I want to reiterate before I get started on this that I love the series, and like Fox Mulder, I want to believe! But the more times I watch Stargate – the movie and season 1 episodes of SG-1, the more confused I get about the workings of the Stargates. I’ve come to the reluctant and sad conclusion that the writers of the series haven’t paid enough attention to the ideas of the movie’s writers, and have consequently lost the plot.

I would love someone to prove me wrong and tell me that I’ve just not been paying the right kind of attention or have misunderstood or misinterpreted things that have been said or that have happened. But having had several long discussions with my boyfriend, an irritatingly smart design engineer who, even with a terrible cold, was able to have another long debate with me today over the phone, the problems still seem to be there, at least up to the end of season 1.

So let’s get started:

The movie established that you need to dial six symbols to start with. These six symbols appeared on the stone covering the buried Stargate. They didn’t look like hieroglyphics and Daniel eventually worked out that they were representations of constellations by realising that one of them was Orion. [I’ll get onto the problem of using constellations in a minute.] By drawing lines between each set of two constellations (up/down, side to side, and front to back), you get a point in space (my boyfriend argued that you actually only need four constellations to get that same point in space but, while I agree with him, I’ll let that one slide). You then need a seventh symbol which, as far as I can tell, is not a constellation – this is the Point of Origin symbol and is a representation of the planet you’re starting from. Earth’s Point of Origin symbol is a triangle/pyramid with the bottom line removed, and a dot over the top.

It’s also partly established in the movie (and reinforced in the series) that in order to get back to Earth, you need to dial in the six coordinates/constellations for Earth, together with the Point of Origin symbol from the planet you’re standing on at the time.

In Children of the Gods, we’re presented with the Abydos Cartouche – a map room which gives the symbols that you need to dial into a multitude of different planets. Puzzlingly, each planet’s coordinates contain seven symbols. This had me reaching for a pen to jot it down as a nit, but then I decided I could let it go – perhaps, like on the cover stones from the movie, the six ‘outgoing’ symbols are given first, and the seventh is the Point of Origin symbol for that planet so that you know what symbol to dial when you’re coming home again. So, in order to dial out to any planet from Earth, you dial the first six symbols from the Cartouche, then your own Point of Origin symbol; and to get back home you dial Earth’s six symbols, then the seventh symbol from the Cartouche.

With me so far?

But now we get into the problem of stellar drift. Discussing the Cartouche, Sam and Daniel realise that they will need to compensate for Doppler shift – the stars have all moved a lot in the 50,000 years since the Cartouche was created, and they will need to create a computer model to calculate the movement of the constellations. They never quite explain how they’re going to do this – there are only 38 constellations on the Stargate, so what are the chances that one of these constellations will have moved into the space left by the constellation represented on the Cartouche? For instance, say that you want to travel to planet P47-47 – according to the Cartouche, the symbol for Chevron 1 is the constellation known as The Fire Hydrant (I’m being silly, but I daren’t name real constellations!). Now, the Fire Hydrant is no longer in the same area of space as it was 50,000 years ago, but using a computer model you work out that that area of space is now inhabited by the constellation known as The Budweiser Lizard. But with only 38 constellations on the Stargate, what chance is there that the Budweiser Lizard is even on the Gate? But I haven’t yet been given the impression that SGC have the technical ability to get into the gizzards of the Stargate and tweak them so that punching The Fire Hydrant’s symbol will set up a point in space now inhabited by The Budweiser Lizard.

Additionally, as Keith Alan Morgan pointed out to me in our discussions during the season 1 episode There But For The Grace of God, a constellation is a two-dimensional representation of a three-dimensional area. The stars within any constellation can be bijillions of miles apart. So what “point in space” are we looking for? Did the Stargates’ builders take the central point of all those stars? And if so, why use something as complicated as constellations in the first place? If they were smart enough to work out the central points and programme them into the Gate, why not just call them points A, B, C; or 1, 2, 3; or Ix, Phlan, Gopp?

Sorry – that latter bit was getting off the point – I’m looking for problems with the writers’ perceptions of how the Gates work, but the use of constellations is a nit in itself.

