Goa'uld 'villain decay' and how to deal with it

[Darth Yoshi]

As far as spaceships go, how about making the System Lord fleets primarily deterrents? The balance of power is so precarious that as soon as one System Lord tries to amass his ships to launch an offensive, others swarm his territories and carve them up. To prevent someone from building a purely offensive fleet, the Goa'uld make liberal use of saboteurs and spies to take out shipyards. It'd work better than them being tech-scavengers if the Alterans get cut.

[Big Orange]

What I found mildly irritating is how every Gou'ald warlord had their troops and ships heavily Egyptian themed, even if they based their religious persona on completely different Earth lores to Ra's (the most notable being Yu, Ba'al, and Chronos). I know it is a ploy to recycle the same CGI models, costumes, and sets, but come on. The Gou'ald System Lords are running their own fiefdoms with their fragmented territory spanning thousands lightyears and built up over many centuries, so Gou'ald technology and ships should vary greatly according to System Lord. For example, if Apophis is supposed to be the Big Bad along the lines of Sokar or Anubis, maybe his warships would be somewhat similar to Haa'taks found in Ra's fleet only much more overtly evil looking and matt black, while being loaded up with lost technology that would wipe the floor with any other Gou'ald ship (not unlike Anubis' flagship). And why not have space bound Greek temples for Chronos?

I did not mind the episode where two of those mentioned Gou'ald rulers visited the SGC headquarters to broker a deal, since Earth was protected by the bluff and Gou'ald were genuinely concerned in directly attacking Earth least they provoke the wrath of the Asgard (although the Asgard had their hands full when the treaty was made, but still projected their authority).

[Commander 598]

Ideas:

Tok'ra - Do we really need a bunch of pseudo-Gou'ld wearing really dumb clothes to play a good guy role? Can't we just have "good" Gou'ld?

Jaffa - Do we really need a bunch of pseudo-human aliens who all look and act almost identically to each other carrying an army of infant Gou'ld in a bullshit pouch with no immune system? Also you could at least give them different outfits based on the System Lord's chosen culture.

Zats - Nobody ever thought this thing was a bit unbalanced and honestly killing any good form of drama by solving almost every problem with a stun blast and/or erasing the body from existence?

Ring "Teleport" - Having this basically EVERY FUCKING WHERE is really boring.

Ships - The Gou'ld only ever had like three different spacecraft, and they were all identical right down to gold plated interiors. Again: BORING.

While I realize some of these have more to do with general complaints about the show than Gou'ld, I feel that the two go hand in hand. The Gou'ld ceased to be a major enemy specifically because they had been made into a boring generic enemy in a largely generic setting.

[Big Orange]

Again you're mostly highlighting the limits to a medium budget television show that produces dozens of episodes year after year, Commander 598, so the recycling of the Gou'ald costumes and props was necessary to a certain extent but the writers and production crew could've got more milage out reusing the same stuff. And Jaffa were not really pseudo-humans (like Cardassians or Centauri) but Earth humans "domesticated" through Gou'ald science to be their warriors and incubators, not a bad concept, while the Tok'Ra ultimately were Gou'ald at the end of the day, but the two factions of "good" and "bad" Gou'ald could've been much more blurred as suggested in this thread (with the great idea of relatively sane, non-tyranical System Lords).

[Darth Hoth]

Zats - Nobody ever thought this thing was a bit unbalanced and honestly killing any good form of drama by solving almost every problem with a stun blast and/or erasing the body from existence?

Probably why the writers "forgot" about the eraser setting after the second season or so. Not that that makes better sense . . .

Again you're mosyly highlighting the limits to a medium budget television show that produces dozens of episodes year after year, Commander 598, so the recycling of the Gou'ald costumes and props was necessary to a certain extent but the writers and production crew could've got more milage out reusing the same stuff. And Jaffa were not really pseudo-humans (like Cardassians or Centauri) but Earth humans "domesticated" through Gou'ald science to be their warriors and incubators, not a bad concept, while the Tok'Ra ultimately were Gou'ald at the end of the day, but the two factions of "good" and "bad" Gou'ald could've been much more blurred as suggested in this thread (with the great idea of relatively sane, non-tyranical System Lords).

