posted
And here I was expecting another one of your typical sci-fi loop shows.
As it turns out, Destiny can somehow evaluate the psyche of the crew and determine who is best to lead the ship. That is, when its on autopilot. Rush was able to override everything and send the ship on its merry way. The people that Rush are seeing are now more likely to be projections by the ship and not his subconcious. Maybe Franklin actually is still alive somewhere in the ship.
Also, Eli scores.
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Daniel Butler
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Yeah. Ghin is hot. Go Eli. Oh, yeah, her personality is great too, I'm sure.
Maybe the ship can advise Rush but it can't override him as he's the one who's got physical control of the ship (the code and punching stuff on the bridge consoles). I'd think it probably wants Rush to tell everyone else but it can only try to persuade him with words.
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I like how Destiny has from the get-go been portrayed as sentient (and perhaps sapient) without actually giving down the HAL 9000 route of giving it a personality.
One has to wonder though if the ancients stopped making ships like this for a reason. After all, Atlantis didn't have an conscious computer system, nor did any of the Auroras.
quote:Originally posted by Reverend: One has to wonder though if the ancients stopped making ships like this for a reason. After all, Atlantis didn't have an conscious computer system, nor did any of the Auroras.
I was wondering about that too. Yet more Ancient technology that caused more trouble than it was worth.
I had a great idea after I watched this show... what if Destiny is letting Rush THINK he's got control of the ship, but he really doesn't? That is, he's pushing buttons on the bridge, and maybe some of the things he's doing have effect, but the ship is still operating on its own.
Also, go Eli! It's about time he gets some action. It was hilarious watching Greer be his wingman.
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Daniel Butler
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Yeah, that was well-acted. Nice to see him doing something more than glowering and holding a weapon menacingly.
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Yeah, it's odd but I like that Greer actually likes Eli while Scott just seems to tolerate him because he feels the need to be Mr. Nice Guy all the time. Speaking of which, it was nice to see Scott (almost) grow a pair. Hard to believe this is the same officer who practically lost bladder control while attempting to tough talk everyone in the first episode. Seriously, how did this guy get to be an Airforce Lieutenant? Here I thought our military was the one full of the Ruperts.
As for the ancient tech, one of the advantages of the fuzzy timeline is that there's plenty of room for the Ancients/Alterans to undergo massive and dramatic pendulum swings in their civilisation's social and technological history to account for just about any apparent incongruity.
All we really know is that they left the Ori "millions of years ago", arrived in this galaxy "millions of years ago", first visited Earth "millions of years ago", launched Destiny "millions of years ago" and took off with Atlantis to escape the plague "millions of years ago". Any one or all of those events could have taken place years, decades, centuries, millennia, hundred of thousands or even a million years apart.
posted
Something that makes me wonder about the Ancients is that, for a civilization that spanned millions of years, you would think that eventually they'd evolve into a form that wouldn't outwardly resemble humans. More like Asgard or something.
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Daniel Butler
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Maybe they liked their form for aesthetic reasons and so took steps to retain that form (they probably had genetic manipulation technology superior to the Asgard, since they seemed to have superior technology to everyone else, at least by the time they built the City-ships). Also, bit of a nit to pick, didn't they launch Destiny "hundreds" of millions of years ago? That's definitely older than anything else they built, but Atlantis was breaking down after a measly ten thousand years...then again, the Ancients seemed to have some of that Stone Tech stuff that lasted millions of years long before they built snazzy City-ships and Aurora class warships with glowy screens and breakable furniture.
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No, some of the lines said Destiny was launched hundreds of THOUSANDS of years ago. I guess that was a mistake.
Also, I hardly think Atlantis was falling apart. It was in perfect condition if not for the lack of power. And Atlantis and Destiny use two different power systems. Since the city was designed to always be inhabited, there would be no need for a renewable energy source like on Destiny.
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According to background info from the creators Destiny is about 60 million years old. I also recall an offhand from a recent episode comment about the ship being able to travel through both time and space, or something to that effect.
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quote:Originally posted by MinutiaeMan: No, some of the lines said Destiny was launched hundreds of THOUSANDS of years ago. I guess that was a mistake.
Also, I hardly think Atlantis was falling apart. It was in perfect condition if not for the lack of power. And Atlantis and Destiny use two different power systems. Since the city was designed to always be inhabited, there would be no need for a renewable energy source like on Destiny.
Yeah, the only damage Atlantis really suffered was a result of the shield intentionally sacrificing certain areas to the sea to maintain pressure around the central tower. Probably the only reason Destiny is still going at all is because it was specifically designed to be able to recharge itself.
As for it's age, yeah I think Rush said "hundreds of thousands of years" in the first episode, which while probably an error on the writer's part (or an underestimation on Rush's) the statement is still technically correct, if a little misleading.
