Everything about Stargate Device totally explained
Stargate is one name for a class of
fictional devices which allow almost instantaneous travel between places.
This article deals with the
stargates that feature as a central part of stories set in the
Stargate science fiction universe. They are uniformly depicted as large, usually vertical metal rings. In the stories, their function is to transport people or objects across the vast distances of space by creating a stable artificial
wormhole connected to another stargate.
They first appeared in the 1994 film
Stargate, directed by
Roland Emmerich, and then were
redesigned to subsequently appear in the
television series Stargate SG-1 and its
spinoff Stargate Atlantis (as well as the
animated series Stargate Infinity). The stargate is the central
plot generator of these productions, allowing for stories focused on a small team of
protagonists exploring
other planets and meeting
other races on foot, rather than the more prevalent, grandiose "
space opera" of interstellar
starships seen elsewhere in science fiction. Later in the series stargates are also used for more casual transportation to other worlds and other bases of
the SGC. Stargates are also often used as shortcuts for small spacecraft to fly through such as the
Goa'uld Needle Threader,
Lantean Puddle Jumper, and
Wraith Darts.
In the fictional
Goa'uld language, the stargate is referred to as the
Chappa'ai (Cha-Pa-Eye). This word for the gate is also used by many of the inhabitants of the Stargate worlds, no doubt brought to them by the
Goa'uld System Lords. Stargates are referred to by the Ancients as "Astreaporta". The Gates have also been referred to as the "Ring of the Gods", "Circle of Standing Water", "Doorway", "Stone Ring", "Gateway", "Annulus", "Ring of the Ancestors", "Circle of Darkness", and "Portal" (by characters of less advanced societies that fear or revere the device), and even (in a deliberate self-parody) as "The Old Orifice."
Stargates are marked out by nine
chevrons spaced equally around their circumference (See the
schematic diagram below), and 39 symbols displayed on an inner ring on gates in the Milky Way Galaxy, or 36 on those in the Pegasus galaxy (it is unknown how many symbols feature on gates in the Ori home galaxy or on those in Ida) . They are typically 22
ft (6.7
m) in diameter, 64,000 lb (29,000 kg) in weight, and held to be made of the fictional heavy mineral "
Naqahdah". The gates are almost always seen standing vertically, though they're operable in any orientation.
In the mythology of the
canon, their creators were an alien race known as the
Ancients,
Conceptual origin
The basic notion of the stargate concept is to have at least two mechanical devices (stargates) in two distant positions, such that, when active, the rings of each become similar to a physical, singular gateway or
door-frame between the two locations. The concept was developed by the writers of the feature film
Stargate,
Dean Devlin and
Roland Emmerich. Similar devices had been seen in previous fiction, but their complete conception as seen in the film was quite original — though there has been contention as to whether they plagiarized the idea from a previous script submission.
The idea of a "
portal" for travelers has been seen often throughout the history of both
fantasy and
science fiction, often taking a similar form, a device or magical object shaped as a
regular or irregular
closed geometric form filled with a
water-like,
rippling puddle that represents the boundary point between the two locations. The stargate picks up heavily on this conception, emphasizing the "watery puddle" for the sake of an
alien mystique.
Much of the inspiration for the functioning of the device is drawn heavily from
theoretical astrophysics, particularly that of
black holes and
wormholes, a staple of science fiction, often used to create "shortcuts" through space. Although these may exist in reality, it isn't widely held to be true that any such phenomenon could safely transport a human being, as such wormholes would most likely be created by excessive
gravity (for example from a black hole) which would destroy any potential traveler. In
Stargate however, this is circumverted by transporting a traveller through as an energy signature, and reintegrating him at the other end.
