Wrap Up

So I got the idea from Richard6154 who left a review and asked if I could leave my notes for the story if I'm not going to finish it. I don't have notes, but some of the story and where I was headed is still clear in my mind. And like you, the reader, I have been left hanging at good unfinished stories. So I thought I'd share what I remember of my inspirations, aspirations and overall trajectories for this story.

I will preface this also with the fact that I may not get some details correct, because it has been 5 years, and I did not re-read the story before writing this summary wrap up.

There were a few key themes in this story that I was playing with, and that I still find fascinating today. These include:

Stargate vs Battlestar Universes

How the Stargate Show could change if the SGC had resources

Mind-interface technology, links to consciousness and feedback

Imperfect Narrator

Mythology and History changeup

Pegasus Storyline

Cylons

Shit Happens

The Last Chapters

Stargate vs Battlestar Universes

So in the majority of the SG-BSG crossovers, the SG universe (and characters, technology, and everything) is better than the same in the BSG universe. Some very common scenarios that I see in the majority of SG-BSG Xovers that I am drawn into by the description is (paraphrasing)

Earth's technology in the SG universe is far ahead than that of the BSG universe – i.e. Earth has Prometheus / Daedalus class ships (or more)

SG mythology outweighs BSG mythology – i.e. Lords of Kobol were Ancients/Goa'uld, and everything that is in the BSG mythology is just pure wrong. Earth knows much more about where the Colonies come from than they do themselves.

Earth characters are more ingenuous, while BSG characters can be just plain stupid (this is less widespread). However if you actually watch both shows, the BSG characters live in a universe where ingenuity, adaptation and the rest is more prevalent

Earth is just better at everything.

Earth and the Colonies get drawn into some conflict with each other, or just plain start shooting at each other right away.

I was sick of seeing these biases in the majority of BSG-SG Xover stories… so I decided to flip most on their head. I

Dialled back to an early SG episode to find a departure point, where SG Earth had 'our level of technology' rather than being better than the 12 Colonies

Make the mythology of both Earth and the 12 Colonies unknown, because SG canon that is after my departure point, does not apply and I'm making it up with BSG involved as well.

I was going to make both Earth and 12 Colonies have the same kind of ingenuity that other SG fanfictions talk about for the SG teams – because both civilisations are very similar, it would stand to reason that this applies…. And in my universe, the 12 Colonies and Earth are just about the only civilisations that are similar like this – i.e. Tollans don't have the same level of ingenuity as Earth (and the 12 Colonies), because it's a very different civilisation…they rely on technology rather than coming up with new ideas etc.

Have Earth and the Colonies cooperate… because, in my universe, they share a (partially) common ancestry… and why WOULDN'T they cooperate when faced with a threat such as the Goa'uld.

Changes to Stargate Stories when the Team has Resources

In many SG episodes, the team rocks up, saves the day and leaves. There is no follow up with the people/civilisation that they saved… In my reckoning, I put this down to a lack of resources. The SGC just doesn't have the resources to follow up, and after all, they are after technology so after they've visited a planet, saved the day, and leave, there's no reason to go back if there's nothing useful there that isn't offered up freely.

But the question I asked is "what would happen if they had a hell of a lot of more resources'. In reality, a military unit (now-days) that goes into an area to destroy an enemy or 'save the day', will stick around after the main event is done and help with humanitarian aid, and help to rebuild the local area – I'm thinking Afganistan etc.

So once the BSG and SG teams team up, I found an early SG episode that I could change to show this. This is what that Alania planet was about. There was an SG episode where SG1 rocked up and saved a bunch of people from being locked in stasis by an AI. They got them out, and then left. But when I was watching the episode, I thought

"what if the BSG guys were around, could get ships in orbit, or send hell of a lot of resources through the Stargate. There was actually a fair bit of technology there that could have been useful – stasis, large environmental domes etc. That civilisation was a fair bit ahead of the SG teams at the time, and shows technology that the 12 Colonies do not have.. it would also be interesting to show how the Colonials responded to (and bonded with) another civilisation that had been adversely affected by their own AI (more on that later)". Therefore, with the backing of the resources of the 12 Colonies, the SG and BSG teams stayed and helped out…. For a much greater reward long-term – they were getting to study and get access to more advanced (and just different) technology than their own under the guise of 'helping them rebuild their civilisation'.

