It seems to me that the SG-1 team dial home too fast. On several occasions in series 1, Sam, Daniel or Teal'c (why doesn't Jack ever dial himself? The joys of command??) usually punch in the first couple of 'digits' slowly, but then thump in the last five very fast. Occasionally we hear the grinding sound that the Earth Gate makes when it spins, but unless offworld Gates spin a whole lot faster than the Earth one, I don't reckon that they could possibly spin fast enough to engage the chevrons. Also, even if we don't see the wormhole open, we usually hear the 'whoosh' it makes and, again, it seems to do so very quickly after the 7th symbol has been punched in.

Now I know that on Earth, SGC had to 'MacGuyver' a computer system to engage the Gate, and in There But for the Grace of God they were working on a way of making the chevrons engage faster. But in Solitudes there was no sign of Stargate2 spinning when Sam was trying to dial home. So, do offworld Gates spin? And if not, how do they engage the chevrons?

This query works in reverse too - watching Children of the Gods again recently I noticed that the Abydos Gate definitely didn't spin when Apophis was incoming - the chevrons clunked but the Gate didn't move. Yet we've seen Earth's Gate spinning when people are incoming.

I suppose it could be that there's a wheel within the wheel - maybe on offworld Gates this theoretical inner wheel spins to engage the chevrons when people are dialling in but because Earth doesn't have a DHD the whole thing has to spin. That's clutching at straws rather, because offworld Gates should still spin when dialling out.

Mabey the spin is a problem we (humans on Earth) created when we cut open the Stargate to insert the Iris. Who knows what all we mucked up when we did that.

Except it spun in the movie and in the TV pilot before the iris was inserted.

Oh darn it. And I was hoping that we could just chalk up all the Gate nits to this. Oh well.

Many of our newer TV sets are almost useless if you break or lose the remote control.
Considering how many times the DHD has been lost or broken, the ancients built in a back-up functionality. You can dial out in two ways: either remotely (electronically)with the DHD, or by physically tuning the dial built into the gate itself, locking in the chevrons, and then applying power. Even with the computer and motors at SGC, this is a slower and less desirable method, but -hey- it's all we have. This is why only "our" stargate is seen to spin.

Tom - I love this idea! It's a shame that TPTB haven't had the same idea and explained it during a show.

TPTP at the studio in the "real world" just see SG1 as a piece of fluff that makes them money. TPTB at the SGC explained this (to whoever needed to know) between the scenes of the movie and/or the first ep. Neither has any reason to bring it up now.

BTW the spinning during an incoming wormhole can be explained as the gate resetting itself -- usually the SGC leaves the chevrons locked in place to speed sending supplies and re-inforcements during an away mission.

Tom - you have evidence of that last statement? I'm not convinced - there have been episodes where SGC wants to open the Gate to the same location twice running but still has to dial the second time. I think that once the Gate has opened and shut again, it re-sets to its own version of 'stand-by'. To dial to the same place again, the boys in the control room may well just hit 're-dial' but the Gate still has to spin and lock the chevrons in. It's like hitting 're-dial' on a telephone and getting a pretty tune as the phone dials the numbers for you.

You may be right, but it would make more sense my way, since the gate does spin on incoming wormholes.

WARNING SPOILER ALERT FOR SEASON 4!!!! DO NOT READ FURTHER! YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED!!!!


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Did the second gate in WaterGate spin?

Ok, here is my explaination for why the Earth gate spins. Lets say that Earth was one of the first places visited by the race that built the StarGates. They build the Earth gate, then they improve the design. Earth has a version 1.0 StarGate and most other worlds have a version 2.0 StarGate.

Why does the earth gate spin??

BILC!

It seems to have been established that all other Gates don’t visibly spin, therefore there must be some internal mechanism that causes the chevrons to engage. So how come SG-1 have been able to haul a Gate round manually on at least three occasions (Torment of Tantalus, Prisoners and Nemesis) when they’ve been dialing out without a DHD? I would have thought that wrenching around part of the Gate that doesn’t normally move wouldn’t do it any good at all. And more to the point, why should that part move when it doesn’t normally?

Brad Wright and Michael Greenberg were asked at Gatecon 2002 why the SGC Stargate spins when offworld Gates don’t. The simple answer was that the Gate on the SGC set can spin whereas the one they take on location can’t.