OK – now the big question: are the symbols on all the Gates (and DHDs, of course) the same or does each Gate have different symbols to all the others? I go for “the same”. If the Abydos Cartouche only worked from the Abydos Stargate, it wouldn’t work from Earth but it does (and Abydos may be the closest to Earth in the network but it’s still “on the other side of the known universe” according to the movie, so the constellations must look pretty different, I would have thought). And think about it: if you used the Abydos Cartouche to dial out from Abydos to planet P47-47, you wouldn’t be able to get back again until you found a map on P47-47 which told you which symbols to dial to get to Abydos. The only reason Daniel needed a map in the movie was because at that time he didn’t know what Earth’s six symbols were. Additionally I’ve seen two episodes - There But for the Grace and Solitudes - where you have an overhead shot of the symbols punched into the DHD to get back to Earth and the first six symbols are the same in each episode. It’s only the seventh symbol, the Point of Origin symbol, which is different each time. This is also borne out by the events in Solitudes where Sam can’t dial home because, unbeknown to her, she’s dialling from Earth to Earth and so she keeps getting a ‘busy’ or ‘engaged’ signal.

Another thing to reinforce the theory of all Gates having the same symbols comes from The Torment of Tantalus – in that episode the team arrive on a planet only to find that the DHD is broken. Sam says that the probe only looked around to see that there was a DHD – it didn’t go round the front to look at and send back pictures of the symbols. So presumably it always does that – it never looks at the symbols but the team always confidently punch the go-home symbols in. So I think that they must be punching in the same symbols each time.

So, as far as I can work it out, the series demands that the Stargates’ builders originated from Abydos or somewhere nearby – they based their calculations on the Abydonian sky and then built their Stargates all using the same symbols. Each Gate has 38 identical symbols and one other – this 39th symbol is unique to each Gate and is that planet’s Point of Origin symbol. Again, this is borne out in Solitudes when Sam finds the Point of Origin symbol by looking at the DHD and finding the one symbol she doesn’t recognise. So when you’re dialling from Abydos to Chulak, say, you’re using Abydos constellations, not Chulak constellations and, likewise, when you’re dialling out from Chulak, you’re still using Abydos constellations. If, in a future episode, the SG team found another Cartouche on another planet, it should have the same symbols and groupings of symbols on it as the Abydos Cartouche.

This, however, is completely contradictory to the movie. One of the symbols on the cover stones is very similar to Orion!! Why would Earth’s Stargate have Orion on it when Orion must look very different from Abydos? Additionally, Daniel looked at the images of the Abydos Gate being sent back by the probe and said that the symbols were different to Earth’s Gate. That was why he insisted on going with O’Neill’s team – so that he could translate the symbols and find the right ones to get home. But you just can’t have it both ways! Either the symbols are different on each Gate or they’re the same – but events in several episodes of the series seem to blatantly contradict the events of the movie.

Now normally I’d say that the movie and the series are two very different beasties and you can’t use one to prove a point in the other. But unlike most series which arise from a movie, Stargate SG-1 seems to have done its best to run on from the movie – they have the same characters who have the same history etc, so contradictions between one and the other are nits in my book.

But even if you push the movie aside and only work from the series, there’s still confusion when the writers contradict themselves. All previous suggestions that all Gates have the same symbols go out of the window when you look at There But For the Grace of God. I’ve talked long and loud about the problems of that episode on its own page on Nitcentral – if you’ve read this far and haven’t lost the will to live yet, go have a look cos I don’t want to repeat it all here! But that episode seems to suggest that Earth’s Stargate should have the Point of Origin symbol of other Gates on it. Which seems like total nonsense to me – a Point of Origin symbol isn’t a coordinate, so having someone else’s Point of Origin symbol on your Gate would be a waste of space – you could never use it to dial out.

The only way I can see it is that the writers are “doing a Voyager” and not being consistent in their writing. They’re happy to stick with one theory until it suits them to turn it upside down for the sake of plot. Which is a shame if it’s true, because otherwise this is a superb series and one which I’m very much enjoying. It just honks me off when I spend more time at the end of some episodes having long involved discussions about Gate functions than commenting on the good stuff within the episode!

Callie: I believe Doppler Shift is what happens to light and sound as it approaches or goes away from us. Astronomically it is a symptom of stellar drift, not the name.

The Egyptians were very advanced mathematically. Maybe what Daniel assumed were constellations were mathematic representations based on specific properties of the constellations?
(Possible nit, haven't seen the movie for over a year. What we call Orion's belt was the Balance Beam to the Egyptions.)

