Sg-1 Question

[Thomas Cardew]

So I rewatched some Sg-1 Episodes and something has been bothering me.

Why do the Tokra have a population/host problem? I get that no new symbiotes are born because no Queen Gou'old. But what stops them from pure-breeding? The whole Apophis/Harsesus(sp?) thing showed that symbiote possessed humans can still breed; the only restriction was the symbiote has to go into a dormant/noncontrolling state. This shouldn't be a problem for the Tokra at all because they aren't actively controlling at all time anyway. I could see it being an irritating inconvenience but hardly one worth dooming your species over.

The other reason would be the genetic information making the child inevitably evil, but that doesn't hold in the Tokra case because well they're the Tokra. They don't have the evil nature the other ones do because it wasn't imparted to them by their brood mother and they never used the sarcophagus. The children presumably wouldn't have a problem taking symbiotes as they'd be raised free from whatever prejudice the rest of the galaxy has towards them. I can see some incestual problems but those are easily avoidable with a large enough population. Not to mention even though no new symbiotes are being born; the Tokra culture, beliefs, and knowledge would all be being preserved and furthered in the human children who be Tokra in all but symbiote having the same knowledge as their parents. The bloodmarkers/naquadah or whatever that enables them to use gou'old tech would be a bit of a problem but presumably a solvable one either by technology or by just having symbiotes join and leave each (culturally problematic I know and untenable as symbiotes die off but still buys hundreds of years to millenia to figure out a long term solution).

Their susceptibility to being possessed by a Gou'old, would probably render them civilians by necessity. But it would still solve the host problem without even exploring the possibility of the Tokra as a Gou'old human hybrid species/culture which I think would be fascinating.

[thorgrim29]

I mean, the Tokra are pretty hidebound and fairly incompetent so it could just be that they didn’t think of it of thought about it but since it wasn’t part of Egeria’s plan they didn’t do it. Or, maybe the hybrid children can’t be hosts? Besides, was lack of hosts really a big problem for them? Sure it came up a few times in the series but before the SGC kicked the galactic status quo in the bottom I don’t think they would have had much of a problem. They rescued slaves once in a while and those who wanted to got symbiotes.

[Toastkart]

I've frequently wondered about that myself. So far as I can recall, it's never brought up as a possibility.

All that I can think of is that it was taboo for the system lords because a harcesus could blow their cover as gods, and somehow it was still a taboo to the Tok'ra. But even that doesn't make a lot of sense.

There were plenty of inconsistencies about Gou'uld physiology over the course of the series. For example, Apophis states that he impregnated the queen mother to produce Klorel, his son. Later, however, we learn that Gou'uld reproduce asexually, and don't have a gender per se. This is probably just another one that wasn't followed up on.

[Binks]

When is it ever said they have a host population problem? The Tok'ra population issue is that they only have X symbiotes left, and that number is never going to go up.

Also, we don't know whether or not a Tok'ra Harcecus would be evil or not. Sure the Tok'ra aren't currently going around being evil today, but they were once Goa'uld who split off from the main group. It's entirely possible all the Tok'ra were guilty of crimes like to Goa'uld a long time ago, or that their queen had the genetic memory of committing great evils. It's one thing to convince a symbiote who can grow into the memories to be a good guy, it's a whole other thing for a child born with all of them to try and do so. Not to mention the whole 'absolute power' angle of the harcesus being inherently corrupting (as the episode Absolute Power demonstrated). Everything we see in Stargate is that Harcesus = Bad Time, regardless of your own moral character.

[Douglas]

Even besides the hosts issue, it always seemed to me that the Tok'ra (and to some extent SGC) were ignoring a far more important thing Earth had to offer - a level of sheer industrialized manpower that is completely unheard of in the entire rest of the galaxy.

Goa'uld controlled space is uniformly rural and pre-industrial, operating mostly on a subsistence level with what little technological work there is being done by back breaking manual labor by people who don't understand what they're making. Give Earth technological parity with the Goa'uld, let the Tau'ri adapt all the fantastic devices to everyday use throughout their culture and industries, and I'd expect the result to be something capable of taking on the entire Goa'uld empire in open warfare. That's something the Tok'ra have only ever been able to dream of, being forced into hiding and subterfuge by their small numbers and lack of support.

Of course, then they'd have a powered up Earth to deal with, but it shouldn't be hard to leverage all their technological gifts into a lasting alliance.

