I like Laura’s explanation (see September 17,2006). I wish they included that in the show somehow. Perhaps the gate malfunctioned when they went to Abydos, and the language translation didn’t happen, or the Goul’d prevented it from working, thereby keeping the population enslaved and under control.

Albert

And, people who are white probably wouldn’t notice this precedent as readily because being white is “normalcy” on TV shows.

Look at that weak ass show, Flash Gordon. Everybody in the other dimension is white. I think I would have atleast respected it more if everyone was maybe say, Asian looking. Now, that would have been something different!

Atleast BSG has some diversity, albeit not much, but it give a depiction of color being a non-issue. Rather, what planet you came from is the “race”.

I’ve not watched SG1 for a while; are all of Teal’c’s kind black, or do I have that mixed up in my head?

On the first episode of Atlantis, when they showed the ancient ship departing, it was cool, finally, to see people of color being the ancients. But in subsequent episodes, Ancients are whitefolk. I think it creates a social staple that says it’s normal to be white, but any other color, is something extra, or not of the norm.

Being an American, that ideology being depicted in science fiction shows is just “ass backwards”.

As for the explanation that the SG-1 team speaks Goa’uldish, they would have to have learned it quickly and fluently, and it still doesn’t explain why they can even speak with worlds that have never been enslaved (or even encountered) by the Go’auld.

As for the ‘constant military insuboordination’ (which is actually pretty rare on the show), those levels of insuboordination and much worse happen all the time in the military. In fact, the Air Force is in many ways one of the more relaxed of the branches. If anything, I always cringe at the fact that Carter seems to think that every time she disagrees with O’Niell in the course os saving their lives, she has to begin with, “With all due respect, Sir…” They also always make a big deal about not using first names, which is not at all unusual, especially among officers.

In any case, it is really lame that they didn’t even attempt an explanation in the very first episode. The original Star Trek series ignored the language problem, too.

I would have liked to see the actors who played their characters in the original movie play their alternate reality versions in one of the alternate reality episodes. Although Carter and T’ealc didn’t have counterparts in the original.

Here’s a question, though: Are all the stargates’ symbols star constellations as seen from Earth? That seems to be the explanation from the movie, but that seems unlikely, unless the stargate technology was invented on Earth by natives to Earth, which doesn’t seem to be the case. I know the series has a different stargate dialing procedure, but I forget what the difference is.