As for the Abydos symbols looking different, well 4 & IV look different, but mean the same thing.

An additional wonderment is why 6 symbols? (Ignoring Point Of Origin for the moment.)
Logically you should only need 3 (Up, Across, & Distance). Possibly the other 3 are refinements on the major coordinates, for instance, Up point 4, Across point 7, Distance point 5. Although this kind of 'pinpoint' coordinate system might be more subject to failure given stellar drift.
Presumably the 6 stand for Up, Down, Left, Right, Far, & Near. Assuming that the Stargate system searches for other gates between a given set of cordinates, which might make sense because of stellar drift. (More space to search, although this too could have problems.)

Now for POO. As I understand it, energy radiates outward from a single point. When the Stargate is looking for a specific Stargate the signal also radiates outward in every direction and only the Stargate within those coordinates (assuming there is just one) is activated and the POO symbol activates the wormhole connecting these two points in space.

Does any of this make any sense? (Oddly enough, I don't have a problem with Temporal Mechanics, but Physical Mechanics are a real pain.)

Oh, Keith, do you know how hard I worked to avoid using the acronym POO??!!!

According to the movie, there were six points because you plot those six points on a cube, then draw a line between the Up/Down points, the Left/Right points and the Far/Near points and the place where the three lines join is the location of the planet. As my boyfriend said, two of those lines would give the same location.

"Doppler Shift" were the words used by Sam and Daniel in Children of the Gods. I wondered if they were using the right words at the time.

Maybe we should name the Point Of Origin symbol Winnie. ;-)

I think my idea that it searches for a gate within the given set of coordinates would work better since all stars are in motion and searching a general region of space would make the address valid for a longer period of time than pinpointing a specific point in space.

Hmmm, maybe Winnie also contains information on how fast the planet's star system is moving through space and in what direction? That kind of information might be valuable in establishing a stable wormhole?

It's not Winnie that causes me a problem - it's just the dial-out number, like pressing "Send" on a mobile phone. But I agree that the wormhole, once initiated, must have to search for the nearest Gate, cos any Gate is at least going to be spinning round on a planet, and the planet's spinning round the star etc etc.

I'm more puzzled about why any Gate should have someone else's Winnie on it (I'm sooo glad you came up with the word 'Winnie'!). Winnie identifies your own Gate and your own Gate alone, but only as the Gate which is dialling out. To dial in to your own Gate, someone on another planet has to dial six 'digits' - they can't dial your Winnie.

And another thing while I'm on the subject of dialling. When SGC dial out, they engage the seventh chevron and the wormhole almost instantly does its whoosh-thing. When dialling away from any planet using a DHD, the SG teams have to dial seven numbers AND press a "send" button in the middle. I suppose it's possible that the computer that drives the Earth Gate automatically presses 'send' without us noticing.

Based on evidence from Solitudes and the Second Season opener The Serpent's Lair, I think it is safe to say that Winnie is not Earth's symbol, but the symbol for the individual Stargate itself. This is implied by the 2 Earth Stargates having different Winnies, but also (WARNING!!! THE FOLLOWING EVIDENCE COMES FROM THE 2ND SEASON OPENER & MIGHT BE CONSIDERED A SPOILER IF YOU HAVEN'T SEEN IT YET!!!) in The Serpent's Lair the Stargate on Apophos's ship (or was it Klorel's ship?) dials out using Earth as the origin coordinates, even though it has a different Winnie.

Keith - run that by me again? I’ve not yet seen The Serpent’s Lair - do you mean that someone dials out from the Stargate on the ship while it’s at/near Earth and uses the triangle with the dot on the top as the seventh symbol? Or do you mean that they dial the first six symbols basing them on the location that the ship Stargate is at at the time, i.e. Earth, and then finish with the ship Gate’s own personal Winnie?

If it’s the latter, then I’m even more confused, and even more convinced that the writers aren’t sticking to a standard formula because that would negate the visual ‘evidence’ from Solitudes and There but for the Grace where it seems to suggest that wherever you are in the universe, you dial the same first six symbols to get back to Earth. If you had to base the first six symbols on your location at the time, wouldn’t that make the Winnie irrelevant? (The only time a Winnie would be useful would be where you’ve got two Gates on the same planet [which apparently is extremely rare and one is inevitably disabled/lost], or two Gates on two planets very close together. Or you’ve got a mobile Gate like in Serpent’s Grasp/Serpent’s Lair!)

