5 ms·

I don't think any show has handled the progression of tech better. They start out as little more than scavengers, barely understanding what they're using, and e

by flir 5y ago

I don't think any show has handled the progression of tech better. They start out as little more than scavengers, barely understanding what they're using, and end up building their own starships. And the progression makes sense every step of the way. And there's none of Trek's "fix this week's problem, then never mention this incredibly overpowered solution again". Also there's never been an American SciFi show that's been so fundamentally athiest. I'm still amazed they got away with that.

new_guy 5y ago
> And there's none of Trek's "fix this week's problem, then never mention this incredibly overpowered solution again". The tech jumped the shark at the start of season 5 with the introduction of Prometheus, but things like the device built in the "Fifth Race" episode, it could open a wormhole to another galaxy, it was used in one more episode "Point of View", then conveniently forgotten about. There's a few examples like that, but overall it was a good show. I wouldn't call it fundamentally atheist either, in fact the entire thing was about religion, especially the last two seasons.
- walterbell 5y ago
  > in fact the entire thing was about religion So many cosmology storylines about the role of tech as go(o)d proof, including: False gods (Goa'uld) Ascended Beings / Ancients Egyptian history (Ra, Osiris,..) Bio-mechanical-AI Lotan (S4E9, terraformer) Purgatory (semi-ascended, Oma Desala) Immaculate conception (Adria/Ori) Merlin, Grail, Arthurian legends Hallowed are the Ori Transhumanism (symbiotes, Ancient tech) Asgard cloning/transasgardism Asgard time-dilation & time-reversal Multiverses Multiple dimensions
- flir 5y ago
  Well religion, yes, absolutely, but behind every religion was a false God. (Dead false God). I'd call that implicitly athiest. By those last two seasons they're basically fighting mediaeval Christians. I don't think you can get much more obvious than that. There's only one "religion is good" story off the top of my head (when the Asgard are introduced as protectors of the Viking planet), and in that one the religion is meant to be outgrown (there's a test).
  - hericium 5y ago
    > There's only one "religion is good" story off the top of my head (when the Asgard are introduced as protectors of the Viking planet), and in that one the religion is meant to be outgrown. Great example. It pointed out that religion/mythology is bogus and was put in place so they (Viking folks) can contact the little, grey, Roswell-looking men after they mature out of the religion to see aliens' true form instead of a Viking dude. BTW, Thor was voiced by Michael Shanks, who mainly portrayed Daniel Jackson.
  - mindslight 5y ago
    People like myths. They generally don't like atheism because it's basically just rejecting their favorite myth, without even having one of its own [0]. Thus I believe a non-atheist watching the show is likely to see a bunch of other stories, which while false are actually more in line with their worldview than not. They aren't going to latch onto the general implication of if all these stories about Gods are false, maybe theirs is too. There are already plenty of competing religions, and they rarely induce this effect. [0] I feel bad about saying this, because the rationalist story of emergent creation is quite amazing. But for most people grokking complex details is not enjoyable.
- delecti 5y ago
  I'm not entirely sure what you mean by the tech jumping the shark with the Prometheus. They handled pretty well how they were very much a small fish in a big pond. As for the device in "Fifth Race" and "Point of View", it burned itself out, making it not very practical except in rare situations. It's totally a fair criticism to say that there are some pretty contrived reasons to keep their power generation limited (across all three series really), but I give them credit because at least they gave a reason rather than just forgetting it like many episodic SFF.
- naasking 5y ago
  > The tech jumped the shark at the start of season 5 with the introduction of Prometheus Agreed, the tech development timeline was way too fast starting with the Prometheus. Progress up to that point was a little more plausible. I also never understood why they didn't come up with their own energy weapons. Those were the first things they started collecting, so they should have been able to replicate them given how other tech progressed. And who builds starships before they can build simple weapons? Sure bullets were more accurate according to canon, but having a lightweight and inexhaustible weapon is also invaluable, so putting some effort into improving the accuracy of the energy weapons seems like a no-brainer. Never made sense to me, but a fun show regardless.
  - laumars 5y ago
