured and their ZPMs pilfered. As mentioned earlier, sending ships into Wraith territory would be necessary to try to relocate people on some number of planets.

                          Comment


                            #28
                            Part II:

                            All they had to do was last long enough just like a medieval siege. If Atlantis by itself was able to last so long under fire from their whole armada, I can't see why a fleet of Aurora-Class + support from Atlantis couldn't keep them at bay long enough to defeat them ... Worse comes to worst, evacuate as many humans as you can towards Earth and self-destruct Atlantis after.
                            Once we're talking about a siege, the number of Wraith who need to be awake goes way down. Most Ancient battleships won't be powered by ZPMs as there weren't enough to go around, and those are far easier to take out than Atlantis. Ones with ZPMs still need to be resupplied with drones, so they can only stay in the battle for so long before needing to be resupplied. Atlantis itself was able to survive for years against the Wraith's firepower (presumably after swapping out their ZPMs a bunch of times), but the Wraith don't need their darts at that point as it's the heavy weapons fire from Hives that are most effective. Hence, their Hives can operate on skeleton crews while most of the Wraith sleep at that point.

                            As for moving billions of humans to Earth, you're adding another level. First, only Atlantis can dial Earth so, without adjustments, you're talking about all the humans in the galaxy coming through Atlantis' control room. Occasionally they would have to break from sending people through to use ZPM power to slowly funnel them to Earth. That's billions of people coming through Atlantis' gate, being transported to the mainland, being flown back, and then being funneled through the gate again. Not only does this double the massive amount of time it would take, it also uses a ton of valuable ZPM power that is needed to defend against the Wraith's eventual attack, keeps the gate busy so the Ancients can't use it for their own purposes, and it puts disgruntled humans in a position to do damage to a high value target. Having people in Atlantis or near any Stargate attached to a ZPM (as it still would need to be if the Stargate is moved to the mainland) after forcing them from their homes is going to end badly.

                            You could switch and have extra control crystals made so that humans go directly from the planet that they are being moved from to Earth, but then you're also putting ZPMs on those planets, which would be targets for the Wraith and human insurgents. Alternatively, you could first move them to secure planets within the Pegasus galaxy that aren't existing cities/outposts and then use ZPMs to transport them to various planets in the Milky Way (not just Earth), so at least they're not going through Atlantis and there's less of a bottleneck, but it's still a long process and those ZPMs are still targets. However, you look at it, this is madness.

                            We haven't seen how they feed themselves exactly either. I could see something like the Aschen have, a couple farm planets that could easily funnel huge quantities of food straight from the gate. I'd rather not focus on this particular point, since the whole air/food/water aspect wasn't really something TBTB put too much importance on throughout the whole franchise, to the exception of maybe SGU in ''Air'' and a couple other episodes. It's always assumed everybody's fed and well pretty much.
                            I don't agree that they ignored food as an issue. Sg-1 always carried food with them on missions and the writers regularly made a point of them having to eat or ration (if need be) what they had available to them. There were also plenty of instances where local populations came up to Sg-1 with food they wanted to share, where Sg-1 shared the food they carried on them, and instances where Earth offered or gave people supplies, which mostly commonly meant food and medicine. Then, of course, there's the finale where Carter figured out how to use Asgard tech to create an energy to matter convertor because there's no other way the concept would have worked and they weren't about it ignore it. Here are some of many examples:

                            The Jaffa rebellion needs food, Earth is willing to provide it:

                            JAFFA MALE
                            An army has weapons! An army has food!

                            KYTANO
                            In time we shall have weapons, and enough food and drink to sustain us for as long as it takes to achieve victory. Until then, we have our freedom. We have our brothers…and sisters.

                            ...

                            HAMMOND
                            I've already ordered food and medical supplies prepared for transport. What we need to discuss in more detail is what kind of weapons and how many.

                            ...

                            DANIEL
                            We also offer food and supplies for your people.


                            -The Warrior: Season 5, Episode 18.

                            Here advanced humans contact Earth and ask for assistance in their battle against an enemy. The first thing Daniel mentions in terms of what they can provide them is food. This is a theme in so many episodes, I promise you. Oh and it's even mentioned how those people had been feeding themselves in a bunker prior to contacting Earth because the writers do not ignore the realities of food consumption:

                            HAMMOND
                            All right, assuming they make contact again and assuming they transmit the coordinates to their world, what kind of help can we seriously offer?

