If you were writing Stargate from scratch, how would you change the Stargate universe?

The three things I would change most would be:

1. the technology,

2. the Goa'uld, and

3. the era.

The technology

Stargate was never hard sci-fi, but as the series went on it became a bit ridiculous, with technology being basically magic. I would bring the technology back "down to Earth".

The biggest change I would make would be to completely remove ship-based FTL capabilities. This serves the purpose of making the Stargate particularly special and the only practical way to cross large interstellar distances. Ships would be pretty much restricted to the solar systems in which they were built, with the exception of sleeper or inter-generational ships crossing interstellar spaces at sublight speeds. The process of colonising a new planet would be to first send a ship there with a Stargate, and then once the Stargate is in place, then you can travel there instantaneously.

Second, I would remove shields as an all-purpose defence. Shields would stop energy weapons, and are therefore essential, but they should not be able to stop projectile weapons. Ships would therefore need to be both armoured and shielded.

Third, I would have energy weapons be much less effective in atmosphere than in space.

Fourth, I would increase the role of biomedical and information technology, as well as materials science. The original Stargate falls into the trap of giving people advanced space-faring technology but not giving them a similar level of advancement in areas where actually advancement is more readily achieved.

Fifth, I would increase the importance of certain commodities, both industrial materials for the design of military items and the generation of energy (I'd keep naquada as the fuel for an advanced form of fusion), but also luxury goods. Basically a galaxy with a proper system of trade.

Sixth, I'd get rid of all beaming technology, including rings. It's just too convenient!

The Goa'uld

The Goa'uld ended up as quite cartoonish villains who were mostly defeated by their own holding of the idiot ball, and who also became extremely disposable. They went from being these awesome, rare beings in the Stargate movie to being redshirts. So I would make changes to them which would restore their prestige and make them a genuine threat.

First, I would ditch the idea that the Goa'uld are literal parasites, restoring the original Stargate movie depiction of "possession". This would be achieved through their advanced computer science and biological knowledge, essentially transferring their consciousness from body to body, overwriting whatever was in that person's brain. They would also use that same knowledge to give their body all the genetic and technological modifications they could.

Second, I would make the Goa'uld much rarer. Like, maybe 50 of them in the entire galaxy. You don't run into them on every planet. I'd keep the feudal style "System Lords" structure with a ton of in-fighting, but every Goa'uld is a system lord. As per the original Stargate movie, they are the last survivors of an alien race. Essentially I'd have this alien race dying of some disease, and they sent out sleeper ships all over the galaxy in a last-ditch effort to find a cure. The remaining Goa'uld are the group who discovered Earth and were able to transfer their consciousness into the compatible bodies of humans. Their ship would have been composed of a handful of families; the different pantheons of Earth each correspond to a different family.

Third, I'd give the Goa'uld a proper industrial base and society. It's not just a god and then a load of downtrodden human slaves. Their societies would be brutal and massively unequal (I'm imagining a Roman-style martial culture with gladiators etc), but there would be an educated class, trade, etc.

Fourth, while I'd keep the way the Goa'uld present themselves as gods, this would be more like an Imperial Cult in the style of the pharaohs/Caesars. The Goa'uld would not be considered omnipotent/omniscient by their followers. The Goa'uld would keep power because of their way they can transfer their consciousness from body to body, basically making them impossible to kill.

Fifth, I'd get rid of the Jaffa. Goa'uld society would be made up of transplanted humans from Earth.

Sixth, I'd restore the original idea from the Stargate movie that the Goa'uld created the Stargates. The Ancients would not exist, nor would the Asgard. The Norse gods would be another branch of the Goa'uld. The core, heavily industrialised Goa'uld worlds would have space gates permitting ships to travel between star systems.

The timeline

Basically I'd set the story in the future, in a version of Earth that had achieved a level of technology similar to that of the Colonies in Battlestar Galactica. Earth would have spacefaring capabilities including heavy launch capability, but not shields.

The Goa'uld would still have a massive technological advantage over Earth, including:

- Shield technology.

- Vastly superior energy generation and therefore much more powerful energy weapons.

- Much more advanced computer science.

- Much more advanced biomedical engineering.

- More advanced materials for e.g. armour.

- Knowledge of how to build Stargates.

- Significantly larger industrial base.

The purpose of this change is to have Earth be at a significant disadvantage while still being able to fight the Goa'uld on their own terms, rather than having to get constantly lucky. The removal of FTL ability, meaning that all invasions had to take place via the Stargate, would protect Earth from being overrun in short order.

