Stargate Universe/WMG

Destiny's ultimate destination is Gallifrey.
Hey, at least it's not the usual "(insert character here) is a Time Lord" WMG.

Destiny is a Time Lord.
^ He was asking for it.
 * Remember that many incarnations of The Doctor sound like they come from the north, or even Scotland. And Dr. Rush...
 * Not only is Rush a Time Lord, he has amnesia...or is very bad at being a Time Lord.

The Message encoded into the background radiation pattern from the Big Bang is...

 * "Let there be light."
 * "Say please."
 * "A one, a two, a one, two, three, four..."
 * "Hello Sweetie!!..."
 * "We apologise for the inconvenience."
 * "What are you dong here?"
 * "42."
 * "Geronimo!"
 * A message from the alternate Rush created in "Twin Destinies". At the end of the episode, he was sent millions of years back in time, where he discovered what Destiny's mission really was. He then created a Stable Time Loop by sending his past/future self a message to ensure that Destiny completed its true mission.
 * Eli's iPhone after accidental time travel.
 * The "SGU" logo we see at the beginning of every episode, duh!
 * "Doctor Who? Doctor Who? DOCTOR WHO?"

Dr. Rush is a Goa'uld.
Dr. Rush is not at all what he appears to be. This is the evidence:
 * 1) Remember his reaction to Eli being brought into the project? Not only did he seem jealous that someone else could solve what he could not (that in itself is normal to humankind), but he also, upon discovering that the solution (based on both Eli's and his work) was incorrect, immediately assumed that Eli's work was at fault. He didn't even consider the possibility that he was the one to make a mistake; good scientists don't take that attitude. It's as if he believes himself incapable of making mistakes.
 * 2) When the mysterious assailants show up and attack the base, he forces everyone to evacuate to the unknown destination (which, as we all know, was later revealed to be the Destiny) instead of returning to Earth. He used the flimsiest excuse possible for this, one that doesn't even hold up: if the explosion could follow them through the Stargate to Earth, then what's to keep it from following them to this unknown destination? One could argue that he figured he would save Earth even if it meant forfeiting the lives of everyone on the base; but if that were the case, then he would have dialed one of the uninhabited planets in the Milky Way instead of a destination that couldn't be accessed from any other known Stargate in the galaxy.
 * On the other hand, is it possible that successfully dialing the 9-chevron address requires so much power that the energy of the explosion would have been absorbed in the process, and would therefore be unable to follow them to the Destiny, whereas simply dialing a 7-chevron address wouldn't have absorbed this extra power, resulting in a big "Kaboom" on any planet of this galaxy they could have reached? Having figured that out, Rush took the option that had the best probability of saving everyone's life (and most importantly his own).
 * 1) The timing of the Ha'tak-class vessels was convenient: it's as if they arrived in response to Rush's belief that he would be able to dial the gate so that, if he was successful, the attack would force everyone to go to the unknown destination according to Rush's plan.

Who's to say that Ba'al didn't make more clones of himself just before the events of Continuum? Or that the Trust doesn't have some other member who has previously remained unknown? Or that there's some new Goa'uld who's been hiding out for a long time, but recently came out of hiding after learning about the base and the nine-chevron address? Either way, based on the evidence, it must be faced: Dr. Rush is a Goa'uld!
 * Uh...all this says is, he's got an ego. It's a trait of the Goa'uld, sure, but that's still a bit of a stretch.
 * And SG personnel are probably screened on a regular basis for this sort of thing.
 * Until "Air (part 3)", it looked like Rush was behind the attack. His characterization in parts 1 and 2 made him come across as evil. Not as much now.
 * Rush wanted to dial the 9th Chevron - this seems to have been one of his defining motivations for everything. As long as Icarus base was intact, he had an unlimited amount of time to do that. Once the attack happened, he nearly lost his chance. This makes it seem highly improbable that he was behind the attack: he would likely have lost his only opportunity to unlock the ninth chevron.
 * Also, as pointed out in the Just Bugs Me page, Rush and the entire SGC were probably used to the last chevron being the point of origin. The idea that they could use a bogus chevron, something so fundamental about how the Gates work, may have simply never occurred to him or anyone else. Eli, as someone with fresh eyes, was not prone to this momentum of fact.
 * This is impossible anyway because Carter and O'Neill are former Tok'Ra hosts, and thus have naquadah in their blood, allowing them to detect Goa'uld.
 * Actually, all of the above can be circumvented, due to Goa'uld Genetic Memory and the Stargate Verse's love of Lego Genetics. Khalek and Anna were both humans who were successfully cultivated with Goa'uld genetic memory, and the Harcesis possibility is still out there. A human implanted with Goa'uld genetic memory could fly under the radar of both MRIs and naquadah-sensitive individuals.
 * Also, probably Jossed by Rush's taking his name out of the escape lottery. He might have known that, but couldn't be sure, and Goa'uld don't do self-sacrifice.
 * But what if its all part of his plan?
 * Um, yes they do. Several have been shown willing to sacrifice themselves for others.
 * Tok'ra have willingly sacrificed themselves for others. Your average Goa'uld, not so much.
 * Dr. Rush isn't a Go'a'uld. He's something much more dangerous. He's Dr. Rush.
 * Exactly. Is Dr. Rush a bumbling, incompetent idiot? Nope. Not a Goauld.

The Destiny's purpose is not exploration or expansion, but flight.
Notice that the ship's first stop is the Pegasus Galaxy, which is where the Ancients did flee in Canon. Then notice how it travels at least as far again to its next destination. If they were trying to explore or expand, then its first stop would have been the Milky Way's satellite galaxies. Instead, it stops in a satellite of Andromeda and then skips Andromeda entirely, even though it's larger than the Milky Way.

The only way this makes any sense is if the Ancients sent the Destiny and the other ships to create a route across the universe to flee the Ori. Using satellite galaxies would make it harder for them to find the Ancients, as they would have to search more than the main galaxy.

This explains why the Ancients ran to Pegasus when the plague hit. They knew the Ori had found them, and so they used Pegasus as a hideout. Unfortunately, they didn't expect a threat from within the galaxy; when the Wraith won the war, they were unable to contact the Destiny from Atlantis, forcing them to return to Earth. Even more unfortunate, this happened about the same time Ra took over.

Note, however, that the Destiny visited a number of galaxies between Pegasus and wherever they are now. Also, we know the Ancients that didn't Ascend or stay on Earth left, but we're never told where they went. It's possible that they were able to activate the ninth chevron and flee to whatever galaxy the Destiny happened to be in at the time.

There is another reason why the Destiny would only visit any given galaxy once. It's really only getting that first Stargate up and running in any given galaxy that's a problem. Once you are able to gate in resources at will, it's much easier to continue exploration of a galaxy from that homebase by building new ships and what not.


 * The later episodes shed some light on Destiny's true purpose. Its primary mission is to explore "the length and breadth of the universe" to analyze some sort of signal hidden in the Cosmic Microwave Background.

The ship isn't/wasn't empty.
At the end of "Air (Part 3)", we see one of the shuttles take off (or another ship entirely, can't be sure). Someone was on the ship in hibernation waiting for someone to come along and fix it. Once the group gets the ship in stable condition, this unknown person(s) is going to come back looking to take the ship.
 * That was another ship entirely. It shape was different from either of the shuttles shown, and from the design of the Destiny herself.
 * Thank you for clarifying that. But whoever is flying that ship will be coming back once Destiny is up and running.
 * Well, they came back at least, but earlier than expected.

The ninth chevron was designed to be a location-independent gate address system.
The Destiny is very much a moving target, not even staying in the same galaxy, and the successful dial used an invalid point of origin; clearly, the gate must have obtained the target location some other way.

The system was never widely used by the Ancients, perhaps for being a complicated and not appreciably useful technology.
 * Alternatively, the system was widely used by ancients, but no one else knows it and so the more basic system took over. This might explain why earth has so many stargates, despite only one gate working at a given time. If you know the specific nine-digit address, you can always dial one specific gate, regardless of where it is or how many are on the planet.

Every gate manufactured ever is assigned an nine-digit, base-36 code by the Stargate Network.
Base 36 because 36 is the lowest number of glyphs on a gate so far.

