Children of the Gods (101)

[Platschu]

These ones are still much better than those major ones, when the stargate has got only 8 chevrons or when both side has got glyphs.... We would expect that some producer or supervisor will coordinate and check such things even if different VFX teams worked on the SG shows.

[AleksisMi]

the antarctic gate is earths gate, the gould brought the egypt gate with them etc.... they used space ships to move it for convenience to get more human slaves... and you know.... basically go visit "party" planet etc, the gould are big on parties, we just always get to see them when they are hung over after words

[Falcon Horus]

These ones are still much better than those major ones, when the stargate has got only 8 chevrons or when both side has got glyphs.... We would expect that some producer or supervisor will coordinate and check such things even if different VFX teams worked on the SG shows.

You would think so, wouldn't you.

[aretood2]

Yes please! Thank you!



RDA wasn't interested in playing O'Neil. He wanted the character to have more "humor" in a manner of speaking, less military rigid, so they changed him up a bit and added an second L.

For the longest time I didn't know that so when Jack mentioned the "other O'neil" with one "l" I really though it was a senseless random thing.

[lunasera]

11.34 on the puzzle. I love the first two episodes, they transition well from the movie, and are a great set up arc.

[Platschu]

What I was always missing from SG-1 to explain why Abydos had the address map of the Goa'uld ruled worlds? Has this planet played some dominant role in the past? Why would Ra bothered to put this list on a simple and obviously not that important naquadah mining colony instead of Dakara or any famous Goa'uld homeworld? Somehow I have always imagined that Abydos used to be a rich world, but then their climate has turned dry and the big gardens and plantation have gone as the desert has taken over the planet. Abydos could have been a meeting point of the Goa'uld dynasty as it was the closest to Earth, before our solar system has disappeared from their eyes (maybe Nox or Asgard cloaking could explain it).

[Xaeden]

He also had a chamber in the Abydos pyramid where he kept valuable possessions like the Eye of Ra.

I don't know about the idea that it was universally important in Goa'uld culture. In "Full Circle" (S6, E22), Daniel said that Anubis "looked everywhere Ra used to hang out" before trying Abydos. If it was once an important world, I'd imagine that it would be higher on Anubis' list of places to search. It sounds more like like Anubis thought it was just a backwater planet of no real importance, which may have been the point. What better hiding spot than somewhere that nobody would suspect you valued? Additionally, it's close to Earth, which means it was likely deep in Ra's territory, and nobody is going to be foolish to try to take a centrally positioned naquadah mine by ship like they might if it was near the border.

Why there would also be a list of all known gate addresses inscribed in stone, I don't know. Based on how the Goa'uld's genetic memory was depicted in "Absolute Power" (Daniel was able to use memories to create new technologies from scratch), Ra should have been able to easily commit all those addresses to memory. Maybe they were for Jaffa or human use before the rebellion on Earth. It's possible that back then humans were trusted to make naquadah shipments themselves and were thought to need very little oversight since they were toiling for their gods.

Ra found Earth and presumably shipped humans all throughout the galaxy for the other Goa'uld to use. We know very little about when the Goa'uld devolved into factionalism, but humans are a powerful resource for the Goa'uld, so if they were dolled out freely that suggests to me that the Goa'uld weren't prone to the same level of infighting back then. If that's the case, perhaps naquadah also flowed freely from planets like Abydos rather than solely serving the needs of an individual System Lord.

For all we know, cartouches were more common thousands of years ago and many simply didn't survive rebellions and the post Earth rebellion crackdown. A point in that favor is that there has been some evidence of gate addresses being carved elsewhere. Earth had the one to Abydos and could've had more that didn't survive or haven't been found yet. The planet from "The Other Side" (S4, E2) said that while digging up the gate they also found writing with Earth's address. Then there's the planet in "Cure" (S6, E10), which was also a Ra controlled world back in the day and also had a rather comprehensive list of addresses:

DOLLEN
But we haven't determined how to make a connection with the many worlds described in the writings in the temple.
cartouche

...

JONAS
From what we can piece together, Ra used this planet as his base of operations in this sector of the galaxy.

TEAL'C
Centuries later a rival Goa'uld named Shak'ran captured this world in battle, forcing Ra to abandon it.