Sadly they didn’t come up with an in-context explanation!

Once, long ago, a mysterious race of alien repairmen passed through our galaxy, servicing StarGate after StarGate after StarGate. Unfortunatly, they only noticed the active gates, so Earth's gates were not improved. These aliens noticed that the spinning of an engaging gate eventually wears down the StarGate mechanism, eventually resulting in a severe shaking, which causes nasty tremors when a gate is activated. These repairmen cut into the StarGates, oiled them, then modified them so that the gate no longer has to spin when activating. As a safety measure, they left an emergency option whereby a user could manually spin the gate to engage the chevrons. SGC noticed the wear on the parts when they installed the iris and fixed it, resulting in no more tremors when the gate activates. The aliens then left our galaxy, searching for more StarGates to repair, but they left behind certain artifacts that reveal their mysterious presence. A bill for 247 Billion GoldCredits and a 1-800 emergency service number that only works between the hours of 2pm and 3pm. The Gou'ald live in mortal terror of the day they return, for Yu accidently spilled coffee on the DHD on P3X-597, invalidating the warranty and incurring a heafty fine.

*applause*

Good one, Merat!

I don't see a problem. The Gates are designed with an automatic dialling system hooked up to the DHD which doesn't require the ring to spin. However, it also includes a backup manual dialling system in case the DHD is disconnected. In order to work this you have to use the Gate like a combination lock and spin it to lock the chevrons on the right constellations (as seen in several episodes). Now when the US built its computerised operating system to mimic the DHD, it didn't understand the Gate's operating protocols exactly and so it spins all the time, even on incoming wormholes. The Aschen did something similar and thus their Gate also spins. All the others are connected to DHDs and don't need to spin, so they don't.

Where's the problem?

Chill, Thande, there’s no problem here! Sometimes we just ask questions to find out the answers, not to nitpick them. This particular topic is just to explain to ourselves why some Gates spin and others don’t.

I know. I just felt like being annoying.

Here's a question R.E. the Gates: does the Gate really have just seven chevrons or does it have nine, with the other two being hidden under the ramp? I ask because of the reference to the 'eighth symbol' in The Fifth Race etc. Was this locked on another chevron or was one of the previous ones reused?

I think the most likely possibility is that there are an extra two chevrons, but this begs the questions of "How come nobody wondered what they were for before then?" and, for that matter, "What's the ninth chevron for?" My money's on entry to parallel universe or the higher plane on which the Ancients now live (seeing as they built the Stargates, and perhaps because Daniel visualised his ascension as stepping through a Stargate filled with bright white light).

There are nine - the best episodes to see them in are Season 4’s Exodus when the Gate floats out of the airlock of the mothership, and Season 7’s Death Knell when we get a cool overhead shot of a Gate lying down.

If the 8th chevron adds distance as it did in The Fifth Race, I too am wondering what the ninth does. It could well be explained in the upcoming episodes about the Lost City, and I’m wondering if the 9th sends you to a different dimension? Ooo-weeeee-oooh!

Could be...

BTW, I don't know if this really belongs here, but some rabid SG-1 fan has made a Stargate Dialler simulation and is hosting it for download. It's pretty fun, and has a few elements that seem to take it almost to "game" territory. (Attacks by Apophis and Sokar, Reetou invasions, visits from the Tok'ra, etc etc etc)

http://perso.wanadoo.fr/stprod/gb_index.html

The DHD simulator is pretty fun too.

One offworld Stargate spins: the one from "Icon". However, I think that gate lacked a DHD, so my theory above would still hold.

It has 9.
At least the "second" Gate taken from Antarctica
in the alternate timeline from Moebius has them.

So, there is a little problem there...

Those 2 chevrons are built into the socket the gate sits in. Do those gates have only 7?

Maybe they're just concealed in the socket.

well maybe they all decided to cut the other 2 from the gate but leaving the actual chevron there so that if ever they had enough power to activate the chevron they could reconnect it maybe the ascendants wanted to come back and those that built the gates didn't

No the Stargate doesn't spin in Watergate giving some evidence towards the idea that a DHD has a fancier way of dialing a Stargate.

Btw i know Stargate Infinities is non cannon but they did have off world gates spinning becaus eit was an animated series so they had no problems with props.

The Destiny Gate spins.