The ninth chevron triggers an override, switching from "dial these spatial coordinates and connect to the optimal gate" to "dial the Stargate with this code regardless of anything and everything else." Since we have established that the Stargate can accept an invalid/incorrect point of origin, it is not a stretch that the Stargate can ALSO accept 'bogus' addresses such as ones with the point of origin as any chevron but the final chevron, or addresses with the same glyph used multiple times. This means that there are a maximum of 36^9 (101,559,956,668,416) possible Stargates in the network, which is more than enough to cover every planet - habitable or otherwise - in the known universe several times over.
 * I doubt that that's every planet in the known universe. A lower estimate of 10^22 stars in the known universe means this only works if only 1 in 10^8 stars has a habitable planet. But this would mean that there'd only be enough room for 2,000 gates in the Milky Way. While that's not unreasonable, it sure does leave a lot of empty space with no gates.
 * Actually makes quite a lot of sense, since apparently Destiny was in the Milky Way at the time the show started. It would only have needed a 7 Chevron Address. Whereas, if it were in another Galaxy, it would only have needed an 8 Chevron address, like every other gate in another galaxy we've ever seen.
 * A) The Destiny was not in the Milky Way at the time the show started: it was launched from Earth some hundreds of thousands or millions of years ago and traveled out several billion light-years before the current crew reached it. B) The Destiny is over a billion light-years away. Every galaxy that we have seen reached using the eighth-chevron has been within a few million light-years; it is almost certain that the Destiny is too far away to be reached via an eight-chevron address, even if each eight-chevron address were an entire galaxy.

The Destiny's address changes periodically.
First, they got the address out of a computer database; this means that the address could have been updated as the ship moved from location to location. This update could have been performed by an algorithm in the database calculating the ship's location or by the Destiny regularly relaying its position back over some sort of link.

Second, at the ranges involved, there aren't enough nine-chevron addresses to have each correspond to a single seven-chevron address. This means that, if the nine-chevron address does represent a region of space, then it would have to be a large region of space - a significant portion of a large galaxy, if not the whole galaxy or even multiple galaxies. It is thus quite possible that the Destiny could explore for a long time (years, centuries, or even millennia, depending on how fast it is) without changing the nine-chevron address needed to access it from the Milky Way.

As for using Earth's Point of Origin instead of the planet that they were on -- one possibility is that the Point of Origin is not just the Earth's, but also the Milky Way's, which is what matters at the distances involved.


 * Another thought might be that to dial Destiny which is (mostly) a constantly moving target in a mostly unpredictable way, the gate network basically syncs up as a gestalt to find where it is similar to GPS satellites. You would have the Milky Way and the Pegasus galaxies acting as two giant points in space. These then would locate Destiny's bread crumb trail (acting as a third roughly estimated point in space) of activated gates and use that to call Destiny and let it know it stop for an incoming connection.

Dr. Rush will devolve into a Knight Templar.
He's already becoming madder as the series progresses, and the main page says that he's super-obsessed with getting that ninth chevron issue over with.

Furlings are behind most of the mysteries.
Just like there are the rogue Asgard lot that are surviving as the last members of their race so are there surving members of the Furlings. As such they were behind the little sand tornado, they were the ones on the ship that detached from Destiny, and probably behind a lot more. You know its true.
 * Better yet, they are the sand tornadoes. Which is why the ones that we've seen have been helpful and non-aggressive, they recognize the humans for what they are, descendants of the Ancients.
 * What if the Furlings are those blue catfish-like aliens that kidnapped Rush and Chloe? They knew the Ancients disappeared, so they're trying to get on the Destiny to try and preserve what they can of their comrades' culture. They don't recognize Humans as being descendants of Ancients, so they treat them as random galactic scavangers.
 * Ancients look exactly like humans. Wouldn't the Furlings see humans and think we're Ancients until we open our mouths? For that matter, they read Rush's mind. They know potentially everything he knows, and so they know our relationship to the Ancients.
 * Maybe the Furlings were wronged by the Ancients somehow and therefore are bitter towards any aliens that were good terms with them. I mean, it's not unreasonable to assume that the Ancients messed up with them too. They did create (intentionally or not) most problems that the show has dealt with. A few thousand years or so of abandonment will do things to people.
 * Or that weird gas cloud is the ascended Furlings, and they made the planet to be nice, just like that paradise moon the Go'uld sabotaged with hallucinogenic plants.

The planet where they almost settled in "Light" suffered a recent ecological catastrophe.
Spectrographic analysis indicated Nitrogen, Oxygen, liquid water, and only trace amounts of Carbon Dioxide. Not only does that last one indicate a lack of plant life, as mentioned, it also indicates a lack of animal life necessary to produce CO2. The fact that there's still oxygen in the atmosphere indicates that whatever caused the plant life to die off happened fairly recently, as oxygen tends to oxidize out of an atmosphere without plants to produce it (it's hypothesized that's what happened on Mars, producing the iron oxide which gives it its distinct red color.) It's probably a good thing they didn't end up settling there.
 * Just as possibly it's a very young planet and life is just beginning to get a toehold there.
 * Doesn't really fly; as said above, you just can't keep free oxygen in an atmosphere; you need some process that releases the oxygen from the oxides it inevitably forms. That means life. On the other hand, you could presumably have a soil rich in carbon compounds that provided a plant with everything it needed (aside from light) for photosynthesis; said plant could also sequester excess carbon dioxide produced during respiration to keep the CO 2 available for photosynthesis.

The ship is sentient.
Apparently, it doesn't want to kill the people on board. Destiny's computer has far more control over the ship than Atlantis', and while the ship was originally designed to be manned, it was sent on an extremely long mission. On this mission, it might have to (and probably, had to) face with unpredictable situations requiring intelligence and even creativity. The Ancients probably over-proofed the mission as much as they could. Also, the possibility of a "digitally ascended" captain shouldn't be ruled out.
 * As a corollary to this, the reason why Rush can't access the systems is because after a few million years, the ship is bored and thus purposefully blocking his attempts for its own amusement. It's not going to harm the crew, but that's no reason not to have a little fun at their expense.
 * I don't really see the show using Instant AI, Just Add Water by making an AI 'quirky'. Though it would be a possibility to have some sort of AI. That said though I could see it being an interesting twist in that the AI is just as Insufferable as Rush - it's not letting him do things because it believes it knows better.
 * Well, Rush went into a little more detail in "Earth". Seems they're just lacking a master code to unlock the main systems. If the ship does have an advanced AI behind the scenes, it's probably not actively messing with them yet.
 * This theory is given a boost by "Time"--what are the odds of them winding up near a planet with antibiotic-biting snakes if the ship hasn't recognized that they need them? Note that the cast didn't figure out they needed any kind of antibiotics until after the jump, so the ship must have somehow realized this on its own...
 * This doesn't necessarily mean intelligence. It could be sapient enough to figure things out without possessing any real sentience. A simplified example would be Google's search stuff; it's not capable of holding a conversation but it has just enough intelligence to know that typing 'tv torpes' really means 'tv tropes'.
 * In "Pathogen", Rush says to Franklin (paraphrased) "If you're the ship, why aren't you helping".
 * Given some credence in "Trial and Error". The ship, while not alive, is able to affect the dreams of the crew to test them. It starts messing with Young's head, apparently judging his ability to lead. So, the ship isn't exactly sentient, but its AI is good enough to tell that something needs to be done and will do it if necessary.
 * In short, the ship, while not sentient, is sapient.
 * The "Destiny has a sentinent AI" concept is hilariously parodied in at least one fanfic. Where the ship does, indeed, have a sentinent AI...which is female...and lesbian. Lt. James is not amused.

The 'bugs' are actually proto-replicators.
Well, they certainly replicate as fast as them, and the original idea had to come from somewhere.
 * Except for the fact that we already know exactly where the replicators come from. A scared, lonely robot girl who wiped out all life on her home planet.
 * Except that they're also in Pegasus. There's no reason for them not to be in Stargate: Universe too.
 * Those were different Replicators invented by the Ancients. There's no one out here (that we know of) to create yet another version of the bugs.

The 'bugs' are the reason why the desert planet has no water.
They're not native to it, and we've already seen they replicate with water. They drained the planet.
 * In that case, if there's any justice, they fell victim to the parasite from "Time".

All the random firing in "Earth" to drain the power reserves will come back to bite the Destiny's crew in the ass.
How much you want to bet one or more of those random potshots might hit someone, who'll somehow track down the Destiny and find out just why they tried to pop a cap in their ass?
 * Unlikely. Energy weapons would have a finite range, and anything close enough to get hit would have been visible to them.
 * True, the range would be finite. It could, however, be far greater than visual range, or even sensor range on the Destiny. We have little idea what the ship is firing, it looked to be some standard sci-fi plasma energy weapons, but we don't know what it is. If it were highly coherent or capable of self-stabilization then it's range could be far longer than LOS. We can't really make any assumptions about the capability of a weapon system we know so little about.
 * Fair enough. Space is pretty big, though. The odds of dropping out of FTL at random and hitting anything are pretty low.
 * To boot, given the low odds of hitting anything and the fast transit speed of Destiny, even if something did get hit, by the time they (whoever got hit) go to the firing point, Destiny would be long gone with perhaps only a little evidence as to where.