I would keep Earth as a planet of many nations. No unified world government or anything like that. Colonisation of the solar system will have begun but be in relatively early stages.

 

I actually prefer some of the campyness that kept Stargate lighthearted. The other things that made Stargate good was it's heavily pro freedom and pro human spirit, so those should continue to be why they ''win" engagements, even when technologically behind.
So I would keep the ancients having built the Stargate, but they are gone, none of this ascended stuff. Thier ruins would be like the ruins to Renaissance Italians, a source of inspiration and materials, with scraps of written knowledge. This also parentsp good story fodder for a conflict with a goa'uld who is also trying to get this knowledge for itself. So SG1 can do combat in Ancient ruins where damage to the environment is not acceptable to either side. That Goa'uld, call it Thoth, would also have teams to secure such sites, and could present a good race against the clock opponent for the SGC, and one that losing to does not mean game over and death to earth.
I would expand the named characters of SGC personnel. In the early seasons, we had Hammond, Walter, Frasier, and SG1 and a few one-off characters. For all of it's sci-fi, it's still a character drama, and would benefit from more characters on base for our leads to talk to and interact with. Walter in particular is disappointing for his real lack of interactions.

 

I like everything but the timeline. I guess you could do a series with humans being more advanced, much like they became in the original series later on, but I liked the early series where they hadn't yet adapted alien technology as much.

Granted I haven't watched all the Stargate series all the way through or anything. I watched a lot of reruns of both SG-1 and Atlantis on TV and have seen the movie a couple times.

 

The things I would change? Hmm...well, SGU was simply not interesting. Arguably, one can just ignore SGU completely. It doesn't really affect anything in-universe.

But what I would change is definitely Atlantis getting back into contact with Earth after Season One. That was such a waste of potential. Atlantis had so much going for it in the beginning: an expedition in another galaxy without support, left to their own devices and needing to survive. There were so many possible routes it could have gone and instead Atlantis became this slightly far away frontier base.

The intergalactic traveling capabilities of Earth ships definitely should be removed. It makes things too easy. Flying around in your own galaxy, fine. I would make the travel times a lot longer, not days but months, at least. And if Earth ever contacted Atlantis again, it would be a one-way trip into the Pegasus galaxy.

The first few seasons of SG1 were actually fine. Yeah, it was campy, but that can be a good thing. It's not the usual grim dark stuff that populates the series landscape in the last, what, decade? But Earth definitely got too powerful too quickly. The Goa'uld were good enemies as long as they remained few and powerful. With the many Earth invasions I'd have put the focus in the later seasons on the changes on Earth. New technologies, the threat of aliens, the social upheaval...you could do a lot with it, from rogue organizations, to colonization of other planets, unification of Earth, a long, true war with the Goa'uld...the Tau'ri truly becoming the Fifth Race and earning their place in galactic history.

 

@Taure

Initially I was planning a point-by-point agreement/rebuttal, but once I got past the technology section of your post I had to stop. The sheer number of changes you are suggesting would strip so much from Stargate that it would be a completely different show. First let me post the rebuttal for the tech section.

The technology

1, FTL:
I think completely stripping FTL is going too far. At the end of season one of SG1, it was said that a Goa'uld mothership could move at 10 times the speed of light. The fact that it managed a 10-light year jump in less than 24 hours was a major surprise. That sort of speed isn't unreasonable in keeping Stargates relevant--they are still the easiest way to get from point to point. In fact, it makes it somewhat similar to Mass Effect with its relays--instantaneous transport across narrow corridors, slower transport outside of those areas, leading to clustered civilizations (ME ships travel at about 4000 times the speed of light, though).

Dropping FTL down to these speeds also makes fast ships an important plot point. Say that how fast you go with FTL is based on the mass of the ship+cargo and the size of the engine. Small but fast ships are possible, but mothership carriers are inherently slow. Then someone sacrifices armaments for speed, allowing for a surprise attack. Or another person designs a ship that is about 90% engine with 9% by mass warhead, allowing for a surprise suicide attack. It makes it similar to the arms race of the US-Russia/Soviet Union/Whatever cold war, where the Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird's Mach 3 speed was a gamechanger. Then of course there's the Asgard who can pull off the cross-galactic FTL jumps within a week, because they were allies with the Ancients and thus on the same tech level.