Surrounding plot
The
Stargate film begins in 1928, when the titular alien device is first discovered and unearthed at
Giza, with a young
Catherine Langford watching as her father, the archaeologist who found it, directs its unearthing. It quickly skips to the "present day" (1994), in which an unsuccessful archaeologist
Daniel Jackson is giving a lecture about his outlandish theories that the
Great Pyramid of Giza wasn't built by the
pharaoh Khufu. After he's laughed away, an aged Catherine Langford meets with him, and recruits his
egyptological talent, taking him to a top-secret military base at Creek Mountain, where he's instructed to decipher the unique
Egyptian hieroglyphs present on a set of cover-stones. He realizes that the indecipherable glyphs are in fact not words but images of
constellations, such that by identifying 6 of them a position in space can be extrapolated. He is then shown the stargate itself, uses his new understanding to identify the 7
th symbol (the point of origin allowing a route to be extrapolated), and the gate is opened for the first time.
Because thousands of combinations had been previously tried and had failed, it was believed at the time that only two stargates existed, connecting Earth and the planet
Abydos, which was visited in the film. At the beginning of the
Stargate SG-1 series, however, a large set of additional valid coordinates were discovered engraved in ruins on Abydos. Because the coordinates pick out stars, and because time leads to
stellar drift, other addresses were impossible to dial until
Samantha Carter reworked the dialing system on Earth to account for this movement. After this, a massive network of possible connections suddenly became available. Even more addresses were later uncovered by Colonel Jack O'Neill from a repository of Ancient knowledge.
The alien race encountered in the original movie is later developed in
SG-1 as the
Goa'uld, the dominant evil power in the Milky Way. The leaders of this race, the
System Lords, pose as gods and use the stargates to transport slaves between worlds. This has resulted in a large number of planets throughout the galaxy sporting human life, often in civilizations more primitive than Earth. The majority of these civilizations, descended from former
Goa'uld slaves, treat the stargate as a religious relic, often as a source of long-forgotten fear and evil.
For most of the run of
Stargate SG-1, Earth was under constant threat from the
Goa'uld, and is no match for their superior technology. In the face of this threat, the US Air Force established a top-secret base,
the SGC (Stargate Command), as a frontline defence. Multiple teams are formed and sent on missions through the stargate, their primary objective being exploration, and through it the discovery of intelligence, technology and allies to help the fight against the
Goa'uld. The primary team is called
SG-1, and the series follows their adventures.
For a long time it was thought that the Goa'uld were the builders of the Stargate Network, but it was later discovered that they'd merely made use of the relics left behind by a different and extinct race, the Ancients. At the climax of
SG-1's 6th season, Daniel Jackson discovers that the Earth myth of
Atlantis is in fact founded upon the Lost City of the Ancients, and Season 7 is spent trying to locate it. At the beginning of the show
Stargate Atlantis, which coincides with the beginning of
SG-1's 8th season, the city is found in the Pegasus Galaxy, and 8 chevrons are dialed to send an expedition there on what could be a one-way trip. It is there that they discover a new network of stargates, and are plagued by the nemesis of the Ancients, the
Wraith. During the events of
The Ark of Truth it's revealed that the pre-ascended Ancient known as Amelius originated the concept of the Stargate and wormhole travel.
Internal names
The Ancients placed stargates on thousands of worlds across the galaxy, but the gate network was open to use by all, and continues to be a convenient form of travel for many races. Some races, such as the
Goa'uld, grew their ways of life around the gates, which became integral to the functioning of their culture.
In turn, most races developed their own names for the stargates. The Ancients called them
Astria Porta, a
Latin-esque word for "Star Gate"; in Latin, it would really be either
porta stellae or
porta in astria. The
Goa'uld and
Jaffa call them the
Chaapa'ai. The English word "stargate" is a direct
calque of
Chaapa'ai, and
Chaapa'ai is itself a calque of
Astria Porta. The Wraith call the Stargate the Portal.
Although stargates are present on many planets, most of the races which inhabit them are relatively primitive, and view the gates as no more than divine, sacred or terrifying relics, as evidenced by such names as "Ring of the Gods" and "Circle of Darkness". In the Pegasus galaxy, villagers know them as
Rings of the Ancestors and variations thereof. They are also commonly referred to as "the ring", "the
annulus", or simply "the gate".
