Stargate - The Ark of Truth

[Luzifer's right hand]

Replicators? That sounds interesting, is there a fight between Ori and Replicator ships?

[PREDATOR490]

Replicators? That sounds interesting, is there a fight between Ori and Replicator ships?

No.

When I said the Ancients got shafted I meant the race in Menace. I thought that was the Ancients but obviously I'm in error on that. Either way, the IOA should have known damn well how dangerous bringing in those things was.

The Borg Drone rip off was pretty stupid as well and their attempt at justifying it was weak. One would have thought the crew would get the IOA guy out of the cell before he got chewed up or interrogate him for the deactivation program. This is afterall the same Cam Mitchel who threatened Mckay with a Lemon to get him to work faster but wouldnt dare threaten the IOA guy... then the Replicators decide to turn him into a drone for some lame reason and have him waste time beating up Mitchel where a single spray of acid would have ended it in seconds.

The simple problem with this entire movie is they had to introduce a threat like the Replicators as an enemy rather than actually have a battle with the Ori at all. It is distinctly unfufilling when the whole 2 season Ori arc gets wrapped up in the last 10 minutes of the movie by opening a fucking box.

Points that really bug me in this movie:

1) The Odessey was able to approach, dial, enter and exit the Ori supergates without any opposition. We are left with the Ori looking like complete retards when they dont even have any defenders.

2) The Ancients supposedly only shielded the Milky Way galaxy from the Ori. Not everywhere else so logically one would expect Adria to operate freely within her own galaxy even against non-believers.
The ship went there of their own 'free-will' so the Ancients have no right to shield them. Vala and Daniel got to the Ori galaxy without Ancient interference on the premise it was 'free-will' and Vala got herself unwillingly impregnated by Ori means.
Assuming the Ancients only shield people about to be killed, then Adria should at least be able to take non-lethal measures against the team.

3) Ascended beings supposedly cannot be killed. Anubis was unkillable and only partially ascended so that Oma had to battle him for eternity.
If Morgan can kill Adria then shouldnt Oma have been able to kill Anubis ?

Overall, I'm fairly disappointed with how this movie finishes the Ori arc. Flashy effects and better quality picture wont make up for the distinct lack of a grandoise finale. Sure, Stargate isnt all about space battles but if they are going to continue bringing in Ascended beings / Ancients then is it too much to expect some modicum of explanation on why they act this way and the power they actually have ?

[NecronLord]

1) The Odessey was able to approach, dial, enter and exit the Ori supergates without any opposition. We are left with the Ori looking like complete retards when they dont even have any defenders.

Approaching and dialing is no problem. It's already been established that the Ori don't guard them on their side all the time. We've seen them learn how to dial out on a supergate before, too. I would have liked to see them guarding their side, but then, that would have begged the question why they didn't shoot down the ship carrying Adria and the Merlin-superweapon as soon as it came through, thus saving their gods.

2) The Ancients supposedly only shielded the Milky Way galaxy from the Ori. Not everywhere else so logically one would expect Adria to operate freely within her own galaxy even against non-believers.

Err.. Contradicted by the very second Ori episode. Where, Y'know, the Ori aren't able to just appear and burn unbelievers in their galaxy? The Ori are obviously weaker than the Others at this point.

The ship went there of their own 'free-will' so the Ancients have no right to shield them.

Individual ascended beings are granted some leeway. Daniel provided some moral support to Jack when he was being tortured, Oma slaughtered entire armies. Morgan... Err... She healed Teal'c. Compared to wiping out an entire army of Jaffa, that's a minor interfereance.

Vala and Daniel got to the Ori galaxy without Ancient interference on the premise it was 'free-will' and Vala got herself unwillingly impregnated by Ori means.

Your point? The Ancients are douches, we know.

Assuming the Ancients only shield people about to be killed, then Adria should at least be able to take non-lethal measures against the team.

Err. No. They shield them from Ascended beings. They'd stop Adria waving her hand and destroying the Oddessy, but they wouldn't stop her ordering her worshippers to do so.

3) Ascended beings supposedly cannot be killed. Anubis was unkillable and only partially ascended so that Oma had to battle him for eternity.
If Morgan can kill Adria then shouldnt Oma have been able to kill Anubis ?

For a start, we know that they can be killed. Daniel says he can kill Anubis, and we know that it's presumably possible, although it is possible he wasn't able to.

Oma says that the Ancients could have dealt with Anubis. Similarly, both the Ori and Adria planned to destroy the Ancients. Clearly it is possible to destroy ascended beings, even if neither Oma or Anubis could have defeated the other. All Ascended beings are not created equal - by feeding on Worship, Adria was the most individually powerful of them.

Morgan could simply be more powerful than Oma, or Adria bereft of her power-up, could simply be mentally weaker than Anubis was (this would not be terribly surprising. Anubis' life experience stretches back to the beginning of the goa'uld species. Adria is at least mentally, something of a child).