On the other hand, the cartouche on Abydos was in a building separate from Ra's pyramid, and the one in "Cure" was in a temple alongside writings that detailed what happened after Ra abandoned the planet. Humans certainly could have added writing alongside Goa'uld carvings, but if the Abydos building was also a temple there's a good chance their worshipers created and maintained those buildings. The Jaffa have temples and priests to this day. Maybe they had outposts on those two planets way back when or maybe humans were allowed to run their own temples during that era. Based on how easily Bra'tac is able to come and go, the Jaffa seem to have free reign to the use the gate and the same probably would've applied to a hypothetical clergy class of humans as well.

Since Ra was the chief System Lord, maybe his priests were permitted to travel to worlds beyond his sphere of influence and that's why we've only see comprehensive cartouches on his planets, or maybe his priests were not supposed to know about all those addresses and were overstepping by collecting and recording them.

[Platschu]

I was thinking that if he was the Supreme Systemlord, maybe it was a list of his territory or domains. Maybe it was meant for his priests and Jaffas, just he was not interested to "update" it regularly. Or maybe the Goa'uld has used their own genetic memory as you have written, so their brain could store more informations than any computer.

Thanks for the info from "Cure" as I just wanted to say it would have been nice to find such lists on other Goa'uld controlled worlds.

[Xaeden]

True. It could be that the other System Lords started off as Ra's under lords, so he may well have considered all of those gated planets throughout the galaxy as belonging to him at one point. Unfortunately, we know very little about Goa'uld history, so how they organized themselves at the time is largely guesswork.

[JohnFourtyTwo]

True. It could be that the other System Lords started off as Ra's under lords, so he may well have considered all of those gated planets throughout the galaxy as belonging to him at one point. Unfortunately, we know very little about Goa'uld history, so how they organized themselves at the time is largely guesswork.

I've always wondered about this myself. With the introduction of the Tok'ra, it's possible to assume the Goa'uld weren't always evil. They probably started out as a true benevolent symbiotic relationship with their hosts but over time those relationships were corrupted with the introduction of less than desirable malevolent hosts and symbiotes. I wouldn't be a bit surprised if they weren't accidentally created by the Ancients like the Wraith were.

Unfortunately we'll never know anything more about the current Stargate universe until a new series continues where they left off, but the showrunners let a major backstory slip through their fingers by not developing the Goa'uld's history.

[Xaeden]

I've always wondered about this myself. With the introduction of the Tok'ra, it's possible to assume the Goa'uld weren't always evil. They probably started out as a true benevolent symbiotic relationship with their hosts but over time those relationships were corrupted with the introduction of less than desirable malevolent hosts and symbiotes

I don't know that they were ever fully good, but I wouldn't be surprised if there were more good symbiotes prior to Egeria who the Goa'uld eradicated.

It's been implied a few times that their reliance on sarcophagus technology made their behavior far more malicious than it needed to be. Hence the Tok'ra's aversion it.

[AmFor]

Today I had an oportunity to watch the first episode and I have a few questions.
1. How is it possible that Apophis was able to dial an adress to his planet when he was in SGC? We don't have a DHD and I doubt that his men could active it with a help of our dialing system.
2. Was it somehow said during the series why our team is not covered by ice anymore (after they travel to other worlds)? In the first episode we can see it clearly, but especially in later seasons I didn't notice it anymore.

And one thing that I have never realized- Walter was with us from the beginnig. I was really happy to see him there. With more hair ( like almost every man- ok except of Teal'c ), but it is him

[Falcon Horus]

1. How is it possible that Apophis was able to dial an adress to his planet when he was in SGC? We don't have a DHD and I doubt that his men could active it with a help of our dialing system.

Walter's keyboard has the symbols so basically a pocket DHD in a way.

But I think they added a scene about it in the "Director's cut"... Did you watch the DC or the original Showtime version? (did you still have Sha're naked in front of the camera or not)

2. Was it somehow said during the series why our team is not covered by ice anymore (after they travel to other worlds)? In the first episode we can see it clearly, but especially in later seasons I didn't notice it anymore.

Probably because it was too inconvenient to have them covered in the white stuff each time.

[AmFor]

Walter's keyboard has the symbols so basically a pocket DHD in a way.

But I think they added a scene about it in the "Director's cut"... Did you watch the DC or the original Showtime version? (did you still have Sha're naked in front of the camera or not)

I am not sure, it was on TV and yes Sha're was naked.

Probably because it was too inconvenient to have them covered in the white stuff each time.

Yes, I thought so.
Thank you

[Gatefan1976]

IIRC the snow effect was originally due to having 2 gates on earth.