As for the Ancients' form; as I understand it, evolution is for the most part an adaptive response to environment. So if the climate shifts towards colder weather, those with random genetic mutations (like thicker fur or greater body fat) that allow for a better chance of survival will do so and pass on those favourable genes while those that can't, won't and so they die without passing on those genes and so gradually, by inches a species changes over time. Given that, when an organism like ours reaches a point where it starts to use tools and thus artificially manipulate it's environment to suit what it's already accustomed to (like building a hut and making clothes to keep warm) then, with the environment conquered there's nothing left to adapt to save perhaps tool use itself and natural evolution grinds to a crawl-if not a total halt-as it appears to have done with us over the last few hundred thousand years.
With that in mind, given that the ancients were masters of terraforming and artificial environments it's no wonder they hardly changed over the millions of years.
As for the Asgard, the way I took it, they changed so much not because of natural evolution but because of artificial evolution; generations upon generations of genetic "tinkering" to make themselves immune to disease and genetic aberrations that rendered them sterile and biologically stagnant, no longer able to go forward or go back. Combine that with an over-dependence on technology and it's no wonder they ended up how they did.
The Ancients appeared to have avoided that fate by taking the long road and not allowing themselves to become too cut off from their natural environments. After all, most stargates were found out in the open, not inside orbital habitats or hermetically sealed cities. They were a people that tried to find a balance between the natural and the artificial. They were willing to allow evolution to take the (very) long path with the Asgard apparantly sought to short cut it and ended up extinct before their time.
quote:Originally posted by Reverend: The Ancients appeared to have avoided that fate by taking the long road and not allowing themselves to become too cut off from their natural environments. After all, most stargates were found out in the open, not inside orbital habitats or hermetically sealed cities. They were a people that tried to find a balance between the natural and the artificial. They were willing to allow evolution to take the (very) long path with the Asgard apparantly sought to short cut it and ended up extinct before their time.
I think you just perfectly explained the differences between the Ancients, the Asgard, and the Nox. I doubt that's what the writers intended at all, but it makes perfect sense to me.
I guess that Fabrux was asking about why the Ancients might not have changed their appearance somewhat over the years, not radically like the Asgard, but in a way that at least indicates SOME sort of change. I kinda agree, in that sufficient internal evolution would likely create SOME sort of external physical difference. That being said, it doesn't have to be like that Farscape episode with the three versions of Crichton, either.
Stargate has been pretty consistent in suggesting that the Ancients' abilities came from their advanced mental capacity. It does seem strange that there wouldn't need to be a specific organ for, say, the healing touch or whatever, but as far as sci-fi logic goes, it makes sense.
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From what I recall, in the series' own internal logic the "powers" of the pre-ascended ancients were essentially an amplification of what was already there, which is how evolution works anyway. New jobs for old organs. Nothing is designed, it's just a series of ad-hoc, trial and error adaptations. That's how Nirrti was able to create her superfreaks and how the ancient archives were able to re-write O'Neill & McKay without any drastic anatomical alterations...OK Nirrti's lot were rather drastic, but then she didn't really know what she was doing.
Mind you, the fact that they did find ancient tech capable of DNA manipulation might suggest that at some point they did do at least some self improvements, or adjustments. Even so, they clearly didn't end up using it as a crutch the way the Asgard ultimately did.
As for the Nox...I never got whether they really were 24/7 nature lovers or was that one group down there for a visit. I mean they had a huge floating cite after all, so they were hardly technophobes. Also, nothing can account for the Furlings.
Daniel Butler
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Rev: That's the basics of evolution, yeah, but as far as I know, it's still pretty contentious exactly how evolution occurs, and it's well established that random mutations sometimes being beneficial are neither sufficient in theory nor the only way in actuality that changes accrue within species. I'm fairly sure it's mostly believed to be the *main* way, but not the only way, and I think a lot of biologists and so forth still argue over even that. So...I dunno...maybe they should still change? Or oh, wait, it's just a show
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Well "random mutation" can be a bit of a catch-all term for a number of causes of the genetic variation that drives evolution from background radiation exposure, viral infections, chemical mutagens and genuinely random errors is cell replication plus of course the result of sexual reproduction, with the varying degrees of inbreeding and inter-breeding re-enforcing dominant traits.
I don't think there's that much contention as to the basic mechanics, unless you're referring to the "old bearded bloke on a cloud" theory of evolution.
For anyone who has access to them, there's actually a fairly interesting sci-fi related discussion on the mechanics of evolution in one of the Babylon 5 short stories. Greg Keyes apparantly applied his degree in anthropology to the question of why a sapient telepath cannot naturally evolve and how the Vorlons got around it. It comes down to the same thing too. A race that becomes tool users cease to evolve and so can't develop telepathy while those that evolve psi ability first, have no need for tools and can (almost) never become sapient.
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