Franchise / Stargate-verse

Earth's Stargate.

"Stargate!
It's a crazy trip!
You can go quite far
and you don't need a car
Or even a ship!"

— The writers of Stargate SG-1, singing the theme tune

To most of the Earth-bound humans in it, the Stargate-verse is indistinguishable from the universe in which we viewers live. It's present-day, there isn't a whole lot of Applied Phlebotinum that you'd notice, and human history has unfolded just the way you remember, so far as you know. About the only difference is that there's about 80 billion dollars in the US military budget that no one can adequately account for. Oh, wait...

In fact, human history unfolded in a radically different way than they teach you in school. First, the pyramids were built by extraterrestrials.

Many millions of years ago, aliens that looked exactly like humans evolved elsewhere in the universe, advanced to a stunning level, filled the galaxy with really nifty Imported Alien Phlebotinum (not the least of which were the titular Stargates), and created the human race before buggering off to a higher plane of existence. Some time later, a race of parasitic aliens called the Goa'uld invaded Earth, built pyramids, inspired the various mythological gods, and created a human diaspora in order to serve them as slaves on other worlds, resulting in large populations of Homo sapiens throughout the galaxy.

Really, the defining element of the Stargate verse is the Stargates: a Portal Network allowing instantaneous travel between the various worlds. Upon finding Earth's long-lost Stargate, the US Military promptly went out into the universe, and, mostly through pluck and determination, set out to completely rewrite the status quo, despite the fact that the rest of the galaxy is a lot more advanced.

Fortunately, we're really good at it. So, as of 2010, while to most of the people on Earth, it does not seem like anything interesting is going on, we actually have offworld colonies, two expeditions to distant galaxies, and five (intact) intergalactic starships (Daedalus, Apollo, Odyssey, George Hammond, and Sun-Tzu; two other starships, Prometheus (an older, intragalactic type) and Korolev, have been destroyed).

Works set in the Stargate verse include:

• Stargate (1994) - The movie that started it all.
• Stargate SG-1 (1997-2006) - A TV series based on the movie.
  • Stargate: The Ark of Truth (2008) - A direct-to-DVD sequel to SG-1 concluding the Ori arc.
  • Stargate: Continuum (2008) - Another direct-to-DVD movie centered around the former System Lord Ba'al and Time Travel.
• Stargate Infinity (2002-2003) - A non-canon Animated Adaptation.
• Stargate Atlantis (2004-2008) - A Spin-Off of SG-1 taking place in... yes, exactly there. It begins chronologically after the Season 8 premiere of SG-1.
• Stargate Universe (2009-2011) - A continuation of the universe with a whole new cast trapped aboard an ancient spaceship.
• Stargate Origins (2018) - A Prequel series following Catherine Langford, the daughter of the archaeologist who discovered the original Stargate.

Audio Plays

• Big Finish audio plays, which can no longer be purchased from the official websites individually due to rights issues, only being available in bundled collections of each "series". These collections were made available for download only in 2022.
  • Stargate SG-1: Gift of the Gods (2008)
  • Stargate Atlantis: A Necessary Evil (2008)
  • Stargate SG-1: Shell Game (2008)
  • Stargate Atlantis: Perchance to Dream (2008)
  • Stargate SG-1: Savarna (2008)
  • Stargate Atlantis: Zero Point (2008)
  • Stargate SG-1: First Prime (2009)
  • Stargate Atlantis: Impressions (2009)
  • Stargate SG-1: Pathogen (2009)
  • Stargate Atlantis: The Kindness of Strangers (2009)
  • Stargate SG-1: Lines of Communication (2009)
  • Stargate Atlantis: Meltdown (2009)
  • Stargate SG-1: Half-Life (2012)
  • Stargate SG-1: An Eye for an Eye (2012)
  • Stargate SG-1: Infiltration (2012)
  • Stargate SG-1: Excision (2012)
  • Stargate SG-1: Duplicity (2012)
  • Stargate SG-1: Time's Wheel (2012)

Comic Books

• Entity Comics
  • Stargate (1996)
  • Stargate: Doomsday World (1996-1997)
  • Stargate: One Nation Under Ra (1997)
  • Stargate: Rebellion (1997)
  • Stargate: Underworld (1997)
• Avatar Press
  • Stargate SG-1: Convention Special (2003, 2004, 2006, 2007)
  • Stargate SG-1: P.O.W. (2003)
  • Stargate SG-1: Fall of Rome (2004)
  • Stargate SG-1: Aris Boch (2005)
  • Stargate SG-1: Daniel's Song (2005)
  • Stargate SG-1: Ra Reborn Prequel (2005)
  • Stargate Atlantis: Wraithfall (2006-2007)
• Dynamite Comics
  • Stargate: Vala Mal Doran (2010)
  • Stargate: Daniel Jackson (2010)
• American Mythology Productions
  • Stargate Atlantis: Back to Pegasus (2016)
  • Stargate Atlantis: Gateways (2016-2017)
  • Stargate Atlantis: Hearts & Minds (2017)
  • Stargate Universe: Back to Destiny (2017-2018)
  • Stargate Atlantis/Universe Anthology (2018)
  • Stargate Atlantis: Singularity (2018)
  • Stargate Atlantis/Universe Anthology Ongoing (2018-2019)