2, Shields:
Shields not stopping kinetic attacks is probably the wrong way to go for a lot of reasons. First, because in space micrometeorites and space debris are a major problem that would be one of the major concerns of sublight travel, and thus one of the reasons that it would be developed in the first place. An energy-based shield that relies solely on power is far more useful than a solid shield that would end up potentially destroyed over the decades of travel your proposed sleeper ship would have to endure. Second, if it is unable to withstand kinetic attacks, then it can't be used to create barriers across hangar doors/airlocks, as air would just pass right through. Third, remember the first Nox episode where Apophis isn't taken down like a little bitch by bullets because he had a personal shield device? It ruins the whole god-shtick if you can be nailed in the head with a ball of mud by some insolent child. Fourth, space window backups. Fifth, instant walls for traps. Sixth, dangerous material (such as antimatter) containment. And so on. There's just too many useful scenarios to get rid of their ability to interact with physical matter.

That being said, yeah they get a little overused in the later seasons. It becomes a matter of throwing more energy into this weapon to overpower that shield, and so on. No creativity, just Tim Taylor technology. It might be better for them to act somewhat similar to Star Wars-style shields in that as a ship defense they act to deflect attacks, reducing the impacts of kinetic attacks and interfering with energy-based attacks.

3, Energy Weapons:
I'm not sure why you feel the need for this. There is some merit to the idea, with in-atmosphere energy weapons needing an additional shielding around their projectiles to prevent plasma containment fields from dissipating against air molecules instead of the enemy, or to keep laser-type weaponry from being diffracted.

However, I think it works as is. The SGC uses ballistic weaponry because they can manufacture it instead of having to steal it, they know how it works and how to fix any problems it has, bullets work just fine against most enemies anyway, and its simple design allows it to work under a ton of environmental conditions. The Goa'uld use energy weapons because they are powerful, because they are intentionally designed to intimidate the enemy, and because the technology was stolen from other alien designs. Then the Asgard have their whole super-alien thing with basically teleporting/disintegrating the enemy like a Necron Gauss Weapon, and the Ancients have their drone torpedoes. It helps create a sense of different cultures, different technologies, and helps to differentiate sides on a busy battlefield.

(If you came up with this argument to explain why the SGC kept using firearms instead of Goa'uld weapons, that was because the actors got to play with either guns with blanks or they had to wave around a prop and let the FX team have all the fun. Most chose to use the fun guns.)

4, Miscellaneous Technology
The big reason of why this was the way it was is due to the time period the series is set in. The series began in the late 90s, and so was therefore hamstrung by that tech level. In a way I think it was actually a boon to the series more than anything else. Without modern computers, drones, quasi-AI like Siri or Alexa, digital documents, or any of the other modern accessories, the characters had to work with their brains and what they had instead of 3D-printing a solution. Instead of relying on computer simulations to find a solution to a gate-based problem, they had to physically try each solution. Instead of creating a Ancient-to-English translator, Daniel Jackson had to personally translate ancient texts. Imagine trying to keep the Stargate Program under wraps in the age of cameraphones and Twitter or Instagram.

Plus the disconnect of having a higher tech level than you are ready for is the driving force for about half the plot of the first couple seasons. There were so many times where Carter disabled some protocol on the Stargate and made the whole thing worse. Like the time that they got sent back in time because she overrode a lock preventing them from going through a wormhole too close to a solar prominence, or when they had to figure out a way to disconnect from a black hole, or when they overrode a restriction which made their wormhole pass through a star's core which caused the star to prematurely decay into death which would doom the low-tech people living on the nearby planet...

5, Trade Goods
That sort of thing was also a plot point for a number of episodes. There was an episode where they found the super-strong metal trinium, and the government wanted to forcibly take it from the Native Americans who lived on that planet. There was an episode where they had to decide whether to evict a whole society of Unas to get to the Naquadah mines they were living in. There were a number of episodes related to stealing Naquadah from Goa'uld. There were the episodes revolving around the acquisition of Naquadria and the development of tech to use it. There were a number of episodes relating to finding this or that miracle material or technology, and of the government being disappointed at how little return of trade goods and technologies it was receiving for the amount of money it was spending on the program--the season one ending was based around this.

Unless you want different kinds of materials instead of just Naquadah, I'm not sure what else you would look for. Remember, the SGC was run by the US Air Force and was trying to fight the Goa'uld first and foremost.

6, Beaming
Ehh... This really only becomes an issue very late in the series. Even then, it's not that bad. There's clear limits on when it can and can't work, distance limitations, needing for targetting... Really, there are much bigger problems with the series than this.
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Stargate had its problems, especially in the later seasons (about the time of Stargate Atlantis especially) as things had to change. But it had a lot of unique and fun elements that I wouldn't change for the world.

