Alien races in the Stargate universe

Encyclopedia : A : AL : ALI : Alien races in the Stargate universe

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This article provides a list of the alien races featured in Stargate SG-1 and Stargate Atlantis.

See also: Humans in SG-1, Humans in Atlantis

Most planets in the Stargate universe are populated by humans. This is largely because, in the distant past, the alien race known as the Goa'uld came to Earth and posed themselves as the Egyptian Gods, forcing thousands of slaves to worship them. Humans were taken from Earth, by the Goa'uld, to other planets in the Milky Way, there to do forced labour for their 'gods' (e.g. mining the rare and fictional mineral naqahdah). After a rebellion on Earth, the Goa'uld fled, and indeed many of the peoples who were drafted to extraterrestrial planets also managed to free themselves of the Goa'uld - either by the Goa'uld losing interest in them, or by instigating a strong enough rebellion. For these reasons, humans of Earth are called the Tau'ri, meaning "those of the first world", whilst there are innumerable extraterrestrial human civilisations, often the only surviving remnants of ancient civilisations.

Aside from the abundance of human life throughout the Stargate universe, there is also a diversity of alien life. There are many minor species that have been encountered, but the most widespread and influential species include the Asgard, the Goa'uld and the Jaffa in the Milky Way. In the Pegasus Galaxy, the Wraith hold dominance. Inter-galactic races include the deadly mechanical Replicators, and the all-powerful Ori, and, ironically, the most influential race of all is extinct: the Ancients.

Milky Way aliens

Altairian

After their world was poisoned they built an underground facility to save their race. They learned how to make synthetic copies of themselves and duplicate their consciousnesses into them. Harlan is the last known survivor of this race, after all others left the planet and were presumably destroyed.

Furlings

Little is known about the Furlings, except that they are a member of the alliance of the Four Great Races. However, occasional artifacts attributed to the Furlings have been identified. In the episode "Paradise Lost", SG-1 discovered an old Utopian colony established by the Furlings and wiped out by a Goa'uld bearing a mind-altering drug.

Goa'uld

The Goa'uld have been the dominant race in the galaxy for millennia. They are a parasitic species that resemble small snakes, which burrow into the upper spinal cords of other creatures, thereby taking control of the "host's" body and mind. In general, they choose to use humans as hosts due to the simplicity of human physiology, which makes it easy to repair, such that they can sustain life almost indefinitely. Prior to using humans as hosts, they frequently used Unas, which were a very powerful species with regenerative capabilities, the transition to humans was due in part to the fact that Goa'uld by nature are very vain, and value physical appearance highly. This particular aspect is evident in the series pilot, Children of the Gods, in which Apophis's wife is chosen mainly by appearance by a Goa'uld symbiote which is partly leaving a Jaffa. For centuries, they ruled Earth by claiming to be gods, and so they resemble the gods of Egyptian, Mayan, Aztec, and Babylonian mythology. The show consistently calls the Goa'uld a symbiote, even though most biologists would use the term symbiont.

The Goa'uld have a rigid rank system. The most powerful members of the race are the System Lords, who control massive fleets of interstellar motherships, massive armies of Jaffa, and are worshipped as gods by billions.

Jaffa

Strictly speaking, the Jaffa are not a separate species from humanity. They are the descendants of humans that were enslaved by the Goa'uld thousands of years ago. However, they have been genetically re-engineered by the Goa'uld so as to suppress their natural immune system, such that beyond a certain age they can only live with the aid of a Goa'uld symbiote, functioning as incubators for larval Goa'uld. All Jaffa have marsupial-like pouches in their stomachs which serve to incubate a Goa'uld larva for several decades, providing them access to the long life and well-being that the Goa'uld possess. The Jaffa constituted the majority of the military strength of the Goa'uld. However, due to the Jaffa rebellion, some Goa'uld, most notably Anubis, began to use other forces, such as Kull Warriors, for their primary troops.

