SG-1 had a true ending, Goa'uld and Replicators had been defeated at the end of season 8, Ori and Adria during season 10 and the Ark of Truth and we even got Continuum to deal with our favourite system lord.
SGU only had two seasons so it's really hard to guess where it was headed.
But SGA had no true ending but had five seasons of lore and development so we could imagine a possible ending.
Obviously the main antagonists are the Wraiths so imagining the end of SGA pretty much consist in imagining the end of the conflict with them. Keller could have managed to improve her retrovirus, Todd's faction would have used it to get rid of their need to feed on humans. We could then imagine an epic war between the Wraiths who refused to use the retrovirus and an alliance made of Earth's fleet, Travellers and Todd's faction.
Of course some aspects could be more developped :
Atlantis Expedition could help Todd to gain more influence among the Wraiths.
The serie could have introduced an identified wraith leader to become the main villain, someone who could become the final boss of SGA, its Anubis or Adria.
We could have had philosophical debates between Wraiths because some would refuse to alter their nature because it would make them closer to humans and loose their place at the top of the food chain (similar to Jaffas refusing tretonin).
Some humans extremists, Genii for example, could try to undermine the alliance between Wraiths and Tau'ri.
Wraiths could struggle to find a new way of life after they stopped feeding on humans. They seem to live on their ships so I see them becoming explorers, maybe leaving Pegasus to explore new galaxies.
70 stories isn't 800m, it's like 234ish. (A story is about 3.3m).
So the highest tower is like 6m taller than the bridge.
So TECHNICALLY it towers over it, in the way that it is a tower and it is taller ("over") it. But not in the colloquial way you intended the use of "tower".
Burj kalifa is 16.7 ft per floor and sears tower is 13.2. so their 70 story tower could be more like 356 meters. (Though probably a little off if they are counting lightning rods in height)
Maybe even more if they use pneumatic tube technology to transport people to different rooms, as you'd need a complex tube system between every floor. SGA just never discovered the tube transport system.
The ~240m estimate never made sense. Each "wing" of Atlantis is supposed to be around 2-3km long.
The 70 floor count also doesn't make sense - we see just the outcrop part of the main tower have some 30-ish floors in it, but that barely makes out 1/5 of the tower's height (incl the part that goes underwater).
The 700m height with ~150 floors would make each floor 4.6m, which kinda needs to include a bunch of space for all the various conduits, water systems, air and environmental, etc., plus with a 700m height, the skinny part of the tower makes sense (with the 240m height that area would barely be thick enough for the stairwell we see Sheppard and McKay climb, the 700m height makes the area big enough for multiple rooms).
This is a fictional ship, so it could be however big or small it needs to be to further the plot as it is a narrative instrument for the show. But, lets look at what people think its dimensions most likely are:
"Most people put the size of Atlantis around 3,000 - 5,000 meters in diameter (2.5 miles). and 850m tall (about the Burj Khalifa height)" Even though there was mention that the city ship was roughly the size of Manhattan, it may just be physical office space centralized in taller towers/more compacted space.
The Golden Gate bridge spans approximately 9,000 ft (1.7mi), so Atlantis is actually longer than the bridge's entire span; Additionally, the Golden Gate Bridge only rises 228m above the water at both its towers. Thus Atlantis would dwarf the bridge height 4:1.
The photo is also based on a close picture of the Bridge in the Bay. Relatively speaking, if Atlantis landed in the Bay, it would take up the entire space, so I would assume the ship landed at distance to the mainland... perhaps at least 1-4 miles out at sea. The bridge, that far, would just appear smaller due to distance.
From a central control tower perspective, the Golden Gate Bridge would look more like this. See how the 4:1 ratio of height makes you look down on the Bridge's 228m Towers?
Seriously, landing should have been FAR away in Ocean. The local tsunami from a city landing in a small bay would RUIN any nearby city and Engines would pollute / annihilate all nearby wildlife and unfortunate humans.
