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-Rodney's calling it the McKay-Carter intergalactic gate bridge: 34 gates spanning the void, half each of Milky Way and Pagasus gates. Strangely though, they specifically mentioned needing to harvest space-based stargates to make this work. Have they retrofitted Milky Way gates with Pegasus gate station keepers and power systems? A Milky Way gate is useless without a DHD (or naquadah generator, or bolt of lightning), so SOME physical modification had to be done. Perhaps they were short on spare gates? Why is the Midway space station right in the middle? Sheppard activates the Milky Way gate with the Pegasus-style DHD in the PJ, so SOME modification must have been done on the insides as well.

-We were earlier wondering if they were limited only to puddle jumpers to get back and forth, which seemed to be the indication earlier - you'd slowly and tediously dial each gate as you go, popping in and out of sequential gates, and humping your way home. Now, we see that it's a true relay system, with only one stop in the middle as you transition from one gate system to another.

-3,000,000 ly / 34 gates = 88235 ly/gate. We've never really known the upper range limitation of a standard gate, but this is the first indication. I'd say that the upper range is around 100 to 110,000 ly, as the Milky Way galaxy is about 100,000 ly wide at the most.

-Actual transit time is a little over half an hour; to the traveller it's a slightly longer transit than usual (we've heard said that it's near instantaneous - the cool tunnel effects are mostly for our benefit).

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This was a great start to the season IMO, giving us a ton of new story points and introducing Carter (though not mentioning the Ori at all). Good character moments, especially between Shep and McKay, as well as Teyla, Ronon and Weir as they really can't do anything to help save the city. Additional notes:

-For taking a laser beam and exploding window to the face, Weir is looking remarkably intact.

-I think the doors ARE airtight... It would be silly for them not to be on a GIANT FLOATING CITY. Rather, those three guys were killed because EVERYTHING was shut down, including life support. The doors closed automatically, but the vents may not have - dialogue says that the city was purposefully decompressing.

-I haven't watched my new S3 DVDs yet - weren't they going to install an F-302 facility in the central tower too?

-I like the completed midway station, even if most of it is CGI and the only practical set was made partially out of the "earth ship" sets. I wonder if the gates have irises or force fields as protection? The graphics in the control room seem to suggest at least one of them does. Will they have a crew of marines there as they do at the SGC ready to take on anyone making it past that?

-Bill pukes into a bag, and the force of his barf leaving his stomach propels him to the ceiling. Nice touch on some otherwise simple weightless effects.

=They collapse the sheild to save power, but all the buildings outside the shield still have the lights on...

-After the teaser, Chuck (the Canadian gate dialler guy) disappears. He's suddenly replaced by a guy from China, who basically spouts the usual Chuck lines. Incidentally, the actor is Yee Jee Tso, who showed up in Daniel's imaginary psychotic future five years ago in "Absolute Power". You know, for a city which is about half Asian, Vancouver STILL has so few decent Asian actors that I can pick them out whenever I see them. I should move down there.

-Our real-life asteroid belt isn't that crowded, and logically no real belt should be. Almost EVERY SINGLE PROBE we've sent to Juptier and beyond has gone through the asteroid belt in pretty much a straight line without a problem. The one in this episode must be from a relatively new solar system, such that the asteroids are all still really close and pulverizing each other.

-It's a complete coincidence, but Family Guy also had an "Asteroids" reference this week. Or IS it a coincidence..?

-Yay! They mentioned Carson!

-I'm not sure whose spacesuits they've been renting for this episode... But I think it's from one of the recnt "Mars" specials we've seen. In any case, it's not the same suit that Cater was wearing during the battle with the Ori last year. In that one, they had her correctly wearing a suit that would be too heavy to wear in normal gravity.

-While Shep and Zelenka were on outside, some of the shots of them were reversed You can clearly see the text on Zelenka's suit is backwards.

-Hmm... They had some pretty significant damage to some of the towers, and no Replicators to fix it this time... I wonder if they're going to follow up on that.

-For a super-advanced metalic city, the destroyed tower sure had a concrete look about it - rebar and all.

-When Zelenka takes a rock through his leg, they don't patch it - instead, Shep dials up the pressure to compensate.

-Great follow-up last year's standalone episodes, witn Weir's deactivated nanites, and the brainy McKay's (McKayniac?) Hyperspace jumper. We'll see just how useful both are next week.

Mark
 

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Posted by Reverend (Member # 335) on :
 
Regarding the asteroid belt, remember that our own belt has had billions of years of Jupiter playing cosmic hoover and is relatively stable. As you say this one could be from a much younger, or indeed older system where the failed rocky planets are still in the process of breaking up.