Technically, because they are the descendents of genetically modified humans, the Jaffa could be listed as a mutation of humanity, a sub-species rather than a completely independent organism.

Kull Warriors

These creatures were genetically engineered by the Goa'uld Anubis for use in his personal army. Given life and enhanced, they are essentially tabula rasa bred for obedience and war. Their suits, which they are almost welded into, are impervious to all main weapons and explosives, including C-4 and other highly explosive compounds. Small trinium darts, however, can penetrate the suit. The Kull Disruptor was eventually devised by the Tau'ri and the Tok'ra, using an Ancient healing device discovered by the Goa'uld Telchak, and is capable of bringing a Kull Warrior down in one or two shots. } After the defeat of Anubis, the System Lord Ba'al took control of Anubis's army, including the Kull Warriors. However, it was later revealed that Ba'al was a puppet for Anubis, who was still controlling the Kull Warriors. Later, though, when Anubis was forcibly removed from our plane of existence by Oma Desala, the Kull Warriors lost their guidance from Anubis, and were quickly defeated. It is unknown if any remain alive.

Nox

A peaceful and fairy-like people, who are capable of reviving the dead and rendering even large objects invisible and intagible. They are entirely against violence of any kind, regardless of whether it is noble or evil. Despite their apparent fragility, they are a race of great dormant power. Their technology appears to be nearly equal to that of the Ancients, as demonstrated by the fact that they have a flying metallic city that can be shown to anyone by a wave of a Nox hand. They were also a member of the alliance of four great races.

Re'ol

Almost wiped out by the Goa'uld, the Re'ol have a unique natural defense: one of their bodily secretions is used to create false memories when it comes into contact with a living creature. A Re'ol managed to infiltrate SG-1 in the episode "The Fifth Man" as "Lt. Tyler", but was stunned to see how O'Neill, even once he was told that Tyler wasn't a member of his team, wouldn't "leave a man behind". The Re'ol now hide on an unknown planet, but the possibility for an alliance, should they appear again, is still there.

Re'tu

Sworn enemies of the Goa'uld, the rebel Re'tu faction employs a radical method to wipe out their foes: kill all possible hosts. Essentially, this means that the rebel Re'tu are a great threat towards humans, even though the legitimate Re'tu government bears no ill-will towards humanity. They have the forms of large spider-like creatures. Most notably, however, they exist 180 degrees out of phase from the normal visual spectrum, making them invisible except under a TER. One Re'tu can be a deadly threat, and the rebels usually come in packs of 5 or 6, with which they can provide a danger to even well-secured military installations.

Serrakin

Seen in "Forsaken" and "Space Race", the Serrakin helped free the human Hebridans from a Goa'uld, possibly Morrigan, several millenia ago. They brought a signficant amount of highly advanced technology with them, making the Hebridans one of the most technologically advanced Human civilizations. The Serrakin and the Hebridans live peacefully together, with the exception of an extreme minority of racial purists, and are known to intermarry and sire multi-species offspring. The Serrakin civilization is one of the few starfaring civilizations in the Milky Way galaxy not controlled or exterminated by the Goa'uld.

Tok'ra

Opposing the Goa'uld are the Tok'ra (Literal translation: "Against Ra", the ancient Supreme System Lord). Though the same biological species as the Goa'uld, the Tok'ra have fought the Goa'uld for millennia and have come to ally with the Tau'ri (humans from Earth) against the System Lords. Unlike the Goa'uld, who dominate their host, the Tok'ra respect their hosts and freely share the body with the human mind that still inhabits it. A member of the Tok'ra is quite literally two-fold; a voluntary human host, and a Tok'ra (strictly, Goa'uld) symbiote. The minds of the two "blend", which effectively means that they share memories and emotions and wisdom, but still remain distinct personalities. The mind in control of the body swaps around frequently, at the behest of either mind, and is usually signalled by lowering the head and closing the eyes for a moment. Furthermore, when the Tok'ra is in control, the person's voice becomes like that of a Goa'uld. The Tok'ra are a dying race, as the queen from which they all were spawned, Egeria, has died.