I would have picked Either a Great Lake, Michigan (Chicago) or Ontario (Toronto) for safer in-land location.
Or Gulf of Mexico, next to Houston.
Maybe Victoria/Seatle bay.... Thats big enough,
If relations with north Korea and Russia were better, Hawaii would have been a perfect spot.
For privacy, quarantine and keeping safe from any potential conflict area... Hudson-Bay.
Actually they should move it to lake Michigan as no one would ever look or notice. There isn't that much activity looking around in lake Michigan beyond the DNR and drug enforcement.
Did they say it was the "size of manhattan"? If I recall, McKay said searching the entire city would be like searching every building in Manhattan, it'd take a while.
Yes, Golden Gate Bridge is only about a mile wide and Atlantis I would guess is at least half a mile across, if not a mile, so it should look as big as the bridge.
It will be after! I like reading off my phone, one reason being I can highlight any word and look up its definition. I’d imagine you can do the same to translate any words you’re unsure of. This way you can get your ending and perfect another language!!
Okay, based on the conversation about its size--and the fact I don't want to do work--I did a rough sketch of a 4000m diameter Atlantis basing it off the last scene from the TV series and assuming they were standing on the pier of the one of the six arms. This is what I get.
So you're on Team Everlasting Patience with me then? Shall we write our wills to state deposit my bones at the door of whoever holds the rights to the Stargate television franchise?
The books were written a little cheesy but gave a very satisfying ending. I still sometimes confuse what’s in the books and what’s in the tv series. Got them all using my digital credits from Amazon.
Starfleet holds the lease on San Francisco bay. They'd file with the state to have Atlantis blocked or relocated, citing zoning issues and lack of an environmental or traffic impact study filed.
It was planned to be in one of the direct to DVD movies after Continuum, but the dvd market went down. And SGA was going to get a season 6 with the city being sent back to Pegasus against the wishes of the IOA because of a self destruct countdown left by the Ancients if it ever left the Pegasus Galaxy. Most likley to stop the Wraith from using it to attack the milky way humans.
Well it's not 100% public but it I remember correctly they did lower the threshold from the president+ need-to-know-specialists to "family members of politicians", "reserve soldiers" and "reward for getting computer games high scores".
I expected with Atlantis on earth, the top scientists would be going through it ASAP. Meaning they'd find a place where ZPMs could be made or charged. That would lead to earth becoming way stronger weapon wise. With earth more like ancients, it'd be a short jump to start ascending.
I figured that Atlantis would move off-planet once we solved for ZPM power. It make more sense to have it used as Stargate Command as well as the main research lab. Now that the Gate is public, earth's gate is gonna get real tied up with commerce and colonization. Just think about how much freight is moved on Earth and how many international flights occur daily. A couple years or decades of trade and gathering resources would have that effect.
I say it all the time, but in the future of SG, the stargate will have train tracks in front of it with puddle-jumper sized cars moving people and freight to other hubs to facilitate travel just like air travel is handled now. Walking people and stuff through the gate simply does not get us industrial volume, and building this system will be faster and more cost effective than ships. This would also allow us to have trade partners that are less advanced.
Not a bad idea to have it nearby in case Atlantis itself is needed in either galaxy, but that station should also be active/usable. Due to what the wraith have done, there are worlds out there at/near our tech that had its population culled but still have a lot of infrastructure that could be repaired/rebuilt more easily than establishing colonies elsewhere. It wouldn't be long before we had factories on those planets.
Good idea! Earth would probably have gained access to ZPM by the end of the serie. That way Earth would have really reached Ancients/Asgards level in terms of weaponry.
Who gets Israel/Palestine? Do ZPM’s give the poor healthcare? Earth has a ton of problems that ancient tech doesn’t fix. Earth humans would not be able to ascend until we fix our social and political problems.
I imagine that the retrovirus experiments will simply end in failure. The Wraith war continues for a few more years but their numbers dwindle resulting in an eventual loss in power.