It certainly makes sense for each Winnie to be unique to a particular Stargate (especially now we’ve got mobile Gates!), and I still think that all other coordinates ought to be based on the Abydos Cartouche - it would make the Gates a lot easier to use. For instance, in order to get to Planet Frank, no matter where you are at the time, you always dial the same six symbols to start with and then, to connect the arrivals Gate with the departure Gate, you dial the departure Gate’s own unique Winnie to show where you’re coming from. Solitudes backs up that particular theory when Sam has no idea where in the universe she might be but confidently dials the six symbols for Earth without having to think about it or calculate for her current location.

If this weren’t the case and you had to dial home by working out a new set of symbols each time depending on where in the universe you were, the Cartouche would be a waste of space - it tells you how to get to a planet but doesn’t tell you how to get back. Every time you arrived on a new planet, your first job would be to search around for a cartouche! Even if the symbols just looked different but meant the same thing (going back to Keith’s 4 and IV example) you’d still need to translate them - but SG-1 have been seen to arrive at a planet, not like the look of it and instantly dial out again, which suggests to me that they know the six symbols for Earth and have been taught the Winnie before they left on this particular mission (as at the end of the Season 1 we’ve not yet been shown a briefing session which proves or disproves this).

But still the contradiction from There but for the Grace of God stands - why would Earth’s Stargate have P3R233’s Winnie on it?!

First. I thought you wrote somewhere that Earth's Winnie was not on the other gates & DHD's and I assumed that all Winnies are unique to their own gates & DHDs. (I haven't taped an episode then checked the symbols, so this could be a flaw in my theory.)

Second. We don't actually see the ship's gate being used, we just hear about it, so I don't know what symbols were actually pushed. It is said that it was close enough to Earth to use those coordinates. (Don't remember the exact quote, sorry)

However, the Winnie is assumed to refer to Earth because at the time they only knew of the one Stargate. Since the second (actually the first, but the second known) had a different Winnie, then it seems that maybe each Winnie could be each Gate's 'serial number.' Å could mean gate 74, while the Antarctica Gate could be Gate 47.

Another possibility for the 6 symbols: The first three are the origin point (planetary coordinates); The second three are destination coordinates. This could explain how they know the way back whenever they arrive. To go somewhere dial 1-2-3-4-5-6-W, to get back dial 4-5-6-1-2-3-W. Unfortunately, Solitudes and Prisoners (2nd Season) would seem to contradict this idea.

Aw, nuts! I've found it - proof that the writers have grakked it up and are contradicting themselves.

As I've said before, in Solitudes and the early part of Grace, we get an overhead shot of the DHD as a member of SG-1 types in the first six coordinates for Earth. They're identical. But Children of the Gods tells a different tale:

When Daniel leaves Abydos with SG-1, despite the fact that he's torn up by the abduction of his wife and brother-in-law, and also upset by having to leave his friends, he walks up to the DHD and punches in the symbols for Earth without stopping to think about it. He knows what the symbols are. But at the end of the episode when he has to dial out from Chulak, he can't do it without looking through his notebook for the symbols, so they can't be the same as the symbols he dialled from Abydos. The case rests, m'lud.

Keith - yes I did say that Earth's Winnie isn't on any other Gate - I just wondered whether the writers had remembered!

I dunno about your last paragraph. The movie very specifically stated that all six of the symbols are destination coordinates. The only origin coordinate is the Winnie. Your idea's a much better one, though - shame the writers didn't think of it!

But remember, in the movie they were only guessing that they were destination coordinates. This was alien technology and they really weren't certain how it all worked.

As for the writers messing up, well, they are probably more concerned with telling a good story, than worrying about what symbols some actor hits on a prop. It would have been nice if someone had set out some guidelines for how the Gate might work, but TPTB probably didn't consider it a high priority.

Oooooh. Another bit of info for the discussion. I was at the Stargate SG-1 website and came across a mention that the Asgardian homeworld is so far away from Earth that the team would have to dial 8 symbols to connect to it's Stargate. Hmmmm...

