After visiting a couple dozen worlds, O’Neill has come to the conclusion that there are two kinds of alien planets connected by the Stargates: desert worlds, and the ones with trees. On the whole, even though they provide more places for the enemy to hide, he prefers the trees. Temperatures are more comfortable, there’s shelter from the weather, and trees just look nicer. When you’ve seen one sand dune, you’ve seen ‘em all.

Daniel, of course, looks at everything differently. For him, the worlds they visit are divided into the ones that have interesting ruins he can poke around in, or at least an existing culture to explore, and the ones without either. Scenery is of lesser importance; as long as it doesn’t get in the way of Daniel’s poking about, he doesn’t pay it much attention. Unless there are flowers triggering his allergies, in which case he’ll glare at them between sneezes.

Once in a while they might stumble across a river, a lake, or on a couple of occasions, an ocean, but mostly it’s either sand, or trees, sometimes hills and valleys, very little you wouldn’t find someplace on earth. Alien planets, and alien people for that matter, aren’t all that alien. Even the Goa’uld, if you ignore the glowing eyes, are pretty much human. Okay, so that’s the host bodies and not the snakes themselves, but still, you could pass one on the street and not notice anything strange about them.

Part of Jack O’Neill wants to feel cheated, because when you travel to the other end of the galaxy there should be something alien to look at, extra suns or moons, weird plants, strange landscapes, futuristic buildings… But at the same time, there’s something comfortingly familiar about the scenery. Wherever they go usually looks like home.


The End