I have only started watching sg-1 recently and i'm now up to the start of season 5. Can anyone tell me if Ra , the Gould from the film , ever makes a return or does he stay dead? cheers.
Posted by Cartman (Member # 256) on :
$$$
Not until the 8th season finale.
Posted by Aban Rune (Member # 226) on :
He's also mentioned several times throughout the series. Mostly in connection with other Goa'uld.
Posted by Mark Nguyen (Member # 469) on :
They emphatically label him as dead in the series premiere. In essence, it's his death that sets the Goa'uld balance of power on its ear, breaking a stalemate that has led to eight years of high adventure.
Don't worry though - for a couple years we end up having to deal with Ra's son Heru'ur, who inherited his dad's armies and power upon his death. He gets dealt with eventually (no point explaining how, here) but it was always cool to see the Horus guard helmets again.
Mark
Posted by Aban Rune (Member # 226) on :
The Horus Guard showed up even afterwards after the Jaffa were sort of dispursed. I think Amonet had some serving her during the events of her death. Or were they serving Heru'ur who had taken her prisoner... I can't remember.
Posted by Mark Nguyen (Member # 469) on :
Not entirely. You're probably mistaking the episode in which Amonet was napping while Sha're was bringing the Harcesis child to term. Heru'ur showed up on Abydos (where, despite having possession of his father's massive armies, still went there in the same kind of apparently unarmed "pleasure yacht" as Ra), and after SG-1 dealt with him, they left Amonet with the belief that Heru'ur had taken the child.
It's too bad they got rid of the helments following the third season or so, seen mostly since then in flashbacks or on pikes in rebel Jaffa camps. It's true that the production team and cast hated them because they were huge and top-heavy (and never really retracted well for the serpent guards), but it helped with the whole alien look - now they're stuck with bald cap helmets, and even those are mostly gone.
I'd have liked to have seen a Setesh guard helmet just once, though. Apparently, their noses droop.
Mark
Posted by Aban Rune (Member # 226) on :
Drip.
And no... I'm pretty sure there were Horus Guards present when Amonet was killed by Teal'c.
Remember, at that point, Apophis was sort of in limbo after the whole resurrection/Netu/escape/return to power thing.
Posted by Sol System (Member # 30) on :
So, like, are they getting the same actor to play him, or is it a different host?
Or I guess I probably don't want to know yet. Maybe.
Posted by Jason Abbadon (Member # 882) on :
From What I've seen it's just a guy in the mask/headdress: not the same actor.
I could be wrong, though it's almost never happened.
Posted by Mark Nguyen (Member # 469) on :
Nope. Jaye Davison, aka Ra, aka the shemale from "The Crying Game", retired from acting a while ago. It'll be just the headress, and probably David Palffy (Sokar and Anubis) waving his arms around from under it.
Mark
Posted by Aban Rune (Member # 226) on :
It's been awhile since I saw the movie, but did this head dress show up there? I seem to remember the first time we see Ra, his mask folds down like the Jaffa helmets, but I don't remember what the mask looked like.
Posted by AndrewR (Member # 44) on :
Just like the sarcophagus mask in the early versions of the opening credits. Actually when you first see it, it's a little creepy!
Posted by Aban Rune (Member # 226) on :
Hopefully Ra's appearance will be creepier than it seems to be in the promo photos already out.
I should really go back and watch the movie again.
Posted by Mark Nguyen (Member # 469) on :
Lighting does wonders. I expect that Ra will be just as eerily spooky as before.
Also, in the movie, when Ra's mask retracts, it actually MORPHS into his face as well as moving around behind his neck. He covers up in style, he does.
Mark
Posted by Jason Abbadon (Member # 882) on :
Not that that's ever made any sense...
Posted by Aban Rune (Member # 226) on :
Did we ever get an explanation as to why Ra didn't have any Jaffa during the movie? Jack acknowledges that the guards he fought weren't Jaffa (in other words, he didn't see any slits in their tummies), but do we ever get an explanation as to why regular humans were serving as Ra's guards instead of Jaffa?
