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

[Juubi Karakuchi]

I will say that I enjoyed Stargate SG-1 initially. The Goa'uld were a capable and deadly enemy, and I liked how SG-1 seemed to be on the brink of disaster every time they faced them, but nonetheless succeeded and got away. Later on, the Goa'uld got increasingly useless. System Lords were not only dropping like flies, but were nothing like as impressive as Ra in the movie. They are rendered down into cookie-cutter villains (at least Baal had a goatee, and Yu was somewhat impressive). I have some difficulty in explaining them in words, so instead I'll describe Ra and let you make the comparison.

In the movie, Ra has an impressively dark and potent mien about him. Through a combination of Jaye Davidson's appearance, his acting skills, and the voice effect, you can see a being that has lived for thousands of years, is accustomed to unimaginable power, and might be forgiven for equating humans with cockroaches. Incidentally, the movie novelization actually describes Ra in some depth. He comes across as a being of genuine potency, but doomed to inescapable loneliness by his longevity and his essential nature. He is something of a Nietzschian superman as a youth, dismissive of the tribe's communal life and unimpressed by its spirituality, actually developing it into a controlling ideology after he fuses with the alien. In the end, for all his power, his immortal life has no meaning beyond survival and the maintenance of said power. For all his apparent godhood, there is something frighteningly and painfully human about him.
Look at Ra, and you might just see a god. Look at the other System Lords, and you see fundamentally insecure beings, hiding their vulnerability behind grandiose monuments and BDZ-capable starships. In this respect, it is the 'parasitic alien' concept that ruins the Goa'uld, since the fear of being ripped out and stamped-on is what makes them so insecure. Only Apophis comes close to matching Ra's depth, since he might just be capable of love.

Now for something more fun; the technical stuff. Ra's warriors were potent and threatening. The Jaffa were somewhat impressive to begin with, but their threat diminished over time. In Children of the Gods Apophis' Serpent Guards proved a match for Tauri soldiers (and Abydonian militia armed with Tauri firearms). The two deaths in the first encounter were caused by their tendency to stand around doing nothing while M16 bullets bounced off their armour (or at least the armour plates. Presumably the chainmail underneath is less protective). As far as Jaffa are concerned, I would define a 'Guard' (Serpent, Jackal, etc) as wearing the characteristic headgear, which I call a 'Guard Helm' (I say helm because it covers the whole head, as opposed to a helmet which does not), those who do not being simply 'Jaffa'. The Guards rarely appear in SG-1, and when they do, they seem somewhat more capable than generic Jaffa. The staff- weapons also seem to have been toned down, which is unfortunate since their destructive power compensated somewhat for their ergonomic inadequacies. As soldiers, the Jaffa also seem to be let down by their tactics. Their idea of an assault is a massed infantry charge with blazing staff-weapons, usually getting mown down by SG troopers in the process. Since the Guards do not often appear, and when they do it tends to be in confined areas, their combat effectiveness is difficult to gauge. Their superior shooting can be put down to short ranges, but I have long suspected that the Guard Helm provides some targetting assistance, amongst other things.

Then there's the Death Glider. There are essentially two ways to look at this iconic aircraft: a graceful and deadly war machine, or the pointless toy of a civilization which has forgotten the art of war. The movie took the first view, and SG-1 mostly took the second view, with occasional concessions. It appears capable of acting both as jet fighter and attack helicopter, being based on antigrav technology, and is apparently more manouevreable than the F-302 (the Tauri derivative). It can withstand incredible pressure over its superstructure (flying in and out of atmospheres, operating deep underwater in Descent), but tends to suffer when hit by Tauri missiles, with the unique 'transporter-glider' going down to a single Stinger hit in Children of the Gods (though the Stinger is actually a direct-hit-kill missile intended to deal with helicopters and ground-attack aircraft, which tend to be fairly resilient).

You're probably starting to wonder what the point of this post is. I suppose it was to complain about what the Goa'uld devolved into over time, considering how they started out in the movie. But it also inspired me to consider how they might be improved, to answer the age-old question 'well how would you do it then?' This is, before you ask, one of my hobbies.

So how would I improve them? Firstly, I must decide on the context. Am I writing this as a series or wargame (a particular hobby of mine)? Or am I writing them as a realistic civilization? In the former case, I would write in some deliberate weaknesses, to give the heroes a fighting chance in the former case and for game-balance in the latter case. If I were writing them realistically, then they don't really require obvious weaknesses, since it is in the nature of military organisations to render themselves invincible, though they don't often succeed.

I came up with several possiblities, the simplest of which would be to lay the tech on pretty thick. As I see it, the Goa'uld technology should be highly advanced to the point of being seamless, and as such being easily mistaken for magic. It should also be almost everywhere, even when it isn't quite appropriate. For example, the Guard Helms should provide a series of advantages, including multi-spectral vision, targetting, a pressure seal, tactical communication, and whatever else you can plausibly squeeze in. Also, they should fold up like in the movie. The trade-off to all this wankery is that the Helm is a hideously complex piece of equipment. It may be fairy resiliant, but its wearer nonetheless cannot repair it by himself. This is the disadvantage; for all its sophistication, Goa'uld military technology is not particularly accessible, with only a small elite being able to use it to its full potential. This is a convenient built-in weakness, reminiscent not only of the M16 vs AK47 debate, but also hints at what is happening in real-life. It also gives the heroes something to work with, without them having to scavenge Ancient Technology which only they can use. I want the heroes to win because they are heroic, not because they are genetically destined to rule the universe.