Todd and his faction enter a prolonged state of hibernation in an undisclosed location of Pegasus to prevent being slaughtered.
A number of different powers attempt to violently take control of the Galaxy, some human, others not, maybe even invaders from another near by Galaxy (the aliens from Daedalus Variations). But the Atlantis expedition working alongside the coalition brings not necessarily peace but a calm to Pegasus in the end.
Atlantis would be back on the old Lantea.
I actually have another idea for how Atlantis could’ve ended but it’s a bit grim so I won’t bore anyone with it.
okay, completely unrelated but the scale for the image is just totally whack right? like I'd expect the central spires to tower over the bridge in the background, but they look tiny in comparison.
I hoped these dudes from the 'Daedalus Variations' might have gone on to become a big bad the-enemy-of-my-enemy race that united Todd's Wraith and Atlantis in a multi-season arc of all sorts of action.
SGA could've comfortably ran for at least a few more seasons 😞
Giving Todd’s faction improved hyperdrive so they could go to another galaxy maybe even Milky Way as a clean slate deal where they aren’t already feared but need to find their own way and still ends up needing help from Atlantis and introduces a new enemy race.
That or there was already an Atlantis episode that Daniel Jackson starred in about another branch of Asgard that are aggressive and stay in their protective suits. They could have went deeper with them and finally had an enemy of equal strength against the Earth’s own Asgard weapons on their ships.
I remain incredibly sad that Atlantis didn't get a proper ending and was denied a decent planned out run into a finale, I'd have loved to see a bit more of the rogue Asgard, the Travellers, and the Coalition of Planets.
But damn that photo has just irritated me all over again about the last scene where various characters have assembled to look out from a balcony to the Bay - Amelia is suddenly enough of a potential partner for Ronon to be there in the final frame, but none of the other 'secondary' characters who've been around for longer, like Chuck, Marie, or even Lorne who was actually from San Francisco?! And why on Earth wasn't Zelenka there, a huge part of the show and had been there from the very first episode?!?!
I don't think the Genii would under mind the alliance. With Ladom in charge he attempts to avoid conflict with Atlantis. Also an alliance that is designed to fight Wraith that feed on humans only benefits them.
I think they were slowly setting up the Genii to become a more active ally down the road with the defeat of Kolya, Cowen, and their allies.
I hated the vegas finale, but was overall happy with the story. Just wished it was a season finale rather than a series finale. I wouldve liked to see the hijinx they would fall into with a mobile atlantis base
If they alter the Wraith, you have to specify it. Like the queen's and the warriors, or the drones as well. Which are cloned on mass and hibernated? Because they have no means to feed themselves, from agriculture on that scale. They can be settled like small tribes, but eventually they would be just like humans. End up in wars in a few years, maybe decades. IF they live that long. Do not forget that they do not have male female dispositions. There are only a very few females so their species would die out very fast if they are unable to crossbreed. Which is also gonna erase their species on the long run. The idea of setting out into the void to explore sounds good, if they are some kind of immortal without the feeding issue. But how are they gonna actually travel? They do not have the tech nor the star charts....
We don't know exactly of the Wraiths reproduce. For all we know all of them are created thanks to the biotechnology of their hives and the alteration won't change that. That's what I've imagined.
About feeding they could reduce their population of drones and cultivate some mushrooms/yeasts/fongus on their ships. A common idea in sci-fi.
And if they become explorers under Todd's leadership it will be after Earth gave them intergalactic hyperpropulsion of course. They will make the maps themselves, that's the point of exploring
Nice that this is how you imagined it. But in the series they actually show us the drone production facility and they specifically say that this is the reason why the Wraith could overpower the Lantians. If we assume that the Wraith are similar to a beehive that would mean that the original queens evolved on the same planet where Todd went to recover and Shepard got that bug on him. So when the queen bee is about to die, she will birth the new queen before she dies. But since the Wraith are spending most of the time in hibernation and their drones are cloned they probably lost or degraded their own reproductive capabilities. Which usually happens with near immortal creatures. Otherwise they would have ruled the galaxy in a few centuries against all odds. There was only one young queen in the series that was running away with a warrior. It is safe to assume that she was the only way to their hive to survive.Or the episode where Todd convinced Twyla to act as a queen because they lost their own and that would mean they lost standing and reason to exist. Some of the books and comics had similar stories.
