misunderstanding

[tauri]

When it is an incoming wormhole does the gate circling (on Earth) IN ALL THE CASES?

[jsc]

Hi, Tauri,

Welcome to the forum!

You have asked a good question. I am going and check my tapes. But if anyone else has an answer they will let you know. Want to check out Season one when Lya rescues the Tollans from Maybourne's grasp and again in Shades of Grey when the Tollans retrieve their "stuff" from Jack. Can anyone think of when the gate doesn't circle for an incoming?

Are you getting around here OK, Tauri? The names at the top of the screen are the other sections you can click on to visit our other universes. The pull down menu at the bottom of our screen is easiest to use when you want to visit our other fora in the Stargate section.

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In Shades of Grey when the Tollans dialed Earth the inside ring of the Gate turned. Then they walked through the iris. Does that help?

[Edited by jsc on 12-07-2000 at 05:21 AM]

[Dialer Dude]

I don't think the gate rotates when there is an incoming wormhole because that only happens if earth is dialing out or someone manually dials.

[jsc]

Hi! glad that you are posting. You seem to know alot about the Stargate! In Shades of Grey the gate rings seemed to move will go back and check my tape again. That surprised me. Maybe we have found a blooper or maybe I should check and see it just wasn't the woosh. Thanks for your answer!

Hope you are enjoying our Stargate site! We also have other universes to check out. Stargate the Movie is listed at the top of the screen in Films.

If you can't find a thread that you need you can always start a new one! Just keep in mind about spoiler space for those who are not at the same season you are, keep posts g rated and no flames, please. So please browse around the site and post but mostly enjoy!

[the_Brainz]

Being a little more complicated than a telephone, although similar in principle in terms of "dialing", the stargate must dial for an outgoing wormhole and an incoming one. When the stargate dials, as you will doubtlessly know, the centre ring with the chevrons spins so that each of seven chevrons is rotated to the top of the gate. Each time a chevron in the address gets to the top, one of the wedge-like locks opens and closes, whereupon the nice red light glows on, indicating that that chevron has been locked. When all seven chevrons are locked, the wormhole is opened.

I mention this probably rather obvious fact in order to support my next statement: when a wormhole is established, it is necessary for both gates to be "in phase" as it were -- unlike a telephone which can simply accept any incoming call, the stargate uses the slightly more complex principles of quantum physics, meaning that both gates must dial, maybe in order that some kind of hyperdimensional resonance is set up between them to establish the wormhole. I would imagine that, rather than the wormhole "going out" from one gate and connecting to another, it would need to be mutually established between both gates simultaneously. Perhaps it's just me, but that seems to make a lot of sense.

There's another reason that both gates should dial. If I were to dial Abydos, I would have a wormhole established to that planet. However, if someone from Chulak also tried to dial Abydos, it isn't as simple as just getting a "busy signal". If the gates did not both need to dial, I could theoretically cause some rather severe problems by linking a wormhole to a gate that was already open. Technically, it could probably be done; ie, you would have two wormholes leading to one gate, rather like a 3-way phone system, however it's easy to forget how much power is required. Probably, a gate would be unable to support the extreme power drain exerted by a dual-wormhole system.

With regard to the series then, as far as I remember, the only time a gate has not dialed when there is an incoming wormhole was when it was already set to the coordinates of the dialling gate. That is to say, if I go to Chulak using the Earth gate, and no one uses the Earth gate again, when I dial back from Chulak the Earth gate will still be "connected", and will not need to redial. That being said, there have been numerous occasions when speed is of the essence and we see Carter, O'Neill or whoever smash in the coordinates for Earth on the DHD when they just came from Earth and no one has used the gate since...as the coordinates are still set, all they should need to do is hit the nice red button on the DHD. Of course, this could be explained: perhaps O'Neill wasn't sure if you could simply hit the red button again so, rather than try, he wasted all that time redialling the address ;)

With regard to these time-is-of-the-essence situations, we often hear the gate make noises, but never get a shot of it spinning. A reason? Oh yes -- that gate can only manage a certain rotational speed, and the noises are happening a lot faster than I reckon it could actually go. I suppose this, too, could be defended; perhaps the gate actually can spin really quickly, and uses its excellent intuitive feature to determine how fast it should rotate based on the speed at which the chevrons are entered on the DHD...