Literature

• Roc published a series novels based on the original film.
  • Stargate (1994) - Novelization of the film.
  • Stargate: Rebellion (1995)
  • Stargate: Retaliation (1996)
  • Stargate: Retribution (1997)
  • Stargate: Reconnaissance (1998)
  • Stargate: Resistance (1999)
• Roc then followed with a novels based on the TV series.
  • Stargate SG-1 (1998)
  • Stargate SG-1: The Price You Pay (1999)
  • Stargate SG-1: The First Amendment (2000)
  • Stargate SG-1: The Morpheus Factor (2001)
• Burgschmiet Verlag published a series of novels only officially released in German.
  • Stargate SG-1: Kinder der Götter (1999)
  • Stargate SG-1: Der Feind meines Feindes (1999)
  • Stargate SG-1: Kreuzwege der Zeit (2000)
  • Stargate SG-1: Jagd ins Ungewisse (2000)
  • Stargate SG-1: Unsichtbare Feinde (2001)
  • Stargate SG-1: Tödlicher Verrat (2001)
  • Stargate SG-1: Das Bündis (2002)
• Fandemonium published several novels based on the TV series

Tabletop Games

• Stargate: SG-1 Roleplaying Game (2003) - The Role-Playing Game published by Alderac Entertainment Group based on their Spycraft game.
• Stargate SG-1 (2004)
• Stargate Trading Card Game (2007)
• Stargate Roleplaying Game (2021) - The Role-Playing Game published by by Wyvern Gaming based on the Dungeons & Dragons 5th edition Open Gaming License.

Video Games

• Stargate (1994)
• Stargate Online Trading Card Game (2007)
• Stargate Resistance (2010)
• Stargate: Teal'c's Revenge (2012)
• Stargate SG-1: Unleashed (2013)
• ''Stargate: Timekeepers" (2024)

The Stargate 'verse is rare even in Science Fiction for having particularly cheap and easy interstellar (and later, intergalactic) travel.

The other defining element of the Stargate verse is that there are a lot of Godlike Aliens, representing a wide range of concepts of God, degrees of Godlikeness, and degrees of friendliness.

Another relatively unusual feature of the Verse is the scarcity of aliens: aliens do indeed exist, and the universe is teeming with life, but the entire population of the universe seems to consist of no more than two dozen or so distinct races, of which only three or four are ever central to the main plot at any given time.

Despite being one of the newer sci-fi franchises (compared to, y'know, the other franchises that start with "Star"), the Stargate verse is the third longest science fiction franchise in terms of hours. No single Trek series has more episodes than Stargate SG-1. It's a long way from either Doctor Who or the combined Star Trek franchise, but those have been around since The '60s, whereas the Stargate movie was released in 1994.

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Tropes of the Stargate Verse as a whole include:

• Alien Tropes: Being a franchise that involves going to ther planets, the Stargate-verse has a decent amount of alien species.
  • Humans, who — thanks to the diaspora — live everywhere in the Milky Way Galaxy. Those from Earth specifically are called the Tau'ri. Humans also inhabit the Pegasus Galaxy and the unnamed galaxy of the Ori due to being "seeded" through genetic engineering by the Ancients and Ori.
  • Goa'uld, a race of snakelike parasites who, until recently, ran most of the galaxy by pretending to be gods. Goa'uld require an individual of another species to host them in order to survive, and most Goa'uld take full control over their host. They steal technology, filling their "parasite" role in multiple ways. Most prominent is their sarcophagus technology, which they can use to heal themselves (or to bring their corpses back to life). Unfortunately, this rejuvenation process is part of what makes them so evil (as revealed when Daniel becomes addicted to using a sarcophagus... and his personality mirrors that of a Goa'uld).
    • Some Goa'uld, however, decided that this system of involuntary symbiosis was evil. They call themselves Tok'ra, which means "Against Ra" (who was the Goa'uld emperor at the time). Tok'ra live in voluntary symbiosis with their humanoid hosts. Usually. Also, they don't use the sarcophagus technology, believing it to be unnatural to prolong ones life in such a manner and that it damages the soul, hence why the Goa'uld are so evil. They do not take being called Goa'uld very well.
    • Jaffa, a human-descended race genetically modified by the Goa'uld to serve as their soldiers and as organic life support systems for juvenile Goa'uld. After the fall of the Goa'uld, the Jaffa attempt to form a democratic, egalitarian society despite the fact that their history consists entirely of killing one another over their masters' territorial disputes. It turns out to be about as difficult as you'd imagine.
  • Nox, an ancient and super-advanced race of peaceful tree-huggers who keep to themselves and live in seclusion, aided by the ability to render themselves and others invisible. It is likely that many of Earth's various legends of "The Little People" or "The Fair Folk" are actually about the Nox. They maintain an Actual Pacifist stance, refusing to defend themselves when threatened, (mostly because death is a minor inconvenience when you can resurrect the dead), although when pushed, they are perfectly capable of whisking away enemies back through the Stargate without their weapons. They were one of the Four Races, most likely The Heart of the group.
  • Asgard, an ancient and super-advanced race with the classic "gray alien" appearance, who inspired the Norse gods, and occasionally bail our sorry backsides out when we get in over our heads, now supposedly extinct, (although Atlantis revealed that more ruthless offshoot called the Vanir live in Pegasus). Unlike most such advanced species the Asgard have proved to be friendly, helpful, (as much as they can), and all things considered actually decent and polite as well, capable of acknowledging humanity's flaws compared to themselves, (and acknowledging where humanity can help them), without coming across as condescending and smugly superior. A member of the Four Races, acting as The Lancer to the Ancients.
  • Ancients, an ancient and super-advanced race who built the Stargates and Atlantis, then most died from a plague and others evolved into Energy Beings. Their society shakes down, so far as we know, into the "Alterans", the original parent race which built the gates, the "Lanteans", who moved to the Pegasus galaxy and did more or less the same thing, and the "Ori", their evil cousins, and final SG-1 Big Bad. Though we evolved separately, humans and ancients are more or less the same biological species, and most of the population of the Pegasus galaxy evolved similarly. They are also non-interfering to the extreme, to the point of seeming like total jerks. The Leader of the Four Races.
  • Furlings, an ancient and super-advanced race and member of the Four Races, who have, as yet, not bothered to actually show up. (A lampshade is hung in the episode "Citizen Joe", wherein one of Joe's readers is annoyed that he keeps mentioning them even though they never actually appear.) Although this may be because they are dead, since SG-1 did find a Furling colony once where they had created a paradise and lived in harmony with nature, until some plant that caused paranoia was introduced. The skeletons looked like short humans, although since they invited everyone to come join them, those skeletons might really have been human. Parodied, like many other things, in the SG-1 episode "200", where the Furlings finally appear... and their first on-screen action is having their planet blown up. It was just an Imagine Spot, though.
  • Unas, big, scary, humanoid and reptilian creatures, who were the common hosts of the Goa'uld before they encountered humans and subsequently abandoned as hosts, since while being stronger and more durable, humans regenerate more readily and have nimbler hands for tool use. They are believed to have evolved on the same planet as the Goa'uld, where they maintain a Stone Age tribal culture and level of technology.
  • Wraith, evil, powerful vampiric creatures. The result of unfortunate genetic crossover between humans and a really nasty life-sucking bug. All but defeated the Ancients in the Pegasus Galaxy.
  • Replicators, self-replicating Lego bugs (who later evolve into "liquid metal" human-form androids) whose ultimate goal is to consume all other civilizations in the universe, which makes them a major threat to pretty much all of the above. A different kind of Replicators, the human-form Asurans, who were made by the Ancients, inhabit the Pegasus galaxy and are pretty much as hostile as the Milky Way Lego bugs. The Replicators in the Milky Way were created by an android named Reese, whose "father" was likely also an Ancient, and learned to produce human-forms after studying her dead body.
  • Reetou are invisible creatures that seem to fill the role of "token insectoid life". As could be expected, they were attacked by the Goa'uld, who apparently developed (read: probably stole) a weapon that not only kills them, it also makes them visible. Most notable for genetically engineering a human being to act as a go-between when they decided to warn Earth about the Reetou Rebels, a group of Reetou who decided that they'd stop the Goa'uld by killing every life form in the galaxy that could possibly be used as a host. Unfortunately, the genetically engineered kid suffers from multiple congenital defects, and has to become a host for a Tok'ra in order to survive.
  • One minor race, the Serrakin, who appeared in just two episodes (SG-1 season 6's "The Forsaken" and season 7's "Space Race"). They are a vaguely lizard-like humanoid race who live in harmony (and interbreed) with a Celtic-descended human culture, whom they liberated from the Goa'uld millenia ago. In the present day, they have a highly industrialized and corporate-dominated society, with advanced technology and interstellar travel. It is unknown exactly how widespread they are, but they have clearly managed to avoid attracting sufficient attention for any Goa'uld system lords to attempt to reconquer them. Since they are humanoid aside from their skin, facial features and corrugated forehead, they count as Rubber-Forehead Aliens.
  • Another minor race is the Re'ol, who were seen for but a few moments in a single episode. They can generate a chemical which, when injected into humans, causes them to see the Re'ol as a human being, or whatever the Re'ol wants to be seen as. The single Re'ol to appear onscreen used this to get SG-1 to help it escape the Goa'uld, since it was afraid to ask. When it is seen, it looks like a skeleton with leathery gray skin stretched over it, more or less.
  • The Unity, a race of crystalline energy beings who only appeared in one episode.
  • The A't'trr, a Hive Mind race of microbes who only appeared in one episode.
  • The otherwise unnamed (in the episode at least) "GIANT ALIENS!" from the SG-1 episode "Crystal Skull." Not to be confused with the Indiana Jones movie of the same name. Almost nothing is known about the "GIANT ALIENS!" except that they are enemies of the Go'auld and live out of phase with the rest of the universe. Note: "GIANT ALIENS!" must be said with a Dutch accent for proper effect. Apparently, they're officially called the Omeyocan, but not only does that not show up in the one episode they appear in, saying "GIANT ALIENS!" is far more amusing and descriptive.
  • Then there's the unnamed "foothold aliens," a mildly humanoid, technologically advanced race that briefly conquered Stargate Command using devices that let each of them take on the appearance of a captured human individual. They were only seen in one episode, but their captured devices were used again later. It's not clear what these guys actually look like, as they seem to constantly wear armour or environment suits... unless that's just their normal appearance. For the record, the RPG calls them the Stragoth.
  • Oannes, aquatic humanoids who had visited Earth during Babylonian times appeared in one episode.
  • Another unnamed race of gill-faced humanoids possessed of shapeshifting and teleportation powers appeared as protectors to a dislocated tribe of Native Americans in one episode.
  • The Oranians are another type of Aliens in Rubber Suits, who are also vaguely reptilian. The species is primarily represented by the unscrupulous businessmen Jup and Tanat. If they are any indication, Oranians seem to be fairly hapless and stupid. When Tenat finds out that he has been tricked into firing on his commanding officer and is about to die, he delivers the hilarious Kirkesque line "Damn you Cam Mitchelllll!"
  • The sulphur based some what reptilian looking Gadmeer who make their appearance in season four's Scorched Earth. A milky way native, they were wiped out by a superior military power who may or may not be the Goa'uld. They created a large terraforming ship to recreate their society.
  • The silicon based Sekkari, who look somewhat like a cross between a skeleton and an anatomy model. Some tens of thousands of years prior, they realized they were going extinct, and spent the rest of their days creating over fifty seed carriers that would restart their evolution on new worlds in the Pegasus galaxy. The Atlantis personnel encountered the only still functioning device.
  • The Nakai, who are hunting after the protagonists of Universe. They are vaguely humanoid, but with catfish-like faces, and glow neon-blue. They possess advanced starship technology and even devices that allow them to communicate with humans telepathically, although understand English well enough to issue the demand to "Surrender" and taunt Destiny with "No Escape", after crossing into another Galaxy in pursuit of them. They appear to communicate to each other in the form of clicks and grunts.
  • Planet Builders, an extraordinarily advanced race of beings capable of creating entire star systems complete with fauna and flora. They can accomplish these feats in a minimum of 2000 years. The Destiny found one of their created star systems and many cre wished to stay but were overruled. Those who did stay died and later were resurrected and returned to Destiny(via unknown means) in perfect health along with their shuttle which was restored to perfect working condition. They were described by Eli as "the number one all-time advanced civilization" to Rush replied was an "understatement".
  • Ursini, about 1.2m (4') tall vaguely humanoid (seems like a recurring theme with advanced Stargate Universe aliens) brown-skinned insect-like aliens with whom the crew of Destiny have first encountered on a derelict stargate-seeding ship. They also possess advanced spaceships, stun guns and other pieces of advanced technology. Their language is as for now incomprehensible, though it remains to be seen whether they will learn English from Telford or not. They aren't particularly hostile, but the first contact didn't end on good terms due to difficulties communicating. They are probably waging a war with something else. As of "Deliverance," they're apparently extinct.
  • Berserker Drones, a type of mechanical drones that were created a long time ago for a war, with the unfortunately vague directions to "Destroy all advanced technology." This naturally backfired when their creators own technology advanced, causing the Drones to turn on them and wipe them out. Since then, their creations have been terrorizing their local galaxy, driving races like the Ursini to the point of extinction. Most of the final episodes of SGU deal with Destiny's desperate attempts to avoid them.
• Aliens Speaking English:
  • Notably averted in the original movie, where the Abydonians speak a derivative of ancient Egyptian.
  • Played straight thereafter in the derivative television series, which was eventually handwaved (by Word of God) with Translator Microbes in the form of an effect created by the stargates themselves.
• Apocalypse How: Between blowing up stargates (equivalent to a supervolcano), 100-plus gigaton nuclear weapons, planet smashing asteroids, and blowing up an entire solar system (at least twice!), you would think that there was a universe-wide unofficial contest going on for the most creative way to destroy everything.
• Artifact Collection Agency: The SGC fills this role, among others
• Auto-Doc: Sarcophagi have the power to heal any injury or illness and revive the dead multiple times.
• The Backwards Я: The series generally uses a symbol resembling Norwegian and Danish Å (without the crossbar) in place of A in the title. Står is Norwegian for "standing" and gåte means riddle.
• The Battlestar: For bonus points, the human battlecruisers even bear a passing resemblance to the Battlestar Galactica, with a hangar bay mounted on each side of the main hull. The similarities end there, however. The Goa'uld ships instead look like flying pyramids, and the Asgard ships look vaguely like giant hammers or axes. Other ship designs vary widely.
• Colonel Badass: The movie and SG-1 have Jack O'Neill. SG-1 later adds Samantha Carter and Cameron Mitchell. Atlantis has John Sheppard. Universe has Everett Young and David Telford.