Operation
The film
Stargate rushed very quickly over how a stargate actually works and is operated, but the subsequent television shows go into this area in a great amount of detail. In
SG-1, it's explained that a stargate's destination isn't fixed, but is singled out by a process known as "dialing". Once a destination is selected by the traveler, the stargate generates a
wormhole between itself and a complementary device at the destination, by being supplied with a threshold amount of raw energy. Objects in transit between gates are broken down into their individual
elemental components, and then into energy as they pass through the event horizon, and then travel through a wormhole before being reconstructed on the other side. As each symbol is dialed, the chevron is said to "engage" or "encode" and usually responds by lighting up or moving. When the final symbol of an address is dialed, that chevron is said to "lock" and the wormhole opens (this terminology is arbitrary and often interchangeable, but preferred by the recurring character
Walter Harriman). It is assumed by the show that this is enough to identify the position of any stargate within a galaxy. The symbols dialed are often referred to as "coordinates", and are written as an ordered string; for example, this is the address used in the show for the planet
Abydos: (corresponding to the constellations of
Taurus,
Serpens Caput,
Capricornus,
Monoceros,
Sagittarius and
Orion). As explained by Dr. Daniel Jackson in the movie, the stargate requires seven correct symbols to connect to another stargate. As shown in the picture opposite, the first six symbols act as co-ordinates, creating three intersecting lines, the destination. The stargate uses the seventh symbol as the point of origin allowing one to plot a straight line course to the destination.
Eight-symbol addresses were introduced in, opening up new plot lines by connecting stargates to different galaxies. The additional symbol acts as a type of "area code". Such connections, in comparison to seven symbol codes, required substantially more energy to complete a functional wormhole — much more than any standard dialing method can provide. Opening an intergalactic wormhole has been shown to require large amounts of power compared to a regular wormhole. This has been generated in a variety of ways in different episodes, although the main way is using a
Zero Point Module (ZPM).
The show has never featured a nine-symbol address, so the purpose of the ninth chevron is unknown. However,
Robert C. Cooper has stated that the purpose of the ninth chevron will be revealed in the upcoming series,
Stargate Universe. One of the purposes proposed for the new series is that the ninth chevron connects it with an Ancient ship that seeds stargates throughout the galaxy, and was abandoned after the ancients ascended. It is unknown if this will be the final idea. The extra chevrons are so rarely used that stargates are often seen with those two chevrons embedded within the stone platforms that hold many of the gates upright (see the image at the top of this article). This has often led to the misconception that a stargate only has seven chevrons.
Dial-Home Device
There are a handful of methods used in the shows to dial a stargate, and the most common is with the use of a Dial-Home Device. Almost always referred to as the "DHD" for short, it's depicted as a pedestal-shaped device with a round inclined control panel on top, consisting of two concentric circles of "keys", and a translucent red (Milky Way) or blue (Pegasus) hemisphere in the center; the keys represent the symbols on the rim of the stargate. By pressing these keys a traveler builds an address. The central hemisphere serves as an "
Enter" key to activate the stargate once a destination has been dialed. In the Milky Way, the Dial-Home-Device contains 38 of the 39 symbols on the stargate, meaning there's always a missing glyph on each DHD. This missing glyph however isn't the point of origin for the planet. It has been confirmed that the missing glyph on numerous DHDs differs based on how each stargate is positioned on different planets. The glyph that's hidden under the pedestal of the stargate, unseen along with the two chevrons, can't be dialed by the DHD. This states that only certain addresses can be reached in certain positions in the galaxy. The only way to intervene and reach all destinations in the Milky Way is to manually dial the gate, or use an alternative dialer, such as the one at the SGC.
The show makes it clear that every stargate originally had its own DHD, located directly in front of the gate and facing it. Any matter which comes into contact with the vortex is destroyed, as is dramatically demonstrated by a pair of smoking shoes in the episode "Prisoners".
Power for the wormhole can be drawn from both the point of origin (the dialing stargate's power source) and the destination. One of the most basic and repeated axioms of Wormhole Physics, the (fictionalized) field of study pioneered by the character
Samantha Carter, is that unless an extraordinary amount of energy is being generated at either end, a wormhole can only be maintained for 38 minutes at a time.