The idea was, that with the backing of the 12 colonies, a lot of SG episodes that were like this one, would change from a 'once off', to a long protracted engagement which would, in reality, span many many many episodes, be boring, but in the long-run of technology development and progress, be much better. My plan was, in the future of the story, to find an episode that was ½ to 1 season in the future from the one I used for this, and re-work the main events in the episode into the story. This would then be another indication of 'how things could be different'.

Mind Interface Technology and Feedback

I am fascinated with stories and TV shows that really get into the nitty-gritty of technology that interfaces with the mind – think the latest season or 3 of Black Mirror. I liked the holo-band idea from Caprica, but found some other applications of that kind of technology a bit more fascinating. I especially like things where it is not just as simple as 'your mind telling the technology what to do', but where there could be feedback the other way – either through accident or design – that technology can affect your mind/thoughts.

The idea of Cylon resurrection touches on this. The idea of the Cylon 'data-stream' on their base-ships is exactly this. The holo-band from Caprica touches on this. The fact that an AI kept a city full of people from waking up in stasis in the SG episode that was mentioned in the above section, was too perfect to NOT start off on in this story.

I wanted to explore, through gradual technological gains by Earth and the Colonies through the Stargate Program; as well as the Colonies getting over their fears of their past technology (maybe through necessity upon realising the Goa'uld threat), the interface with technology, sanity, consciousness, your self identity and the potential for everything to go drastically wrong. I started this off with the Colonials dusting off the holo-band technology and starting to use it. I got into it a bit more with Sam Carter and "random can't-remember my own made up character" using the 'mind interface' technology to get to Kobol via Stargate.

What I can remember wanting to get to in this story:

Colonials dust-off the holo-band and start to use this as a 'mind interface computer' type thing, where it can automatically read your thoughts and intentions towards some kind of external machine… rather than you having to give commands or pilot something…. But not quite so far as having a pilot mind-control a viper.

Eventually, the Colonials realise that they cannot go up against Goa'uld Hataks with a Battlestar too well… but, through necessity, they realise that they are (after digging up some long lost skills), very good at building killer robots… so they use their newly developed holo-band technology (with input from other technology they've scavenged from worlds through the Stargate Program), to build an army of remote-controlled Cylons (not AI), where the pilots of the cylons remain in The Colonies, hooked up via Holo-band to their unit (and can see and sense everything that Centurion can). The Colonies can then send this army through the Stargate to overrun Goa'uld ground installations, and maybe start capturing some technology… eventually capture a few grounded Ha'taks. The army needs a contingent of people to go through on every engagement, to keep up the fighting for 5min out of every 38min (as the Stargate disconnects and the Centurions lose their connection to their pilots).

Have an arms race between the Cylons and the Colonies for 'mind interface technology' – the Colonies get a head-start on building their multipurpose holo-bands and this brings them up to the level of the Cylons in terms of speed, and the ability to hack computers… the Cylons figure this out in an 'accidental' engagement with the Colonies where they attempt to hack their systems. After failing, the Cylons go out into the galaxy to improve their 'mind interface' technology, while the Colonials are doing the same… get to a few instances where it is literally a 'virtual' battle between Colonial and Cylon 'hackers', with technology advanced to the point where the loser can die or suffer brain-damage (because the technology can feed-back into your brain, rather than JUST be one-way and take commands from your brain). Perhaps the Colonies are able to detect the resurrection signal and block individual Cylons from transmitting their consciousness upon death… or hack into the resurrection signal and see where it leads to etc.

THEN – perhaps, (I was toying with the idea), Earth comes into the fray with a Dollhouse crossover – where the SGC gains access to Rossum Corporation technology. This is technology that allows consciousness transfer and also to assemble and create your own personalities and skillsets. Technology in Dollhouse advances to the point where the Rossum corporation is able to wirelessly wipe a person's consciousness and replace it with someone elses… or replace your own after modifying it. In the world I was eventually going to get to, where 'mind interface technology' is becoming prevalent amongst the 12 Colonies, Cylons (moreso) and the SGC, the ability to alter someone's mind is an absolute game-changer… but this was always a maybe.