• Depleted Phlebotinum Shells: As a minor Call-Back to the movie, by the beginning of SG-1's second season the SGC's strategic weapon of choice is a thermonuclear bomb enhanced with naquadah. By the final season, they've got bombs capable of destroying stargates. By Atlantis, they've developed the Horizon, a starship-deployed MIRV tipped with six 280-gigaton warheads. For reference, that's over 13 million times the yield of the bomb dropped on Hiroshima per warhead. We're talking a continent-buster.
  • Also the energy weapon the SGC developed in SG-1 season 7 to reliably kill Kull warriors.
• Elite Agents Above the Law: Defied. Despite the Secret Warfare nature of the stargate program and General Hammond having the President of the United States on speed dial (right below his own grandchildren), the SGC and related agencies such as NID are still very much subject to the normal US and eventually UN legal structures. There's repeated tangles with Congress over the budget (recurring antagonist Senator Kinsey originally gets read in because he was chairman of the Appropriations Committee at the time), and a couple of times, operators who went rogue end up with federal death sentences for offenses they legally aren't allowed to discuss because they happened on other planets.
• Eminently Enigmatic Race: the Furlings remain one of the most infuriating mysteries of the franchise to this day; they're believed to be a highly advanced species that were one of the legendary Four Races alongside the Ancients, the Asgard, and the Nox, but apart from that, nothing is known about them. In all the Stargate media, none of them have ever featured a single confirmed appearance by a Furling except in an Imagine Spot, during which they are depicted as a Higher-Tech Species of Ewoks who immediately get their planet blown up. For good measure, nobody's even sure if they're extinct or still out there somewhere.
• Fantastic Nirvana: Ascension is a classic pathway towards Ascending to a Higher Plane of Existence with a great deal of inspiration taken from Buddhism. Along with achieving Enlightenment Superpowers, the key to the process is elevating the mind, resolving the unfinished business tying you to the physical world, and achieving inner peace; achieving this state of mind will allow you to transcend physical existence and spend all eternity observing the universe as a godlike Energy Being. This usually takes years of introspection, but Daniel Jackson is able to fast-track the process on his deathbed with help from Oma Desala, allowing him to make peace with his life as it was and Ascend. Furthermore, numerous illicit shortcuts exist throughout the various series - hence why malevolent Ascended beings like Anubis and the Ori exist.
• Fantastic Rank System: The Goa'uld have the rank of First Prime, which is comparable to a Real Life Chief Master Sergeant (on the assumption that only the Goa'ulds are commissioned officer equivalents).
• Faster-Than-Light Travel: By stargate, which is nearly instantaneous regardless of distance, and by hyperspace, whose speed varies by faction.
• Genius Serum: There's an Ancient device which causes the subject to undergo changes towards ascension, increasing their intelligence and giving them psychic powers. It turned Daniel from someone who's already The Smart Guy to a cold, godlike super-genius who eventually becomes Drunk with Power. For Rodney McKay, it allowed him to make numerous improvements to Atlantis before he discovered that he would die if he didn't stop the process somehow.
• Genre Savvy: Unlike in many settings involving interplanetary travel and fantastical conflicts, almost all the protagonists in the Stargate verse are people from the modern Western world who are well aware that their daily life resembles science fiction. It shows: every series has at least one Deadpan Snarker, characters frequently lampshade bizarre events.
• Healing Serpent: Stargate SG-1 and its related series (Stargate Atlantis, Stargate Universe, Stargate Origins) give us a rare horrifying example in the form of the symbiotes, which look much like snakes when not in their host, of which there are two groups called the Goa'uld and the Tok'ra^note Though in the Tok'ra's defense, they try to not be horrifying.. Listed below are the different ways they qualify for healing aspect of this trope:
  • Adult symbiotes provide their hosts with a extended lifespan, a minor case of Super-Strength, a minor Healing Factor and a super immune system. Unfortunately the cost is having a Puppeteer Parasite^note The Tok'ra are a downplayed example though, they usually try to share the body with the host..
  • The Goa'uld created a Slave Race of Super Soldiers called the Jaffa that were genetically engineered so that their entire immune system is dependent on a larval Goa'uld symbiote^note The Jaffa eventually found a alternative in the form of a drug called "Tretonin". . The Goa'uld made the Jaffa that way to both keep their slaves under their thumb and to get incubators for their larva.
  • A invention of the Goa'uld is the sarcophagus, which was used to rapidly injuries and cure illnesses. Constant use of sarcophagus can reverse various genetic disorders, such as poor eyesight, extended one's lifespan^note Though if they have a symbiote they both become functionally immortal. and even revive the dead in some cases. Unfortunately, it can't fix various forms of brain damage, its use can become addictive, it can be used for Brainwashing and can cause psychological side effects when used regularly.
  • Tretonin is a drug originally made by a race called the Pangarans, by using Goa'uld larva that they were getting from a captive Goa'uld queen ^note It was later discovered that the Pangarans were accidentally using a Tok'ra queen.. The drug essentially grants the user perfect health at the cost of a suppressed immune system, which became a major problem when the Goa'uld queen began to die. The Tok'ra eventually came and helped create a antidote and even made a refined version of Tretonin for the Jaffa to help end their dependence of the Goa'uld.
• Humans Need Aliens: The Verse implies that the Ancients and the Asgard have protected us for a lot of our history in the hopes we would one day become the badass "Fifth Race"^note the first four being the Ancients, Asgard, Nox, and Furlings we have. Tragically we only earn that title when the Asgard are on their deathbeds, and so we have to take up their mantle as the intergalactic guardians of less developed peoples and planets. An exchange between Thor and Carter:
  Sam: "There must be something more you can do."
  Thor: "I assure you, we are providing you with all the latest Asgard technology, as well as a knowledge base, including our entire recorded history."
  Sam: "That's not what I was talking about."
  Thor: "Everything that can be done, has been done. The final attempt to solve our physiological degeneration has left each of us with a rapidly progressing disease."
• ISO Standard Human Spaceship:
  • The BC-303 Prometheus-class and BC-304 Daedalus-class battlecruisers are of the gray and boxy variety.
  • Even their F-302 space fighters eschew the graceful birdlike curves of the Goa'uld Death Gliders in favor of flat surfaces and sharp angles reminiscent of an Earth-born stealth fighter.
• Kinetic Weapons Are Just Better: With one exception (see We Will Use Lasers in the Future below), Earth firearms are favored over any of the Ray Guns favored by more advanced offworld cultures. SG-1's "The Warrior" specifically demonstrates the FN Herstal P90 to outperform the Goa'uld staff weapon in every area except ammunition capacity (the staff relies on a liquid naquadah power cell which is never once shown to run dry). The SGC's starships also follow this philosophy, with railguns as the primary weapon until the Asgard give them the sum total of their collected knowledge, including extremely powerful energy weapons, in the SG-1 finale. And even then, the Asgard plasma beams can't track small targets so the railguns are still used for point defense. In the case of the FN P90 v. staff weapon example, a rather justified point was made. Staff weapons were designed to terrorize and intimidate targets who were often unarmed or barely so, meaning that spray and pray tactics and lots of collateral damage were perfectly valid and acceptable. The P90 was designed as an actual weapon of war where the point was to kill a target, not scare it. Other tradeoffs in other weapons were similar justified — unreliable, difficult to use, or what have you.
  • The humans of Earth appear to have inherited this preference from the Ancients, whose main offensive technology was the drone weapon, essentially a souped-up space torpedo. The drones consistently prove themselves to be far more effective (and destructive) than just about any other civilization's weaponry.
• Loads and Loads of Races: Somewhere in the range of 24 known sapient species, many of which only appeared in one or two episodes.
