The Galactic Empire invade the Star Gate Universe

[Vance]

Ah, well, that clears that up then. That wall was pretty darn thick too, so it's not much of a stretch to believe they could blast in metal doors. It was arrogant of me to assert what I did without seeing all of StarGate.

The best example is the Zygerrian blaster you have on the site; but even that, I'm not convinced is indicative of a weapon operating at a substantially greater power than staff weapons are capable of.

Yeah, neither am I now.

[RogueIce]

But the trail of bodies thing is entirely normal as far as we can tell for the empire. We need to start questioning our assumptions, built on thirty five years of now-deprecated information, about how the empire works, and what it is, even.

But that's the thing, we don't know if it's normal. We have only two executions from Vader, who has no clear superior other than the Emperor. We don't even know what his "standards" are for killing subordinates, since Piett didn't die after losing the Millennium Falcon while Needa did. And we can't even say whether it's technically legal or illegal, because I don't think anyone will be quoting regulations at Lord Vader anytime soon. Tarkin did put a stop to Vader choking Motti, and the others reacted with surprise at it happening, Tarkin included, so who's to say Vader had a reputation of offing officers who displeased him before that?

Kallus again happened with no witnesses, so it could be justified or it could have been straight-up murder but he could get away with it because of the circumstances.

As for the second example, well that could well be instructive as to this point, depending on what they do with it.
Spoiler

The kid is going in to "investigate" the disappearance of his friend, if I'm thinking of the same thing you are. So if summary execution is legal and normal, why would they even have a mystery? They executed somebody, deal with it, this is the Empire. OTOH if there's some kind of cover story, that would tend to imply it's not the norm, because otherwise why bother? So we shall see how that plot plays out and what insights it can give us.

Assuming said friend is even dead. From what I've seen they just say there's a disappearance so maybe the other cadet is alive or something. Though I haven't seen everything that's been released about the show so maybe they've said the missing friend really is dead somewhere.

Right now with only three examples from two people - one of whom with a murky yet clearly very high place in authority; the other with no witnesses and circumstances where nobody might even think to ask the question in the first place - I don't think there's enough to say one way or another. Star Wars Rebels might actually give us some clues in this regard, but we'll have to wait and see.

And what's the deleted scene? Those generally aren't considered canon anyway, but I am curious.

As to the Replicators, it's been way too long since I watched SG-1 to say what they can or can't do so I won't even bother. Others can pick up that fight if they want to. I'm just here about the officer executions thing.

[NecronLord]

Sorry about not posting this with the other: had to go find the DVD. There actually is a scene with a staff weapon shooting through a blast door:


It's not as good as the Death Star example, as it takes three or four shots, but then, there's only one guy on the other side, and he's definitely not using an explosive charge.

RogueIce:
Spoiler

Fair point re Ezra's friend having disappeared, I was misremembering it as 'killed' had to check that.

And what's the deleted scene? Those generally aren't considered canon anyway, but I am curious.

Star Wars deleted scenes can't be canon, otherwise Shaak Ti managed to die twice.

The one I'm referring to is Jerjerrod confronting Vader for trying to get into the Emperor's tower 'You may not enter' whereupon Vader proceeds to choke him until he croaks out 'It is the Emperor's Command!' and Vader lets him go.

There's also a deleted scene somewhere where one of the royal guards shocks Jerjerrod apparently for fun, though, but that one was probably just horsing about on set.

[Simon_Jester]

The point is that the Empire is, in the few hours of canon material, rife with murdering of subordinates.

Provide a counterexample that says this is unusual.

The Empire could be rife with superiors murdering subordinates, and yet those superiors might still be expected to file paperwork afterwards.

It's like demanding canon evidence that people go to the bathroom in Star Wars*.

Even if you can't actually find a scene from one of the movies that makes it clear people go to the bathroom, it would be highly counterintuitive, to say the least, if they didn't. There are basic principles of biology and for that matter common sense involved; an organism that has anything like a humanoid metabolism, and which eats, must excrete.

Likewise, in a bureaucracy with a formidable security establishment must necessarily keep track of goings-on and activities within its own ranks. Especially activities as potentially significant as mid-ranking officers being randomly assassinated by their immediate superiors.

But even so, the Star Wars trilogy isn't Hot Fuzz; it is not a comedy based on the volume of investigative paperwork involved in action-movie antics. There is no reason to expect them to show an hour worth of form-filling entailed in summarily shooting a subordinate, even if such an hour of form-filling is required.

