Stargate

The forthcoming re-arrival of Battlestar Galactica got me craving science fiction, and so I’ve returned to playing (major) catch-up with Stargate SG-1. If you remember my posts about it before, you’ll know that I was just getting started with the series, having never watched it at all on television. On that first “run”, I got through all of season 1 and watched the first, and maybe the second, episode of season 2.

On returning to the series this time, I went ahead and started over with season 2, as I couldn’t remember much about the first episode, and the second episode was even hazier in my memory, despite the fact that I recognized the opening scene. Maybe I had started watching it and never finished it; who knows. I’ve now watched the first 7 episodes of season 2, and something peculiar has struck me: on the planets that have inhabitants… well, where is everyone? Whenever SG-1 goes to a planet that has humanoid inhabitants, generally, those inhabitants seem to number in the dozens or perhaps hundreds. The Nox had a huge ship hovering over their planet, which could have held thousands of inhabitants, but overall, it seems that most of the planets that SG-1 finds are relatively sparsely populated. In talking to my friend Joshua about it, I remarked, don’t these people ever reproduce? Shouldn’t their population increase, especially if they’ve been on the planet for a thousand years, which one would assume about, say, the Viking population on Cimmeria?

He said that perhaps the Goa’uld preferred to keep the people spread out on a planet in small village units to make controlling them easier. I suppose that could make sense with some of planets, but what about the Viking descendants in particular? Until SG-1 broke the protection device, the planet of Cimmeria was protected from Goa’uld by Thor’s Hammer. The Asgard seemed to obviously care about the people on the planet, and so I can’t see them controlling the population growth in any way. So, why is the population level still so low?

When you get down to it, I’d guess it’s simply a matter of money: they can only hire so many actors and actresses, and so the population depicted in each episode is rather small. However, what’s stopping them from using CGI to throw in some cities or large towns here and there? People are expensive, CGI is (relatively) cheap. Even just having a single panning shot of a CGI town or city would gift some realism to the episodes.

Somewhat related to the population issue: do the civilizations that SG-1 finds ever do any of the things that civilizations have to do to keep going? I don’t think I’ve seen any farms on any of the planets, for example. What are these people eating^[1]? I’ve seen setups where there was essentially a king or similar figure with his royal helpers, and then the slave population, but the slaves have, as far as I can recall, never been producing food. The planet P3R-636 and associated civilization, from the “Need” episode, is an example of what I’m talking about. Shyla the princess and her father control a slave population that seems to be largely used for mining naquadah, while Shyla, her father, and the other high class folks live “in the lap of luxury.” Okay, but who’s making all of that stuff? Who’s growing the food, raising the cows, sewing all of the flashy clothing, etc.?

Yes, yes, I know. I’m picky! I do wish the civilizations seemed a bit more realistic. Despite all of my nitpicks, however, it’s still a great show. I don’t think it’s as good as Battlestar Galactica, story-wise, but it’s still a lot of fun to watch. It also gives me geeky things to write about, as this post bears witness to.

1. If you recall my posts about Battlestar Galactica, you might think I’ve got some weird obsession about food in television shows. Not really. Food is just one of those essential things (duh), and so if, in a show, seemingly no one in a civilization is producing it, the civilization just seems flat and fake. [↩]

After staying up until 3AM this morning watching, I can now say that I’ve watched all of Stargate SG-1, Season 1 [amazon]. There were more than a few episodes in this first season that were, in all honestly, pretty bad. Some of them simply oozed with cheesiness, and I’m still not overly fond of the (in my opinion) silly voices that Apophis and his son have. In fact, a lot about the  Goa’uld came across as cheesy to me. When talking to my friend Joshua (frequent commenter here), I often joke about the uniforms that the Jaffas wear, with the giant snake heads with glowing eyes.

So, here’s the question: am I going to keep watching the series? You bet. While a lot of season 1 struck me as cheesy, all in all, it was an enjoyable show. The final four episodes - Tin Man, There But For for The Grace of God, Politics, and Within The Serpent’s Lair - were great. A lot of season 1 suffered from episodes that were all self contained; there was no solid overarching plot. Sure, we knew the Goa’uld were “out there”, but many of the episodes simply consisted of SG-1 going to a planet, finding a problem, solving the problem, and coming back home. The last four episodes switched gears however, and got back into the Goa’uld plotline.

