SG1: Seth

[Madner Kami]

The fun part of earthly religions is, that they pretty much all are a hodgepodge of earlier believes, so you can twist the wierdest connections and still stay true to the source material. Ra, for example, is hardly the monolithic figure we think of today. Ra entered the egyptian pantheon as a regular sun-god. It was only a cult in Heliopolis, that intially revered him as the "All Father", which slowly migrated outwards to make him the god he is known as nowadays. He went through several mergers with other gods on his journey, which also explains why he has multiple names, like Ra-Horakhty (a fusion of Ra and Horus) and Amun-Ra (a fusion of Ra with the god named Amun during the time of the New Kingdom), not to even think about his quasi deplacement with the first (known), though short-lived monotheistic god: Atun or Aten, which iincidentally falls into the period where the jews were slaving about in Egypt (what a coincidence, I wonder where the idea of a singular god may have come from in the later jewish believes...).

[Morgaine]

The only thing that really annoyed me in that department is that we never got a Goa'uld named Yahweh. But then the Ori kind of made up for that, so.

I think that’s probably because they’d have pissed off so many Christians if they’d had the Abrahamic god show up in a villainous role that the execs would nix any such plans (would probably have also pissed off Jews and Muslims as well, but I have a feeling that it’d have been the Christians the execs were really concerned with).

That’s probably why in that one episode there was an unas pretending to be Satan (or one of his devils, don’t recall which; might have been Sokar that was pretending to be Satan); Satan is already an embodiment of evil, so having him as a villain is fair game and no one the execs care about would object to such a portrayal.

This being the same episode where Teal'c announces that he has read the bible and could not see a Goa'uld ever being as benevolent as the Christian God.
Aside from the obvious question "Have you read the Old Testament, Teal'c?", many Goa'uld have been benevolent when it suited them (Hathor, Baal, Lord Yu, etc) and some of Jesus' petulant fits in the New Testament are rather Goa'uld-like (the fig tree incident comes to mind immediately).

Clearly any mythology was fair game but they felt the need to pander to a Christian demographic.
Even the Ori while very clearly Catholic expys (the "crusader" soldiers, the nuns, all the priors are male) have very clear distinctions, they're a pantheon, they revere fire, etc. Also it just so happens evangelical Christians do not on average like Catholics very much.
They also have a running theme where the Book of Origin (bible expy) is said to be 100% good and full of useful stories and metaphors, whereas it's the Priors who are twisting the good word found in the book. It's not the book's fault, it's the people!

That would have made an interesting subplot if they revealed he’d been behind various technological revolutions throughout history, influencing/guiding things to advance humanity for his own ends. Could even have tied it into his banishment background by having him take advantage of Earth having ‘dropped off the map’ to be able to advance Earth tech to the point where they’d be a viable threat to the Goa’ould without the Goa’ould noticing, at which point he’d step out of the shadows to take over. The death cults could then be spun into his way of keeping his ego stroked while he bided his time.

You mean, Set would actually have to be called Kane?

For the Technology of Peace!

Funnily enough, the guy Kane shot in the head for being a moron in the first game was called Seth.

[Dînadan]

Tying the mythological drift back to the OT, Set himself is a good case of this; he started out as a ‘good’ god, and was one of the gods that guarded Ra’s barge against Apophis, but when the cult of Horus grew in popularity he was reworked into a villain as Horus’ archnemesis.


Going back to the point about the missed opportunity that Seth being played by the same actor as Daniel’s father for a moment; just thought of another angle that could have been worked in. We know that Goa’ould can pass on infirmation to the children of their hosts; now it was established that both parents need to be hosts to produce a harsesis, but it wouldn’t be unreasonable to have retconned that some information gets passed on when only one is and that could have been used to explain why Daniel had all those ‘conspiracy theories’ that flew in the face of established academia which ended up being right or how it was him who was the only one to crack how to activate the gate - he was actually subconsciously calling up memory/info fragments that had been passed on from Seth.

