Star Gate bumbs into Star Wars

[JamesStaley]

This may be a topic that has already been discussed, but I don't feel like wading through hundred of pages on the Star Wars section to find it!

I just finished watching the original Star Gate movie this evening and had a few ideas to comment on.

#1. The Star Gate crew beams/teleports/travels to a desert planet. What if they had landed on Tatooine?

#2. Daniel encounters a domesticated "beast of burden" which could be a cousin to a Bantha.

#3. Ra had some serious health problems the same as Darth Vader, although Ra doesn't need his armored suit to keep him alive the way Vader does. Ra and Vader both have their "elite" Stormtroopers to terrorize and enslave everyone else.

#4. If the Star Gate is indeed capable of such long-distance travel, could it not land in the Star Wars universe, a galaxy "Far, Far Away"?

Just some muzings.

[Ziggy Stardust]

Well, right off the top of my head, #4 can only hold if you throw out the continuity established across the various TV iterations of the franchise. If you ignore those, you can probably imagine it possible for the Star Gate to reach other galaxies (IIRC nothing in the movie establishes a strict upper limit on their distance, though it has been years since I've seen it). However, the TV expansions make it a lot more explicit what they are and are not capable of.

[Darth Lucifer]

Ra had some serious health problems the same as Darth Vader, although Ra doesn't need his armored suit to keep him alive the way Vader does

I don't remember Ra having any sort of health problems except during the flashback scene (or the opening scenes of the Director's Cut), when his original host body was dying. He subsequently took over the body of an adolescent boy and then enslaved humanity until they revolted. All of this was 10,000 years before the events in the Stargate film. When O'Neil and his team meet Ra, he seemed to be in perfect health because of his Gou'ald sarcophagus, a machine shown to even bring the dead back to life.

[Elheru Aran]

Yeah... the Stargate show changes things from the movie in a big way by totally inverting the distance from Earth to Abydos-- instead of being all the way over in another galaxy, it's now the closest planet to Earth that stellar progression hasn't changed its dialing address. Which frankly worked a lot better in the context of the show.

As to Stargate vs Wars: Stargate has some absolutely ludicrous hyperspace speeds, and the Gate is faster than anything Wars has (albeit it's a pretty obvious bottleneck). The Goa'uld have a few nice toys... but the Empire pretty absolutely outclasses them militarily thanks to having actual combined arms, heavily equipped stormtroopers, etc. The show did a pretty good job of breaking down the weaknesses of the Goa'uld-- they were organized as a class of feudal overlords with a small cadre of heavily equipped thugs in the Jaffa, but they depended on flash and presence rather than actual military strength to maintain their authority. There aren't many times that they actually show a serious military presence, and usually it takes being united under a powerful System Lord to do that.

Now the Tau'ri with their full Asgard-derived equipment would be another story; while they don't have many forces, in a reasonably equal confrontation they could well be a decent opponent toward the Empire in space. F-302's do seem to be a decent enough spacefighter, but they don't have blaster cannons as far as I recall...

[Khaat]

Well, right off the top of my head, #4 can only hold if you throw out the continuity established across the various TV iterations of the franchise. If you ignore those, you can probably imagine it possible for the Star Gate to reach other galaxies (IIRC nothing in the movie establishes a strict upper limit on their distance, though it has been years since I've seen it). However, the TV expansions make it a lot more explicit what they are and are not capable of.

Actually, the explanation for the probe's destination in the movie was "That's right, Daniel. The other side of the known universe."

[Elheru Aran]

Well, right off the top of my head, #4 can only hold if you throw out the continuity established across the various TV iterations of the franchise. If you ignore those, you can probably imagine it possible for the Star Gate to reach other galaxies (IIRC nothing in the movie establishes a strict upper limit on their distance, though it has been years since I've seen it). However, the TV expansions make it a lot more explicit what they are and are not capable of.

Actually, the explanation for the probe's destination in the movie was "That's right, Daniel. The other side of the known universe."

So, theoretically... you're talking basically instant travel across more or less *millions of galaxies* worth of distance.

Yeah. That's maybe a wee bit too far for me. I prefer the 'it was in another galaxy' story.

[Khaat]

Just thought I'd dig this up:

SHORE
The thing has locked itself onto a point somewhere in the Kaliam galaxy.
JENNY
It has mass. It-it could be a moon or a large asteroid.
DANIEL
Where are we on that map?
CATHERINE
(points)
Look down.
[Daniel moves to the far end of the star chart where a red square box is. Then follows to where the trajectory guide is now sitting.]
CATHERINE
That's right, Jackson. It's on the other side of the...known universe.

So, you get both: it was in another galaxy, but the older archaeologist (not a stunning endorsement) also attributes that location to the other end of space. Catherine could be wrong. I remember being somewhat surprised that the map covered as much of the universe as it did, seeing as they didn't know what the gate would do.