The actual portal of a stargate appears inside the inner ring when an address is correctly dialed. This has the appearance of a vertical
puddle of water which represents the "event horizon" in the show. In non-fictional parlance, an
event horizon is the perimeter around a
black hole or wormhole through which once one had crossed, the gravitational pull of the singularity would be too strong to overcome. The wavering undulations characteristic of water are supposed to represent the "fluctuations in the event horizon". (though during the episode and in the first episode a man partially puts his hand through the event horizon of the destination gate and pulls it back with no apparent issues However, as matter is only transmitted through a stargate once the whole object has passed the event horizon (except in the same "
A Hundred Days" episode where Teal'c dangled from a rope secured to a ceiling on the other side) the stargate wouldn't have started to try to deconstruct him, instead waiting until he was entirely inside). Additionally, the outgoing gate is invariably entered from the same side as the unstable vortex present during stabilization of the wormhole.
Passage through a stargate is usually accompanied by a visual effect of shooting through a tunnel in space, though it's just meant to be a visual aid. The representation of the transit is sometimes almost instantaneous, and other times it appears to last up to 20 seconds. This is thought to be just a representation of how it might look. Since they're disintegrated, it would be impossible to truly see the inside of a wormhole or travel through it.
The actual time the travel takes on average 6 seconds. Novice travelers often emerge from the gate trembling as if they've been on a "
roller coaster ride", and although it's often omitted later in the series, they also experience the sensation of being "frozen stiff." This has since been explained as problems with the man-made interface on the Earth gate, and has mostly been fixed over the years of stargate operations.
The visual effect resembles a spinning wispy tube, and was in Season 9 (and the first season of
Atlantis) revamped to resemble a misty tunnel lit by shooting rings of light (almost looking like other stargates in the network). The Atlantis wormhole is significantly greener in colour whilst the new-style Milky Way wormhole was blue. The
film depicted the first moment
Daniel Jackson entered the pool, walking through and remaining in apparently physical form as if the pool was in fact simply a covering for the black of the wormhole beyond. An object that hasn't completely passed through the event horizon may be pulled out again, Furthermore, each time the gate is activated the buffer is wiped clean to receive new information. If the control crystal of a connected DHD is removed then an event horizon will form without establishing a wormhole, allowing any memory stored in the stargate to be reintegrated.
Several facets of the stargate are necessary for it to function as a useful personnel transporter. Matter emerging from a stargate retains any
kinetic energy it had while entering, so a person running into one stargate will hit the ground running upon emerging from another. (Weapon projectiles also maintain their trajectory upon transit- a bullet fired through a stargate is just as dangerous as it would be otherwise) Also, the transmitting stargate doesn't allow the air molecules of the local atmosphere to pass through. The show explains that the stargate differentiates between objects
attempting to pass through the event horizon and things that would naturally exert pressure, such as water, air, lava, etc.
Gate obstruction
A wormhole is prevented from forming if a significant obstruction is present inside the stargate's ring. Consequently, it's fairly common for stargates to be semi- or permanently sealed by burying them, invalidating that stargate address.
Another means of controlling travel through a stargate is by placing a barrier a minuscule distance (less than three μm, in the case of the Earth's iris) from the event horizon, Power can be fed directly into the
Naqahdah that comprises the gate; power harnessed from lightning strikes has been shown to be sufficient. The same is true if the outgoing gate loses power while transmitting; if the incoming gate has a DHD, it'll take over powering the gate until reintegration is complete.
Secondary gates
Some planets are known to possess "secondary" or "backup" stargates. The second stargate is normally inactive, with the primary stargate (defined by the presence of a functioning
Dial-Home Device) receiving all incoming wormholes. The stargate originally used in the SGC, found in Giza, was brought to Earth, by Ra, from another planet. Since stargate addresses correspond to planetary locations and not individual gates, the new gate inherited the same address as the one in Antarctica. Because the Antarctic gate had been abandoned millennia earlier by the Ancients and no longer had a connected DHD, Ra's gate became the primary.
