Chimera said:
That Amanda Tapping line was terrific and instantly endeared the series to me. One thing I've always liked about SG is that they never took themselves too seriously.
re: Ancients vs Wraith - The ancients apparently never faced a real threat to themselves until they found the Wraith, IIRC. So they probably would have not been terribly milliterized. Think of the US vs some place like North Korea or the old Soviet Union. The US has practically no internal controls on movement or military security vs any sort of uprising/attack internally. Where as in a totalitarian state it's almost impossible to travel without permision and certainly not in large numbers.
Military conflicts from what I have read are generally won by the side that is the least incompetent. Competent leaders with a professional military are a very rare thing in history and generally result in conquring large chunks of the globe. A society that is essentially unfamiliar with large scale military conflict would be likely to screw up quite a bit and thus loose even though they might be a nominally superior force.
In the American Civil war the North had virtually every advantage, far greater industrialization, substantially larger populations and the technological edge. However it took Lincon like 3 years to find a general who could find his ass with both hands and to get the military into a functioning state. The South essentially got all of the trained military leaders and had a much more of a warrior mentality. I suspect in part at least due to the threat of slave revolts. So they repeatedly kicked the Union all over the battlefield for the first couple of years.
Another thing about the wraith is that there was essentially only a night watch on "duty" that the SG:A people encountered and they were only expecting to be facing hunter gatherers. So it probably wasn't their "A-Team". What the rest of them are going to be like is a better question, but their numbers may still be limited by their "food" supply. Since they wouldn't go into hibernation unless there was some compelling reason.
They are probably not some sort of the Ancients as one person mentioned, since the holographic message specifically stated that the wraith were "awakened" which indicates that they had been there for some time previously before the ancients encountered them.
Finally, in the end it could just be that like the Gou'aud, the wraiths simply arent that good at waging war, but they were savage enough and better enough at it than the ancients to defeat them, but aren't not-incompetent enough to beat a species that has had LOTS of practice at war and has gotten really good at it (ie. Humans).
I meant, Jaffa who had been pouch-hosts, not head-hosts.