[Thomas Cardew]

fairly incompetent

Ehh. They get a bad rep for playing things too close the chest, being cautious, and overly fixated on finding a single perfect solution. The close to chest and cautious thing make sense. They live for millennia after all, that have very good reason to move slow and avoid brash moves. They erred far too much to the side of caution but not as much as people might claim. Remember their end game plan WOULD have worked except for the whole basically divine intervention thing. They successfully got all, the system lords in one room, with an operative in that room with a toxin capable of wiping them out. They had tags on EVERY single Gou'old ship. Depending on how genocidal they wanted to be; that would have been the end of the Gou'old right there. The system lords are dead, every minor Gou'old is fight every other minor Gou'old. The Tokra can ship in overwhelming force and take out any base, any ship one at time because there's no longer an unfiying force to stand against them. The only thing that stopped this was the whole half ascended Gou'old which no one could have seen coming or dealt with.

Or, maybe the hybrid children can’t be hosts? Besides, was lack of hosts really a big problem for them?

The whole plan was for Apophis to take the child as a host so that's out. The lack of host was nominally a big deal for them. It was the whole basis of the Earth-Tokra alliance. It never got explored beyond the drama of having Sam's dad become Tokra but presumably there was still a need for it.

[Thomas Cardew]

When is it ever said they have a host population problem? The Tok'ra population issue is that they only have X symbiotes left, and that number is never going to go up.

Also, we don't know whether or not a Tok'ra Harcecus would be evil or not. Sure the Tok'ra aren't currently going around being evil today, but they were once Goa'uld who split off from the main group. It's entirely possible all the Tok'ra were guilty of crimes like to Goa'uld a long time ago, or that their queen had the genetic memory of committing great evils. It's one thing to convince a symbiote who can grow into the memories to be a good guy, it's a whole other thing for a child born with all of them to try and do so. Not to mention the whole 'absolute power' angle of the harcesus being inherently corrupting (as the episode Absolute Power demonstrated). Everything we see in Stargate is that Harcesus = Bad Time, regardless of your own moral character.

The very first episode we meet them it's talked about they have a host problem. It's explicitly the whole basis of the Earth-Tokra alliance.

As for the rest we had different takeaways. The line is "The evil in my subconscious is too strong to resist. The only way to win is to deny it battle." The problem isn't the knowledge; but the effects of the sarcophagus and genetic memories from the standard gou'old lines that make them evil. This seems to hold true every time we see gou'old hybrids. They're evil because the gou'old they were made from was evil; or humans become evil because of the sarcophagus.

Even besides the hosts issue, it always seemed to me that the Tok'ra (and to some extent SGC) were ignoring a far more important thing Earth had to offer - a level of sheer industrialized manpower that is completely unheard of in the entire rest of the galaxy.

Goa'uld controlled space is uniformly rural and pre-industrial, operating mostly on a subsistence level with what little technological work there is being done by back breaking manual labor by people who don't understand what they're making. Give Earth technological parity with the Goa'uld, let the Tau'ri adapt all the fantastic devices to everyday use throughout their culture and industries, and I'd expect the result to be something capable of taking on the entire Goa'uld empire in open warfare. That's something the Tok'ra have only ever been able to dream of, being forced into hiding and subterfuge by their small numbers and lack of support.

Of course, then they'd have a powered up Earth to deal with, but it shouldn't be hard to leverage all their technological gifts into a lasting alliance.

The problem with that is ramp up time. And Earth's unwillingness to wait. The infrastructure to build Gou'old tech doesn't appear over night not to mention Earth lacks the raw resources to produce Gou'old tech, naquadah. But yes, given a little bit of time an Earth/Tok'ra would be a dominate superpower beyond anything the Gou'old dreamed of even without the ancient tech. Because mining with pick axes is fine; but a single strip mine is going to out produce anything we see in the show in a month of production. Even without adjusting for any Earth based improvements/innovations. The problem of course was not getting blown up before that happened.

[gooddragon1]

I've always felt there was just no winning with the tic-tac-tokra.

I've also wondered where Aunt Patty was given that we've seen Aunt Selmac (Simpsons). Or why people simply allow bratac to take their tea without putting up a fight.

More seriously, I understand why they cut the series off. They were experiencing what I call (and perhaps others call) a dragonball z effect in power increases of both their technology and the enemies they deal with.

On topic with the main poster: Wasn't there an episode where they made symbiotes that were effectively blanks (though not as blank as they should have been). Couldn't they just find a queen and engineer it with the right memories?