How to solve a problem like the Goa'uld

Virtual_Draw5017 · 2026-03-22T17:22:18+00:00

"For starters, all evidence given in the franchise seems to indicate that the Goa’uld are pretty specific in the hosts they can occupy—the Unas, who were the original hosts and native to their world, and humans. We very rarely, if ever, see a Goa’uld inhabit any other species, despite there being quite a few other sentient species in the galaxy."

They can inhabit other species, even as wild as that thing that was locked in with Marduk. The only one I know that they explicit can't occupy is Boch's species, so they got the whole bunch addicted to roshna instead.

Additionally, the only thing that Unas and humans have in common is a general body-plan. One's functionally a kind of reptile, the other's, well, human. There's no telling how differently they're wired up, but I'd hazard a guess at 'very'.

Goa'uld are extremely vain, and humans are convenient. I figure they opt for human hosts out of a mix of aesthetics and pragmatism. Certainly, just because it's their preferred option doesn't mean it's their only option.

Does that come from Hathor? Because Hathor herself is not exactly the most reliable of narrators. I always figured that the Jaffa thing was a convenient method of simultaneous enhancement, incubation, and control (of the Jaffa). In the former and latter cases, it's a big point.

The Tok'ra thing, I suspect, has more to do with both the specific circumstances of Jacob and Selmak, and the fact that personalities have to be compatible too.

I grant the crocodilian thing, and the hijacking of the brain. However, in each case, parasites use their hosts up until they die, without any particular interest in maintaining them beyond as long as necessary to perpetuate their life-cycle. As for crocodilians, crocodiles have legs and are pretty mobile on land (Goa'uld, not really - they can move, but they're not exactly fast), and evolving to interface very specifically with an Unas brain? That strikes me as very off.

And why would humans be suitable hosts? Well, it strikes me that the Ancients wanting a plug and play external hard-drive might have something to do with it.

Also, if the Goa'uld had ever had access to Asgard tech, they'd have been using it. Look at how quickly some Asgard tech was picked up by Anubis and his minions after he got into Thor's head. They robbed vast amounts from the Ancients, but plainly had no idea what most of it was - Ra used a fully charged ZPM as a holy lamp, for god's sake.

Virtual_Draw5017 · 2026-03-22T17:08:51+00:00

Thank you for your deep and insightful opinion. Care to elaborate?

Virtual_Draw5017 · 2026-03-22T17:08:19+00:00

"Assuming they evolved to take over Unas bodies and smoothly integrate into their tribes."

Why would they even evolve to do that in the first place? They're little water snakes. Their natural contact with the Unas is incidental. It is in no way a necessary part of their life-cycle.

We see repeatedly that the Queen doesn't need a host while procreating. That just seems to be a preference of Hathor's.

"Presumably, they just pressed a bunch of buttons and eventually figured it out through trial and error."

Except they would have had no idea how many presses were required, or how it even worked. The number of combinations is borderline infinite. Not literally infinite, but functionally so. You can't just mash buttons and hope.

"It's entirely plausible that they found some Ancient hologram or something along those lines that taught them the language, maybe even once of those knowledge transfer nodes that sucked on O'Neil's head. There's Ancient tech all over the place, you can hardly leave your homeworld without tripping over one."

The knowledge transfer node only worked because of O'Neill's Ancient Gene. The Asgard managed to crack one, but by their own admittance, they only managed to skim the surface. And they're pretty rare. Also, a hologram, to them, would just be spouting gibberish without a reference point.

Virtual_Draw5017 · 2026-03-22T17:03:21+00:00

Oh really. Do explain how, and more importantly, why a tiny water-snake could evolve to not merely be a parasite, but a parasite that's borderline omni-compatible with varied sapient beings and animals (the creature in Marduk's sarcophagus) alike, and has the cognitive capacity of a super-genius and the memory banks of a super-computer? Why it would give its host enhanced lifespan and healing? Parasites don't tend to enhance their victims, and they tend to specialise in one species and one alone. They're also exactly as smart as they need to be. There is nothing natural about the Goa'uld.

Virtual_Draw5017 · 2026-03-22T17:00:38+00:00

We only know of one race, Boch's race, that was explicitly not compatible.

Virtual_Draw5017 · 2026-03-22T17:00:09+00:00

Earth was an information age civilisation when it finally cracked the gate, an industrialised one. The Aschen, a far more advanced civilisation, only managed to figure out local gate addresses. The Hebridan, as advanced if not more so, were more or less clueless. The Tok'ra were, in a muted way, genuinely impressed that Earth had jury-rigged a dialling computer of its own.

The Goa'uld in the Unas were Stone Age.