I read an interesting review of season 1 at amazon, which basically said this: season 1 wasn’t great. In fact, the bulk of the episodes could be considered mediocre. However, a lot of shows get off to a bumpy start, until they’ve introduced and established the main characters, and the makers have decided exactly where they’re taking the show. While season 1 of Stargate SG-1 wasn’t great, it was fair, and at least a lot of fun to watch. More importantly, it laid the foundation for following seasons to build on. I’m looking forward to watching those seasons.

It occurred to me recently that I’ve not really explained why my blog is entitled System 13. Here’s the answer:

When I created my first blog at WordPress.com, I used netJosh as the title for a while, but I didn’t care much for it. I wanted my blog to have a title that held at least a bit of interesting-ness to it, so “Josh’s Blog” or “The Life and Times of Josh” just wasn’t going to cut it.

Shortly after I created my blog, I started getting more interested in science fiction, which would explain why, when I wanted to have a more interesting blog title, I turned to science and science fiction. I started digging around on Wikipedia, looking for science / space terms that could be converted to a blog title. Galaxy? Nah. Universe? Too big, and I didn’t like the ring of it. Star system? Now hey, that could be interesting. The definition for a star system, according to the almighty Google ‘define’ command:

A star system or stellar system is a group of stars (and possibly smaller bodies such as planets or asteroids) that orbit one another (systems with planetary bodies orbiting stars, are referred to as solar systems or planetary systems). Although this is similar to the definition of a star cluster, the term is generally used to describe a group of a small number of stars, often two or three, emphasizing the gravitational influence they have upon one another.

I figured I could play that to fit my blog: my thoughts, ideas, and opinions could be likened to a star system, with lots and lots of different things orbiting each other, interacting in interesting ways. Certainly a long shot, and I’m sure the science is shoddy at best, but hey. I liked the idea, so I ran with it.

The next question that might follow then, is, “what’s the meaning behind the 13?” I’d love to have an explanation, but I don’t. I wanted a number after ‘System’ to kind of mimic how stars and planets are initially named, and 13 sounded good. I wanted a simple number, one that would have a decent ring to it. For an example of what I didn’t want, here’s a snippet from a Stargate episode:

Gentlemen, these planets designated P3575 and P3A577 have been submitted by Captain Carter’s team as possible destinations for your next mission.

Hmmm. Check out my blog, it’s called System P3A577… ?
Nah, I’ll stick with System 13.
I’m going to be blogging a bit more about this. The next entry in this ’set’ will be about making my theme to match the title of my blog, and second thoughts on doing so.

I finally got around to watching another episode of Stargate SG-1. It was the episode titled Thor’s Hammer. The episode I’d watched before this one was Fire and Water - an episode that is actually 3 ahead of Thor’s Hammer. I’m not quite sure how I managed that. Oh well.

Oh, and before I go any further… there will be spoilers in this post! So if you’ve not seen this episode and don’t want any of it ruined, turn back now (or browse more of my blog, whatever works for you). If, however, you’ve seen it (or don’t care if it’s spoiled)…

Step through the gate.

A friend of mine (Joshua J. Slone in the comments here at System 13) sent me a snippet from an interview with Don Davis, the fellow who plays General Hammdon on Stargate SG-1. Here’s the snippet:

GW: Don, are you a fan of science fiction?

DD: I am now. I wasn’t always. I never really liked science fiction in film and television because when I was your age it was all cardboard and very crude, and it wasn’t realistic. And I could read someone like Asimov and envision all of these wonderful things. Or Wells, or whoever, and then I would see it on TV or in a film and — no. In fact, my son, when he was about four years old, I guess — or five years old — “Star Wars” came out. And he had to see “Star Wars.” He really had to make me lots of promises in order for me to get me to take him to it. And I came out of that movie a Star Wars nut.

GW: Really?!

DD: Oh, yeah! Then with the Star Trek, — not the original Star Trek. Again, it was silly — the crudity of the thing. Even though the actors, a lot of them now, are friends of mine. But I don’t like crudity. I’m a painter and a sculptor. I spent twenty years teaching people how to be artists and craftsmen. And then to see something, especially on film, that looks like a retarded two-year old created it in their back yard, is not entertaining to me.

The rest of the interview is here.
I never would have pegged him as a painter / sculptor.

Note: Removed the image from the snippet. I’d copied and pasted it from gateworld.net, and had accidentally been stealing their bandwidth. I doubt I’d put ‘em out of business or anything, but it’s the principle. Technorati Tags: stargate_sg1, stargate-sg1, science_fiction