It is retarded to have the same people being your expendable shock troops and the incubators for your children, if you value the mini-snakes like at least those episodes I saw implied they did (treating them like human babies, basically, which appears . . . odd, for a race of sociopathic wormlike parasites). If you need bullshit like that, have the Jaffa men as warriors and their women (barefoot, pregnant and SAFE in their kitchens) as incubators.

[Darth Hoth]

Ra's assassination in the movie seemed like a big fluke: the ruler of the known Milky Way was visting a remote resource planet onboard his pleasure ship with only a small entourage due to his relaxed attitude that is understandable because Abydos was deep in his territory far away from the borders of his significant rivals and major non-Gou'ald powers. It was stupid luck Ra was as relatively unprotected as he was on his "holiday ranch" when suddenly a small army of USAF commandos burst through a long dormant stargate and while clearly technologically inferior were still well armed enough to sweep aside Ra's bodyguards and destroy his pyramid yacht.

If your weapon has a higher sustained rate of fire than your enemy's, is cheaper and easier to build, and actually has ergonomics worth a damn, it is arguable "higher" technology even if it less "flashy". It certainly is not of inferior design by any token. Earth in the series is far ahead of the Goa'uld in terms of small arms and infantry tactics (bad though they are, by our standards). To me, this fits with the idea that the Goa'uld are parasitic and effectively fossilized; they invent little new technology, but rather steal that of others piecemeal, copying good and bad wholesale with little judgment of their own. This explains most of their "retarded but L00KZ K3WL" designs.

[Big Orange]

Probably why the writers "forgot" about the eraser setting after the second season or so. Not that that makes better sense . . .

The writers said as much that they retconned the disintergration setting of the Jaffa pistols.

It is retarded to have the same people being your expendable shock troops and the incubators for your children, if you value the mini-snakes like at least those episodes I saw implied they did (treating them like human babies, basically, which appears . . . odd, for a race of sociopathic wormlike parasites). If you need bullshit like that, have the Jaffa men as warriors and their women (barefoot, pregnant and SAFE in their kitchens) as incubators.

Putting Gou'ald young into numerous cannon fodder is likely to highlight the EEEEEEEVUL nature of Gou'ald society - Gou'ald adults want a constant pool of Gou'ald infants to carry on the species, but they don't want too many rivals to reach adulthood either.

[Sky Captain]

I think to make the show more plausible SGC should have made existence of aliens public probably after the events at the end of first season when Apophis attacked Earth. Common, there is no way how to plausibly deny existence of aliens when two huge nearly kilometer in size ships blown up in low orbit producing millions of tons of debris some of which would inevitably fall everywhere on Earth and be picked up and analyzed by countless labs in nearly every country revealing these pieces are no meteorites.

[Darth Hoth]

The writers said as much that they retconned the disintergration setting of the Jaffa pistols.

They did? When? And, well, that kind of out-of-universe fix is about as irritating. They should have just thought things through before they introduced them, just like with a lot of other things.

Putting Gou'ald young into numerous cannon fodder is likely to highlight the EEEEEEEVUL nature of Gou'ald society - Gou'ald adults want a constant pool of Gou'ald infants to carry on the species, but they don't want too many rivals to reach adulthood either.

The problem is that they are so schizophrenically portrayed; in some episodes they are the space-alien snakeworm bastards, in others they have basically human personalities and concerns (including a human love for their children). What you say makes sense for the first variant, but not the second.

[Darth Onasi]

It is retarded to have the same people being your expendable shock troops and the incubators for your children, if you value the mini-snakes like at least those episodes I saw implied they did (treating them like human babies, basically, which appears . . . odd, for a race of sociopathic wormlike parasites). If you need bullshit like that, have the Jaffa men as warriors and their women (barefoot, pregnant and SAFE in their kitchens) as incubators.

No need for such unecesarry sexism (there should in fact be more female Jaffa warriors, more I say!) instead keep the incubation to the priests which they already have.
Actually they rather forgot about potraying priests aside from Apophis' ones in the early seasons, which is odd considering the thearchic nature of the goa'uld.

[Darth Hoth]

When it is the villains who do it and all their other societal values are Bronze Age at best (slavery, God Kings and so forth)? It makes perfect sense for them to be sexist as well, even if it is only for convenience (human females are of greater reproductive value than males, hence should be better protected).