At the end of the series, Eli will ascend.
As revealed in "Time", Eli reveals his slight fear of death, after which Rush explained ascension in detail. Eli seemed very intrigued by this prospect, which leads me to believe that at the end of series, he will ascend, just for the sake of a  Tear Jerker ending.
 * For what it's worth,
 * Actually, a webisode shows that the current timeline has both Kinos, so Eli would know about Ascension.
 * Even more, Rush tells him about Ascension while still on the Icarus Planet, and it's discussed in one of the "Stargate 101" videos he watched on the Hammond. Though he probably wasn't paying much attention at that point.

We'll see an alternate version of Dr. Rush sometime in the future.
As established in "1969," the Stargate SG-1 episode that established time-travel by wormholes interacting with solar flares, entering the gate a few seconds early or late can change the destination by decades. It's entirely possible Rush got sent to a different time during his impetuous attempt to travel through the malfunctioning gate.
 * Except for the fact we see his dead body arrive in the same time period as the old kino, and then find his remains later.
 * Rush was sick, but not at death's door when he went through the Stargate, but from the position and location of his body, it looks like he emerged from the gate, hit the ground, and died on the spot. This might point to him taking some sort of detour between the leaving the planet and the Kino finding his body.
 * He wasn't at Death's Door, no. But remember how everyone else affected first showed signs? Oh, right, collapsing right where they were without warning. And then they stayed collapsed for several hours before finally actually dying. He may not have died right then and there, he probably jumped through, took a couple steps, then fell over from the disease.

Alternatively, the way he jumped, he slipped and broke his neck on the way through. Or he popped through during the night and those bug things got him.
 * Or maybe the (old model) gate couldn't properly handle a solar flare, and there was some sort of other malfunction that caused him to drop dead after walking through. They did say it looked like the gate was overloaded and malfunctioning before realising it was a solar flare, after allâ€¦
 * Maybe an alternate Dr. Rush will be a Mr. Francis Begbie, who'll be piss-drunk and try to stab the first person he sees.

Scott is a Highlander.
How many times has he almost died now, even before the end of season 1? He almost died on the desert planet but survived despite a lack of water. He almost died on the ice planet when he got stuck in that crevass. He appears to have died in an Alternate History on the jungle planet, but we don't actually see it happen. Obviously Scott is immortal. He cannot die unless his head gets chopped off.
 * Or Scott is the new "Daniel Jackson" and he's going to (almost)die more times than Daniel.

Sharon's "ugly" chair is a Chekhov's Gun.
Is it really just a coincidence that chairs popped up in "Life", now the chair on destiny may in fact be a repository if Rush is to be trusted but what if Sharon's chair is actually an ancient device that possibly requires the use of the one on Destiny, something like the communication stones? Either it might explain why Sharon's still keeps it as it has an influential hold on her and why Wray doesn't like as she subconciously knows something is wrong with it.
 * Jossed in the latest episode, Sabotage. Camille specifically notes that Sharon got rid of the chair.

This is an Alternate Universe Lost in Space.
Rush is quite obviously Dr Smith, Eli is Will, other characters fit nicely into the rest of the main cast's molds. They will eventually find a Robot.
 * If the Destiny really is sentient, as the above WMGs claim, wouldn't that make it the Robot character?
 * Destiny: "I'm sorry, Eli, I'm afraid I can't do that."
 * I've been thinking that since episode 1: that this show is going to be yet another version of Star Trek: Voyager

Rush is autistic.
And his current obsession is Destiny. Note if you will he's got issues with being touched, and when Young offered his hand to shake in Power, Rush just looked at it as if trying to work out what exactly he's meant to do with it. He has a lot of trouble interacting with people. All of which are common in people who are Autistic.
 * Its much more like Asperger's Syndrome or something else on the Autism Spectrum. If it were Autism, he would be much more disabled and would likely never be directly involved in the Stargate program.

Rush's wife ascended.
And it happened before his eyes. And she said he can't follow her. He got obsessed with finding out how to follow her. Rush also knows a lot about ascension, which is odd given his occupation in the SGC (mathematician). He can read (and it's implied speak) ancient. He's obsessed with Destiny which is a pre-ascension Ancient ship, and more importantly its database. He wants to know how they did it.
 * Which makes Rush's character arc him learning that ascension requires a state of mind the currently arrogant Rush can't achieve and setting about that with his usual determination. He will ascend in the end, not Eli.
 * It wouldn't be odd as since he'd have been working with and on Ancient technology, he'd probably be required to understand it too. After all, it'd be quite the hassle to have to get a translator whenever he needed to read an Ancient mathematical proof on something or some other technical document.
 * Might be jossed by Rush's flashback episode, where she dies in a hospital. It's unlikely that she would ascend in public.

Rush wins.
Dr. Rush will fix the broken ship, catch up to Destiny, disable it remotely and take it over. Reason? He is just that good.
 * It's a given that Rush will somehow get back to Destiny - there'd be little reason to show him at the end of Justice otherwise. That said, I could see several possibilities beyond that. He might become a sort of recurring villain backed by aliens. He might bring the ship and rejoin Destiny but essentially form his own crew on the ship.
 * Rush teams up with the aliens who built the not!Ancient ship and gets his revenge on Destiny.
 * Or the guy who sat in the chair will learn something useful about controlling the ship's navigation, and the crew of the ship (considering only two know the truth about Rush) will turn it around to pick him up.

He got back, but doesn't really win.
 * Show's not over yet...
 * Now it is..and he hasn't won. Maybe a draw.

The communication stones weren't designed to swap bodies.
Why would the ancients create a communication device that transplants one's mind into another person's body? It would require there to be a constant sacrificial body in connection with the stones in order to work, or else there'd be no way to communicate with the person one's intending to contact, especially considering the way they originally worked in the last two seasons of SG-1. More likely, the stones are supposed to allow telepathic communication - somewhat like in Citizen Joe - but aren't completely compatible with normal (non-ATA?) human physiognomy like most other ancient devices, which for some reason transfers the entire mind to the receiving end of the line.

Eli kept a copy of the Kino footage from "Justice".
And at a suitable moment, he'll let Young know he still has it. "Eli: I didn't murder Scott. Just like you didn't maroon Rush on that planet. Right?"


 * That might have been Eli's intention, but since Divided and Faith it seems like Young's actions are well-known, at least to the important people.
 * Eli's been over Chloe romantically even before he hooked up with Ginn. When Ginn kissed him with Chloe's body in Hope, he actually recoiled because it felt wrong. (Leaving aside that Eli could barely swat a fly without agonizing about it.)

The shuttle seen at the end of "Air, Part 3" is the one found in "Justice".
It has some ability to track Destiny, which is how Rush gets back.
 * Except the one in "Air" didn't have wings, and the hull design, though similar, is not exactly the same. Plus it would look a lot newer.
 * Turns out to built by the same people, at least.

We will meet Ori at some point.
1: Anything the Ancients can do, the Ori can do, so the Ori could possibly be out there.

2: Using Applied Phlebotinum, Destiny could be made to stay for an extended period, allowing for a good two-parter.

3: It could result in a awesome battle between Destiny and a few Ori motherships.


 * The Ori are dead. Their followers aren't, but that's another story. Also, state-of-the-art Ori motherships verses dinosaur technology Destiny would be a curbstomp battle.
 * Only the Ori in the Ori galaxy are dead. If the Ori went and tried to expand to another Galaxy before the milkyway, it's entirely possible some are still alive.
 * Destiny's shields can survive the interior of a star. I don't think an Ori beam weapon is going to be a problem.
 * They were likely intentionally designed to do that. Energy weapons are another thing entirely.
 * Jossed by Adria in The Ark of Truth. All the Ori are dead and she inherited all their power, literally turning from Godlike to actual God.
 * Not really. Again, all the Ori in the Ori Galaxy are dead. Adria was in the Milky Way at the time, and had to catch a ride back to the Ori Galaxy with the rest of the Tauri. Other Ori in other areas are probably still around doing the same thing.
 * What Ori in other areas ? There was no mention of any other Ori out there. Just the Ori in the Ori Galaxy. Hence Adria declaring her the last one left. Not the second to last one next to the others that have never been mentioned till now.
 * The Ori seemed pretty content with their setup. The only reason they went after the Milky Way was because A) they'd had the Ancient's location rubbed in their faces and B) it was full of (potential) converts to Origin. Between the Ancients' code that prevented interference and the power source represented by the natives, it surely seemed a slam dunk to the Ori.
 * Where is it ever said Adria had to catch a ride? From the look of things, she was running the show for a while before SG-1 showed up to get rid of her.
 * Doesn't she say it? It's been a while since I've watched Continuum, so I might not be recalling it. I thought that the whole 'long distance' thing was also one of the underlying facts of being an Ancient. Hence why the Ori themselves couldn't easily arrive in either the Milky way or, more specifically, Pegasus, as implied by Chaya.
 * As memory serves, Adria was on the vessel that delivered the Sangraal. It went off, killed the Ori, and left not-quite-ascended Adria alone. She then ascended and took the mantle of the Ori, including their genocidal plans for the Ancients.
 * Yes, Adria was on the ship with the Sangraal, but then she came back to the Milky Way, and ascended while on-board the Oddessy. The next time we see her is in Ark of Truth in the Ori Galaxy.
 * The Ori could go to the Milky Way, if they wanted to. They didn't because the Ancients would get pissed and try to kill them. Their followers needed to use Gates and stuff, but an ascended being could get there no problem. After all, they sent Morgan from Pegasus to the Ori galaxy.