Is this of interest?

[Zor]

I never saw anything about the Death Glider being used in a manner that made it seemed invincable in regards to the movie, they simply had no anti-aircraft rocket launchers or such to use against it. Sure it could vertically take of and land, but besides that it only had one means of attack (strafing runs).

Zor

[Pulp Hero]

I think that if Jaffa armor were treated as IV+ armor, and essentially as something requiring something powerful and not easily carried (or at least not with lots of ammunition) like 40mm grenades, .50 cal bullets, etc. they would stay very threatening because the situation for the SG-1 team is either "ZOMG, run away!" or "Pull out the barret for a heavy fight" which makes the primary enemy not a wuss.

Plus if the the Goa'uld/Jaffa were made obsessed about keeping their advantage over the humans, you could get great story threads like the Goa'uld sending in waves of jaffa to recover a single (movie level of destructive power) staff weapon. Make every technological steal from them a big deal.

[Johonebesus]

First of all, I assume you realize that the backstory created by the movie's writers was completely different than the series. Emmerich's Ra was not a Goa'uld, and in fact your brief description of him from the novel makes him sound more like a Star Trek Trill than a Goa'uld. The guards were not Jaffa, and the credits at least imply that they weren't just redshirts, but the main two were Anubis and Horus themselves. So bringing in the movie's backstory and the novels based on it is problematic at best.

I think that the big problem with the series was not the technology, but the abandonment of the movie's mythos. In the movie Ra was the source of Egyptian myth. I don't know where the novels took it, but from the movie it seemed that Ra came to Earth at least ten thousand years ago, much later whatever government he left on Earth was overthrown and the Stargate buried, and by the classical dynastic period Ra's reign was barely remembered in myth. The movie had a sort of mytho-poeic quality that was quickly lost by the series. It didn't happen all at once. Early on Jackson used Egyptian myths to speculate on the relationships and personalities of the system lords, with some success. The episode that introduced Osiris also confirmed an age of at least ten millennia for Osiris' escape ship. Yet by the end of the series they implied that the Goa'uld were just assuming the personas of fictional deities that already existed.

They also moved the Goa'uld occupation of Earth into historic times. By making Greek and Chinese and Mesoamerican Goa'uld, not to mention the Asgard and Sokar/Satan, they placed the Goa'uld well into history. For anyone with the least bit of knowledge that hurt suspension of disbelief. It's a lot easier to imagine aliens active on Earth in distant prehistory than in the times of the Greeks or the Christians. It also hurt the mythic quality. There's a reason that the golden age/antediluvian/dream-time myths are almost ubiquitous, even with modern Atlantean garbage. There is just something almost instinctive about the myth of the prehistoric age of the gods. By removing the Goa'uld from that ancient past and making them players in recorded history, they were made much more mundane.

I think what they should have done was stick to the Egyptian pantheon. There are plenty of Egyptian deities to supply major and minor lords. Perhaps Ra left his son/lieutenant Osiris to govern Earth, and he was almost assassinated by a rival Set. Osiris was saved, but called back to Ra's court in shame. Horus defeated Set and continued to rule. Maybe it was only after this that Ra began to use the sarcophagus and became a sociopath, or maybe something happened to Horus to make him more benevolent. There ought to be some explanation as to why the Egyptians remembered Amun and his descendants as being so benevolent. For whatever reason, Horus decided to leave the humans to rule themselves. He had them bury the Stargate and told Ra that the planet was attacked or something.

Apophis should have been Sokar. The "real" Apophis wasn't a god, but a monster that tried to devour the sun every night on his journey through the earth. It would make much more sense for Apophis to the be name of a mysterious, powerful, and feared Goa'uld who was outside of the System Lords' feudal structure. Ra's rival within his system should have been Set. Set was a force of chaos and destruction, yet he also aided Amun in his nightly battle with Apophis. The Goa'uld Set would be a reluctant vassal of Ra's, always scheming to replace him, but sometimes fighting for his lord to maintain the feudal empire from outside threats, like Apophis.

Of course, there is the inevitable problem that comes from the underdog heroes again and again defeating the vast and powerful enemies. Once or twice is luck, but when it happens over and over it becomes incompetence. If you want the Goa'uld to remain a really impressive threat, then they should be face only rarely. Mostly they should ignore Earth, and the earthlings should only occasionally strike a minor blow against them. It's the same problem with the Wraith and the Borg. If they keep getting beaten by heroes that are explicitly stated to be inferior in technology and resources, then the only excuse is incompetence. They become disappointing and stupid. Perhaps SG1 should have handled the Goa'uld somewhat like DS9's Dominion. For the first couple of seasons they should be rarely seen or hinted at, and only gradually become a present threat. They should have built up the threat gradually over the years, with the System Lords ignoring Earth at first because they can't be a threat. Only in the last season or two should they really let loose, and then it should have been like Anubis or the Ori: massive ships with incredible power that the heroes, despite their technological advances, can barely deal with. That would have been much more satisfying.