• Medieval Stasis: Most of the Transplanted Human civilizations encountered in the series haven't advanced much, if at all since they were first seeded on that world, despite the fact that many have been left to their own devices by whoever seeded them for centuries or even millennia. However this varies: at least three planets in the Milky Way have technological parity with mainstream Earth society^note The Langarans are in the late '40s/early '50s, the Tegalans were probably 1970s until they self-destructed in "Ethon," and the planet visited in "Bad Guys" are probably mid-90s. and a few more are actually ahead of us (the big one being the Tollans, who were FTL-capable and had weapons tech superior to the Goa'uld). Justified because so many of these humans are living under Goa'uld, Wraith or Ori oppression, and even in those human communities that aren't under their thumb, these races tend to wipe out or enslave any civilization whose technological advancement might allow them to become a threat. The humans the SG teams encounter are either those that are left after that process, or ones like Earth that managed to escape notice.
• Mildly Military: All the television series set in the Stargate verse include active duty military characters, and all have a very loose approach to orders and discipline, but that has relatively rare and minor repercussions for them. In Universe and Atlantis, that's because the expeditions were cut off from Earth and fending for themselves (at first, at least). In SG-1, it's because the titular team is the best in their respective areas and in some cases outside the military chain of command entirely, so their bosses have no choice but to put up with insubordination, making them Bunny Ears Lawyers. The United States Air Force backed the show because they liked the portrayal of the military in it. When the Air Force Chief of Staff guest starred in one episode, Richard Dean Anderson took the opportunity to ask if he'd ever had to deal with any Air Force Colonels as bad as Jack O'Neill. The answer? "Worse." But when a guy's good enough at his job to make a rank like Colonel, some slack gets cut.
• Minovsky Physics: The stargates' "wormhole physics" are pretty consistent. Matter only goes one way (from dialing gate to receiving gate), but energy and gravity can go both ways. A gate can only stay open for 38 minutes (give or take a few seconds), barring extreme energy or Time Dilation effects on one end. Any matter that is caught in the vortex when the gate opens (or tries to travel from receiving gate to dialing gate) is disintegrated. Dialing six chevrons and the point of origin gets you to another gate in your galaxy. Dialing seven chevrons and the point of origin dials a gate to another galaxy ("dialing another area code" is the analogy). Dialing all nine chevrons targets a specific gate by its "serial number", for lack of a better term, instead of its location in space. Sending a wormhole past or through a star is a Very Bad Idea: it may cause problems for the star (e.g. retarding fusion), or if it happens during a solar flare, may cause the wormhole to travel through time as well as space.
  • It should be noted that as the 38-minute restriction on wormhole duration can be overcome by extreme energy, it's possible this is an engineering limitation of the gate itself rather than a physics thing.
  • The Stargate physics themselves also borrow from an element of real-world wormhole theory. The stable wormholes formed by the Gates are only really large enough for atoms/subatomic particles, as predicted by some interpretations of general relativity; the Gate acts more like a combination Star Trek transporter-wormhole. The transporter part dematerializes whatever goes through the Gate, and the resulting stream of atoms is what actually goes through the event horizon to the other Gate. This features in multiple episodes, between how a giant metal iris can stop most every weapon sent through a Gate, including nukes^note  the iris is barely a few microns above the event horizon, which prevents matter from being reconstructed, although nuclear blasts get absorbed by the Gate and lead to a building shake now and again. to a character being saved from a gate malfunction by being stored in the Gate's buffer.
• Named After Somebody Famous: Three of the later-built Daedalus-class battlecruisers. The Russian Air Force-crewed Korolev is named for Soviet-era rocket scientist Sergey Korolyov, while the Chinese-crewed Sun Tzu is named for pretty much whom you'd expect. The fourth American-crewed 304 is named after Lt. Gen. George S. Hammond, the SGC's founding general, who is Famed In-Story.
  • Theme Naming: The American-crewed vessels tend to be named after mythological figures. The exception being the aforementioned Hammond, which was originally called the Phoenix before being renamed in honour of the late general.
  • The Asgard eventually take to naming new ships after the members of SG-1.
• Nigh-Invulnerability: There are many examples of this trope - almost every category has an example:
  • Gods: The Ori and the Ancients. They're ascended beings from a higher dimension who are apparently immortal, omniscient and all-powerful, but the Ancients prefer not to mess with mortals unlike the openly evil Ori. They can wage war on each other and the Ori apparently need prayer, so they can be killed. SG-1 kills off all the ascended Ori with a superweapon at one point.
  • Divine Protection: Ori Priors are immune in this way because if necessary the Ori will interfere directly in the lower plane to protect them. They can also do this the other way around and kill a Prior who betrays them.
  • Made of Diamond: The Kull Warriors can walk away from anything up to a point-blank explosion. Only two things can reliably kill them: a weapon the SGC built using the technology the Kull were originally created with, and overexertion that strains their bodies beyond the point where their Goa'uld symbiote can keep them alive (the first one the SGC encounters conveniently dies of sudden cardiac arrest before it can kill Teal'c and Bra'tac).
  • Made of air: The Black Knights and the dragon in season 9, which are holographic and have to be worked around rather than fought directly.
  • The Blob: Human-form replicators are robotic regenerators made up of millions of smaller cells. Not even weapons fire can harm them, but there's another Ancient energy weapon which can — until they figure out an immunity.
  • Regeneration: The Wraith, the first Unas. The Wraith feed on lifeforce, so as long as they can continue to replenish themselves they are biologically immortal — sufficient gunfire can still take any Wraith down.
  • Can Only Kill Part Of Him: Anubis is a half-ascended Energy Being, something less than the Ancients but still effectively immortal. Destroying his physical container or his host only releases his essence, which is indestructible as it's only an avatar of his higher-dimensional form. The only way to positively kill him is by collective vote of the Ancients, which they refuse to do. Trapping him in eternal battle works too, although that technically only deactivates both him and his opponent.
  • Multiple Bodies: Ba'al and the Replicators. The normal spider-like Replicators are a Hive Mind, killing every last one is the only way to stop them or they'll just reproduce. Ba'al cloned himself numerous times over to where being killed more than twenty times onscreen didn't stop him. Both the final clone and the original were finally killed in Stargate: Continuum, although the host survives.
  • Extreme Luck: Apophis survived numerous brushes with death in the first four seasons, including repeatedly being tortured to death then resurrected by one of his enemies, only to end up with a larger army each time.
  • Resurrection: Daniel Jackson, while not actually invulnerable in any reliable or definitive way, has managed to recover from death on a frightening number of occasions, to the point where the fanon has him dying and recovering on an almost monthly basis. It's even lampshaded late in the show's run when it's clear Daniel could not have survived the attack on the enemy. Jack utterly refuses to mourn, search for him or believe he's never coming back and instead says that he expects to see Daniel drop in naked at any moment. Sure enough, Jack's right.
• No Such Agency: The SGC officially doesn't exist, though it was supposed to be revealed in the movie Revolution due partly to the number of people involved in the project making keeping the secret increasingly unwieldy. The failure of Stargate Universe and MGM's bankruptcy derailed the plan.
• Obfuscated Interface: Nearly all alien technology has interface displays in alien languages (e.g., Ancient, Goa'uld, Wraith, Asgard) that the good guys have conveniently learned to read. Crew members repair or disable ships by screwing around with luminous gems. Alien weapons such as hand devices may not even have an interface as we understand it. The stargate itself, at least, is a model of clarity; an astute viewer can even read off the gate codes^note At least on Earth, this is Justified by the USAF having to rig a custom interface because they couldn't find the actual interface, so they made a human-friendly makeshift one.. Alien super weapons tend to overwhelmingly consist of moving rocks. Strangely, all U.S. military weapons and equipment follow Viewer-Friendly Interface criteria, to the point where using the Earth Stargate or firing a missile from a converted alien jet involves a nice graphical program with animations.

