As the Stargate franchise expanded from its
flagship TV series to multiple spin-offs, the shows’ production design created different
looks for the iconic Stargate. It made sense, seeing as how Stargate SG-1, Stargate Atlantis,
and Stargate Universe were all set in different galaxies. And more practically, the shows’
creators wanted casual viewers to be able to tell at a glance which series they were watching.
But there’s also some really interesting differences between these three types of Stargates
within the Stargate universe – including how they operate. Let’s look at the three different types
of Stargates from the three television series. And long-time viewers may know that,
in fact, there have been a total of six different types of gate shows on screen so
far. Stay tuned to the end for more about those. Inside the Stargate universe, the technology was
first devised by a race called the Alterans many millions of years ago. When the group emigrated
from their home galaxy to the Milky Way the Stargate was just a draft idea thought
up by an Alteran scientist named Amelius. This is seen in the 2008 movie
Stargate: The Ark of Truth. The Alterans came to our galaxy, and would
eventually come to be known as the Ancients. Eventually the technology was
developed, improved, and perfected, and gates were places on thousands of worlds
throughout the Milky Way. These are the standard, red-chevron gates we know from the original
Stargate feature film and from Stargate SG-1. The Milky Way gates have nine chevrons, but only
utilize seven of these for a standard address. They can dial to any other gate within the
Milky Way, so long as its address is known. Six points triangulate the location of a
destination in three-dimensional space, and the seventh symbol serves as the point of origin
to chart a course from one Stargate to another. An 8-chevron address requires significantly more
power, but can dial a Stargate in another galaxy. And the ninth chevron?
We'll come back to that one. Normally the Stargate is dialed by means of
a “dial-home device,” or D.H.D. This device allows for rapid push-button dialing, and it
also provides the gate with its power source. On Earth, Stargate Command does not utilize
a D.H.D. Instead a specially engineered supercomputer interfaces with the gate,
interpreting the gate’s various signals and allowing for dial-out. Special power systems feed
the Stargate’s power requirements through direct current to the gate’s superstructure.
When the gate is sufficiently powered, the inner track unlocks and can spin freely.
Without a D.H.D. or dialing computer it can even be dialed manually ... with a bit of elbow grease.
As the gate dials an address the inner ring spins one direction, until the chevron locks
one symbol into place. The inner track then reverses direction, proceeding one
symbol at a time like a combination lock. When a valid address is completed, an
unstable energy vortex “kawooshes” outward, before settling into an event horizon leading
to a stable wormhole that connects two gates. But you’ll notice when watching the show that
the inner track only spins at Stargate Command, never on an off-world gate. The chevrons on
the off-world gates also only light up, and don’t move. There’s a practical production reason
for that. The Stargate prop, of course, was very expensive to build and maintain. The show had two
of them – and the gate used for location filming was moved around every week. So it was smart to
make sure it didn’t have all the moving parts. The Ancients or their allies also placed an
unknown number of these gates beyond our galaxy. The first time Earth successfully dialed
an 8-chevron address, Jack O’Neill visited the Asgard planet Othalla, in the galaxy of
Ida. Thor also presumably used the Stargate to bring Samantha Carter to his home planet
when it was under threat by the Replicators. When the Ancients suffered from a galaxy-wide
plague, they eventually moved their advanced civilization from Earth to the Pegasus Galaxy.
Operating from the city of Atlantis, this group of Ancients – the Lanteans – seeded hundreds of
worlds in this untouched corner of the universe with human life. As these newborn civilizations
continued to evolve over millions of years, the Lanteans developed a brand
new Stargate network for Pegasus. The gates on Stargate Atlantis have distinctly
blue chevrons – part of Brad Wright’s original pitch to SCI FI Channel for the spin-off. These
Stargates are newer and more modern than Milky Way gates. Even on the main set there was no
spinning track or moving chevrons. Instead a panel of lights inside the gate illuminate in a
rotating pattern, giving the illusion of the same “combination lock” dialing procedure.
If the SG-1 gates are analog, the Atlantis gates are very much digital.
As a security measure, the Lanteans limited these new Stargates so that only the gate in Atlantis
could dial the 8-chevron address back to Earth. A unique control crystal was required to enable
this functionality ... though the crystal could be moved to a different Pegasus Stargate.
Without that crystal, it may be that the Pegasus gates were deliberately limited to not
be able to dial any 8-chevron address at all. Aside from the visual aesthetic, there’s one
other big difference with these more “digital” Stargates. The Ancients had since developed
small ships capable of flying through a gate and traversing the wormhole – the Puddle Jumper.
So when they built out the Pegasus network over millions of years, they were no longer limited to
putting a new Stargate on the surface of a planet. So in this galaxy we see our first space gates,
which instead float free in orbit of the planet. Residents of these planets would obviously
not be able to use the Stargate to explore and trade with other worlds. The space gates
are also effectively locked to Lantean use, since there is no open dialing mechanism here. Travelers needed a Puddle Jumper to be able to
dial an address when on approach to the gate. Of course, eventually the Wraith
overcame this by creating Darts – which themselves could dial a Stargate.
Without a D.H.D., space gates also need a different source of power. This is provided by
three power nodes, attached to the outer edge of the Stargate at 120-degree intervals. This gives
the space gates a cool and totally unique look. Atlantis premiered in 2004, and at this
point digital effects were getting better. In fact, the location Stargate was
replaced with a computer-generated image. The crew didn't have a full location Stargate
to film. You can often spot this when the gate is shot straight-on with a fixed camera
angle, making it look a bit two-dimensional. The Stargate is seen at a distance
in establishing shots in Season One, and in later years we got Stargates partially
buried in the ground rather than erected on some sort of stone pedestal – something SG-1
usually didn’t even try with their physical prop. A physical segment of one-third of the Pegasus
Stargate was eventually built, though. It’s first seen in the fifth season episode “The Shrine,”
when the team is sitting on top of it after the valley where the gate is located has flooded.