Unas

The first race used as hosts for the Goa'uld; they coexisted with them on their original planet. Known to the Jaffa as 'The first ones'. The Unas possess incredible physical strength and, when taken as a host, have the ability to regenerate from almost any wound thanks to the healing powers of the Goa'uld. Few Unas are still used as hosts, having been abandoned in favor of humans.

Lesser known alien races

These races have appeared only once so far.

• The Atonieks: The Atonieks were the subject of legends across the galaxy long before the era of Goa'uld dominance because of a technology, generally considered to be utterly fanciful, which gave them unprecedented speed and strength. These devices turned out to be real; they were armbands discovered by the Tok'ra Anise in an archaeological survey of the Atoniek planet. The armbands released a virus into the wearer which modified their phsysiology to drastically increase their strength, stamina, and durability. However, the host body eventually develops an immunity to the virus of the armbands, rendering them ineffective and useless. With their primary technology rendered ineffective, the Atonieks died out.

• Gadmeer: The Gadmeer existed for thousands of years, before being wiped out. They created a ship for the purpose of terraforming a new planet for them. For ten thousand years it travelled around the universe looking for a viable world to terraform. Their sulfur environment was a problem when the ship attempted to terraform a planet being used at the time. The ship created Lotan to communicate with the settlers and inform them they had to leave.
• "Giant Aliens": Name given by Nicholas Ballard (Daniel Jackson's grandfather) to the beings that live in a lepton-rich environment on planet P7X-377. They can only be seen by those who have received a special radiation emanating from a special crystal skull present in an offworld Mayan Ziggurat. They are enemies of the Goa'uld, and are friends with anyone who shares that in common with them.
• "Mimetic aliens": Mysterious aliens who tried to take over the SGC in "Foothold", using technology that allows them to mimic the appearance of other beings. It was discovered that a certain sound frequency disrupted that technology. To prevent a similar situation, ever since, that same sound is played every time the Stargate activates (not that we can hear it).

• Oannes: Nem and Omoroca are the only known members of this species. In the episode "Fire and Water", Daniel Jackson is kidnapped by an Oanne named Nem who wants to know what happened to his mate Omoroca, insisting that Daniel remember some old information he read in his predoctoral days. Omoroca obviously at some point visited earth, and influenced early Phoenecian mythology. He searches Daniel's mind for the information only to find out that his mate was killed a long time ago by the Goa'uld. The species is aquatic and refer to the mythological species Oannes.
• "Orb aliens of P5C-363": The only survivors of planet P5C-363, preserved within an orb. When the orb was taken back to Earth, strong spikes darted out from it, pinning Colonel O'Neill to the wall. Eventually, they grew strong enough to speak through O'Neill, and the SGC agreed to take them to a planet they could survive on, rather than, as they planned, take over Earth.
• "Aliens of PJ2-445": Though humanoid in appearance, their internal organ structure suggests otherwise. They have no spoken language, primitive housing, and cover their bodies in a thick paint that becomes a second skin. They seem to unknowingly live in symbiosis with the flora around them. When the crash of a UAV disturbed the flora and the humanoid creatures, SG-1 was forced to set things right. They are a culture centered entirely around the human musical voice, and sing to heal themselves - this singing is in part what generates the synergy with the plants.
• "Reptilian aliens": A gold-eyed alien species of which little is known. The only two members of this race the SGC has encountered so far are bumbling mercenaries working for the Lucian Alliance.("Prometheus Unbound", "The Ties That Bind"). They depart entirely from what a normal "Stargate alien" looks like, and are quite obviously men in stereotypical plastic suits.

