Saw notification and thought "oh spacedock video nice" immedately clicks on video. Love your work and could you do an updated video on the UNSC Infinity please or just UNSC ships in general. Keep up the good work :)
Ah, Stargate... The more fractured and weak Goa'uld become, the more of a threat they become to the point of Lucien Alliance having 0,00001% of System Lords resources. Remember all those cool Goa'uld techs Tealc knows about because he either seen them used or heard about them? They'll appear once and never again. Remember how he never misses with his stuff weapon which has a power of 37mm recoilless rifle at least and has no drop on projectile *ever?* Or how SG-1 members never miss with Zats and those disintegrate targets on third hit _while being capable of being fired in burst or even full auto?_ Remember how they never need ammo or cleaning, but then series makes fun of them by comparing them to plastic piece of sh... marketing, piece of fine marketing. I remember that and much more:( God, how much I fanboyed over it and how it was constantly dropping a ball or forgetting about things that could have provided a good payoff later...
@@BoneistJ I really would like a post declassified Stargate show. Carter could the General in charge of SGC and O'Neill is the Secretary of Homeworld Security
I remember from the old EU books, the really old and weird ones: That Palpatine knew exactly that Tarkin's methods would cause a rebellion and even activly encouraged the rebellion because he was simply bored with being Emperor and did it for the lolz. And creating a rebellion to scheam against out of being bored with your power wealth and concubines seems exactly the kind of thing Palpatine would do
@@SugarFreeMisery Yes, as teenager he was involved in some underground street racing. One day he had crushed and killed someone and his first reaction was being worried about the damage the body did to his swoop. Showed he always was a person with psychopathy. Source: Darth Plagueis by James Luceno (Novel from the Expanded Universe)
I would buy that Palpie was so confident in his view of the future, that he would be willing to use a rebellion to crush belief in rebellions. He was wrong. It's the sort of think people do when they get out of school and haven't learned yet that all the tests they've had up to this point were carefully controlled. I did it. I also thing Tarkin simply hated planets and liked the idea of destroying them. I also think that the problems Star Wars has in leadership culture are believable because there are armies and governments here on Earth that have done and do similar things.
I don't think Stargate _is_ an underrated show; I think it's a very highly-regarded and well-recognised part of the history of sci-fi TV series. I think Stargate is an underrated _movie._
@@ArcaneAzmadi indeed, it did have 17 seasons worth of content, and 3 movies. It just isn't the juggernaut that starwars+star trek is, but outside of those 2 it's probably the 3rd most recognizable sci-fi show.
"This is a weapon of fear. It is meant to intimidate your enemy." *Drops Staff, holds up P90* "This is a weapon of war. It is meant to kill your enemy."
I really liked that scene, when they pretty much lay out why SG-1 absolutely dominated practically every firefight with the supposedly highly trained Jaffa warriors, who are supposed to do nothing but fight and train to fight
Such a great scene. And a potent reminder of why the jaffa rebellion struggled and the Tau'ri were kicking ass. The jaffa needed to relearn how to fight a real war, instead of the games the Goa'uld had them fight before.
Yeah, not the proudest moment of the series, sadly. Remember how he never misses with his stuff weapon which has a power of 37mm recoilless rifle at least and has no drop on projectile *ever?* Or how SG-1 members never miss with Zats and those disintegrate targets on third hit _while being capable of being fired in burst or even full auto?_ Remember how they never need ammo or cleaning, but then series makes fun of them by comparing them to plastic piece of sh... marketing, piece of fine marketing. Want to know why P90 is bad for _rebel force on the other side of the galaxy fighting in dirt and having NO industrial capacity of their own to produce it or its ammo?_ Want to know why Zat and Staff are brilliant? Google "40k flashlight"... or "Warhammer 40, Imperial Guard, Lasgun, quote Ciaphas Cain" if not familiar with it:D
"Not practical" is the biggest understatement possible. No ship in sci-fi yet has ever been even vaguely practical. Most Stargate ship designs are second only to Star Trek in just how bad they are...and about tied with Babylon 5.
The Dominion from Star Trek is another example of doing it right. Instead of preventing the development of writing in their populace, they genetically engineer out their creativity.
@@cavedmanjim249 I am not sure it was their downfall. Yes they lost their ambitions in the Alpha Quadrant but in the Gamma Quadrant they stillrule their vast dominion. I think mainly because they only partially rule with fear: Yes if you anger them they come after you, but generally it seems the Dominion is simply a ruling superstructure that doesn't impose taxes or their culture on a world unless it is absolutly necessary. Basicly if you are a planet that is offered membership in the Dominion it is a rather sweet deal: access to the Dominion market, security from other worlds, save travel routes and as long as you don't try to be stupid they leave you alone
I only the Vorta and Jem'Hadar where engineered out of creativity , The fear that kept the rest of the Dominion in line was the total brutality that came to anyone that rebelled ,example the quickening a genetically engineered virus made not only to kill the infected a young age but also infect there children at birth all to serve as an example to the rest to the gamma quadrant.
@@cavedmanjim249 At the same time, the Alpha Quadrant coalition was only fighting the Cardassian Union with Dominion tech and a large expeditionary force. The Dominion proper in the Gamma quadrant never fully intervened. It would be like saying the USA downfall was losing in Vietnam. It was a setback yes, but not a huge one.
@@thefirstprimariscatosicari6870 There was also the Section 31 bio weapon. It nearly wiped out the Founders and was only stopped by Dr. Bashir's creativity and unwillingness to abandon the core tenants of the Federation.
I think that it's very underplayed that in Stargate the system lords are in a constant cold war that hindered their ability to make better tech as any advancement would make them a threat to every other system lord.
Didnt stop Nirrti's genetic experiments or Ba'al from experimenting with gravity. Honestly, that should have been pushing guld technology, but in secret.
Exactly, they could have made advancements in tech, but it just wasn't worth it. The system was such that as one system lord became too powerfull (for example due to a tech advantage), the others would form coalitions against them, defeat them due to sheer numbers and distribute the losers domains and technology among them. Therefor putting resources in great (military) advancements wasn't beneficial to a systemlord, only to the goa'uld race as a whole which seeing how selfish they are, was irrelevant to them.
Less constant cold war and more 15 sided chess game. The system lords often fought amongst themselves for fun more than anything, or to test how strong the other was. That's why they can all go to the general meetings and talk semi peacefully then go out and start bombing eachother again, which is why whenever someone like Apophis, Anubis or ba'al decide to get serious in taking over they become a serious threat to the other system lords
@@Andrew_Sword The Tok'ra was indeed another nail in the coffin for advancement or change in the Goa'uld Empire. If a System Lord couldn't be kept in check by the other System Lords, the Tok'ra + the System Lords both working against him would definitely do it. The Tok'ra being master spies also meant that a System Lord trying to do something new would find himself discovered by the Tok'ra and either outed to the other System Lords or countered directly by the Tok'ra themselves.
Not exactly what Daniel was getting at. The Empire definitely did strike fear in people, but the people of the Star Wars galaxy had the ability to DO something about it. Not so of the majority of people in the Stargate universe.
@@gravitydefyingturtle Which is why they only dissolved the Senate after the Death Star was operational. Without the exhaust port flaw it would be deemed impossible to stop or defend against. Up until that point the Empire's oppression was mostly limited to outer rim worlds nobody in the core cared about enough to look closely at. And then the Death Star went boom....
It's coming back. Saw an interview with one of the original producers recently. It's going to remain in canon and be a sequel to all that came before it.
@@maarek71 Finally. As long as it is not a reboot and pays the proper homage to its predecessors, I will be a happy camper. Fair enough, most of the cast have got old, but I think that they could still contribute.
@@veslar I just hope any continuation goes with the tone and style of SG-1 and Atlantis rather than Universe. Universe definitely got better as it went on, but I'd rather have fun sci-fi adventure than more miserable dimly-lit melodrama.
Another point about the Ga’uld and Stargate, it’s also a fact that Earth wasn’t the first advanced force that the Ga’uld met. Usually when they meet another suitably advanced race that threaten them they usually just send a fleet of ships and overwhelm them with firepower and numbers, bombarding them to extinction. Or if the advanced race is too much a problem they just blockade them from expanding and eventually use underhanded and clever tactics to eliminate them in a round about way. With Earth, the system lords weren’t too concerned of the Tauri because we weren’t as advanced as these other races they’ve encountered and felt they could destroy us at any time. Wasn’t until we start popping off the system lords themselves when they took us seriously. At that point though we’ve gained allies and know how to resist and live another day. Another thing is that Earth has a long and bloody history of in fighting and war. Other advanced races the Ga’uld fought were peaceful or didn’t have experience or strong military. We however had advanced battle tactics and weapons specifically designed for all out war. In conclusion, we had some advantages to the more advanced races who grew fat from complacency and negligence.
Another consideration: Earth _has to_ be one of the most populous worlds in this galaxy. Being the homeworld of the human race, the population has boomed into the billions (it's why the Wraith were so obsessed with trying to find one planet in an entirely different galaxy) and this must have given the System Lords pause (how do you conquer/decimate a planet with so many?)
@@mantisynth2186 We never got the full story why, but the Goa'uld considered Earth to be a lost world to them. Most of them had to have visited Earth at one point (how else would they learn how to impersonate human gods?) so you can write off the idea that Ra alone knew the location of the world and jealously guarded the secret of where he got all these slaves. Maybe the ol' Ancient plague was cropping up on Earth, the Goa'uld knew enough to stay away lest they spread the disease to their offworld holdings, and simply assumed Earth was depopulated by the plague. All the while, such a disease either zeroed out or was eradicated by Ascended Ancients or another benevolent race like the Asgard,
@@BogeyTheBear but didn't they say in the original movie that earth was abandoned because there was an uprising that ended with the stargate getting buried?
@@mantisynth2186 and they considered Earth to not be worth the annoyance of sending some ships to conquer the area and unearth the stargate. they didn't consider that human tech would advance and that the humans could reverse enginner gould tech to build starships etc.
I mean, the Empire was ruled by a pretty cunning and smart, but ultimately chaotic evil sith lord who just assumed he has already won. Palpatine relaxed to early, and that kind of fits the character. It is also believable that he would surround himself with bumbling idiots, because he was much more scared of his own surroundings than of common people who might resist the rule. After all, Palpatine achieved power not by having a fascist uprising of ideological believers but by staging a high-level coup. So that's exactly what he was afraid of the most. So he did surround himself with idiots.
Palpatine was just a dog chasing cars. Becoming The Emperor confronted him with the reality that he had no idea what to do when he actually caught the car.
Not to mention Palpatine didn't go straight to ruling with fear. He kept the Senate because he needed a bureaucracy to maintain control and only dissolved it after the Death Star was built. This was a shift in policy from subtly control to an overt, fear imposing dictatorship. The problem was, once the Death Star was blown up, there was no longer a bureaucracy to keep control so the Empire had to double down on fear. That was kind of the beginning of the end for them. As Leia said "the more you tighten your grip the most star systems will slip through your finger.
Sideous was a sith Lord first and an emperor second. Taking over the Republic and turning it into an empire was just a means to and end. (That end being destroying the Jedi.)
Peter Dinklage had a great line in game of thrones, "my sister and father ruled through fear. It was effective but made their power brittle". You can't overtly use fear. You appear as the tyrant you are. Subtlety is far more effective and longer lasting in terms of maintaining control.
@@chrisstevens2 it's no so much subtlety as stability. It actually does tend to make the lives of the peasants less bad making them less likely to revolt.
@@chrisstevens2 I have to correct you: indirect democracy. That is the kind of democracy that America, European nations and almost all other democratic nations have. A true democracy would be direct and the people would have full control, meaning that all citizens can vote on any law, proposal or decision.
4:23 "They tried to make the transition too fast." Man, remember when it was implied the Empire had been in power for multiple decades, and it had actually been a slow transition to the state of things in A New hope? I think my favorite part of the setup for the System Lords in Stargate was that many of them clearly understood the nature of the threats against them, but couldn't actually acknowledge any of those threats without risking fracturing their power base. It's why Yu was my favorite; His reaction to the changing nature of galactic politics was "Okay, let's secularize and form mutual defense agreements.".
Yu was one of the things I think the show really should have focused on more, as one of the oldest system lords he wasn't quite the megalomaniac the other system lords were, and had a much more pragmatic side to him. Even despite his age and degrading mental health he seemed to accept what was happening with almost open arms, which I find rather bizzare. In addition he had an agreement with Earth to kinda stay out of each other's way. To what extent wan't really said up to the point where he was killed by replicator Carter.
@@noahhounshel104 Yu is on the spectrum from full blown megalomaniac Goa'uld to Tok'ra. He isn't all the way in the Goa'uld camp, but he is still further from the Tok'ra. We have a few other confirmed cases of Goa'uld who didn't drink their own kool-aid or who plain don't agree with the general line of the empire, with some like Gershaw of Belote or most famously Egeria going so far as to completely rebel against it. It's not made entirely clear so many fans never realize it, but Gershaw, the Tok'ra councilwoman we see in the original Tok'ra episodes was in fact not born a Tok'ra but is a Goa'uld who joined up with them, like they hoped Tannith would have. Another example might be the Goa'uld from Fallout which was willing to altruistically sacrifice itself to save Jonas and the people of Kelowna for no personal benefit. As for Yu and the SGC, the SG teams seemingly had very few incursions into Yu's territory which in turn made him far less concerned about the SGC and Earth than most other System Lords. Thus Yu generally didn't care what Earth was doing as long as it didn't outright threaten the entire Goa'uld empire and he was willing to entertain treaties and deals with that in mind. I think the view that all Goa'uld are entirely evil and megalomanic was most championed by O'niell and Teal'c on the show, and thus many fans end up thinking that to be the case, but we often have Sam and Daniel try to be a bit more level-headed about it and interject that it isn't quite true.
@@NATIK001 While I'm not entirely disagreeing with what you're saying, I think the show strongly suggested that the evil-ness of the Goa'uld is strongly correlated with the inherited memories of the symbiote. It's mentioned a handful of times that tok'ra split from the goa'uld thousands of years ago, and over time the number of legitimately repentant goa'uld vanished to nothing. It's certainly true that the symbiotes aren't "entirely" evil, after all the tok'ra aren't a different species or something. But the goa'uld are the culmination of generations of almost exclusively evil symbiote's memories on top of one another. Those habits, thoughts, and behaviors have pooled within the Goa'uld all that time.