Either Destiny is nowhere near as old as Rush thinks, or the natives to whatever Galaxy they're in are horrible intrastellar warfare.
Seriously, a million year old ship that's older than all the ancient super-technology is apparently a match for a modern attack ship? What's more, even the shuttle is capable of taking out more fighters than you'd shoot down in your average Star Fox mission. Then again, the aliens didn't use Hyperspace, so...
 * Remember what Rush says at the end of the episode: They weren't trying to destroy Destiny at all, so they weren't fighting all out. Also, have a look at the alien ship during the fight. Notice how Destiny's attacks never get through the shield. The alien ship got out of the confrontation without a scratch, while Destiny was considerably damaged.
 * True. However, that doesn't change the fact that Destiny's shuttle was able to cut through the fighters like they were nothing. Even if they weren't trying to destroy the Destiny, they were still certainly trying to capture it. Given that at the start of SGU Destiny was practically disabled on its own, and that there haven't been much in the way of repairs, it's not exactly... an impressive accomplishment.
 * Why else would they be interested in Destiny if its tech wasn't better than theirs?
 * You assume that all species must have evolved and progressed technologically at the same pace. This species may simply be far younger than the Ancients and their tech has just recently reached the level of Destiny's.
 * Valid point, but still, Earth is able to take on Asuran ships, and those are improved ancients, and win.
 * Which is not at all relevant to this situation. Earth massively cheated as far as technological progress is concerned, and the only reason they weren't utterly dominated by Asuran ships is because of the Asgard uber-tech they got. These aliens (probably) have had no such help, and may simply be at a point in their development where Destiny, regardless of age, is still superior to them.
 * To me, the most likely answer is that the aliens are at a slightly lower tech level to the Ancients from the time period when Destiny was launched. At full power, Destiny could have beaten them outright.
 * It may also be that the aliens don't unilaterally have the same level of technology as Destiny. They may be worse in some areas, better in others. Destiny may, even if of equal 'technological level', have information that would prove valuable or may have information that they could get but haven't yet due to time such as galactic maps.

Rush is playing Camille at the end of "Space".
During the bit at the end of the episode,
 * Semi-Jossed. He was playing her, but not for that reason.

The aliens are enemies of the Ancients, and are going to become the Big Bad.
Destiny has been moving between galaxies just about every episode. So if the aliens have been encountering them in multiple galaxies, they must also possess intergalactic travel. And they are shown to be capable of matching the Ancients in battle (if not beating them).

What seems likely to me is that the aliens have a civilization that spans much of the known universe. Destiny wasn't designed to bring in colonists - it was designed to bring in armies. Eventually, the aliens will figure out that the Ancients are gone, and will seek to attack our galaxy to plunder their secrets.

Oh, by the way: I came up with this theory before "Space" aired.


 * If anything, these aliens are inferior to Destiny. They had three motherships and couldn't beat through Destiny's shields. And it isn't even in top form. Also, Destiny has not been moving across galaxies every episode. That's just ridiculous. Galaxies are huge, and the Destiny is not that fast. It's slower than hyperdrive.
 * We have never had a case of one stargate being out of range of another while still being in the same galaxy. Therefore, if Destiny is coming into range of a different set of stargates each episode, it is moving between galaxies.
 * See the Just Bugs Me page. Modern Stargates can hit anywhere in the galaxy. These models, it would seem, can barely reach outside a solar system. Word of God is that they do not have the kind of range a Milky Way gate does.
 * It's also worth pointing out that we have no idea what their range is, given that the only way to dial them is apparently to and from Destiny, which sets it up pretty much automatically. It's theoretically possible they have just as a long of a range as other 'Gates, but Destiny only connects to near by ones.
 * The statement about the Destiny traveling between galaxies is Jossed by this interview: "For example, if the Destiny is travelling through a galaxy [Destiny's Stargate] can't go anywhere in that galaxy, it can only go within a limited range, that's why they put it on a ship, so as it moves through the galaxy it can move across it and explore..." (emphasis mine).

The Destiny isn't actually heading out of the galaxy at the end of "Lost."
It turns out instead that most of Destiny's damage is actually the result of various attacks by those obsessed blue aliens, and it is in fact moving to rendezvous with another automated ship in the stargate deployment fleet for repairs. Y'see, in addition to the gateships contructing and planting gates and Destiny surveying and testing them, there are maintenance ships for repairing damage to both the fleet and the stargate proto-network.
 * Why would the Ancients build separate maintenance ships that have to rendezvous with Destiny? If they have the technology for automatic-maintenance, why not incorporate that into Destiny herself? Having separate ships just increases the chance that something will go wrong. Also, in Sabotage it is very clear that Destiny is truly leaving the galaxy.
 * By that logic, why have any specialised class of ships anywhere? There's a reason earth navies have ships ranging in class from super Carriers to submarines to destroyers to frigates to minesweepers etc.
 * That's o Jossed

The guy trying to get people to stay on the planet in Faith is an alien.
I certainly don't recall seeing him before (Although apparently he was around). Still, he seemed awfully determined to get people to stay.
 * He was the guy who discovered the downed fighter in "Justice". Was in communication room in "Space". Vanessa James' love interest.

The planet in Faith is a trap!
It's a Honey Pot Trap. It's why there's no life. It's designed to be a paradise in a pretty inhospitable galaxy and to encourage people to come to it. Then, when they've settled in, the Obelisk turns on and the radiation kills them. It's why there are no animals.

The blue aliens are former slaves.
Created by the ancients they where simple genectic creations. A slave laborforce. While testing their ship tech they would use them as guinea pigs launching them across deepest space. Not caring if they died. They survived, evolved and using old Atlantis tech to survive and reach the stars. They remember and fear their old 'Masters' and view the Destiny as their only chance to remain free.
 * That doesn't seem consistent with what we know of the Ancients; Destiny was launched from the Milky Way, which means it's from after the schism with the Ori.
 * They could have been a simple organic type artificial lifeform that evolved to be sentient. Let's face it the Ancients while brilliant did some questionable things. Created replicators in the Pegusus galaxy, created a weapon to defeat the Ori but decided not to leaving billions to be killed and or enslaved by the Ori.

Destiny is a refitted Necron (or Necrontyr) ship.
It has a scythe/crescent shape and a pyramid-like structure at the end; very reminiscent of Necron warships.

We will see one of the Gate Seeding Ships
Yeah, nothing more to say about it. With as often as they're referenced, and as weird as it is to see gates that are around before Destiny, we're almost assured to see one.
 * But they're designed to operate way out in front of Destiny. Maybe one breaks down and the crew is able to cannibalize it to fix part of Destiny?
 * Alternatively, they attach it to Destiny as an add-on module. Or simply hook it into the Destiny via remote and go from one ship to two, requiring physical connections to FTL. Which would offer storylines about catching up or damaged connections and the like beyond simply stranded on a planet variety.
 * It is almost a necessity for the plot that at some point that the crew gain access to a secondary craft capable of traveling interstellar distances, but not necessarily intergalatic distances. This would serve as a way to break things out of the current pattern of gain a problem, autopilot to the exact planet they need, then move on again, while still keeping them tethered to the Destiny.
 * Well, they do run into one, and it does appear able to attach and act as an add-on module. The already present aliens kinda ruined that plan, though.

Scott, Chloe and Eli will return to the "paradise planet"
Following on from the events of "Lost" Scott, Eli and Chloe will return to the artificially created planet since it's the most hospitable one they've found so far. Once there they will encounter the aliens who built it and
 * No Stargate, though, and no ship to get there. Also Jossed now.

