Stargate Command / P2X3YZ

The Alpha Gate, originally found in 1928 in Giza, Egypt, was stored in various locations by the United States Air Force, including Washington D.C., before it was installed in the Cheyenne Mountain facility. While the Stargate had been previously studied (most notably in World War II as a potential weapon), no one was able to make it reliably function until Egyptologist and Archaeologist Dr. Daniel Jackson was introduced to Project Giza, predecessor to the SGC in the mid 1990s. Jackson intuited the strange symbols around the perimeter of the Stargate device were actually representations of Constellations rather than Hieroglyphs, and the device could ‘dial’ another Stargate by ‘locking’ seven (or, much later, up to eight or even nine) of its chevrons onto these symbols, like a combination lock. This ‘dialing’ activates a wormhole between the dialer’s Stargate and one of thousands of other Stargates across the cosmos, allowing for near-instantaneous travel to other planets.

Subsequently, Major General W. O. West ordered USAF Colonel Jack O’Neill and a team of military personnel accompanied by Daniel Jackson through the Stargate from the Cheyenne Mountain Facility to Abydos, where they encountered Ra. Ra was a Goa’uld, an alien race that uses Stargates to transport slaves and goods throughout the galaxy.

The Stargate and any related programs remained dormant until 1997 when the Goa’uld Apophis dialed the Earth Stargate and arrived into the Embarkation Room.

While his First Prime, Teal’c of Chulak took Senior Airman Carol Weterings prisoner, Apophis’s guards responded by attacking and killing the four male personnel who were playing poker near it with one Serpent Guard dying in the process. The remaining troops along with Apophis himself later fled, taking an unconscious Weterings with them. When it was confirmed that Apophis had not arrived via the Abydos Stargate but instead a planet called Chulak, it was realized that the Stargate was capable of connecting with multiple destinations. O’Neill, since retired, was recalled to active duty and assigned to head the rescue mission where he convinced Teal’c to defect from the service of the Goa’uld.

Realizing that the Goa’uld were a serious threat, Stargate Command (SGC) was formed with a contingent of SG teams, of which the primary team, SG-1, consisted of Colonel Jack O’Neill, Dr. Daniel Jackson, Captain Samantha Carter and Teal’c. Their standing orders, along with the SGC, were to acquire weapons or technology that could help Earth in the fight against the Goa’uld, including establishing alliances.

From that point forward, the SGC began exploring hundreds of worlds using an ancient Goa’uld map found on Abydos, in conjunction with calculations to account for galactic drift since the map was made. After encountering a few advanced races, they also began researching and developing many alien-human hybrid devices, such as fighter-jets capable of spaceflight, and Earth-designed battlecruisers.

About a year and a half after the first activation of the Stargate and the mission to Abydos (about half a year after the creation of the SGC and the SG teams), a second Stargate — the Beta Gate — was found on Earth, in Antarctica. This Stargate was sealed until after the original Giza gate had crashed into the Pacific Ocean aboard the Asgard vessel Biliskner.

Russia, performing deep-sea research in the area, discovered the Alpha Gate and began using it in conjunction with the Dial Home Device they had captured from Germany after World War II. Eventually, the Antarctic gate was destroyed by a device controlled by Anubis, and the Giza gate was returned to the United States from Russia for rent and an agreement to share plans for the F-302 fighter-interceptor and BC-303 interstellar battlecruiser (by this point, however, the DHD was destroyed rescuing Teal’c.) This agreement also called for the formation of a Russian SG team at the SGC. Renewal of this agreement led to Russia acquiring a Daedalus class battlecruiser, the Korolev.

In 2004, Stargate Command was also the launching point for the Atlantis expedition led by civilian Dr. Elizabeth Weir.