Writer and Co-Executive producer Joseph Mallozzi disclosed to fans on the Japanese Bboard to which he sometimes posts that “New Order”, the two-parter season 8 opener, will deal with the Japanese sun goddess Amaterasu. The Japanese founding myths are collected in a volume known as the Kojiki (Record of Ancient Matters, 712). The stories tell of the formation of the Japanese islands and the founding of human society. One of the most important stories in this set of tales is the story of the Sun Goddess who is still the most important deity in Japan and the ancestor of the Imperial family. Her grandson was dispatched to pacify Japan and his great-grandson became the first emperor, Jimmu, one of the numerous mythological emperors. The centre of worship for Amaterasu Omikami is Ise Shrine, the main shrine of the imperial family. Amaterasu Omikami has been worshipped by successive Emperors as the ancestral kami of the Imperial Family and the tutelary deity of the Japanese people.
You can find more information on this goddess at
http://www.uwec.edu/philrel/shimbutsudo/amaterasu.html
http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~dheb/Tirane/Am/amaterasu.htm
http://cla.calpoly.edu/~bmori/syll/351EAWomen/Amaterasu.html
http://ias.berkeley.edu/orias/hero/yamato/characters_yamato.html
At the Creation Convention this weekend in Pasadena, actor Michael Shanks was asked if there would be more Jack/Daniel banter moments and replied that the opening of Season 8 was heavy on it and very funny.
In the UK scifi magazine Dreamwatch, writers Joseph Mallozzi and Paul Mullie reveal the following tidbits: O’Neill is thawed out but still retains the knowledge of the Ancients, the Asgard are contacted for help but are in the middle of some kind of problem of their own [when are they not?] and while Jack is promoted to General, Carter is promoted to Lt. Colonel.
GATEWORLD reports:
The first details on the 2-hour season premiere of Stargate SG-1 have arrived! “New Order” will see the return of deadly enemies from SG-1’s past, and will set the stage for sending the show in some new directions in the year to come.
“Baal has stepped into Anubis’ power vacuum, taking over his powerbase of super-soldiers,” co-executive producer Joseph Mallozzi told GateWorld. “He’s kicking butt, and the System Lords are reeling and they go to us for help, because we have a common enemy. We’ll see Yu and we’ll see a couple of new System Lords: Camulus and Amaterasu. Yu has fallen on hard times, and his First Prime does a lot of the speaking for him.
“So these three representatives come to convince us to help them take down Baal. But, of course, we have problems of our own — the biggest being that we can’t use the weapon. We’ve used up all the energy (or most of it), and O’Neill is the only one who can use it.”
“The System Lords noticed that we wiped out Anubis’ fleet in five minutes or less,” co-executive producer Paul Mullie said, “and the other System Lords are interested in how we managed to do that. That’s one issue that has to be dealt with.” But the arrival of the System Lords and the threat of Baal is just one side of the story.
SG-1 goes in search of their long-absent allies, the Asgard, in the hope that they can save Colonel O’Neill’s life from the knowledge of the Ancients that has taken over his mind (“Lost City”). What they discover is that the highly-evolved Replicators — left in a time-dilation prison in Season Six’s “Unnatural Selection” — have escaped. And the Asgard are about to launch yet another plan to try and stop them.
Patrick Currie guest stars in the episode as the Replicator “Fifth,” who took a liking to Major Carter in “Unnatural Selection,” only to be betrayed by her. Actress Amanda Tapping (“Samantha Carter”) endured gruelling torture scenes for this episode.
“Fifth realized we had betrayed him, and he was literally reaching for that device when they got ‘frozen’ — or just really slowed down — in time,” Mullie said. “And the Asgard figured out that it was only going to take them, in real time, a couple of years to reach that device and turn it off. For O’Neill’s sake we go seek out the Asgard, and we happen along just when their new plan for dealing with the Replicators is about to fail miserably.”
The premiere will also see Jack O’Neill replace Dr. Elizabeth Weir as commander of the S.G.C. O’Neill will be promoted to the rank of brigadier general, leaving Carter in command of the SG-1 field unit.
http://www.gateworld.net/news/episodeupdate.html