As the Stargate franchise expanded from its flagship TV series to multiple spin-offs,
the shows’ production design created different looks for the iconic Stargate. It made sense,
seeing as how Stargate SG-1, Stargate Atlantis, and Stargate Universe were all set in different
galaxies. And more practically, the shows’ creators wanted casual viewers to be able to
tell at a glance which series they were watching. But there’s also some really interesting
differences between these three types of Stargates within the Stargate universe – including how they
operate. Let’s look at the three different types of Stargates from the three television series.
And long-time viewers may know that, in fact, there have been a total of
six different types of gate shows on screen so far. Stay tuned to the end for more about those.
Inside the Stargate universe, the technology was first devised by a race called the Alterans many
millions of years ago. When the group emigrated from their home galaxy to the Milky Way the
Stargate was just a draft idea thought up by an Alteran scientist named Amelius.
This is seen in the 2008 movie Stargate: The Ark of Truth.
The Alterans came to our galaxy, and would eventually come to be known as the Ancients.
Eventually the technology was developed, improved, and perfected,
and gates were places on thousands of worlds throughout the Milky Way. These are the standard,
red-chevron gates we know from the original Stargate feature film and from Stargate SG-1.
The Milky Way gates have nine chevrons, but only utilize seven of these for a standard address.
They can dial to any other gate within the Milky Way, so long as its address is known.
Six points triangulate the location of a destination in three-dimensional space, and
the seventh symbol serves as the point of origin to chart a course from one Stargate to another.
An 8-chevron address requires significantly more power, but can dial a Stargate in another galaxy.
And the ninth chevron? We'll come back to that one.
Normally the Stargate is dialed by means of a “dial-home device,” or D.H.D. This device
allows for rapid push-button dialing, and it also provides the gate with its power source.
On Earth, Stargate Command does not utilize a D.H.D. Instead a specially engineered
supercomputer interfaces with the gate, interpreting the gate’s various signals and
allowing for dial-out. Special power systems feed the Stargate’s power requirements through direct
current to the gate’s superstructure. When the gate is sufficiently powered,
the inner track unlocks and can spin freely. Without a D.H.D. or dialing computer it can even
be dialed manually ... with a bit of elbow grease. As the gate dials an address the inner ring spins
one direction, until the chevron locks one symbol into place. The inner track
then reverses direction, proceeding one symbol at a time like a combination lock.
When a valid address is completed, an unstable energy vortex “kawooshes” outward,
before settling into an event horizon leading to a stable wormhole that connects two gates.
But you’ll notice when watching the show that the inner track only spins at Stargate Command,
never on an off-world gate. The chevrons on the off-world gates also only light up, and
don’t move. There’s a practical production reason for that. The Stargate prop, of course, was very
expensive to build and maintain. The show had two of them – and the gate used for location filming
was moved around every week. So it was smart to make sure it didn’t have all the moving parts.
The Ancients or their allies also placed an unknown number of these gates beyond our galaxy.
The first time Earth successfully dialed an 8-chevron address, Jack O’Neill visited
the Asgard planet Othalla, in the galaxy of Ida. Thor also presumably used the Stargate
to bring Samantha Carter to his home planet when it was under threat by the Replicators.
When the Ancients suffered from a galaxy-wide plague, they eventually moved their advanced
civilization from Earth to the Pegasus Galaxy. Operating from the city of Atlantis, this group
of Ancients – the Lanteans – seeded hundreds of worlds in this untouched corner of the universe
with human life. As these newborn civilizations continued to evolve over millions of years,
the Lanteans developed a brand new Stargate network for Pegasus.
The gates on Stargate Atlantis have distinctly blue chevrons – part of Brad Wright’s original
pitch to SCI FI Channel for the spin-off. These Stargates are newer and more modern than Milky
Way gates. Even on the main set there was no spinning track or moving chevrons. Instead a
panel of lights inside the gate illuminate in a rotating pattern, giving the illusion of the same
“combination lock” dialing procedure. If the SG-1 gates are analog,
the Atlantis gates are very much digital. As a security measure, the Lanteans limited these
new Stargates so that only the gate in Atlantis could dial the 8-chevron address back to Earth.
A unique control crystal was required to enable this functionality ... though the crystal could
be moved to a different Pegasus Stargate. Without that crystal, it may be that the
Pegasus gates were deliberately limited to not be able to dial any 8-chevron address at all.
Aside from the visual aesthetic, there’s one other big difference with these more “digital”
Stargates. The Ancients had since developed small ships capable of flying through a gate
and traversing the wormhole – the Puddle Jumper. So when they built out the Pegasus network over
millions of years, they were no longer limited to putting a new Stargate on the surface of a planet.
So in this galaxy we see our first space gates, which instead float free in orbit of the planet.
Residents of these planets would obviously not be able to use the Stargate to explore
and trade with other worlds. The space gates are also effectively locked to Lantean use,
since there is no open dialing mechanism here.
Travelers needed a Puddle Jumper to be able to dial an address when on approach to the gate.
Of course, eventually the Wraith overcame this by creating Darts –
which themselves could dial a Stargate. Without a D.H.D., space gates also need
a different source of power. This is provided by three power nodes, attached to the outer edge of
the Stargate at 120-degree intervals. This gives the space gates a cool and totally unique look.
Atlantis premiered in 2004, and at this point digital effects were getting better.
In fact, the location Stargate was replaced with a computer-generated image.
The crew didn't have a full location Stargate to film. You can often spot this when the
gate is shot straight-on with a fixed camera angle, making it look a bit two-dimensional.