So demanding evidence that people do in fact fill out the forms is a bit different from demanding evidence that, say, the technology exists to do scans for shapeshifters. We might reasonably expect shapeshifter-detecting technology (or other, similar things) to be used, if a situation requiring it arises. We have no reason to expect that we'd see on-screen examples of Imperial officers filling out paperwork after shooting a subordinate, or to see the ISB or its new-canon equivalent keeping track of whether a suspicious number of assassinations have occurred within a single chain of command.
__________________________

*You might be able to provide this, I'm not disputing that, it's an example meant to illustrate a point...

But the trail of bodies thing is entirely normal as far as we can tell for the empire. We need to start questioning our assumptions, built on thirty five years of now-deprecated information, about how the empire works, and what it is, even.

I think it might be best to take this a bit... gradually. Among other things, we went from having a huge glut of information, far too much and too contradictory, to having far too little. Until a respectable volume of new-canon EU-type material is released, we have very little to go on.

Settings like Star Trek and Stargate still have several hundred hours of screen-time canon... but Star Wars just went from twelve hours of movies plus a hundred or so hours of TV (tops) plus millions of words of novels... down to just the movies and TV.

So sure, we need to re-evaluate what we think we know. But we need something to work with, and that material doesn't exist yet.

[Elheru Aran]

Re Goa'ulds and research:

Given the very provincial attitudes System Lords have demonstrated, here is a hypothesis.

After the initial rise to power of the Goa'uld in the vacuum left by the Ancients' disappearance, a brief struggle for power among the upper hierarchy that ended up with Ra being Supreme System Lord, the Goa'uld consolidated all the Ancient technology they had managed to figure out. Ra kept the other System Lords under a fairly tight rein as he feared being overthrown (see Anubis' ejection).

So there was for a few thousand years or whatever it was, little reason for innovation to grow among the ranks of the Goa'uld in general. Individual System Lords did research of their own for their own purposes (Nirrti, etc) and kept it under their big, fancy hats. Everybody was in theory on the same level, subordinate to Ra, with no real potential for advancement unless they managed to pull off a revolt. So there's minimal motivation there to really improve other than keeping up with the Joneses.

Once Ra was eliminated, that gave the System Lords a huge incentive to improve their standing and position in Goa'uld society, so the brighter (and more powerful) ones get going on R&D post-haste. Ba'al, Cronus, Apophis, etc. When Anubis returns, he brings Ancient knowledge back with him thanks to his semi-Ascension, and some of them are able to leech off that knowledge to varying degrees (notably Ba'al).

So it's quite possible they might see Imperial technology and decide they want a juicy piece of that pie. Some of them-- I'm looking right at Yu-- might be hide-bound enough that they don't care, but the smarter ones are definitely capable of pulling a few nasty tricks to get their hands on it.

[Borgholio]

Yu is by this point losing his mind. I don't know if we can predict what he would (or would not) do.

[Elheru Aran]

Yu is by this point losing his mind. I don't know if we can predict what he would (or would not) do.

Fair enough, but until he gets to the point where he's basically being handled by his Jaffa, he maintains a pretty consistently conservative stance in the little that we see him. He resists Anubis' re-entry into the System Lords and maintains a society based on medieval China-- a culture that didn't particularly favor sweeping change and reform. Honestly we don't know a whole lot about him or his background other than that.

Remember the thread deals with the SG universe at different points, so I think it's fair enough to say that up to, when was it? Season 8? that he got killed off by Replicarter, IMO he wouldn't be particularly interested in change, just in resisting any assaults upon his domain.

[FedRebel]

Lets assume the Empire tries to deal with Earth via diplomatic means. What terms are they likely to offer Earth and would any government refuse ?

I could only see this as a possibility after season 8 when Earth/SGC are solidly a Galactic power

Prior to season 8 Earth is just far too low profile to warrant diplomacy.

Post S8, The Empire can feint being an ally, offering help against the Ori in exchange for knowledge of the gate system and Galactic Geo-politics. Shortsightedly this looks like a magnanimous miracle to Earth.

Given at the start of S9 Congress wanted to cut the Stargate program to fund more 304's as a defensive force, any opportunity for a quick release from the Ori crusade would be jumped on by the political authority. The IOA would have the same mindset as Congress, a well funded American SG Program keeps the US the dominate power (a leaner SGC would balance things out enabling other IOA players to make their mark on the galaxy.)

How would that change if they reveal the SGC's offworld operations to the rest of Earth ?

How would the Empire even know that's a hot button topic?

Just from the standpoint of simple logic, blunt extortion is always counterproductive.

Probably with a slant about how much danger the SGC has exposed Earth to and how the Empire is offering to help protect Earth.

That's the pitch the Empire would give to an IOA/US Diplomatic delegation, to illustrate that Earth is in over their heads with the Ori. Not as a threat, but to make the point that Earth "needs" the Empire. The price for the Empire's "assistance" is 'just' information (for the short-term.)

