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? 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.