The idea of gods-were-aliens isn't new, but this was one of the rare cases of it being done well. Usually I see it in conspiracy shows like Ancient Aliens, but here it was played seriously. Unfortunately I don't think they went far enough with it though. There was practically no difference between Cronos and Apophis in terms of what they could do. Mostly this was due to budget and time constraints. But I would have liked to have seen each god have key pieces of technology that made them different from each other, as though they had discovered some technology that they kept to themselves. I would have liked to have seen Zeus's ships specializing in lighting-based weaponry, Nyx having darkness-based technology, Ares having huge armies, etc.

Basically I would have liked to see that the reason there were differences between how humanity perceived these gods was due to their actions and abilities. I wouldn't have had Ra be the one and only Supreme System Lord, but rather each of the pantheons be its own collection of gods with their own SSL: Zeus, Ra, Indra, and so on. I like that the reason that the Goauld managed to be destroyed was because of Ra's death, which no one had expected, and that the sudden upset of power/squabbling over his position allowed the Tok'Ra and the sudden introduction of the SGC into the mix managed to keep the chaos going until the millennia-long stalemate was completely dissolved.

 

One thing that always bothered me - not so much show dynamics but a lack of proper risk management procedures.

I would move Stargate Command entirely off-world to the Alpha Site. Thereby eliminating the sheer number of near-world ending threats brought back through the gate to Earth. It never made sense to me for the primary world to bear the brunt of the exploration.

 

Thinking about it some more, I'd say one of the biggest changes I would make would be to decrease the episodic nature of the episodes. Don't get me wrong--the self-contained episodes of the earlier seasons allowed for some great stories--but that very nature worked against it sometimes.

Like how Daniel Jackson's entire motivation to join the SGC was to rescue his wife, but that plot thread was pretty bare. There's brief mentions here and there, but you would have expected to see Daniel's empathetic demeanor slide somewhat when dealing with Apophis, or some scenes of him pouring over mission reports to try to find her instead of doing archaeology stuff.

Then there's the almost pathological need to return to the status quo. Every single time there's more than one copy of an SGC character (from dimension hopping, android replicas, time travel, so on), the former plot armor becomes a death magnet, killing them by the end of the episode. With the noted exception of child!Jack O'Neill, who was never heard from again. Teleport the irreplaceable SGC Stargate onto a disintegrating ship so that four people can escape? No consequences to SG1, just wheel out the spare! It almost became a drinking game.

I'm not saying that Stargate was completely without plot threads. There are a number of seemingly one-off episodes that get referenced later on in the series. I just would have liked to have seen other plot threads fade in and out instead of appear and disappear.


Note that this is me talking about the early SG1 series. When season 8 rolled around, Don S. Davis (Hammond's actor) asked for Richard Dean Anderson to take over his role as base commander due to his failing health, a move which coincided with RDA's desire to spend more time with his daughter. That meant the removal of O'Neill from SG1 for Season 8, and completely from the series after that season. Since RDA was also one of the executive producers of SG1 (but not Atlantis or Universe), that probably had a lot to do with the shift in tone. They also lost two of the other executive producers at the same time as RDA, along with shifting from MGM to Sony.

The other part was that after the Goa'uld were taken out it was almost a question of, "Uh...now what do we do?" Like a dog who chases a car, the show almost felt like it didn't know what to do with the series after it accomplished what it initially set out to do. Up until this point Stargate had been an underdog story. The Goa'uld were ancient, advanced, powerful, and numerous against a fraction of a single branch of the US military, in secret.

But then in one fell swoop they pitted the Replicators against the Goa'uld, taking them out in the span of a couple weeks, then using an Ancient 'technically not a Halo' device to take out the Replicators. After this the tone was not man vs god, but god vs man or god vs god. The SGC was starting to be able to use Ancient tech and understand it instead of scratching their heads at how the Stargates worked like in the earlier seasons, placing them on the same level as the Goa'uld used to be.

Then the shows started to recycle villain concepts to fill the gaps left from Apophis/Anubis: the Ori are the Goa'uld 'aliens posing as gods' concept with a Catholicism bent instead of ancient religions (except they arguably are gods this time around instead of just pretending to be), and the Wraith are the consuming nature of the Replicators combined with the superiority complex of the Goa'uld shifted from 'we are gods/you are slaves' to 'we are predators/you are prey.'

So yeah, I'd probably scrap pretty much everything after season 7. Let the series end with the destruction of Anubis at Antartica, with a wrap up movie between that and Continuum.