As for the space suits, I thought they had previously used the ones left over from Deep Impact, perhaps they've finally bitten the bullet and built some of their own.I imagine once the Midway Station is online it will have it's own contingent of troops and techs and possibly a new Walter!
I was a little disappointed to see them using an SGC style dialling computer as I had sort of expected there to be the two DHDs sat next to each other, oh well.

I do wonder if the station will be expanded later in the show, given it's currently only a pressurised embarkation room with no visible external defences. I imagine it's ultimate fate (assuming they won't be blowing it up at some point) would be as Earth's first BIG space station, acting as a stop over point and docking facility for the BC-304s and eventually having it's own squadron of F-302s.
 

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Posted by Omega (Member # 91) on :
 
McKay's cliffhanger plan is insane and has no chance of success. Which is fine if it's your only option. But it's not. If you have a jumper that can get to a gate and perform two jumps, then why not use that gate to get near your ultimate destination planet, jump-gate-jump, and get Apollo to help? Hope they address why that won't work in the next ep.
 

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Posted by Daniel Butler (Member # 1689) on :
 
About the doors - I don't think they're airtight, because when the shield failed in Rising, the sections of the city with no shield were flooding. If the doors were airtight that wouldn't happen. In fact they wouldn't need the shield in the *first* place.
 

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Posted by Reverend (Member # 335) on :
 
There's a difference between being airtight and invulnerable to massive amounts of pressure.
 

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Posted by Daniel Butler (Member # 1689) on :
 
Maybe I just tend to overestimate Ancient tech...I would have figured if they're gonna build a city ship, they'd make it, you know, not gossamer fragile...
 

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Posted by Sol System (Member # 30) on :
 
Why would you bother building up the midway station? (The Midway Station?) It is, literally, in the middle of nowhere, and exists just to let one walk from one gate to the other. (Also, if you could easily send a whole fleet there, then you wouldn't really need to, would you?)
 

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Posted by Reverend (Member # 335) on :
 
You mean aside from it being a vulnerable tin can, in a strategically important position AND the logical fall-back position for the Pegasus expedition?

No reason.
 

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Posted by Mark Nguyen (Member # 469) on :
 
If you think about it, you can basically use Midway to access ANY POINT in either the Milky Way OR Pegasus within fifteen minutes. In practice though, it's not like even a significant military force could DO anything there, as anything more than people would take ten days to get to either end via hyperdrive. It's MUCH closer for a base or ship stationed in that galaxy (and they have three now - a fourth should be available by the end of the season, if they're still building them at the same rate).

Should it be defended on the exterior? Sure. But The list of people who can even GET there by ship is terribly small. I'd rather build more Earth ships at this point, and defend Midway JUST enough that any attacking force can be held at bay long enough for people to evacuate to one galaxy, disable the gate bridge, and destroy the station. Human starships (until Odyssey) regularly get their asses kicked - I wouldn't be confident that they'd be able to defend for long against any existing enemy for too long if they sent more than a couple ships of a given force that could reach the station.

As it's been pointed out, Midway could serve as a useful refueling or re-arming point for starships passing by, and as a fallback point if Atlantis had to be evacuated again. But if an extended military campaign in Pegasus were to be mounted, it would make more sense to put a base IN that galaxy, like they do with the Alpha Sites, and allow instantaneous access to the gates as well as the gate bridge.

Mark
 

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Posted by Reverend (Member # 335) on :
 
Maybe I heard wrong, but I'm pretty sure you can't, or not supposed to be able to dial just any old gate address in either network, it's purposely meant to be a bridge from SGC to Atlantis as it's off the normal grid. Something about macros, I think and only Carter & McKay are smart enough to rewrite them.

Even so, if dialling anywhere in both network from Midway becomes common practice, that makes it even more strategically important.

As for expanding the station; if it's going to be manned 24/7 then it's going to need facilities anyway. Which means barracks, an armoury, etc. There's also the possibility it will be used for scientific purposes, for starters it has a unique view of the milkyway galaxy which I'm sure the astronomers and astrophysicists are going to love.

Like I said, I can see the role of Midway expanding quite a bit beyond just a waystation.
 

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Posted by Daniel Butler (Member # 1689) on :
 
Did they not dial from the SGC to another planet in Pegasus in Season 3, for an unauthorized mission to retake Atlantis from the Asurans? Through the station, I mean.

And I think the macros are just to instruct the gates along the bridge to forward your matter stream to the next gate instead of dumping you out in the middle of space. (I hope it's more stable than consumer software....
 