That I'd like to see - are they gonna attach a new chevron to the Stargate? ;)

Now there's a thought which could set off another topic all of its own - if you dial the coordinates in the wrong order and so the wrong chevrons clunk at the wrong time, do you end up at a different destination to what you intended?

Like I said at the beginning of this page, I do love this series and I don't let inconsistencies get me down or spoil the show for me. I find that I can now watch programmes on two levels simultaneously - on the pure entertainment level, and on the nitpicker level. It's afterwards that I put my nitpicker's hat firmly on my head, and I do think it would have been nice for TPTB to have written some kind of 'Stargate bible' so that they don't contradict themselves.

The way the comment was written it sounded like a possibility, not a done deal. So who knows what they will do with that.

I should think you would end up at the wrong coordinates. If you were trying to find a place on the map, Longitude 47 by Latitude 74 is a different place than Longitude 74 by Latitude 47.

BTW pain in the *ahem* that the website is, they do have the symbol coordinates for some of the planets like Abydos & Chulak.

For anyone else reading this (and I begin to wonder if Keith and I are the only ones!), the website Keith referred to is www.stargatesg-1.com, a horrendously slow site because it's so full of stuff, and very difficult to navigate through because it has so many topics. But I registered anyway, and found what I think is a true representation of the Earth Stargate. I've been looking for one for ages! - even the videos have the wrong pictures on the Gate!

Callie: They don't need a new chevron for an 8 symbol address, but it requires about a 100 times more power, so they can't do it without a power booster.

An apparently contradictory thing that I thought had been established. In The Tok'Ra, Part II, a character (I'll keep it vague to try & avoid spoiling the story) on another world sees that someone is activating the gate. They then start quickly dialing in an address to prevent the off-worlders from activating the gate. I thought they had established that once a gate started to be activated, that was it, you could not dial out, but that's what they do in this episode.

In The Fifth Race a DHD locks up during the dial out, but an offworld gate dials up and opens the gate on that world even though, I would assume, the the gate should be ready for the remainder of the address. (However, the people on the world with the locked-up DHD cannot travel through the gate. Indicating that trips are one-way only.)

I thought they had established that once a gate started to be activated, that was it, you could not dial out

Yep, yep, yep - more proof that the writers are making it up as they go along and not referring to an SG-1 Bible. There But For The Grace of God definitely states that once your Gate is accessed from offworld, you can't dial out.

Indicating that trips are one-way only

and proving that Hammond was being unnecessarily over-cautious in Solitudes when he closed the iris because a probe was under attack on another planet while the Gate was open from the Earth end.

Ever notice that the spinning gate sounds like a squeeling pig? Well, we already have Winnie the POO, so maybe that's Piglet?

The Stargate SG-1 website states that the glyphs are based on 38 of the constellations, and looking at the shapes, I could see the oulines of stars (the Scorpio fishhook, Orion), but it does cause problems.
1. The Constellations are different sizes. Orion is one of the largest. Others are much smaller. (I'll have to double check my reference books about which.)
2. The shape of Constellations change and some Constellations didn't exist in the time of the Egyptions. (Libra was originally the claws of Scorpio. It only became it's own constellation during the Roman Empire.)
3. The Constellations are star patterns that can only be seen from Earth. Why would the Ancient Builders create a glyph system that only makes sense from Earth?

And even if they did decide to base their Gates on the night sky as seen from Earth, why then put the Cartouche on Abydos which is on the other side of the galaxy to Earth and so must have a very different-looking night sky?!

Oops, my bad - Abydos is on the other side of the "known universe" - nowhere as near as the other side of the galaxy!

Hmmm - that raises a thought: presumably if all the locations of known Stargates are mapped in the control room of SGC, Earth's perception of "the known universe" got a whole lot bigger since the Stargate went operational.

Except that dialogue in season 2's The Fifth Race indicates that you need eight symbols to get to a Stargate outside of our galaxy, so the 'known universe' statement was obviously an error.

How would you actually establish that you were on a planet on the other side of the universe, anyway? The only clue would be the stars in the night sky and that would be a guess anyway.

