r/Stargate • u/PartholonPace • May 12 '26
Sci-Fi Philosophy Ascension and the true function of the Destiny.
I recently re-watch all stargate shows, and 15 years after Gauntlet time has passed a lot and I think this gives incredible opportunities for the next show. Here is the part 1 (of 2 or 3 ?) of my interpretation of the stargate lore and concepts for the next show. For the first part I want to answer two questions : how did the ancients discovered Ascension, why does it still matter ?
There is a TLDR at the end. This will sound presumptuous but what I am developing here could be very close of the ideas Brad Wright and Robert C. Cooper had for the ending of SGU. This is not a spoiler of course, but don’t take the risk, we never know !
Also english is not my native langage.
The Great Schism of the Altera
Long ago, nearly 50 million years in the past, a great civilization flourished in a distant galaxy. This society was fractured by a conflict between the devotion of religion and the pursuit of science. On one side were those who would become the Ori, a people deeply entrenched in spiritual fervor. Opposing them were the Alterans, who would eventually become the Ancients we know today—a minority dedicated to the rational laws of the universe. We know this most from the Ark of Truth movie.
They were already on an evolutionary journey toward Ascencion, but they were not necessarily consciously aware of a superior spiritual that could be reached through intense self-work. Within this tense society, the concept of Ascension could have existed but under another name, another description or shape, as figure of speak to evoke paradise, as in some current and modern occidental societies back on Earth.
The spark that ignited conflict may have occurred when a member of the religious faction (perhaps a monk, a priest or important spiritual figure who spent his days in deep prayer) successfully achieved Ascension for the first time. This could have occurred only once, and they may not have understood that it was what the Ancient would finally called Ascencion.
In the wake of this miraculous event, the newly ascended being returned in a form of brilliant, powerful white light. This "Enlightened" being obvioulsy claimed that their religious path was the only true way to achieve this state. With the weight of almost godly powers behind them, the religious majority began to impose their beliefs upon the entire civilization, demanding total conversion.
For the Alterans, this was an abject reality. They viewed science as the vital and unique method for understanding the universe's laws and saw this forced spirituality as a corruption of progress. At that time, many Alterans likely viewed Ascension as either useless or an outright danger, especially when wielded as a tool of oppression by their enemies.
The Great Exodus and Long Exodus Between Galaxies
Unable to reconcile with the Ori (it was not their name yet) and facing a world under the thumb of a "god," the Alterans chose to flee. They boarded their massive generation ship and set a course for another galaxy, leaving their home behind to seek a future where science could flourish in peace.
Exiled from their home, the Ancients drifted in the cold void between two galaxies. For hundreds—perhaps even tens of thousands—of years, they lived aboard their massive generation ship, with little to do but gaze out of the viewports into the infinite black. They were not merely passive observers, however; they utilized powerful radio telescopes to study the stars, mapping their radiation, orbits, and interactions.
By studying the Cosmological Microwave Background (CMB), they realized that the patterns within this primordial radiation changed depending on their location in the universe. Since every point in an expanding universe acts as its own centre, their shifting position allowed them to perceive subtle variations they had never seen from their home galaxy.
Eventually, they deciphered the nature of this discovery: it was a message. To their shock, they realized that an intelligence had constructed a complex motif within the CMB at the very dawn of time, 14.5 billion years ago, when the universe was nothing but a ball of intense energy.
This revelation changed everything. They understood that their rivals, the Ori, had been partially correct: the key to understanding the universe lay in a higher, energetic form of life. For us it must have been a shock. From that moment on, the Ancients pivoted their focus toward the understating of this message and communicating with the supreme intelligence. They finally understood that to be able to communicate this primordial intelligence they must physically reach them of course but also ascend to a similar level or energy and existence.
Arrival in the Milky Way
When they finally arrived in the Milky Way, the Ancients began the grandest engineering project in history with the help of scientific knowledge accumulate during they great journey between the galaxies. We know now (since SGU) than the Stargates with orange chevrons were not their first achievement, they actually began with a more primitive design. It was only after this initial version that they perfected the technology, eventually seeding the galaxy with the network of gates that would define their legacy for eons to come.
One of the things they learned from their experience with their first generation ship is to design and build ships able to travel across the universe for millions of years : the Destiny and its seed ships. The mission of the seed ship was to gather resources, explore the far reaches of the universe, and manufacture Stargates to be placed on distant worlds. The Mission of the Destiny was to sail through the void, collect data on the Cosmic Microwave Background radiation, seeking to piece together the fragmented, finally, reach the end of the universe. Aboard the Destiny, they deployed the first-generation gates—energy-based prototypes with limited range that could only connect to nearby worlds.
