Skip to main content

stargate - Are Goa'uld naturally evil?


I understand the Goa'uld are naturally parasitic but are they naturally as evil and selfish as they are in the current age?


The Tok'ra show that some Goa'uld can be at least somewhat considerate creatures. Then the episode "Need" demonstrates that the sarcophagus has very negative mental effects on humans, including indifference for others, and paranoia.


Are Goa'uld just a victim of their own stolen technology, or are they inherently evil?




Answer



I would say not, but that their taking of hosts and the civilization that was built on that encourages them to be "evil" by our modern, western, standards. And it is a fairly easy to trace this development. Initially the creatures they could take on was hosts were animals of limited physical and mental capacity and the Unas, which while having things like opposable thumbs, were probably little more culturally advanced than modern chimpanzees. Even now, after thousands of years of abandonment by the Goa'uld, they still were a pre-bronze age culture.


As the Goa'uld began exploring the galaxy they discovered left behind Ancient tech, learned how to interface with it, and in some cases replicate it. The Unas probably didn't have the ATA not being a race descendant of the Alterans, so that limits their access to many of the more advanced pieces of tech. Chances are the majority of those were destroyed as the Goa'uld tried to take them apart to learn their secrets. But they were able to figure out how to replicate their Hyperdrive and Healing tech (Sarcophagus). But since they were limited to Unas hosts, and possibly other species of non-Alteran descent by then, the Alteran healing tech wouldn't work well for them.


Eventually the Goa'uld, Ra specifically, discovered Earth and the Humans. As with the Unas, humans were at a very early stage in their development, bronze age or just before. Not only that the Alteran tech worked much better on the fast breeding humans than the Unas, a probable reason why Unas were abandoned as hosts for the Goa'uld (and fits in with the movie reason of humans being easier to repair) given Unas superior strength and durability.


So the Goa'uld, a space faring race that lives though the domination of a primitive species, comes across another primitive species. One without much of a language or a cohesive culture beyond extended family groups. Sure they have some basic tool use but so do modern chimpanzees and modern humans hunt them for sport or food. I doubt that would sway the Goa'uld, a species that has for generations, at this point, treated creatures of such development as beasts of burden. Not only that, with the genetic memory that Goa'uld are born with every new generation has that same impression of humans.


At some point though, probably around the time of the Earth Uprising, a group of the Goa'uld saw through the generations of stereotyping the humans as a beasts of burden. Having experienced the humans coordinated repulsion of Ra from Earth Egeria was one of the first to recognize the immorality of subjugating another intelligent species. That realization probably led to a re-evaluation of the cultural assumptions of the Goa'uld and eventually the Tok'ra.


Even so the Tok'ra aren't pro humanity so much as they are in opposition to Ra's status quo. You can see parallels to this in the US's early emancipation movements. Then the opponents of slavery had moral objections to the practice of slavery, but often were not welcoming of Africans into their communities.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Did the gatekeeper and the keymaster get intimate in Ghostbusters?

According to TVTropes ( usual warning, don't follow the link or you'll waste half your life in a twisty maze of content ): In Ghostbusters, it's strongly implied that Dana Barret, while possessed by Zuul the Gatekeeper, had sex with Louis Tully, who was possessed by Vinz Clortho the Keymaster (key, gate, get it?), in order to free Big Bad Gozer. In fact, a deleted scene from the movie has Venkman explicitly asking Dana if she and Louis "did it". I turned the quote into a spoiler since it contains really poor-taste joke, but the gist of it is that it's implied that as part of freeing Gozer , the two characters possessed by the Keymaster and the Gatekeeper had sex. Is there any canon confirmation or denial of this theory (canon meaning something from creators' interviews, DVD commentary, script, delete scenes etc...)? Answer The Richard Mueller novelisation and both versions of the script strongly suggest that they didn't have sex (or at the very l...
1 comment
Read more

Why didn't The Doctor or Clara recognize Missy right away?

So after it was established that Missy is actually both the Master, and the "woman in the shop" who gave Clara the TARDIS number... ...why didn't The Doctor or Clara recognize her right away? I remember the Tenth Doctor in The Sound of Drums stating that Timelords had a way of recognizing other Timelords no matter if they had regenerated. And Clara should have recognized her as well... I'm hoping for a better explanation than "Moffat screwed up", and that I actually missed something after two watchthroughs of the episode. Answer There seems to be a lot of in-canon uncertainty as to the extent to which Time Lords can recognise one another which far pre-dates Moffat's tenure. From the Time Lords page on Wikipedia : Whether or not Time Lords can recognise each other across regenerations is not made entirely clear: In The War Games, the War Chief recognises the Second Doctor despite his regeneration and it is implied that the Doctor knows him when they fir...
Post a Comment
Read more

story identification - Animation: floating island, flying pests

At least 20 years ago I watched a short animated film which stuck in my mind. The whole thing was wordless, possibly European, and I'm pretty sure I didn't imagine it... It featured a flying island which was inhabited by some creatures who (in my memory) reminded me of the Moomins. The island was frequently bothered by large winged animals who swooped around, although I don't think they did any actual damage. At the end one of the moomin creatures suddenly gets a weird feeling, feels forced to climb to the top of the island and then plunges down a shaft right through the centre - only to emerge at the bottom as one of the flyers. Answer Skywhales from 1983. The story begins with a man warning the tribe of approaching skywhales. The drummers then warn everybody of the hunt as everyone get prepared to set "sail". Except one man is found in his home sleeping as the noise wake him up. He then gets ready and is about to take his weapon as he hesitates then decides ...
Post a Comment
Read more

warhammer40k - What evidence supposedly supports Tau as related to the Necrontyr?

I've heard of rumours saying that the Tau from Warhammer 40K are in fact the Necrontyr. Is there anything that supports this statement, in WH40K canon? I just found this, on 1d4 chan 1 : Helping Necrons? Or are they Necrontyr descendants? An often overlooked issue is that Tau have no warp signatures, just like Necrons, hate Warpspawns and Warp in general, just like Necrons, have the exact same skull shape,stature and short lives, and the overwhelming need for Technology and beam weapons, JUST LIKE NECRONS. GW may have planned a race that simply prepares a pacified, multiracial galaxy for Necrons to feast upon, supported by Ethereals that have a C'tan phase blade. Then there is a reference of "dark seed in east" by the Deceiver, so the tricky C'tan might give Tzeentch the finger in the JUST AS PLANNED competition. Or maybe GW just has so little creativity that they simply made a new civ conforming to an Old One's standards without knowing it. Is this the connec...
Post a Comment
Read more