this post was submitted on 18 Jun 2026
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That's the thing that has bothered me most about Stargate.
The earlier human cultures that got scooped up, transported to new planets, and even after hundreds to thousand of years, the cultures are largely the same. At least earlier in the show.
As time goes on, budgets increase, and visual effect got cheaper, we get to see more modern versions that left their old culture in the past, like Hebridan, which is a spacefaring civilization that mixed their culture with an alien species. They look like a modern city. No weird anachronistic Celtic stuff.
You were more bothered by most of the cultures not evolving, but not bothered by the fact they all live in the Canadian woods?
I think it's a bit explained why the cultures haven't evolved (although it bugs me as well) but I think the lore pretty much is that pretty much everyone with an active gate is still actively being repressed by the Goa'uld, which is why they don't really develop. (Middle-ages used to be called the dark ages, kinda like that. Depressing and repressing monotheism.)
The cultured which managed to overthrow the overlords and bury or destroy the gate then proliferated a lot and advanced in technology. That's the exact reason Earth advanced. And we also see a fair few other planets that have evolved cultures, usually when the team gates into their museum after fixing some issue or having the "cold-calling program" get a hit after some society digs up their gate. Reminds me of one of my favourites line deliveries by Michael Shanks: Daniel Jackson's demands
But yeah that is in the later seasons more, you're right about that.
Not to mention the fact that nearly everybody speaks perfect English for some reason.
I can forgive that one. Having every episode include a montage of Daniel figuring out the local language would not have made an entertaining series. That works as a one off in a movie but not as the central struggle in every TV episode.
Guess they could hang a lantern and say the gate gives some sort of babelfish ability, just like that. (Is she referring to Farscape there, I remember Crichton asking why he understands them but i can't recall if that was the explanation.)
The Doctor's TARDIS gives a magical ability to speak and understand languages, perhaps the gateway does as well.
Yes, that joke there is about a Stargate character making a Farscape reference. This is not actual dialogue from a Stargate episode.
I know it isn't. I do remember Crichton being weird about why everyone speaks English. I'm just asking whether "translator microbes" was the in-universe explanation in Farscape.
Could've googled it obviously but this is a forum so I was making conversation
Yes, it's in the first episode. They don't spend a lot of time on it.
Thanks for the confirmation
The Canadian woods! I can forgive that pretty easily, knowing it was due to budget constraints.
There are plenty of people today who follow cultural traditions thousands of years old. Add in an alien overlord who deliberately suppresses technological advancement (remember in the movie how even writing was banned?), and you have a recipe for stasis.
The First Australians have stories that are literally 10,000+ years old, and that's been verified by science. Elders all over the continent can tell you about islands that were once connected to the mainland, holy sites that have been underwater since the ice age when the sea rose, megafauna that have been extinct for thousands of years.
Our modern pace of cultural and technological change is quite unusual, historically speaking. Cut a group of people from before the renaissance off from Earth, and they might not change all that much, even without alien interference in technology.
"Holy sites which have been underwater since the ice age"?
Just asking for curiosity, you got a source on that? Like someone actually told a story and then that story got connected to a real life underwater place that was actually found? Because that would be kinda amazing.
The Rainbow Serpent has many names in the different countries across this continent. If I met you face to face, I would tell you the name it has in the country where I live. But sadly, this is the internet, and for privacy's sake I'll have to be a little vague.
Each Aboriginal family has its own stories about the Rainbow Serpent. But in most of them, it's the primary creator-diety for the land and water, carving the river and pushing up the hills with its body. Each family has its own stories for where the Serpent went, which explain the landscape they're from. These stories are important, because they help the people to navigate. They explain the path of a river that connects two locations and which forks to take to get there. Where the Rainbow Serpent went underground is a good place to dig in the ground for water, because the Elders who first told the story knew there's an underground river there. These stories are survival.
And the stories predate the sea level rise.
Two-way science is an emerging field which draws from western science and Indigenous science to add knowledge to both. For example, biochemists are asking Elders about medicine plants to find chemicals they can use to invent new drugs. Ecologists are experimenting with using western farming techniques with Indigenous plants, which are resistant to the local heat and droughts. Mathematicians are examining the rules of Indigenous marriage systems to learn how they preserve genetic diversity in a limited population.
Two-way science is an emerging field. Indigenous knowledge is still ahead in some areas. A lot of westerners don't respect traditional knowledge. And that's why, when a group of Tiwi Elders complained that an underwater pipeline would intersect and potentially damage their underwater songlines and the resting place of the Rainbow Serpent, the judge threw the case out. He said there wasn't enough evidence that the pipeline would damage the heritage sites. But I think we should do the science to find the truth before we let a mining company build all over the place.
Yeah this is what I was asking for.
Thinking about these things is how I get to sleep. Thanks again.
You're welcome! I love sharing Indigenous knowledge!
Here you go. Looks like it's somewhat recent news (2021)
https://www.arc.gov.au/news-and-publications/media/first-underwater-indigenous-sites-found-australian-seabed
Thanks for the link, but I'll have to continue searching. It's great they've found those places, but aside from mentioning that the area is known as "sea country" to lot of indigenous people, it didn't really ascertain that the caves were found because some folklorist decoded or inferred data from ancient myths.
Which is the thing I was interested in, but this is itself interesting as well.