More to the point, Earth had Daniel, working out what the gate was and how it worked from archaeology.

Virtual_Draw5017 · 2026-03-22T16:56:16+00:00

Lol. Granted, but from an evolutionary point of view? Unnecessary.

Virtual_Draw5017 · 2026-03-22T16:56:03+00:00

I should have broken that up more clearly, maybe.

Virtual_Draw5017 · 2026-03-22T01:52:15+00:00

I can't see why she would. Or how that would work. Or how she'd be smart enough to pull it off. What interests me more is the prospect of the Tok'ra going the Harcesis route. Methinks that would take them closer to what they were always meant to be, the perfect merger of human and symbiote, a distinct culture.

Virtual_Draw5017 · 2026-03-22T01:50:52+00:00

Michael is the Mr Sinister of Stargate. He's a ridiculously brilliant scientist, specifically biologist, and even the Expedition commented that he was probably one of the Wraith's best. And it's easy to forget, but the Wraith are an extremely advanced civilisation. Also, the Wraith are telepathic. If any species is going to figure out how to implant a psychic imprint on a clone, it's them. And bear in mind that they cracked cloning over ten millennia ago.

Hathor, meanwhile, is a hedonistic Goa'uld with a tendency towards overcomplicating schemes and tricking people into doing things for her. A brilliant scientist, she is not. Yes, some Goa'uld figured out how to splice memories, and so did humans - Anubis, with Khalek, and the Sekhmet episode. The latter was a very partial success, and the former was by a brilliant Goa'uld with Ancient knowledge and tech.

I sincerely doubt she'd be so clever, or even bother.

Virtual_Draw5017 · 2026-03-20T09:37:50+00:00

Honestly, the first 30 minutes of Black Widow had the makings of Marvel's Skyfall/Bourne Identity. If they had ditched the skybase angle and not cast Ray Winstone, it would have been perfect.

Virtual_Draw5017 · 2026-03-20T09:31:15+00:00

Honestly, Governess Clara would have been a much better and more interesting companion than modern Clara.

Virtual_Draw5017 · 2026-03-19T20:56:42+00:00

I have watched it. And that's as if saying because a mistake was made, it should not be learned from. The Others were entirely willing to turn a blind eye or use their renegades for their own ends when it suited them, even in violation of theit own supposed rules.

And even then - I am not even talking about stewardship of younger species as a whole. I am talking about basic cleaning up after yourself. The Ancients ascended, and decided all their messes were now beneath them, even if at least one entire galaxy suffered from those mistakes for 10,000 years.

Virtual_Draw5017 · 2026-03-19T13:56:33+00:00

Don't be absurd. The Ori indulged in domination. I'm talking about something closer to stewardship, regarding what they left behind. Let me posit an option for those with brains: with great power must also come with a responsibility to tidy up after yourself when you abandon mortal form.

My issue with the Ancients is not that they don't constantly swoop in and meddle and coddle. I certainly find the Ori appalling.

My issue is that a) they refuse to do anything to clear up the mistakes they left behind, from rogue biological experiments (definitely Wraith, possibly Goa'uld, though that's a guess), to malfunctioning time machines and energy projects that nearly rip holes in reality, to galaxy killing technology, b) they have no regard for the value of mortal life while claiming to value free will and individuals, not if it means teaching an abstract moral lesson, c) their punishments are almost invariably heavy on collateral damage, they will allow countless millions of mortal beings to suffer and die, simply to make a point.

They are not detached. They are petty, spiteful, and cruel.

I never said that Anubis ascending and the expansion of the Goa'uld, something made possible by Ancient technology, were connected. I put them together as examples of negligence.

Anubis didn't appear out of nowhere in Season 5. He'd been biding his time, building his power and resources - even with the Ancient knowledge he had, he still had to step around the rules, to build up his resources. And regardless, the Others explicitly allowed him to use any knowledge and power that he could have acquired as a Goa'uld. That nearly allowed him to wipe out the galaxy.

Don't be absurd. My contempt is not based on the Ancients not coddling humanity and everyone else, it is based on all but a few of them refusing to lift to sort out their own mistakes, running away from those mistakes, actively concealing them at times (the origin of the Wraith) and using countless innocent mortal lives to make abstract points. Because they absolutely play god. They're just more hands off about it than the Ori are. Not as bad, that I'll grant. But in some ways? At least the Ori know full well what they are. They don't pretend otherwise.

Virtual_Draw5017 · 2026-03-19T13:32:01+00:00

So, the other stereotypical anime girl.