Ginn doesn't die, but is instead trapped inside Dr. Perry's body.

 * Jossed as of "Malice"
 * However, some consciousness-juggling has clearly happened, allowing both of them to survive their bodies' deaths, so this one's a near miss.

Franklin didn't ascend.
Instead his consciousness was put in the ship and his body vaporized.
 * Or it just got so cold that he's huddled in a corner, shivering.
 * Depends if one believes that 'fixing' the ship would also bring him out of a comatose state.

Wray has a Batman Gambit to gain control of the ship.
You see, first Rush is the evil genius! Boo hiss! Then he gets better. Young becomes too much of a cowboy cop (ie in second two, Rush and Young switch roles as far as who's the jerk ass). Young gets better. Wray steps in (as the voice of the reasonable people on the ship ie everyone else) and the two agree to put her in charge so they don't cause problems over personal issues.

First Girl Wins will apply to SGU.

 * Chloe will end up with Eli.
 * Lt. James with LT. Scott.
 * TJ with Young.
 * Wouldn't apply to TJ and Young as Young cheated on his wife with TJ making his wife the first girl, not TJ.
 * The 'first girl' part of that trope is somewhat subjective. I'm pretty sure the audience found out about their affair before they introduced the wife. It could go either way.

Telford will get onboard the Destiny and stay there for season 2
This seemed obvious after watching the latest episode with the Lucian Alliance working on getting to Destiny along with the conversations between Telford and Young. Young was practically taunting him about how it was supposed to be his reward and Young is in command on the ship and not Telford.
 * Corallary: Telford will get aboard, but it will not last, or at the very least he won't get command. Given the situation Rush-in-Telford's-body is in right now, Telford is not going to have the option to overtly join the military should the Lucian Alliance manage to board the ship. Unless he can help defeat them without getting himself killed, it'll be a short trip.
 * As of the S2 premiere, Telford, surprisingly enough, survives the invasion of the ship and lives through the takeback. What this will mean is yet to be seen though one wonders if Telford will get upgraded, casting wise, or hung on to so he can be killed later. Given how the show seems to like to keep favorite secondary characters and even upgrade them (Beckmen, Brody, James to name but three), perhaps he may yet survive.
 * Seems likely that he'll be upgraded as a way to help integrate the Lucian Alliance, since they're the only real source of new blood.

Franklin is starting to take over the ship
Following on from the earlier WMG that his consciousness became a part of the ship after using the chair, the recent weirdness affecting the Lucian Alliance is Franklin trying to turn the ship against them.

The Lucian Alliance has significantly stronger ties to Earth than the SGC realizes.
Where else would they get Earth weapons? For a group of thugs that are picking up where the System Lords left off they seem to have an awful lot of standard projectile weapons rather than Goa'uld Energy Weapons.
 * They had guns prior to this episode. It's not that big a surprise. Plus, they have Telford to provide them with links to arms dealers.
 * Yeah, but the SGC doesn't seem to be aware of those potential links.
 * Not casually, but it really doesn't take them that much effort to track such things down. Telford could find something if he was determined.
 * Plenty of worlds in the Milky Way have developed firearms independently (Langara, for example). After seeing that Tau'ri firearms were superior to Goa'uld energy weapons, the LA went to those worlds, contacted the local arms manufacturers, and started making bulk orders.
 * They raided Destiny with Chinese-made Type 97 assault rifles. You can make the argument that they look futuristic and were chosen by the production team for that reason, OR, you can follow canon: The Chinese have never wanted the USAF in control, and selling weapons to the Lucian Alliance would be a great way to express that dissatisfaction.

Destiny's purpose is tied to Ascension.
And both the IOA and Lucian Alliance want it in order to control mankind's next stage of development. Joseph Mallozzi has repeatedly noted that the Destiny has some secret purpose that will be explored in the next season. Moreover, Kiva's interest in the Destiny seems to be less about the ship's technology than about its mission. Finally, there have been several references to Ascension over the course of the series.
 * Perhaps the Chair is actually an Ascension machine, and that's where Franklin went?
 * That's what I think also. Especially when you consider that previous stargate series have portrayed ascension as technologically achievable, but with the disadvantage of potential brain frying. This is why the room went super cold first, to cool Franklin's brain during the process. I also think that the aliens that may or may not be on the "Faith" planet depending on your opinion are aliens from this end of the universe that have ascended, possibly the blue ones. They could be benevolent, but just misunderstood, as they haven't hurt anyone up till now, they just want to study us for whatever reason, possibly to learn more about ascension.
 * Semi-Jossed. It remains to be seen.
 * Of course, that signal could be somehow connected to Ascension. And the Ancients just managed to figure it out themselves without going to the source
 * Or the Ancients went to the source via the Destiny and that's how they learned to Ascend. Given that Ascension is a spiritual process and they're a technologically focused race (And most of the ones we meet show no signs of being at all interested in the necessary steps to ascend spiritually), even the idea of a spiritual ascension has to have come from somewhere.

Chloe's ability to understand alien language is a Chekhov's Skill
And our blue friend will return to save her from her scrappiness.

The reason Destiny's age doesn't jive with the Ancient Timeline?
The ship has been in and out of FTL for millions of years, and it cannot or doesn't compensate for relativity when there are no people aboard. Thus it ages a million years in FTL according to Rush's ballpark, but has actually been in the deep dark for millions of years, so it wouldn't have the cool Ancient toys.

Season 2 will bring the fandom together, somewhat.
Because I like sitting on the idealistic end of the scale.

Besides, we've now established that the Lucian Alliance are a relevant threat on this show, there are inhuman aliens that aren't Asgard, Destiny has a chair which Rush has received some relevant information from, and we now have a non-brainwashed Telford on board.

Based on all that evidence, I think that there will be some form of control gained over Destiny, a much better supply of food will be obtained, and the crew will spend more time discovering things about where they are now, since they aren't in a threat of dying every five minutes. This way, it will simply be a Darker and Edgier Stargate show, instead of Base Breaker incarnate.
 * Seems likely. As well, the friendly (or at least, non-Ax Crazy) Lucian people (Varro and his men and perhaps their scientists) provide outside information and such that SGC may not have. They also provide a constant B-story threat.
 * According to the Twitters of most of the Atlantis cast, they did a lot of shooting for this season and many of the SG-1 people were there too. It might just be cameos ala last season for O'neill, but the implication is that they're playing a pretty big role in at least a few episodes.

Destiny will eventually turn against the crew.
Destiny's AI is programmed to do whatever is necessary to keep the ship active and continue its mission of following the seeder ships to new galaxies. This is illustrated by its ability to self-ration its power, alter its course, and defend itself from outside threats. The program doesn't currently view the crew as a threat to the mission so it has no problem letting them tag along for the ride. However once Rush starts to gain real control over the propulsion and navigation systems the ship will actively start to resist the crew efforts to gain control, as its mission will then be in jeopardy.
 * Maybe though Rush (not that he's a perfect expert) notes that the ship is -not- sentient only sapient. So if the crew, say, mucks with something the ship will not actively try to resist out of malice. Instead, it would simply try to keep doing what it's doing. For instance, the crew cannibalizes a hypothetical exploration drone factory. Sentient Destiny would drop shields and try to kill them (or whatever). Sapient Destiny would simply try to cannibalize other systems to make up for the loss... though if enough systems were damaged, that may mean life support.

Chloe is a Clone.
It's why she healed so fast, and why there's the other odd stuff going on with her.

Chloe is a Goa'uld.
Fast healing after being off screen following contact with former Goa'uld servants who still have some snakes working in them? Slight changes in behavior? Sounds like it to me!
 * The Lucian Alliance doesn't have any Jaffa in it and it is unlikely they would allow a Goa'uld to live very long if they noticed, which isn't very difficult once you know the signs.

There will be an AU episode where they encounter a Destiny under someone else's control.
Possibilities:
 * Lucian Alliance: Would certainly provide answers regarding the LA's plans for Destiny. For added amusement, the Tau'ri might have launched an attack of their own.
 * Ba'al: Come on, Rush matching wits with Ba'al would be epic.
 * And it will be crewed entirely by other Ba'als.
 * That would be a ba'alsy episode... aaand I'm going to hell for that one, aren't I?
 * Ori: From a timeline where the Ori crusade succeeded, or at least captured Icarus.
 * Ancients: Where some Ancients came onboard as planned, and never ascended.
 * Rush: From a time line where the altercation between Young and Rush in "Justice" ended with Young being left on the planet. The question is...would it be Rush vs. Rush or Rushx2 vs. everybody else.
 * It'd be Rush x2 versus everyone else, of course. And of course, while the two Rushes would be working together, they'd be actively working against each other as well.
 * Well, one of the episodes in S2 is titled "Twin Destinies"...