    That was addressed in the show. The Prometheus used a retrofitted Asgard hyperdrive however the Asgards didn’t provide them with any tech to build weapons (at least until the very last episode in SG1). You do see Earth building energy weapons based on Zat'nik'tel which was used for training exercises after SG1 scavenged the same devices from a Goa'uld camp who fashioned those same training guns that appeared like Earth weapons but were Zat-based. However those wouldn’t have worked on a larger scale (ship to ship). They do also address in one episode why SG teams prefer their guns over the Jaffa’s energy weapons (the argument given was “accuracy”).
    - naasking 5y ago
      > The Prometheus used a retrofitted Asgard hyperdrive however the Asgards didn’t provide them with any tech to build weapons (at least until the very last episode in SG1). That doesn't explain why they didn't develop their own long before then. They could reverse engineer the tech and materials science for fighters and spaceships but not energy weapons? Come on. > They do also address in one episode why SG teams prefer their guns over the Jaffa’s energy weapons (the argument given was “accuracy”). Yes, and I addressed that point in the post you replied to (see "sure bullets were more accurate according to canon"). In reality, energy weapons would have been included in standard kit simply because they don't run out of ammo. SG teams are potentially out for long deployments, how much ammo do you think they could carry with them? It's simply implausible that they would not have prioritized developing their own energy weapons with an eye towards making them more accurate, rather than simply throwing their hands up and saying "bullets are more accurate". By canon logic, the staffs were weapons of terror and intimidation and not designed for war, but that doesn't mean a better design suited to combat wasn't possible.
- laumars 5y ago
  > The tech jumped the shark at the start of season 5 with the introduction of Prometheus Prometheus was very much portrayed as a kludge that barely held together for quite a few episodes after it was built. It wasn’t until the Asgards helped with development that it started to look anything like a functional spaceship. > I wouldn't call it fundamentally atheist either, in fact the entire thing was about religion, especially the last two seasons. It was about liberating cultures from worshiping gods. O’Neill is very much anti-religion in his comments throughout the show. And the Ori are as close to the definition of a “god” as one might get and there were 2 series and a movie dedicated to making a point that no entity should be worshipped regardless of how powerful they might be. They even feature references to Earth religions and “disprove” they’re credibility (albeit it doesn’t touch the Abrahamic religions but that might have been a step too far for an American network). That’s about as anti-religion as one can get and like the GP I was really surprised an American network was allowed to finance it.
- Izkata 5y ago
  > but things like the device built in the "Fifth Race" episode, it could open a wormhole to another galaxy, it was used in one more episode "Point of View", then conveniently forgotten about. I think it was mentioned once more, one of the scientists said afterwards it broke down they still couldn't figure it out and fix it. That device was Ancient technology after all, not Asgard or anything else. Also it didn't open the gate to another galaxy, the Stargate is capable of that all on its own. It amplified the energy output to juice of up the Stargate; come later seasons, once they found some ZPMs, they no longer needed it anyway.
epage 5y ago
While I enjoy the show, my problem was with the impracticality of keeping it all a secret that entire time.
- khuey 5y ago
  The difficulty of keeping it a secret or the failure to do so does drive the plot of several episodes.
  - pantalaimon 5y ago
    But there is this massive power creep that is getting incredibly hard to justifiability hide. In the beginning they are just barely able to figure out how to use the ancient tech, but they eventually advance to being the most powerful civilisation in the known universe with massive space battles over Antarctica - all without any effect on the rest of the earth's population? One would imagine that at some point they would no longer see a point at keeping this all secret and let the general public also benefit from that technology.
    - terafo 5y ago
      They give technology to general public, but in small doses and after rigorous safety tests. There were numerous incidents with "surprises" left in alien technology.
    - laumars 5y ago