                            DANIEL
                            Err, food, clothing, medical supplies.

                            ...

                            FARRELL
                            This food you have brought is most flavorable

                            O'NEILL

                            (drinking the wine)
                            We can do much better, believe me.

                            [Daniel takes a bite of the Eurondan food. He does not seem to like it.]

                            FARRELL
                            You must understand that we have survived on hydroponically grown yeasts for many years.


                            -The Other Side: Season 4, Episode 2.

                            Here Sg-1 is trapped on a prison world. How do they eat? Time in the episode is devoted to explaining the process by which the aliens supply their food:

                            O'NEILL

                            Then P2A-509 it is.
                            (getting to his feet)
                            Linea? Do they send food—and I'll use that term loosely—does it come through the Gate on a regular basis?

                            LINEA
                            Every day, at the same time.


                            -Prisoners: Season 2, Episode 3.

                            I could go on like this for pages, and I'm tempted to because your comment baffles me given the volume with which this actually comes up. In another case, refugees are brought through the gate and have to spend time in the SGC and the issue of how they will get fed is brought up. In Atlantis, they talked about a potential food shortage by the 6th episode, so Teyla introduced them to the Genii specifically because she knew them as farmers who the Athosians previously traded with. Later they get resupplied by Earth and talk about that, they come through the gate with fresh fruit that they've been gifted, and so on and so forth.

                            Absolutely, I'd say at most 50% of them would come willingly, the rest would have to be forcibly removed or stunned, which can be done without much harm done. The rest that run away would probably end up getting doggybagged for Wraithsnacks, which would convince the most stubborn eventually to hop-in the Ancient train.
                            And how many are going to shoot back? Or set off bombs both in the moment and later as retribution? You know what people love? Knowing their family members were taken through the gate by the an arrogant, technologically superior race never to be seen against and told they should trust that they'll be okay. Those who do run and don't end up as Wraith food are not going to be happy. And that's assuming a planetary wide operation to relocate people is even successfully, resulting in some percentage of people hiding in the mountains or underground where Ancient sensors can't locate them. If people who don't want to go through the gate and don't like seeing family members forcibly stunned and dragged away want to stop it, they are going to marshal an attack force and go after the Ancients as they are grabbing more people and/or moving them through the gate. Hit and run tactics by an inferior foe can do a lot to slow down and even stop (depending on the level of force the Ancients have available to them and the level of technology the invaded planet has) the Ancients altogether.

                            Then there's the issue of unhappy governments. Do any of them have nuclear weapons or any kind of military forces capable of doing damage to Ancient ground, aerial, and/or space targets? There's a reason why the Wraith don't just go in with stunners against societies like the Satedans and it's because they can't; such a society can put up so much resistance that the only way to quell them is with heavy, lethal military force. You appear to be imagining the Ancients going around to a bunch of village planets and mopping up people like the Wraith did to the Athosians, but the reality of the matter is the Ancients would be going to probably a good number of planets where they have to engage in bombing military targets and using other forms of lethal force to stop all major forms resistance, which means a lot of people are going to die.

                            Keep in mind I am not suggesting this lightly, this is war, nasty guerilla war. As Churchill named it, the ''Ungentlemanly warfare'' has to be employed when faced with certain destruction. We are talking about the survival of the human species in the galaxy, it is a last stand moment. The outcome of what I suggest could not possibly be any worse than what happened in the canon.
                            Churchill made an agreement to cede Polish territory to the U.S.S.R., which forced Polish people off their land and compensated the Polish government by giving them German land, which forced Germans to do likewise. Churchill was also an imperialist who lamented the human rights abuses of others while the British were still holding on to colonies that did not grant equal rights to non-British people. You're using attitudes that we are critical of today in the hopes that we do not fall back into them to defend an extremely impractical and highly authoritarian plan that requires the Ancients to choose to enslave humanity in order to "save" them. Do you realize how authoritarianism always cites people's best interests when backing whatever horrific act of violence against the people they seek to implement?