Destiny was not built by the Ancients.
The technology of Destiny is very crude and unlike what the Ancients used. It uses a form of power generation the Ancients did not use. The Stargates aren't the same and it uses the Giza point of origin symbol. It does not have the Ancient design asthestics. It is almost certainly not built by the Asgard, not likely by the Nox. The Furlings are a possibility, or possibly humans or a splinter group of Ancients. Even a simple mistranslation could lead the humans to believe it was Ancient, or it may have been deliberate. Ra took the Giza gate from their home planet, after they had moved, died out, or whatever. Of course this race would have had different technolgy and design rules than the Ancients. Judging by the level of technology of the Destiny and its age, they were not as advanced as the Ancients.
 * Perhaps the Ori? They had different design aesthetics to the Ancients, but spoke the same language.
 * It doesn't match Ori design either. Technology-wise, maybe- we don't know a lot about the Ori. If it was built by the Ori, the mission is obvious. However, it is known or at least assumed that the Destiny was launched somewhere from inside the Milky Way. Although it wouldn't be much of a stretch based on the liberties they took with canon already.
 * Maybe that's what the battle damage was - the Ancients attacked Destiny shortly after launch.
 * The ship is older than any other Alteran device ever seen on the show. The ZPMs, while handy, are rather limited in duration and recharge capacity. So the Pegasus Stargates aren't made by the Alterans either? The "Giza point of origin symbol" is the symbol the Alterans used for Earth (it is the symbol for "Aht" which means "Home" in their language), it stands to reason that on an intergalactic scale, it also means "The Milky Way". Of course it uses different aesthetics, it was built in a different era. That's like saying the Empire State Building and the Twin Towers weren't built by the same race and culture, and that's only a few decades apart, not several million years. The age is "several million years". This gets shortened to "million years" all the time because no one really cares about the techincalities of the age, let alone just how mind boggling that age can be. Also, Ra used the gate that was already on earth, just like all the rest of the Goa'uld, who have never been shown able to produce their own gates.

Rush is about to completely lose his mind.
As a result of all the head and mental trauma he's sustained.

First in Darkness he temporarily lost his mind and collapsed as a result of nicotine and caffeine withdrawal.

After that Rush framed Young for murder, during their little scuffle toward the end of the episode Rush was knocked unconscious. He was then kidnapped by the catfish aliens and had his mind probed, most likely more than once.

After returning to Destiny and having the tracking device in his heart removed, Rush sat in the chair and explored the depths of his mind. However doing so brought on physical damaged, evident by the repeated nosebleeds while he was in the chair. As well as some mental trauma at having to relive his wife's death.

Shortly after that he was under the effects of a hallucinogenic tick which caused Rush to believe that the catfish aliens had gotten on board Destiny.

During the season 1 finale Rush while in Telford's body was tortured by the Lucian alliance, the pain of said torture likely causing some mental trauma. Telford while in Rush's body was deprived of oxygen to the point he needed to be revived. Even though it was Telford, Rush's brain suffered the effects of the lack of oxygen.

The combination of both the mental trauma and the head trauma has begun to take it's toll on Rush evident by the fact his dead wife is speaking to him in the second episode of season 2.

Now Rush is dealing with the stress of keeping the fact he can control Destiny a secret as well as living with the fact that his decision to stop at the planet with the buried Stargate cost a man his life.

Before the season is over Rush will have a meltdown and Rush seems to be currently aware of the fact that he is losing his mind.

Either he will go batshit and try to kill Young which will likely prompt Young into leaving Rush on an alien planet alone or lock him in his room because he is a danger to the crew.

Or after someone, likely Young, discovers he has had control of Destiny for some time Rush will go on a Rant of how he thought it was for the best and through the course of the rant become more and more crazed before just shutting down completely and ending up in tears. Young will probably still try to leave Rush on some alien planet but Eli, Chloe, Camile and probably T.J. will object.


 * It seems like S2, the conflict between Young and Rush is more how they deal with the stress of leading and power.

Telford will die.
They haven't made him a regular, but his rank will make it impossible to keep him on the sidelines. At minimum, he should be second in command to Young. So something is going to happen to him.
 * Well, he is off the ship now, but it won't last.
 * Put On A Ship as it were. Though since the aliens didn't seem all that hostile (after all, what would you think of a bunch of aliens started sucking the power from the ship you're on?), it's possible he'll come back.

Icarus was a dead-end project where the washouts of the Stargate program were sent to keep them out of the way.
This is why the Icarus team seems so dysfunctional. No one expected them to succeed.
 * There seems to be some truth in this. Colonel Young is the worst commanding officer that most people could dream of having and the level of military discipline among his troops is rather low.Also,the scientists on Destiny (excluding Rush) don't really seem to be that sharp.
 * Somewhat Jossed come season two, apparently without the infighting the crew manage to work pretty well for a group that was unprepared. Young lets go of his angst and takes up leadership, Rush manages to find and control the command deck on his lonesome and even Camille becomes more tolerable. Except for Greer he doesn't change much, then again he doesn't have to.

We won't ever learn the fate of TJ's baby or the other crew members on that planet.
As something of a Brick Joke because after all, the whole point of the episode "Faith" was.... faith. If TJ ever finds out the truth, it wouldn't be a matter of faith that her baby was saved by aliens or that the crew members are okay. It would just be true (or false). As it is now, they can't ever say one way or another and can only believe one way or another.
 * Jossed in Ep. 9 of Season 2. It didn't happen.

Syfy wants SG:U to die.
Hence the 30 day delay on Itunes/Hulu/other sources.
 * They did it to Haven, too. It isn't localized to SGU. They're doing it across the board.
 * It would certainly help their efforts to get rid of anything considered "Sci-Fi" in favor of more WRASSLIN' and shitty reality shows.
 * Or it could be because they want people to actually watch it on their channel or website and not use third party sources.
 * Which is a completely stupid reason, since anyone who is likely to want to watch it online, would download it by torrent, usenet or a rapidshare type direct download.
 * Which is my solution. I then buy the season dvds when they come out.
 * Comcast may try to save syfy from want NBC is doing to it or the 30 day delay is part of comcasts planes to lock up content just like what they do with CSN Philly.
 * Well, several counter points. Most agencies that track 'stuff' (sales, TV ratings) do not yet have systems in place for online material. What this means is that tracking viewership is much more difficult with online material. And, at least for Hulu, advertisement time is much lower (Hulu usually has 3 to 6 breaks of one 30 second - 1 minute commerical each or 1 2-minute commerical; compare to television where there's 8 minutes of commericals in the average 30 minute show). In turn, this means that advertisers are less willing to pay higher prices for online advertisements/networks can't charge as much; for the most part, they still make much of their money off television ads. Thus the delay onto the Internet is to maintain that money off advertisements. Also, not everyone owns a television such as this troper and even if this troper did have a television, would not want to spend 30 bucks a month to watch less than a handful of channels and/or shows. And since this troper wants to support the show (because ultimately if a show doesn't bring in the viewers, the network will cancel it no matter how good it may be), venues like Hulu are the best option to show some level of support.
 * Guess what wasn't renewed for a 3rd season.

There is an ascended Ancient, possibly Oma Desalla hanging around Destiny watching over the crew.
This explains a number of the stranger signs of Destiny being aware of the needs of the crew before they are. This is also why TJ had that vision of going to the Faith planet and leaving her baby there with those who stayed behind. In some kind of attempt to help Rush fix the ship, as well as trying to keep him from going completely insane, it is appearing to Rush when he's alone to act as a kind of advisor, carefully prodding him in the right direction. This is also why Franklin disappeared.

Rush has a brain tumor.
Likely in the frontal lobe area which is affecting his impulse control and judgment. The brain tumor may also be giving him chronic headaches but he's to stubborn to see a doctor and thus has no knowledge of his condition.

Or he knows he has a brain tumor and hides it so he can work unhindered, wanting to learn as much as he can before time runs out.

Rush is Darkseid, or at least an agent of him.
A mysterious ordered signal in the background of the universe? A feverish quest to find it and thereby control the world around him? Sound's like the Anti-life equation to me.

The ascended being hanging around the Destiny is not an Ancient.
Or if it is, it's an evil one. It's only helping because it needs the crew to find the message in the background of the Universe. What's more, Rush is wrong. The ancients did discover what it was, and it lead to the Ancient/Ori split.