      I remember watching it at the time and really enjoying the cover up aspect. Then rewatching it 15 years ago and finding the cover up a little less plausible. Then after rewatching it last year the whole cover up aspect felt dumb. What I put it down to was the following: At the time it was aired, it was intended to be set in our universe. So there was some logic in maintaining the cover up because we obviously weren’t hearing stories about alien battles in the news. It’s only when you rewatch it 20+ years later and see all the 90s tech mixed with futuristic tech that you’re pulled out of the realism that it’s set in our universe. Once you see this as an alternative universe with an alternative earth, you no longer need the cover up to keep the cover up to aid with the viewers suspension of disbelief. It’s a bit like with Dr Who and how present day humans have never heard of the Daleks despite the high number of episodes where they’ve invaded Earth. The moment the victim recognises the Dalek the moment you realise this isn’t set in a reality you occupy and that’s when all the tension disappears (it no longer matters what happens because you don’t care about an alternative Earth you don’t live in).
rob_c 5y ago
There were a few overpowered solutions of the week, but typically they were then cleaned up in later episodes. The writing was rather fantastic at that. Aside from the nanites that aged O'Neil feeling more advanced than any other tech the goauld scavenged. But then I suppose the galaxy is littered with stuff like that they had either forgotten or lost themselves...
randallsquared 5y ago
> Also there's never been an American SciFi show that's been so fundamentally athiest. Well, there's Teal'c approval of the biblical God, but I guess he's not engaging with the reality of the Bible, either way: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0709069/characters/nm0431895 https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0709069/characters/nm0431895
jerf 5y ago
SG-1 isn't atheist. It's Gnostic. Gnosticism is one of the earliest Christian heresies (directly addressed in the New Testament, which was written in just the few decades after Christ, so very early) that was built on the idea that matter is bad, we're imprisoned in it by the false God (the God of the Bible in real Gnosticism), and that by the possession of the secret knowledge of gnosticism, you can transcend your earthly existence to become pure spirit, which is good. Anything keeping you from that is evil. Gnosticism also perfectly well fits with the material world being quite evil, and all the "false gods" running around fits in with that. The Gnostically-transcendant "Ascended" beings also decided to not interfere with the material world, except for a couple of rebels. Those rebels were also portrayed as basically being wrong; both rebels in SG-1 also made enormous mistakes and the universe would have been better off if they also stayed hands off, and the Ascended were correct they shouldn't have done anything. (I would consider Atlantis more ambiguous on this point.) When I say it "is" Gnostic, I don't mean that they were pushing Gnosticism per se. I just mean, that's the fundamental setup of the universe. The Highest Reality shown is Ascension. It would be a rational conclusion in that universe (though not the only rational conclusion, but a rational conclusion) to conclude that the only goal worth pursuing is Ascension. (In fact it was a bit jarring to me in some ways that the characters did not address that more fully at times.) The show's Gnosticism doesn't seem to have included the particular idea that we were imprisoned in the material world on purpose, but it has pretty much everything else about it. So bear in mind I mean this descriptively, not proscriptively; goodness knows I'm not advocating for this myself. I'm just saying that just as the Lord of the Rings is established on certain ultimate principles spelled out in the first section of the Silmarillion, the SG-1 universe is at its core, very Gnostic. I don't mean this as a good or a bad thing, just a descriptive one. In fact a Gnostic would consider responding to the universe with atheism as a reasonable one to some extent, because the material world has nothing worthy of worship in it. They would just claim that there is still something better, to transcend the material world into pure spirit, but if you didn't know about that, atheism would be the next reasonable response. (The ideas of Gnosticism can be further traced back in the mythologies of the area, like Greek and Roman. If you get early enough versions of the myths and read them with the mindset of the time, or read the philosophers of time, most of them also had some variant of the belief that life involved eventually moving into the pure spirit world, sometimes in good ways, sometimes in bad. Given the nature of the show and its relationship with mythology you could come at it that way as well. But it ultimately still strikes me as fairly Gnostic, rather than the older mythological interpretations. YMMV; if you know enough about this sort of thing to have opinions you are welcome to them by me.)

