posted
The DHD seems pretty frail when you consider the virtually indestructable nature of the gate itself. Mabye they arent original parts but are something the G'auld made.
-------------------- Justice inclines her scales so that wisdom comes at the price of suffering. -Aeschylus, Agamemnon
Registered: Aug 2002
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posted
Considering the Gates in the Pegasus Galaxy in the new series also have DHDs of a sort, I'm guessing they're Ancient technology like the Gates themselves.
Though, it doesn't seem very smart to have a nigh-invulnerable Gate with a control system that can be disabled with a swift kick. Perhaps the invulnerability of the Gate is just a byproduct of the type of material it had to be made of in order to channel the power needed to make it work. Or perhaps thre Ancients had other means of controling the Gate system in addition to the DHDs. We've seen Gates activated by "wireless" means before.
Registered: Oct 1999
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posted
Whenever they need to do something "technical", the gate has always been a black box - you can't open it up and look inside or modify it (the iris is an external modification, for example). The DHD is essentially the terminal to change and modify gate stuff, so it kinda follows that it would be more fragile than the gate itself. The gate can dial without a DHD or computer - all it needs is enough power to unlock the inner ring which you can dial in manually from there.
Essentially, the DHD is a remote control to the "TV" of the gate. We've seen at least four different kinds of remotes, too - the Earthside computers, the DHD, a wrist activator some more advanced people use (which omits the usual "kawoosh"), and some more advanced mental or telekinetic control that we've seen the Nox use. In any case, you can break the remote easier than you can break the TV.
posted
Interestingly enough, the Goa'uld must have some kind of portable, remote Gate control, because Apophys' posse dials back to Chulack from the SGC after abducting the Airforce sergent at the beginning of "Children of the Gods".
It didn't show them dial, but they couldn't have used the SGC's computer to do it.
Registered: Oct 1999
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posted
Yep, the writers have said that he probably had a "quick return" device he scooped from somewhere. The Goa'uld are mostly parasitical, and they rarely invent their own technology - rarer still when it comes to gate travel. At least until Anubis came along, anyway.
"...a wrist activator some more advanced people use (which omits the usual "kawoosh")..."
Isn't that caused by the opening of the wormhole, though? I wouldn't think it should be avoidable, regardless of what device you use to tell the gate to start spinning.
Registered: Mar 1999
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Cartman
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"The gate can dial without a DHD or computer..."
Which is pretty strange when you think about it. The Ancients go through all this trouble to make the gate network as user-friendly and idiot-proof as possible by implementing a billion elaborate safety protocols in their uber-advanced remote control devices, but they also install a crude secondary dialing mechanism in the gates themselves that disregards all of those measures and has *zero* safeguards against fragging you wholesale...
Registered: Nov 1999
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Aban: Dude, you're behind! That's five seasons of DVD gold to catch up on!
TSN: The Nox can activate the stargate by waving their hands around. The wormhole appears as a wave, with no "kawoosh" (this is a term used by the production team, BTW). The "kawoosh" is NOT part of the wormhole forming, as we know the wormhole can open while the iris is closed. Most people believe that the "kawoosh" is part of a gate mechanism to clear the way of anything passing through the wormhole, like snow, ice, rock, etc. Since the target is reconstituted AT the event horizon, it makes sense that it should be able to pass into normal space with nothing blocking it. In "1969", the future sees humans able to do the same opening effect with a wrist-device. These people, being as cool as they are, already KNOW that the destination is safe, and thus overrode the "kawoosh".
Cartman: Continuing the remote control analogy, if your remote's broken or missing, you can still walk over tot he TV and hit the on switch and select the channel yourself. The DHD is basically a shortcut to do the same thing faster, plus play with the tint, color and sharpness. Then there's the satellite box that O'Neil can build that takes you to a whole other galaxy.
posted
Well, it's a surefire way of making sure that primitives don't figure the whole thing out too early, right?
Besides, seeing as how the gates can accept incoming travelers without a DHD or computer input, it seems fairly logical that it can dial out that way too.
-------------------- “Those people who think they know everything are a great annoyance to those of us who do.” — Isaac Asimov Star Trek Minutiae | Memory Alpha
Registered: Nov 2000
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Cartman
just made by the Presbyterian Church
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Yes, but if my remote breaks and I tune the TV manually, my atoms aren't in danger of being smeared out across ten solar systems, whereas if I step into a gate I've just dialed with my bare hands and don't know what error codes its DHD would have returned for that address, they very well might be. B)
Registered: Nov 1999
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posted
You're right - you're in danger of watching Friends. What I'm trying to say that as on a TV, if you want to go from channel 3 to channel 143, you're stuck in front of the TV for a while pressing the "up" button. With your remote, you're three button pushes away.
Actually, I think the gate's usual safety features STAY in effect and must be overridden. For example, the Alpha gate didn't work because it was disconnected from its DHD for thousands of years and couldn't be "updated" by the network to account for stellar drift. Then, in "Red Sky" the gang overrode the gate's safeties to travel, and THAT almost caused a star to die. If the gate returns an "error code", it will simply not engage.
Cartman
just made by the Presbyterian Church
Member # 256
posted
Ow, doh. For some wacky reason I thought it was the DHD that prevented a gate from establishing an unsafe wormhole (and I'd forgotten all about Red Sky to boot). Thanks for kawooshing a gate-sized hole in that theory. B)
Registered: Nov 1999
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