There are a number of intermediate societies: Langara, Pangara, Tegalus, etc. But they remain cut off from the gate network. Had they become reconnected like Earth they might have filled the role of "plucky heroes." Stargate also presents a logical escalation. At the end of season 1, Apophis losing 2 motherships was a huge set back. By season 8 Anubis and Baal are throwing around dozens because thanks to the Tau'ri the Goauld have spent years engaging in a protracted power struggle that forced them to switch to a war economy. But you still have a lot of places that still don't see Goauld because they are just not important to the war effort so the galaxy as a whole becomes LESS oppressed because all the military assets are being used elsewhere.
@@TheKrstff Spacedock words it so it sounds like Earth is the only middle tech world in SG1 and notes that Earth is off the grid. I do think the Stargate guys did a very good job of explaining why Earth even survived.
We were lucky to have killed Ra early on. I don't think even Earth would have stood up to a united assault (something they make clear when Apophis/Anubia/Baal are close to becoming Supreme System Lords). Also none of those other planets had the population of Earth since they were taken from here, and higher population means higher production capability which is is better when fighting an enemy as entrenched as the goa'uld.
The reason Earth became the champion was not only that it had intermediate technology, a large population (though I believe Landry does note that it has THE largest population in the galaxy) and centuries of military conflict that caused pragmatic military doctrines to form. As you note, several other planets fit that description. What gave Earth the edge was the decision to do a system-wide exploration of the entire Milky Way (and beyond) gate network. There were tons of Ancient ruins and useful resources and possible allies just lying around, but none of those societies had the guts/foolhardiness to do a systematic search for them. (To be fair, we know of a LOT of timelines where that ended badly for Earth.) That willingness to explore gave Earth the pieces it needed to tear the Goa'uld down.
“Which I hope is advice you’ll never be able to take advantage of” *Me sitting in my brand new Death Star after cashing in my GameStop stock:* >: ( don’t tell me what to do
A Death Star? What a poor investment... You can make more than a dozen weapons capable of whipping out most life on a planet by destroying only the surface of the planet instead of blowing the whole planet up for the same cost.
To paraphrase O'Neil in Season 5 of SG-1: holds up a staff weapon, "This is a weapon of intimidation. It's meant to scare your enemy." He holds up a P90, "This is a weapon of war. It's meant to kill your enemy." I'll have to check out World Anvil as I've had an idea bouncing around in my head for a while now, but I do have one question, is there by chance a method to your feedback on whether an idea is good, bad, or oh god why would you want to pursue that, etc?
I’m on World Anvil (check out Barriban if you join) and there is the option to leave comments on articles. You could just post a feedback page in your world and discuss with people there.
their usage of P90 was always funny to me. P90 was intended the weapon of the last chance for vehicle crews and rear echelon soldiers, it even has that futuristic look and crappy ergonomics for the sole purpose of not snagging on vehicle hatches.The actual weapon of war of a P90 user would be a tank or a howitzer.
(Picks up Jaffa staff) “This is a weapon of terror. It is made to intimidate your enemy.” (Picks up P90) “This is a weapon of war. It is made to kill your enemy.”
I really liked how Stargage often showed that complicated isn’t necessarily better. In so much Sci-Fi modern day weapons are just glorified waterpistols and there are those moments in Stargate. But for everything that doesn’t have a force field? Yeah a gun will be pretty damn effective.
Honestly, Terra Invicta did it the best way in my opinion. On Earth, modern firearms, artillery and weapon systems are more than capable of destroying alien forces (even if a numerical advantage is needed due to the aliens using superior materials for armour), but in space, naval guns and autocannons are quickly replaced, because the sheer scale of space battles means that enemy ships can either dodge the projectile, orient themselves so it hits their thickest armour, or just destroy it with point defense. But once you have railgun and coilguns, projectile weapons become far more effective due to the increased velocity. And missiles are both the best early game weapon, and perfectly viable in the mid-and-late game, because they get more powerful payloads (conventional, nuclear, fusion, and antimatter)
Which IS complete bullshit and Just an excuse for Sg1 to win, Like the goa'ulds will Encounter way more people with bow and Arrow and throwing knives than guns but somehow the goa'ulds have only defenses against guns and Energy weapons but are completely defenseless against random peasant with a throwing knife?
even forcefields cannot ignore the laws of physics, the daedalus is able to overwhelm a forcefield with the sheer intensity of its projectile weapons fire.
@@boobah5643 Yes. They extinguished the line of Apophis, and cost the Goa'Uld dearly in ships. Anubis only managed to nearly wipe them out because of all that ancient knowledge he had. And to be fair, even the older Asgard ships couldn't stand up to Anubis' ships.
If you want to rule through fear remember the most terrifying thing is being effective. Your subjects don't need to be literal peasants if you can effectively crush any resistance through proper and effective tactics
The problem is,you need to win every time and if you lose even a single battle then that will have domino effect that will start different mostly unrelated revolts against the Empire because of the hope that it creates,the message that the empire can be destroyed and if the original rebelion is destroyed the other rebelions can't stop the Empire will kill them all,if they surrender or continue the opposition.
@@shorewall that too. Palpatine was a lunatic wizard; he WANTED to be in charge but he had no plans or designs for his new Empire. He just wanted them he empire. Someone in another comment compared him to a dog chasing a car, with no idea what to do when he caught it.
That's the point, though. There's many people in the Empire who are OLDER than the Empire and can imagine a world without it. So naturally, there will be more educated and armed people who wouldn't just bow and nod whenever Palpatine says something.
The issue with Star Wars is that it was written specifically in a way so that the Empire could be toppled and give people a feeling that toppling it is the right course of action, which everyone in-universe celebrates. This meant that the writers had to make sure the Empire makes lots of really dumb mistakes that ensure its downfall. After the Clone Wars, all Palpatine needed to do was to restore peace, restart the galactic economy and make sure the space trains run on time. Everyone would love him. But this doesn't give plucky teenagers a chance to shine.
@@Nethan2000 Not really. In fact, Palpatine had to clamp down on many races from the Outer Rim considering that they rebelled against the Galactic Republic. He also had to clamp down on many Senatorial aristocrats who believed it to be their God-given right to interfere in Imperial affairs. The Empire destroyed Alderaan-a world that used its wealth to fund terrorist operations against the Empire galaxy-wide. The Empire enslaved the Wookiees-after the Wookiees aided Jedi fugitives and after they started attacking Imperials. Damn near everything the Imperials do was out of a logical sense of law and order. The only thing that wasn't was their eradication of the Jedi, and even still, Palpatine had an excuse for that, because he was Sith, and if the Jedi found out, they would have killed him. The only thing I would have changed from Palpatine's agenda is I would offer Jedi survivors of Order 66 amnesty if they came out and swore allegiance, and I would have ordered the Clone Commanders during Order 66 that it would be preferable if the Jedi is captured alive, kill them only if you cannot do so otherwise. That would ensure that I would have enough Jedi to snuff out any possible rebel threats or talk them out of doing something stupid.
SG-1 in particular will always hold a special place in my heart. I loved watching conventional military tactics being applied to an unconventional threat, such as the Marine firing-line withdrawing in detail from the Replicators in the gate room or the interplanetary drone-targeted Hellfire missile strike. I don't think anything since has really nailed that feel, though BSG and films like Battle:LA have taken a bash at it.
Just think of what current SGC tactics would look like with advancements in their preexisting tech and all the stuff from Pegasus (reverse engineered and mass produced).
In the Expanded Universe, they did say that the Empire launched a hearts-and-minds campaign in the core worlds that was successful for a time, but you're right, in canon that all went away.
Wow, that's some great advice. My plans to take over the galaxy have been pushed back a bit more, but now I think I'll shelve the whole thing until I can become an immortal snake creature parasite. Cheers mate!
The goa'uld's impractical designs make sense in world which is something I love. They're not truly warriors, they're predators, preying on weak, tribal and medieval societies, relying more on psychological warfare than physical and the wars between system lords are far more ceremonial/formal affairs than an actual battle to the death. That's why when the Tau'ri come on the scene, a force that's fighting an actual war to bring down their empire, the Goa'uld fail constantly, they've never fought an enemy that can bring anything greater than spears and bows to bear against them, so you have scenes like when Sha're was found, SG1 was up against a large force of Jaffa and still came out on top because they tried to fight an SG team the way you'd fight a rabble of tribal villagers, by running right up to them and executing them at close range, because that's all they knew. The empire on the other hand, was at first ruled my a megalomaniac who would just throw huge amounts of resources at a problem and relied on super weapons and after his death, in the old EU, it fractured and fell apart due to no clear line of succession and in Disney, it self destructed.
What you are saying is even more or less mentioned in the episode where SG1 supplies a Jaffa resistance group lead by a supposed brilliant leader who turns out to be their old system lord actually. They put up a contest of shooting at a target. The staff weapon shots slowly and misses 1 out of 3, Carter not only hits every time with a complete rapid fire mag dump, but shreds the target in half and with the last shot precision hits the tiny cord holding the target. And O’Neill says, the staff is a weapon of terror designed to frighten its enemies, the rifle is a weapon of war designed to kill.
I mean most of the tactics dealing with the resistance were the Goa'uld still stuck in their fear empire mentality. There were numerous times where they should have just set the ships cannons to autofire, sat down and waited for everyone to starve to death on a planet while the gate is constantly bombarded form orbit. That or with multiple ships have one only target the gate then use the others to wipe everyone out. It's why the replicators in pegasus were a problem, when they went to wipe out a planet first thing they did was go and nuke the gate so no one could escape or help out. The wraith also blocked the gate. The Goa'uld wanted people to escape basically and spread the fear around when they should have just nuked the gate from orbit.
@@Xershade Yeah, they could probably have made a better energy weapon as well. Some of the ones used by bounty hunters or the like spring to mind. The problem is definitively in their thinking, and that shows itself in each of the elements of their tactic. The Wraith have a similar issue though
This gap in available technology in Stargate reminds me a lot of the differences in how technology developed between Humanity and the Covenant (before Halo 3 and so on ruined it by making humans "the specials"): The Covenant had access to Forerunner tech from the beginning, but due to their religious views they could study it on a surface level but could never truly understand it and hence all their developments could emulate the Forerunners, but never truly match or surpass it. Inversely, Humanity had to start from scratch and so learned to make do with whatever they had access to. Skip ahead to the Human/Covenant War and while the Covenant began with more advanced tech humanity was able to properly analyze, rebuild, and improve upon both Covenant and Forerunner technology. As an example, equipment like Mojinoir armor augmented with better shields, The Spartan Laser, hand held Railguns, retroactively giving human ships non-physics based artificial gravity. Not to mention that in the lore human AI programs are absolutely superior to their Covenant equivalents and can even stand up to Forerunner constructs for a time.
That's wrong. The only thing humanity had over the covenant was their ability to use important forerunner artifacts. Infinity has forerunner engines basically slapped onto it as well as other covenant tech. The covenant created their own tech based off of forerunner designs. Their ships engines werent forerunner. Same with their weapons. Besides. As much as I like halo its lore is a crap shoot. With the strength of rail guns in that universe the covenant should be wiped out. Sending 600 ton slugs at a quarter the speed of light would destroy almost anything in it's way, high charity would have been dust. Yet humanity won. Yeah, halos lore has been turned into a crap fest.
That said, the actual purpose of the Galactic Empire was to give Palpatine access to the resources and mcguffins needed to make him immortal. The Goa'uld had immortality long before the main storyline of Stargate began.
You know, I am surprised you never brought this up. That unlike in Star Wars, where the Empire does not seem, in the movies, to learn their lesson and adapt to galactic conflict, the Goa'uld did. That due to growing threats, factions if not the entire System Lords began to adapt to Earth and began to develop technology to counter Earth and adversaries they were not able to take originally. Anubis, Apophis, and Bs'al being prime examples, where only luck, in the end, was the reason Earth defeat them.
One theory I have in regards to Palpatine is actually a parallel; Scar from the Lion King. He spent so much time, planning, manipulating, scheming, working to get *into* power that once there, he really had no idea what he was doing. He found something that sounded like it might work and ran with it full steam ahead.
The comparison of a P-90 and a Jaffa Weapon by O'Neil in season 5 episode 18 describes that perfectly: "This (Jaffa Weapon) is a weapon of terror. It's made to intimate your enemy. THIS (P-90) is a weapon of war. It's made to kill your enemy"
Is it unrealistic in Star Wars when the person who engineered that system is a sith Lord of dubious sanity, and only maintained that empire for less than 20 years? Grabbing power without considering consequences feels internally consistent, and the consequences I feel played out as well as could be expected
Nah, Palpatine was perfectly sane. His flaw (as Luke noted) was his overconfidence in his genius and extraordinary Force powers. He assumed that if he took absolute control, his brilliance would be sufficient to quash any rebellion. To be fair, his genius did make him emperor of the galaxy, overthrow the Republic and destroy the entire Jedi Order...
@@Cailus3542 Depends on how you define sane, sane is not a medical term with a strict definition like insane, they are legal terms that discribe someone who can or cant be held accountable for their actions or are unable to distinguish right from wrong. And i do think palpatine fits into that seconds category, his moral compass is practically non-existant. He is clearly a full blown sociopath. Its hard to tell, of course if he actually doesnt know wrong from right or just doesnt care, but he does call justice(or something like it, cant remember the exact quote) a point of view which to me points strongly to him not actually being able to see the difference between right and wrong, and his only way to see said difference is through the established laws.
@@Julian-pw5mv You do know 'Sociopath' is also a medical-ish term and it doesn't mean "bad"/"evil"/etc.? Your morality 'flavour' is significantly rooted in your culture and beliefs -fortunately most cultures that survive/thrive; develope what we would consider humane or 'common sense' aspects like 'randomly going around murdering and stealing is a bad thing'; Palps seemingly was able to somehow absolutely and completely reject his Naboo 'morality' and adopt the (dubious) Sith 'morality', in which pretty much anything is cool as long as it makes you and thus the Sith more powerful.