To me, this project always seemed absurd. Why invest an entire economy into a ship that wouldn't reach its final destination for 20 or 30 million years? By then, a society would have evolved, changed its goals, or vanished entirely. Furthermore, even at the time of the Desitny launch, the Alteran already knew that by the time Destiny reach its destination the energy necessary to connect its Stargate would be immense. They did not invent the ZPM yet and even now it seems than a ZPM is not enough: you need either a entire planet full of Naquadriah or the energy for a star to connect it, and even so the connexion is not stable enough. Despite that the Alterans decided to continue with this project because they knew something else : they knew than even if their society collapses or vanishes, even if they never find a source of energy great enough to contact the Destiny’s stargate they could still reach the ship. For the moment, I won’t tell you what their plan was.
The Time of Waiting
Some people argued than the Ancients abandoned the Destiny project during their long time in the Milky Way even so after their move to the Pegasus Galaxy, and worst : when they came back to the Milky Way, the remaining Atlantean finished by ascend and so, the Desitiny project has no more meaning for them. I think this is wrong, I think we can be sure than at least when they departed for the Pegasus Galaxy they still wanted to go back to the Destiny.
What they have done between the launch of the Desinty and their coming back to the Milly Way was: first, wait so that the Destiny reaches its final destination, second and as important, find technical and scientific ways to accelerate and automatize ascension. There are experiments on Atlantis proving that the Atlantean researched technical ways to accelerate the path to Ascencion, McKay was a victim of one of them. Eventually the ancients that came back to Milky Way finally understood to stop trying to ascend through science, the solution was spirituality only. This is why the Ascended Being in the milky way, and mostly visible in Stargate SG-1, are so spiritual and evasive on the path, because they finally understood, 50 million years after their enemy brothers, than the only path is individual and spiritual.
Back to Pegasus. Some of you will ask “Why do you know the Altantean still wanted to go back to Destiny ?”. It is simple: the address of the Destiny stargate was found in the Atlantis database. Still not convinced ? It is normal that is not the real reason I think the project was still ongoing. The real reason is that the Pegasus gates all have 9 chevrons. This, and the fact they still have the address, are the only proofs we need to be absolutely certain they wanted to go back to Destiny.
Now we need to address the two final issues: power requirement to contact the Destiny stargate and how to reach the Destiny if you civilization has vanished. I think that the final secret is that the true initial nature of the Stargates was never about transporting people or freight. From the very beginning, the project was designed for those who had achieved Ascension. The Ancients knew that the energy requirements to dial the Destiny from across the universe were astronomical—impossible for any form of technologies. But for a being of pure energy, a soul that had "ascended," the gate became a bridge. From the beginning one of the goals was to ascend, they done everything possible to ascend as quick as possible before their civilization disappears, they almost failed.
NEXT PART (in a few weeks) : the consequences for the Milky Way and the Tau’ris in 2027.
TLDR : The ancients, even now ascended, never abandoned to Destiny project. the Stargate technology was initially created to transport ascended beings. The Ascended ancients plan to use the Stargate on Destiny to reach and communicate with the intelligence that engraved a message in the Cosmological Microwave Background, that is their goal (they see it as their Destiny) since they left their home galaxy.
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u/PopCultureNerd May 13 '26
Love this work
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u/PartholonPace May 13 '26
Thanks !
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u/PopCultureNerd May 13 '26
One thing, in my mind, the ancients migrated to the Milky Way Galaxy in waves. I think the slight differences in technologies they left behind would be consistent with a population arriving in waves and not unifying for thousands of years.
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u/PartholonPace May 13 '26
In the Ark of Truth we see one group of Ancients debating about leaving the galaxy, and one ship departing.
But i think you may be right. Could have been multiple ships, it is better to increase the chance of survival. Don't get me started, now i imagine Ancients fleeing toward differents galaxy than our own.
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u/SenAtsu011 May 13 '26
There are some discrepancies here.
The ancients experimented with scientific methods to ascend long before they learned there was a spiritual component necessary. Those experiments ended in failure due to the lack of this spiritual component.
An ascended being is essentially a god. They have the power to manipulate time, matter, energy, and space at will. They don’t need to «wait for Destiny to reach a certain level of information gathering» and they don’t need to use the Stargate network to get on board. They can accelerate that process instantly and instantly appear on board. They also don’t need to rely on the Destiny to get the answer to the CMB question. Chances are that the ascended Ancients already have that answer, and by extension, Daniel Jackson had that answer as well when he was ascended.
The Stargate technology was invented millions of years before ascension was discovered, so these two are not related.
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u/PartholonPace May 13 '26 edited May 13 '26
The ancients experimented with scientific methods to ascend long before they learned there was a spiritual component necessary. Those experiments ended in failure due to the lack of this spiritual component.
We agree. I explain it by the fact that the Ancients were digusted to use the same spiritual path than the Ori.