[Pulp Hero]

Agreed. SG-1 should have stuck mostly to exploration of the galaxy and diferent human worlds. There should have been more non-Goa'uld controlled planets, no "gimmick" historical allegory planets. Maybe the Goa'ld left our galaxy/went to hiding thousands of years ago/lost the addresses of lots of different planets and then something that SG-1 does in the first or second episode is fuck that up and bring them back.

Now you have a show about exploration and Earth trying to convince other human planets to join up before the Goa'uls show up with death beams. When they do show up there should be lots of sneaking (maybe the jaffa don't have NVG capabilities, so we can sneak around them?) and the occasional firefight with the employment of barrets, beuwulf rifles, and generally lots of big anti-tank weapons.

[Juubi Karakuchi]

I agree with Johonebesus that it should have stuck with the Egyptian pantheon. It offers plenty of potential for rows, plots, intrigue and family squabbles simply by following the mythology. Your point also raises the question of why the Egyptian pantheon was considered benevolent if its members/impersonators were actually evil? Overall, I'm not particularly worried about the technology either. I did not even mention the starships since they pretty much serve their purpose.

My concept was that the Gods were humans chosen and empowered by Ra. Increasing their longevity through genetic manipulation (while still requiring a sarcophagus) would be the most obvious improvement. He allowed them to rule in particular ways as part of his purpose. Osiris and Isis were good rulers, for Ra saw the usefulness of benevolence, but Sokar was allowed, even encouraged, to be psychotically cruel, his domain serving as a counterpoint to the near-paradise of Osiris' kingdom. Apophis could be a member of the Pantheon who rebelled against Ra, or he could be completely separate from it. Like Johonebesus, I too had the idea that it was the Gods who buried the Stargate to get of Ra, perhaps realising his nature after a while. The idea that they left in order to let humans rule themselves is also quite appealing.

I also wanted to have ideological and philosophical differences between the Gods on what it means to be a God. This way, some of them would not actually be hostile to Earth (meaning that not all encounters would be violent, thus allowing them to appear without raising the competence issue). Osiris and Isis, for example, believed that the whole point was to make people happy, even if that meant keeping them ignorant of some things, and may have come to think of themselves as Gods. Thoth, on the other hand, opposed obscurantism and did not believe in the afterlife, deciding that it was better for people to accept the inevitability of death. Thoth, incidentally, sees his immortality as a gift that allowed him to discover all knowledge, and Ptah amuses himself for eternity by exercising his engineering skills, but neither think of themselves as Gods.

[Darth Hoth]

Now for something more fun; the technical stuff. Ra's warriors were potent and threatening. The Jaffa were somewhat impressive to begin with, but their threat diminished over time. In Children of the Gods Apophis' Serpent Guards proved a match for Tauri soldiers (and Abydonian militia armed with Tauri firearms). The two deaths in the first encounter were caused by their tendency to stand around doing nothing while M16 bullets bounced off their armour (or at least the armour plates. Presumably the chainmail underneath is less protective). As far as Jaffa are concerned, I would define a 'Guard' (Serpent, Jackal, etc) as wearing the characteristic headgear, which I call a 'Guard Helm' (I say helm because it covers the whole head, as opposed to a helmet which does not), those who do not being simply 'Jaffa'. The Guards rarely appear in SG-1, and when they do, they seem somewhat more capable than generic Jaffa. The staff- weapons also seem to have been toned down, which is unfortunate since their destructive power compensated somewhat for their ergonomic inadequacies. As soldiers, the Jaffa also seem to be let down by their tactics. Their idea of an assault is a massed infantry charge with blazing staff-weapons, usually getting mown down by SG troopers in the process. Since the Guards do not often appear, and when they do it tends to be in confined areas, their combat effectiveness is difficult to gauge. Their superior shooting can be put down to short ranges, but I have long suspected that the Guard Helm provides some targetting assistance, amongst other things.

What did Ra's servitors in the film do that was so impressive (apart, perhaps, from overtaking the troopers in the darkness of the pyramid)? They displayed no superhuman abilities that I can remember, and when shot at, they died. That, coupled with low numbers, made them very much a minor threat, one that even the Abydans could easily beat once they made the attempt. The Goa'uld Serpent Guards in Children were vastly more impressive in at least some respects (foremost, being bullet proof); if anything, they were amped between the media, not nerfed. Of course, they were ultra-nerfed later on . . . But as of the first episode, I do not see the discrepancy.

[Juubi Karakuchi]

What did Ra's servitors in the film do that was so impressive (apart, perhaps, from overtaking the troopers in the darkness of the pyramid)? They displayed no superhuman abilities that I can remember, and when shot at, they died. That, coupled with low numbers, made them very much a minor threat, one that even the Abydans could easily beat once they made the attempt. The Goa'uld Serpent Guards in Children were vastly more impressive in at least some respects (foremost, being bullet proof); if anything, they were amped between the media, not nerfed. Of course, they were ultra-nerfed later on . . . But as of the first episode, I do not see the discrepancy.