                            You think this would be easy, I get that, but it's not and the type of people who would be willing to try to carry out such a plan, knowing what the realities of it are, are not the type of people who would stop at just killing anyone who stands in their way of moving people around like cattle without proper supplies to care for them. This is one step down from the Asuran plan of getting rid of the Wraith by just wiping all humans out. At least that plan had the potential to actually work (bottlenecks make this one huge, time consuming mess), and if carried out by the Ancients they could just recreate all human life after anyway. And why not? We're talking about the surviving of humans as a species, after all. If ending the lives of all humans and recreating them anew is the only way to do that, does not the end justify the means?

                            Comment


                              #29
                              Part III:

                              Still as we've discussed previously the amount of people isn't that great if you consider how many planets a single system solar could have, that would be potentially habitable in SG-verse. Most of them are small settlements of a couple thousands, sure it is a LOT of people still but nothing compared to us on Earth. You could settle them all on a couple systems or so.
                              You're citing how many people live and in what state they are in during the present day, not imagining what life was like 10,000 years ago. At the start of the series, the Wraith were estimated at having less than a hundred Hives and however many cruisers throughout the whole galaxy. These are numbers that serve to make them a threat to Earth who has limited supplies, resources, and ability to control/access Ancient technology. They would, however, be wiped out quickly and easily by the actual Ancients during almost any point during the war. The reason for the discrepancy is that, in expanding their numbers to combat the Ancients, they overfed and over reproduced (and over cloned), resulting in humans not being numerous enough to sustain them. Thus, the Wraith went through a tremendous period of decline where they probably fought one or more civil wars before getting to the point where they decided that the only way they could survive was to hibernate for hundreds of years at a time.

                              Before the Wraith came into the picture, there was nothing stopping humans from reproducing to their heart's content for an undetermined period of time. We don't know all of those specifics, but we do know that in order for the Wraith to have been as numerous as they would have needed to be to challenge the Ancients, there would have had to have been a lot more humans than there currently are. The largest planetary population numbers that have been given in the series have all been in the thousands, suggesting that the total population of humans that the Wraith know about, galaxy-wide, is only in the millions. This is also suggested by the Wraith Keeper in the pilot who seemed to indicate that her "feeding ground" did not exceed millions of people and also indicated that there used to be billions of humans 10,000 years ago:

                              WRAITH: Tell me of Earth. How many more are there of your kind? (Again, Sumner tries not to let her into his mind.) Thousands? Millions? (delighted) More. Our feeding ground has not been so rich in ten thousand years.

                              I am not dismissing that they might've encountered Destiny, and backtracked its way back to the MW. I think that would be a very interesting plot twist. What I was trying to say is that the Ancients surely knew what the Ori were capable of, I mean, they were on the same level prior to their departure it's safe to assume they would discover similar technologies as well.
                              They weren't at the same level. The Alterans were scientists who tried to keep their technological developments secret while outwardly pretending to have the same, primitive, medieval lifestyle as that of the Ori. The Alterans decided to leave because the Ori had "amassed armies" to move against them and the Alterans were unwilling to use their advanced technology to fight them.

                              To advance technologically, the Ori would have had to undergone a dramatic cultural shift and, in the process, shed their efforts to stamp out scientific advancements. In which case, their reason for opposing the Alterans would no longer be in play and a reconciliation would have been possible. I therefore assume that the Ori never advanced technologically and instead only evolved until, through meditation and careful reflection, some were able to ascend.

                              Could very well be, and maybe that would be explained by the fact that the Ori might've achieved ascension way before the Ancients, somehow cheating their way in. Anubis did it, I'm sure the Ori cheated their way quick enough, they seemed power hungry.
                              They could have also ascended at around the same time since large numbers of Ancients were capable of ascending 5-10 million years ago when the plague hits. This would suggest that ascension was possible previously and may have occurred in smaller numbers for awhile.

                              They would need to be flying alongside, the Destiny is constantly moving, never stopping.
                              The Destiny stops at various points based on information that the seed ships give it and stays there for a period of time, collecting information, before zipping off to the next point it wants to stop at. When the people from the Icarus base arrived, Rush told the computer of their needs and it included stopping points that allowed the crew to gather supplies, but it was doing that all along for its own reasons. That's how the aliens found it and it's why it had so much battle damage.

                              Do you remember in season 2 when Eli proposed taking the Destiny off its course of exploration where it zigged and zagged to make various stops and Rush was worried that, by missing those stops, they might miss out on an important piece of the puzzle? Just as Eli instead took the Destiny on a direct path out of the galaxy, any support ships hanging around the edges of the galaxy could catch the Destiny by arranging to make a direct path to one of its future stops.