[Ancients50]

if both stargates need be in phase how does the one reciveing the wormhole know that it is being called before the other gate has been told the set of cordinates(and if it does shouldn't it spin a lot faster that dialing out because you can tap an address on the DHD a lot quicker than the SGC system can). Or . if you say that the other stargate says once the cordidinates have benn entered "someone's comming start to spin" shouldn't there be a delay between activating one stargate and the other finishing locking it in?

[PTeppic]

Originally posted by the_Brainz
With regard to these time-is-of-the-essence situations, we often hear the gate make noises, but never get a shot of it spinning. A reason? Oh yes -- that gate can only manage a certain rotational speed, and the noises are happening a lot faster than I reckon it could actually go. I suppose this, too, could be defended; perhaps the gate actually can spin really quickly, and uses its excellent intuitive feature to determine how fast it should rotate based on the speed at which the chevrons are entered on the DHD...

Well, we know that however fast the dialling computer in the SGC can go, it seems to be faster to dial via a DHD, though this may have been beaten now, thanks to events in Serpents Song.

[CynVision]

From a purely TV production standpoint, I catch a few gate inconsistancies. The "onset" gate spins, any "on location" gate is likely not to. Sometimes this bugs me, but I've never made a study of just how many times a shot of a non-rolling gate makes it into the show on a dial-out scene. I don't want to sit nitpicking the show that much. I've already got a beef with the symbol dialing system that started in the movie...

The practical issues of moving a truely functioning gate around to locations remind me too much of my time in the theater backstage troubleshooting errant scenery and special effects. It would be slightly annoying to outright insane depending on the day. I'm sure the studio techs loved whatever memo they got detailing the removal of the onset gate for that season ender! Unless, it gave them the opportunity to rebuild it better Or, did they digitally remove it?! Ah, questions, questions.

The first time someone dialing in an off world activation bugged me was when I got my season one DVDs and watched COTG. We get to the scene with the Abyados gate being used by Apophosis. And it bugged me because the sound was someting later series episodes had drummed into me as "rolling gate" sound. And it was not rolling. But, I try to let it go, it was the pilot after all. I think the camera tricks and conventions for gate dialing settled down late in the first season.

[PTeppic]

Originally posted by CynVision
From a purely TV production standpoint, I catch a few gate inconsistancies.

I think the camera tricks and conventions for gate dialing settled down late in the first season.

Saying all this, I think the gate "front" is applied optically in post-production. I suggest this because on some eipsodes the whole gate-front is on back-to-front, and dials in the wrong direction!

[I spent too long trying to get good shots of each glyph...]

[CynVision]

Originally posted by P'Teppic
Saying all this, I think the gate "front" is applied optically in post-production. I suggest this because on some eipsodes the whole gate-front is on back-to-front, and dials in the wrong direction!

[I spent too long trying to get good shots of each glyph...]

If you're talking about finding some of the gate 'close ups' during a dialing going the wrong way from the 'distant' view... yah, not exactly a post-production optical thing, but instead that they have a set of stock close ups on hand to insert during the post-production editing. The same thing for the exteriors of the base at the gates with trucks and guards marching. Or exteriors of the off base homes and buildings.

A "Second" or "B" Unit is responsible for collecting shots like this when they are not occupied with filming the shots with cast members. If they need a close up of a special glyph being locked in, that's their job to film it. If you notice in most TV shows the story splits the cast into groups. There is more than one filming unit on the set and they can get more work done in the week if the cast is split onto seperate sets and stuff. When the "B" unit is done with that they then handle closeups of items and other transitions. That's why you see "second unit director" or "assistant director" in the credits.

I have a lot of fun with some of the elevator movement establishing shots in the first few episodes. They used some 'stock' footage of elevator mechanics but didn't pay attention to what angle and direction the elevator was going