Stargate SG-1

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The cara was in the film, he was just played by a different actor.

I'll get over it, I was just complaining as I love to do.. It's still worth watching without him being there. I recall seeing parts of the original movie (or all of it, I can't remember) and disliking it a little - probably because it was different to usual. It's so weird about that, that they're seperately owned. Wouldn't there be copyright issues? Ah well.

Yeh i prefer the series, partly cos sinse i saw the series first, seeing different peeple as jack and daniel jarred me a bit, and seeing horus guards insted of serpent guards jarred me a bit to.

I think you guys are missing some details. Oma was allowed to kill Anubis, she WASN'T allowed to simply de-Ancient him entirely because she made the mistake. The Ancients were using Anubis as a lesson to Oma against Ascending other people. She learnt her lesson and rectified her mistake by destroying herself and Anubis. Also, I think you have to remember, that Anubis was only half-Ascended. He didn't have all the powers of a fully Ascended person. That's why the other Ancients, including Daniel, had the power to destroy Anubis.
Secondly, the Goa'uld are as powerful as the Wraith. More so, I think. The only advantage the Wraith have over them is their numbers. The Goa'uld had so few numbers of adult Goa'uld, that they had to rely on the Jaffa. The Taur'i attacked the Goa'uld using that weakness. If the Goa'uld had greater numbers, that they could use Goa'uld for regular fighting, they would be so much awesomer than the Wraith. Not to mention the divisiveness of their society, where they contest with each other. Technology-wise, I think you are all forgetting stuff like the ribbon and the healing device. Imagine an army of Goa'uld wearing ribbons and using personal shields. The Goa'uld are so much better than Wraith.

<nitpick>de-Ascend, not de-Ancient.</nickpick>

No, I believe she was unable to do either. Like we discussed earlier, it is probable that the Ancients have a rule that says when you descend someone you can't kill them. Maybe even Oma could have descended Anubis but that would have killed him, and she couldn't make him descend otherwise unless he cooperated.

Daniel Jackson could have killed Anubis but was stopped by Oma because that would have violated the "no kill" rule.



Not true. She was fighting him. To quote her words (from my memory so no nitpicking please), "But I can fight you ... you won't be able to do anything else but resist me." Supposedly both are in limbo right now, fighting each other.



That makes sense, but like I said above I think there is more to it than that. Of course that bit of info is a tad confusing - in season 6 Ascended Daniel says that Anubis ascended and then the ancients tried to put him back but failed. So he ended up halfway.

Season 8 halfway Daniel learns that Oma ascended Anubis, and that when she couldn't put him back the Others intervened and told him that he could act as a Goa'uld again but couldn't use any knowledge or technology that wasn't available to him before he ascended. This makes it sound like Anubis is fully ascended but living within strict rules. Hmm.

I guess Anubis would have to be half ascended or else the Ancients wouldn't be able to control him.

In any case this means that we can't draw any conclusions



Wraith don't need healing devices because their bodies effectively have such defenses built in. Most Wraith tech seems to be biological in nature (at least in terms of looks) oddly enough. Supposedly they borrowed Ancient technology (this was never actually mentioned in cannon though - it was implied from the mention that Wraith written language is derived from Ancient) but even if they did they modified it pretty uniquely, while the Goa'uld have more or less used it "as is".

So Wraith at least have a better understanding of their technology than the Goa'uld.

Zats and staff weapons have never been used against the Wraith iirc (it is always machine guns or Wraith stunners, ok Rowan has his own gun but thats closer to stunner) so no idea how effective they'd be. Zats may be more effective - a Wraith could probably heal itself from a staff blast in a few minutes or seconds, but zap it 3 times and it disappears.

The Wraith can also play mind tricks and etc, scaring the Jaffa by messing with their psyche.

Also note that the Wraith can block the Asgard transport beam, so they are on par with the Asgard. It has been well accepted that the Goa'uld are way behind the Asgard. (Only Anubis and his followers have been able to match them.)