• Salish Spirits: Seen in the episode "Spirits", the race defeated the Goa'uld occupying a particular planet several centuries, possibly millennia ago, and coexisted with the Salish as the Salish gods. They have natural powers, including the ability to teleport either themselves or others to or from, seemingly, anywhere. Their appearance is distinctive - humanoid, but with strange gills around their nasal area.
• Unity: A species of intelligent crystalline beings that was almost destroyed by the Goa'uld. The unity crystals are able to create a duplicate of any being that touches them. When SG-1 arrived at their planet, Colonel O'Neill touched one of the crystals and was knocked unconscious while the duplicate returned to Earth. The change was discovered after O'Neill woke up and returned to Earth. The duplicate had no ill intentions, and O'Neill himself helped him return home.
• "Water-beings": beings that lived in a water world in the form of a liquid and were able to transform into a gas at will. They can also take control of humans. They were found when Russian stargate personnel took a sample of the water back to Russia when they noticed that the water was emitting thermal energy.
• The Shippers: On one flight of the Prometheus the ship became stranded in a nebula and the entire crew apart from Carter were kidnapped. Near the end of the episode we see the ship belonging to this race, it appears to be huge, approximately the same mass as a Wraith Hiveship or Ori battleship and possessing technology at or near Ancient level. Though we never see this race in person they appear to be extremely xenophobic and reclusive.
• "Unnamed energy fireflies": While not technological, and never proven intelligent, the behavior of the spark-like energy entities on the research outpost moon (unspecified designation) in the episode "Prodigy" exhibit distinct signs of intelligence, that may be attributed to the planets massive magnetic field.
• "Unnamed 'computer virus' entity": A world with a surface covered in advanced technology turns out to be inhabited by, for want of a better description, software. The software entity(ies) transmit a 'weapon' - a sentient computer virus - back to the SGC, where it hijacks the computers and, eventually, Samantha Carter.

Pegasus Galaxy aliens

Wraith

The Wraith are the dominant species of the Pegasus Galaxy. This hive-based species drove the Ancients out of the Pegasus galaxy around 8000 BC, and are currently the antagonists of Stargate Atlantis. They maintain thousands of worlds, populated by humans, as sources of food, and they feed off the life-force of other beings. The Wraith are part human-ancient and part insect. In the pegasus galaxy a genetic trait exists among certain species such that, by a complex chemical and enzymical process as yet not understood by man, they feed on either time or life (victims tend to "lose years"). This trait is enhanced in the Wraith. They still maintain vestigial human organs such as stomachs and are capable of eating human food but derive no sustenance from it. Since the Wraith are descended from Ancients they presumably had some Ancient technology which helped them to overcome the original Ancients and makes them a formidable adversary today.

Lesser known alien races

• Mist Aliens: Intelligences that compose the mist covering M5S-224. They are made mostly of energy. Whenever the Stargate is activated on their world, thousands of their species die from the Stargate's attempting to process their lifeforce as energy (the design of the gate is such that it seeks energy in any possible form). Because they are energy in nature, the life forms provided a brief power surge on Stargate activation. Rodney McKay devised a method to dial Earth from M5S-224; however this would have resulted in millions of alien deaths to establish the wormhole, thus the aliens placed the Atlantean team into a "fabricated reality" in a desperate attempt to save themselves. It took the diplomatic skills of Dr. Weir to convince the energy creatures to allow the expedition team to return to Atlantis and ensure the Atlantean expedition would not threaten their world in such a way again.

Other galaxy aliens

Ancients

An extremely advanced race that was originally human, that inhabited Earth millions of years ago after leaving their distant home galaxy in order to escape their bretheren, the Ori. Before leaving for the Milky way, the ancient race was known as the Alterans, a fact discovered after the discovery of a great ancient treasurey in England, in which it was also learnt that Merlin the wizard was an ancient who helped King Arthur to ascend and that the sword in the stone was truly a test of purity in the heart to test whether a person was deserving of the secrets of the ancients. They were the central party of the alliance of the Four Great Races, and are credited with very building of the entire system of Stargates, and possessing technology that surpasses anything known throughout the Stargate science-fiction universe. The Ancients expanded their gate system beyond the Milky Way galaxy with a significant network of gates being present in the Pegasus Galaxy. After the vast majority were wiped out by a plague, they fled to Pegasus via their "flying city" several million years ago.