Morgan, on the other hand, has been ascended for thousands of years; Adria's a newcomer. And you're assuming Morgan actually managed to kill Adria.

As for Ancient lifespans, one can assume Morgan and Merlin were in stasis at some point. Aiyana was also millions of years old when she died, presumably having gone into stasis in the outpost she ran. Perhaps the Ancients were like the Culture, with, rather than dying, spending long periods in stasis, until something interesting happened, such as the war against the Wraith (explaining Ganos-Lal/Morgan's time on Atlantis) or mass-ascension.

[NecronLord]

I wonder if they'll try and use Replicators against Asurans, at some point, too. That's about the only way I can see them matching the Asurans' industrial output in SGA.

[PREDATOR490]

Frankly, I find myself getting exceptionally tired with all this Ascended / Ancient being plots. The people writing this have created them to be super all powerful but naturally had to come up with a way to neuter them from making Stargate obsolete.

Supposedly another movie is coming out of SG-1 and given the ending of this one I'm pretty certain that will be the case. Least of all because Carter is still here and we have yet to get rid of the Super-Asgard-Cloak-ZPM-Replicates Anything ship.

That ship just HAS to be destroyed or crippled in some way otherwise one has to wonder why that thing cant act as a production facility for various technologies. If it can create replicators from basic instructions and fill in the blanks it should be able to build docile replicators that are designed to manufacture equipment at the very least.

[Rommie2006]

The replicators move was a real dumbfuck by the IOA. Let's see, they're releasing the replicators, modded to be IMMUNE to the Asgard beam weapon thingy and releasing it on the Ori, who is led by Adria, who possess the knowledge of the Ancients.

Have they thought that the Ancients were the ones that created the replicators? That was a real dumb move, I won't be surprised if Adria re-engineered the replicators to be another branch of her army, if things played out differently.

[Meest]

The the secrecy of the IOA guy was just stupid, since the IOA approved the initial mission with original objective. Especially when the whole Replicator angle killed the whole scale and meaning of the Ori arc. Would have at least wanted to see some deep strikes to hurt production or a key facility, even if not purely done through ship bombardment, just a covert op. They seemed to have lost all the "adventure" angles which is fine action when the budget doesn't leave enough for major CGI battles.

The writers just don't know how to portray the scale, 7 ships to attack earth. Some great galaxy wide force, it's really pathetic. Their security at their headquarters was pathetic too, that part went really fast, Teal'c gets in no problem and they free themselves with no resistance. How the hell did the Asgard lose to these guys. All earth needed was a nice parting gift, a battle group of Asgard ships would be a menace since the Odyssey can take multiple shots even when their shields are stated at 18%. I just could never fear the Ori since their initial appearance, all their evils would always be told through some simple one liners in dialogue.

[NecronLord]

The writers just don't know how to portray the scale, 7 ships to attack earth. Some great galaxy wide force, it's really pathetic.

Stargate does not have scale. Most worlds have populations under a hundred thousand. Earth is the most populated planet in the entire universe, with the possible exception of Asuras. Most enemies are not industrialised, and for their labour, rely on ignorant peons. The exception to this is the Asurans, who appear to be able to crank out over thirty battleships and god knows how many cruisers in half a year.

[Vympel]

Further, the small villages next to the gates on most planets don't speak well of the planet's general population level - for what is the equivalent of a port city to the entire galaxy, they're all pretty pathetic.

[NecronLord]

Further, the small villages next to the gates on most planets don't speak well of the planet's general population level - for what is the equivalent of a port city to the entire galaxy, they're all pretty pathetic.

There's numbers given for Pegasus populations when the Asurans start wiping out human settlements. They're all under two hundred thousand per planet IIRC.

We're lucky the Wraith haven't mastered decent agriculture-of-humans yet.

The only planets with what seem to be decent populations in the billions, or even hundreds of millions, are (presumably) the Aschen homeworld, Asuras, Earth, Delmak (not any more, I'd guess), and the Delmak clone Ba'al and Anubis were operating from.

And even the Aschen seemed alarmed by Earth's teeming billions.

[Meest]

The Goa'uld/Replicator conflict showed decent scale, when they were tracking all the motherships there was at least a couple dozen. How the Ori galaxy is populated, where for all we know there hasn't been an opposing force to the Ori and there was that episode showing the ship production at one facility. They should have the same resources as the Goa'uld dominating the Milky Way. Guess I'll wait and see how the rest of SG:A season ends up with 2 major forces duking it out. They just didn't make the Ori threat as visible or menacing as they could.

[NecronLord]

The Goa'uld/Replicator conflict showed decent scale, when they were tracking all the motherships there was at least a couple dozen.