@@LENZ5369 I know what a sociopath is. I also know that it doesnt mean evil, a sociopath is someone who suffers from aspd, which means they dont understand other peoples feelings and often lack, or have a very weak moral compass. The term is used interchangeably with psychopath and are clinically the same. Though some people describe a psychopath to be better at hiding their lack of a moral compass and their inability to understand other peoples feelings. I guess palpatine would be more like a psychopath, but as I said they are clinically the same.
@@Julian-pw5mv It's not about a "moral compass" (which is an inability to understand whether actions are 'right/wrong' according to your culture/law/etc.); it's about empathy and sympathy -the innate ability to feel and understand the emotions of others. It isn't something unique, an objective 'box' that you can put individuals in -it's a spectrum that everyone is on and can even vary day to day or context to context. A guy could be lynching a black guy for looking at a white women one day but bawling his eyes out the next; because his neighbour's kid got cancer. Not every concentration camp guard went home and started torturing puppies. "Psychopath" has deep negative connotations and cultural implications -it's effectively pejorative at this point, there is an effort to differentiate sociopathy and psychopathy with regards to 'impulse control' and general outward behavior -confining the negative connotations, behaviours and biases to psychopathy; leaving sociopathy as simply the 'condition'. Based on his action alone -Palpatine wasn't "a psychopath" or "a sociopath" anymore than Anakin was when murdered the younglings, anymore than anyone harming or killing others or letting harm come to others. That is a 'morality' (not "moral compass") issue, they fully understand that their actions are 'wrong' on a base level but justify it on some 'higher principle': "Kill them so you can gain more darkside power, so you can save your wife and children", "KIll them so you can restore order and peace", Take control and oppress everyone because you are better and deserve/need to lead".
The preservation through fear makes more sense in the idea that palpatine has no context of culture outside of sith ideology and that he’s a megalomaniac, which is why when the empire was lead by thrawn or pelleon it actually worked more efficiently. Palpatines regime never was actually true to its promise it was a farce, that only existed to spread his influence, hence why tarkins doctrine was so enticing to him. If anything it is more appropriate that the empire would collapse easily due the fact applying sith doctrine to a large bloated behemoth like the republic would make it unstable. Earlier smaller sith empires were long term unsustainable, the Galactic Empire, under palpatine had no long term chance... Also palpatine would never settle for the status quo and rest on his laurels of having a weak galaxy or regime to rule over due to the social darwinistic mentality of the sith. If his military industrial complex or his power can’t grow why bother.
He was literally a senator in the Republic. There's no way he was unaware of the culture of the Republic. It's possible that he hated it so much that he massively overcorrected when creating his own Empire because, as you say, he was a megalomaniac. But even then, he should have known better than to assume that an ancient style of governance would work with no problems whatsoever.
@@ThePCguy17 it’s not so much that governance can’t work it’s just palpatine never intended it to hold true to his promises and be a man of the people or an enlightened despot as people thought he was, control and giving himself more power was all he wanted at the end of the day, also obviously the years of being a senator were just a means to an end, an end which he successfully achieved, also all sith empires fell from a lot of the same issues, and none of the sith were ever self aware enough to see past there own sociopathy except casting the blame on some perceived flaw instead of realizing the fundamental culture of the sith and the darkside in general (this applies to the jedi as well) are incredibly volatile and incompatible with building stable societies. You could make the argument the republic itself was very shaky and tumultuous regardless of authoritarianism being slapped onto its central government and already had many cracks that were there since the early days, hence this just being another phase of it falling apart and putting itself back together via china.
@Wind Rose I feel like there are a lot of differences between Palpatine and Hitler. For one thing, Palpatine didn't have any specific race that got persecuted under his reign, though admittedly he was encouraging human supremacy. Palpatine was also a lot more practical than Hitler, generally using persecuted populations for actual labor rather than just working them to death because he didn't like them. I'm not saying there aren't parallels, but calling Palpatine 'literally Hitler but in space' is a bit much.
He was full of himself. He forgot that the plan he used to take control was developed over the corse of a thousand years and by multiple Sith Lords. And also that you need a clear line of secession if you want your Empire to be able to outlast you.
Excellent comparison! The Go'ald were excellent villain, and they need to be showcased more often, along with the whole Stargate series of shows. I'm hoping for action figures soon
@@Lapantouflemagic0 Honestly with STD and Disney Star Wars (and countless other reboot/sequels), I think it's probably better that we don't have another series of shows.
As an admittedly casual Star Wars fan and dilettante, the more I hear about the Tarkin Doctrine, the more I wonder how anyone could have signed off on what seems to be the dumbest and most wildly impractical means of maintaining galactic hegemony that I've ever heard of.
Well it is explained more in legends as Sidious wants unlimited power, meaning no other bodies that can oppose him or restrict his power so he wanted to destroy things like the Senate but doing so would mean the people would become more restless and the galaxy would be harder to govern. The galaxy is also too big for any galactic military to fully pacify so they devoted their resources to trying to prevent uprisings through fear and propaganda. Once palaptine dies and the empire shatters, some of the Imperial successor states are run much more effectively such as the Pentasyar Alignment under Ardus Kaine, which yes only lasted about 8 years but that's because it chose to join a different state and actually existed for two years after kaine died. The empire under people like Grand Admiral Thrawn and Pelleon were much more effective, Thrawn unified the warlords and nearly defeated the rebels in less than a year before getting assissinated and Pelleon was the man who managed to stop the New Republic from crushing what was left with the empire and negotiating a peace deal, in which the empire managed to live on though severely reduced in size and managed to remain stable until the Second Imperial Civil War decades later.
I think this is the first time I've ever seen anyone compliment the way the Goa'uld rule. Usually I just see people say something along the lines of "lol the Goa'uld are so dumb they got beat by humans with primitive 90s tech"
Reminds me of people complaining about the Stormtroopers losing to the Ewoks, despite showing us every detail of how and why the Stormtroopers were outclassed.
Actually they weren't beaten by earth at all. It was Anubis and the replicators that destroyed the Goa'uld. But the point of this video remains the same, The Goa'uld kept everyone uneducated and it was only when educated people (or 'things' in the case of replicators) that threatened the status quo appeared that the Goa'uld stranglehold failed. Even after the destruction of their empire it was shown that the galaxy very easily fell back into its old status quo as the vast majority of people accepted the Ori, because all they've known was being ruled for thousands of years. The system lords were weakened by Anubis and then vanquished by the replicators.
@@pewpewsalote8802 The System Lords were weakened by the Tau'ri at least as much as they were by Anubis. And I doubt it's a coincidence that Anubis chose to make his return shortly after the Tau'ri created a power vacuum within the System Lords for him to exploit.
Another difference is that while the Galactic Empire was defeated solely by a small rebellion, the Goa'uld had not only three separate factions uniting against them (Tau'ri, Tok'Ra and the Jaffa Rebellion), they also had to deal with an invading army of all-consuming robotic locusts that came the heck out of nowhere.
Before and during fighting all that the Goa'uld also fought a giant civil war, with Ba'al and Anubis basically destroying the Goa'uld empires thousands of years old power structure in taking down the System Lords.
Honestly the Big Blows came from the replicators,the infighting and much much later the Jaffa desertions. The Tau'ri accomplishments were only Commando raids, earth was never a serious Military threat but they ruined a system Lords vacation. Think about ra came to abydos probably Just for a nice relaxing vacation of being the Most awesome Dude in the Galaxy then suddenly some weird Primaten apes came along to Blow Up your Yacht.
@@Nukestarmaster There's not much to wonder about, the replicators did more damage to the Goa'uld empire than the entire efforts of the Tok'ra, earth, and free jaffa nation did combined. Before the reckoning (episode) Ba'al had inherited all of Anubis's vast empire and was poised to take over the entirety of the Goa'uld empire. He was just as unstoppable as Anubis, then the replicators came and weakened the Goa'uld so thoroughly that the Jaffa rebellion was able to officially declare themselves independent, and after the battle of Dakara the last great fleet of the Goa'uld empire was gone and thus the system lords and their mighty empire were no more. Even the underlords were wiped out, only Ba'al remained but he went into hiding on earth and began his clone plan. If stargate was a call of duty videogame, then the jaffa would've literally kill-stole from the replicators, and the Tauri/Tokra would've gotten a 1% kill assist.
A few other societies in Stargate managed to advance far enough. Some are at a 20th century level. Others are far ahead, like the Hebridians and the Tollan. The Tollan, whose leader wants you to play a game (maybe cut off your foot), have built powerful weapons capable of destroying Goa’uld capital ships with a single shot. But they end up sitting on their laurels and assuming the enemy can never adapt. And when they do develop weapons that can overcome the enemy’s new advantage... they don’t use them. Stargate also has the Ori, who keep their subjects at a medieval level through faith and fear (think Inquisition to the max). But unlike the Goa’uld, the Ori are as close to gods as this universe has, whereas the snakeheads are just pretending (even though most of them actually believe it; the ones that don’t are really dangerous)
"This [a staff weapon] is a weapon of terror. It is made to intimidate the enemy. This [a P-90] is a weapon of war. It is made to kill your enemy." -- Jack O'Neill (with 2 Ls) :P The Gua'old were not unopposed, the Asgard opposed them. Somewhat. Though it was mostly just bluster by the time SG1 started getting powerful.
The Asgard were native to a different galaxy and were far too preoccupied with their own problems (replicators and their own failing genome) to give real opposition to the Goa'uld. All they did was protect a limited number of planets from the System Lords.
Stargate is an amazing multi-layered storyline because of this technology gap. Ground warfare had been mastered by Earth's military, but space battle was completely...alien...to humans (at the beginning). I remember when Carter demonstrated how a P90 SMG excelled versus a Staff Weapon. On the other hand it was funny when Bra'tac expected Earth to have a space fleet, but Jackson and O'Neill said: "We have....Shuttles..."
It’s why I love Thrawn so much. He points out how flawed the fear based strategy is and campaigns for a focus on constructing a larger number of mobile star destroyer strike fleets supported by tie interceptor fighters to be able to quickly respond to rebellions and squash them before they get too large.
True fear is wearing fashion no one else would dare wear, and making it look empowering. Black leather suits and a cape, ha, gold chains and a skull cap, insolent fools kneel to me!
I agree with almost everything you said but it should be noted that A. The Gould would have wiped out the Tauri when they started taking them seriously had it not been for the Asgard intervention. B. The Tauri did not win against the Gould, it was actually the replicators that dealt them the final blow, followed by the Free Jaffa and then the Ori (granted they all appeared due to Tauri shenanigans) but earth would have never been able to stand alone, one Ha'tak could have glassed earth from orbit with little resistance
This was very useful advice for my God Emperorship. Especially being an immortal lizard person. You shall be spared for this immeasurable assistance. 🐍
We should note that the Goa'uld have plenty of internal enemies (heretic Jaffa, anti-Goa'uld humans, the Tok'ra) in addition to their external enemies (Asgard, Nox, Tollan), but all of the external enemies have reasons not to fight (Asgard want to but have to put resources elsewhere, Nox don't like violence, Tollan are confident of their own security) and the internal enemies all mistrust each other (no one likes the Tok'ra because they are Goa'ulds, no one likes the Jaffa because they are System Lord lackeys, and no one is impressed by the regular humans). It is only by Stargate Command, a group of outsiders without centuries of ingrained suspicions, seeing the big picture and dragging this groups together into a somewhat coherent alliance is any progress made. It also helps that the Goa'uld Empire is heavily factionalized, rather than a united front. Even when Earth becomes a clear threat, any System Lord who sends his forces against it risks being attacked from behind by his rivals. Apophis lost to Sokar because he'd wasted so much effort against Earth. SGC offed Sokar, and later Cronus. No Goa'uld was able to get the Empire united in a common cause until Anubis, at which point they were facing much more serious rebellions and a much more powerful Earth.
Another BIG advantage the Tau'ri/Earth had was the stargate gate addresses. This allowed them to plan more surgical strikes/infiltration missions and exploration. I feel like the Goa'uld used Jaffa soldiers as test subjects to map out the network on thousands of years and each faction didn't share information (which also lead to their believable downfall). I liked how the show had alternate timelines storylines that showed how they're timeline was a rare few that survived fighting the Goa'uld system lords.
3:40 Others have existed, for an example the Tollans, but the Tau'ri use small unit tactics very effectively to cause chaos amongst the system lords. The Tok'ra had been seeking an equilibrium between the system lords for a long time thinking it was preferable to the rise of one all powerful systemlord. The Tau'ri kept upsetting the balance which allowed potential supreme system lords to rise only for them to be knocked down by coalitions of other system lords and the Tau'ri.
Ya hit the nail on the head with the Stargate description. Everyone was to technology advanced or total less. The tar'ui had weapons more advanced than a arrow or sword but so lacking it screws with the more advanced energy stuff
Personally, I would argue that the best way to rule and empire is to ensure that the common citizenry willingly accept your rule while also ensuring that anyone powerful enough to personally threaten you is too loyal/fearful to dare move against you.
Isn't that basically what happened in Star Wars with the galactic Empire? The public applauded to Palpatine for creating the Empire. The people who were powerful but not loyal was executed.
@@darkwolf4434 the problem there is that Palatine is evil. His presence naturally rots the regime from the top. The 'be loved by the plebeians, feared by the patricians' systems only works if the leaders genuinely have the best interests of the nation at least somewhat at heart. Also, I'm not really that knowledgeable about Star Wars lore but doesn't the Empire abandoned that strategy once it is established
The Goa'uld do this. The peasantry think they are gods, their soldiers are a race of soldiers engineered to be physically dependant on them. Anyone who got too powerful usually got glassed from orbit. Their fall came from earth making thier gods bleed and the production of the tretonin drug freeing the army from the dependence.
@@amiscellaneoushuman3516 What you're describing is pretty much exactly how Darth Vitiate ruled his Eternal Empire, and for all intents and purposes it actually worked extremely well. The only problem is that Vitiate got bored and decided to die. If he didn't decide to let the 3 most powerful people in the galaxy into his throne room for a laugh, he actually could've ruled eternally. How Vitiate crafted the Sith Empire and Zakuulan culture in parallel with each other is a pretty fascinating bit of Star Wars lore to dig into
Best quote from Stargate: Holds up staff weapon "This, is a weapon of terror. It's made to intimidate the enemy." Casually tosses it aside and holds up P90 "This, is a weapon of war. It's made to kill your enemy."