There they encountered the Wraith, and although their technology was far superior to their enemy's they were vastly outnumbered. Finally accepting that they would never defeat the Wraith, they submerged the city of Atlantis and returned to Earth. There they passed on some of their genes to humans, including the Ancient Technology Activation gene (or ATA). Few Ancients are known to exist on the mortal plane of existence, having Ascended to a higher state of being.

Asgard

Physically identical to Roswell Greys, and, according to Stargate, accounting for them, the Asgard are a benevolent, highly advanced and evolved race who have visited Earth on many occasions from the galaxy Ida, and who also gave rise to the Norse legends. Whilst still posing as Gods to many pretechnological races, they do this to help that race grow, and leave tests such that, when the race advances enough, they will return to them and show them their true forms. They were a prominent member of the alliance of the Four Great Races.

The Asgard have established the Protected Planets Treaty with the Goa'uld, which was expanded to include the Tau'ri in Season 3. This means that the Goa'uld cannot attack Earth without inflicting the wrath of the Asgard - but this hasn't stopped them throughout the course of the show.

Thor, as Supreme Commander of the Asgard, expressed to the Tau'ri the regret the Asgard had over allowing the Goa'uld to spread and enslave humans throughout the galaxy. If it weren't for the threat of the Replicators in the Ida Galaxy, they would have prevented the Goa'uld rise to power long before they became a serious threat.

The Asgard are no longer able to reproduce in the traditional sense, and must use cloning technology in order to survive by cloning their bodies and then transplanting their minds into the new one. During the transplant process the consiousness of the individual is "downloaded" into their ships' computers. They were constantly at war with the Replicators until the end of Season 8.

Ori

The most fearsome and terrible threat in the cosmos, the Ori are Ascended beings who use their infinite knowledge of the universe to force lesser beings to worship them. In essence, they used to be Ancients, however they split into separate groups due to different views of life. The Ori are religious while the Ancients prefer science.

The Ori sway lesser-developed planets into worshipping them by promising Ascension through an invented and empty religion called "Origin". This religion states that they created humanity and as such are to be worshipped by their creations. It also promises its followers that, on death, they will Ascend. In reality, the Ori never help anyone else Ascend because then they would have to share the power of Ascension. Their ultimate goal is to completely destroy the Ascended Ancients, who they know as "the Others".

As Ascended beings, the Ori do not interfere directly in the mortal plane. They use instead humans called Priors, which they artificially evolve so that they are one step from Ascension, giving the Priors godly powers. Because the Ori have worshippers across the entire home galaxy of the Ancients, and using their knowledge to spread, they are nearly unstoppable.

Replicators

A potent mechanical lifeform using a quiron based technology composed of building blocks using nanotechnology. They strive to increase their numbers and spread across the universe by assimilating advanced technologies. They are hostile to all other lifeforms in the universe, but are opposed primarily by the Asgard. In the episode "Unnatural Selection", the Replicators had developed human-form Replicators, based on the technology they extracted from their Android creator, that appear just like humans and are able to change their form. Standard Replicators are resistant to energy weapons, and can only be destroyed by projectile weapons. Human-form Replicators, on the other hand, are resistant to projectile weapons as well due to the change in their nature from large blocks to smaller units the size of organic cells (cell blocks).

In the episode "New Order (Part 2)", an Ancient weapon called the Replicator Disruptor was developed by Jack O'Neill while he still had the knowledge of the Ancients in his mind. It works by blocking the cohesion between the blocks that make up the Replicators. The Replicators in the Milky Way galaxy were wiped out by the Dakara Superweapon in the two-part episode "Reckoning" at the climax of Season 8.

References

 

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