Also, there is a line of reasoning like this: The Tollan were able to defend against the Goa'uld, so they were more advanced. The Tollan were defeated by Anubis who had Alteran's technology. The Wraith defeated the Alterans (through superior numbers but still, their technology was at least comparable for this to be possible). So the Wraith are more advanced than the Goa'uld.

You obviously haven't missed the episode I'm talking about, since you quoted from it. But Oma also stated, in that very same episode, that Anubis's current existence was a punishment upon her by the other Ancients. They wanted her to understand the consequences of Ascending people who shouldn't be Ascended except by their own abilities. Another thing I pieced together since our conversation, is that they do not have a no-kill rule. Remember where we first met Oma Desala, on the planet with the Buddhist temple with the Harsesis, she killed many Jaffa then. And later, in SG-Atlantis, there was another Ancient who stayed behind to protect her planet from the Wraith, also killed Wraith. Oma stopped Daniel from killing Anubis, simply because if she hadn't, the other Ancients would have.


She was unable to put him back, BECAUSE the Others intervened. The Others can control Ascended people. Within the Ascended ranks, there are other higher tiers, as can be seen since you have Ascended beings who can de-Ascend and Ascend others, as well as enforce rules on other Ascended beings, and set what level of Ascention one is at. Oma de-Ascended Daniel, after all.


Wraith don't need healing devices, no, but Goa'uld also have their own healing abilities. Need I remind you of the healing capabilities of the symbiote? Nevertheless, even with their own abilities, once dead they're dead. With the healing technology, like the sarcophagus, they can die however many times and be revived.
The Wraith may have a better understanding of Ancient technology than Goa'uld, but that doesn't make them technologically superior. Especially when the Wraith don't have access to large amounts of Ancient technology. The Goa'uld have their own technology which they developed themselves. It's simply two different lines of technology.


True, that's an innate ability the Wraith have that the Goa'uld do not. But as we've seen in Atlantis, once realized, it can be employed with much reduced effect. It remains to be seen if such an ability will work against a Goa'uld or Jaffa. As we've seen with Teal'c, the symbiote gives the Jaffa defences against mind tricks. Against a person controlled by a Goa'uld, it should have much less effect. Especially, since the Wraith would unknowingly employ their tricks against the human controlled by the Goa'uld, rather than the symbiote itself.


As you have pointed out in your addendum, Goa'uld can block transport beams, too. Simply blocking transport beams does not make them on par with the Asgaard. Secondly, you have to remember that the Asgaard, too, are afraid to try and take on the Goa'uld. Not because the Goa'uld are technologically superior, but because they have greater numbers.


Your line of reasoning is flawed in SO many ways. All things being equal, it might work. Unfortunately, all things aren't equal. Otherwise, a line of reasoning could go like this: The Wraith faced only one city of Alterans. For similar reasons, the Asgaard do not want to take on the Goa'uld because they know they would be overwhelmed. The Asgaard are comparable with the Alterans. So the Goa'uld are comparable with the Wraith. The only reason the Wraith could beat the Goa'uld, is because the Wraith have greater numbers than them.
I would also like to point out that the Wraith's technology was in no way comparable with the Alterans. Take that defense machine SG-Atlantis fixed that belonged to the Ancients, it was only partly powered up and it destroyed how many, 2 of their major ships? I would compare it about the same as the Taur'i's understanding of technology. And even the Taur'i, despite their understanding of Alteran technology, cannot understand the workings of a Goa'uld mothership. Remember the episode with the Harsesis, where he gives Daniel a vision where he has the racial memories of the Goa'uld? Remember the defense system Daniel develops based on Goa'uld technology? The Goa'uld, if they worked together, I would place up there almost or on par with the Asgaard. The only reason they have done so badly, is because they haven't banded together. Each System Lord would help the Taur'i if it would help them bring down one of their own kind, it's happened many times. United, they would defeat almost anyone. And before you bring up the replicator example, remember that even the Asgaard couldn't defeat the replicators.