Point taken. I meant to say that Ra's servitors were impressive in the sense that they gave a sense of power, but were not overpowered (they could still die). The Serpent Guard were, as you say, impressively powerful early on (so much so that I forgave their black trainers/sneakers), and the armour was well-handled at least in their case. I suppose calling them 'impressive' was rather subjective in this case. It's like saying that the SW Stormtroopers are 'impressive' (to the point of being iconic) whereas Ming's troops in 'Flash Gordon' (1980 Movie) are rather florid and campy. I concede your point in this case.

[Darth Onasi]

I don't agree that the movie Ra and guards were that much better than the TV series.
Considering a TV budget the early Jaffa were quite impressive; I still remember the first time I saw Teal'c open his serpent guard helmet to look all menacing-like.

I do agree that the goa'uld in general decayed quite badly through the series. They were overused and weakened to a laughable extent. Aside from the serpent and horus guards we never saw other helm Jaffa, always going for the cheaper mark-on-forehead route and - aside from budget issues - dying stupidly in human-wave attacks and succumbing to the "honorable warrior culture" brainbug.
I too think the goa'uld should've been a more sporadic enemy, not too concerned with the Tau'ri to begin with. Apophis' assault at the end of season 1 should've still happened but I don't think it should have ruined him the way it did. Instead have him back off with a grudge or something, and gradually build up the threat to epic levels.
Moreover as cool as the Asgard were, I think they were introduced too early, and were far too above the Goa'uld at first which involved a series of plot events to weaken them and strengthen the goa'uld and vice versa that I honestly couldn't take seriously anymore.

[tezunegari]

I didn't like the episode where Earth was made an Asgard protected world. At that point the Goa'uld already knew Earth was able to overthrow them individually planet by planet and we have seen how Goa'uld attacked a world (or just a village) because a single Tok'ra was there.The homeworld of the Reetu was destroyed because they are invisibility and have a fear effect on Goa'uld. Martin Loyds homeworld was at destroyed by them, that bounty hunter (the zed immune guy "woo, that tickles") was enslaved because the Goa'uld were unable to take over their bodies.
So what did stop them from attacking Earth?

And if the Asgard are so interested in the development of humans then why isn't Earth a protected world already.

I think it would have been interesting to learn that they only survived so far because the Goa'uld where held back by a bluff.
And what would the Asgard have traded for Earths safety (they did think Earth held the key to their survival after all).

The approch the writers have used for Anubis should have been used for the Goa'uld as a whole. Don't show them - show their agents.
Making Tanith the agent of Anubis was really an interesting move because of the history the guy had with Teal'c. Not to imagine what kind of trouble they would have gotten into because of Teal'cs lust for revenge.

The Goa'uld were supposed to be decadent rulers who have no real interest in riches but in intrigue and power.
So why not making some of their plans benevolent.

In one episode - the one with O'Neill pulling a Kirk with a local female and turning into methusalem for it - a Goa'uld (Talos, I think) used humans to research the aging process. The people there lived their lived happily. And the Goa'uld was seen as evil for it.
But the Alterans used colonies for sociologic experiments in the SGA episode "The Game" (?). No one really questioned the motives of the alterans there. No one really knows what happened to the colonies that failed the expectations of the Alterans.

A story arc about a SG1 travelling to a world with a benevolent Goa'uld would have had great potential. SG1 thinking the population is spouting Goa'uld propaganda out of fear and trying to overthrow the Goa'uld and failing just to learn that he/she is actually a good guy/gal who cares about his people would show that even SG1 can make mistakes.
Imagine a prison scene (modern, not medieval) with a pissed of Goa'uld shouting at SG1:
"I had to write [insert number here] letters to families who will never see their husband, son or father ever again! You were invited into their homes. You shared their bread and this is how you repay them?!" *tired moaning* "I share your resentment against some of the systemlords you have encountered but I will not forget what you did. I have contacted Earth. They did not believe my words. So I will let you leave. Do not return. Every armed Tau'ri will be considered hostile and killed on sight."

[Darth Onasi]

In general they missed a lot of opportunity to characterize the goa'uld, making them all evil one-dimensional despots.
Yeah there were some interesting and funny ones like Nerous and Baal (later on) but they were still bad bad bad, a lot of wasted potential.
I mean they go on and on about how all goa'uld are rabid sociopaths, but Apophis did indeed seem capable of love, and Osiris appeared somewhat distressed at the news of Daniel's death (that would've made some sense, Osiris is one of the great romantic figures of ancient myth and maybe Sarah's feelings imprinted on him... oh but next time Osiris appears it's back to being a complete idiot and getting killed. Yay.)

I suppose they tried to make the goa'uld less one-dimensional with the tok'ra but then they were hand-waved away as the single spawn of one magically not evil goa'uld queen.