• Panspermia: All human life in the Milky Way, Pegasus, and Ori galaxies was created by the extragalactic Advanced Ancient Human species that the Ancients and Ori belong to, using technology that forms the basis of the device on Dakara. Milky Way humans were initially native only to Earth; the Goa'uld started raiding Earth for slaves after the Ancients ascended.
• Phlebotinum-Handling Requirements: The Ancients designed a lot of their tech to require the ATA gene to use. The gene is recessive so it tends to get bred out of smaller populations, but Earth's is large enough to maintain it and the SGC eventually developed a procedure to add it to people who didn't have it.
• Pictorial Letter Substitution: The "A"s in "Stargate" are always rendered in the show's titles as the Ancient symbol "At" (A symbol resembling the Greek letter Λ; crowned by a small circle). Until the first one changes back to a plain ol' A.

• Pointless Doomsday Device: The Ancients built so many of these that they have their own folder on the trope page. Their tendency to leave them lying around is why they also have their own folder on the Neglectful Precursors page.
• Portal Network: SGU reveals it covers a sizable section of the visible universe.
• Precursors: The Stargate Verse is notable for its high number of precursors, featuring just about all the subtropes.
  • The Goa'uld and Wraith are Abusive Precursors. The Goa'uld kidnapped thousands of ancient humans from Earth and seeded the stars with us for use as slaves, turning others in to Jaffa to serve as warriors and walking incubators for their young. Meanwhile the Wraith think our life force is crunchy and good with ketchup.
    