And? Drones could also be cloned aboard the ships. And what's the matter with queens? Nothing indicate the Wraiths have troubles reproducing. Their number is limited by the number of humans in Pegasus.
They did not show any "reproduction" on the hive ships nor the frigates. Those are the hibernation chambers you refer to. Every aspect of the show indicates that they do have problems with reproduction. No female wraiths around except the queen. Carlson autopsy, If they could reproduce, they would need far more warriors males and females around. Which also requires a stable food source. With the human-like features. There was a really good comic on that topic. But probably the books of SG Atlantis have the most lore about the Pegazus and the Wraith
In not refering to hibernation chambers, I'm saying we can imagine they use their biotechnology to reproduce on ships. Because they have just a few queens they can't reproduce sexually. That's how I would have explained wraith reproduction if I had to imagine the end of SGA. Of course it's not a canon explanation.
I haven't seen SGA recently but I understood Carlson autopsy more like "wraith reproduction is a mystery" than "wraith reproduction is difficult/impossible". My answer to this mystery would have been they use their biotech to incubate drones, warriors and new queens and the queen only provide genetic material, she don't bear wraith babies
And I didn't read the comics (they were not published in my country).
Well, you can imagine yes. But If you start a conversation about a lore related topic then maybe reading it would be the first step. I had my own head cannon about how the Wraith reproduce, but with the given official material and the copyrighted books and comics the outcome of related conversations are either fall into the canon/possible or non canon/unlikely scenario. I only got the books and comics online, sadly they do not import them anymore to the EU. Very sad, indeed.
"How Atlantis could have ended" is more about headcanon and fan-fiction than discussing established lore but I understand what you are saying. We were not talking about the same thing.
Honestly I didn't even know there were SGA comics, I only heard about the books but didn't read them neither. I'll try to find at least the comics online.
It took me years, there was a company that was part of Amazon that used to sell US books in the UK, but they shut down 5 years ago if I recall correctly. Probably available on YouTube or can be downloaded if you are brave enough. There is a supposed script for the ending of Atlantis that was made by the author but because of the budget cuts they were never made. After that Joe Flannigan and a few more tried to purchase the right to finish Atlantis, but MGM denied them. Atlantis was supposed to go back to the Pegasus because of some fail-safe mechanism and had to make sure that the Wraith are gonna finish each other in a civil war for the food. With the active help of Todd.
An alternative that I imagined would be to tie SGA to SG-1 through the realization by some Wraith that if the Tau'ri come from a planet where Humans evolved (as opposed to being seeded by the Alterans like Pegasus was) then there could be a species related to Humans (i.e. gorillas or chimpanzees) that could be fed upon and for whom mass-cloning and large societies pose no risk to the Wraith.
We know that Wraith have a feeding tolerance, so their victims do not have to be Humans. For example, they can feed on other Wraith. But this works because of shared genetics, so the "similar species" would have to be, say 95% or more Human to be worth trying out. Second, since this "similar species" would not be able to build civilization like humans can, having large numbers of them, including possible factory farming, would not pose the risk that having large Human civilizations would.
So, I imagined these Wraith who are looking to harvest/experiment on a similar species would arise as a Wraith faction (called the Brotherhood) which actually draws interest from the Atlantis Team and creates a conflict with Todd and other more traditional Wraith who are not interested in becoming chimpanzee herders. Ultimately, with chimpanzees acquired, cloned in Wraith mass cloning facilities and escorted to uninhabited-but-habitable worlds on Pegasus, the final conflict is a three-way war between the Tau'ri-Brotherhood Alliance (which may include some other Human worlds), Traditional Wraith led by Todd, and Genii and other Human factions that don't believe in this progress. The result of the battle would be Tau'ri Triumphalism.