[Omega18]

I don't agree that the movie Ra and guards were that much better than the TV series.
Considering a TV budget the early Jaffa were quite impressive; I still remember the first time I saw Teal'c open his serpent guard helmet to look all menacing-like.

I'm going to strongly disagree in a key respect here. We can debate impressiveness, but the movie Ra Guards came across as FAR more competent in general. In part one of the first episode of the TV show, the Jaffa came across as still pretty impressive, but it rapidly went downhill from there. (A basic detail is they supposedly switched to armor piercing bullets and suddenly the armor was no longer notably effective.)

By contrast, the movie Jaffa as I recalled took down the group of elite special force type soldiers at the pyramid without as I recall even taking a casualty in the process.

Several of the soldiers were only overwhelmed by a MASS uprising with them being overwhelmed by a mass attack from all directions at once. A modern assault rifle would have been better for that situation, but the guards did take down quite a few of the attackers and the staff weapons were substantially more powerful as shown in the movie. (As in a number of the attackers were taken out by every single blast.) You also significantly had Curt Russel's O'Neal have incredible trouble beating just a single one of these Jaffa movie guards with him having to resort to getting the guard's head right in a transport ring at the right moment in order to actually kill him.

Even in small numbers, movie guards would have been a vastly greater potential threat a small SG-1 team in their typical operations. Clearly they were individually nerfed heavily to make the SG-1 team's survival every episode somewhat more plausible, but I personally think they absolutely should have gone with direct encounters with the Gou'ld and Jaffa being much rarer and them remaining far more dangerous.

[Oskuro]

I suppose they tried to make the goa'uld less one-dimensional with the tok'ra but then they were hand-waved away as the single spawn of one magically not evil goa'uld queen.

It's the magic of genetic memories! Handwaving away actual individuality. That's why Baal was such a likeable villain, he went beyond the Goauld stereotype. Too bad he did it so late into the series.

As for the contrast between movie and series, I always faound it funny how the series' Glider weapons were roughly as powerful as the Movie's Staff Weapons. But, on the other hand, is an understandable nerf.

Although they weren't armored, and not really that impressive, the Movie version of the Jaffa, as well as Ra, had a lot of style, thus making their pressence more imposing and giving an aura of power. The series' "we all wear gray" Jaffa were.... dull. Only with Anubis (and his samurai-looking jaffa) did things get a bit mixed up.

[Adrian Laguna]

Typically the best way to prevent villain decay is not just to make sure the good guy's victories are hard won, but to also let the bad guys win every so often. There should be times when the bad guys outsmart the heroes, also times when the heroes honestly fuck up, either by underestimating their enemies or overestimating themselves. Such situations would force to them to change plans, concede objectives, or give ground. The villains thus remain dangerous because even the best laid plans on the part of the heroes can be foiled or compromised.

Here's a plot idea: SG-1 goes to a world held by a hostile System Lord to make contact with and assist a Tok'ra spy. After they get there and find the spy, they are told that the local garrison is heavily infiltrated and can be made to turn against their God if the loyalist Goa'uld and upper ranking Jaffa are eliminated. SG-1 is given the task of conducting the assassinations then helping the uprising against remaining loyalist resistance. The twist comes when SG-1 realizes, to their horror, that they've taken out the traitor Goa'uld and upper ranking Jaffa. Turns out the real Tok'ra spy had been found out long ago and replaced by an impostor. It's a clever trap devised by the System Lord to take out SG-1, purge the garrison of disloyalty, and foment distrust between the Tau'ri, Tok'ra, and Free Jaffa. How does SG-1 save the day? They don't, just making it out alive requires all the wit, luck, and improvisation skills they can muster.

Stuff like that could do a lot to prevent villain decay in the Goa'uld. Implementing the occasional mission failure is, however, an incomplete measure. To be truly credible as a threat a villains must be only capable of holding ground against the heroes, but also of taking it from them. Thus there must be terrain that the heroes can lose without threatening the integrity of the series. For example, every time the Goa'uld attack Earth they have to fail, even if it forces the writers to resort to deus ex machina, because them succeeding would alter the character of the series too much. Earth is basically character shielded, which means that any attempts to put the SGC on the defensive will always fail, thus eventually making the enemy look incompetent. There have to be places other than Earth that can come under attack without some sort of victory on SG-1's part being necessary. That way the Goa'uld and Jaffa can be given the opportunity to look competent and dangerous by scoring victories against SG-1.

Another important thing would be to maintain the sense that the SGC is a minor player and way out of its depth. Realistically, the Tau'ri about as dangerous to the System Lords as the Taliban ever was to the United States. The worst that SG-1 can do to the Goa'uld is blow up something important*, but that's just going to piss them off. Once the System Lord they attacked finds were SG-1 came from, it's game over. He'll either nuke everything and go home, or nuke until resistance breaks and seize whatever is still standing. It should have been painfully obvious early on that Earth's only options are to remain beneath Goa'uld notice, or to secure powerful allies, and the first option has already been compromised.

(*No, I'm not calling SG-1 terrorists, obviously it would be a military target.)

