I like how normally in these situations it’s the audience angrily demanding world-building minutiae from the actors, here it’s an actor that’s upset with the fiction of the world.
After Stargate ended, Shanks was in a Red Riding Hood movie. The protagonist gal was complaining that her parents had set up an arraigned marriage for her, and for a second when I thought it was Shanks’ character (turned out to be his son) I was like “hey, what’s wrong with that!” 😂
The other flaw he didn't touch on here was how inconsistent the stun effect was. Sometimes it would put people out for hours. Other times they don't even lose consciousness and lie there delivering quips.
Yeah but you could say the same about any gun in any film. Some people drop immediately getting hit, others get hit and keep on swinging, and still others cling to life just long enough to deliver half an "I love you" to the protagonist. People die when it's plot convenient 😉
A phaser would make more sense for that. Instead of the nebulousness of wondering how long you have to wait before you can safely stun someone, just switch the stun setting to kill or disintegrate.
@@Fayanora It’s a decay rate that has a few hours of diminishing returns. The longer you wait, the less it’s likely that you’ll end a life. And so it goes with obliteration.
The problem with the disintegration thing is also that...if it has enough energy to disintegrate someone. Then it is quite literally the most powerful handheld weapon ever made in the whole of stargate. The amount of energy needed to disintegrate a human being is ludicrous.
The first two make sense. A big bolt of energy that disrupts your nervous system like a tazer does would stun you. A second blast _while_ your system is being disrupted _could_ kill you as it would overload your system like being electrocuted. Now the 3rd one is kinda not falling in with this but i can see the first two being practicle.
I dunno man. There are people who the first blast, would kill. If you shot someone who wasn't a healthy young male, their odds of death would high enough that it's best just not to shoot them if you don't want to kill them. Tazers have killed people, so you'd imagine this thing would be a good deal more powerful since they appear to get electrocuted for several seconds at least.
The Goa'uld never seemed to value efficiency. Maybe the third shot massively amplified the effects of the first two, so the zat could be used as a threat or torture device (remember, the writers retconned the zat's effect of inflicting tremendous agony to stun), and they could dispose of anyone who proved stubbornly resistant?
Probably for the same reason floors, trucks, don't go away, when you shoot them. I mean, a bumblebee doesn't fly, it swims through air, but math says it shouldn't, yet it does because at its relative size, air is "thick" enough to allow it to do that. Same with a zat, it works on within a certain size range, and AFAIK, they never plot holed themselves with that. Crates, people, always within a similar volume.
@@aserta Science doesn't say bees can't fly, old incomplete understanding of the world said that, and now we're past that and we do understand. The only reason I can think of why zats wouldn't work on a large scale is that we wouldn't have enough energy to make them work.
Sigh...and that's why the Atlantis Wraith weapons worked better. Those were only ever designed to stun. The Zat's still pretty cool, aesthetics aside haha, but I kinda wished they put more thought into how it could disintegrate stuff. (Yes I know it was done a very long time ago, before all the later seasons came up, to address a narrative issue) Like maybe let it disintegrate stuff but that takes like all the power in the Zat, so it's a one-shot deal. (But I agree. The time between hits to NOT kill someone was never discussed)
I think the point was that after you get stunned and you get back up and go do whatever it is you do after and then you get shot again, are you stunned again or killed?
@@therickman1990 well I would assume one would need to stun in a state of unconsciousness or in their stasis form that way it does it's job or what if it's like a mouse click and you have to double tap quick to activate the breaking down to the molecular level unless it's a triple for the disintegrate effect but then that follows with the question what if you zap someone that's asleep or in stasis cause they disintegrated a couple of inanimate objects just to not leave evidence
In "1969" Teal'c also disables the Minuteman rocket with a zat blast. For a couple seasons it was basically an ion gun, then it became the gun that bad guys shot SG-1 with.
Plus how does it aim? The part that shoots is like six inches above the straight line of your hand and forearm. And no sights. How do you know where the thing is aiming?