Yes. About forty to sixty on each side. For the assembled premier fleet of the largest faction of the galaxy-spanning goa'uld empire, that's not terribly big. Nor for the assembled fleet of the captured vessels of a replicator force that's apparently rapidly taking all their ships.

How the Ori galaxy is populated, where for all we know there hasn't been an opposing force to the Ori and there was that episode showing the ship production at one facility. They should have the same resources as the Goa'uld dominating the Milky Way.

And Ori ships are a hell of a lot bigger than ha'taks. Seven ships is sufficient to destroy Earth. Probably with no losses. What more should be required?

[Winston Blake]

Where were the physics labs testing all of the new principles that must have been learned in order to understand this stuff?

Major experiments are done at Area 51 (or 52), as a general rule. The labs there are quite extensive apparently - when we see one of Rodney McKay's 'labs' when he gets a job there, it's the size of a small stadium. It's sheer nuttery of course, but that's where it all happens.

IIRC there was this ruined civilisation that SG-1 came across once. Jackson's brief examination of their history told him when they discovered their stargate; because their science and technology exploded.

The purpose of the SGC has always been 'find defensive tech' first and 'explore' second. My rationalisation is that Earth has been plundering the scientific knowledge of every dead civilisation they find, or trying to make alliances to get their hands on knowledge that would have taken centuries to develop from scratch. It's like showing up in Newton's bedroom and saying 'These crates here have thousands of science and engineering papers and textbooks. We did all the experiments already - here are the numbers. Have fun.'

However, it's still annoying that in Season 2, a plot point was based on how ridiculous it was that Bra'tac assumed Earth had 'warships' ("This 'Shuttle', it is a formidable craft?"). Then in Season 6 or whatever, it's all 'Oh hey now we go flying around the galaxy, wheee'.

[Darth Wong]

Where were the physics labs testing all of the new principles that must have been learned in order to understand this stuff?

Major experiments are done at Area 51 (or 52), as a general rule. The labs there are quite extensive apparently - when we see one of Rodney McKay's 'labs' when he gets a job there, it's the size of a small stadium. It's sheer nuttery of course, but that's where it all happens.

IIRC there was this ruined civilisation that SG-1 came across once. Jackson's brief examination of their history told him when they discovered their stargate; because their science and technology exploded.

The purpose of the SGC has always been 'find defensive tech' first and 'explore' second. My rationalisation is that Earth has been plundering the scientific knowledge of every dead civilisation they find, or trying to make alliances to get their hands on knowledge that would have taken centuries to develop from scratch. It's like showing up in Newton's bedroom and saying 'These crates here have thousands of science and engineering papers and textbooks. We did all the experiments already - here are the numbers. Have fun.'

However, it's still annoying that in Season 2, a plot point was based on how ridiculous it was that Bra'tac assumed Earth had 'warships' ("This 'Shuttle', it is a formidable craft?"). Then in Season 6 or whatever, it's all 'Oh hey now we go flying around the galaxy, wheee'.

Even with all of that bullshit, it's still totally ridiculous. How many years did it take to develop the F-22, again? All with real, well-understood physics rather than having to learn entire new branches of physics from ruins?

[The Nomad]

Even with all of that bullshit, it's still totally ridiculous. How many years did it take to develop the F-22, again? All with real, well-understood physics rather than having to learn entire new branches of physics from ruins?

It seems Stargate verse tech is trivially easy to build once you know the principle. Like when an Ancient built a stargate in Carter's basement with components ordered from Internet in under a few days, or an early-50-60's civilization launched an Ori-designed defense satellite with an invulnerable shield and capable of bitchslapping the Prometheus in a few shots .

[Darth Wong]

Even with all of that bullshit, it's still totally ridiculous. How many years did it take to develop the F-22, again? All with real, well-understood physics rather than having to learn entire new branches of physics from ruins?

It seems Stargate verse tech is trivially easy to build once you know the principle. Like when an Ancient built a stargate in Carter's basement with components ordered from Internet in under a few days, or an early-50-60's civilization launched an Ori-designed defense satellite with an invulnerable shield and capable of bitchslapping the Prometheus in a few shots .

That's not an explanation of the stupid writing; that is a description of the stupid writing.

[Siege]

The F-303 series were bearable, but Prometheus and its sister ships just broke SoD for me. I wonder why the writers chose for Earth-built warships instead of modified Ha'taks with a new paintjob, a USAF logo and a few railguns slapped on. SG teams stealing a few of those after the System Lords fell into disarray would've been far more believable than Earth building its own custom warship, Asgard help or no Asgard help.

[Vympel]

Even with all of that bullshit, it's still totally ridiculous. How many years did it take to develop the F-22, again? All with real, well-understood physics rather than having to learn entire new branches of physics from ruins?