In the episode "
Nemesis", SG1 transports the stargate from Stargate Command onto a crashing spaceship in order to escape. The gate is replaced at the SGC by the Antarctic gate. The original gate survives the crash, however, and the Russian military takes possession of it to conduct their own off-world travel. Because they were also in possession of a DHD (not found in the original Giza dig but recovered from Germany after WWII), which they activated and deactivated at pre-defined times, they were able to selectively become the primary gate. Using a strict schedule for returning teams, they were able to avoid detection by the US Air Force for some time.
The stargates themselves are extremely resistant to damage or destruction: in one case, a stargate survived a direct hit from a meteor, A stargate has also been seen to continue functioning whilst entering a star, though it was protected by a portable forcefield for a portion of its journey. In the
SG-1 fourth season episode "
Chain Reaction", the SGC sent a
naqahdah-enhanced
nuclear bomb to a planet whose surface had trace amounts of naquadah in its topsoil; the explosion destroyed the entire planet, yet the gate still remained open and intact.
In the ninth season of
Stargate SG-1 the
United States develops a
naqahdriah-enhanced "Gatebuster"
nuclear bomb that's theoretically capable of destroying a stargate (the "Mark IX"). However, when it was first used it failed to destroy the intended stargate, as an Ori shield defending the gate was being powered by the weapon attacks attempting to destroy it.
A later attempt was made in the episode
The Shroud against another stargate in the Pegasus Galaxy with a Mark IX warhead however was successful in destroying an active stargate by placing the bomb behind the gate so that the energy wouldn't be absorbed by the open wormhole.
Exceptions
Under normal circumstances, a wormhole can only be maintained for slightly more than 38 minutes. The second incident occurred when energy-rich liquid beings maintained the power for a gate while a Russian vehicle had its transmitter stuck.
Susceptibility
The stargate and its network is susceptible to computer viruses. In the episode
Avenger 2.0 the entire stargate network is brought down by a virus created by Dr. Felger. Although not intentional the virus was altered by
Ba'al to take the network down. It was previously unknown that each
DHD does periodic correlative updates by dialing other gates in close proximity to one another. The updates were designed to compensate for stellar drift to thus maintain the proper coordinates. The stargate at the SGC uses a human developed "Dialing Computer" rather than a DHD which accounts for the lack of in depth knowledge regarding the DHD's. It is also what saved the network as the Earth stargate was the only gate unaffected by the virus because it has no DHD.
Other uses
In several episodes of the series, the Stargate Network was used for a purpose other than interplanetary travel. In the plots in which these extra functions feature, they're almost always discovered by a fluke, and were not intended in the design of the stargates. Two such occurrences regard the stargate's interaction with time, such as "
1969", in which the
SG-1 team accidentally travels backward in time to the year 1969, as a result of the matter transmission stream passing through a
solar flare. The character
Samantha Carter intentionally uses this phenomenon in the episode "
2010", where she uses advanced technology to predict a flare and send a message back in time. Time is also a factor in the episode "
Window of Opportunity", when a scientist uses a failed time machine built by the Ancients to isolate a region defined by 14 stargates from the rest of the
space-time continuum, causing a
time loop.
In several episodes, the stargate, and the cobbled-together dialing program utilized by the SGC, are nearly the cause of disaster. In the episode "
Red Sky", the bypassing of a system error caused the stargate to introduce atoms of
plutonium into the center of a star, causing the star to become unstable. In the episode "
Ripple Effect", an unknown device and/or method was used to connect different realities and was reversed by use of an
Asgard beam weapon.
Later in
Stargate SG-1 a feature of the Stargate Network, whereby one stargate can be caused to dial multiple other gates simultaneously, is revealed. This allows a blast wave such as that of the
Dakara Superweapon to extend almost indefinitely throughout the galaxy, as seen in "
Reckoning".
In the episode, a stargate was used as a weapon capable of destroying an entire solar system. The gate was dialed into a planet in close proximity to a black hole. The gate (protected by a force field) was then sent into a star. The resulting loss of mass caused the sun to go supernova, destroying the solar system and
Apophis's fleet, which was orbiting the star at that time.