..if i recall correctly, Zatniktel need to set into *'erect'* mode first before any *'shoot'* can happen i thought we only stop at Teal'c jokes about curious son asking why his dad have 2 symbiote lol
Zat gun is to mimic the snake. They should have 3 buttons not one button with 3 level intensity 😂 but hey A snake 🐍(umm oops.. I meant Go’uld ) thought of that.. dumb setting. Go figure!!🤪
An explanation for how long between shots, my thought was that the energy dissipates after a short time. So lets say if shot again within 5 seconds is death and within 5 more seconds, vaporized.
yeah im not gonna lie, in the middle of a firefight, you're not going to be keeping track of how many shots are fired especially as it can shoot rapid fire, so micheal shanks has a point there
You could ask the same questions about the Stargate itself, what dictates how long the event horizon stays open? Is it proximity to the gate or the DHD? Some episodes it stayed open for a long time with no-one really near it, other times you could have enemies around the DHD, SG1 would escape and the event horizon closed seconds after they arrived back at the SGC. Lots of things make no sense if analysed yet we go with it anyway as its just TV.
It's rapid succession. If you get hit a second time a day after the first your body is back to normal and it's just a stun. The three shots rule was always stupid though but, beyond that I always figured Zats we're a weapon they would try to replicate but, without the stupid three shots rule.
You would get stunned again the show at least implied by the time you woke up what ever the Zat'nik'tel shot you with dissipated and as far as the third shot disintegrating you it never bothered me because any race capable of faster than light travel could probably figure something like this out.
Also where does it go after it disappear? What if I zat the earth? Will it disappear? Has there been no accidents? How does a zat distinguishes between living-matter and non-living matter?
I like the 1969 reference, When they shot the campfire why didn't it stun the flames? Or in lost city when O'Niell shot the crystals the ship went faster, shouldn't it have been stunned and dropped out of hyperspace?
Fire isn't a human or even an animal, it doesn't have a nervous system to disrupt. You're just adding more energy to the fire. Same logic could be applied to the crystals, depending on how the system was configured.
The ancients built Stargates that toss wormholes between them, and a molecular destabilizer with various settings is shocking? Meh. It's obviously a multipurpose weapon, and the show writers never abused it. They stayed within its initial limits, never nerfed it never oversold it. Stuns, kills, vanishes. There's other faaar far more problematic things in Stargate, the universe than a multitool point and shooter. O'Neill used the power source from a staff weapon to boost a Stargate out of the galaxy < far more incredible.
Usable wormholes are something that could become a reality someday. They've been talking about for a long time and theoretically, do not actually violate the laws of physics. This makes them far more acceptable than a weapon that only stuns people, but then somehow completely vaporizes or disintegrates them. All that matter had to go somewhere... so where did it go? At least in star trek, someone vaporized by a phaser would leave some type of remains on the ground. They should've just encountered less enemies on the ship, and stunned them using the zat gun. Even killed them with it by shooting them twice. Then just dragged the bodies into the many alcoves and recesses they all kept popping in and out of the whole time. Same effect.
O'Neill didn't directly use the staff weapon naquadauh to power the gate in the Fifth Race. He made some sort of generator contraption powered by the liquid vial that then powered the gate. And I think why Shanks focuses on the Zat is simply because he didn't like the prop. But he does have some valid points.
I'm ashamed to say this literally did not occur to me until I saw this clip. Seems like they could have just said there was a switch, or something. Doesn't do much for the penis problem though.
i think the gun knows if you pull it twice on same target, its a much larger shock. perhaps the third is vaporizing once again knowing target has residual voltage discharge from varying shocks that have a definable signature.
Zats keep firing nonstop and seem to have unlimited energy. Assuming say 100 shots, that's like 33 Jaffa you can vaporize. Why wouldn't you pack like 3-4 per SG1 member and only use that. Why the bs P90 and other weapons. Zats were stupid
i remember this. it was whiped out of internet since the original lasts like 2 hours, and shanks ROASTS the show beyond belief. he says it was crap , he hated doing it etc. just like some star trek the next gen stars do, they let loose more than what they should do. they call themselves artists and that they love what they do and the art they do... untill they let loose its a regular job they despise. i hate him since i found out in season 4 was a total diva, that wanted out of the show, making life impossible for everyone in and out of the screen, and even a star trek the next gen actress that was in a singular bad episode, recalls having issues with him up to the point of WALKING OUT OF SET, up to the point if you watch the episode, they read lines out loud but they dont really interact. like shanks (jackson) its "talking" to this actress, looking foward to the camera, then the actress do the same, and actually they just give line after line, not like regular humans but a bad combo of google assistant and alexa exchanging words. quite messy. thats why the episode its bad itself, since shanks the diva was HATEFUL that a bigger real tv star was the show guest star and wanted MORE attention than her. she says when the episode was done she chew his ass, basically say to him "if you hate the job just quit it, but dont try to make us the artists and the show crew to actually kill ourselfs just to scape your hellish diva act" needless to say he left the show in season 5 finale... to come back in the begenning of season 7 with his tail between his legs since nobody hired him, he was for a short time on smallville but was fired because he instantly became diva from hell and he was a nobody there. i think he lasted half of a season.