It gets worse when you think about how long it takes to even build an ocean-going warship which has a well settled design produced many times before- the newest DDG 51 destroyer was ordered in 2001 and was commissioned early this year - and yet, they had their first damn starship by the 5th season of the show.

[Crazedwraith]

6th. The Prometheus was unveiled halfway through season 6. Unless you're including captured goa'uld ships. They had a cargo ship in season 4 and a Mothership for the finale of season 4.

[SirNitram]

Indeed. The fighter plan was quite bearable: By four years, they had... Duct-taped on some USAF controls onto a pair of enemy fighters. Six years of production, and they have a mostly human-tech transatmospheric. I think the main super-tech on the X-302 was the hyperdrive(Which is shown to be literally a Gou'ald one; it still takes the glyphs!), otherwise being an extremely complicated multi-engine fighter. And we don't see any more of them until the seventh year.

The Prometheus was just insane, though. Sure, it didn't work and was basically an incomplete metal shell with a reactor and engines that needed to be finished by a Gou'ald and some Asgard help, but still, that's crazy, the level of progress. And it ran off Naquadriah, which they had only just discovered!

[NecronLord]

I think the main super-tech on the X-302 was the hyperdrive(Which is shown to be literally a Gou'ald one; it still takes the glyphs!),

And that hyperdrive topped out at 1 light second or less, and still hasn't been seen to work any better yet, IIRC.

[Crazedwraith]

I think the main super-tech on the X-302 was the hyperdrive(Which is shown to be literally a Gou'ald one; it still takes the glyphs!), otherwise being an extremely complicated multi-engine fighter. And we don't see any more of them until the seventh year.

Hyperdrive + the inertial compensators that make it more manoeuvrable and aid in flight iirc.

[SirNitram]

I think the main super-tech on the X-302 was the hyperdrive(Which is shown to be literally a Gou'ald one; it still takes the glyphs!), otherwise being an extremely complicated multi-engine fighter. And we don't see any more of them until the seventh year.

Hyperdrive + the inertial compensators that make it more manoeuvrable and aid in flight iirc.

Ah yes.

The absolute physics-raping tech, that was the only thing working on every single Earth ship. Apparently, it's easier to nullify inertia than maintain a pressurized hull.

[Winston Blake]

Even with all of that bullshit, it's still totally ridiculous. How many years did it take to develop the F-22, again? All with real, well-understood physics rather than having to learn entire new branches of physics from ruins?

The F-22 took 21 years to develop (the Saturn V took 5 years to develop). I doubt that the Prometheus is the F-22 of starships - IIRC the bad guy in its introduction episode was apalled that Earth would even attempt interstellar travel with such crude technology. Rather than squeezing out every last drop of performance at the cutting-edge (like the F-22), it's more like a modern third world country trying to build a Spitfire.

I concede that the introduction of Earth ships to the Stargateverse was sloppily executed, and the feel was practically copied-and-pasted from Star Trek. I also concede that having only extraterrestrial scientific knowledge is not a plausible explanation for Earth's development of starship technology. However, I don't agree that the short development time of the Prometheus is laughably impossible.

As others have pointed out, a staple of the show is that Area 51 often acquires working examples of alien technology (engines/hyperdrives from Death Gliders, Cargo ships, Al'kesh etc). They traded for plans and examples of naquadah reactors in one episode, completely skipping most of the time needed to develop a hand-held nuclear power station (if it could have been done at all).

The SGC also exchanges personnel with the Tok'ra. They can not only provide plans for Goa'uld starships, but plans of the industrial fabrication technology needed, expert consultants, and they may even outright sell parts and/or tooling to Earth.

There are a lot of ways the writers could have explained the Prometheus. The simplest would be that it really is just a runt Ha'tak or souped-up Goa'uld cargo ship, painted-by-the-numbers with off-the-shelf Tok'ra/alien manufacturing technology. The world is at war, and they needed an anti-Ha'tak vessel ASAP. That's my rationalisation. The only reason it's shown great combat performance is because the Asgard explicitly improved it and gave it Asgard shields.

Regarding naquadriah, American nuclear submarines use highly enriched uranium that has over 130x the energy density of the fuel in a natural uranium reactor. Yet the fundamental principles are the same. A naquadriah reactor may be nothing more than a high power density naquadah reactor, that happens to be very temperamental.

[SirNitram]

The Prometheus can, to an extent, be explained as monkey-see-monkey-do tech, because in the first episode, it's shown to use the same crystals as Ha'taks, just with USAF interfaces literally welded on top. And of course, it didn't bloody work except for the engines and dampners.

But it's still a huge leap of faith. It's somewhat helped by the fact that by the time we saw it's first functional flight, it's had the Asgard crawling over it, improving it in many ways.

And of course, on that first proper mission, it's reactor goes foom. Silly hu-mans.(To be fair, it ejected and the ship was fine apart from the fact the explosion caused the nearby planet to launch missiles.)