                              Comment


                                #30
                                Originally posted by Xaeden View Post
                                Part I:
                                This is a representation of the text bomb you just dropped on me. The guy with the Montreal shirt is me.

                                You will need to give me some time lol. I'll start with Part 1.

                                That's not what the hologram describes.

                                In time, a thousand worlds bore the fruit of life in this form. Then one day our people stepped foot upon a dark world where a terrible enemy slept.
                                Thanks for digging that out (again). Well the hologram to be honest is so vague that it almost seems it's an ascended ancient doing the talking... wait..it is.

                                it's not much to go on, unfortunately. I guess it is implied that they completely forgot about the Wraith and when they came to check back on them, as you suggest. You know some people forget their car keys at home, others forget about the couple thousand people they left on a planet, for a thousand years.

                                It seems like they did not pay that world any mind for awhile. It's not clear for how long. The first sentence suggests that they seeded worlds over a long stretch of time.
                                They probably tried some crazy science experiments that went wrong. Maybe they seeded gates throughout the galaxy then seeded life all at once. It was impossible for them to monitor every planet. The primitive Wraith could've burrowed deep underground and constructed nests with some sort of crude stasis tech, a cocoon would be believable.

                                I've suggested before a purely speculative idea that perhaps spacegates were a partially enacted plan by the Ancients to stop the flow of Wraith through the gate network during this era, and it was halted before fully being enacted because the Wraith developed their first ships.
                                It was my opinion as well, and I would also say that the darts were probably the first ship designed by the wraith as a countermeasure. They were then able to use the spacegates and that increased their progress even more, to the dismay of the Ancients.

                                We could also speculate on the nature of the psychic link between Wraith. It can reach subspace if a bunch gather up, like a radio antenna, as we've seen done by the white-dressed wraith test subjects. Maybe they were able to triangulate the position of the gates by connecting to each-other on both side of the wormholes, and figure out its position in space to calculate the symbols. This would've pretty much enabled Wraith to crack the entire network in a short amount of time.

                                You're actually talking about a long process of years where the Ancients go around, trying to relocate humans from thousands of worlds one-by-one.
                                I know exactly what I am suggesting. The gate of course wouldn't be sufficient for what you said, puddle jumpers would be use to try and evacuate as many as possible. But that's not what the Ancients did because the Ancients are too good for such drastic measures, as proven by this transcript which might shed some more light on the matter:

                                - Before I sleep -
                                Spoiler:
                                ALT-WEIR: The Atlanteans sent a delegation protected by their most powerful warships in the faint hope of negotiating a truce. One on one, the Atlantean ships were more powerful, but the Wraith were so many. After that great battle, it was only a matter of time.


                                There we have it. I'm glad I found this because it confirms what I said about the Wraith pulling a Battlestar Galactica. Only in this case, the Ancients seemed foolish enough to go all-in for a suicide mission instead of using these ships to provide support.

                                First they can try dialing in. If they can do so faster than you can dial out, they'll have locked you out for 38 minutes. Do you want to play that game for days, weeks, months?
                                The cloak on the puddle jumpers is an immense advantage for these types of missions. An Aurora-class warship could drop in behind a moon, send a couple cloaked jumpers to scout and shotgun the gate before the Wraith would even be aware of their presence. One of the greatest flaw of the Wraith is their hyperdrives, which they cannot use profusely, that means their motherships can only travel so fast. Quick guerilla style attacks would prove the most effective, the Hives would be on constant movement unable to catch up, which would make them vulnerable to be picked individually amidst the confusion.

                                Second, they can launch an attack. How many Ancient ships are going to be sitting in orbit during this whole process?
                                Assuming there is one hive ship per inhabited planet, which is unlikely unless the Wraith had 1000 hives (we've seen them with what, 100-200?), a cloaked jumper coming out of the gate via Atlantis would tag the ship and send its location to a fleet of warships standing by in hyperspace. They would then dial-in, get as many as they can back to Atlantis or into jumpers, then quickly leave.