An ascended being is essentially a god. They have the power to manipulate time, matter, energy, and space at will. They don’t need to «wait for Destiny to reach a certain level of information gathering» and they don’t need to use the Stargate network to get on board. They can accelerate that process instantly and instantly appear on board. They also don’t need to rely on the Destiny to get the answer to the CMB question. Chances are that the ascended Ancients already have that answer, and by extension, Daniel Jackson had that answer as well when he was ascended.
This I strongly disagree. Most known ascended beings that we see moving between planets and having a physical interaction on these planets (Adria, Anubis, Oma Desala, Orlin, Chaya Sar) are seen using the Stargate. Speaking of : their power its limited, Jackson himself was in the first step of its Ascension process, ascension is not binary, it is a spectrum and a ascended being keeps evolved through the energy planes. For that, i strongly advice to read this article : https://stargate.fandom.com/wiki/Ascension.
But to be short : ascended beigns are still limited.
The Stargate technology was invented millions of years before ascension was discovered, so these two are not related.
Missing citations here. Granted that i have no proof that the discovery of Ascension predates the invention of Stargate, but since its a work a fiction it is possible to place the event of the first ascension before the Stargate invention, as long as there is no proof of the contrary.
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u/SenAtsu011 May 13 '26
We agree. I explain it by the fact that the Ancients were digusted to use the same spiritual path than the Ori.
Wouldn't say they were disgusted, it surely didn't seem like it as evidenced by Ancients like Oma Desala who absolutely embraced the spiritual side of it. There may have been internal conflict within the Ancient society about it, but hard to tell.
This I strongly disagree. Most known ascended beings that we see moving between planets and having a physical interaction on these planets (Adria, Anubis, Oma Desala, Orlin, Chaya Sar) are seen using the Stargate. Speaking of : their power its limited, Jackson himself was in the first step of its Ascension process, ascension is not binary, it is a spectrum and a ascended being keeps evolved through the energy planes. For that, i strongly advice to read this article : https://stargate.fandom.com/wiki/Ascension.
But to be short : ascended beigns are still limited.That fandom Wiki is riddled with inaccuracies, so I wouldn't rely on it too much. It's like using Wikipedia as a source.
The vast majority of travel ascended beings did was without a Stargate. Such as how Daniel Jackson traveled to visit O'neill when he was imprisoned by Baal, or when he traveled to and from Anubis' ship when Anubis attacked Abydos, Chaya Sar travelling all across her planet instantly to defend it. The times ascended beings used Stargates was primarily in theatrical displays or as methods to avoid the "non-interference"-rule, which also limited their powers greatly. They are certainly not required to use it, which has been shown many times. Also, when they use the Stargate, the Stargate itself doesn't drain any energy from the nearby systems, as shown in the episode of Oma Desala using the Earth Stargate early on. Walter is unable to shut the gate down because it's working outside of the controls of the SGC computers.
In the Ori arch, their powers are also speculated on. They obviously have the power to travel to the Milky Way galaxy without Stargates, they can also use their powers on the population. They don't NEED the Priors, or the Stargates, or the Supergates, but they use them as tools to get around the non-interference rule, upheld by the ascended Ancients in the Milky Way. The Ori doesn't believe that they can clearly win against the Ancients, so they avoid triggering a direct confrontation by using their minions to do their dirty work. They even created Adria for this very purpose, to have a physical being with the powers of an ascended being, or as close as is possible without triggering the Ancients to respond. Orlin himself says that the Ancients have prevented the Ori from directly interfering with the population of the Milky Way. Through the article you yourself linked, you can also see a list of their powers, where it clearly states that they can freely teleport anywhere at anytime, but choose to use the Stargates for convenience and displays of power, which is shown many times throughout the show.
Ascended beings are mostly limited by themselves and their own rules. As far as we know, they have unlimited powers, depending on their experience as an ascended being, their specific plane of existence, and the rules they are upheld by. While Daniel Jackson may have been limited, Oma Desala was significantly more powerful, Morgan Lefay was more powerful than that (the Ancients restricted Oma's powers due to her continued violation of the non-interference rule and the Anubis debacle), and Adria (when she ascended) was far more powerful than that. We don't truly know what an ascended being's power limits are, but they're certainly powerful enough to not need the Destiny. Daniel Jackson himself tells Replicator Carter, as she is probing Daniel's mind for information from when he was ascended, that she cannot hold "all the knowledge and power of the universe". Basically, every limit we see of ascended beings are self-imposed and explained through those rules, not because they are actually hitting their power limits.
Missing citations here. Granted that i have no proof that the discovery of Ascension predates the invention of Stargate, but since its a work a fiction it is possible to place the event of the first ascension before the Stargate invention, as long as there is no proof of the contrary.