I agree.



But they gave her the chance to descend Anubis first. When she failed, "then" they intervened by half-descending him. After she failed on her own.



The no kill rule would apply only to descending Ascendents back to the physical plane. Wouldn't affect how mortals were treated.



Not true. She tried and failed, then the Others stepped in. She admitted this herself in Threads (in the hour and a half long version).



That was his choice, as revealed in Threads. (He was pissed that Anubis had tricked Oma and gotten away with it, and that as an Ascended he wasn't allowed to do anything about it.)

Also there is no obvious hiearchy. Everything seems to be done by concensus, and then the group pools their power to control those who disobey.



Well, a starving wraith can be killed pretty easily but a well fed one needs major firepower to kill ... the kind that usually doesn't leave a body behind. (I'm thinking about the Wraith that survived from the crashed ship for 10,000 years.) Maybe they don't really need sarcophaguses.

Still, I am getting to see your point - the Goa'uld have an array of devices while the Wraith's technology (or what has been seen) seems a lot smaller. Makes one wonder. Do they have better tech in hiding or do they really have less tech than the Goa'uld? From here it is easy to see why the Goa'uld might look more advanced.



I thought the Goa'uld stole most of their technology from other human cultures.

But it is still true, that they are different lines of technology, and thus a lot harder to compare.



Ok, you are right. They are pretty much equal in this regard.



I didn't say that. I don't remeber ever seen Anubis try. But he did have Ancient technology on his side.



No, the Asgard are based in another galaxy that has a war going on. They don't exactly lack the numbers, just the resources.

As you mention below, this is comparable to the Ancients vs Wraith problem.



I think Goa'uld & Jaffa all united would be pretty even with Wraith. They never give exact numbers so there is no way to be sure though.



One of their ships, before it overloaded. But it could have done all three, yes.



Well, the 10,000 year Wraith was able to get to a puddle jumper, disable the shield, and started to reconfigure it (so it would respond w/o the user having to have the ancient gene I assume).

McKay was supposedly able to do the same, but I bet he took a lot longer.

I would say that it is comparable to the Taur'i level but only because the Taur'i have such a good understanding of Ancient technology (not because the Wraith are bad at it). Jack added a lot of new info the first time he had the database in his head, and Jackson was later very helpful as he was able to read Ancient as a natural language.



What makes you say that?

Earlier episodes they didn't know enough .. later episodes they didn't bother.



No, they can't. United, they can't defeat a replicator free Asgard. And the Asgard undeniably have better technology (exempting Anubis of course, who was somewhat of an oddity).

Maybe the Asgard have worse tech than the Wraith, that is possible. Also possible for it to be the other way around. My personal guess is that they are more or less evenly matched, so Wraith win based on numbers.



No, but they had technologies that the Goa'uld certainly never used. Time dilation device, turning a sun into a black hole, etc. No doubt the Asgard are more advanced. The Wraith haven't done any of these things either, agreed. So it is hard to say.

One oddity of the Wraith is how little of their tech you see. The Goa'uld are not as old as the Wraith I believe though, so that suggests that the Wraith should be ahead - but different cultures (and presumably different species) will have different rates of advancement.

It will probably have to be shown at some point why the Wraith are more advanced than Goa'uld (if not more advanced than Replicators or Asgard) in order to explain why the Asgard can't just wipe them out. (Numbers I don't buy - Ancients were caught by suprise, and the Asgard would have plenty of resources that they have re-established their civilization. Also with mega weapons like time dilation and black holes....)

The Asgard have intergalactic hyperspace technology, whereas the Wraith need the Atlantis stargate to get to Earth. Therefore, they are NOT on a par with the Asgard

I didn't say that they were on the same level, just that they were close. (Perhaps on the verge of a breakthru even ... or not.) The point is that, upon encountering a totally alien technology (something they'd never seen before), they mounted an effective counter defense in the span of a few minutes.