The Stargate is seen at a distance in establishing shots in Season One,
and in later years we got Stargates partially buried in the ground rather than erected on
some sort of stone pedestal – something SG-1 usually didn’t even try with their physical prop.
A physical segment of one-third of the Pegasus Stargate was eventually built, though. It’s first
seen in the fifth season episode “The Shrine,” when the team is sitting on top of it after the
valley where the gate is located has flooded. You can also look for it in later episodes,
mixed in with CG shots of the full Stargate. So what about the third model of Stargate –
the black and white gates from Stargate Universe? SGU debuted in 2009 with
another brand new look for the iconic prop. But in this case these gates aren’t newer,
fancier models. They’re evidently much older than both the Milky Way and Pegasus gates.
The Ancients launched Destiny millions of years ago, and with it a means for the crew to acquire
food, water, and other much-needed supplies. Destiny itself was launched unmanned, and it
stayed empty for eons ... until an Earth research project cracked the code for the Stargate’s ninth
chevron. The one 9-chevron address was found in Atlantis’s database, and allowed a team to dial
directly to Destiny – now millions of lightyears from Earth, seeking the secrets of the universe.
So if the ship is following a preprogrammed course, through galaxies where the Ancients
themselves never set foot, how can there already be Stargates there? Ahead of Destiny
the Ancients launched seed ships. These are also completely automated, both in
manufacturing Stargates and transporting them to the surface of habitable planets it passed by.
So the gates in SGU are not scattered all throughout the galaxies that Destiny has
passed through. Instead these smaller networks of gates have been built
down a corridor – the ship’s original flight path. These gates are also more limited in their range.
Unlike the other gate networks, these gates are not powerful enough to dial every other Stargate
in that galaxy. They have a limited range, so they’re only capable of dialing a few of their
closest neighbors. When Destiny jumped into F.T.L. and left a team behind, the group had to dial from
planet to planet to planet to try and catch up before Destiny’s Stargate went out of range.
Destiny’s gate also has a unique dialing sequence, one that’s more crude and mechanical. Instead of
an inner track, the entire gate spins in the deck of the ship. As each symbol is locked a large,
glowing orb illuminates above the gate, and the corresponding chevron illuminates.
But the final chevron isn’t even located on the Stargate itself. It’s here,
built into the deck in front of the Stargate. After the wormhole disconnects, steam is loudly
blasted out of nearby vents – giving the gate a more old-timey, steampunk feel.
That’s three different Stargates, built by the Ancients for the benefit of multiple galaxies.
So who else is out there making new Stargate models? Do you remember all of them?
Well, there are three more we’ve seen on screen so far. In the third season of Stargate SG-1 the team
visited the new Tollan homeworld of Tollana. Here they discovered that the advanced Tollan
have built their own fancy, slimmer Stargate – with a little help from the Nox, another
race who were allies of the Ancients long ago. The Tollans’ original homeworld was recently
destroyed in fire when its orbit was altered, and their civilization resettled using ships. So
it makes sense that they’d build themselves a new Stargate to rejoin the network. The Tollan passed
it off as no big thing, but color us impressed. In Season Five, Major Samantha Carter met
Orlin – an ascended being who follows her home like a lovesick puppy. He’s eventually found out
by the people in the U.S. government who like dissecting aliens ... so Orlin makes his escape
back to the planet Velona. Astonishingly, to get there he builds his very own miniature Stargate in
Sam's basement – using only parts found on Earth (and ordered online with Sam’s credit card).
This gate couldn’t dial multiple addresses, and was probably only good for one use.
And Carter’s going to need a new toaster. But remember that we didn’t know at this
point in the series that ascended beings like Orlin and Oma Desala
are actually the Ancients. Orlin’s ability to MacGyver his own gate in a pinch was a giant clue
for fans that the Ancients were still out there ... and the team had already met some of them.
OK, the final model of Stargate on our list might be the coolest. It’s certainly the most inventive.
When the Ori learned that our galaxy was populated by billions of humans, they set their sites on a
full-scale invasion. But how do you get a fleet of warships from one galaxy to another when you
don’t have those zippy Asgard engines? Enter the Supergate – a massive device
that creates a wormhole between two gates on a much, much larger scale – big enough for a
warship to fit through. The Supergate requires an unimaginable amount of power to maintain an
active wormhole, which it gets by forming a singularity – a black hole – near the gate.
The Ori are cousins of the Ancients. (That’s the planet the Alterans left behind millions of years
ago.) So it makes sense that they would also develop Stargate technology – along with their
own version of transport rings, which work on the same principle but over shorter distances.
So how do you get a Supergate built by remote? The Ori’s followers launched dozens of smaller
segments through a standard-sized Stargate. Each segment exits the Stargate and heads into orbit
of the planet, aligning themselves into a massive circle. The segments are joined together by arcing
power current, which slowly makes its way around the circle as an incoming wormhole is established.
Once connected, the Supergate is large enough to pilot a capital ship instantly from one galaxy
to another. This gave the Ori forces a beachhead in the Milky Way, allowing them to bring a fleet
of warships here to conquer new worlds. It looks like these segments probably also
telescope in order to fit through the gate, and then expand upon entering orbit. That’s because
when they're fully deployed these individual segments look to be about the same size as a
Goa’uld cargo ship. But a cargo ship is way too big to fly through a Stargate. So either
the segments get bigger after exiting the Stargate ... or the production designers are just cheating.
Six different Stargates, spanning the known universe.
Which Stargate design is your favorite? What should the Stargate look like
in a fourth television series? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.
Head over to GateWorld.net to explore more about the history of the Stargates. Subscribe to the
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