The diplomats would eat that up even if SG-1 heroically tries to point out that the delegation is being played (time travel was the only thing that spared Earth from being taken over by that neutering species.)

As time progresses the Empire would 'request" basing rights on worlds the SGC has bases/claims on, the SGC would also be "requested" to act as middle men for the the Empire to establish garrisons on 'neutral' worlds.

The extortion round begins after the Empire's finished swatting the Ori aside and thanks to the 'assistance" of the SGC, is entrenched across the galaxy with Earth's credibility impaired in the eyes of the Empire's "hosts".

Even then extortion would be restricted to interstellar trade (Naquida and Naquadria don't exist in the Sol System.) Blocking the gate is trivially easy (it's Earth's primary lifeline) and the miniscule 304 fleet is very easy to blockade and would soon enough be starved of fuel. So if Earth wants to keep it's cute little fleet running and make use of extra-solar resourced to advance their civilization, The SGC will work wholly at the whim of the Empire (SG teams being tasked to subdue free jaffa/Hebridian revolts, etc. and be cannon fodder where Imperial lives/ships shouldn't be risked.)

[PREDATOR490]

The Replicators are only seen being able to pierce the shields of Asgard. No evidence they can ignore other shields.

- The personal shield of Apophis was able to stop Replicators
- Reckoning has them using brute force conventional attacks to bring down Hattak shields with no evidence of boarding actions before those shields go down.
- The Asgard successfully destroy the Replicator super-ship as it emerges from hyperspace in S8 New Order because it had no shields
- Replicators are shown being vulnerable to explosives "Small Victories"

Even if you take the stance the Replicators can somehow brush off Star Wars ship-to-ship energy weapons. SW is quite familiar with using guided missiles and explosives which should be just as effective against the Replicators.

The idea of the SGC using the Replicators as weapons is dubious. That only becomes an issue post season 10. Prior to this the SGC has no access to Replicators except in the most narrow of circumstances that would not be viable.

Season 1 - 5 - Replicators hardly show up and when they do, the SGC would have more of an issue getting rid of the damn things on the spot than ever considering deploying them against the Empire. The Replicators showed no interest in coming on their own and the Asgard are not stupid enough to try.

Season 6 - The only issue with the Replicators is Unnatural Selection which is a bottle episode. The Empire cannot provoke the Replicators directly because they cannot get to the Asgard galaxy. The Asgard are too busy dealing with the Replicators and the Replicators only show interest in staying in the Asgard galaxy. They had decades to jump to the Milky Way which would have been completely undefended and they made no attempt to do so. Any issue the Replicators introduce to the Empire in the Milky Way rests on the most narrowest of windows.
If SG follows through with the events of that episode - The Replicators become a non-issue until Season 8 thus the Empire can act with impunity
If SG fails to follow through with that episode - The Replicators will emerge "in a short few years" to conquer everyone thus Empire or not, everyone is fucked.

Season 8 - The Replicators show up at the mid-point and the worst the Empire can do is impede SG so that the magic Dakara solution is not found. Doing so will cause everyone to fall.

Season 9 - 10 - Replicators are done in SG.

[NecronLord]

Y'know, I was going to post more about it, but I won't bother. Before shields are a barrier to boarding, we must first disprove Star Wars shield permeability on starships. Because you know, you can in the canon, just fly up to a star destroyer and dock with it.



A half dozen more examples, including the ones I posted on previous pages on this thread are available in the shields video Part 2, The Permeability Vulnerability on Brian Young's site. It is quite well established, even in the original trilogy films, as shown in the image above.

So no, nothing stops the replicators boarding one of the Empire's ships, except it's point defense capacity. The Falcon managed to do it, after all, as did the Ghost, as did Anakin Skywalker's Eta-class shuttle, because it's remarkable (and shows that Anakin really is all he's cracked up to be as a pilot) let's take a look at that.


(Note, in thie example, they do in fact board, as does the Ghost)

Don't forget the really outstanding one back on page 2, of the clones jumping from a venator onto a seperatist ship using jetpacks.

And not to forget, Anakin's done this before in in the battle of Naboo [11m 31s in, if the link doesn't jump your browser to the right time.] In this one, the ship's crew are even obliging enough to say 'nothing can get through our shields' in an omitted scene here, just to confirm that the shields are still up.

So before we even talk about replicators special ability to penetrate shields, let's talk about how many times Star Wars ships shields are flown through.

There's ample evidence that the shields on star wars ships do not stop one docking with the target, from the Death Star ("The station is heavily shielded" [...] "We're passing through the magnetic fields") to various successful boardings in the Clone Wars (there are more, including dedicated boarding pods) and right on to Rebels.

So before talking about anything special the replicators need to do to get in, let's talk about whether they keep ships out reliably (they don't).