West

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Maj. Gen. W. O. West

Summary

Maj. Gen. W. O. West was the Air Force officer in charge of the base where Catherine Langford's team investigated the device her father discovered in Giza, Egypt, in 1928. This device was later to be determined to be the Stargate. (Stargate: The Movie)

Character Biography

USAF Maj. Gen. West was a no-nonsense military man who took his assignment at the Cheyenne Mountain Complex quite seriously. He had access to the three major finds from Professor Langford's archaeological dig: the coverstone, the Stargate itself (then called "Doorway to Heaven"), and a flattened slab of the fused armor of some other-worldly soldiers. He watched as Langford's team built a computer dialing system and tried to decipher mysterious hieroglyphs on the coverstone. It took approximately fifteen years for Langford's team to produce a dialing computer that interfaced heavily with the device, even though they had no idea what the device's true function was. (Stargate: The Movie, 1.01 "Children of the Gods Part 1")

That all changed when Langford brought in the young archaeologist Dr. Daniel Jackson, who had caught Catherine's attention because of his unconventional thinking concerning the time period that the Great Pyramid was built. He claimed that the writing forms found within the Pyramid spoke to its having been built much earlier than the Egyptologists currently accepted. After Jackson immediately corrected the coverstone's translation, West saw that the team was getting closer to making the device work, so he sent for Col. Jack O'Neill. West knew that O'Neill was suicidal after the tragic accidental death of his only child, so the colonel was recalled with the idea that if the team actually determined what the threat was, O'Neill would be there to see the threat eliminated ... no matter what the cost. (Stargate: The Movie)

West called in several interested officers from the Pentagon when Jackson announced that he had figured out in two weeks what Catherine's team still hadn't after two years of study. Embarrassed by his achievement, Daniel continued with his presentation as West looked somberly on. After Daniel's presentation on the seven-symbol Stargate address, West gave his permission for Jackson to see the actual device. Daniel found the Point of Origin symbol, and the team dialed the Stargate and made a connection for their first time. (Stargate: The Movie)

West sent a MALP through the Stargate to see what was on the other side. After Jackson recognized that the symbols on the Abydos Stargate were different from the ones that were on the Giza Stargate, West almost called the whole mission of the study off because he knew that they'd have very little chance of returning, but Daniel convinced him that he could decipher the address. West immediately assigned Daniel to O'Neill's reconnaissance team. He gave O'Neill secret orders to destroy the Stargate on the other side with a nuclear bomb if any threat was determined from there. O'Neill was to stay with the bomb to make sure it eliminated its target; he readily accepted that he would die in the explosion. (Stargate: The Movie, 7.01 "Fallen Part 1")

Three of West's men returned from Abydos after their encounter with Ra: O'Neill, Maj. Charles Kawalsky, and Maj. Louis Ferretti. The three men's reports led their superiors to believe that the Abydos Stargate was destroyed with the bomb and that Daniel Jackson was dead. In reality, they weren't "quite accurate" so that the Abydonians and Daniel could live in peace after Daniel buried the Abydos Stargate. (Stargate: The Movie, 1.01 "Children of the Gods Part 1")

After the new project's team failed to make a connection with Abydos and other randomly-dialed addresses, the Stargate Program's mission was changed to investigate other uses of the device. Captain Samantha Carter, a doctor of Theoretical Astrophysics, began to work on the possibility of using the device to create wormholes through which one could travel through time. West also moved out of the base, most likely back to the Pentagon, where he managed the Program from there, but he still had personnel assigned to the base to watch over the alien technology. He appointed Maj. Gen. George Hammond in command of the base, knowing that the seasoned officer was close to his retirement and feeling that the assignment to watch the base was a nice, quiet one. (1.01 "Children of the Gods Part 1", 2.21 "1969")

A year after the Abydos mission, the Stargate was used by Apophis to invade the base and kidnap possible new hosts for his queen Amaunet and his son Klorel. Several guards were killed, and West ordered that O'Neill be brought back to the base to explain how this invasion was possible, because, at the time, they thought that the Stargate could only go to one place and that that place had been eliminated by the bomb. Hammond sent O'Neill and his new team back through the Stargate once it connected with the Abydos Stargate, which Daniel had unburied in his investigation of the cartouche room he found on the planet. Daniel informed O'Neill that the Stargate actually went to several places, and after explaining to Carter that her dialing computer system needed to compensate for stellar drift, the Stargate Program was turned on once more with General Hammond in full command of the Program and the base, answering directly to the Joint Chiefs and the President of the United States. (1.01 "Children of the Gods Part 1", 1.02 "Children of the Gods Part 2")

West's role in the new Stargate Program, if any, was never addressed after the Stargate Program was activated "to perform reconnaissance, determine threats, and if possible, to make peaceful contact with the peoples of these worlds." (1.02 "Children of the Gods Part 2")

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--DeeKayP 10:28, 28 April 2008 (PDT)

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