[Khaat]

BLARG! [double post!]

[Vendetta]

Well, right off the top of my head, #4 can only hold if you throw out the continuity established across the various TV iterations of the franchise. If you ignore those, you can probably imagine it possible for the Star Gate to reach other galaxies (IIRC nothing in the movie establishes a strict upper limit on their distance, though it has been years since I've seen it). However, the TV expansions make it a lot more explicit what they are and are not capable of.

I'm not sure why you'd have to throw the show out to establish the Stargate reaching other galaxies since they do exactly that multiple times during the show.

Connecting your stargate to another galaxy requires abnormally large amounts of power, but it's definitively possible to do it.

[Elheru Aran]

Well, right off the top of my head, #4 can only hold if you throw out the continuity established across the various TV iterations of the franchise. If you ignore those, you can probably imagine it possible for the Star Gate to reach other galaxies (IIRC nothing in the movie establishes a strict upper limit on their distance, though it has been years since I've seen it). However, the TV expansions make it a lot more explicit what they are and are not capable of.

I'm not sure why you'd have to throw the show out to establish the Stargate reaching other galaxies since they do exactly that multiple times during the show.

Connecting your stargate to another galaxy requires abnormally large amounts of power, but it's definitively possible to do it.

Which makes it particularly unusual IMO that they did it first time out, if you go by the movie. O'Neill had to use Ancient knowledge to build an one-shot naquadah generator to get to the Asgard galaxy the second time around.

[Vendetta]

Yeah, but "wacky thing happens to the Stargate and we're not where we thought were were going" is also a p. common plot on the show...

[Elheru Aran]

Yeah, but "wacky thing happens to the Stargate and we're not where we thought were were going" is also a p. common plot on the show...

Granted; possibly the Gate stores residual energy or *something* if unused for a long time, and its internal power supplies gave it enough juice to kick it out to Abdyos after a couple millennia. Then the Abydos gate dialed back to the Earth gate no problem because its power was still working just fine...

Anyway, yeah. I'm leery of discarding the show canon mostly because there's so much of it. If we only went by the movie... Ra only has the pyramid-ship, a few Jaffa (or human? Goa'uld?) guards and death gliders. Not a particularly powerful force, considering that the human soldiers were able to shoot down a few of the guards.

[FTeik]

Well, right off the top of my head, #4 can only hold if you throw out the continuity established across the various TV iterations of the franchise. If you ignore those, you can probably imagine it possible for the Star Gate to reach other galaxies (IIRC nothing in the movie establishes a strict upper limit on their distance, though it has been years since I've seen it). However, the TV expansions make it a lot more explicit what they are and are not capable of.

I'm not sure why you'd have to throw the show out to establish the Stargate reaching other galaxies since they do exactly that multiple times during the show.

Connecting your stargate to another galaxy requires abnormally large amounts of power, but it's definitively possible to do it.

But in the show they had to dial with eight chevrons if they wanted to travel to another galaxy. In the movie they used seven chevrons to reach Abydos.

[Elheru Aran]

Well, right off the top of my head, #4 can only hold if you throw out the continuity established across the various TV iterations of the franchise. If you ignore those, you can probably imagine it possible for the Star Gate to reach other galaxies (IIRC nothing in the movie establishes a strict upper limit on their distance, though it has been years since I've seen it). However, the TV expansions make it a lot more explicit what they are and are not capable of.

I'm not sure why you'd have to throw the show out to establish the Stargate reaching other galaxies since they do exactly that multiple times during the show.

Connecting your stargate to another galaxy requires abnormally large amounts of power, but it's definitively possible to do it.

But in the show they had to dial with eight chevrons if they wanted to travel to another galaxy. In the movie they used seven chevrons to reach Abydos.

How to handwave that... maybe they were simply *wrong* on where Abydos was? They were dealing with a completely unknown, little understood technology after all.

[Khaat]

Yeeeeeah, except in SG-1 Season1, Ep 1, they dial up Abydos like three times (box of tissues, team, then team again for Daniel to say "bury it for a year!"), so Abydos doesn't seem to be extra-galactic for the TV show. So "capacitors built-up a charge over a looong time" doesn't work.

And movie Horus guard were just trained/indoctrinated humans, not Jaffa. Jaffa were a for-TV creation, with a "built-in" reason to follow Goa'uld.

[Ziggy Stardust]

I'm not sure why you'd have to throw the show out to establish the Stargate reaching other galaxies since they do exactly that multiple times during the show.

Connecting your stargate to another galaxy requires abnormally large amounts of power, but it's definitively possible to do it.

I was really talking more in the context of the OP, which explicitly tries to connect Abydos with the Star Wars galaxy. The show, obviously, does not take place in the Star Wars galaxy. Granted, I'd forgotten that Abydos was supposedly in another galaxy in the movie, so that's a bit of a sticky situation. I just meant you have to throw out the TV show in order to conclude that Abydos is in the Star Wars galaxy. Simply within the context of the movie it seems you can make that argument. But the TV show pretty much refutes that, because we never see other Star Wars stuff.