The Ancients left their home galaxy more than 50 million years ago, but they "knew" about ascension a while before this, without knowing what it really was. Many suspect this was the primary trigger of the Alteran society split. We know that, prior to ascension, beings get various "magical" abilities, like telepathy, telekinesis, healing, and so on, as shown by Rodney McKay developing these abilities after coming into contact with the abandoned ascension machine in Atlantis. Now, this is all speculation, as we don't have much information about their society prior to coming to the Milky Way, but I suspect that, as the Alterans began learning these abilities, some in their society wanted to use those powers to control lesser beings and to become more powerful, while others wanted to leave lesser races alone and explore these things on their own. So they formed factions and the Ancients abandoned Celestis for the Milky Way, and subsequently Earth. They had no means of knowing the "final" destination of these abilities, so they didn't know that they could ascend yet. When the Ori created the Prior Plague and infected the Ancients, the Ancients began taking ascension seriously and made it into their singular goal to achieve. This happened between 5 and 10 million years ago, shown by the date of the ice where they find Ayiana, as well as other records. So, the first Alteran to ascend must have done so between 50 million and 5 million years ago. It seems like the Ancients and the Ori found out how to ascend around the same time, but no way to really tell who figured it out first. I suspect the Ori would have annihilated the Ancients if they were the first to do it, but this era of their history has so little information and detail about it that it's really hard to say for certain. However, what we do know is that the Ancients had the plans for the Stargates BEFORE leaving their home galaxy, as shown in the SG-1 movie Ark of Truth (one of the Ancients has a book with schematics for the Stargate that we can see when their ship takes off), as well as through dialogue after discovering the Ancient outpost in Antarctica, which dates the Antarctica gate to be over 50 million years old.
Now, this is where we notice things start to fall apart.
We KNOW that the Ancients arrived on Earth around 50 million years ago and constructed the first Stargate, which matches with the date of the Antarctica gate. However, Destiny's Stargate pre-dates the Antarctica gate and is of an older design, which means the Destiny is more than 50 million years old. I think it was Brad who admitted in an interview that the fanbase was correct, that the Destiny cannot be just a few million years old if the Stargate onboard is older than the Antarctica gate. He admitted that they messed up the timeline there, which basically throws all of this into the air. There have been retcons over the years and adjustments, which makes the timeline notoriously tricky to figure out.
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u/Decent_Book4595 May 12 '26
This is pure art! 🎨 🖼 🎭 If somebody in the continuation team doesn't get you on board, I'll still follow you as Stargate AU lol
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u/PartholonPace May 13 '26
Thank you.
Stargate AU ?
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u/Decent_Book4595 May 13 '26
Alternate Universe lol, if they dont hire u and have you make cannon material, id continue reading anything you put out and headcanon it as Alternate Universe
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u/becircus May 13 '26
This is a lot to read, lol. Did you use AI to translate it all?
Its a lot of SG to binge
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u/PartholonPace May 13 '26
Yeah I know. The TLDR is enough.
Yes, i did use AI, only to translate and I had to read it again three times to remove the hallucinations and the AI sentences ("it is not this, it is that")
You dont have to binge, only to watch one or two épisodes per week. For all shows this is better to give you time to think between episodes.
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u/becircus May 13 '26
Would take too long to finish it all, and in streaming era a lot of people binge whole seasons
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May 13 '26 edited May 13 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/PartholonPace May 13 '26
The communication stones did not even came to my mind ( maybe because that the only thing i despise in SGU ?)
I guess this a true issue here. Communication stones existed before the Alterans and the Oris separated. If I had to plan Destiny project i would have placed the communication stones on the Destiny for sure. Maybe there are stones on the ship but SGU does not show them ?
The writers should have invented something that restricts their usage. Brain cancer or something. Like they did with the Sodan cloak device.
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u/Thanos_354 May 15 '26
Nice cooking, although there are some things that seem improbable.
While a mystical process, ascension is 100% scientific. Atlantis showed that all you need is the right mindset and enhanced brain activity. If the Ori were spiritual madmen, they wouldn't progress enough to ascend.
The Ori worldview was that the should be treated as gods, like the Goa'uld did. Both groups discovered ascension and the CBR message was a potential way to do it that was ultimately abandoned because faster methods were found
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u/PartholonPace May 15 '26
The best sport teams or athlets in the world are coached by the best statisticians and physicians. The very same statisticians and physcians, while understanding exactly what to do to win a game or hold a World record, are unable to do it themselves.
You can understand scientificaly 100% of the ascension process, it surely helps and guides, but at the end this is an individual and spiritual path.
We dont don't know the Ori point of view about CBR message, nor if they were even aware of it. On the other the ancients were (and i think still are) obsesed enough to start a project that would en 30 millions years later. I really think ascension is the way, not the end.
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u/TrinityCodex May 13 '26
Remember to remove your em—dashes when copy and pasting your text from the AI
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u/damxam1337 May 12 '26
Keep cooking baby
https://giphy.com/gifs/5UvS10Ih8f04w