Did they make the Wraith too similar to the Gou'ld?

[ReadyAndWilling]

i've been watching SGA and man, the wraith are just so similar. they speak in a similar way, they worship a queen instead of a system lord and hell, they even live forever and heal much faster.

does anyone know what their plans were with the cyborg species we saw in S5? they would have been great as the series protagonist.

 

[AJ86]

Pretty sure they were just a one-off.

 

[DarKush]

^
Yeah I agree that the cyborgs seemed like a one and done. I didn't think the Wraith were too similar to the Goa'uld. The Wraith didn't really have names or personalities, except for Todd maybe. I do wish they had been made more vicious, something like the mutants from the movie Pandorum. I don't think the Wraith got as much development as the Goa'uld did.

The one species I wish had gotten more focus on Atlantis was the renegade Asgard, the "Vanir". I wish they had gotten more screentime. They were more interesting than the Asurans or the Wraith (by Season 5 anyway).

 

[PudWacker]

I think the Wraith were too similar to blood sucking leaches. Like a parasite that just lives off of Usery tactics and makes profit off humans for nothing. They dont really contribute anything to the galaxy do they?

 

[The Wormhole]

^
Yeah I agree that the cyborgs seemed like a one and done. I didn't think the Wraith were too similar to the Goa'uld. The Wraith didn't really have names or personalities, except for Todd maybe. I do wish they had been made more vicious, something like the mutants from the movie Pandorum. I don't think the Wraith got as much development as the Goa'uld did.

I think the Wraith should have been more like the Wraith warlord from Sateda. That guy was a badass mafucker.

 

[Temis the Vorta]

The Gou'ald and the Wraith could both have benefited from a better approach.

Gou'ald - I'd like to have seen them be a more fleshed out society. They can be crazy and flamboyant, with some of them actually believing they are gods and others knowing the whole thing is a con game. The way they could always be turned against each other made things too easy for Our Heroes. If the Goa'uld worked together, their only handicap would have been that at least some of them were insane, and all of them were at least a little loopy.

But ultimately, the Goa'uld never had the potential that the Tok'ra had. If only the writers had allowed the Tok'ra to discover that one of their kin was a breeding Queen. Then they'd have a motive to keep their society going, of course, without sacrificing their principles. At least that would have been the idea at first. In light of that, the alliance with Tau'ri and Jaffa would have become very interesting indeed.

Wraith - The way to go with those guys is the opposite of the Goa'uld. Loose the haunted-house theatrics. Make them ordinary. They just eat people, that's all (and can't eat anything else.) There's nothing "abnormal" about them, from their point of view. All species have things they can eat and other things they can't eat, and they must survive within those constraints.

It's not the Wraith's fault that the only thing they can eat can walk and talk and shoot P-90s. In fact, it's kind of a bitch. I'm sure they'd prefer to eat something that won't start shooting at them.

How would Shep & the gang have reacted if the Wraith politely introduced themselves and explained the situation? Sure, we eat people around here. Do you expect us to starve to death instead? You could try to stop us from collecting our food source by violence, but you're only perpetrating violence against us by doing that. Of course we'll fight back. It's not like we have a choice.

Then Shep & the gang would be forced to admit they're taking sides with the humans simply because they're their own species - is that really a "good" reason to take sides at all? What makes humans so much more valuable than any other sentient species in the galaxy?

 

[Witterquick]

They should have jumped on the vampire bandwagon and made the wraiths beautiful and charismatic and smart, so magnetic that some humans are drawn to them and willing to let themselves be eaten.

Make the wraiths interesting, not the one-dimensional wraiths we got. Give them personalities. Have recurring wraith characters that we love to hate, or semi-good wraiths. Sort of like the Cardassians on DS9.

 

[AJ86]

Given the female demo's they pull, and the number of Wraith fetishists online (oh hell yes, they're out there), I think they already sort of did inadvertently get on that bandwagon.

 

[Temis the Vorta]

They should have jumped on the vampire bandwagon and made the wraiths beautiful and charismatic and smart, so magnetic that some humans are drawn to them and willing to let themselves be eaten.

Make the wraiths interesting, not the one-dimensional wraiths we got. Give them personalities. Have recurring wraith characters that we love to hate, or semi-good wraiths. Sort of like the Cardassians on DS9.

I like that!

 

[Star Wolf]

I think the Wraith were too similar to blood sucking leaches. Like a parasite that just lives off of Usery tactics and makes profit off humans for nothing. They dont really contribute anything to the galaxy do they?

They keep the human population in check so the forest doesn't get cut down.

 

[Temis the Vorta]

And if there's one thing Stargate needs it's MORE FORESTS!

 

[backstept]

one thing I wish they did in SGA was to make Ronon his own character instead of fill the quiet warrior dude trope
I like Jason Momoa and I always felt like he was under-used . . . like he didn't have much room to put his mark on Ronon the way Hewlett put his mark on McKay

 

[TiberiusMaximus]

The Wraith should have been more consistent. One of the first Wraith we see Offhand Backhands a human and sends him flying ten feet. Eventually, though, humans and Wraith are pretty much evenly matched, even in hand to hand combat. Classic villain decay.

Gou'ald - I'd like to have seen them be a more fleshed out society. They can be crazy and flamboyant, with some of them actually believing they are gods and others knowing the whole thing is a con game. The way they could always be turned against each other made things too easy for Our Heroes. If the Goa'uld worked together, their only handicap would have been that at least some of them were insane, and all of them were at least a little loopy.

I think they tried to make the Goa'uld that way...for example, Apophis pretty much believed his own propaganda, but Ba'al admitted several times that he knew very well just what he was.