[tezunegari]

In the beginning of the show you could explain the whole lack of differing ship designs with the fact that Ra controlled all worlds with ship and armor building facilities. And he forced the 'normal' Systemlords to buy his (substandard) ships (Hatak, Alkesh, Deathglider) and the lesser quality Jaffa armor while he himself kept all the really good and dedicated ships (Carriers, Cruisers frigates, transporters etc) and the nice folding space helms.

With his death you can slowly introduce Jaffa with changing armor and new ships. (partly scavenged from Ra, some prototypes maybe even unusual designs).

They did have different armor styling for Sokars jaffa (reddish color and strange shoulder pads) and Anubis bunch of ninjas (special ops Jaffa?) and his Kull warriors (don't really like the helm design though)

[Darth Onasi]

When it is the villains who do it and all their other societal values are Bronze Age at best (slavery, God Kings and so forth)? It makes perfect sense for them to be sexist as well, even if it is only for convenience (human females are of greater reproductive value than males, hence should be better protected).

Perhaps, though I feel that all the goa'uld should not be villians, neither should all the female goa'uld carry on sexist policies.
Moreover with an entire galaxy full of seeded humans there's not exactly a population problem.

[Darth Hoth]

All humans might not be suitable for Jaffa.

Do Goa'uld have sexes? I thought they only had sexless "ordinaries" and "queens" that multiply asexually?

[ray245]

Incidentally, with my list of good and evil Gods, I was following the actual Egyptian pantheon rather than the series. One of my biggest bags with Stargate was its portrayal of the Egyptian deities as evil, when in fact they were relatively benevolent figures whose worship was fairly undemanding by the standards of organised religion. Apophis is the obvious exception, and Ra is sufficiently distant to allow some artistic license. Sokar's nature and role changes quite a bit (the Egyptians reorganised their pantheon quite a few times), going from an aspect of Ra to a god of craftsmen to the god in charge of the 'penal' underworld.

Well, given the fact that the series starts off in season 1 describing Hathor as a helpful and caring goddess, and managed to turn her into a crazy and evil rapist, I'm not surprised.

[Darth Onasi]

All humans might not be suitable for Jaffa.

Do Goa'uld have sexes? I thought they only had sexless "ordinaries" and "queens" that multiply asexually?

No but they've tended to prefer a specific gender in a host, the Tok'ra too. For example, Jolinar and Lantesh always blended with female and male hosts respectively. When they could choose to, at least.

As for Jaffa, in season 1 it was shown a human could be instantly converted into an incubator with Hathor's funky belly device.

[Big Orange]

The Jaffa military could have ceremonial warriors who have powerful, yet impractical staff weapons, guarding System Lord processions all dressed up in Egyptian/Greek/Babylonian ceremonial regalia to impress stone/bronze/iron age primitives, but the "real" Jaffa military could have weaponry working on the same principles as their ceremonial weapons but repackaged into resembling Earth firearms, with the Jaffa wearing tight fitting combat suits that have forcefield and cloaking capabilities. Like Marines who wear ceremonial "blues" for formal occasions who also kit themselves out in BDUs for actual combat duties.

[andrewgpaul]

What, so the guys in the movie are like Goa'uld Beefeaters? That would work, yes.

I wouldn't like to see the 'functional' staff weapons look too much like normal guns, though.

[His Divine Shadow]

A staff weapon could be so much more effective if they just mounted an aimpoint micro on it

[Juubi Karakuchi]

The Jaffa military could have ceremonial warriors who have powerful, yet impractical staff weapons, guarding System Lord processions all dressed up in Egyptian/Greek/Babylonian ceremonial regalia to impress stone/bronze/iron age primitives, but the "real" Jaffa military could have weaponry working on the same principles as their ceremonial weapons but repackaged into resembling Earth firearms, with the Jaffa wearing tight fitting combat suits that have forcefield and cloaking capabilities. Like Marines who wear ceremonial "blues" for formal occasions who also kit themselves out in BDUs for actual combat duties.

I wouldn't like to see the 'functional' staff weapons look too much like normal guns, though.