Features
Stargates are all held to be made of the fictional heavy mineral "
Naqahdah", an immense
superconductor which is also extremely durable. Milky Way stargates are held to be in weight.
Milky Way
A
Milky Way stargate has 39 inscribed symbols on the inner ring. When dialing, this inner ring rotates until the dialed symbol is aligned with the seventh chevron, at which point the ring pauses, the seventh chevron moves down and up, and the appropriate chevron in the sequence engages. In the
Stargate SG-1 series, an engaged chevron glows red. In the original
Stargate film, all of the chevrons use this motion, and none of them glow red.
With 38 symbols, the Stargate Network in the Milky Way has:
» (38×37×36×35×34×33) = 1,987,690,320 possible addresses.
8-symbol addresses will yield:
» (38×37×36×35×34×33×32) = 63,606,090,240 possible addresses.
If a 9-symbol address operates like 8-symbol addresses it'll yield:
» (38×37×36×35×34×33×32×31) = 1,971,788,797,440 possible addresses.
However, not all points in space represented by these addresses have stargates, in fact, there are sufficiently few valid coordinate sets that randomly dialing the stargate is largely futile. It was discovered in the season seven finale,
Lost City, that the glyphs have syllable pronunciations that allow a gate address to be spoken aloud as a destination name. This is how the planet
Proclarush Taonas was named. The gate symbols are as follows:
†This symbol is unique to the planet earth. In the movie, Dr. Jackson interpreted it as representing the Sun over the peak of a pyramid. Other planets are described as having their own unique origin symbols as well.
Pegasus galaxy
In the
spinoff series
Stargate Atlantis, an expedition dials the 8-symbol address ||pixelwidth=16|openbracket=|closebracket=}}
from
Stargate Command to travel to the
Ancients'
Lost City of Atlantis, located in the
Pegasus Galaxy. They find that the Ancients seeded planets throughout the Pegasus galaxy with stargates too, but used gates of a slightly different design. As these gates were built at a later date than the original Milky Way network, they may be of more advanced design, however at this point the differences appear mostly cosmetic.
The alternative stargate design in the Pegasus galaxy is one of many things the producers of the shows employed to differentiate the sister shows
SG-1 and
Atlantis. Pegasus stargates are designed with blue chevron lights instead of red ones, and the address symbols are groups of small blue lights (rather than embossed figures) that light up sequentially instead of rotating. In SG-1 it's stated that the rotating section of the gate unlocks when sufficient power to dial has been fed to the gate, allowing manual dialing in case the DHD is damaged or not present, as on Earth.
Unlike the Milky Way gates, Pegasus gates are depicted with 36 symbols. 7 symbols are still required to dial an interplanetary address, adhering to the same constraints as a Milky Way gate. With 36 symbols, the Stargate Network in the Pegasus Galaxy has:
» 35×34×33×32×31×30 = 1,168,675,200 possible addresses.
8-symbol addresses will yield:
» 35×34×33×32×31×30×29 = 33,891,580,800 possible addresses.
If a 9-symbol address operates like 8-symbol addresses it'll yield:
» 35×34×33×32×31×30×29×28 = 948,964,262,400 possible addresses.
Thus there are fewer
possible addresses in the Pegasus Galaxy, although it may still be the case that there are more stargates there if more of the possible addresses are utilized than in the Milky Way.
In a departure from the definitive "anywhere to anywhere" ethos of
SG-1, the only stargate in the Pegasus galaxy capable of reaching stargates in the Milky Way is the one located at Atlantis. This is due to a special "control crystal" unique to the Atlantis DHD, without which a Pegasus stargate can't encode its eighth chevron. a plan was put in place to create a bridge of linked stargates in the void between the Milky Way and Pegasus galaxies to circumvent the need for a ZPM to effect travel between Atlantis and Earth (see
McKay-Carter Intergalactic Gate Bridge below).