Posted by Jason Abbadon (Member # 882) on :
Mabye early Jaffa were respoinsible for the revolt on Earth and Ra (wisely) learned his lesson whereas the other "gods" did not.
Posted by Mark Nguyen (Member # 469) on :
The obvious answer was that the whole Goa'uld / Jaffa / Unas thing had nothing to do with the original film.
In the original film continuity, Devlin and Emmerich wanted Ra to be a unique alien being, the last of his kind, who took over the body of a pre-Egyptian boy and maintained it via his sarcophagus. He then created the whole Egyptian mythology with himself as its supreme God, and with a succession of regular humans portraying the other "lesser gods" through the millenia. In the film, his two chief henchmen were Horus and Anubis - in this case, two humans PORTRAYING the roles of Horus and Anubis (and Horus having a bunch of "Horus guards" as the movie's handful of stormtroopers). In the movie novel series, Jack O'Neil (one L) and Daniel Jackson team up to fight Hathor, another human among many who'd been portraying the role of the Goddess, when she claims Ra's technology for her own.
The series tosses all of this out of coruse, giving us the Goa'uld System Lords and their armies of Jaffa. I think we're MEANT to reconcile the two by believing that Horus and Anubis actually WERE Jaffa, probably his first prime(s). The fact we didn't see any gold on their foreheads or an "X" on their bellies was... Uh... A trick of the light. As for why there were so few of them in the first place, Abydos was a conquered world held in fear for centuries and with no means to fight back. Ra wouldn't NEED a Ha'tak full of troops to simply pick up a mining shipment of naquadah; for that matter, he wouldn't need a Ha'tak either, and thus explains why he came in his fancier, open-air, and much smaller ship.
This leaves us to wonder why he even went to Abydos in the first place. I guess that just like all Goa'uld, he just liked thousands of people worshipping him as a God, and Abydos was on the list of his "Great Big Galactic Divinity Worship Tour 1996".
Mark
Posted by Aban Rune (Member # 226) on :
Right. I realize the differences between movie and series continuity, but Jack mentions in the pilot that Ra's guards were different than Teal'c and the other Jaffa. So Ra's guards really were Human, even in the series continuity.
Posted by Mark Nguyen (Member # 469) on :
Man, I'm really getting rusty on my earlier seasons. The whole Horus guard thing from "Forever in a Day" thing (which I re-watched yesterday) was also correct; following the (first) fall of Apophis, Amonet went into the service of Heru'ur, and used her influence as a Goa'uld queen to hide the Harcesis.
Okay, so we ARE left with human-looking guards around Ra. No clue on this one... Maybe Ra, while on his Great Big Galactic Divinity Worship Tour 1996, decided to take along some new servants along with him. Or his regular Jaffa were having a tummyache. Or were being punished. We've seen that the Goa'uld queens have the technology to "create" a symbiote pouch on regular humans...
Mark
Posted by Aban Rune (Member # 226) on :
I'm going to guess that there's some story behind how these two regular humans became Ra's chief warriors, and that all of their underlings were actually Jaffa. Jack just never got an up-close like look at them. Though I will go back and watch the pilot again just to make sure I've got his comment right.
Perhaps Ra didn't want other Goa'uld, even developing symbiants, that close to him.
Posted by Jason Abbadon (Member # 882) on :
Or Ra was actually somewhat diffrent than the other system lords: thus the whole fear of this little sissy-looking, soft spoken kid and his lil grey alien alternate apearance.
Mabye he was some sort of "king" or elder Goa'uld that made the wormy kind of symbiotes as a way to preserve some of his dying race's genetic material...
Thus explaining that whole Lovecraftian "racial memory" the worms posess.
It would be cool if one of these alternate realities turns out to be the film version. A Kurt Russell cameo would rock.
Posted by Mark Nguyen (Member # 469) on :
Not gonna happen. However, Russel DID visit the set of SG-1 once, a few years ago, while filming something else in Vancouver.
It's also possible that Anubis and Horus from the movie WERE Goa'uld. They can't ALL be lords of some domain, so maybe those two guys were minor Goa'uld serving as Ra's top fighters. I don't think their names were ever spoken in dialogue (expect possibly as some of the ancient Egyptian gobbledygook), so that could be overlooked at least. Despite the Goa'uld desire to fight and kill each other, this is not without precedent - Apophis briefly served as first prime to Bynar, albeit in disguise.