The Empire’s operating political strategy makes sense when one considers that its Emperor was a self-absorbed megalomaniacal malignant narcissist, a trait shared by his top cronies (Tarkin, Motti, Vader, etc). They feared no rebellion, because they saw no imperfections in themselves, and therefore none in their political and military ideals. In their mind, they were infallible. One might even say that their overconfidence was their weakness. The Empire wasn’t meant to portray the ultimate perfect system of galactic oppression; it was meant to show the corruption inherent in a democracy-turned-dictatorship that was created through populist politics.
I always thought the Goa'uld had a bit too many problems with handling Earth Technology. But when you put it this way it makes a lot of sense. Makes me appreciate the series even more now.
The Wizard I play in D&D grew up in a similar situation, where her people were oppressed by a pseudo magocracy that didn't really know how their magic worked, but kept the peasants ignorant so they could never catch up. My Wizard's mother was a medical doctor and had some knowledge of numeracy and literacy before she was exiled, and she taught that to her daughter. Just as a quirk of her personality and interests my Wizard is hyper observant and ended up independently discovering the basics of the worlds magic system.
People should remember this as well in the case of the Goauld. They werent just scary to non technologically advanced peoples. They went to war with the asgard and even caused them trouble leading to a treaty between the two. Even though the asgard had other threats that were bigger, the goauld were a handful for one of the most powerfull races in the stargate universe. The goauld as a species were actually very ancient and were as adaptable as humans in their learning and ability to adapt. They rose from the swamps of their homeworld to the most dominat force in the galaxy. I'm well pleased a new stargate is on it's way, it's my fav sci franchise ever.
The Goa'uld - Asgard conflict seems to have had two, maybe three, stages. 1: Presumably they fought for some period before they sat down and hashed out treaties. 2: When they hashed out treaties the Asgard pulled back from the Milky Way and left token defenses around protected worlds. 3: Asgard encounter Replicators and lose ability to force project into the Milky Way. I think the Asgard faced a smaller version of the Ancient-Wraith war problem when they fought the Goa'uld. The Goa'uld empire is incredibly large, covering most of the Milky Way, the Asgard were never a large civilization especially after they started cloning. Asgard probably had their own version of realizing they could win every battle but not the war, and the Goa'uld realized that the Asgard were impossible to take down, if for no other reason than the Asgard striking from a galaxy the Goa'uld couldn't reach. So the two powers fought each other to a stalemate leading to the Asgard-Goa'uld protected planets treaty. The only reason Earth could take down the Goa'uld while the Asgard couldn't would be that Earth drove the Goa'uld against each other and the Jaffa against the Goa'uld. Also Earth got "lucky" that Anubis took down the Goa'uld empire from within so Earth only had to take down Anubis to shatter the empire completely. Without Anubis taking down the Goa'uld System Lords I doubt Earth could have won total victory except over a very long time frame.
I miss 20 episode seasons. Sure alot is filler or downright cheap, having to spread the money over 20 hours of TV. But you just can´t make a show like Stargate with 8 episodes every 18 months. Longevity has helped this franchise so much.
Same here, I've noticed that I'm less inclined to start a show like that b/c they are over before you know it. I don't mind some 'filler' episodes, those are usually the ones where you get to know stuff about the characters they would otherwise cut because of time restraints.
@@Whitespliff Exactly! Teal´c, O´Neill, Carter, Jackson, Sheppard, and so on, are burned into my memory. Just like a lot of Old Trek characters are. I can't remember half the names of people in Star Trek Discovery, They just weren't that interesting.
"The people of the Star Wars galaxy are too intelligent to accept oppression without resistance or question." If only that applied to the fanbase, too...
A fear based doctrine is a good idea since basically the enemy would be to afraid to fight you but like the video says making your army look scary is not entirely the whole point my point is making the army get its fearful reputation by its action like mowing down elite army’s and only losing a small number of their own men, three battleships taking down entire armadas without losing a single ship. Thus the empire gains its invincible standpoint, you can’t expect to intemidate people through mere presentations but through the sheer force you can unleash but not lose many soldiers on your side to make resistance so completely useless that a resistance will only continue for a few days before being anhilated. But that’s my theory so take it with a pinch of salt good video btw I liked it 👍
Niccolo Machiavelli: Crafts an intricate treatise on the right of princes to rule, the balance between ruling through fear and ruling through love, how princes may gain strength and how they can keep their holdings effectively. Spacedock: Imma bout to end this man's entire career.
Also, everyone forgets that Machiavelli had a raging hard on for republics. The fact he suggested ruling through fear to princes is a mix of sabotage and telling them they just suck because the populace will never be truly happy or even content under their rule.
It's funny, I was actually surprised that when you began talking about StarGate, you immediately started from the movie rather than ignoring it to focus entirely on SG1 and all the other spin-offs. I still remember when that movie came out. Not an all-time great, but certainly very memorable, especially Ra as played to eerie perfection by Jaye Davidson.
yeah, i think Apophis in the first seasons is kind of lame, he doesn't feel god-like at all. while Râ is so magnificent i almost would be okay worshipping him
I disagree that the inhabitants of the GO'ol empire didn't know they were oppressed, on contrary they are rather quick to rebel when the terrians arrive. It's just that they thought rebellion was impossible, in part because they don't even know the empire exists or how it is organized. To them there is only their small town and overkill fighter planes.
And even if they resisted, they had sticks and stones and what they could make from those. The Gua'uld had superadvanced technology that could easily counter that. How would they overcome their oppressors, even if they knew what was going on? How is a guy with sticks and stones gona defeat a guy that is not only armed with a better weapon than anything else you have, armored to be immune to your weapons, has flying vehicles and has superhuman regenerative powers to boot due to their symbiont? The only way you'd have a chance in hell is by stealing their stuff and they guard their stuff well enough.
Reminds me of GDP Grey's video on rules for rulers. The end conclusion was that best working wealthiest and best educated democracies are stable and absolute worst, least educated, people struggling just to survive dictatorships are stable and in between was a valley of revolution, or that's how he put it.
@@stollinroned5090 Babylon 5 is a completely new and equally brilliant and epic universe, although the comparison can be made to Star Trek since DS9 ripped off its concept. Still love both shows though
A common theme I've seen in some Tierzoo videos (TH-cam channel about assessing the strengthes and weaknesses of different animals with a bunch of video game memes mixed in) is that intimidation becomes less and less effective the smarter your prey is. Rhinos could gore hippos with ease but they are relatively stupid animals and as a result all a hippo needs to do 'win' a fight is to open its mouth and charge at the Rhino, scaring it off. Smarter organisms like Elephants however will not fall for this trick and stand their ground, or even fight back.
There is also the pretty ridiculous distribution of technology, like the Jaffa typically communicating over distances using frigging WARHORNS! With the Jaffa armies, its fighting with handheld weapons or bomb everything with starships and Deathgliders and there was nothing in between. Basically, if the Goa'uld had invaded Earth, their only really viable strategy would have just been to glass the planet from orbit, because I'd love to see the Jaffa take on a tank company
Have you ever heard of Homeworld (the game)? You could talk about how the exiled people from the planet Higara who were forced to settle on the planet of Kharak. They ended up returning to their homeworld through a long trek, having to deal with their original oppressor's and finding a lot of really sad/mysterious things along the way. It's really interesting story a lot of people don't talk about. It's a space-themed sci fi game that has a rich history. if you're looking to expand into a universe that has interesting races like the Bentusi and other large empires.
I always thought the existence of the rebellion was part of Palpatine's plan. Fascism always needs an external Other, and during the early days of Palpatine's power grab it was the CIS. He needed to finally end the Clone Wars to consolidate his position as Emperor, so the CIS leaders had to go, but he then needed a new threat to scapegoat and agitate against while the Empire established itself, an enemy to put all those troops and all that war machinery to use against, and so the rebellion was deliberately allowed to flourish so it could be that. Join the Empire, fight the forces of chaos and disruption. After the nightmare of the Clone Wars, that would sound appealing to many. The Legends Force Unleashed games outright confirm the Empire deliberately created the Rebellion, albeit to get all their enemies' eggs in one basket. There's a theory he deliberately allowed the Death Star to have such a glaring weakness, so he could point to its destruction as an act of terror to galvanise support. Palpatine was a guy who made his bones through being able to predict everything his enemies would do, and I don't believe he wouldn't have known the Tarkin Doctrine would be an utter failure at its stated objective, but used it anyway *because* it would fail. And by the time of Return of the Jedi, Palpatine's drawing near to the point where he doesn't need that fear - an entire generation or two have grown up under Imperial control, with Imperial ideals, and Imperial loyalties, and Endor was meant to be what Mustafar was for the CIS - a decapitating stroke, so Palpatine could secure his gains.
I like your threat process - and it's probably the same one Joss Whedon used when creating the Alliance. Edit - meant "thought", phone autocorrected to "threat", but I'll keep it because "threat process" seems oddly fitting given the topic
@@KaiserMattTygore927 I have to disagree there. In order for Palpatine to reorganise the Galactic Republic, he needed to win the clone wars. Being the victor is what allowed him dissolve eons of galactic democracy. I also believe that Tarkin doctrine was introduced not out of ineptitude, but because the empire’s military power hadn’t been solidified yet.
Isn't that kind of what Vader was doing in The Force Unleashed, having Starkiller running around the galaxy essentially putting together the Alliance's core leadership, all at his behest?
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Have you guys done any Farscape ships?
Saw notification and thought "oh spacedock video nice" immedately clicks on video. Love your work and could you do an updated video on the UNSC Infinity please or just UNSC ships in general. Keep up the good work :)
Ah, Stargate...
The more fractured and weak Goa'uld become, the more of a threat they become to the point of Lucien Alliance having 0,00001% of System Lords resources.
Remember all those cool Goa'uld techs Tealc knows about because he either seen them used or heard about them? They'll appear once and never again.
Remember how he never misses with his stuff weapon which has a power of 37mm recoilless rifle at least and has no drop on projectile *ever?* Or how SG-1 members never miss with Zats and those disintegrate targets on third hit _while being capable of being fired in burst or even full auto?_
Remember how they never need ammo or cleaning, but then series makes fun of them by comparing them to plastic piece of sh... marketing, piece of fine marketing.
I remember that and much more:( God, how much I fanboyed over it and how it was constantly dropping a ball or forgetting about things that could have provided a good payoff later...
I have listened to the sojourn it is AWESOME.
Thank you.
The world needs more stargate discourse
The world needs more Stargate.
indeed.
@@BoneistJ not the device, they can't coexist
@@BoneistJ I really would like a post declassified Stargate show. Carter could the General in charge of SGC and O'Neill is the Secretary of Homeworld Security
MGM needs to open the property back up
I remember from the old EU books, the really old and weird ones: That Palpatine knew exactly that Tarkin's methods would cause a rebellion and even activly encouraged the rebellion because he was simply bored with being Emperor and did it for the lolz.
And creating a rebellion to scheam against out of being bored with your power wealth and concubines seems exactly the kind of thing Palpatine would do
Palpatine was always a risk taker. Before becoming a Sith, he was an underground swoop racer.
@@Janoha17 wait, for real?
@@SugarFreeMisery Yes, as teenager he was involved in some underground street racing. One day he had crushed and killed someone and his first reaction was being worried about the damage the body did to his swoop. Showed he always was a person with psychopathy.
Source: Darth Plagueis by James Luceno (Novel from the Expanded Universe)
I would buy that Palpie was so confident in his view of the future, that he would be willing to use a rebellion to crush belief in rebellions. He was wrong. It's the sort of think people do when they get out of school and haven't learned yet that all the tests they've had up to this point were carefully controlled. I did it.
I also thing Tarkin simply hated planets and liked the idea of destroying them. I also think that the problems Star Wars has in leadership culture are believable because there are armies and governments here on Earth that have done and do similar things.
@@frankharr9466 Tarkin came from a death world. He hated Alderaan for being so idyllic, and he likely had Eraidu on his list of planets to destroy.
95% of comments : thank you Stardock, Stargate is an underrated show.
4% of comments : "this is a weapon of terror, this is a weapon of war"
Remaining 1% of comments: keyboard philosophers debating over the role of fear in statecraft and/or its role in the downfall of.
I don't think Stargate _is_ an underrated show; I think it's a very highly-regarded and well-recognised part of the history of sci-fi TV series. I think Stargate is an underrated _movie._
"indeed"
@@ArcaneAzmadi indeed, it did have 17 seasons worth of content, and 3 movies. It just isn't the juggernaut that starwars+star trek is, but outside of those 2 it's probably the 3rd most recognizable sci-fi show.
@@LiquidWater91 4th (you forgot Doctor Who).
"This is a weapon of fear. It is meant to intimidate your enemy."
*Drops Staff, holds up P90*
"This is a weapon of war. It is meant to kill your enemy."
and then frikkin saws a meter thick log in half with a sub machine gun, just SG-1 things! xD
I really liked that scene, when they pretty much lay out why SG-1 absolutely dominated practically every firefight with the supposedly highly trained Jaffa warriors, who are supposed to do nothing but fight and train to fight
Such a great scene. And a potent reminder of why the jaffa rebellion struggled and the Tau'ri were kicking ass.
The jaffa needed to relearn how to fight a real war, instead of the games the Goa'uld had them fight before.
Yeah, not the proudest moment of the series, sadly.
Remember how he never misses with his stuff weapon which has a power of 37mm recoilless rifle at least and has no drop on projectile *ever?* Or how SG-1 members never miss with Zats and those disintegrate targets on third hit _while being capable of being fired in burst or even full auto?_
Remember how they never need ammo or cleaning, but then series makes fun of them by comparing them to plastic piece of sh... marketing, piece of fine marketing.
Want to know why P90 is bad for _rebel force on the other side of the galaxy fighting in dirt and having NO industrial capacity of their own to produce it or its ammo?_
Want to know why Zat and Staff are brilliant? Google "40k flashlight"... or "Warhammer 40, Imperial Guard, Lasgun, quote Ciaphas Cain" if not familiar with it:D
Was wondering if anyone was going to quote it! Great scene!
I know it's not practical, but I still love the Goa'uld design aesthetic!