Explore the 'mind interface technology' with reference to the Stargate itself. I chose to take the stance that 'mind interface technology' is how the Asgard and Nox are able to command the Stargate to have an instant wormhole (rather than dialling in) and other unique abilities with the Stargate that the SGC never got. The start of this was in the ability to use the holo-bands to access Kobol.

This theme would also delve into consciousness, what it is and would toy with the idea of 'what is real' and 'keeping a grip on reality' in these kinds of situations. I would also toy with/ask the questions like:

If your consciousness is transferred (upon death?) to another body/identical body, are you dead and a copy is walking around, or is it still you?

If your consciousness is transferred, how can you know it was transferred completely without alteration. Would you start doubting your own sanity if you worked in an organisation where it was possible to alter a consciousness?

Ineffective Narrator

I am a big fan of the 'ineffective narrator', where the story is told, only knowing the details of the characters who are the focus of the chapter at the time. I was a fan of this before I read the GRRM GOT books (which is a major drawcard of Game of Thrones – you only know what the Character knows, including lies). I didn't do it as much as was done in that series, as I use a 'limited third person perspective', but I was going to do this and explore it throughout the show.

Mythology and History

The whole title of the story was "Origins of Humanity". The whole story would, over a lot of chapters, unfold the mystery of where humanity on Earth and the Colonies began, and how the two societies and races were related. However, with the 'ineffective narrator' theme above, the characters and the reader would never know anything close to the whole story as the majority of details would have been lost to time.

In parts of the story already we had seen glimpses of the Lords of Kobol. In the story I was going to have the Lords of Kobol be a different race – not Ancients, Not Asgard, Not Goa'uld or anything related to those. They would have been another advanced race existing at the time of the Asgard-Ancient-Furling-Nox alliance. They would have interacted (sometimes positively, sometimes negatively) with these races. But they were not members of the alliance. This is because the alliance did not approve of their ethics or a whole range of stuff that they were doing… including (something like) abducting early humans (Ancient decendants) and experimenting on them. The mind-interface tech (and associated tech) would have been the downfall of the Lords of Kobol. They abducted early humans from underneath the Ancients and started experimenting on them in order to gain the ability to Resurrect (like the Cylons… or from BSG canon, like the 13th Tribe on "earth")… and then transferred that ability to themselves once they perfected it in humans – minds much easier to hack, interface with and change.

Something with the resurrection technology would have gone wrong. A corruption or so – after you make a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy (etc), the 'file' (your consciousness) is not the same. This would have led to the downfall of their civilisation. At some stage during this, there was some kind of rift. Some of the Lords of Kobol took humans and went to the 12 Colonies. Some of the Lords of Kobol renounced their ways and decided to part with some other humans to Earth to join the Great Alliance – sure that upon renouncing their ways, the Alliance would accept their faction as 'the fifth race' (hint: they didn't)….Maybe something that the Lords of Kobol do then (upon not getting into the 'great alliance', sparked the downfall of the Ancients, or was one of 5 causes for the alliance to break up, or for the Ancients to leave Earth and disregard the humans they were looking after, as well as the humans that the Lords of Kobol had brought with them)…. Other factions within the Lords of Kobol went and did other things…

… basically I wanted to build the Lords of Kobol up in the readers mind to be this new, awesome race that was not expected, and that you wanted to know more about. But once I reached 'peak mystery and awesomeness' about the Lords of Kobol, I'd then tear them down and you, and the characters, would realise that they were actually awful, some would say villans, some would say worse than the Goa'uld (not so much with the straight out torture – it was going to be a very grey area, where if you looked at it one way, you could see that what the LOK did was justified / reasonable, but if you looked at it the other way, it was horrendous what they did). Also throw some things in there like, when the Lords of Kobol got to the 12 Colonies, they found one of them infested with Goa'uld (parasites, not living in hosts) and gave their humans an inoculation against them – hence why they were able to remove the symbiote from Teal'c which I had written into the story).

With all this mind-interface technology going on, as well as the typical battles and war of the 12 Colonies – Earth alliance vs the Goa'uld going on (which would have ramped up over time), the story, our characters and the civilisations would have gotten ugly. Only to realise that they were no better than their 'creators' and 'all of this has happened before, all of it will happen again'.