Some of that was addressed by the series, as securing allies was one of the SGC's stated missions, SG-1 did piss of a System Lord, and he did attack with such overwhelming force that Earth stood helpless. Thing is, the two capital ships were then destroyed by SG-1, two rebel Jaffa, and a strong willed host. I will readily admit that I thoroughly enjoyed that couple of episodes, they are pure win and awesome. However, one cannot deny that completely defeating a strategic scale attack with a tiny spec-ops force did not exactly enhance the credibility of the Goa'uld as a threat. Neither did it make the apparent need for allies other than some rebel Jaffa all the more pressing.

To go back to the issue of securing allies, consider this: If the Tau'ri are a complete non-threat, why would anyone want to ally with them? Because, while at most a nuisance by themselves, the nature of the Stargate universe means that they can be dangerous when allied with powers which are a threat to the Goa'uld. In Stargate, status quo has been generally maintained for some ten thousand years. As such, pretty much everybody is unaccustomed to all out war. Conflict tends to be resolved by intimidation, or limited to raids and skirmishes. The Asguard are about the only guys with experience in all out warfare, thanks to the replicators, and even they find themselves needing some pointers. So, what the Tau'ri have to offer is over 3000 years of experience in organized brutality. Well, that, an outdated map of the Stargate system, a willingness to stick their noses were they don't belong, unsurpassed scientific aptitude, supernatural luck, and the trust of the rebel Jaffa.

A better comparison than Afghanistan at this point might be Nepal. Tiny mountainous country, out of the way, low population, few resources, not much to write home about. Yet, it provided something invaluable to the British Empire, which boasted both record size and unchallenged mastery of the seas. One word: Ghurkas. Except the Tau'ri are even better. They are like Ghurkas, spec-ops commandos, military advisers, and scientific experts all rolled into one neat package. The general idea is that the SGC does not have the resources, firepower, or manpower to take on the Goa'uld directly. That part is handled in the background by other players, whose space and ground forces can match the Goa'uld. The role of the SG teams is give advanced training to these forces, assist in developing operational plans, conduct irregular warfare against the System Lords, and (most importantly) search the Stargate network for more allies and Ancient doodads.

If I am not mistaken, none of the things I have brought up thus far were absent from the series. I'm not adding entirely new elements, just developing them further for the purpose of preventing Goa'uld villain decay. To bring it all together, I first re-iterate my original point: to retain credibility the bad guys must be able to score their own victories. For that to happen there has to be something that the heroes can afford to lose. So the SGC is relegated to a supporting role in the greater struggle against the System Lords, and other factions are given the role of taking them on directly. This permits the writers to come-up with numerous offensive and defensive scenarios while still keeping open the possibility of victory or loss for either side. Meanwhile Earth becomes a secondary target and thus only rarely endangered, thus reducing the number of battles that are contractually required to result in a victory for the villains.

This can all be integrated with other ideas presented in this thread that add more depth to the Goa'uld as a whole. Some allies that the SGC finds could be the more benevolent System Lords, for example. A plot integrating all these ideas could involve a Goa'uld invasion of some planet the SGC just discovered. Instead of resorting to technobable devices, SG-1 could be rescued by the counter-invading forces of a friendly System Lord. They begin to liberate the world, but are halted and forced back when the invaders bring up reinforcements. They decided to concede the battle and pull out, which they do over SG-1's objections. Episode ends with our dejected heroes dialling home and leaving the planet to be enslaved.

[ray245]

From the early description of Hathor, she almost sounds like a benevolent Goa'uld. Too bad she became yet another generic villain.

[Lord Revan]

personally I think 1 good way to prevent villian decay would have been to do the same thing they're trying in the clone wars CGI-series (time will tell if they succeed or not), aka not have your main villian loose/show up all that often.

basically you have wast armies of minion and minor players who show up to be defeat every so often, but should major player in the goa'uld "empire" show up (or heaven forbid a system lord himself) it should be a really big deal and the victory (if you even would have one should hard won and maybe even a phyrric one).

[Shroom Man 777]

You know, I like it. Have the Tok'ra and the Free Jaffa and other factions, like Lord Yu, be the big guns - the ones who do the major battles and the ass kicking. While SG-1 are not the center of the universe and only play a bit part in a much more epic war.

All of that was already in the series, except they decided to ditch it in favor of going for all sorts of ridiculous Ancient stuff and deus ex machinas.

I for one would've loved to see more interactions and devil-deals with dubious System Lords, who're always out to screw their fellow Goa'ulds. Maybe SG-1 could've allied with some treacherous Grand Vizier of a System Lord, a cackling underling with delusions of grandeur, and both sides plan to betray and kill the other when they're no longer useful.

Earth is only a recent player in the greater Stargate 'verse. Yet in the series, a couple of seasons later, they become the Big Dogs. Man.

[andrewgpaul]

Depends how much you want to change the premise, I suppose. If you say that sometime between the movie and the series, Earth has set up some colonies (like the Alpha site bolthole, but with more populace), and absorbed some populated planets into their 'empire' (for want of a better word), then they've got something reasonable to lose. If you can restrict the use of planet-breaking spaceships*, so that the gates are the major method of interplanetary travel/invasion, it makes actually taking a world more difficult for everyone, so you can make a Goa'uld invasion something that lasts most of a season, rather than something for O'Neill to wisecrack away by the end of the episode.