[jelgate]

I think its vaguely mentioned in Red Sky why their is no icing effect

[Gatefan1976]

Possibly, It's just been so long since I watched this ep, or the "movie release" I could have forgotten.
Red Sky was a good ep though.

[Xaeden]

It's possible that Apophis' Jaffa manually dialed the gate. There's a cut where our view shifts from Apophis in the gateroom to Air Force personnel running down a hallway. It's a common technique to use an interstitial like this to represent a larger passage of time. Meaning, however many seconds that hallway scene lasts may not be the actual time that passed between the previous Apophis scene where the gate was off and the next where there's an active wormhole. I've heard that the added bit in the Final Cut that Falcon Horus is referring to involved Apophis verbally ordering his Jaffa to dial the gate, but it doesn't clarify how it's done. I've never seen the Final Cut, though, so you may want to watch it yourself to confirm.

As to your second question, here's the explanation from "Red Sky" that Jelgate mentioned:

CARTER
I don't know, sir. Margin of error in calculating planetary shift used to cause the rough ride, but we fixed it.

It overtly refers to how they are no longer hurled from the gate upon exiting, but likely applies to why they don't emerge with frost on their faces as well.

[EvaWallE7744]

Children of the Gods is a really good pilot in my mind, it tied back to and really expanded on parts of the movie well (yes, there are some inconsistencies like the alien form of Ra/his species and the pronunciation and/or the spelling of some names) but it pulls the viewer in and makes you want to see more and know what happens next. I like the MacGyver joke it was very relevant for its time and it was not only a nod to Richard Dean Anderson but also to the large number of his fans who followed him and tuned in to watch Stargate SG-1. I wish that the show had followed the team to visit the home planets of some of the refugees-I think it would have been easy enough to "visit" one of the people they had saved say maybe one of the last people that they had sent home (there were a lot of people there and the most we saw taken from a planet was 2 so it likely took a few days) and had had some time to get to know. I don't mind nudity in tv shows if it serves a point or if it is done tastefully (Stargate would go on to have more nudity from Michael Shanks and Amanda Tapping but it was done in good taste). In Children of the Gods it felt unnecessary as the scenes would have worked just as well without it. The part of this episode that has always been a stickler for me is the stargate is only reopened (to Abydos and Chulak) in order to find, retrieve and bring home the missing female sergeant without her Earth and humanity would not have gone back out into the universe. She, therefore, becomes an important part of the origins of the franchise but
1: we never hear her name spoken (at any time) and
2: as soon as Jack, Daniel and Sam are captured they forget all about the sergeant that it was their whole mission to go and rescue. It is really obvious when you re-watch the episode because it goes completely against Jack's motto of never leave your people behind(which we know from A Matter of Time that Jack has from personal experiences in his own past that makes him believe this).

[Falcon Horus]

I don't mind nudity in tv shows if it serves a point or if it is done tastefully (Stargate would go on to have more nudity from Michael Shanks and Amanda Tapping but it was done in good taste). In Children of the Gods it felt unnecessary as the scenes would have worked just as well without it.

While it was a Showtime thing at the time, I disagree with the notion it was unnecessary.

When I first watched Children of the Gods some eons ago (in 1998 or thereabouts), I didn't think that scene was problematic for any reason. It was just a part of the story. I had no idea Showtime wanted something more mature and quite frankly, I had no idea how prudish Americans can be about nudity and sex.

Anywho... I think it perfectly shows us that slaves were not seen as human beings. They were objects to be used and thereby inspected to the fullest of their existence. Amaunet didn't want a body she thought was imperfect, and it was clear she had no love for the sergeant but Sha're pleased her as a future host.

The scene doesn't strike me as anything but showing the vulnerability of Sha're in that moment. She's no longer a human being, but an object to be used and if necessary discarded.

But that's just how I see it...

The part of this episode that has always been a stickler for me is the stargate is only reopened (to Abydos and Chulak) in order to find, retrieve and bring home the missing female sergeant without her Earth and humanity would not have gone back out into the universe. She, therefore, becomes an important part of the origins of the franchise but
1: we never hear her name spoken (at any time) and
2: as soon as Jack, Daniel and Sam are captured they forget all about the sergeant that it was their whole mission to go and rescue. It is really obvious when you re-watch the episode because it goes completely against Jack's motto of never leave your people behind(which we know from A Matter of Time that Jack has from personal experiences in his own past that makes him believe this).

The problem is that they do leave people behind on a regular basis even... and it only became worse in later seasons. They had a rather disregard of other (service) men and women that weren't part of SG-1 or the flagship team of Atlantis.