    Topping them for abusiveness were the Ori, a race of ascended beings that act as gods to yet a third galaxy of humans and gain even more power through worship. The Ancients thought this was morally wrong and were banished. They spent the next several million years hiding the Milky Way and Pegasus galaxies from the Ori. Then the SGC goes and screws that up, setting up SG-1's postscript seasons.
  • The Asgard are Benevolent Precursors. The only thing keeping them from wiping out the Goa'uld on general principles is the fact that they can't spare the ships from their Forever War with the Replicators. As it is, they placed around two dozen worlds in the Milky Way under their protection and curbstomp any Goa'uld stupid enough to mess with said worlds. They act as SG-1's Big Good, adding Earth to the Protected Planets Treaty in season three and gradually introducing their technology to us so we can learn to use it safely.
    • The Oannes, the Furlings and the Nox (at the very least to the Tollan) also fall under this category. The former helped get Earth to rebel against the Goa'uld, and Word of God has it that the Furlings also fought them thousands of years ago.
  • The Ancients are the kings of the Neglectful Precursors trope, so much so that they've got their own folder on the trope page. They constantly left Pointless Doomsday Devices and other tech lying around, and their Alien Non-Interference Clause was such that they wouldn't intervene in the lower planes even to save their own asses. The conflicts of the first eight seasons of SG-1 and all five seasons of Atlantis are ultimately their fault (the Goa'uld learned all their tricks from the Ancients and the Wraith were accidentally created by them).
  • It's revealed later the Ancients found evidence of an even older species of Precursors then themselves or God whom left a pattern or message embedded within the Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation of the universe prior to the Big Bang and that they constructed Destiny to traverse the universe and gather the fragments of this pattern/message and reconstruct it so as to learn more the origin of the universe. The Destiny's current total amounted data on the pattern only appears as static.