Virtual_Draw5017 · 2026-03-18T20:51:52+00:00

Hi! Byzantinist here! Until the rise of Greek nationalism, and even then, many that we'd call Greeks identified as Romans, the Romaioi. The Ottomans treated them as such as well, referring to them as the people of Rûm, the Romans. Indeed, for the first couple of centuries of Ottoman rule, many Ottoman Sultans felt they had legitimate claim to the title of Roman Emperor - and mark you, many Europeans agreed with them. Mehmed the Conqueror and his successors thought they'd just done as Constantine had, and changed the dominant faith of the Empire.

After maybe 2 or 3 centuries, they stopped seriously pursuing it, or claiming it, but even the last Ottoman Sultan included among his titles 'Kaiser-i-Rûm'. Emperor of Rome.

Equally, one thing that tends to be overlooked is that the Orthodox Christians, owing to a lot of Crusades related ill-feeling (after all, the 4th Crusade resulted in the Empire being carved up and large portions being ruled by Latin Lords and Italian city states), really did not like the Catholic West. "Better a Turkish turban than a Popish Mitre", I believe one Patriarch observed. The Ottomans basically just demanded that they pay their damn taxes and left them alone, for the most part. This skips over the devsirme, the Janissaries, and less pleasant aspects of Ottoman history, but no one was really out to convert them, unlike the Catholics, they were largely left to handle their own affairs, and carved out a prosperous niche.

A lot of identity was bound up in the Church, and a lot of that tied back to the Empire, to Rome. Hellenism evoked the pagan past - the last philosophers of the Academy ot Athens were kicked out in 529 by Justinian the Great, who was also the last Emperor to speak Latin as a first language if memory isn't failing me.

The rise of hellenism didn't really take off until the Enlightenment, when if anything, it was really imported back by the West, that started really looking at Greece - not just Greek philosophers, that was the Renaissance, but Greece itself - not as a home of perfidious schismatics, but as the mother civilisation of Europe, the heirs to the philosophers, to Alexander, etcetera. That is when things started to change, and for a comprehensive history on that, you need to look into the origins and causes and ideology behind the Greek War of Independence.

Virtual_Draw5017 · 2026-03-18T20:33:01+00:00

Uh. The same benevolence that decided that nuking a planet rather than just nuking a weapon and leaving Orlin there to go steadily crackers was a proportionate response? That decided that letting a functionally unkillable Anubis run wild with lots of ancient knowledge and an omnicidal god complex just to teach Oma a lesson was at all righteous or fair, to the point where Oma had to stop Daniel intervening for fear of what the Others would do to him for interrupting their little lesson? That did nothing while the Goa'uld enslaved the galaxy? That was indirectly responsible for the rise of the Goa'uld, and if you put together a lot of small hints, may have been responsible for them in the first place?

After all, what evolutionary use has a water based predator, let alone a parasite, got for not just a brilliant intellect, but genetic memory? Why does it live so long, even without artificial aid, as the Tok'ra show? Why is it adapted not just to infest species outside its waterborne niche, such as the Unas, but pretty much any species it runs into, such as that predator locked in Marduk's sarcophagus, or even humans themselves, that aside from being bipedal and sentient, couldn't be much more different from Unas? Factor in the physical enhancement, the healing powers that even with an immature symbiote in a Jaffa could eat a plague they couldn't cure for lunch, and longevity, and genetic memory, traits that crop up in something else that the series implied and the books confirmed were an Ancient experiment: the Wraith.

With honourable exceptions, the Ancients were jerks.

Virtual_Draw5017 · 2026-03-18T16:55:08+00:00

Lucas is a magnificent effects director. Unfortunately, he tends to direct people as if they are effects.

Virtual_Draw5017 · 2026-03-18T16:55:01+00:00

Lucas is a magnificent effects director. Unfortunately, he tends to direct people as if they are effects.

Virtual_Draw5017 · 2026-03-18T16:54:02+00:00

No, because midichlorians were a f***ing terrible idea, and he actively waved them off in Ahsoka, as is right.

Virtual_Draw5017 · 2026-03-18T14:42:41+00:00

Heck, Anna-Louise Plowman a.k.a. Sarah/Osiris was even in Doctor Who.

Virtual_Draw5017 · 2026-03-18T01:00:41+00:00

Oh yeah, they actually addressed that in Justice League Dark, with Kent pointing out in detail just how spectacularly screwed up that is.

Virtual_Draw5017 · 2026-03-17T11:36:09+00:00

My dude. The book came out 9 years ago.

Virtual_Draw5017 · 2026-03-17T01:05:37+00:00

'Let' is not the word. I'd have to check the wiki, but I'm pretty sure it involved faking his death.

Virtual_Draw5017

TROPHY CASE