You can also look for it in later episodes, mixed in with CG shots of the full Stargate.
So what about the third model of Stargate – the black and white gates from Stargate
Universe? SGU debuted in 2009 with another brand new look for the iconic prop.
But in this case these gates aren’t newer, fancier models. They’re evidently much older
than both the Milky Way and Pegasus gates. The Ancients launched Destiny millions of years
ago, and with it a means for the crew to acquire food, water, and other much-needed supplies.
Destiny itself was launched unmanned, and it stayed empty for eons ... until an Earth research
project cracked the code for the Stargate’s ninth chevron. The one 9-chevron address was found in
Atlantis’s database, and allowed a team to dial directly to Destiny – now millions of lightyears
from Earth, seeking the secrets of the universe. So if the ship is following a preprogrammed
course, through galaxies where the Ancients themselves never set foot, how can there
already be Stargates there? Ahead of Destiny the Ancients launched seed ships. These
are also completely automated, both in manufacturing Stargates and transporting them to
the surface of habitable planets it passed by. So the gates in SGU are not scattered all
throughout the galaxies that Destiny has passed through. Instead these smaller
networks of gates have been built down a corridor – the ship’s original flight path.
These gates are also more limited in their range. Unlike the other gate networks, these gates are
not powerful enough to dial every other Stargate in that galaxy. They have a limited range, so
they’re only capable of dialing a few of their closest neighbors. When Destiny jumped into F.T.L.
and left a team behind, the group had to dial from planet to planet to planet to try and catch up
before Destiny’s Stargate went out of range. Destiny’s gate also has a unique dialing sequence,
one that’s more crude and mechanical. Instead of an inner track, the entire gate spins in the deck
of the ship. As each symbol is locked a large, glowing orb illuminates above the gate,
and the corresponding chevron illuminates. But the final chevron isn’t even located
on the Stargate itself. It’s here, built into the deck in front of the Stargate.
After the wormhole disconnects, steam is loudly blasted out of nearby vents – giving the
gate a more old-timey, steampunk feel. That’s three different Stargates, built by the
Ancients for the benefit of multiple galaxies. So who else is out there making new Stargate
models? Do you remember all of them? Well, there are three more we’ve seen on screen so
far. In the third season of Stargate SG-1 the team visited the new Tollan homeworld of Tollana.
Here they discovered that the advanced Tollan have built their own fancy, slimmer Stargate
– with a little help from the Nox, another race who were allies of the Ancients long ago.
The Tollans’ original homeworld was recently destroyed in fire when its orbit was altered,
and their civilization resettled using ships. So it makes sense that they’d build themselves a new
Stargate to rejoin the network. The Tollan passed it off as no big thing, but color us impressed.
In Season Five, Major Samantha Carter met Orlin – an ascended being who follows her home
like a lovesick puppy. He’s eventually found out by the people in the U.S. government who like
dissecting aliens ... so Orlin makes his escape back to the planet Velona. Astonishingly, to get
there he builds his very own miniature Stargate in Sam's basement – using only parts found on Earth
(and ordered online with Sam’s credit card). This gate couldn’t dial multiple addresses,
and was probably only good for one use. And Carter’s going to need a new toaster.
But remember that we didn’t know at this point in the series that ascended
beings like Orlin and Oma Desala are actually the Ancients. Orlin’s ability to
MacGyver his own gate in a pinch was a giant clue for fans that the Ancients were still out there
... and the team had already met some of them. OK, the final model of Stargate on our list might
be the coolest. It’s certainly the most inventive. When the Ori learned that our galaxy was populated
by billions of humans, they set their sites on a full-scale invasion. But how do you get a fleet
of warships from one galaxy to another when you don’t have those zippy Asgard engines?
Enter the Supergate – a massive device that creates a wormhole between two gates on
a much, much larger scale – big enough for a warship to fit through. The Supergate requires
an unimaginable amount of power to maintain an active wormhole, which it gets by forming a
singularity – a black hole – near the gate. The Ori are cousins of the Ancients. (That’s the
planet the Alterans left behind millions of years ago.) So it makes sense that they would also
develop Stargate technology – along with their own version of transport rings, which work on
the same principle but over shorter distances. So how do you get a Supergate built by remote?
The Ori’s followers launched dozens of smaller segments through a standard-sized Stargate. Each
segment exits the Stargate and heads into orbit of the planet, aligning themselves into a massive
circle. The segments are joined together by arcing power current, which slowly makes its way around
the circle as an incoming wormhole is established. Once connected, the Supergate is large enough to
pilot a capital ship instantly from one galaxy to another. This gave the Ori forces a beachhead
in the Milky Way, allowing them to bring a fleet of warships here to conquer new worlds.
It looks like these segments probably also telescope in order to fit through the gate, and
then expand upon entering orbit. That’s because when they're fully deployed these individual
segments look to be about the same size as a Goa’uld cargo ship. But a cargo ship is way
too big to fly through a Stargate. So either the segments get bigger after exiting the Stargate
... or the production designers are just cheating. Six different Stargates,
spanning the known universe. Which Stargate design is your favorite?
What should the Stargate look like in a fourth television series? Let us
know your thoughts in the comments below. Head over to GateWorld.net to explore more about
the history of the Stargates. Subscribe to the channel now and enable Alerts to make sure
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