 

The timeline and the tech sides make me think you basically want a tv series of Mass Effect. They have FTL but its vastly inferior to the Relays which are basically stargates but with set destinations. Element zero fills that naquadah role, super substance that's rare and valuable. The humans in Mass Effect are behind a bit but capable of holding their own before the game starts and by the end of the first they're one of the most powerful in the galaxy. No beaming tech. There's plenty I didn't like about the games I didn't like, namely how humanity has no desire for independence but they fit your changes reasonably well.

For Stargate, I liked it for a few seasons. Then, as with the majority of US tv shows it became bloated and didn't know when to quit. I wonder what it would have been like had it had British style seasons of 4-5 good episodes rather than dragging out ~22 episodes a season. They made so many episodes they ran out of ideas and made up increasingly ridiculous plots to sell more episodes. Had they been brave and made a shift post-Goa'uld they could have made it interesting. Had humanity risen up to the role of protectors and peacekeepers while balancing the instability at home you would have a different series. They just did more of the same until it was worn out and tired and then they made even more.

 

One of the failures of SG1, is how easily they dealt with the Goa'uld in the end.
From existential threat, they become mere annoyance, with SG1 keep killing them on left and right.
Anubis conquered them all=> later destroyed by the replicators=> SG1 use Dakara Super Weapon to defeat all replicators, a Super Weapon whose interface look ridiculous.
Than somehow the rebellion take over an entire galaxy.
The Replicators were poor addition to the series, same as Anubis taking over all the other system lords.
I expected with the defeat of Anubis some of the more stable and powerful system lords will remain independent and in power, yet it didn't happen.

 

Maybe it's just me but the increased level of technology never rubbed me the wrong way. It would make sense for their technology to progress as the show goes on. Heck, the higher ups wanted them to acquire more advanced tech.

My only complaint in regards to this is that most of the technology they got later on was given to them in one fell swoop by the Asgard.

If they'd acquired their tech themselves or even scavenged it/stole it themselves then it would have a bigger impact. Plus, if they started of with acquiring only slightly better tech with each season getting something more powerful.

For example, say that at the end of season 2 they get slightly good body armour that can maybe deflect a staff blast at long range. Then season 2 they figure out how to make Zats themselves (or even just outfit everyone with the original Zats) but it takes a fair few shots to knock out a Jaffa or Goauld.

Removing FTL capabilities completely is a mistake. If you do then all that is needed to defeat the Goauld is to bury your Gate. My suggestion would be to keep the FTL capabilities to what they were before the Season 1 Finale. If I recall, it would take something like a year to travel to Earth.

 

That's a good point, actually. Stargate would have gained if they had done some greater arcs like Babylon 5 did. The SGC cast was a strong one; it could have been done.

But I agree with you. The SG-1 golden age were definitely seasons 3 and 4, and then it went downhill from there. They should have noticed this trend at the latest in season 8. What end could have been better than all of the team at Jack's cabin, fishing? Everything after that was...superfluous.

 

I'm been thinking about a "hard" scifi Stargate for a long time (like, it was literally my first fanfic idea). I thought about it for the first time in probably six months just the other day.

I can certainly agree with that. Early season SG1 is easily my favourite Stargate. I know a lot of people hate SGU but i liked it a lot because it dropped/brushed away the more magical aspects.

I wouldn't get rid of it completely, just make it very impractical. If you think back to the last episode of season 1 Teal'c says he estimates it will take several years to reach Earth. If you kept those speeds it becomes very unlikely that the Goa'uld can attack Earth from space in a reasonable time span.

I also don't think you appreciate how difficult it would be to conduct colonisation without some sort of FTL. You're basically looking at hundreds of thousands of year to go anywhere.

I'd instead just make them weaker.

Shield strength has always been super inconsistant. If you look at the end of season 1 again, a naquadah enhanced nuclear bomb doesn't do anything to a Goa'uld mothership, yet later on non-relativistic railguns are the priamry armament of Earth's ships, and they rape shielded motherships.

Don't they already? Staff weapons only have a range of one or two hundred metres at most.

Oh yes. While they kept everything secret they should have been integrating everything from medical to manufacturing technology into Earth's economy, making us ready so Earth can take full advantage of it when the secret of the Gate gets out.

Sort of. The Goa'uld are very feudal. From out own history we know the trade of luxury goods in feudal societies is widespread, but non-luxury goods usually are not.

To have widespread system of trade in my mind requires the Goa'uld to educate their populace, but that means the increase risk of rebellion.

Beaming tech should go, but I'm not sure rings are too hax. They have the same limitation as gates in that they're between fixed points.

Not super keen to address this as I'm procrastinating right now and should get back to my work.

One of the things I wanted to address is a transhumanist Earth. Probably something at GitS levels of technology.

I'll post a more detailed thing tomorrow.