The Goa'uld

The Goa'uld are the great threat of the saga's early years, and its founding enemy. This race of parasites, resembling small snakes, wraps itself around a host's spinal column to take absolute control. Once in place, they proclaim themselves gods and enslave entire worlds.

Having come to Earth, where they once plundered human mythologies to forge their masks, the Goa'uld spread across the galaxy through the Stargate. Everywhere, the same pattern repeats: abduct populations, present themselves as their creators, and demand unconditional worship.

Their rule rests on two pillars. On one side, the Jaffa, the warriors who carry their symbiotes and serve them with blind faith. On the other, fear, kept alive by stolen technology they barely understand, but which is enough to pass for magic in the eyes of the subjugated peoples. At the very top, the System Lords fight over the galaxy in endless wars.

Their fall will be long, but inevitable. The Jaffa rebellion, the tenacity of Earth and the Tok'ra, and the constant betrayals that eat away at them from within ultimately bring down the empire of the false gods, one System Lord after another.

The idea at the heart of the Goa'uld is one of the cleverest in science fiction. What if the gods of antiquity had never been gods at all? What if, behind Ra, Apophis or the pyramids, there were really visitors from elsewhere? Stargate takes that old hypothesis, the ancient astronaut theory, and runs with it all the way: the Egyptian, Greek, Mesopotamian and Mayan deities all become masks worn by a single race of impostors. The entire saga flows from there, from this dizzying answer to a question humanity has always asked itself.