Who'd win in a Wraith vs Replicator vs Asgard fight is unclear... but the Goa'uld would lose against any one.

Hmmm good point. But the Asgard were allies of the Ancients, rite? And the Wraith fort a war agenst the Ancients? So mabey the Wraith HAVE seen it before, if the Asgrad intervened in any way in the Ancient-Wraith war. I meen, im not necessarily sayin th transporter tech wood DEFFINTLY be that old, but possibly...

In fact, theres bound to be similaritys between the Asgard and Ancient trasporter tech. Even the Goa'uld transporter tech (allthogh thats irrelevant here). Possibly even the stargates....

Ok, we aren't going to be able to settle this without referring back to some quotes. From Threads:
Oma: "Because if I didn't stop you, the Others would have, and they wouldn't have been as nice about it."

I wonder what she could have meant. Kill him perhaps? Perhaps you're wrong about the kill rule. You don't know for sure that they do have a no-kill policy, only that it neatly explains away why they didn't kill Daniel when they de-Ascended him. You're right about her trying and failing before the Others stepped in, though.


And how many Goa'uld have died from just ordinary weapons that do leave behind corpses? Most of them have died when their ships exploded. At any rate, their biological differences really don't matter that greatly. Another advantage of the Goa'uld, is that the Wraith can't all be awake at once, or they begin running out of food. The sleeping cycle of the Wraith, is an obvious weakness. In sleep mode, they are very vulnerable, as evidenced when SG-A infiltrated a Hive ship. They could easily have destroyed it with an onboard nuclear missile. Another comment on their technological advancement, is that they cannot detect cloaked ships. They do not have cloaks of their own, whereas the Goa'uld have their own cloaking technology.



Took the words right out of my mouth. Transporter technology would quite likely work on similar principles, regardless of who made it. The Wraith have their own transporter technology, so they obviously understand the principles. Do you remember the episode where Thor was captured by Anubis, and he mind-linked him to his ship in order to read his mind? SG-1 attempted to beam him out using Asgaard transporters but were unable to. I'm sure that's happened many times in the past, not just with Anubis.


The Asgaard had already been fighting them for a long time, when they were only in bug form. Little more than extreme pests. The Goa'uld copped them as full human-form replicators. Why should the Goa'uld bother to research such large scale destructive technologies? It's no use to them when they can just destroy the inhabitants of a useful planet, or enslave them to their purpose. Individually, a Goa'uld System Lord is incredibly smart, with resources from dozens of systems. The Wraith have only themselves in their hive ships. They don't have large resources, they just roam looking to feed. The Wraith also, given their hive behavior, pool their resources much more willingly and easily, given that they can communicate mind to mind. And all they have to show for it, is pretty basic hive ships. The Goa'uld, as singular System Lords, have developed big fleets, possess many worlds with manufacturing capabilities, and pretty highly developed technology. Remember the episode Avenger 2.0? They uploaded a virus to Baal's Stargate to scramble the dialling device. Baal modified the virus, triggered an automatic update and uploaded it to all Stargates in the galaxy. United, massing the fleets, the manufacturies, technology and knowledge of science, they would wipe out the Wraith. Even the Asgaard would not violate the treaty they have with the Goa'uld. They understand that, to unite the Goa'uld, would give the Goa'uld control of this galaxy. Remember the episode where the System Lords and the Asgaard were discussing accepting the Asgaard's protection of Earth under the treaty? The Asgaard warned SG-1 that they could not protect their planets if the Goa'uld were provoked into unity.


Let's run through the technology of the Wraith we've seen: Stun weapons, large hive ships with large numbers of dart fighters, hyperspace travel, transporter technology. That's all. You seem to be inferring a lot of stuff from very little. We've seen practically no technology from them at all. You have no evidence to back up any claim that the Wraith are technologically superior than the Goa'uld. We have seen almost no biological technology from the Wraith, except the one attempt at creating a better Wraith. Even that was fairly lowtech, little more than trying to cross-breed. Everything, you are inferring from the fact that, the Ancients left Atlantis because of Wraith attack, and that that makes the Wraith tech comparable with the Ancients. The Ancients had no problems destroying the Wraith ships. It's like us against flies. The Ancients weren't defeated; they didn't want to continue their existence in Atlantis when they learnt the plague had ended in our galaxy. They did have the technology to wipe them out entirely, but not to control them.