It’s not always like this, the coolest and most aesthetically interesting is rarely the most efficient or realistic
"Not practical" is the biggest understatement possible. No ship in sci-fi yet has ever been even vaguely practical. Most Stargate ship designs are second only to Star Trek in just how bad they are...and about tied with Babylon 5.
I appreciate its uniqueness but I personally dont enjoy the look of ancient Egypt based art.
@@DoremiFasolatido1979 Only The Expanse makes ships that are relatively realistic
@@DoremiFasolatido1979 Have you not seen The Expanse?
The Dominion from Star Trek is another example of doing it right. Instead of preventing the development of writing in their populace, they genetically engineer out their creativity.
@@cavedmanjim249 to be fair, few can handle the miracles that starfleet corps of engineers regularly pull out of their deflectors.
@@cavedmanjim249 I am not sure it was their downfall.
Yes they lost their ambitions in the Alpha Quadrant but in the Gamma Quadrant they stillrule their vast dominion. I think mainly because they only partially rule with fear:
Yes if you anger them they come after you, but generally it seems the Dominion is simply a ruling superstructure that doesn't impose taxes or their culture on a world unless it is absolutly necessary. Basicly if you are a planet that is offered membership in the Dominion it is a rather sweet deal: access to the Dominion market, security from other worlds, save travel routes and as long as you don't try to be stupid they leave you alone
I only the Vorta and Jem'Hadar where engineered out of creativity , The fear that kept the rest of the Dominion in line was the total brutality that came to anyone that rebelled ,example the quickening a genetically engineered virus made not only to kill the infected a young age but also infect there children at birth all to serve as an example to the rest to the gamma quadrant.
@@cavedmanjim249 At the same time, the Alpha Quadrant coalition was only fighting the Cardassian Union with Dominion tech and a large expeditionary force. The Dominion proper in the Gamma quadrant never fully intervened.
It would be like saying the USA downfall was losing in Vietnam. It was a setback yes, but not a huge one.
@@thefirstprimariscatosicari6870 There was also the Section 31 bio weapon. It nearly wiped out the Founders and was only stopped by Dr. Bashir's creativity and unwillingness to abandon the core tenants of the Federation.
I think that it's very underplayed that in Stargate the system lords are in a constant cold war that hindered their ability to make better tech as any advancement would make them a threat to every other system lord.
Didnt stop Nirrti's genetic experiments or Ba'al from experimenting with gravity. Honestly, that should have been pushing guld technology, but in secret.
Exactly, they could have made advancements in tech, but it just wasn't worth it. The system was such that as one system lord became too powerfull (for example due to a tech advantage), the others would form coalitions against them, defeat them due to sheer numbers and distribute the losers domains and technology among them. Therefor putting resources in great (military) advancements wasn't beneficial to a systemlord, only to the goa'uld race as a whole which seeing how selfish they are, was irrelevant to them.
Less constant cold war and more 15 sided chess game. The system lords often fought amongst themselves for fun more than anything, or to test how strong the other was. That's why they can all go to the general meetings and talk semi peacefully then go out and start bombing eachother again, which is why whenever someone like Apophis, Anubis or ba'al decide to get serious in taking over they become a serious threat to the other system lords
you also have to consider that the tok'ra had a hand in keep the system lords feudal.
@@Andrew_Sword The Tok'ra was indeed another nail in the coffin for advancement or change in the Goa'uld Empire. If a System Lord couldn't be kept in check by the other System Lords, the Tok'ra + the System Lords both working against him would definitely do it.
The Tok'ra being master spies also meant that a System Lord trying to do something new would find himself discovered by the Tok'ra and either outed to the other System Lords or countered directly by the Tok'ra themselves.
Spacedock:
Points to Gou'uld Empire: This one sparks fear
Points to Galactic Empire: This one does not
Not exactly what Daniel was getting at. The Empire definitely did strike fear in people, but the people of the Star Wars galaxy had the ability to DO something about it. Not so of the majority of people in the Stargate universe.
@@gravitydefyingturtle Palpatine voice: No, I know, I was kidding.
(Props if you get that reference.)
@@alexknj1 robot chicken?
@@gravitydefyingturtle Nope, Palpatine's Journey. Give it a watch, it's here on TH-cam.
@@gravitydefyingturtle Which is why they only dissolved the Senate after the Death Star was operational. Without the exhaust port flaw it would be deemed impossible to stop or defend against. Up until that point the Empire's oppression was mostly limited to outer rim worlds nobody in the core cared about enough to look closely at. And then the Death Star went boom....
Now I understand why Teal'c watched Star Wars nine times.
I love how when immaculate conception is brought up Teal’c immediately thinks Anakin Skywalker.
@@gameandgamer1479 And that means that Teal'c 100% watched the prequel trilogy.
And you know if Teal'c likes it, it must be good. - Col. Jack O'Niell.
@@Doublebarreledsimian Yes. Teal'c confirms the prequel haters are dumb.
Thank you Spacedock for reminding people that Stargate exists, and is actually a great show.
A good show but I still wished we got a movie trilogy with the original movie cast tho.
It's coming back. Saw an interview with one of the original producers recently. It's going to remain in canon and be a sequel to all that came before it.
@@maarek71 Finally. As long as it is not a reboot and pays the proper homage to its predecessors, I will be a happy camper. Fair enough, most of the cast have got old, but I think that they could still contribute.
@@veslar I just hope any continuation goes with the tone and style of SG-1 and Atlantis rather than Universe. Universe definitely got better as it went on, but I'd rather have fun sci-fi adventure than more miserable dimly-lit melodrama.
@@Martin-xd4jl I want both, I absolutely loved both of them.
Another point about the Ga’uld and Stargate, it’s also a fact that Earth wasn’t the first advanced force that the Ga’uld met. Usually when they meet another suitably advanced race that threaten them they usually just send a fleet of ships and overwhelm them with firepower and numbers, bombarding them to extinction. Or if the advanced race is too much a problem they just blockade them from expanding and eventually use underhanded and clever tactics to eliminate them in a round about way. With Earth, the system lords weren’t too concerned of the Tauri because we weren’t as advanced as these other races they’ve encountered and felt they could destroy us at any time. Wasn’t until we start popping off the system lords themselves when they took us seriously. At that point though we’ve gained allies and know how to resist and live another day. Another thing is that Earth has a long and bloody history of in fighting and war. Other advanced races the Ga’uld fought were peaceful or didn’t have experience or strong military. We however had advanced battle tactics and weapons specifically designed for all out war.
In conclusion, we had some advantages to the more advanced races who grew fat from complacency and negligence.
Another consideration: Earth _has to_ be one of the most populous worlds in this galaxy. Being the homeworld of the human race, the population has boomed into the billions (it's why the Wraith were so obsessed with trying to find one planet in an entirely different galaxy) and this must have given the System Lords pause (how do you conquer/decimate a planet with so many?)
i thought that earth was just forgotten because the stargate was buried?
@@mantisynth2186 We never got the full story why, but the Goa'uld considered Earth to be a lost world to them.
Most of them had to have visited Earth at one point (how else would they learn how to impersonate human gods?) so you can write off the idea that Ra alone knew the location of the world and jealously guarded the secret of where he got all these slaves. Maybe the ol' Ancient plague was cropping up on Earth, the Goa'uld knew enough to stay away lest they spread the disease to their offworld holdings, and simply assumed Earth was depopulated by the plague.
All the while, such a disease either zeroed out or was eradicated by Ascended Ancients or another benevolent race like the Asgard,
@@BogeyTheBear but didn't they say in the original movie that earth was abandoned because there was an uprising that ended with the stargate getting buried?
@@mantisynth2186 and they considered Earth to not be worth the annoyance of sending some ships to conquer the area and unearth the stargate. they didn't consider that human tech would advance and that the humans could reverse enginner gould tech to build starships etc.
I mean, the Empire was ruled by a pretty cunning and smart, but ultimately chaotic evil sith lord who just assumed he has already won. Palpatine relaxed to early, and that kind of fits the character. It is also believable that he would surround himself with bumbling idiots, because he was much more scared of his own surroundings than of common people who might resist the rule. After all, Palpatine achieved power not by having a fascist uprising of ideological believers but by staging a high-level coup. So that's exactly what he was afraid of the most. So he did surround himself with idiots.
Palpatine was just a dog chasing cars. Becoming The Emperor confronted him with the reality that he had no idea what to do when he actually caught the car.
Not to mention Palpatine didn't go straight to ruling with fear. He kept the Senate because he needed a bureaucracy to maintain control and only dissolved it after the Death Star was built. This was a shift in policy from subtly control to an overt, fear imposing dictatorship.
The problem was, once the Death Star was blown up, there was no longer a bureaucracy to keep control so the Empire had to double down on fear. That was kind of the beginning of the end for them. As Leia said "the more you tighten your grip the most star systems will slip through your finger.
Sideous was a sith Lord first and an emperor second.
Taking over the Republic and turning it into an empire was just a means to and end. (That end being destroying the Jedi.)
@@erockandroll39 also he needed to build Death Star to confront Yuuzhan Vong invasion, oh well, EU :D
Peter Dinklage had a great line in game of thrones, "my sister and father ruled through fear. It was effective but made their power brittle". You can't overtly use fear. You appear as the tyrant you are. Subtlety is far more effective and longer lasting in terms of maintaining control.
That's why they created "democracy".
@@chrisstevens2 Sad because it's true.
@@chrisstevens2 it's no so much subtlety as stability. It actually does tend to make the lives of the peasants less bad making them less likely to revolt.
Give them an outsider to fear. Granted, you keep having to find outsiders.
@@chrisstevens2 I have to correct you: indirect democracy. That is the kind of democracy that America, European nations and almost all other democratic nations have. A true democracy would be direct and the people would have full control, meaning that all citizens can vote on any law, proposal or decision.
4:23 "They tried to make the transition too fast."
Man, remember when it was implied the Empire had been in power for multiple decades, and it had actually been a slow transition to the state of things in A New hope?
I think my favorite part of the setup for the System Lords in Stargate was that many of them clearly understood the nature of the threats against them, but couldn't actually acknowledge any of those threats without risking fracturing their power base. It's why Yu was my favorite; His reaction to the changing nature of galactic politics was "Okay, let's secularize and form mutual defense agreements.".
Yu was one of the things I think the show really should have focused on more, as one of the oldest system lords he wasn't quite the megalomaniac the other system lords were, and had a much more pragmatic side to him. Even despite his age and degrading mental health he seemed to accept what was happening with almost open arms, which I find rather bizzare. In addition he had an agreement with Earth to kinda stay out of each other's way. To what extent wan't really said up to the point where he was killed by replicator Carter.
@@noahhounshel104 Yu is on the spectrum from full blown megalomaniac Goa'uld to Tok'ra. He isn't all the way in the Goa'uld camp, but he is still further from the Tok'ra.
We have a few other confirmed cases of Goa'uld who didn't drink their own kool-aid or who plain don't agree with the general line of the empire, with some like Gershaw of Belote or most famously Egeria going so far as to completely rebel against it. It's not made entirely clear so many fans never realize it, but Gershaw, the Tok'ra councilwoman we see in the original Tok'ra episodes was in fact not born a Tok'ra but is a Goa'uld who joined up with them, like they hoped Tannith would have. Another example might be the Goa'uld from Fallout which was willing to altruistically sacrifice itself to save Jonas and the people of Kelowna for no personal benefit.
As for Yu and the SGC, the SG teams seemingly had very few incursions into Yu's territory which in turn made him far less concerned about the SGC and Earth than most other System Lords. Thus Yu generally didn't care what Earth was doing as long as it didn't outright threaten the entire Goa'uld empire and he was willing to entertain treaties and deals with that in mind.
I think the view that all Goa'uld are entirely evil and megalomanic was most championed by O'niell and Teal'c on the show, and thus many fans end up thinking that to be the case, but we often have Sam and Daniel try to be a bit more level-headed about it and interject that it isn't quite true.
@@NATIK001 While I'm not entirely disagreeing with what you're saying, I think the show strongly suggested that the evil-ness of the Goa'uld is strongly correlated with the inherited memories of the symbiote. It's mentioned a handful of times that tok'ra split from the goa'uld thousands of years ago, and over time the number of legitimately repentant goa'uld vanished to nothing.
It's certainly true that the symbiotes aren't "entirely" evil, after all the tok'ra aren't a different species or something. But the goa'uld are the culmination of generations of almost exclusively evil symbiote's memories on top of one another. Those habits, thoughts, and behaviors have pooled within the Goa'uld all that time.
There are a number of intermediate societies: Langara, Pangara, Tegalus, etc. But they remain cut off from the gate network. Had they become reconnected like Earth they might have filled the role of "plucky heroes."
Stargate also presents a logical escalation. At the end of season 1, Apophis losing 2 motherships was a huge set back. By season 8 Anubis and Baal are throwing around dozens because thanks to the Tau'ri the Goauld have spent years engaging in a protracted power struggle that forced them to switch to a war economy. But you still have a lot of places that still don't see Goauld because they are just not important to the war effort so the galaxy as a whole becomes LESS oppressed because all the military assets are being used elsewhere.
Those cut off worlds are not in the Goa'uld empire. They were literally cut off.
@@TheKrstff Spacedock words it so it sounds like Earth is the only middle tech world in SG1 and notes that Earth is off the grid.
I do think the Stargate guys did a very good job of explaining why Earth even survived.
We were lucky to have killed Ra early on. I don't think even Earth would have stood up to a united assault (something they make clear when Apophis/Anubia/Baal are close to becoming Supreme System Lords). Also none of those other planets had the population of Earth since they were taken from here, and higher population means higher production capability which is is better when fighting an enemy as entrenched as the goa'uld.
The reason Earth became the champion was not only that it had intermediate technology, a large population (though I believe Landry does note that it has THE largest population in the galaxy) and centuries of military conflict that caused pragmatic military doctrines to form. As you note, several other planets fit that description. What gave Earth the edge was the decision to do a system-wide exploration of the entire Milky Way (and beyond) gate network. There were tons of Ancient ruins and useful resources and possible allies just lying around, but none of those societies had the guts/foolhardiness to do a systematic search for them. (To be fair, we know of a LOT of timelines where that ended badly for Earth.) That willingness to explore gave Earth the pieces it needed to tear the Goa'uld down.
