Just One Question, But it's a Doozy

[kaasirpent]

I had heard for years what a great show Stargate: SG-1 was. All my friends who watched it raved about it, saying it was way better than the movie, etc.

Only problem was, it came on some channel I didn't have, and when I finally did get that channel, it was way past the point where I could join and know what the hell was going on.

One thing about me: I like to read a book from cover to cover, skipping no words. I like to see a movie from studio logo through credits, with no missed minutes.

And with series like SG-1 that, I was told, had an ongoing arc not only for the show, but for the characters and the world, I like to see it from start to finish, in order, with no exceptions.

I learned that lesson with Babylon 5, and it greatly enhanced my enjoyment of both Buffy: The Vampire Slayer and Angel

So I finally started watching SG-1 on NetFlix. I started in season 1 and have been watching it (minus about 1 year when NetFlix simply didn't have the first two disks of season 2 available for rental) in order since then. I'm at the tail end of season 4, now, and about to begin season 5.

And I have one, burning question.

So, you have these Go'a'uld who are, basically, Egyptian Gods in Spaaaace! They're all but all-powerful, they're amazingly advanced. They have ships that can destroy worlds and fly faster than light by entering hyperspace. They have unbelievable knowledge spanning millions of years. They have weapons that can stun or kill. They have artificial gravity and their ships run on inertia. And they have sarcophagi that can heal a lowly, puny human of anything, including death, as it turns out.

And yet, in all the amazing vastness of power that is the Go'a'uld...why the ever-lovin' crap do they light their technological marvels of interstellar starships with torches?

I mean...come on! Torches? Sure, it adds to the ambiance and lends flavor to the entire "Egyptian" schtick, but every single time there's a scene in a Go'a'uld ship or base and it's being lit by a damned torch, I lose my "willing suspension of disbelief" and get tossed right out of the story onto my ass. I miss whole scenes because all I can focus on is the torch burning in the background.

You see, in a spaceship, there's kind of a little thing we like to call "a limited amount of air." And even though there would presumably be some sort of "scrubber" that removes CO₂ and CO and other bad things from the air and recirculates it, adding torch soot and the extra heat from the fires makes about as much sense as taking deviled ham sandwiches with cheese to a Yom Kippur picnic. And let's not even go into burning oxygen for lighting.

So far, I have listened to every single commentary track. Seen every extra on every disk.

Not once has anyone brought this up. You'd think I was the first person this ever bothered.

So...do they ever bring this up in the next 5 or 6 seasons of the show? Do they? Because if they don't, I need to know it, now. So I can get a prescription for Valium. A plot hole so wide you could fly a super-massive black hole through it and not even perturb the edges of the hole is something that annoys the living crap out of me. And if they never even bring it up and deal with it, I'm going to need to medicate.

Comments

[kaasirpent]

I think a simple "yes" or "no" will suffice. It'll tell me they at least deal with it, but not reveal anything other than that. :)

[ex-prunesnp.livejournal.com]

Matt says she's right.

[islenskr.livejournal.com]

Oh, I feel your pain! I watched the series right up until the 7th season. I never understood the torches. And don't get me started on the linguistic aspect of it! I've stood up in the middle of a show and yelled at the television screen about how WRONG they got it or how STUPID their linguistic explanations are.

I feel a rant coming on....

[kaasirpent]

They actually dealt with the linguistics in the very, very beginning. After that, all aliens spoke perfect, colloquial, American English of the early 21st century.

How utterly perfect for us. :)

But yeah, that bugs me, too. But if they didn't do that, every show would be 2/3 deciphering the alien language and 1/3 the rest of the plot.

[marmota.livejournal.com]

I'm pretty sure that bit was covered in interviews, and probably on the comment track. Linguistic verite' is a casualty of the medium; they have less than an hour to tell a story, and they can't afford to spend ten minutes or more of each episode playing charades with the natives. A Trek-like 'universal translator' would've been worse.

As for the torches, the impression I had was that the bad guys went to absurd lengths to disguise their technology as godlike powers. Torches make for good theater, and then you don't have to explain to J. Random Peasant what a lightbulbor LED is?

[etherial.livejournal.com]

the bad guys went to absurd lengths to disguise their technology as godlike powers. Torches make for good theater

This.

[peteyfrogboy.livejournal.com]

My guess: flame-shaped light-emitting energy field. If you can make force fields, why the hell not?

[feuervogel]

Yom Kippur's a day of fasting ;)

[kaasirpent]

Yes. It was meant to be a double bad thing. :)

[feuervogel]

That it is, that it is.

Or putting a cheeseburger on a Seder. (Since it's Passover now, after all.)

[liddle-oldman.livejournal.com]

The Go'a'uld have torches all over their ships because they're fraking idiots. All their tech is stolen -- hell, their human bodies and slaves are stolen -- they're psychotic narcissists, with overdeveloped senses of self-importance and drama, and they don't give a shit how hard their crews have to work to keep the life support going.

They are not big on practicality. Seriously. Every other race's ships make pretty good sense. The Go'a'uld are just -- well, think of them as driving Lincoln Navigators.

[etherial.livejournal.com]

with spinning rims!

[kaasirpent]

And those annoying purple lights underneath? Or is that so 90s?

[liddle-oldman.livejournal.com]

Oh -- at one point a Stargate and the dial device -- which are like a quarter million years old -- are beamed off planet (as someone is trying to dial out) -- and there's green grass where they were standing. *That* bugs me a lot more.

[agedwiz.livejournal.com]

In a less serious vein, I always thought that the Go'a'uld were really a race of drag queens and had their personal designers design the interior of their spaceships.

[kaasirpent]

I'm having to beat an image of Carson Kressley as a Go'a'uld out of my mind with a stick.

Thanks for that. Really.