You seem to have a lot of thoughts about it... So, why don't you considerate making paragraphs, if you want to put a whole essay about bashing someone you dislike, and bringing something else than "i remember someone saying... Diva..."? You hate the guy, based on what, something said by another actor / actress about him? Then, next time you hear something good, you like him again? "i started hating him since season 4"... Dude... I mean, grew up maybe? Go touch some grass? You don't even know the guy. You just read things, hear things... And so what, you have no context at all. If Shanks was such a despicable person as you seem to think, the whole cast wouldn't have been in good terms, and they would have told similar things. Not getting along with someone, it's common thing, in any situation. He wanted to leave the show, to try things, doesn't worked, so what? He was part of it for 5 years, he did his job, and he didn't quitted out of nowhere, didn't he? Then he came back, and so what, do you think, if he was such a diva as you said, they would have hired him again? Everyone welcomed him back, even Nemek. You hate the guy, but at least, put some facts in your statements.
@@mang4260 funny your took the time to do nice editing to your reply. maybe a bit of a control freak? i hate shanks cause in many conventions where he was recorded in secret he cannot hold down that "he hates the show it was all crap and stupid" nobody asks he must be a fan but go to the extent of "it was just a job nothing else" for an artist is like compare his work to be a whore. even the cast of smallville hated him. they called a diva as well. at the end of the half season he lasted he was shooting his scenes alone only with the main actor. keep in mind the smallville cast threats them as family. the main actor was driving himself on and off location every day after 12 hours of shooting and once slept at the wheel and almost off himself. the WHOLE cast whent to the producers and decided they wanted an equal % took off their paychecks so they pay for him a personal driver for him and that lasted the whole 10 seasons. so no they where not horrible people. "he worked for 5 years" because he was under contract not because he was a lovely guy. he could not just walk out without loosing his career and a chunk of money plus a lawsuit. wanna know why i hate shanks? sypnosis incoming: - hates the show and cannot stop barfing hate about the show. - more than one invited gust star to the show almost walk out mid shooting because they could not take the diva act enforced upon themselves the rest of the cast or staff of the show. - left the show failed horribly and took corin nemek place witch i did liked more and felt more in line with original daniel jackson from the movie. - even the actress that does vala hates him, she has admitted that she hated to do romantic scenes with him since he has poor personal hygiene and after hours of shooting he stinks. so its not only a diva act the guy wont wear deodorant or whatever it is. - he even once admitted he had the fantasy early on the show that the producers would replace him with james spader "so he would be free" since what he hated the most, was to act as a nerd when he wanted to play a dumb butch military. thats why on season 8 to 10 we see daniel jackson firing weapons instead of carry books and do clever deductions.
Zat are too OP... I mean, any Tok'Ra could vaporize any Goa'Uld lord in three shots, trough infiltration, without proves of anything behind. Or you just vaporize a whole army by constantly shooting from an advantage point. The delay between shoots seems to be aleatory too. But for sure, the third shot, that was dumb.
There is a clip that i saw awhile ago with Marina Sirtis (Counselor Deanna Troi, from Star Trek: TNG), talking about doing a guest spot on the show SG and tells a sweet story about Richard Dean Anderson and also how "Fun" it was to work with Michael Shanks.
They could've fixed this stupidity by giving it three settings instead of the three-shot thing. Setting one stuns, setting two kills, setting three disintegrates. Like a weirdly shaped phaser.
T had no issues about wielding the genital weapon.... Now, play all the scenes of T zapping people with a Zat in your head, add YMCA as a soundtrack, equals entertaining as hell.