@@michaelramon2411 Also having some of those ruins on our own planet (Ex: Antarctic outpost) helped.
I'm am literally rewatching the entire Stargate series.
Where? I would like to do the same lol
@@cheems3158 Netflix US has SG-1 complete.
@@cheems3158 you can order all seasons on amazon
I have because i simply need it in my shelves ^^
@@cheems3158
Amazon Prime has it on Prime Video.
I better don't talk about how often I've done this... (Except infinity and origins of course)
“Which I hope is advice you’ll never be able to take advantage of”
*Me sitting in my brand new Death Star after cashing in my GameStop stock:* >: ( don’t tell me what to do
You ended that sentence with a preposition! Bastard!
"Oh I don't think so"
A Death Star? What a poor investment...
You can make more than a dozen weapons capable of whipping out most life on a planet by destroying only the surface of the planet instead of blowing the whole planet up for the same cost.
@@stafjalon4589 I'm just rockin' my fleet of 10,000 Venator's how about you?
for that price you could have built about 200,000,000 hyperdrive-equipped Urbanmechs.
To paraphrase O'Neil in Season 5 of SG-1: holds up a staff weapon, "This is a weapon of intimidation. It's meant to scare your enemy." He holds up a P90, "This is a weapon of war. It's meant to kill your enemy." I'll have to check out World Anvil as I've had an idea bouncing around in my head for a while now, but I do have one question, is there by chance a method to your feedback on whether an idea is good, bad, or oh god why would you want to pursue that, etc?
I’m on World Anvil (check out Barriban if you join) and there is the option to leave comments on articles. You could just post a feedback page in your world and discuss with people there.
Which Episode
@@Alexthealright S5e18
their usage of P90 was always funny to me. P90 was intended the weapon of the last chance for vehicle crews and rear echelon soldiers, it even has that futuristic look and crappy ergonomics for the sole purpose of not snagging on vehicle hatches.The actual weapon of war of a P90 user would be a tank or a howitzer.
It's O'Neill with TWO LL !!!!
(Picks up Jaffa staff)
“This is a weapon of terror. It is made to intimidate your enemy.”
(Picks up P90)
“This is a weapon of war. It is made to kill your enemy.”
I really liked how Stargage often showed that complicated isn’t necessarily better. In so much Sci-Fi modern day weapons are just glorified waterpistols and there are those moments in Stargate. But for everything that doesn’t have a force field? Yeah a gun will be pretty damn effective.
No, the shields stopped bullets too. That's where good old knives came into play...
yeah i kinda hate the all firearms are nerf guns trope in sci-fi.
Honestly, Terra Invicta did it the best way in my opinion. On Earth, modern firearms, artillery and weapon systems are more than capable of destroying alien forces (even if a numerical advantage is needed due to the aliens using superior materials for armour), but in space, naval guns and autocannons are quickly replaced, because the sheer scale of space battles means that enemy ships can either dodge the projectile, orient themselves so it hits their thickest armour, or just destroy it with point defense.
But once you have railgun and coilguns, projectile weapons become far more effective due to the increased velocity.
And missiles are both the best early game weapon, and perfectly viable in the mid-and-late game, because they get more powerful payloads (conventional, nuclear, fusion, and antimatter)
Which IS complete bullshit and Just an excuse for Sg1 to win, Like the goa'ulds will Encounter way more people with bow and Arrow and throwing knives than guns but somehow the goa'ulds have only defenses against guns and Energy weapons but are completely defenseless against random peasant with a throwing knife?
even forcefields cannot ignore the laws of physics, the daedalus is able to overwhelm a forcefield with the sheer intensity of its projectile weapons fire.
"Because one planet, that being Earth, slipped through the net"
**laughs in Tollan**
And the Aschen
@@boobah5643 Yes. They extinguished the line of Apophis, and cost the Goa'Uld dearly in ships. Anubis only managed to nearly wipe them out because of all that ancient knowledge he had. And to be fair, even the older Asgard ships couldn't stand up to Anubis' ships.
@@phillipleavenworth I really like to think that tbe first gate address they dialed was the black hole.
@@Deridus I wonder if they left their planet they would want to exact some kind of revenge.
@@Deridus Serves the bastards right.
I hope the planet was pulled threw the Stargate, piece by piece.
If you want to rule through fear remember the most terrifying thing is being effective. Your subjects don't need to be literal peasants if you can effectively crush any resistance through proper and effective tactics
The problem is,you need to win every time and if you lose even a single battle then that will have domino effect that will start different mostly unrelated revolts against the Empire because of the hope that it creates,the message that the empire can be destroyed and if the original rebelion is destroyed the other rebelions can't stop the Empire will kill them all,if they surrender or continue the opposition.
When you said to be effective, I thought you meant to be an effective leader. 😀
@@shorewall that too. Palpatine was a lunatic wizard; he WANTED to be in charge but he had no plans or designs for his new Empire. He just wanted them he empire. Someone in another comment compared him to a dog chasing a car, with no idea what to do when he caught it.
That's the point, though. There's many people in the Empire who are OLDER than the Empire and can imagine a world without it. So naturally, there will be more educated and armed people who wouldn't just bow and nod whenever Palpatine says something.
The issue with Star Wars is that it was written specifically in a way so that the Empire could be toppled and give people a feeling that toppling it is the right course of action, which everyone in-universe celebrates. This meant that the writers had to make sure the Empire makes lots of really dumb mistakes that ensure its downfall. After the Clone Wars, all Palpatine needed to do was to restore peace, restart the galactic economy and make sure the space trains run on time. Everyone would love him. But this doesn't give plucky teenagers a chance to shine.
@@Nethan2000 Not really. In fact, Palpatine had to clamp down on many races from the Outer Rim considering that they rebelled against the Galactic Republic. He also had to clamp down on many Senatorial aristocrats who believed it to be their God-given right to interfere in Imperial affairs. The Empire destroyed Alderaan-a world that used its wealth to fund terrorist operations against the Empire galaxy-wide. The Empire enslaved the Wookiees-after the Wookiees aided Jedi fugitives and after they started attacking Imperials. Damn near everything the Imperials do was out of a logical sense of law and order. The only thing that wasn't was their eradication of the Jedi, and even still, Palpatine had an excuse for that, because he was Sith, and if the Jedi found out, they would have killed him. The only thing I would have changed from Palpatine's agenda is I would offer Jedi survivors of Order 66 amnesty if they came out and swore allegiance, and I would have ordered the Clone Commanders during Order 66 that it would be preferable if the Jedi is captured alive, kill them only if you cannot do so otherwise. That would ensure that I would have enough Jedi to snuff out any possible rebel threats or talk them out of doing something stupid.
SG-1 in particular will always hold a special place in my heart. I loved watching conventional military tactics being applied to an unconventional threat, such as the Marine firing-line withdrawing in detail from the Replicators in the gate room or the interplanetary drone-targeted Hellfire missile strike. I don't think anything since has really nailed that feel, though BSG and films like Battle:LA have taken a bash at it.
Just think of what current SGC tactics would look like with advancements in their preexisting tech and all the stuff from Pegasus (reverse engineered and mass produced).
In the Expanded Universe, they did say that the Empire launched a hearts-and-minds campaign in the core worlds that was successful for a time, but you're right, in canon that all went away.
Wow, that's some great advice. My plans to take over the galaxy have been pushed back a bit more, but now I think I'll shelve the whole thing until I can become an immortal snake creature parasite. Cheers mate!
@@Hawk_of_Battle Just ask Thulsa Doom
The goa'uld's impractical designs make sense in world which is something I love. They're not truly warriors, they're predators, preying on weak, tribal and medieval societies, relying more on psychological warfare than physical and the wars between system lords are far more ceremonial/formal affairs than an actual battle to the death.
That's why when the Tau'ri come on the scene, a force that's fighting an actual war to bring down their empire, the Goa'uld fail constantly, they've never fought an enemy that can bring anything greater than spears and bows to bear against them, so you have scenes like when Sha're was found, SG1 was up against a large force of Jaffa and still came out on top because they tried to fight an SG team the way you'd fight a rabble of tribal villagers, by running right up to them and executing them at close range, because that's all they knew.
The empire on the other hand, was at first ruled my a megalomaniac who would just throw huge amounts of resources at a problem and relied on super weapons and after his death, in the old EU, it fractured and fell apart due to no clear line of succession and in Disney, it self destructed.
In my cycle, the mighty Prothean Empire had perfected this art.
That soon came back to haunt them, when the Reapers arrived.
Uh? Did you lose your bike?
What you are saying is even more or less mentioned in the episode where SG1 supplies a Jaffa resistance group lead by a supposed brilliant leader who turns out to be their old system lord actually. They put up a contest of shooting at a target. The staff weapon shots slowly and misses 1 out of 3, Carter not only hits every time with a complete rapid fire mag dump, but shreds the target in half and with the last shot precision hits the tiny cord holding the target. And O’Neill says, the staff is a weapon of terror designed to frighten its enemies, the rifle is a weapon of war designed to kill.
I mean most of the tactics dealing with the resistance were the Goa'uld still stuck in their fear empire mentality. There were numerous times where they should have just set the ships cannons to autofire, sat down and waited for everyone to starve to death on a planet while the gate is constantly bombarded form orbit. That or with multiple ships have one only target the gate then use the others to wipe everyone out. It's why the replicators in pegasus were a problem, when they went to wipe out a planet first thing they did was go and nuke the gate so no one could escape or help out. The wraith also blocked the gate. The Goa'uld wanted people to escape basically and spread the fear around when they should have just nuked the gate from orbit.
@@Xershade Yeah, they could probably have made a better energy weapon as well. Some of the ones used by bounty hunters or the like spring to mind. The problem is definitively in their thinking, and that shows itself in each of the elements of their tactic.
The Wraith have a similar issue though
This gap in available technology in Stargate reminds me a lot of the differences in how technology developed between Humanity and the Covenant (before Halo 3 and so on ruined it by making humans "the specials"):
The Covenant had access to Forerunner tech from the beginning, but due to their religious views they could study it on a surface level but could never truly understand it and hence all their developments could emulate the Forerunners, but never truly match or surpass it.
Inversely, Humanity had to start from scratch and so learned to make do with whatever they had access to. Skip ahead to the Human/Covenant War and while the Covenant began with more advanced tech humanity was able to properly analyze, rebuild, and improve upon both Covenant and Forerunner technology. As an example, equipment like Mojinoir armor augmented with better shields, The Spartan Laser, hand held Railguns, retroactively giving human ships non-physics based artificial gravity. Not to mention that in the lore human AI programs are absolutely superior to their Covenant equivalents and can even stand up to Forerunner constructs for a time.
Even still the UNSC and humanity really only won because the covenant fell apart in the Great Schism when the elites were betrayed and rebelled
That's wrong. The only thing humanity had over the covenant was their ability to use important forerunner artifacts. Infinity has forerunner engines basically slapped onto it as well as other covenant tech. The covenant created their own tech based off of forerunner designs. Their ships engines werent forerunner. Same with their weapons. Besides. As much as I like halo its lore is a crap shoot. With the strength of rail guns in that universe the covenant should be wiped out. Sending 600 ton slugs at a quarter the speed of light would destroy almost anything in it's way, high charity would have been dust. Yet humanity won. Yeah, halos lore has been turned into a crap fest.
That said, the actual purpose of the Galactic Empire was to give Palpatine access to the resources and mcguffins needed to make him immortal. The Goa'uld had immortality long before the main storyline of Stargate began.
"Is it better to be feared or respected, and I say, 'Is it too much to ask for both?'"
- Tony Stark, 2008
You know, I am surprised you never brought this up. That unlike in Star Wars, where the Empire does not seem, in the movies, to learn their lesson and adapt to galactic conflict, the Goa'uld did. That due to growing threats, factions if not the entire System Lords began to adapt to Earth and began to develop technology to counter Earth and adversaries they were not able to take originally. Anubis, Apophis, and Bs'al being prime examples, where only luck, in the end, was the reason Earth defeat them.
One theory I have in regards to Palpatine is actually a parallel; Scar from the Lion King. He spent so much time, planning, manipulating, scheming, working to get *into* power that once there, he really had no idea what he was doing. He found something that sounded like it might work and ran with it full steam ahead.
The comparison of a P-90 and a Jaffa Weapon by O'Neil in season 5 episode 18 describes that perfectly: "This (Jaffa Weapon) is a weapon of terror. It's made to intimate your enemy. THIS (P-90) is a weapon of war. It's made to kill your enemy"
Is it unrealistic in Star Wars when the person who engineered that system is a sith Lord of dubious sanity, and only maintained that empire for less than 20 years? Grabbing power without considering consequences feels internally consistent, and the consequences I feel played out as well as could be expected
Nah, Palpatine was perfectly sane. His flaw (as Luke noted) was his overconfidence in his genius and extraordinary Force powers. He assumed that if he took absolute control, his brilliance would be sufficient to quash any rebellion. To be fair, his genius did make him emperor of the galaxy, overthrow the Republic and destroy the entire Jedi Order...
@@Cailus3542 Depends on how you define sane, sane is not a medical term with a strict definition like insane, they are legal terms that discribe someone who can or cant be held accountable for their actions or are unable to distinguish right from wrong. And i do think palpatine fits into that seconds category, his moral compass is practically non-existant. He is clearly a full blown sociopath. Its hard to tell, of course if he actually doesnt know wrong from right or just doesnt care, but he does call justice(or something like it, cant remember the exact quote) a point of view which to me points strongly to him not actually being able to see the difference between right and wrong, and his only way to see said difference is through the established laws.
@@Julian-pw5mv You do know 'Sociopath' is also a medical-ish term and it doesn't mean "bad"/"evil"/etc.?
Your morality 'flavour' is significantly rooted in your culture and beliefs -fortunately most cultures that survive/thrive; develope what we would consider humane or 'common sense' aspects like 'randomly going around murdering and stealing is a bad thing'; Palps seemingly was able to somehow absolutely and completely reject his Naboo 'morality' and adopt the (dubious) Sith 'morality', in which pretty much anything is cool as long as it makes you and thus the Sith more powerful.