*perhaps the Goa'uld's ships are non-FTL - that would explain why Ra visited Abydos so infrequently. You might have to retcon away the sheer distance between Earth and Abydos, though.

[tezunegari]

*perhaps the Goa'uld's ships are non-FTL - that would explain why Ra visited Abydos so infrequently. You might have to retcon away the sheer distance between Earth and Abydos, though.

Or you could make the standard Goa'uld hyperdrive rather dangerous to use. The premise was that the Goa'uld are tech-scavengers and that all their technology (to a degree) is based on ancient designs - at least that's what I remember. So the Goa'uld hyperdrive would just be a crude copy that they can copy but don't truelly understand. And as Ra was the Supreme System Lord he might have achieved that rank by having a technological advantage there. While the other Goa'uld took weeks or even months he could sent whole fleets within days or even hours.

(The scene with deLancie and the Glowey Eyes billionaire hijacking the prometheus comes to mind. the Goa'uld called the earth hyperdrive beyond primitive and it took time for him to get it working at all. Just change the line about it being primitve into "It's completely different!")

And the number of real Goa'uld should be reduced. No lackeys with glowing eyes. No Goa'uld scientists, no Goa'uld prison guards. All those should be normal humans/humanoid beings. Only the highest ranking officers of a system lords army should be other Goa'uld and quite rare to find on the battlefield.

The Tok'ra were a nice idea but in the end they were just arrogant bastards who were more interested in the status quo.
Earth killed Systemlords left and right and they moaned about the successing Goa'ulds being more powerful then the dead ones.
As far as I remember there wasn't even a Systemlord that was killed or overthrown by the Tok'ra at all.

[Marcus Aurelius]

Perhaps SG1 should have handled the Goa'uld somewhat like DS9's Dominion. For the first couple of seasons they should be rarely seen or hinted at, and only gradually become a present threat. They should have built up the threat gradually over the years, with the System Lords ignoring Earth at first because they can't be a threat. Only in the last season or two should they really let loose, and then it should have been like Anubis or the Ori: massive ships with incredible power that the heroes, despite their technological advances, can barely deal with. That would have been much more satisfying.

Well, at the time people still remembered Babylon 5 and you just described its main plot for the first 3 and half seasons. Of course it was not 1:1 rendering of your description, but fairly close to it. Copying B5 even more closely than DS9 had done would not have been very smart so close to the original (at least the DS9 writers could still claim that the similarities were accidental, since the Dominion was not as formidable and relentless enemy as the Shadows). In literature of course the same basic plot has been repeated numerous times--it's not that the B5 was truly original--but TV scifi is more scarce and similarities in plot development catch the eye more easily.

[andrewgpaul]

*perhaps the Goa'uld's ships are non-FTL - that would explain why Ra visited Abydos so infrequently. You might have to retcon away the sheer distance between Earth and Abydos, though.

Or you could make the standard Goa'uld hyperdrive rather dangerous to use. The premise was that the Goa'uld are tech-scavengers and that all their technology (to a degree) is based on ancient designs - at least that's what I remember. So the Goa'uld hyperdrive would just be a crude copy that they can copy but don't truelly understand. And as Ra was the Supreme System Lord he might have achieved that rank by having a technological advantage there. While the other Goa'uld took weeks or even months he could sent whole fleets within days or even hours.

That'd work, too. Anything so that invasion forces have to come via Gate, and you can have an ongoing defence without having to have SG1 blow up the three Goa'uld battleships that have appeared in orbit (again).

[Big Orange]

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.

After that incident Gou'ald System Lords should clue in to how Ra died and be much more protected from now on: the System Lords keep within the walls of their fortress palaces and the hulls of their flagships, so they should be virtually impossible for the SGC characters to get to so easily and so should be unseen masterminds like Sokar was depicted as, unwisely killed off early as he was.

[Johonebesus]

Perhaps SG1 should have handled the Goa'uld somewhat like DS9's Dominion. For the first couple of seasons they should be rarely seen or hinted at, and only gradually become a present threat. They should have built up the threat gradually over the years, with the System Lords ignoring Earth at first because they can't be a threat. Only in the last season or two should they really let loose, and then it should have been like Anubis or the Ori: massive ships with incredible power that the heroes, despite their technological advances, can barely deal with. That would have been much more satisfying.

Well, at the time people still remembered Babylon 5 and you just described its main plot for the first 3 and half seasons. Of course it was not 1:1 rendering of your description, but fairly close to it. Copying B5 even more closely than DS9 had done would not have been very smart so close to the original (at least the DS9 writers could still claim that the similarities were accidental, since the Dominion was not as formidable and relentless enemy as the Shadows). In literature of course the same basic plot has been repeated numerous times--it's not that the B5 was truly original--but TV scifi is more scarce and similarities in plot development catch the eye more easily.