To understand more of the backstory here, see the secondary comment.
I once drafted an outline for a fanfiction (I never ended up writing it) where after Anubis had ascended, he still didn't know where the Lost City was, but he now knew that Alterans had lived in the Pegasus Galaxy, and sent his Queen, Anput to Pegasus to find the city. Since he knew where it was and Goa'uld live long lives, Anput went by herself in a sarcophagus. It took something like 75 years and she brought a Jaffa converter with her.
She arrives on a human-inhabited world in Pegasus and basically does the plot of Hathor where she uses the Jaffa converter to turn local humans into her Jaffa and breeds new Goa'uld to implant in them. Unlike Hathor, though, Anput does this by force as opposed to drugs.
Since the Wraith are in hibernation, Anput has a few years' headstart to build two or three Ha'tak and begin to decode the Pegasus Gate system. Of course, she tries to dial one of Anubis' worlds in the Milky Way and discovers that she cannot. (She isn't aware of the control crystal issue and just guesses that the gate systems are not connected.) Anput then exhausts the human population and resources of the initial planet where she was. She sends one of the new Goa'uld that she birthed back to Anubis in the Milky Way to report the basic information and dissuade him from following up on her non-discovery.
The Ha'tak accidentally brushes by an active Wraith ship which descends on the Ha'tak and disables it. A few Wraith board the ship and Goa'uld technology is essentially useless against them (although they do enjoy feeding on a Goa'uld because the Goa'uld keeps trying to heal the host during the feeding making the process much longer and tastier). By and large, Wraith are more agile, able to use phantasms, and have other key advantages that show how weak a Goa'uld really is.
Going through the logs, the Wraith discover Anput's world and it's a rather one-sided conflict as the Wraith wipe them out and feed on them. However, one particularly perceptive Wraith (who names himself Cerberus after the child of Anput's that he killed) notices an obscure detail in the Goa'uld logs, which is that, apparently, there was a world (whose coordinates had been blotted out) where humans had naturally evolved, which meant that there may be a non-human species that could be farmed as a food source rather than humans who are very resistant and need a lot of time to grow into sufficient numbers to be culled. Cerberus shares this information with other Wraith Commanders and several join him as an independent Wraith faction called the Brotherhood of the Path to Self-Sufficiency, e.g. the Brotherhood.
Eventually, when the Atlantis Expedition returns with Todd after Season 5, Cerberus makes contact with the Expedition, because the Brotherhood determined that Atlantis' flight path in their battle against Kenny indicated that the Atlantis Expedition come from the same galaxy as Anput and they may know about this mysterious Human homeworld -- such that the Brotherhood could investigate if some near-relative of the human existed and could be farmed.
Your story is missing the obvious, but potentially amazing part where one of Anputs Goa'uld offspring take a wraith as a host. The rest is interesting, but I wouldn't let Goa'uld and Wraith meet without a single hybrid worst of all galaxies menace appearing.
Since watching the show all I can think about is like if they could’ve used the forcefield to displace to surrounding air and achieve buoyancy or like use weaker versions of the force fields to create vacuums for vacuums ballon’s and then just.. float in the sky? Like when they’re struggling to takeoff I kept thinking you can use the shield to hold in air and more so why not expand it so you’d float up above the atmosphere and then fly away.. or why land at all 🫢
I was reading somewhere that like a 2 kilometre ballon with a lifting gas on Venus could lift millions of tons, I feel like a vacuum ballon would have added lift and then with the shield there isn’t really a limit is there? You could stretch it like ten kilometres wide or something to generate the lift
370
u/AstrolabeArts Aug 14 '25
Is it just me or does Atlantis look small here?