A Stargate is a fictional Einstein–Rosen bridge portal device within the Stargate fictional universe that allows practical, point-to-point near instantaneous travel between two distant locations with an "address". The devices first appeared in the 1994 Roland Emmerich film Stargate, and thereafter in the television series Stargate SG-1, Stargate Infinity, Stargate Atlantis, Stargate Universe, and Stargate Origins, as well as the television films Stargate: The Ark of Truth and Stargate: Continuum. In these productions, the Stargate functions as a plot device, allowing the main characters to visit alien planets without the need for spaceships or any other type of technology. The device allows for near-instantaneous teleportation across both interstellar and extragalactic distances.
Concept Some early "portal" appearances in science fiction include A. E. van Vogt's novella Secret Unattainable (July 1942, Astounding), a radio episode of Space Patrol that aired October 25, 1952 (in which it was called a "cycloplex" or a "hole in space"), and Robert A. Heinlein's Tunnel in the Sky (1955) and its "Ramsbotham jump". In 2001: A Space Odyssey, Arthur C. Clarke uses the term "Star Gate" for the large monolith "sentinel" TMA-2, which is a classic stargate portal to another part of the universe. The basic stargate concept is that it has at least two devices in distant positions, and when active, the rings of each become similar to a physical, singular gateway or door-frame between the two locations. The concept was developed by the writers of the feature film Stargate, Dean Devlin and Roland Emmerich. Similar devices had been seen in previous fiction, and there has been contention as to whether they plagiarized the idea from a previous script submission from a student of Egyptology named Omar Zuhdi, who submitted a screenplay to them about ten years before the movie was made. Zuhdi pursued legal action regarding this, and the case was eventually settled out of court. Much of the inspiration for the functioning of the device is drawn heavily from theoretical astrophysics, particularly that of black holes and wormholes, a staple of science fiction, often used to create "shortcuts" through space. Although these may exist in reality, it is not widely held to be true that any such phenomenon could safely transport a human being, as such wormholes would most likely be created by excessive gravity (e.g., from a black hole), which would destroy any potential traveler.
Plot
Films The Stargate film begins in 1928, when the alien device is first discovered and unearthed at Giza, with a young Catherine Langford watching as her father Paul, the archaeologist who found it, directs its unearthing. Stargate SG-1 has since revealed more of the backstory of the Earth Stargate. The American ship Achilles brought the gate to America in 1939 to prevent it from falling into the hands of the Nazis. The United States Air Force then stored the device in various locations —including Washington, DC—before installing it at its location of the film and series. The Stargate was studied in the 1940s as a potential weapon and was later mothballed. As the Stargate film quickly skips to the "present day" (1994), unsuccessful archaeologist Daniel Jackson is giving a lecture about his outlandish theories that the pharaoh Khufu did not build the Great Pyramid of Giza. After he is laughed away, an aged Catherine Langford meets with him and recruits his egyptological talent, taking him to a top-secret military base at Cheyenne Mountain, where he is instructed to decipher the unique Egyptian hieroglyphs present on a set of cover-stones. He realizes that the indecipherable glyphs are not actually words but images of constellations, such that by identifying 6 of them a position in space can be extrapolated. He is then shown the stargate itself, uses his new understanding to identify the 7th symbol (the point of origin allowing a route to be extrapolated), and the gate is opened for the first time. Because thousands of combinations had been previously tried and had failed, it was believed at the time that only two stargates existed, connecting Earth and the planet Abydos, which was visited in the film and was at the time erroneously believed to be located in the Kaliam Galaxy, billions of light years away on the other side of the known universe. At the beginning of the Stargate SG-1 series, however, a large set of additional valid coordinates were discovered engraved in ruins on Abydos. Because of the stellar drift accumulated over millions of years, other addresses were impossible to dial until Samantha Carter reworked the dialing system on Earth to account for this movement. After this, a massive network of possible connections suddenly became available. Even more addresses were later uncovered by Colonel Jack O'Neill from a repository of Ancient knowledge. In order to allow for dialing back to Earth from other locations (without altering the dialing system), it was later stated that the DHD ("Dial-Home Device") normally attached to each stargate automatically updates for stellar drift; Earth's stargate lacks its DHD, requiring other accommodation. The alien race encountered in the original movie is later developed in SG-1 as the Goa'uld, the dominant evil power in the Milky Way. The leaders of this race, the System Lords, pose as gods and use the stargates to transport slaves between worlds. This has resulted in a large number of planets throughout the galaxy supporting human life, often in civilizations more primitive than Earth. The majority of these civilizations, descended from former Goa'uld slaves, treat the Stargate as a religious relic, often as a source of long-forgotten fear and evil. Direct-to-video films Stargate: The Ark of Truth (2008) and Stargate: Continuum (also 2008) expand upon the Stargate lore.
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