[Vendetta]

Well no, the OP was basically "What if the Stargate team went to Tatooine instead of Abydos.

Except apparently it was more interesting to argue about the minutiae of fictional technology?

Act of plot happens: Replace Abydos with Tatooine, go!

(Now we could argue about whether the what if is more interesting with the movie team or TV show team. Except it's blatantly the show team.)

[Elheru Aran]

Yeeeeeah, except in SG-1 Season1, Ep 1, they dial up Abydos like three times (box of tissues, team, then team again for Daniel to say "bury it for a year!"), so Abydos doesn't seem to be extra-galactic for the TV show. So "capacitors built-up a charge over a looong time" doesn't work.

Oh, granted, but by that point (how many years was it since the movie, five? six?) perhaps their ability to deliver power to the Gate improves...

Anyway the capacitator thing only really works if you assume Abydos is extragalactic and that for whatever handwavey reason they didn't need eight chevrons to dial it. The show did the sensible thing and moved it in-galaxy.

We shouldn't get too hung up about the difference between movie and show though. For purposes of the thread, unless James Staley states otherwise, they should be treated as happening in the same universe. Because as I said, movie is pretty pointless against the Empire. Show gives you a LOT more to play with.

Now, the OP was kind of... vague.

If Star Wars is occurring in the same universe as Stargate-- improbable given that O'Neill and Teal'c mention it a few times (T has watched ESB like... 17 times) but let's roll with it-- we probably have to assume that it's at least several galaxies away. Gate probably isn't reaching that without some serious power amplification.

If O'Neil (with one L, the sourpuss) had come through with Kawalsky and Ferretti and the other OG guys to Tattooine, he'd probably have gone 'what the fuck, there's nothing here' unless the Gate was in the middle of Mos Eisley or something. They'd have had one hell of a story to bring back to Earth. It's too far out of left field to really form much of a conclusion with such a vague OP.

O'Neill-with-two-L's and SG-1... well after Teal'c happily identifies where they are, they go looking for Luke Skywalker, Carter technobabbles something about repulsors or blasters, Daniel starts trying to translate Jawa or Tusken Raider lingo, before they run into a bunch of stormtroopers, get arrested (but Daniel escapes because he's hiding among the friendly Jawas), free themselves in wacky manner with the help of Daniel clumsily wearing stormtrooper armour (O'Neill gets in the traditional shot about 'aren't you a little short') and high-tail it back to the Gate, maybe with a blaster in hand...

[Khaat]

Back to the original post:
1) Tatooine would be/is populated with a) sparse settlements, b) nomadic sand people, c) a crime lord stronghold, and d) mobile jawa tribes in transports; some (if not most) would respond to armed troops more aggressively than the miners on Abydos did, Stormtroopers definitely would
2) The bantha would have been "meh" as far as different, but probably less jumpy than the mastadge; Daniel would have been killed by sand people, like Luke really ought to have been
3) Stormtroopers are immediately more recognizable by the airmen/soldiers of the Stargate mission, and less likely to start by "sneak attacking" - they'd flood into the room, blasters firing; Stormtrooper armor is probably more defense against SMGs than the Horus guard costume; Vader would probably not GAF where the protagonists came from, since his ego hadn't been personally bruised by the revolt on Earth, and either just execute them, or leave them in a cell and never come back
4) Yes and no: in the movie, the issue of time travel through the Stargate was never addressed, instead played as concurrent (10 thousand years ago on Earth, 10 thousand years ago on Abydos)

Now if, instead, the Stargate mission troops came out of the pyramid and found two 'droids arguing about which way to go, after having crashed in an escape pod from a ship in orbit, things change. Threepeo could probably translate, O'Neill might want to head to civilization to get the lay of the land. He might also just walk back into the pyramid and set off the nuke: a casually space-faring culture with AI 'droids? A rebellion against an empire? Warships in orbit right now, looking for these two 'droids? That's a risk Earth doesn't need.

See, it matters which: (KR) O'Neill wasn't (RDA) O'Neill, by leaps and bounds.

[Elheru Aran]

RDA O'Neill would definitely be more culturally aware, perhaps a bit more dense than KR O'Neil (though that depends on the season of SG1). He'd probably recognize the stormtroopers, Vader, droids etc. for what they were.

[Solauren]

RDA O'Neill would definitely be more culturally aware, perhaps a bit more dense than KR O'Neil (though that depends on the season of SG1). He'd probably recognize the stormtroopers, Vader, droids etc. for what they were.

I always assumed that after the movie, SG-1 O'neill became a Sci-Fi buff, when he found out it was all possible.

Divorced, Retired Airforce Colonel, with nothing else to do, could binge watch/read alot of Sci-Fi in 6 months/year.