Mark
Posted by Jason Abbadon (Member # 882) on :
PIctures TNG's Bynars with that goofy deep Goa'uld voice and glowy eyes.
(Chuckles)
Posted by TSN (Member # 31) on :
Considering that Ra is meant to have been the undisputed top System Lord of his time, I'd say it's quite likely that he had full-grown Goa'uld as servants, rather than Jaffa. After all, we know there ought to be plenty of Goa'ulds out there, but we only see the occasional System Lord.
Posted by B.J. (Member # 858) on :
As another example, Osiris had to serve another Goa'uld for a while (can't remember his name), who was in turn serving Anubis.
Posted by Aban Rune (Member # 226) on :
Zipacna. (SP?) Or Zippy if you prefer.
Posted by Mark Nguyen (Member # 469) on :
Actually, I was mostly talking about Goa'uld in a fighting role - which Apophis was doing as first prime. For the most part, minor Goa'uld like Zipacna, Tanith, Moloc, and Bynar tend to be lords over smaller planets or with some technical responsibilities under a System Lord. Ra's two main cronies could easily be full Goa'uld. They just didn't make their eyes glow.
Mark
Posted by Jason Abbadon (Member # 882) on :
Not that theye is any way a worm could make a human's eyes physically glow that way...
Unnless it's the naqueda the system lords infuse into themselves to make the palm weapon functon...
Hmmmm..you'd think they would blow up real good if hit weith an energy weapon.
Posted by Sol System (Member # 30) on :
The eyes glow whenever the Goa'uld seems to be exerting or reveling in its power. Like, hey, look at me. I've always assumed the glowing eyes was the result of some chemical the symbiote was excreting/injecting into the host, which happened to be bioluminescent when hit by, you know, Goa'uld endorphins. They seem to be able to control themselves when they're trying to be sneaky, so it wouldn't be something that would be selected against, in terms of their evolution, and it probably helps keep the proles scared and in line.
Posted by Neutron_Bomb (Member # 1471) on :
thanks all. I'm glad to hear Ra's returning , no other Goa'uld has quite measured up to him since the movie. And cheers for teaching me not to spell Goa'uld as Gould.
Posted by Topher (Member # 71) on :
Gould is just how Jack and Hammond say Goa'uld.
Posted by Aban Rune (Member # 226) on :
That's not as bad as the occasional guest star who says it "gowld" or "go-Ald".
You'd think they'd go over pronunciation with the guest actors. It's like Picard saying "buh-jor' " in "Emissary" instead of "Bay'-jor".
Posted by Jason Abbadon (Member # 882) on :
Mabye diffrent provinces of Bajor use accents and Picard had only met Bajorans with the accent.
You know...like Picard's french accent. Posted by Mark Nguyen (Member # 469) on :
The producers have occasionally mentioned that it's the accent thing - and that they at least try to keep the Goa'uld and Jaffa actors pronouncing it correctly. It's the same in-joke reason that everyone pronounces Jaffa correctly (jah-FAH), EXCEPT for Jack, who sticks to JAH-fah (as in the cakes, which we think is deliberate).
Mark
Posted by Hobbes (Member # 138) on :
The only way I can think of tieing the movie and series together.
Ra was always Ra, he didn't change his name to fit in with Egyption mythology, mythology was based off the System Lords. Ra was the first to find Earth, the Goa'uld's host species were going extinct so finding Earth was like going to an all you can eat buffet. The other Goa'uld promised to serve him in exchange for a human host thus elevating him to the supreme System Lord. This balance of power remained stable until Ra's death.
Posted by Aban Rune (Member # 226) on :
Makes sense. I think the series kind of goes back and forth on which came first, the Goa'uld or the Egyptian mythology.
Sokar impersonated an existing character from religion, but it seems that other Goa'uld have inserted themselves into mythology.
Yu Wang Shang Ti was an Emperor of China (according to Daniel), so it's likely that he established a religion of sorts rather than co-opting one.
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