Pegasus Storyline

… following on from the above backstory and changes to mythos… in the current time, the Asgard and Nox have 'hope' for humanity. They are watching The 12 Colonies and Earth closely. They hope that humanity will not repeat the mistakes of the Lords of Kobol and will eventually (in a hundred or more years) be able to be worthy to become 'the fifth race'. So as a result, the Nox and Asgard begin testing them… hence why the Nox showed up and ended up transporting the Pegasus a long way away from the Colonies… a trial by fire – a way to get the Colonies out in the galaxy, but also bring them down a few levels so they aren't so arrogant (i.e. Cain manages to, after a long time, get the Pegasus, in barely functional condition, half the crew lost, the other two Battlestars lost, back to the 12 Colonies after being through a massive ordeal). This trip would have also showed 'human ingenuity' at its best when the Pegasus and the rest of its fleet literally had its back up against the wall- things like abducting Stargates from planets in order to set up a Space based gate - flying raptors and Vipers through to addresses that would connect in order to then scout large areas for resources, artifacts, and hints for the way home… some ambush tactics using jump drives on Goa'uld forces etc….

… I was also reading a fanfic at the time (can't remember if it was just straight BSG or SG-BSG crossover) where the Pegasus comes across a maybe WW2 era world, and takes its role over the world as mediator between 2 sides in a massive conflict with its superior technology… I was inspired by this and was going to show the Pegasus, on its journey home, do something similar – break up a conflict of another human world they came across… or take on a few thousand people of a primitive village that was going to get wiped out by a volcano… or something like that, that would also show the 'softer' side of Cain, and also show the 'humanity may be worthy of being the fifth race after all'.

Cylons

I can't remember if the expeditionary fleets, or the Pegasus fleet, were coming across worlds devoid of human life, but with evidence of past (primitive) civilisations. What I was going to have revealed over the story is

These worlds are relatively close to the Colonies

There were human settlements on them

Following the Colonial-Cylon armistice, when the Cylons left the 12 Colonies, they came across these worlds.

They abducted some humans from these worlds for study

They killed the rest

I think there was a chapter or so where the Colonials witnessed the Cylons try to wipe out one of these civilisations…. This is because, after the 12 Colonies found their Stargate, the Cylons (after learning of this through Cylon infiltrators) realised that the galaxy was much larger than they knew about, and started venturing further out (faster than the Colonies started venturing out), and then doing the same thing – killing primitive human worlds they came across.

After the 12 Colonies would learn the history of what the Cylons had done to these other human worlds (they would have been relatively close to the Colonies by Stargate/Goa'uld standards; a long way by Cylon/Colonial standards), it would embolden the Colonies to go into open conflict against the Cylons, and enact/enforce their own Protected Planets Treaty (without having heard about the Asgard one)… - protecting primitive human worlds (within their maps of known space) from all outside threat, mainly the Cylons… and eventually the Goa'uld (but the Colonials would have bitten off waaaay more than they could chew with the Goa'uld). Despite the ugliness going on in other areas, this would have been a 'step in the right direction' according to the Asgard and Nox – but definitely not enough to even warrant consideration as 'the fifth race'.

Shit Happens

This kind of fits with the 'imperfect narrator' theme. Sometimes shit happens that no one knew about. There would have been 'random' events in the story with no lead up, no justification why, but the characters (and civilisations) have to deal with the consequences. An example is the destruction of the Colonial Stargate Command that they'd built inside an asteroid mere days after it was finalised. It was destroyed by a Cylon infiltrator.

In the story, I am following the characters that we know. They are not everywhere in all aspects of the civilisation. Also, no one knew that it was coming, so there was no lead up. Therefore, randomly, it appears that the Colonial SGC was destroyed after it was established… but this is just a 'shit happens' moment that the Colonials have to deal with.

The last few chapters

I remember that I jumped the shark with the last few chapters. I was getting impatient, because I had all of this in my head a somewhere to get to, and was recognising that I needed a good few tens of thousands of words of character, story, civilisation development before I could even touch on a few of these themes above… therefore, I started accelerating the story and had the Goa'uld attack the Colonies almost out of nowhere. That was a mistake, and probably the reason I stopped writing – because I wrote myself into a corner, and just really kind of wanted to delete a few chapters and go back.