by flir 5y ago

new_guy 5y ago

> And there's none of Trek's "fix this week's problem, then never mention this incredibly overpowered solution again". The tech jumped the shark at the start of season 5 with the introduction of Prometheus, but things like the device built in the "Fifth Race" episode, it could open a wormhole to another galaxy, it was used in one more episode "Point of View", then conveniently forgotten about. There's a few examples like that, but overall it was a good show. I wouldn't call it fundamentally atheist either, in fact the entire thing was about religion, especially the last two seasons.

walterbell 5y ago
> in fact the entire thing was about religion So many cosmology storylines about the role of tech as go(o)d proof, including: False gods (Goa'uld) Ascended Beings / Ancients Egyptian history (Ra, Osiris,..) Bio-mechanical-AI Lotan (S4E9, terraformer) Purgatory (semi-ascended, Oma Desala) Immaculate conception (Adria/Ori) Merlin, Grail, Arthurian legends Hallowed are the Ori Transhumanism (symbiotes, Ancient tech) Asgard cloning/transasgardism Asgard time-dilation & time-reversal Multiverses Multiple dimensions
flir 5y ago
Well religion, yes, absolutely, but behind every religion was a false God. (Dead false God). I'd call that implicitly athiest. By those last two seasons they're basically fighting mediaeval Christians. I don't think you can get much more obvious than that. There's only one "religion is good" story off the top of my head (when the Asgard are introduced as protectors of the Viking planet), and in that one the religion is meant to be outgrown (there's a test).
- hericium 5y ago
  > There's only one "religion is good" story off the top of my head (when the Asgard are introduced as protectors of the Viking planet), and in that one the religion is meant to be outgrown. Great example. It pointed out that religion/mythology is bogus and was put in place so they (Viking folks) can contact the little, grey, Roswell-looking men after they mature out of the religion to see aliens' true form instead of a Viking dude. BTW, Thor was voiced by Michael Shanks, who mainly portrayed Daniel Jackson.
- mindslight 5y ago
  People like myths. They generally don't like atheism because it's basically just rejecting their favorite myth, without even having one of its own [0]. Thus I believe a non-atheist watching the show is likely to see a bunch of other stories, which while false are actually more in line with their worldview than not. They aren't going to latch onto the general implication of if all these stories about Gods are false, maybe theirs is too. There are already plenty of competing religions, and they rarely induce this effect. [0] I feel bad about saying this, because the rationalist story of emergent creation is quite amazing. But for most people grokking complex details is not enjoyable.
delecti 5y ago
I'm not entirely sure what you mean by the tech jumping the shark with the Prometheus. They handled pretty well how they were very much a small fish in a big pond. As for the device in "Fifth Race" and "Point of View", it burned itself out, making it not very practical except in rare situations. It's totally a fair criticism to say that there are some pretty contrived reasons to keep their power generation limited (across all three series really), but I give them credit because at least they gave a reason rather than just forgetting it like many episodic SFF.
naasking 5y ago
> The tech jumped the shark at the start of season 5 with the introduction of Prometheus Agreed, the tech development timeline was way too fast starting with the Prometheus. Progress up to that point was a little more plausible. I also never understood why they didn't come up with their own energy weapons. Those were the first things they started collecting, so they should have been able to replicate them given how other tech progressed. And who builds starships before they can build simple weapons? Sure bullets were more accurate according to canon, but having a lightweight and inexhaustible weapon is also invaluable, so putting some effort into improving the accuracy of the energy weapons seems like a no-brainer. Never made sense to me, but a fun show regardless.
- laumars 5y ago
  That was addressed in the show. The Prometheus used a retrofitted Asgard hyperdrive however the Asgards didn’t provide them with any tech to build weapons (at least until the very last episode in SG1). You do see Earth building energy weapons based on Zat'nik'tel which was used for training exercises after SG1 scavenged the same devices from a Goa'uld camp who fashioned those same training guns that appeared like Earth weapons but were Zat-based. However those wouldn’t have worked on a larger scale (ship to ship). They do also address in one episode why SG teams prefer their guns over the Jaffa’s energy weapons (the argument given was “accuracy”).
  - naasking 5y ago
    > The Prometheus used a retrofitted Asgard hyperdrive however the Asgards didn’t provide them with any tech to build weapons (at least until the very last episode in SG1). That doesn't explain why they didn't develop their own long before then. They could reverse engineer the tech and materials science for fighters and spaceships but not energy weapons? Come on. > They do also address in one episode why SG teams prefer their guns over the Jaffa’s energy weapons (the argument given was “accuracy”). Yes, and I addressed that point in the post you replied to (see "sure bullets were more accurate according to canon"). In reality, energy weapons would have been included in standard kit simply because they don't run out of ammo. SG teams are potentially out for long deployments, how much ammo do you think they could carry with them? It's simply implausible that they would not have prioritized developing their own energy weapons with an eye towards making them more accurate, rather than simply throwing their hands up and saying "bullets are more accurate". By canon logic, the staffs were weapons of terror and intimidation and not designed for war, but that doesn't mean a better design suited to combat wasn't possible.
laumars 5y ago
> The tech jumped the shark at the start of season 5 with the introduction of Prometheus Prometheus was very much portrayed as a kludge that barely held together for quite a few episodes after it was built. It wasn’t until the Asgards helped with development that it started to look anything like a functional spaceship. > I wouldn't call it fundamentally atheist either, in fact the entire thing was about religion, especially the last two seasons. It was about liberating cultures from worshiping gods. O’Neill is very much anti-religion in his comments throughout the show. And the Ori are as close to the definition of a “god” as one might get and there were 2 series and a movie dedicated to making a point that no entity should be worshipped regardless of how powerful they might be. They even feature references to Earth religions and “disprove” they’re credibility (albeit it doesn’t touch the Abrahamic religions but that might have been a step too far for an American network). That’s about as anti-religion as one can get and like the GP I was really surprised an American network was allowed to finance it.
Izkata 5y ago
> but things like the device built in the "Fifth Race" episode, it could open a wormhole to another galaxy, it was used in one more episode "Point of View", then conveniently forgotten about. I think it was mentioned once more, one of the scientists said afterwards it broke down they still couldn't figure it out and fix it. That device was Ancient technology after all, not Asgard or anything else. Also it didn't open the gate to another galaxy, the Stargate is capable of that all on its own. It amplified the energy output to juice of up the Stargate; come later seasons, once they found some ZPMs, they no longer needed it anyway.