Now I’m peeved. Keith mentioned above (and I’ve since seen the episode) that at the end of The Serpent’s Lair, Daniel said he’d realised that he could dial out from the Stargate on Klorel’s ship because the ship was close enough to Earth to use Earth as the point of origin. But this would appear to contradict previous suggestions that it wouldn’t matter where in the universe the ship had been at the time, as long as Daniel remembered the six coordinates for the Beta/Alpha site. He could have been on Abydos, Chulak, Planet Frank, anywhere, and the six coordinates would still dial to the same place. Only the Winnie would be different, so being close to Earth at the time was totally irrelevant. SGC’s Winnie shouldn’t be on Klorel’s Stargate, so Daniel should have had to dial a different Winnie to what he would have dialled if he’d been on Earth.

I’ve got no problem with Daniel knowing what that Winnie was, because he’d already sent the probe back to Earth in the previous episode, so he’d already worked it out. The problem I have is with the careless scripting. Using Earth as the point of origin was never in the equation, as far as I’m concerned. When you’re dialling from any other place than Earth, whether it be on a planet or a starship, there should be only two things you need: the six coordinates of the place you’re headed to, and the Winnie of the Stargate you’re dialling out from. Where you are at the time ought to be irrelevant - provided that the same six coordinates will go to the same place from anywhere in the Stargate network. If they don’t, then it’s a mystery to me how the SG teams ever get home from another planet.

For me, there wouldn’t have been a glitch if only Daniel had said something like, “I realised I was close enough to a permanent Stargate location to dial out.” This would have also explained why the team couldn’t get the Gate to work once Klorel’s ship had moved away from the Goa’uld homeworld – perhaps a Gate has to be in a particular place in order to work. Perhaps the builders of the Stargate network made it so that the wormholes would only go to and from certain places in the universe, i.e. the locations of the Gates. So Klorel’s Gate effectively borrowed Earth’s wormhole (yes, I imagine that the wormholes don’t hang around all the time waiting to be accessed, but I’m trying to work on the side of the writers for once!).

I don’t reckon that there’s ever going to be an answer to the problem of coordinates and Winnies – I think it has become clear that the writers either haven’t written a Bible or don’t often refer to it and can’t decide from one episode to another whether a Winnie is unique to a single Stargate or whether all Gates have everyone else’s Winnie on them (which would be pretty ridiculous), and whether the same six coordinates will dial to the same place from every Gate in the network. I guess this is equivalent to the Star Trek: TNG problem of not being able to beam people through shields unless it’s convenient to the plot, or the UT translating every Klingon word into English until it’s necessary for the viewers to hear the original Klingon. As I keep reiterating, these glitches don’t spoil the show for me, and I do acknowledge that the writers have got better things to do, like write a good story, but neverthless I do find such glitches irritating, particularly when they appear to be down to carelessness on the part of the writers.

[Y’know, this started out as a couple of short paragraphs about Earth as the point of origin but, as so often happens, the more I wrote, the more I thought of. I’m so sorry to ramble on at such great length – but then, hey, you’re reading it and you don’t have to!]

Callie: All the information we have about how the Stargates work comes from Earth scientists who are making educated guesses.

(What do you mean it's just a show? No, those are real scientists. ;-)

Therefore as they learn more about how the Stargate works they revise their theories and it just seems like they're making things up as they go along.

(Writers? Imagine that. Oh, do I have to put my straight jacket on now, doctor?)

Actually permanent Stargate location would pose a big nit as the Earth goes around the sun, and the sun orbits the galactic center, and our galaxy is also moving through the universe.

I think I wrote somewhere up above that maybe the Winnie actually contains information on how fast it's moving in space and in what direction(s), relative to the movements of the Stargate it's connecting to so it can create a stable wormhole (and might explain the 38 minute time limit). Therefore the Winnie to the Stargate on Apophis' ship, because it is near Earth, possibly in geostationary orbit, would send out the same speed & direction information that Earth's Stargate sends out.

(How's that for pseudoscientific reasoning?)

Actually permanent Stargate location would pose a big nit ...

Yes it would. Bad phrasing on my part - sorry. I know what I meant, just didn't say it right! I still can't work out the right wording, but I meant a Gate that's permanently fixed in the ground in one spot, regardless of the fact that that spot's moving round the planet which is moving round the star etc etc!

I would love to see a future episode explain that a Winnie works the way Keith thinks it does, cos it must be there for a reason other than just to act like the 'send' button, especially as all planets except Earth have got a DHD which has a separate 'send' button anyway.