@@LENZ5369 I know what a sociopath is. I also know that it doesnt mean evil, a sociopath is someone who suffers from aspd, which means they dont understand other peoples feelings and often lack, or have a very weak moral compass. The term is used interchangeably with psychopath and are clinically the same. Though some people describe a psychopath to be better at hiding their lack of a moral compass and their inability to understand other peoples feelings. I guess palpatine would be more like a psychopath, but as I said they are clinically the same.
@@Julian-pw5mv
It's not about a "moral compass" (which is an inability to understand whether actions are 'right/wrong' according to your culture/law/etc.); it's about empathy and sympathy -the innate ability to feel and understand the emotions of others.
It isn't something unique, an objective 'box' that you can put individuals in -it's a spectrum that everyone is on and can even vary day to day or context to context.
A guy could be lynching a black guy for looking at a white women one day but bawling his eyes out the next; because his neighbour's kid got cancer.
Not every concentration camp guard went home and started torturing puppies.
"Psychopath" has deep negative connotations and cultural implications -it's effectively pejorative at this point, there is an effort to differentiate sociopathy and psychopathy with regards to 'impulse control' and general outward behavior -confining the negative connotations, behaviours and biases to psychopathy; leaving sociopathy as simply the 'condition'.
Based on his action alone -Palpatine wasn't "a psychopath" or "a sociopath" anymore than Anakin was when murdered the younglings, anymore than anyone harming or killing others or letting harm come to others.
That is a 'morality' (not "moral compass") issue, they fully understand that their actions are 'wrong' on a base level but justify it on some 'higher principle':
"Kill them so you can gain more darkside power, so you can save your wife and children", "KIll them so you can restore order and peace", Take control and oppress everyone because you are better and deserve/need to lead".
The preservation through fear makes more sense in the idea that palpatine has no context of culture outside of sith ideology and that he’s a megalomaniac, which is why when the empire was lead by thrawn or pelleon it actually worked more efficiently. Palpatines regime never was actually true to its promise it was a farce, that only existed to spread his influence, hence why tarkins doctrine was so enticing to him. If anything it is more appropriate that the empire would collapse easily due the fact applying sith doctrine to a large bloated behemoth like the republic would make it unstable. Earlier smaller sith empires were long term unsustainable, the Galactic Empire, under palpatine had no long term chance...
Also palpatine would never settle for the status quo and rest on his laurels of having a weak galaxy or regime to rule over due to the social darwinistic mentality of the sith. If his military industrial complex or his power can’t grow why bother.
He was literally a senator in the Republic. There's no way he was unaware of the culture of the Republic. It's possible that he hated it so much that he massively overcorrected when creating his own Empire because, as you say, he was a megalomaniac. But even then, he should have known better than to assume that an ancient style of governance would work with no problems whatsoever.
@@ThePCguy17 it’s not so much that governance can’t work it’s just palpatine never intended it to hold true to his promises and be a man of the people or an enlightened despot as people thought he was, control and giving himself more power was all he wanted at the end of the day, also obviously the years of being a senator were just a means to an end, an end which he successfully achieved, also all sith empires fell from a lot of the same issues, and none of the sith were ever self aware enough to see past there own sociopathy except casting the blame on some perceived flaw instead of realizing the fundamental culture of the sith and the darkside in general (this applies to the jedi as well) are incredibly volatile and incompatible with building stable societies. You could make the argument the republic itself was very shaky and tumultuous regardless of authoritarianism being slapped onto its central government and already had many cracks that were there since the early days, hence this just being another phase of it falling apart and putting itself back together via china.
@Wind Rose I feel like there are a lot of differences between Palpatine and Hitler. For one thing, Palpatine didn't have any specific race that got persecuted under his reign, though admittedly he was encouraging human supremacy. Palpatine was also a lot more practical than Hitler, generally using persecuted populations for actual labor rather than just working them to death because he didn't like them.
I'm not saying there aren't parallels, but calling Palpatine 'literally Hitler but in space' is a bit much.
He was full of himself. He forgot that the plan he used to take control was developed over the corse of a thousand years and by multiple Sith Lords. And also that you need a clear line of secession if you want your Empire to be able to outlast you.
Nice video! I feel like Stargate is a underrated franchise.
Excellent comparison! The Go'ald were excellent villain, and they need to be showcased more often, along with the whole Stargate series of shows. I'm hoping for action figures soon
i'm hoping for a new stargate show 😉 !
@@Lapantouflemagic0 it's the dream! I want a show, too
@@Lapantouflemagic0 Honestly with STD and Disney Star Wars (and countless other reboot/sequels), I think it's probably better that we don't have another series of shows.
As an admittedly casual Star Wars fan and dilettante, the more I hear about the Tarkin Doctrine, the more I wonder how anyone could have signed off on what seems to be the dumbest and most wildly impractical means of maintaining galactic hegemony that I've ever heard of.
Well it is explained more in legends as Sidious wants unlimited power, meaning no other bodies that can oppose him or restrict his power so he wanted to destroy things like the Senate but doing so would mean the people would become more restless and the galaxy would be harder to govern. The galaxy is also too big for any galactic military to fully pacify so they devoted their resources to trying to prevent uprisings through fear and propaganda.
Once palaptine dies and the empire shatters, some of the Imperial successor states are run much more effectively such as the Pentasyar Alignment under Ardus Kaine, which yes only lasted about 8 years but that's because it chose to join a different state and actually existed for two years after kaine died.
The empire under people like Grand Admiral Thrawn and Pelleon were much more effective, Thrawn unified the warlords and nearly defeated the rebels in less than a year before getting assissinated and Pelleon was the man who managed to stop the New Republic from crushing what was left with the empire and negotiating a peace deal, in which the empire managed to live on though severely reduced in size and managed to remain stable until the Second Imperial Civil War decades later.
You need to consider that the planet that Tarkin în was born and the fmily. He fought 2 eriadu wild cats when he was 16 for exemple.
The Tarkin doctrine was picked because it appealed to the Emperor, who was a Sith who were all about having power over others.
I think this is the first time I've ever seen anyone compliment the way the Goa'uld rule. Usually I just see people say something along the lines of "lol the Goa'uld are so dumb they got beat by humans with primitive 90s tech"
Reminds me of people complaining about the Stormtroopers losing to the Ewoks, despite showing us every detail of how and why the Stormtroopers were outclassed.
Don’t you mean cutting edge modern technology?
Actually they weren't beaten by earth at all. It was Anubis and the replicators that destroyed the Goa'uld. But the point of this video remains the same, The Goa'uld kept everyone uneducated and it was only when educated people (or 'things' in the case of replicators) that threatened the status quo appeared that the Goa'uld stranglehold failed. Even after the destruction of their empire it was shown that the galaxy very easily fell back into its old status quo as the vast majority of people accepted the Ori, because all they've known was being ruled for thousands of years.
The system lords were weakened by Anubis and then vanquished by the replicators.
@@pewpewsalote8802 The System Lords were weakened by the Tau'ri at least as much as they were by Anubis. And I doubt it's a coincidence that Anubis chose to make his return shortly after the Tau'ri created a power vacuum within the System Lords for him to exploit.
Another difference is that while the Galactic Empire was defeated solely by a small rebellion, the Goa'uld had not only three separate factions uniting against them (Tau'ri, Tok'Ra and the Jaffa Rebellion), they also had to deal with an invading army of all-consuming robotic locusts that came the heck out of nowhere.
I wonder just how much damage the replicators did to the Gao'uld before SG1 wiped the critters out.
Before and during fighting all that the Goa'uld also fought a giant civil war, with Ba'al and Anubis basically destroying the Goa'uld empires thousands of years old power structure in taking down the System Lords.
Honestly the Big Blows came from the replicators,the infighting and much much later the Jaffa desertions. The Tau'ri accomplishments were only Commando raids, earth was never a serious Military threat but they ruined a system Lords vacation. Think about ra came to abydos probably Just for a nice relaxing vacation of being the Most awesome Dude in the Galaxy then suddenly some weird Primaten apes came along to Blow Up your Yacht.
@@Nukestarmaster There's not much to wonder about, the replicators did more damage to the Goa'uld empire than the entire efforts of the Tok'ra, earth, and free jaffa nation did combined. Before the reckoning (episode) Ba'al had inherited all of Anubis's vast empire and was poised to take over the entirety of the Goa'uld empire. He was just as unstoppable as Anubis, then the replicators came and weakened the Goa'uld so thoroughly that the Jaffa rebellion was able to officially declare themselves independent, and after the battle of Dakara the last great fleet of the Goa'uld empire was gone and thus the system lords and their mighty empire were no more. Even the underlords were wiped out, only Ba'al remained but he went into hiding on earth and began his clone plan.
If stargate was a call of duty videogame, then the jaffa would've literally kill-stole from the replicators, and the Tauri/Tokra would've gotten a 1% kill assist.
A few other societies in Stargate managed to advance far enough. Some are at a 20th century level. Others are far ahead, like the Hebridians and the Tollan. The Tollan, whose leader wants you to play a game (maybe cut off your foot), have built powerful weapons capable of destroying Goa’uld capital ships with a single shot. But they end up sitting on their laurels and assuming the enemy can never adapt. And when they do develop weapons that can overcome the enemy’s new advantage... they don’t use them.
Stargate also has the Ori, who keep their subjects at a medieval level through faith and fear (think Inquisition to the max). But unlike the Goa’uld, the Ori are as close to gods as this universe has, whereas the snakeheads are just pretending (even though most of them actually believe it; the ones that don’t are really dangerous)
Finally, I've been watching tutorials all day but this one actually gets to the point.
"This [a staff weapon] is a weapon of terror. It is made to intimidate the enemy. This [a P-90] is a weapon of war. It is made to kill your enemy." -- Jack O'Neill (with 2 Ls) :P
The Gua'old were not unopposed, the Asgard opposed them. Somewhat. Though it was mostly just bluster by the time SG1 started getting powerful.
The Asgard were native to a different galaxy and were far too preoccupied with their own problems (replicators and their own failing genome) to give real opposition to the Goa'uld. All they did was protect a limited number of planets from the System Lords.
“Which I hope is advice you’ll never be able to take advantage of”
*glances nervously at stellaris*
Stargate is an amazing multi-layered storyline because of this technology gap. Ground warfare had been mastered by Earth's military, but space battle was completely...alien...to humans (at the beginning). I remember when Carter demonstrated how a P90 SMG excelled versus a Staff Weapon. On the other hand it was funny when Bra'tac expected Earth to have a space fleet, but Jackson and O'Neill said: "We have....Shuttles..."
These... “shuttles”... they are formidable craft, yes?
It’s why I love Thrawn so much. He points out how flawed the fear based strategy is and campaigns for a focus on constructing a larger number of mobile star destroyer strike fleets supported by tie interceptor fighters to be able to quickly respond to rebellions and squash them before they get too large.
Now I start to wonder, how would Thrawn view the Goa'uld empire's system of using fear to control its populace?
@@mill2712 tbh thrawn would probably find their hubris disappointing but their culture fascinating
True fear is wearing fashion no one else would dare wear, and making it look empowering.
Black leather suits and a cape, ha, gold chains and a skull cap, insolent fools kneel to me!
He was beaten by a song 😂😂
And makeup and jewelry.
The Stargate franchise got me into the Sci-fi genre.
I agree with almost everything you said but it should be noted that A. The Gould would have wiped out the Tauri when they started taking them seriously had it not been for the Asgard intervention. B. The Tauri did not win against the Gould, it was actually the replicators that dealt them the final blow, followed by the Free Jaffa and then the Ori (granted they all appeared due to Tauri shenanigans) but earth would have never been able to stand alone, one Ha'tak could have glassed earth from orbit with little resistance
Yeah Humans pull a pompey claiming to BE the sole reason for the Victory No wonder they tok'ra ,the Jaffa and Other Humans didnt Like them at all
The Editor: Is a slave a slave if he doesn't know he's enslaved?
The Doctor: Yes.
The Long Game (S1E7), Doctor Who
Stargate? A surprise to be sure, but a welcome one (Please more stargate O:) )
This was very useful advice for my God Emperorship. Especially being an immortal lizard person. You shall be spared for this immeasurable assistance. 🐍
A true God Emperor does not need advice.
We should note that the Goa'uld have plenty of internal enemies (heretic Jaffa, anti-Goa'uld humans, the Tok'ra) in addition to their external enemies (Asgard, Nox, Tollan), but all of the external enemies have reasons not to fight (Asgard want to but have to put resources elsewhere, Nox don't like violence, Tollan are confident of their own security) and the internal enemies all mistrust each other (no one likes the Tok'ra because they are Goa'ulds, no one likes the Jaffa because they are System Lord lackeys, and no one is impressed by the regular humans). It is only by Stargate Command, a group of outsiders without centuries of ingrained suspicions, seeing the big picture and dragging this groups together into a somewhat coherent alliance is any progress made.
It also helps that the Goa'uld Empire is heavily factionalized, rather than a united front. Even when Earth becomes a clear threat, any System Lord who sends his forces against it risks being attacked from behind by his rivals. Apophis lost to Sokar because he'd wasted so much effort against Earth. SGC offed Sokar, and later Cronus. No Goa'uld was able to get the Empire united in a common cause until Anubis, at which point they were facing much more serious rebellions and a much more powerful Earth.
This is a brilliant analysis. Also I'll add the timing of the Replicator assault on the Milky Way ended up being fortunate.
This is a weapon of Fear.
This is a weapon of War
P90 go BRRRRRRRRRR
Another BIG advantage the Tau'ri/Earth had was the stargate gate addresses. This allowed them to plan more surgical strikes/infiltration missions and exploration. I feel like the Goa'uld used Jaffa soldiers as test subjects to map out the network on thousands of years and each faction didn't share information (which also lead to their believable downfall). I liked how the show had alternate timelines storylines that showed how they're timeline was a rare few that survived fighting the Goa'uld system lords.
Your timing is HILARIOUS as I began rewatching Stargate SG-1 several weeks back while I work on hobby projects. I am already on Season 3.
The Goa'uld are awesome. I love them as bad guys.
Every Stargate video is always welcome!
