Dialling the Gate in Space

[Conor]

Massive spoilers for 'First Strike' Dont read!!


No really, dont!


So at the end of 'First Strike', when Atlantis is floating in the middle of nowhere and only has a 24h power supply, Teyla asks McKay if they can dial out. He says no because the gate has to be calibrated to a specific location. Now to dial Athos for example, the only symbol they'll need to change is the point of origin! There's only 39 bloody symbols, how hard can it be?!?

How can McKay forget that??

[Night Spring]

That "point of origin" thing never really made sense, because there are way more than 39 gates in the gate network, so if each gate needs a unique "point of origin" symbol, they'd need thousands if not tens of thousands of symbols instead of just 39.

That said, it seems to me that McKay's statement at the end of First Strike that they cannot dial out needs a lot of background explanations as to exactly why not that got left out to keep things simple and heighten dramatic tension. We know from the intergalatic bridge and some prior examples in SG-1 that gates can be moved to another location and still function. I'm pretty sure the situation will be expanded upon in the season opener, with McKay saying we need X, Y and Z in order to dial out.

[Conor]

Yeah but he PG gates are digital, and with corealtive updates, the symbols should change (A hell of a lot of speculation) Grr, the PoO is very confusing! We should have an episode where its fully explained! In 'Bad Guys', The Earth PoO was blatantly obvious on an alien DHD. Maybe, it depends on the constellation your nearest to? So as long as they put that symbol in, a wormhole will be established? Grr confusion

[mcbarr]

Every planet in the galaxy has a unique point of origin symbol, which, in fact, must be just a graphic representation of the PO mathematical position in the galaxy. Thus, the point of origin symbols are greater in numbers than the 39 (standard 38 + PO) Stargate/DHD symbols. Some symbols must be both POs and regular gate symbols used to set the wormhole destination and so on. The Earth symbol is a good example, I think.

In First Strike, no one of Atlantis' DHD symbols correspond to their current position in space anymore. So if they want to dial the gate again, they have to reprogram their DHD for its PO symbol to reflect their current galactic position or whatever. That's what I think anyway...

[Night Spring]

Assuming that I punched in the numbers into my calculator correctly, the number of possible gate combinations at 38 symbols with 6 symbols per address is:
38*37*36*35*34*33=65,593,780,560

There's no way anyone came up with unique symbols to represent each possible gate address. Just. No. Way.

Other than that, I agree that dialing out should be possible once they reprogram their DHD to reflect their current position.

[Conor]

Or they could make McKay's virtual model for a hyperspace window generator for the puddle jumpers and go fly to the midway station

[Elite Anubis Guard]

But the PoO is changable. Think of it as just being One on the dial. All he needs do is press 1. I mean, we've seen that. Earth's PoO isn't on any other Gate, neither is the...erm...Chair Aliens from Season 2 of SG1.

[Akai]

The point of origin isn't a constellation like the rest of the symbols. Each gate has its own unique point of origin symbol. The symbol itself doesn't mean anything like the constellation symbols do...they made separate POO symbols for the different gates to differentiate them from each other and to make the POO easily recognizable on the DHD (so you could still dial out if you're at an unfamiliar place). The programming in the DHD and in the SGC's dialing computer is what makes the POO work...the gate has to know where it is. The POO isn't actually "dialed" like the other symbols, it's just telling the gate "ok, open now". If the gate doesn't know where it is, that won't work. So the DHD has to be programmed with the current location in space (via the correlative update program, or in the SGC's case Carter's hacked stellar drift program) in order to connect. Again, to reiterate...the POO doesn't mean anything, it's basically just the enter key.

[mikeroq]

I thought the big button was the point of orgion since you press it after entering the symbols, just like on the jumper DHD you hit the button below the symbols

[mcbarr]

There's no way anyone came up with unique symbols to represent each possible gate address. Just. No. Way.

Sorry, I meant every planet with a Stargate has a unique point of origin symbol, not every planet/place in the galaxy. This confused lemming messed up...

The Ancients must have come up with PO symbols for every "networked" planet, though. Per instance, if there are 100.000 actual gates in the galaxy, there must be 100.000 point of origin symbols and so on.

But the PoO is changable. Think of it as just being One on the dial. All he needs do is press 1. I mean, we've seen that. Earth's PoO isn't on any other Gate, neither is the...erm...Chair Aliens from Season 2 of SG1.

I agree with you. And given the fact that Atlantis is not only a city, but also a starship, it should have some sort of PO automatic update device or something.

About Earth's PO, I think I've also spotted it on other MW gates, but then again, it could be just a minor plothole. Take a look:

[Elite Anubis Guard]

About Earth's PO, I think I've also spotted it on other MW gates, but then again, it could be just a minor plothole. Take a look:

Lol I can't say that stuck out to me in the episode. At least I didn't notice it unlike those backward Stargates

It makes no sense for the Earth PoO to be on other 'Gates, since the Gates use constellations as a point of reference, our PoO has no place on them gates. Unless it was that planets PoO too...

[mikeroq]

Well, it could be that its a stand in prop for ours, to cut costs. Like if our gate gets teleported somewhere else.

[SaberBlade]

About Earth's PO, I think I've also spotted it on other MW gates, but then again, it could be just a minor plothole. Take a look:

That's possibly just a production error. If the second production gate (the one used to represent offword gates when on a shoot) was made as an exact copy of the on set gate, then the Earth PoO should appear on a lot of gates.

--

When I saw that part, I did figure that they should have no problem dialing another world until I realised that they had no PoO. While they should have been a problem using an offword DHD, using Atlantis or a Jumper DHD shouldn't have been an issue (technically) as it's a generic button that doesn't have a symbol, so it should have worked because it essentially works as an automatic PoO button. No matter where they were, they shouldn't have a problem.

[Pharaoh Hamenthotep]

The first six symbols are the address where you want to go. six points in space to work out the exact location of a planet. each stargate is independant of every other, and they occasionally get moved from one planet to another. if you assume that the DHD is capable of determining where it is in space, then the seventh symbol acts as the second set of six co-ordinates. so you when you dial the seven symbol gate address its like telling the gate 'i want to go here' with the first six and 'i am here' with the seventh.

[RogueEntity]

This was explained in the Movie if I remember.
Their are 6 symbols which represent the six sides of a cube, the center of this cube being the rough area where the gate being dialed is located. The PoO represents the dialing gate and is the second point on the line between the two gates. Just like when drawing a line between two points, you need to know where you are, and where you are going. Atlantis is in a void between starsystems, intersteller space. It does not know where it is yet, so they cannot dial anywhere. There is probably a system that will recalibrate its location and allow outbound dialing again.