Stromos
Summary
The Stromos was one of three ships built by the People of Talthus to escape the impending destruction of their planet. It crash landed on P2A-347, where SG-1 later found it in 7.06 “Lifeboat”.
Stargate References
The Stromos was one of three star ships built by the People of Talthus after they discovered that their world would be destroyed by a solar flare. Each ship could hold over one thousand passengers. A lottery determined who would get a place onboard, though there was conjecture that the lottery was rigged. Each officer was allowed to bring one family member with them. Officer Pharrin of the Stromos took his young son Keenin.
The crew ensured its passengers were secure in their compartments and manually accelerated the ship so it would be beyond the reach of the flare before transferring control of the ship to the computer and entering cryosleep themselves. The Stromos and two other vessels left the Talthus system to travel hundreds of years to a new home, Ardena.
For unknown reasons, while on automatic pilot, the Stromos crash landed on P2A-237. The computer revived Officer Pharrin. However, the ship was somehow damaged during the crash, and the resulting power drain killed the twelve other passengers in Pharrin’s compartment. Desperate to salvage something of these last survivors of Talthus, Pharrin engineered a way past the various failsafes and downloaded the consciousness of those passengers into his own mind.
Pharrin sent out a distress signal from the Stromos to the other two ships. Somehow the ship's food and water stores were also affected from the crash, and there was not enough to sustain more than one person. Power was reaching critical levels by the time SG-1 arrived. Their MALP detected the ship’s distress signal.
In desperation, Pharrin knocked SG-1 unconscious. Since all team members, though in separate compartments, seemed to be affected simultaneously, it is likely Pharrin used a shipwide defense mechanism to stun them. The effects were similar to an electrical charge, like a very strong zat blast. Pharrin downloaded the consciousness of twelve other cryo-sleepers into Dr. Jackson’s mind, including his son Keenin, Engineer Tryan, and the Sovereign Martice. Teal’c awoke and rescued the team before Pharrin could repeat the process with anyone else. Pharrin presumably rerouted power from the dead compartments to the rest of the ship.
Even so, ship’s power was almost depleted. When Major Samantha Carter and Teal’c returned with SG-12, readings indicated there was not enough power to revive anyone, and all the passengers would soon die without another power source. Sam and Teal'c discovered Pharrin, who explained the situation to them. Major Carter and Teal’c offered to use the naquadah generator to restore the Stromos energy reserves and perhaps even save the passengers and crew if Pharrin would return Daniel to his former state.
After a trip to the SGC, Pharrin and SG-1 returned to the Stromos with Dr. Fraiser. Pharrin used the ship’s cryosleep technology to transfer the twelve souls from Dr. Jackson’s mind to his own. Major Carter restored full power to the ship. As far as is known, SG-4 revived the other passengers of the Stromos and helped them find Ardena or another world for their new home. The final fate of the ship itself is unknown.
The Cryosleep Chambers
The Talthus people had not mastered faster-than-light travel, but used a different technology to travel between star systems. They put themselves in a type of stasis, called cryosleep. This way the passengers and crew could survive the centuries long journey. The ship would automatically transport them to their destination, where they would awake from the cryosleep.
Engineer Tryan explained the cryosleep process to Dr. Janet Fraiser in great detail. According to him, each cryogenic capsule contained an active matrix memory module sufficient to sustain one single mind. A cryo-sleeper's consciousness was stored in the same memory module that maintained the sleeper's body as one of the failsafes to prevent the accidental transfer of a consciousness to another’ body. The capsule’s systems were connected with those that regulate and sustain the corresponding sleeper's body. Aside from the obvious safety issues of ensuring personalities did not mix, the memory requirements were so large that each module could only store one consciousness.
The reason they separated the consciousness from the body was to prevent brain damage. Without this protection, a sleeper would have significant loss of memory and intellect after going through the restoration process. Anyone undertaking such a long journey without proper storage of their consciousness would arrive as a mere fraction of themselves. As Tryan pointed out: “the very essence of that person would be lost.”
Various failsafes, including single modules for each sleeper, were built into the system to ensure that an individual’s consciousness would not be able to be returned to any other body but his or her own. The only way to bypass the failsafes would be if the sleeper’s body was dead. After that, the system could be purged. Obviously Pharrin figured out a way to transfer several dead sleepers’ personalities to one mind.
Episode Listed
Related Characters
- Col. Jack O'Neill
- Dr. Daniel Jackson
- Maj. Samantha Carter
- Teal'c
- Dr. Janet Fraiser
- Keenin
- Martice
- Pharrin
- Tryan
Related Articles
- Ardena
- Mobile Analytic Laboratory Probe (MALP)
- P2A-347
- People of Talthus
- SG-1
- SG-4
- SG-12
- Stargate Command (SGC)
- Stasis Technology
- Talthus
--Aurora 10:00, 11 December 2005 (PST)