One concept directly ported from
SG-1 to
Atlantis, and that was the idea of an "
iris" that allows wormholes to form but stops anything trying to emerge. the project takes on an added urgency and is made operational shortly afterward.
The McKay-Carter Intergalactic Gate Bridge (named as such by its co-creator
Rodney McKay, recognizing
Samantha Carter for the original idea) consists of seventeen stargates from the Pegasus network and another seventeen from the Milky Way network. A
macro program written by McKay and uploaded to the gates' operating systems before dialing causes them to store incoming matter in their buffers and forward it from one gate to the next along the bridge rather than rematerialize it at the gate that's initially dialed.
Travelers then exit halfway between the two galaxies at the Midway Space Station, which serves as a transfer point. There they use the other gate network (and a second macro program designed for that network) to continue on to their ultimate destination; travelers from Atlantis use a Milky Way gate to travel on to Earth, and similarly travelers from Earth use a Pegasus gate to travel to Atlantis. Using the gate bridge, the travel time between the Pegasus and Milky Way galaxies is just slightly over thirty minutes, making it far more efficient than traveling by
hyperdrive.
When the first test of the gate bridge is conducted, only the framework of the station has been completed, so a
Puddle Jumper is used. The test is a complete success, and the bridge is declared operational. It is later revealed that since the last gate in the bridge must dial the exit gate, normally either Atlantis or Earth, the macro can be rewritten to dial a different exit gate in the destination galaxy.
The station is later destroyed by the self-destruct after the infiltration of the Wraith; whether or not it's rebuilt is unknown.
Asuran Satellite Weapon
The
Asurans had developed an eight-chevron variant of a stargate that was created as a
satellite weapon. Its components included a shield generator, sensors and a hyperdrive allowing it to orbit its intended target. Once this is accomplished, a wormhole would be activated after which an intense red energy beam reaches out and strikes the target which, in this case, was the city of
Atlantis. The beam would originate from an Asuran stronghold which would both power the satellites defenses as well as maintain an ongoing wormhole. The satellite also had the added effect of preventing stargate travel through the Atlantis stargate as long as the satellite maintained its connection to the dialing stargate, as both gates would be attempting to use the Atlantis coordinates. The satellite was able to receive the incoming wormhole from the Asurans, indicating that it could override the Atlantis stargate, the dominant stargate on the planet due to its being connected to a DHD. It appeared as a satellite with a stargate in the center of its form which allowed it to maneuver and, thus, direct the energy weapon.
Making of the props
Two full stargate
props were originally built for the
SG-1 pilot, the second of which was reconstructed from the prop used in the
film. They are made of
steel and
fiberglass, and are in diameter. The second prop is less detailed, and is used for exterior scenes; in the pilot it was used solely on the planet
Chulak. The primary one, however, is quite sophisticated. It is fully automated, and capable of rotating and emitting light. This is achieved by the use of a specially-designed circular
gear, which turns the inner ring on a precise
pinion drive wheel, using an eight
horsepower electric motor. The top seven chevrons emit
laser pulses which are read by a sensor fed into a computer responsible for the gate's movement, which is consequently able to start and stop the rotation very quickly. This main prop is kept almost immovably at the permanent set of the
SGC, at Bridge Studios,
Vancouver.
There are further stargate props which are no more than two-dimensional or semi-three-dimensional (jar-lid shaped) stargates, being more lightweight and easier to erect on location. These are always filmed front-on to preserve the illusion. If a shot involves the
iris, this is added in post-production, as the mechanics of it opening and closing would be very difficult to build. However, when a stargate is filmed with just a closed iris (for example without it moving), a tangible prop is inserted into place.
The visual effects for
Stargate SG-1 and
Stargate Atlantis are predominantly produced by
Rainmaker Digital Effects, a notable visual-effects studio. However, some effects, including the entire Ori battle sequence in the episode, were done "in-house". The unstable vortex effect, both in the film and the early seasons of the series, on account of being "difficult to achieve" was generated only once and recorded from various angles; this recording was the same used for all gate opening shots early in the series. On occasion, the stargate itself is also completely swapped out for a computer generated model, usually in cases where it's being moved, or is depicted in space. Series producer
Robert C. Cooper explained that it often costs a lot to erect a stargate on location, and so in some cases offworld gates are also entirely a visual effect.