[Aotrs Commander]

That would have made an interesting subplot if they revealed he’d been behind various technological revolutions throughout history, influencing/guiding things to advance humanity for his own ends. Could even have tied it into his banishment background by having him take advantage of Earth having ‘dropped off the map’ to be able to advance Earth tech to the point where they’d be a viable threat to the Goa’ould without the Goa’ould noticing, at which point he’d step out of the shadows to take over. The death cults could then be spun into his way of keeping his ego stroked while he bided his time.

You mean, Set would actually have to be called Kane?

For the Technology of Peace!

Funnily enough, the guy Kane shot in the head for being a moron in the first game was called Seth.

Well, CLEARLY we know what Seth was doing all that time, then - joining a sucession of parapmilitary organisations, trying and failing to work his way up the ranks, getting shot in the head and then having to find a new host...!



(Seriously, "Seth, just Seth" was running though my head the episode, to the point when Seth appeared in the review, I realised I'd been expecting the other one...!)

[Fuzzy Necromancer]

On the side against Yaweh being a nasty mean evil Goal'd compared to Tokra Jesus, I'd like to remind you to take a look at Jewish theology some time. There's the whole covenant thing, and precedent for people being able to bring that up and argue with God.

[Morgaine]

On the side against Yaweh being a nasty mean evil Goal'd compared to Tokra Jesus, I'd like to remind you to take a look at Jewish theology some time. There's the whole covenant thing, and precedent for people being able to bring that up and argue with God.

Not sure what your point is. Goa'uld can be reasonable and negotiated with for any number of reasons. Usually when you have the upper hand, but still.
They can also be extremely generous to their followers; Apophis lavished gifts on those he favoured for example and Lord Yu was said to be responsible for numerous positive societal developments.

[ChiggyvonRichthofen]

Some of you need to brush up on your exegetical skills if you seriously think that the point of the fig tree story is that Jesus was pissed off at a tree.

The story potential of borrowing figures from prominent Earth religions and turning them into villains, anti-heroes, or whatever else would in no way live up to the backlash. As Ghilz said, it's a fun, light series. I would have preferred that they stuck to the Egyptian pantheon and really build their own mythology based on that, but they never followed through with anything they borrowed in a meaningful way. I don't see the benefit in creating storylines that would virtually guarantee division and nastiness within a small, supportive fan community. If they wanted to say something about it, it's easy enough to do a thinly veiled allegory like they eventually did with the Ori. And seeing how insipid the Ori plots were, I'm doubly glad that they didn't bother with something more direct.

[Morgaine]

I prefer interesting and clever stories over being afraid of who gets offended.
Or in the absence of using them as any sort of antagonist, they could at least not *pander* to certain groups as they did with the "Christian" planet or the half-assed way they handled to Ori or introducing Sokar.

Nobody held a gun to their head and forced them to introduce literal Satan. But they did, and when they did that they opened the obvious question about Yahweh and Jesus.

[ChiggyvonRichthofen]

I wouldn't even necessarily be opposed to such a story in principle- I just think if you're going for a light and fun angle rather than developing a more serious mythology, then you might as well be pragmatic about it. Plus, it does make sense story-wise (to me, anyway) for the Goa'uld to be long, long gone. It's an easy out for the general lack of alignment with history, and would help to explain how they could have ignored Earth for all those years.

I can agree that the pandering in Demons was cringey, but my bigger problem with that episode is the timeline. How would medieval Christians be kidnapped anyway? Sokar being present on Earth in the Middle Ages looks like a plot hole to me, given that the gate was supposed to be long buried, unless there's an explanation I'm forgetting. If they were actively using the second gate, then that brings up a host of other questions.

On the other hand, I actually would have liked a riskier version of the Seth story, making him a prominent minister or televangelist (and of course you could mitigate the effect the way they usually do in TV- by having a more moderate religious character be anti-Seth), or at least a prominent politician or businessman. We got some of that later with Ba'al and Kinsey, but it does feel like a missed early opportunity.

[Fuzzy Necromancer]

I think Missed Opportunity is kind of the name of the game for Seth. =/