But ultimately, the Goa'uld never had the potential that the Tok'ra had. If only the writers had allowed the Tok'ra to discover that one of their kin was a breeding Queen. Then they'd have a motive to keep their society going, of course, without sacrificing their principles. At least that would have been the idea at first. In light of that, the alliance with Tau'ri and Jaffa would have become very interesting indeed.

That would have been interesting...I think by establishing that the Tok'ra had little or no population growth, the writers limited them far too much right from the get-go.

Wraith - The way to go with those guys is the opposite of the Goa'uld. Loose the haunted-house theatrics. Make them ordinary. They just eat people, that's all (and can't eat anything else.) There's nothing "abnormal" about them, from their point of view. All species have things they can eat and other things they can't eat, and they must survive within those constraints.

It's not the Wraith's fault that the only thing they can eat can walk and talk and shoot P-90s. In fact, it's kind of a bitch. I'm sure they'd prefer to eat something that won't start shooting at them.

How would Shep & the gang have reacted if the Wraith politely introduced themselves and explained the situation? Sure, we eat people around here. Do you expect us to starve to death instead? You could try to stop us from collecting our food source by violence, but you're only perpetrating violence against us by doing that. Of course we'll fight back. It's not like we have a choice.

Then Shep & the gang would be forced to admit they're taking sides with the humans simply because they're their own species - is that really a "good" reason to take sides at all? What makes humans so much more valuable than any other sentient species in the galaxy?

An intriguing conundrum. Of course the humans would fight back, but they'd be forced to admit that the Wraith weren't necessarily 'evil'. Like Teal'c said about the Replicators in SG-1 - they're really no more 'evil' than a virus. Of course, there would also be Wraith who reveled in it and enjoyed torturing humans, but also some who simply went along with it because they couldn't do anything else. And there would be some like Todd, who actually seemed to dislike the fact that he had to feed on humans.

Most of all, though, I think the Wraith should have been more consistent. Take a look at the Scarrans in Farscape - the first one encountered took a hell of a lot of damage before going down. The rest of them never lost that physical superiority aspect...they weren't unbeatable in the long run, but their physical abilities were consistent. The same thing could have been done with the Wraith.

 

[Temis the Vorta]

hink they tried to make the Goa'uld that way...for example, Apophis pretty much believed his own propaganda, but Ba'al admitted several times that he knew very well just what he was.

I would have liked to see more intra-Goa'uld interaction. What does the Apophis type Goa'uld think of the Ba'al type and vice versa? Would Apophis think Ba'al was insane for rejecting his own godhood? Or that other Goa'ulds are all posers and Apophis himself is the only true god?

They short-circuited that by having the Goa'uld all be megalomaniacs with their own empires, with apparently little interest in doing anything but shooting at each others.

 

[TiberiusMaximus]

^I agree. My point was that it was hinted at slightly, just not executed very well. More interaction between the various system lords would have been interesting, learning about their alliances and so on.

 

[Joe Washington]

The Goa'uld could have been given more dimension as a people with different sides like the Cylons.

 

[Morpheus 02]

i think the Gou'ld made sense....they took over tech abandoned by the Ancients...so not creative as much as opportunists.


Don't forget, Ra (and presumably the rest of the Gou'ld) were beaten by ANCIENT Egyptians! So it makes sense to me that modern Earth would follow the arc of defeating them.

Regarding the self-delusional (i.e. Apophis) vs. Opportunist (i.e. Baal). : The Gou'ld as a whole have set up this god system. Even if they themselves understand they are mere mortals, they can NOT let their Jaffa believe it -- otherwise, why would the Jaffa blindly obey each "god"?

The rational ones (i.e. knowing they are mortal) also might be paranoid enough to think that they HAVE to be #1. Since part of the Gou'ld lifestyle is a life of lies (such as they are the human bein g-- rather than a small worm), it would be almost impossible to trust another Gou'ld for long.



As for the Wraith -- they strike me as a "kewl" idea that didn't get fleshed out much, and they had to be used as series villains before they had time to think it out. Other than sheer numbers, i don't see how they could have taken over Pegasus. Wish we had someone more interesting.

 

[Checkmate]

Of course they were. It's even in their names; Wraith vs. Ghouls ("Gou'ald" was just an 'imaginative' word to use in its place; an imagination they didn't even bother with in Atlantis). Hell, even the casting of the show was a rip off of SG-1, particularly with Shepherd.

The producers and writers for that show had absolutely no creativity in them. It's no shocker SGU turned out so badly.

As I've said before, I'm glad it's finally over. I'm looking forward to a reboot a few years down the line, hopefully with a completely new group of people at the helm. The setting is a cornucopia of possibilities. It just needs people who can see that and do something with it.

 

[AJ86]

The Wraith were an extremely rushed idea. SG-1 was never meant to go past season 7, and Atlantis was meant to be set on Earth with the replicators as the main antagonist. When Syfy renewed SG-1 again they had to change everything. In fact lots of things were last minute, they were still building the sets while they were casting and writing during the hiatus, and even McKay was never meant to be in the series. I suppose that's why so much had to be corrected as they went during it's run, and why it's so much weaker than the other two shows.

 

[Temis the Vorta]

The Goa'uld could have been given more dimension as a people with different sides like the Cylons.

That was kind of what the Tok'ra were for. But it was a cop-out to take away their motive to be bad or at least not quite as good by not letting them have a Queen. Just one example of how Stargate fled from the most interesting/challenging dramatic fodder in favor of screenwriting-by-C4.

The Wraith were an extremely rushed idea.

They had years to add details to the Wraith and make them better. They were just a kernel of an idea in the premiere.

Atlantis was meant to be set on Earth with the replicators as the main antagonist.

Even with all their faults, the Goa'uld and Wraith were better than the Replicators, who were the Borg minus all their interesting aspects.