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Posted by Sol System (Member # 30) on :
 
In addition to what Mark said, which is what I was thinking, if the Wraith knew where the station was, and could get all the way out there to attack, what prevents them from traveling the rest of the way to the Milky Way? So yeah, defend it as a strategic link, even though the travel time by ship really doesn't seem like such a big deal. But the station itself doesn't offer advantages in defending Earth from a Wraith invasion by ship.
 

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Posted by Reverend (Member # 335) on :
 
As I recall they gated to Midway from SGC then had to [insert Mckay rant here] in order to gate to somewhere other than Atlantis. Point is, it wasn't meant to be used that way.

As for defending the station, the point isn't to defend earth, it's to defend the station and the bridge as a military asset. At the very least give the thing a cloak.
 

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Posted by Mark Nguyen (Member # 469) on :
 
402 answers some questions raised here about the gate bridge. But I'll keep my trap shut until that episode airs properly.

Mark
 

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Posted by MinutiaeMan (Member # 444) on :
 
I'm kinda wondering how you manage to dial IN to Midway Station from just any old location. Is it just a matter of knowing the address at the start of the link, and you get automatically forwarded from there?

As far as the instant communication from the Apollo is concerned, I'd be willing to accept an offscreen upgrade to the system. We've seen simultaneous activations of gates at various times in the past. Although... in this case, each gate would have to be making simultaneous incoming and outgoing connections in order to maintain its part of the link. That doesn't seem at all consistent with anything we've seen in Stargate previously. I think it's a goof.

Finally, I don't buy McKay's objection about the city moving too fast to be able to use a gate address. I know we still don't know a lot about how the address system works, but unless the city were moving at a ridiculous proportion of light speed, there's no way they would be moving so fast as to be hopping between solar systems. Because it's generally been one gate address per solar system, right?
 

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Posted by Mark Nguyen (Member # 469) on :
 
We've seen evidence that one system can have multiple gate on separate planets, one each. The gate addresses seen in this episode had several common symbols, too.

Mark
 

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Posted by B.J. (Member # 858) on :
 

quote:

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Originally posted by MinutiaeMan:
As far as the instant communication from the Apollo is concerned, I'd be willing to accept an offscreen upgrade to the system. We've seen simultaneous activations of gates at various times in the past. Although... in this case, each gate would have to be making simultaneous incoming and outgoing connections in order to maintain its part of the link. That doesn't seem at all consistent with anything we've seen in Stargate previously. I think it's a goof.

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Hmmm.... Maybe it only works for communications, and not for solid objects? Besides, the whole "gate forwarding" bit to get them to & from Midway isn't consistent with anything we've seen before, I think. We've never seen a gate hold an incoming pattern and forward it onto another gate before this setup, have we?
 

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Posted by MinutiaeMan (Member # 444) on :
 
No, we haven't seen forwarding per se. But we know the gate has a buffer ( from "48 Hours") so all it would have taken is a basic reprogramming.
 

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Posted by Daniel Butler (Member # 1689) on :
 
Which is exactly what they say it *is* Remember, the Tau'ri are understanding more and more about the gate system. This isn't something the gates were necessarily DESIGNED to do, but any good hacker will tell you that doesn't mean they're not capable of it
 

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Posted by Omega (Member # 91) on :
 
Didn't SG-1 get forwarded to another planet when they tried to dial the world where Anubis had cloned himself?
 

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Posted by AndrewR (Member # 44) on :
 

quote:

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Originally posted by Mark Nguyen:
We've seen evidence that one system can have multiple gate on separate planets, one each. The gate addresses seen in this episode had several common symbols, too.

Mark

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Really? When?? I think the only time we've seen a 'connection' between two close planets is 1. In Jolinar's Memories/The Devil You Know - which was a ring system between Sokar's planet and the prison planet, and in "Paradise Lost" - and that was a Furling contraption that sent O'Neil and Maybourne to that moon.

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quote:

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As far as the instant communication from the Apollo is concerned, I'd be willing to accept an offscreen upgrade to the system. We've seen simultaneous activations of gates at various times in the past. Although... in this case, each gate would have to be making simultaneous incoming and outgoing connections in order to maintain its part of the link. That doesn't seem at all consistent with anything we've seen in Stargate previously. I think it's a goof.

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I've had a thought about the stargates themselves, and that their mechanics manipulate time in some way. As we see at destination gates the Chevrons lighting up BEFORE the wormhole connects. So perhaps when the wormhole connects, the destination gate sends the information about what chervon's were pressed and when, to itself in the past.

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