If I remember correctly, the Shadows were barely known at the beginning and were only gradually revealed. I wasn't a huge fan of the show, but I seem to recall the ambassadors talking about the Shadow as some legendary bogey-man from the ancient past. The Goa'uld would not be hidden, they just wouldn't be confronted. The Goa'uld could be reveled in all their terrible glory in the pilot. Perhaps the U.S. occupied Abydos to mine naquadah and scavenge whatever technology Ra might have left behind, and then a Hatak comes in, removes the Earthlings' bases and infrastructure in a brief volley and overwhelms the defenders with a small force of Jaffa. The full threat and power of the Goa'uld would not be kept hidden; but it would be made clear that they didn't care about Earth. We would see them destroying civilizations and devastating planets, but Earth would be on the periphery of big galactic action. There could be all kinds of collateral damage from the civil war caused by Ra's death and perhaps Apophis' (series' Sokar) taking advantage of the situation. Perhaps the Tok'ra's whining about the Earthlings' having upset the balance of power would be a legitimate complaint voiced by many peoples. Perhaps the Tollan and the Aschen were tributaries or protectorates of Ra, or they played Ra and Apophis against each other, but with the feudal structure in chaos and maybe open war between the System Lords and Apophis, the lesser civilizations are getting ground up.

In a way it would make the threat much more palpable. Instead of some mysterious entity that we just have to assume is so horrible, we get to see right from the start that the Goa'uld are too big for us to take on, which would add a sense of urgency to the mission to develop technology and find allies before the gods finally turn their attentions to Earth.

I'd also get rid of the Alterans/Ancients. Let the Goa'uld be the ancients who invented the stargates and who knows what else. They might be like China; over the ages they invented all sorts of things, but much of it has been lost or forgotten. Maybe they are like the Sleestacks, the slightly degraded survivors of an even more impressive but lost civilization. It seems like the Alterans served two purposes: the source of dei ex machinae, and human exceptionalism since modern humans the descendants of the Ancients through the Dakara device.

You might have to retcon away the sheer distance between Earth and Abydos, though.

They did. In the film the planet was on the other end of the observable universe. In the series it was quite close to Earth, so that the millennia of stellar drift hadn't screwed up the address.

[Juubi Karakuchi]

I have to say I'm impressed with how this debate is going. Excellent ideas all round.

One particularly important issue for me was that of having benevolent Gods. If we are sticking with the Goa'uld concept, then this would make them somewhat similar to the Tok'ra in nature. This would also affect how the Goa'uld acquire their hosts. For SG-1, the taking of hosts is not merely a moral affront, but a visceral reaction (who wouldn't be repulsed by the idea?). For 'evil' Goa'uld (Apophis, Sokar, etc) this would not be a problem. For benevolent Goa'uld (Osiris, Isis, Horus, Thoth, probably Hathor), this could be resolved either by taking willing hosts (Tok'ra style) or by using clones (a la Nirrti's 'Hok'ta' project). The advantage of the latter is that it would allow for bizarre powers via genetic manipulation (Nirrti's Quasimodo-lookalikes were capable of telepathy and telekinesis).
The biggest simple problem with the parastic alien model is that it makes their divinity relatively easy to debunk (though it is implied in some cases that their followers know, but do not care). The Ori countered this, being ascended beings (who might as well have been gods), capable of granting their Priors supernatural powers. Giving the Goa'uld something similar would not only reduce villain decay, but bring up the same question as the Ori (how do you define a god?)

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.

[Johonebesus]

Maybe Apophis (or rather Apep, why did they use try to use authentic forms of some of the gods, like Heru, but Greek forms for others?) could be good, a caring god who fought against Ra's oppressive system. He was demonized by the System Lords, so that in Egyptian myth he was a monster trying to destroy life. In fact, maybe his host is a great serpentine beast instead of a human. Perhaps one of his ships crashed on Earth a couple of thousand years ago. The survivors couldn't retrieve any communication device and couldn't find the stargate, so they scattered and tried to civilize some of the less advanced cultures, leading to myths of wise and benevolent serpent gods, like the Chinese dragon or Quetzalcoatl. Then we could have Apophis becoming an enemy of Earth by tezunegari's idea. Even the good Goa'uld eventually want to conquer Earth to save us from ourselves. This could lead to an interesting philosophical debate. Evil Goa'uld want to enslave us for their own benefit, while good Goa'uld want to civilize us because they are horrified at our barbarity. They see us as no better than Ra's vassals, with all of our war and dichotomy of wealth. In the end, we could question whether we really might be better off ruled by a benevolent alien over-lord.


What if the Goa'uld had a great and glorious civilization and used less intelligent animals as hosts, but then were attacked by a bio weapon that targeted those hosts. Ra fled to Earth and decided to use humans. Ra started out basically benevolent, but over time his constant fight to control his host made him into a sociopath. Perhaps the sarcophagus made it worse. The Ra that made Earth's stargate and gave civilization to humans was much more kind and generous than the Ra encountered on Abydos. After a time he had built up enough of an army to take over the authority of what was left of his people, with Apophis and his followers refusing to enslave sentient people and resisting Ra's rule.

The idea of genetically engineered hosts is good. Maybe the hand device works by focusing power already present, so only someone with psychic powers could use it.