What's all this about the Asgaard? The Asgaard have never encountered the Wraith, or are you talking about the Asgaard vs Replicator war? The replicators aren't advanced in the standard definition of the term. Their strength lies in the fact that they can absorb the technology you employ against them. They are incredibly adaptive. And they can use the principles they absorb to build their own technology. I don't think it will have to show why the Wraith are advanced at all. Look at the Taur'i. They're not especially technologically advanced, yet they're good at fighting races that are. The Goa'uld could easily, technology-wise, have wiped us out, but they haven't. Same deal with the Ancients and the Wraith. Technology is not the be all and end all, it's how you use it. Like the Harsesis episode I mentioned earlier, Daniel used their technology to build a planetary defence system to destroy motherships in hyperspace before they got here. Same technology, just used differently.

Ah! I didn't even think of that.

It has never been mentioned in canon, but if the Asgard have fought the Wraith before it would make more sense.



Well the Goa'uld just use the Ancient's rings (which work on the same principle as the stargates). And the Asgard beaming technology seems to be totally unrelated. But, again, something never directly addressed in canon. Hmm, indeed.

Yes, you're right, that is never neatly explained. The statements are intentionally vague for obvious reasons, of course.



Yes, agreed. I don't understand why the Wraith don't use shields - and why they can't just go back into hiberation instead of trying to reach Earth.



Hmm. They never seem to use it... but if they tried the Ancients could probably have see through it anyways. Still, a very good point.



No, I bet Anubis was the only Goa'uld who was able to do that. He could do quite a few things no other Goa'uld could.

As for transporter tech - it is possible that you're right, but why would the underground mountain that held the communication device block Asgard beams and allow ring transporters? It must have been able to detect some difference...



Well, actually, there is one bit of canon that addresses this. In the series premeire of Stargate Atlantis, you see the hologram of the Ancient explains how they once inhabited the entire galaxy. Then they came upon the homeworld of the Wraith, and the worlds fell. I do remember that she says that the Ancients have never before fought against an enemy with technology at a level comparable to their own - I took this to imply that the Wraith were the welders of that technology.

I could be completely wrong about this though - some have speculated that the darkness the Ancients awoke was a greater intellegence, and that it used the humans and the Iratus bug to create the Wraith in order to fight the battles (as the Goa'uld created the Jaffa). SciFi Inside seemed to claim otherwise - I recall a mention about how it would be revealed that the Wraith were created by the Ancients accidently, due to their arrogance. Of course, that's also not canon...



It is strange - in Atlantis they could win every battle over the city but couldn't win the war. However they also couldn't just use a device like the Dhakara device to dial all the stargates and erase the Wraith - I wonder why. Perhaps you're right about them not wanting to eliminate all the Wraith but still...

Its possible that they couldn't because the wraith ARE human. They possibly had ethical issues about killing off the wraith, as there is a chance that would also kill humans. It also explains the NANOVIRUS that was found on Atlantis at 1 point.

That would explain the nanobots (not really a virus), though it was never tested on the Wraith themselves - but the tecnology involved was quite different than what the Ancients used (Ancient tech is not EMP vulnerable). The visions are disturbly Wraith-like - perhaps the "darkness" that created the Wraith used this virus (or a later revision of it) to do so...

Targetting just Iradus bug genes would have been enough to for the Ancients protect the humans while killing off the Wraith.

Why everyone speaks English has never been explained.

One idea was for the show to include "universal translators" that'd enable communication, but it seems the idea was dropped...

Apparently, some novelizations (none that I know of though) say that the Stargate can act as a translator if invoked properly, but I find that answer less than satsifactory....