Eli will turn into Rush 2.0.
will affect him the way Gloria's death affected Rush. Eli will become bitter and devote himself to his work. There are three things that could snap him out of this: 1. Rush recognizes what is happening, and warns Eli from going down this path. 2. Chloe will snap Eli out of it. This may result in them finally getting together. 3. Ginn will come back somehow. Least likely, but it would certainly do the trick.
 * Or even better, he won't snap out and he will become an even more manipulative bastard than Rush and Wray combined. He already had his Rush-moments on the bridge in Malice, and with Chloe's imminent transformation... maybe Rush won't warn him but will want to use him assuming that he is harmless, but useful. Eli will have his own agenda behind Rush's back but he will keep up his facade. And when Rush's guards will be down, Eli will strike down, get rid of him, destroy the stones (so Stargate Command won't be able to override him), lock Destiny to his own brainwaves (while telling the crew that Destiny itself did it) and assume command.
 * He is supposed to be smarter than Rush.

Joss Whedon has secretly joined the writing staff of Stargate Universe.
Well, he isn't writing the scripts, but he's contributing ideas. Come on, Eli and Ginn's relationship lasted exactly as long as Wesley and Fred. Tell me that isn't Joss at work!
 * I buy it. We've had way more major deaths in SG:U seasons one and two than we have in SG-1 and Atlantis combined if you don't count Daniel Jackson.
 * And he brought his typical low ratings with him.
 * If Joss wrote SGU, Chloe would be played by Summer Glau, be an expert martial artist and walk around barefoot.
 * Addendum: This would not necessarily be a bad thing.

The tech allowing Destiny to hack into dreams exists in the gates, and is responsible for the Aliens Speaking English we've seen in SG-1 and SGA.
Think about it. For all we know, a fully functional gate might be able to access the travellers' subconscious and immediately translate everything without them even noticing. It didn't work for Goa'ulds because those are TWO lifeforms fused together and the system wasn't designed for this. Also, it didn't work in the movie because the gate had been buried for a long time and wasn't connected to a proper DHD, which didn't allow it to work normally. Not very likely, but I'd love the writers to try and find an elegant solution to this problem in SG:U. What about an episode with the system breaking down, and communication between Earth and Lucian Alliance members becoming impossible? and, of course, some additional effects for added drama. I even have a title for the episode: "Babel".

Ok,let me dream a little^^
 * Lucian Alliance people can be reasonably expected to know at least some Earth languages in order to facilitate their weapons deals.

The being responsible for encoding the message into the Big Bang will eventually become the main villain of the series
SG-1 started off with the team fighting against technologically advanced aliens who tried to pass themselves off as gods, after defeating these they faced Sufficiently Advanced Aliens with god-like powers. The Sorting Algorithm of Evil dictates they face an enemy that basically is a god.
 * Wouldn't that make Aizen the big bad for Universe?

The background radiation pattern is the result of time travel.
It shouldn't exist because no one could have possibly been around at the time. So, some group manipulated the past at its earliest possible moment to somehow benefit themselves.
 * Via an extreme instance of a Stable Time Loop, Rush himself will place the message. Destiny has collected loads of information from the background radiation already. But that information is designed so that it requires some very specific brain patterns to process - specifically, it need Rush's, Eli's and Young's brain. Now that they have arrived, the ship starts decoding it in their dreams and alters its course according the instructions encoded in the radiation. As it goes along the specified route, it will collect further data and instructions. In the Grand Finale, the Destiny and its crew will end up in a particularly rough situation when the final piece of data will come in. Then Destiny will start "beaming" information in the crew's minds - information about how to go home. Additionally, it will give Rush some instructions. Going home involves opening up a ship-sized wormhole to the edge of the Milky Way via blowing up a quasar or something. While Eli and the rest of the crew will be busy doing so (and wiping out the enemy fleet that's shooting at them), Rush will modify the shuttle and prepare it for its task - when the Destiny blows up the quasar, he uses the modified shuttle to travel back in time to the moment of the Big Bang. His arrival will be the figurative straw breaking the camel's back - the extra mass he and his shuttle gives the singularity causes the Big Bang, and the modifications in the shuttle will cause the pattern in the CMBR. Or he will need the enormous amount of energy to travel back to the end of the previous universe and place the message before vanishing in the Big Crash.

Eli will turn into the SGU version of Sisko.
He'll end up in the Captain's Chair, and turn from Big Fun into a dark moody Badass with a touch of Wangst. Maybe he'll even Grow the Beard.
 * He has a liking for that chair (because it has access to most systems, but still...). Also in an interview Blue hinted that Eli will have a lot of character development and will become a lot more active during this season. And since he is pretty much the only character respected (at least minimally) by Rush and trusted by both Young and Wray, I wouldn't be surprised. Maybe Destiny will choose him? I could imagine an episode when Destiny locks everyone out of control - except Eli. Though being turned into CDJ wouldn't help the character.

Ginn's and Amanda's consciousnesses are stuck in the waves of subspace.
To quote Mallozzi (badly): "Do you think you know what happened to Ginn? Think again, because this is sci-fi!". Now we think she is pretty much dead, she isn't in Amanda's body (because that's not how the stones work and SGU won't violate the canon) so the only explanation left is that their disembodied consciousnesses are stuck somewhere outside our spacetime. Maybe they will return later via the "Daniel Jackson Ascend-Descend Routine" (tm)
 * This is, more or less, accurate.

The drones are Replicators.
Because they're going to be in everything, and you know it.

The SGU team are the least competent people ever.
SGU: OH MAN THESE DRONES ARE KICKING ARE ASS, WHAT DO WE DO?! Telford: Why aren't you flying into the sun you can survive but nothing else we've ever encountered can? SGU: Why didn't we think of that?!

Seriously, they could beat almsot any number of drones by kiting them back and forth through the star. Plus they have longer range than the Drones. Just go back and forth in various stars and snipe some every time you come out. Behold, no more drones. Sure, it might take forever, but it's a cheesy way to win without a huge amount of work. As a gamer Eli really should've though of this.
 * Probably because most gamer tactics (or conventions for the matter) don't actually work when applied in the real world (or fictional versions there of).
 * But we know for a fact that Eli is a gamer, and that the secret to the Icarus project was hidden inside of a game. Clearly they have at least some concept of gamer tactics and "Hide in the Large firey object that destroys things that don't have our super shields" should not be much of a stretch.
 * Again, many gamer tactics don't necessarily translate into practical tactics. While game play can be used for many things (folding proteins for instance), outside of military simulations, you'd be hard pressed to find people using anything realistic. Concepts may apply but you'd apply them differently. And games rarely have to worry about logistics and resources.
 * Also, the drones were smart. Initially, they were chasing the ships through the star. But subsequently, Telford noted that they were only safe until the drones circumnavigated the star meaning the drones were going -around- the star (yay for having a sense of scale). The initial star run was really only to burn off those drones that were chasing the ships who were, basically, in mode lock and trying to kill the ships before they could escape. Also, while they might have kited drones all day long, it's not something they can do indefinitely; more than likely, the drones would have simply sent in more reinforcements until the star was effectively surrounded. At this point, the drones wouldn't need to even chase them since there would be no place for the ships to hide. Thirdly, remember that the ships can survive going through stars... but that's only because they're shutting down -everything- and powering up shields to max. That alone suggests that while the ships can do this, it's not really something they want to do often since it's still inherently dangerous to them.

Destiny has some hidden superweapon, EMP-gun or something else
Because seriously, how the fuck will they get out of the neck-deep shit they got in "Resurgence"? It will activate said weapon by itself because it's smarter than the whole crew.
 * Alternately that's what Chloe was doing, activating the hidden super weapon to destroy the drones. Said super weapon is hidden in Destiny's tip which is why the last scene of the episode was of Destiny's tip.

The blue aliens are actually parasitic life forms
They consist of a host body and intelligent bacteria forming a hive mind. The bacterium is actually the alien, they reproduce by infecting another life form and taking control of it. That's what they did to Chloe. The transformation is usually faster, but they were unfamiliar with human physiology so that's why it takes so long.
 * Then why hasn't Rush shown any signs of transforming? Are they just unable to reproduce in lifeforms with Y chromosomes?
 * That would explain why it didn't infect Scott in Cloverdale.
 * Does this mean all the blueberry aliens are female? Or would it mean they have different chromosomes all together like... S and R chromosomes.
 * Completely different chromosomes are the more probable theory. They are several galaxies away where the Ancients haven't treaded yet, so their evolution is completely different from MW and Pegasus evolution. They probably haven't figured out how to spread to male humans yet.
 * Alternately they're an all male species with the exception of the "Queen" who normally would reproduce a new queen before dying, however she died before birthing a new queen and the blueberry aliens are kidnapping other species that are potentially compatible and injecting both sexes with an enzyme that will turn the "female" into their new "Queen". They inject both sexes with this enzyme cause they don't know which is the female of whatever species they used.