What do you mean it's just a show? No, those are real scientists. ;-)
Writers? Imagine that. Oh, do I have to put my straight jacket on now, doctor?

Put down the pencil. Put down the pencil, Mr. Russell, er, I mean Mr Morgan.

No, No! I have to write them down because they're real!

I made a mistake in my April 3 comments. While the Romans did turn the claws of Scorpio into Libra, it was the Greeks who earlier turned 'Libra' into the claws. (I use the term Libra for convenience because the constellation had different names in different parts of the world.)

Oh, Callie. Better have some aspirin handy when you finally get to see 1969. The writers really pulled some stunts with how Stargates work.

Besides activating the coordinates, what the heck does the computer have to do with how the Gate operates?
Up till the episode 1969 the only thing that we've known the computer did was dial in the coordinates. Now we find out that the computer is conducting some jiggery-pokery of it's own that can affect the wormhole.

Dialogue in A Matter Of Time indicated that when the other end of a wormhole is disrupted it jumps to another Gate, like what happened in Solitudes when Carter & O'Neal were sent to the Gate in Antarctica. However, in 1969 the solar flare disrupted the wormhole and apparently caused it to feed back on itself. An additional problem is that numerous episodes have indicated that, for matter, the Gate is one way only, but here the Gate is both entrance & exit.

Additionally, Daniel looked at the images of the Abydos Gate being sent back by the probe and said that the symbols were different to Earth’s Gate. That was why he insisted on going with O’Neill’s team – so that he could translate the symbols and find the right ones to get home. But you just can’t have it both ways!

I just re-watched the movie. When they first get to Abydos, O'Neil tells Daniel to start working on the code for the Stargate.

First of all, it's rather arrogant for Daniel to say he can work the gate from the other end. He has no idea what the constellations look like in a galaxy "on the other side of the known universe".

Second, how can Daniel work the gate until he sees the night sky?

Third, how the H*LL does he know where Earth is in Abydos' sky?

Daniel's theory was, I believe, that there would a cover stone like they found on Earth that would have the coordinates for Earth on it like the one they found on Earth having the Abydos coordinates on it.

But in light of the TV show, it is a faulty theory.

That was his plan, according to the movie. But how is he going to figure out the constellations? Different people see different things in the sky. The Native American constellations are quite different from the traditional Greco-Roman ones. And my second and third points still apply.

Maybe this is a •••••• question, but I seem to recall that the constellations look extremely different from the Southern Hemisphere. If that's the case, are all the constellations on the stargate found in the Antartic different that the "usual" stargate?

They certainly should be, fred, but it seems to have been established that the symbols on most of the Stargates are identical to each other. Not that this makes sense, of course, unless the Gate Builders happened to have been based in the northern hemisphere of Earth!

Since the constellations they used are zodiacal & off-zodiacal, the Ancient Builders don't need to be based in the Northern Hemisphere, Callie.

Fred, the constellations in question would be upside-down, but not necesarily grouped differently. I believe that an Aztec or Mayan spider constellation uses the same seven stars that we use for Orion. (Betelguese, Bellatrix, Rigel, Saiph & the 3 belt stars.)

Unless you mean that Southern sky constellations are different than Northern sky constellations because different stars are seen.

Actually this constellation discussion should probably be in the Stargate Symbols board.

The Eighth Chevron:

How's that work? The first six chevrons are meant to pinpoint a three-dimensional point in space - up/down, side/side, forward/back, and then the seventh chevron indicates the start point of the wormhole. So when the Gate dials eight numbers during The Fifth Race, what is that penultimate chevron doing? Does it say to the wormhole, "Then jump the 3D point you've just dialled sixty gadzillion light years in that direction", or what?


SPOILER FOR SEASON 4 - DON'T READ IF YOU DON'T LIKE LEARNING PLOT POINTS AHEAD OF TIME!!

I've read that during season 4, they learn that the Stargate found at Giza did have a DHD, and someone's already got it ...

Also, this is just semi-related, but there are 38 symbols. Assuming one is the Winnie, this is a total of 37. They use an alphanumeric system to refer to locations (like P58-7G4, to make one up), and I'm guessing each one refers to one symbol. But alphanumeric only has 36 symbols (26 letters, 10 numbers), so what do they use for the 37th?




Continued on the next board ...