epage 5y ago

While I enjoy the show, my problem was with the impracticality of keeping it all a secret that entire time.

khuey 5y ago
The difficulty of keeping it a secret or the failure to do so does drive the plot of several episodes.
- pantalaimon 5y ago
  But there is this massive power creep that is getting incredibly hard to justifiability hide. In the beginning they are just barely able to figure out how to use the ancient tech, but they eventually advance to being the most powerful civilisation in the known universe with massive space battles over Antarctica - all without any effect on the rest of the earth's population? One would imagine that at some point they would no longer see a point at keeping this all secret and let the general public also benefit from that technology.
  - terafo 5y ago
    They give technology to general public, but in small doses and after rigorous safety tests. There were numerous incidents with "surprises" left in alien technology.
  - laumars 5y ago
    I remember watching it at the time and really enjoying the cover up aspect. Then rewatching it 15 years ago and finding the cover up a little less plausible. Then after rewatching it last year the whole cover up aspect felt dumb. What I put it down to was the following: At the time it was aired, it was intended to be set in our universe. So there was some logic in maintaining the cover up because we obviously weren’t hearing stories about alien battles in the news. It’s only when you rewatch it 20+ years later and see all the 90s tech mixed with futuristic tech that you’re pulled out of the realism that it’s set in our universe. Once you see this as an alternative universe with an alternative earth, you no longer need the cover up to keep the cover up to aid with the viewers suspension of disbelief. It’s a bit like with Dr Who and how present day humans have never heard of the Daleks despite the high number of episodes where they’ve invaded Earth. The moment the victim recognises the Dalek the moment you realise this isn’t set in a reality you occupy and that’s when all the tension disappears (it no longer matters what happens because you don’t care about an alternative Earth you don’t live in).