                                The key to this tactic is not to try to save everybody, but to bait the hives into a specific location while a surprise evacuation takes place elsewhere. Repeat that over many years, and many would be saved. The Ancients should've relied on their strategic advantages, speed and might. Two aurora-class ship dropping from hyperspace would instantly destroy a small wraith fleet.

                                That, though, separates the Ancient fleet into small, easy to beat targets.
                                Actually having small guerrilla squadrons would've been the best option. The thing with the Ancients is that their HQ is basically invulnerable. Atlantis doesn't even have to be defended by one single ship, the shield will hold a continuous strike for many years. They can use every single ship at their disposal for offensive actions, deceptions and strategic retreats.

                                Third, because this will take years, the Wraith would have time to catch on and respond in other ways, including leaving ships in defensive orbit around as many worlds as possible.
                                They would probably do the opposite actually, because of the flaw I mentionned earlier. Their hyperdrives are slow. They can't afford to leave hives everywhere because they can't regroup fast enough in case they need backup. This is exactly the reason why the Wraith came up with the peace treaty betrayal, they needed their ships to be all in the same spot to win.

                                Yes, the Wraith would be killing potential food, but remember that the Ancients are not willing to sacrifice humans in the now to destroy the Wraith, even if it means they risk losing and more people will die in the future. Hence why they shut down the Attero device.
                                Yes for sure, obviously my suggestion differs greatly from the Ancients style, they would never do this, which is why they lost.

                                Fourth, the Wraith have their own territory and getting ships into it to facilitate the relocation of human populations would be even more difficult. The Ancients tried to breach Wraith territory with ZPM powered ships late in the war and lost them.
                                Yep... as described here

                                - Spoils of War -

                                Spoiler:
                                McKAY: There's one thing I don't understand. Back when you defeated the Ancients, how did you get your hands on a ZedP.M?

                                TODD: The Lanteans were powerful but careless. Believing their ships were unbeatable, they sent them deeper and deeper into Wraith-controlled territory, trying to weed us out. It took months, but eventually we were able to capture three of them, each one powered by a ZeeP.M.

                                McKAY: At which point you brought them back here.

                                TODD: Within weeks, our army had grown to hundreds of times its original size. From that point on, the tide of war turned in our favour and there was nothing the Lanteans could do.


                                Todd clearly mentions that the only reason why the Ancients lost is because they wanted to crush the Wraith too fast. I'll concede that after the fact, it would become really hard to pull an evacuation. The Ancients commanders in chief did not distribute their resources intelligently.

                                If there was some way to magically make it so one day the Wraith could harvest humans from populated worlds and the next they couldn't, it would still take years.
                                I disagree, how long did it take for the Wraith alliance to fracture after the Huffman drug outbreak? It was almost instantaneous. I can't remember which episode but I recall someone saying that the Wraith are not as unified as we were led to believe. Like Alexander the Great, at some point the soldiers become tired of endless fighting over years and years, and the army inevitably will fracture.

                                You also don't consider well enough that human populations are not pawns who, like armies and civilians in a video games, will just go where you order them to. Some people will trust the Ancients and evacuate if desperate enough, but you need warships and authoritarian tactics if you want to do this to everyone (not just stunners as you suggest later).
                                Okay the stunners might've been a bit extreme (I really can't imagine an Ancient manhandling people like that). But, they could be very ''convincing''. I'm sure many would've stayed, but many would've joined forces. They could've used the Ark of Truth in a very unethical way, I don't know. 100 years is enough time to pretty much contact everybody, if as I suggested they would've tried to divert the Wraith's attention as much as possible for evacuations.

                                Not exactly. What he said is that they sent ZPM powered ships deep into Wraith territory as part of an offensive designed to beat back the Wraith. Some of those ships were captured and their ZPMs pilfered. As mentioned earlier, sending ships into Wraith territory would be necessary to try to relocate people on some number of planets.
                                Sure its conjecture from my part, but we know they left some ZPM in a couple places such as the Tower planet. There surely was more that could've been captured after the Wraith gained ground.
                                Spoiler:
                                I don’t want to be human. I want to see gamma rays, I want to hear X-rays, and I want to smell dark matter. Do you see the absurdity of what I am? I can’t even express these things properly, because I have to—I have to conceptualize complex ideas in this stupid, limiting spoken language, but I know I want to reach out with something other than these prehensile paws, and feel the solar wind of a supernova flowing over me. I’m a machine, and I can know much more.

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