• Present Day: Except for Stargate Infinity the shows lean on Like Reality, Unless Noted. Episodes are unless otherwise noted set in the year they aired.
• Pyramid Power: The Egyptian pyramids were built as landing pads for Goa'uld Cheops-class warships. The Goa'uld have since moved on from square-base pyramids to the triangle-based Ha'tak-class, but we've never seen any of them land.
• Ramming Always Works: It's telling that the preferred ship-to-ship weapon of the Ancients is a shield-piercing attack drone that kills by running into things very fast. Outside of Ancient drones, SG-1 and Universe usually subvert this, while Atlantis usually plays it straight. Justified by the fact that the hard(ish) sci-fi nature of the verse means that hull breaches of that scale are as bad as outright damage. The Destiny from Universe spent most of it's power on it's shields simply to keep it's numerous breaches sealed.
• Religious and Mythological Theme Naming: American-built starships are usually named after figures or stories from Greek Mythology not known to be Goa'uld. So far we have Prometheus, Daedalus, Apollo, and Odyssey. The fourth American Daedalus-class was supposed to be named Phoenix, but it was changed to George Hammond after the SGC's founding general.
• Remember When You Blew Up a Sun?: The Trope Namer.
• Retcon: The movie states Abydos to be in another galaxy, on the far side of the known universe from Earth. The series quietly changed this to Abydos being in our own galaxy, and the Stargate being able to connect to a different galaxy is presented as a huge deal when it first happens.
• Running Gag: The individual series have their own running gags, but there's one in particular that happens in both SG-1 and Atlantis repeatedly. One character starts to explain how they have to do something time-consuming and/or complicated to solve a problem, but another character (usually O'Neill in SG-1 and Ronon in Atlantis) takes out a gun or grenade and shoots the problem.
  • Repeated references/jokes to The Wizard of Oz are another of the few gags spanning all three Brad Wright-era shows.
• Russian Guy Suffers Most: Taken to ridiculous extremes. If a Russian character or characters make an appearance in an episode, something bad is going to happen to them. No exceptions. Russians are basically the SGC's version of Redshirts.
  • One guess which country's space battle ship is destroyed.
    • Be fair: The Americans have lost as many ships as the Russians so far. In fact, a Wake-Up Call Boss in one of the later seasons of the show was a satellite that took down one of the American starships while proving impervious to counterattack. The first such ship lost by the Tau'ri.
  • Recurring Russian character Col. Chekhov managed to avoid this fate until the season 10 premiere, when he was in command of the aforementioned battlecruiser RFS Korolev.

• Space Is Noisy: Like nearly every other live-action sci-fi franchise.
• Sterility Plague: The Asgard suffer from the fact that they have totally abandoned sexual reproduction in favor of cloning.
  • This is also how the Aschen conquer planets: by mixing sterility-inducing drugs into "miracle medicines". This winds up backfiring when (thanks to time shenanigans) SG-1 finds out and slips them a list of suggested Gate addresses. That starts with a black hole and "get progressively darker after that".
• Stompy Mooks: Jaffa are so notorious for this that you can be assured that in every hallway scene on a Goa'uld ship there will be some form of clanking. The Ori Crusaders do this too, but to a much lesser extent. As a funny note, the Jaffa actually cease clanking once they are freed from the Goa'uld.

• Swap Teleportation: All based off Ancient technology:
  • The Goa'uld ring devices, which turned out to be appropriated Ancient tech like most of their stuff. They appear to be a set of five miniature stargates that descend or ascend around the objects to be transported and they swap place with whatever's at the other end:
    • Stargate: Portal Cut type Weaponized Teleportation of a section of someone's body: when Jack uses the rings to cut Anubis's head off while Daniel and Sha're are on the other end.
    • Stargate SG-1: They're used relatively frequently when the Goa'uld appear.
  • Stargate Atlantis: The city of Atlantis (and, presumably, all the other Ancient mobile cities of the same design) has its own internal teleportation system which lacks any kind of special effect except a descending light through stained-glass doors (which seems to imply that they are merely a redesigned ring platform), that seems to function like this. If both platforms being used are occupied, anything on them simply swap places. Presumably, if a platform is empty, it works the same way, just unnoticably.
• The Syndicate: The Lucian Alliance, a network of drug smugglers that developed into full-blown secondary Big Bad status after the Goa'uld were defeated in SG-1 season eight. They're an N.G.O. Superpower that operates its own battlefleet of looted Goa'uld motherships, and by Stargate Universe they've modified them to the point where they can challenge the previously superior SGC Daedalus-class cruisers.
• There Are No Global Consequences: The Stargate program remains secret and all it's fruits remain unavailable to the general public throughout the series. Some alternate timelines and universes avert this, usually with disastrous consequences.
• Transplanted Humans: Probably the Trope Codifier. In SG-1, the Goa'uld kidnapped humans from Earth for use as slaves, seeding thousands of planets across the galaxy with us. In Atlantis, the Ancients seeded the Pegasus Galaxy with human populations.
• We Will Use Lasers in the Future: Most advanced offworld cultures favor energy weapons, and though Tau'ri firearms are usually superior as weapons of war the SGC did develop a fondness for the versatile Goa'uld zat'nik'tel, a handgun that reliably stuns on the first shot and kills on the second. By later SG-1 episodes it largely replaced the Beretta M9 as the SGC's sidearm of choice.
• Where the Magic Went: Turns out the gods of ancient mythology were real (even if they were aliens using sufficiently advanced technology). When Earth's Stargate was buried, that prevented them from coming back to our world (or at least made doing so too difficult to bother with), but in the rest of the galaxy, they're still alive, well, and in charge.

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