From: Ziana Astralos (zianastralos@yahoo.com)
Date: Wed Dec 29 1999 - 11:45:58 MST
* This message contains spoilers (pretty much the
whole plot, for that matter) for the below-mentioned
episode. Just a polite warning. :) *
I don't know if anyone else cares about this, but I
found it rather interesting... In the episode of
'Stargate' which aired this past Sunday (12-26-1999)
on Fox, at least in the USA, which I'm pretty sure was
entitled 'Gamekeeper', the SG-1 team went to a planet
which was covered in flowers and plants and stuff, and
entered a large geodesic dome (their probe's
observation of this was what attracted a mission to
the planet in the first place). So they went walking
around inside the dome, looking at all the flowers and
stuff, until they came to these 'pod'-like things, as
they called them, each of which held a black-clothed
person surrounded by wires and tubes. The SG-1 team
speculated about the 'pods' and their occupants (who
they found to be humans), and pretty much came to the
conclusion that the pods were some sort of
'bio-stasis' thing. But then as they were walking
about further, four empty pods (there were four people
on the team) near them suddenly snaked out their wires
and tubes and pulled the teammembers in. The
wires/tubes wrapped around them, and they struggled
for a moment but then two other wires/tubes snaked out
from each of their pods and attached to their temples.
They 'awoke' to find themselves reliving traumatic
experiences from their lives (their strongest memory,
the one they kept wanting to 'go back and see if they
could do it over again and make it work this time, get
it right this time', that sort of thing, y'know?) over
and over again. But they could interact with the
situation, not just watch it go by, so I guess
'reliving' isn't exactly the right word, but you get
the idea. :) So eventually they get fed up with this -
after about three or four tries - and decide they've
had enough of this little game. They're pretty sure
now that this isn't anything real, or time travel, or
anything like that, so they come to the conclusion
that this is some sort of 'virtual reality' which is
as realistic as if it were real. So they refuse to
continue their attempts to make the situation 'go
right' this time around. Then this guy in a weird hat,
who calls himself 'the Gamekeeper', shows up. He, who
turns out to be the guy in charge of all this,
explains that yeah, this is 'virtual reality', not
actually happening; and when asked about the
black-clothed people who have appeared on the scene to
observe, calls them 'the Residents'. He explains to
SG-1 that a thousand-and-twenty-something years ago,
their planet underwent a horrible poisonous
destruction, caused by the inhabitants (sounds like
over-pollution to me). The planet was so poisoned that
it could no longer sustain them, and so they created
the dome to shelter them, and these pod things. The
'Residents' are the only surviving members of the
planet's people - all the others had died in the
destruction. The tubes of the pod-things enter into
their bodies and sustain them at the same age as when
they entered the pods (they 'live forever', as one of
them said); feeding them, sustaining bodily functions,
removing waste, etcetera. The tubes/wire things that
attach to their temples apparently inject a
computerized transmitting-and-recepting implant into
their heads, by which means they experience the
virtual worlds - anything which any one of them can
remember or imagine. There's lots of "but what *is*
reality?" lines, kinda like The Matrix. But after a
thousand years, they're running out of things to
experience that they aren't bored with, and so they
had the pods snatch the SG-1 people so they could use
their memories and imaginings for more things to
experience. As the SG-1 commander put it, it's like a
computer network, and they were using them (SG-1) as
some new software. The Gamekeeper tries to convince
them to stay here, where they can experience 'anything
they (meaning all of them, since they're 'networked')
can remember or imagine', but they're determined to
return to Earth. The Gamekeeper finally lets them go,
but after a while they figure out that when they
thought they had returned to Earth, they were actually
still in the virtual reality. They eventually tell the
people about how the planet 'healed' itself, and isn't
poisonous anymore, and so most of the Residents leave.
Then SG-1 gets to leave for real.
They may not have wanted to stay, but I think I
probably would have. ;) Physical and mental
immortality (well, we only know of at least a thousand
years - but that's exactly not too bad!), a
computerized network of minds, realistic (heck, as
real as the 'real' reality!) virtual reality... sounds
pretty darn good to me. Transhumanist technology (or
so it seemed to me) hits prime-time TV! Neato! :)
--- Ziana Astralos zianastralos@yahoo.com "If something has been done, it's obviously possible." -unknown "Curiosity is the very basis of education and if you tell me that curiosity killed the cat, I say only that the cat died nobly." -Arnold Edinborough __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Talk to your friends online with Yahoo! Messenger. http://messenger.yahoo.com
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Fri Nov 01 2002 - 15:06:13 MST