MORE STARGATE MORE STARGATE MORE STARGATE
3:40 Others have existed, for an example the Tollans, but the Tau'ri use small unit tactics very effectively to cause chaos amongst the system lords. The Tok'ra had been seeking an equilibrium between the system lords for a long time thinking it was preferable to the rise of one all powerful systemlord. The Tau'ri kept upsetting the balance which allowed potential supreme system lords to rise only for them to be knocked down by coalitions of other system lords and the Tau'ri.
this content has legit got me through every life has thrown as me
Ya hit the nail on the head with the Stargate description. Everyone was to technology advanced or total less. The tar'ui had weapons more advanced than a arrow or sword but so lacking it screws with the more advanced energy stuff
@@piotrd.4850 I think that's why it worked so well. The SGC was never overpowered but not total helpless.
Personally, I would argue that the best way to rule and empire is to ensure that the common citizenry willingly accept your rule while also ensuring that anyone powerful enough to personally threaten you is too loyal/fearful to dare move against you.
Isn't that basically what happened in Star Wars with the galactic Empire? The public applauded to Palpatine for creating the Empire.
The people who were powerful but not loyal was executed.
@@darkwolf4434 the problem there is that Palatine is evil. His presence naturally rots the regime from the top. The 'be loved by the plebeians, feared by the patricians' systems only works if the leaders genuinely have the best interests of the nation at least somewhat at heart.
Also, I'm not really that knowledgeable about Star Wars lore but doesn't the Empire abandoned that strategy once it is established
@@amiscellaneoushuman3516 Yeah, but the Worlds it treated badly barlely had any influence in the galaxy.
The Goa'uld do this. The peasantry think they are gods, their soldiers are a race of soldiers engineered to be physically dependant on them.
Anyone who got too powerful usually got glassed from orbit.
Their fall came from earth making thier gods bleed and the production of the tretonin drug freeing the army from the dependence.
@@amiscellaneoushuman3516 What you're describing is pretty much exactly how Darth Vitiate ruled his Eternal Empire, and for all intents and purposes it actually worked extremely well. The only problem is that Vitiate got bored and decided to die. If he didn't decide to let the 3 most powerful people in the galaxy into his throne room for a laugh, he actually could've ruled eternally.
How Vitiate crafted the Sith Empire and Zakuulan culture in parallel with each other is a pretty fascinating bit of Star Wars lore to dig into
Best quote from Stargate:
Holds up staff weapon
"This, is a weapon of terror. It's made to intimidate the enemy."
Casually tosses it aside and holds up P90
"This, is a weapon of war. It's made to kill your enemy."
The Empire’s operating political strategy makes sense when one considers that its Emperor was a self-absorbed megalomaniacal malignant narcissist, a trait shared by his top cronies (Tarkin, Motti, Vader, etc). They feared no rebellion, because they saw no imperfections in themselves, and therefore none in their political and military ideals. In their mind, they were infallible. One might even say that their overconfidence was their weakness.
The Empire wasn’t meant to portray the ultimate perfect system of galactic oppression; it was meant to show the corruption inherent in a democracy-turned-dictatorship that was created through populist politics.
SO THIS IS WHY WE HAVEN'T SEEN DANIEL IN A WHILE ...
He's been busy on the other side of the galaxy ...... oppressing's people.
"Kree, Jaffa!" - Darth Vader, probably.
I always thought the Goa'uld had a bit too many problems with handling Earth Technology. But when you put it this way it makes a lot of sense. Makes me appreciate the series even more now.
The Wizard I play in D&D grew up in a similar situation, where her people were oppressed by a pseudo magocracy that didn't really know how their magic worked, but kept the peasants ignorant so they could never catch up. My Wizard's mother was a medical doctor and had some knowledge of numeracy and literacy before she was exiled, and she taught that to her daughter. Just as a quirk of her personality and interests my Wizard is hyper observant and ended up independently discovering the basics of the worlds magic system.
The believable part of the Galactic Empire was the fact that something so imponent would only manage to last a couple decades at best
The believability of it stems from a it being drawn more directly from modern history.
@@eds1942 I mean hey, the 3rd Reich only had what, a decade?
@@CC-oi8gr About that.
I’m all about Stargate content
I think the speech about the p90 being a war weapon shows this mindset perfectly
'planetary populations hate this weird trick'
People should remember this as well in the case of the Goauld. They werent just scary to non technologically advanced peoples. They went to war with the asgard and even caused them trouble leading to a treaty between the two. Even though the asgard had other threats that were bigger, the goauld were a handful for one of the most powerfull races in the stargate universe. The goauld as a species were actually very ancient and were as adaptable as humans in their learning and ability to adapt. They rose from the swamps of their homeworld to the most dominat force in the galaxy. I'm well pleased a new stargate is on it's way, it's my fav sci franchise ever.
The Goa'uld - Asgard conflict seems to have had two, maybe three, stages.
1: Presumably they fought for some period before they sat down and hashed out treaties.
2: When they hashed out treaties the Asgard pulled back from the Milky Way and left token defenses around protected worlds.
3: Asgard encounter Replicators and lose ability to force project into the Milky Way.
I think the Asgard faced a smaller version of the Ancient-Wraith war problem when they fought the Goa'uld. The Goa'uld empire is incredibly large, covering most of the Milky Way, the Asgard were never a large civilization especially after they started cloning. Asgard probably had their own version of realizing they could win every battle but not the war, and the Goa'uld realized that the Asgard were impossible to take down, if for no other reason than the Asgard striking from a galaxy the Goa'uld couldn't reach. So the two powers fought each other to a stalemate leading to the Asgard-Goa'uld protected planets treaty.
The only reason Earth could take down the Goa'uld while the Asgard couldn't would be that Earth drove the Goa'uld against each other and the Jaffa against the Goa'uld. Also Earth got "lucky" that Anubis took down the Goa'uld empire from within so Earth only had to take down Anubis to shatter the empire completely. Without Anubis taking down the Goa'uld System Lords I doubt Earth could have won total victory except over a very long time frame.
I miss 20 episode seasons. Sure alot is filler or downright cheap, having to spread the money over 20 hours of TV. But you just can´t make a show like Stargate with 8 episodes every 18 months. Longevity has helped this franchise so much.
Same here, I've noticed that I'm less inclined to start a show like that b/c they are over before you know it.
I don't mind some 'filler' episodes, those are usually the ones where you get to know stuff about the characters they would otherwise cut because of time restraints.
@@Whitespliff Exactly! Teal´c, O´Neill, Carter, Jackson, Sheppard, and so on, are burned into my memory. Just like a lot of Old Trek characters are. I can't remember half the names of people in Star Trek Discovery, They just weren't that interesting.
You do a great job of blending sci fi and writing advice. Keep it up!
"The people of the Star Wars galaxy are too intelligent to accept oppression without resistance or question."
If only that applied to the fanbase, too...
A fear based doctrine is a good idea since basically the enemy would be to afraid to fight you but like the video says making your army look scary is not entirely the whole point my point is making the army get its fearful reputation by its action like mowing down elite army’s and only losing a small number of their own men, three battleships taking down entire armadas without losing a single ship. Thus the empire gains its invincible standpoint, you can’t expect to intemidate people through mere presentations but through the sheer force you can unleash but not lose many soldiers on your side to make resistance so completely useless that a resistance will only continue for a few days before being anhilated. But that’s my theory so take it with a pinch of salt good video btw I liked it 👍
Hmm... good point. Immortality first, oppression second. Got it! ...now how to turn myself into an immortal parasite... hmm... 🤔
Niccolo Machiavelli: Crafts an intricate treatise on the right of princes to rule, the balance between ruling through fear and ruling through love, how princes may gain strength and how they can keep their holdings effectively.
Spacedock: Imma bout to end this man's entire career.
Yeah, but the advice is "be a god" ;-)
Also, everyone forgets that Machiavelli had a raging hard on for republics. The fact he suggested ruling through fear to princes is a mix of sabotage and telling them they just suck because the populace will never be truly happy or even content under their rule.
Ruled the galaxy for thousands of years, but only got one Jaffa joke.
Apparently, they never developed seedless grapes, cupcakes, or bacon.
Thanks for the Advice! I will implement your proposal right now ;)
The P-90 the most important weapon in the galaxy!
It's funny, I was actually surprised that when you began talking about StarGate, you immediately started from the movie rather than ignoring it to focus entirely on SG1 and all the other spin-offs. I still remember when that movie came out. Not an all-time great, but certainly very memorable, especially Ra as played to eerie perfection by Jaye Davidson.
yeah, i think Apophis in the first seasons is kind of lame, he doesn't feel god-like at all. while Râ is so magnificent i almost would be okay worshipping him
All you need to rule the galaxy is that deep James Earl Jones voice.
Darth Vader or the Unas?
INDEED
@@LordSevarg good catch! That's what I was referring to
It worked for Andross, right? (starfox franchise)
I watch Spacedock for their invaluable advice that is always so easily appliccable in everyday situations...
I disagree that the inhabitants of the GO'ol empire didn't know they were oppressed, on contrary they are rather quick to rebel when the terrians arrive.
It's just that they thought rebellion was impossible, in part because they don't even know the empire exists or how it is organized.
To them there is only their small town and overkill fighter planes.
And even if they resisted, they had sticks and stones and what they could make from those. The Gua'uld had superadvanced technology that could easily counter that. How would they overcome their oppressors, even if they knew what was going on? How is a guy with sticks and stones gona defeat a guy that is not only armed with a better weapon than anything else you have, armored to be immune to your weapons, has flying vehicles and has superhuman regenerative powers to boot due to their symbiont? The only way you'd have a chance in hell is by stealing their stuff and they guard their stuff well enough.
Reminds me of GDP Grey's video on rules for rulers. The end conclusion was that best working wealthiest and best educated democracies are stable and absolute worst, least educated, people struggling just to survive dictatorships are stable and in between was a valley of revolution, or that's how he put it.
I’m so proud of all my fellow Stargate fans. Making sure to keep one of the single best sci fi franchise in the discussion.
Wait how was SG1's "The Warrior" episode not brought up in this? Perfect example AND highlights what a badass Carter is.
I think you'll find that about 40% of the comments in here did that just fine lol
What about the Babylon 5 approach of simply getting there first
Hey is Babylon 5 a completely unique sci-fi universe or star trek?Im in search of new lores
@@stollinroned5090 Babylon 5 is a completely new and equally brilliant and epic universe, although the comparison can be made to Star Trek since DS9 ripped off its concept. Still love both shows though
@@theastrogamer710 Great!Will the special effects cringe me?I love scifi universes.Sg1 is the top for me
@@stollinroned5090 Babylon 5 was one of the first shows ever to use CGI on a massive scale so it can be a bit rough
Nobody watches Babylon 5 for the CGI. They watch it for the characters, conversations, and story.
A common theme I've seen in some Tierzoo videos (TH-cam channel about assessing the strengthes and weaknesses of different animals with a bunch of video game memes mixed in) is that intimidation becomes less and less effective the smarter your prey is.
Rhinos could gore hippos with ease but they are relatively stupid animals and as a result all a hippo needs to do 'win' a fight is to open its mouth and charge at the Rhino, scaring it off. Smarter organisms like Elephants however will not fall for this trick and stand their ground, or even fight back.
YAY! Time to write this down for my plans of Galactic domination.
I like that they also keep the Jaffa just as much slaves by use of the symbiote dependency.
U Forgot that Even the First Prime THE Highest Level Non Goa,uld Position
Believes There Tech is Magic
Depends on the first prime
I mean even the Goauld started to believe their own bullshit at a point
@@derth4 Indeed!
There is also the pretty ridiculous distribution of technology, like the Jaffa typically communicating over distances using frigging WARHORNS! With the Jaffa armies, its fighting with handheld weapons or bomb everything with starships and Deathgliders and there was nothing in between. Basically, if the Goa'uld had invaded Earth, their only really viable strategy would have just been to glass the planet from orbit, because I'd love to see the Jaffa take on a tank company
@@weldonwin Isn't that how Ba'al won in Continuum?
Have you ever heard of Homeworld (the game)? You could talk about how the exiled people from the planet Higara who were forced to settle on the planet of Kharak. They ended up returning to their homeworld through a long trek, having to deal with their original oppressor's and finding a lot of really sad/mysterious things along the way. It's really interesting story a lot of people don't talk about. It's a space-themed sci fi game that has a rich history. if you're looking to expand into a universe that has interesting races like the Bentusi and other large empires.
I always thought the existence of the rebellion was part of Palpatine's plan. Fascism always needs an external Other, and during the early days of Palpatine's power grab it was the CIS. He needed to finally end the Clone Wars to consolidate his position as Emperor, so the CIS leaders had to go, but he then needed a new threat to scapegoat and agitate against while the Empire established itself, an enemy to put all those troops and all that war machinery to use against, and so the rebellion was deliberately allowed to flourish so it could be that. Join the Empire, fight the forces of chaos and disruption. After the nightmare of the Clone Wars, that would sound appealing to many. The Legends Force Unleashed games outright confirm the Empire deliberately created the Rebellion, albeit to get all their enemies' eggs in one basket. There's a theory he deliberately allowed the Death Star to have such a glaring weakness, so he could point to its destruction as an act of terror to galvanise support. Palpatine was a guy who made his bones through being able to predict everything his enemies would do, and I don't believe he wouldn't have known the Tarkin Doctrine would be an utter failure at its stated objective, but used it anyway *because* it would fail. And by the time of Return of the Jedi, Palpatine's drawing near to the point where he doesn't need that fear - an entire generation or two have grown up under Imperial control, with Imperial ideals, and Imperial loyalties, and Endor was meant to be what Mustafar was for the CIS - a decapitating stroke, so Palpatine could secure his gains.
I like your threat process - and it's probably the same one Joss Whedon used when creating the Alliance.
Edit - meant "thought", phone autocorrected to "threat", but I'll keep it because "threat process" seems oddly fitting given the topic
He should've kept the CIS as the "other" doing that with your own population guarantees fracture and collapse.
@@KaiserMattTygore927 I have to disagree there. In order for Palpatine to reorganise the Galactic Republic, he needed to win the clone wars. Being the victor is what allowed him dissolve eons of galactic democracy. I also believe that Tarkin doctrine was introduced not out of ineptitude, but because the empire’s military power hadn’t been solidified yet.
Isn't that kind of what Vader was doing in The Force Unleashed, having Starkiller running around the galaxy essentially putting together the Alliance's core leadership, all at his behest?