rob_c 5y ago

There were a few overpowered solutions of the week, but typically they were then cleaned up in later episodes. The writing was rather fantastic at that. Aside from the nanites that aged O'Neil feeling more advanced than any other tech the goauld scavenged. But then I suppose the galaxy is littered with stuff like that they had either forgotten or lost themselves...

randallsquared 5y ago

> Also there's never been an American SciFi show that's been so fundamentally athiest. Well, there's Teal'c approval of the biblical God, but I guess he's not engaging with the reality of the Bible, either way: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0709069/characters/nm0431895 https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0709069/characters/nm0431895

jerf 5y ago

SG-1 isn't atheist. It's Gnostic. Gnosticism is one of the earliest Christian heresies (directly addressed in the New Testament, which was written in just the few decades after Christ, so very early) that was built on the idea that matter is bad, we're imprisoned in it by the false God (the God of the Bible in real Gnosticism), and that by the possession of the secret knowledge of gnosticism, you can transcend your earthly existence to become pure spirit, which is good. Anything keeping you from that is evil. Gnosticism also perfectly well fits with the material world being quite evil, and all the "false gods" running around fits in with that. The Gnostically-transcendant "Ascended" beings also decided to not interfere with the material world, except for a couple of rebels. Those rebels were also portrayed as basically being wrong; both rebels in SG-1 also made enormous mistakes and the universe would have been better off if they also stayed hands off, and the Ascended were correct they shouldn't have done anything. (I would consider Atlantis more ambiguous on this point.) When I say it "is" Gnostic, I don't mean that they were pushing Gnosticism per se. I just mean, that's the fundamental setup of the universe. The Highest Reality shown is Ascension. It would be a rational conclusion in that universe (though not the only rational conclusion, but a rational conclusion) to conclude that the only goal worth pursuing is Ascension. (In fact it was a bit jarring to me in some ways that the characters did not address that more fully at times.) The show's Gnosticism doesn't seem to have included the particular idea that we were imprisoned in the material world on purpose, but it has pretty much everything else about it. So bear in mind I mean this descriptively, not proscriptively; goodness knows I'm not advocating for this myself. I'm just saying that just as the Lord of the Rings is established on certain ultimate principles spelled out in the first section of the Silmarillion, the SG-1 universe is at its core, very Gnostic. I don't mean this as a good or a bad thing, just a descriptive one. In fact a Gnostic would consider responding to the universe with atheism as a reasonable one to some extent, because the material world has nothing worthy of worship in it. They would just claim that there is still something better, to transcend the material world into pure spirit, but if you didn't know about that, atheism would be the next reasonable response. (The ideas of Gnosticism can be further traced back in the mythologies of the area, like Greek and Roman. If you get early enough versions of the myths and read them with the mindset of the time, or read the philosophers of time, most of them also had some variant of the belief that life involved eventually moving into the pure spirit world, sometimes in good ways, sometimes in bad. Given the nature of the show and its relationship with mythology you could come at it that way as well. But it ultimately still strikes me as fairly Gnostic, rather than the older mythological interpretations. YMMV; if you know enough about this sort of thing to have opinions you are welcome to them by me.)