Funny you should say that. In Rules of Engagement Goa'uld 'Intar' weapons can take any particular shape and fire a stun bolt. In that particular episode, they are designed after Tauri weapons and that team even wears SGC-styled uniforms. This implies that the Goa'uld (at least Apophis) were having a rethink, using such methods either to develop tactics for Jaffa to defeat SGC troops or else to improve the Jaffa by imitation. The fact that even rebel Jaffa largely stuck with Staff-weapons and Zat'nik'tel, at least until The Warrior, implies that had serious reasons for doing so (though not necessarily good ones).

A staff weapon could be so much more effective if they just mounted an aimpoint micro on it

Not an unreasonable suggestion. That's why I thought the Guard Helms should have a targetting HUD.

[avatarxprime]

Funny you should say that. In Rules of Engagement Goa'uld 'Intar' weapons can take any particular shape and fire a stun bolt. In that particular episode, they are designed after Tauri weapons and that team even wears SGC-styled uniforms. This implies that the Goa'uld (at least Apophis) were having a rethink, using such methods either to develop tactics for Jaffa to defeat SGC troops or else to improve the Jaffa by imitation. The fact that even rebel Jaffa largely stuck with Staff-weapons and Zat'nik'tel, at least until The Warrior, implies that had serious reasons for doing so (though not necessarily good ones).

Uh, they stated exactly why they were using Earth-based designs for everything in the episode. It wasn't to improve anything. They were being trained to infiltrate and take control of the SGC as per dialogue in the episode.

[Juubi Karakuchi]

Uh, they stated exactly why they were using Earth-based designs for everything in the episode. It wasn't to improve anything. They were being trained to infiltrate and take control of the SGC as per dialogue in the episode.

Fair enough. The point is that they are capable of creating such devices, yet do not do so for any other purpose. This implies that they regard their own military technology and doctrine as superior. I also mentioned that they might think this even if it isn't true.

[Darth Hoth]

No but they've tended to prefer a specific gender in a host, the Tok'ra too. For example, Jolinar and Lantesh always blended with female and male hosts respectively. When they could choose to, at least.

That seems more like conditioning than an inherent distinction, considering that humans were not their primary host species to begin with. (Of course, out of universe American television mores probably also played a part.) How was it with Osiris; I forget, did he keep that body on his own accord or because he had to?

As for Jaffa, in season 1 it was shown a human could be instantly converted into an incubator with Hathor's funky belly device.

If I recall correctly, "she" also commented that O'Neill was a prime specimen, or something to that effect. That he could be converted would not necessarily mean that any human could be, or that all humans make equally good "incubators".

[Darth Onasi]

That seems more like conditioning than an inherent distinction, considering that humans were not their primary host species to begin with. (Of course, out of universe American television mores probably also played a part.) How was it with Osiris; I forget, did he keep that body on his own accord or because he had to?

Either way they tend to identify with one gender over the other. There are those that don't seem to care, and those like Apophis and baal who keep the same host for so long they might as well be male, and both demonstrated strong attraction to females.
Osiris I believe kept Sarah as a hostage of sorts to keep the upper hand against Daniel, though after he died I don't know. Osiris was a terribly wasted character anyway.

If I recall correctly, "she" also commented that O'Neill was a prime specimen, or something to that effect. That he could be converted would not necessarily mean that any human could be, or that all humans make equally good "incubators".

[/quote]

Prime in that he's fit and skilled, but that shouldn't be a rare commodity.

[Big Orange]

One of the primary ways the Gou'ald were comprehensibly belittled as a superpower who dominated the Milky Way for millennia is that they were outmatched by the Tollans (who for some reason stayed within the confines of a solar system), the mighty Asgard, and practically unstoppable Replicators. It would've made more sense in making the Tollans inferior to the Gou'ald, but still much more advanced than Earth, while the Gou'ald and Asgard would be roughly equivalent to each other in most areas (although the Asgard could still have notably superior, but the Gou'ald have a greater industrial capacity and a better grasp military strategy to close technological gap).

And the Gou'ald basing their power base on salvaged Ancient technology just makes them ignorant plagiarists. And why make the Ancients more or less human? Could the Replicators be revealed as the greatly degenerated descendents of the Ancients instead of the Gou'ald?