Use of the term "stargate" in other works
The basic concept of a "stargate" didn't originate with the movie
Stargate. Andre Norton's 1958 novel
Star Gate used the term, while the
portal concept is a key plot device used in science fiction for decades prior to the film.
Since the introduction of the stargate on the big screen, authors Lynn Picknett and Clive Prince wrote
The Stargate Conspiracy: The Truth About Extraterrestrial Life and the Mysteries of Ancient Egypt. The book details an alternative theory which associated the term
stargate with Egypt's past: either the pyramid itself is a gateway to the stars (because of the shafts pointing to a star) or the building of Heaven on Earth based on geographical location of the great and outlying pyramids (
see: Orion).
In the Marvel Comics Universe, the alien Shi'ar have a network of "stargates" to aid in interstellar travel.
The TV show Buck Rogers had devices called 'stargates', however, they aided in interstellar travel. They were more similar to jumpgates from the TV show Babylon 5.
The computer game mentions the use of stargates as a means of travel between the stars for space ships. The stargates became obsolete when humans invented Hyperdrive.
In the computer game Master of Orion II the Star Gate is a late game technology (upgrade from Jump Gate) that allows starships to travel instantaneously (one turn) between all the colonies owned by the player in the galaxy, regardless of distance.
In the online game Planetarion, one level of research used to increase the speed of ships/fleets is titled 'stargate'.
In the anime television series Cowboy Bebop, large devices called stargates link the habitable planets, moons, and asteroids of the Solar System, facilitating travel in space vessels.
In the computer game Starcraft, the alien Protoss use structures called stargates to bring space ships from staging areas to the battlefield.
In the animated series, villains Darkseid, Kalibak, Desaad, and the Parademons, used what were referred to as "stargates", a version of the "Boom Tube", which was a mode of interdimensional transportation frequently used by the New Gods, a pantheon which included the above characters and were featured in DC Comics' "Fourth World" titles.
In the MMORPG EVE Online, stargates are the main method of traveling between solar systems.
In the Aqua Teen Hunger Force episode "Universal Remonster", Emory and Oglethorpe travel across space and time through the "Fargate" (a thinly-disguised copy of the Stargate) to steal the Aqua Teens' cable. In order to control which channel they watch, they use the Universal Remonster, a small robot made of several remote controls and shaped like a small werewolf that accidentally ends up in the hands of Master Shake, who uses it to torture Meatwad. During the episode, Master Shake and Frylock find the Fargate under the house and Master Shakes screams out of fear of Goa'uld coming to kill them and convinces Meatwad that the Goa'uld are out to get him.
The Playstation 2 game Primal has devices called "rift gates." These devices, which look similar to Stargates, allow the player to take a shortcut between any two rift gates that have already been found within a world, and also permit the player to move between the central game hub and the worlds within the game. These can also be used to prevent the death of one of the characters (and, by extension, a game over), if the other character can reach a gate quickly enough.
Differences between stargates
There are many differences between the film's stargate and the stargate in SG-1.
The chevrons in the Stargate film don't glow as they do in the series.
The top chevron on the film's stargate is different aesthetically than the rest of its chevrons. In SG-1, all the chevrons on a stargate are visually identical.
In the film, to "lock" in a stargate symbol, each chevron "pops" or "clamps" the symbol in question to dial it. In SG-1, only the top chevron "pops" when dialing an address, while the other chevrons merely light up and don't clamp.
In the film, the symbols on the gate are engraved into the surface of the stargate. In the television series, the symbols protrude from its surface.
In the film, when the stargate is active the wormhole protrudes out the back in a cone shape. In the series the wormhole simply stays around the circumference of the gate, except under extreme circumstances, such as when the gate is connected to another within the effects of a black hole.
In the film, each stargate is different, with unique symbols, in the show, they're universal (more logical for a travel network.)Further Information
Get more info on 'Stargate Device'.
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