Atlantis will come to the rescue.
Think about it, Atlantis is the only ship fast enough to have a chance at catching up to Destiny, as well as having more than enough firepower to save the day. And the Atlantis cast have been talking about doing a lot of filming for season 2. They'll keep this from losing the "you're stuck here" by saying they only have enough power to make one round trip. This is also a perfect chance for a resupply and reinforcement of the crew.
 * It may also keep the wormhole drive from being a complete ass pull. It's also the Lucian Alliance's Xanatos Gambit to get Atlantis off Earth so it can't disintagrate their attack force with drones.

Stargate Universe was cancelled because the real expedition has been lost with all hands
The whole Stargate franchise is based on real events which are Darker and Edgier than the fictional version, and is designed to prepare the world for the truth. Universe is a more true-to-life dramatization of recent developments, but the real Destiny expedition fell out of contact a few weeks ago. Whatever actually happened will be far too dark and depressing for public consumption, so the show has been cancelled and will be hastily wrapped up with a not-too-horrible ending.
 * I know everyone secretly wants this to be true. FTL space travel? Aliens? Wormholes? C'mon!
 * SG:U will be renewed when the real expedition makes contact again after the real Dr. Rush saves everyone and/or fixes whatever was preventing them from keeping in touch with Earth.
 * The irony is that Rush probably exists, while Carter, McKay, and probably Jackson are all composites of the various scientists and archaeologists in the Stargate Program.
 * Senator Armstrong's fate is based on what really happened to Ted Kennedy.
 * Stargate Universe will be renewed in three years, once the Destiny arrives in the new galaxy.
 * Or a thousand, if Eli's calculation is off.

Ginn and Perry will become additionnal Avatars on Destiny
It only makes sense to bring them back this way - Franklin died in mysterious circumstances, yet Destiny was able to somehow assimilate him, or at least his appearance, and use it to communicate with Rush on the Bridge. I can imagine Ginn, at the very least, appeaing to Eli - good way to bring in some drama... Of course, thank you Sy Fy, because now we won't see any of it...
 * Well, looks like we'll be seeing it after all.
 * Guess what just happened in "Hope"...

Destiny's mission regarding the background radiation is to create a new universe
And in order for the Ancients to do that, it's necessary to know how the current one was created. Destiny's mission is to find out as much as possible about the cosmic background radiation and, through that, to learn how the current universe came into existence. The Ancients then planned on using the Destiny and possibly the Seed Ships to start a new Big Bang. But the ascended before they could get to it. And, now that they've ascended, they may know the secrets about the cosmic background radiation anyways, so... To them, Destiny's mission may no longer matter. far-fetched, but... Makes you think.

SGU will become a ragtag band of aliens
Let's see, you got the humans and the Lucian Alliance. Then you got Telford acting as point man for the ursini. And then you'll have Chloe as the point woman for the catfish aliens who will be the token evil teammates.

Future!Rush ascended at the very last second.
Okay we know that to ascend you either learn how to or an all ready ascended being helps you. Now Future!Rush knows what ascension is so he's on the right path, it's possible that whatever knowledge he gained when he sat in the chair would have provided the missing piece he needed to ascend.

By ascended he not only escaped death but the universe should be fine with two Rushes in the same time line as long as they're on different plains of existence.

If this is the case then if/when we get a tie in movie or however they're going to finish the story line. Ascended!Future!Rush will help the crew get home and his past self will either die or go home after getting a kind of lecture from his older self, and he'd return to Earth happily while his ascended self carries on the Destiny's mission.

The Destiny has already succeeded in its mission.
The ancients already unraveled the secret, that's why Destiny is in such bad shape and why there's no data on it.
 * Except there is data on it, thousands and thousands of pages in fact, plus a nearly complete signal.
 * No Data as in "Well, we went and looked and here's what we found." From that episode I understood it to be mostly background "lets go look at this thing" information, rather than "We went and investigate and found X/Gave up because of Y."

The message encoded into the background radiation of the universe is the secret to Ascension.
Well, the Ancients had to have gotten the secret somewhere, and it's implied pretty strongly that it was way outside of their expected development path, since it's at least partially spiritual.
 * In the very first episode, Rush says that the Ancients never boarded Destiny after it was launched, and the humans are in fact the first people to gate to it. He wouldn't claim this if the ship's log didn't tell him so, and the Ancients would have no reason to manipulate the log in that way.

The message encoded into the background radiation of the universe is the result of a Stable Time Loop.
The message is either put there by the crew of the Destiny at the end of their journey. Alternatively, the message ultimately contains the secret of Ascension, and was put there by an ascended ancient so that the ancients could find the message in the first place.

The people from the alternate Destiny in "Twin Destinies" aren't really dead.
Telford may have been the only one to make it back to Earth, but the others are still alive, they just... Were spat out somewhere else by the Stargate. Using the gate while inside a star is risky business, after all. All kinds of things could go wrong. The crew of the alternate Destiny may also have traveled through time as well...
 * Recently revealed summaries for April episodes make it almost confirmed, unless some twist will happen.
 * Confirmed.
 * Not so small...

The SGC has no ability for subterfuge.
Alright, so, the Lucian Aliance/Langaran plotline in Seizure. It's pretty impressive, for the SGC. I mean, switch places using the Stones? But, no one seems to have considered having some sort of fallback option. Is it really that hard to break out a Voice Changer and pretend you've been taken over by a Goa'uld?
 * Well, the whole thing smelled of something out of the NID's playbook. And we know how smart they were. [/Sarcasm]
 * Even if it were plausible at first, this fallback option would still have left them outgunned and taken captive (or shot if they didn't stand down), at which point that subterfuge would fall apart too.

Destiny's mission is not a quest to find the meaning of life, the universe and everything...
Destiny's mission is an experiment to find the meaning of life, the universe and everything. Destiny was left for someone smart enough to figure out the ninth chevron to find. Once aboard, the ship traps them, forces them to jump through hoops ("this Stargate's active and we need X supply, guess we better go through"), gets inside their heads and generally manipulates them all. Rush's "pattern" is a MacGuffin for those who are more science/goal-oriented. It's all a grand social experiment set up by the Ancients in which Destiny is both the laboratory and the scientist.
 * This is totally in character for a lot of the Ancients we meet, too.

The Little Purple Fruits mentioned offhandedly by Chloe and Camille at the beginning of "Common Descent" are space birth control pills.
Either that, or an abortive, or maybe a powerful aphrodisiac, though that one is less likely. But from the tidbits of conversation and the girls' attitude in front of Eli, they were discussing family planning. Maybe Matt & Chloe don't want a happy event just yet?..
 * Altenatively, they help with menstrual cramps.

Ba'al is pulling the strings of the Lucian Alliance

 * As the last of the clones aptly pointed out, the original Ba'al could very well still be out there. As we know, Ba'al is known for planning and implementing schemes for acquiring power far more creative and intelligent than is typical of a System Lord. So perhaps Ba'al knows not only of Destiny, but what the ship is investigating and its true potential. Ba'al, tempted by the prospect of knowing, and being able to manipulate, the true nature of the universe? Heck yeah!
 * Might Varro be secretly Ba'al?

Destiny will reach the edge of the universe

 * At which point, Chuck Norris will send it back to the Milky Way with a well-placed roundhouse kick.

The Drone Command ships are Reapers.
Massive ships served by hundreds of robotic platforms, seeking out and destroying all advanced civilization in the galaxy? Not to mention entering planetary atmosphere seemingly solely for the sake of being ominous.

Eli could use The Chair to go into stasis.

 * Actually, if you go to this address (http://www.gateworld.net/news/2011/05/producer-reveals-alternate-ending-for-stargate-universe-finale/ ), you'll see that this was indeed a possibility they (the producers and writers) discussed for Season Three. As was the possiblity of Eli using the chair to download himself into the Destiny's computer.

The Langaran Stargate going to be a Chekhov's Gun before the series was canceled.
The producers were going to have Earth's negotiations with Langara bear fruit before the full three years of the Destiny's current trip around the outside of the drone-filled galaxy was complete and dial Destiny with another solution, or at least a way to get to the next galaxy more quickly. And a supply line, as well. Think about it- there's no way that was intended to be a one-off plot point. It was going to come up again in the third season (and, I'm pretty sure, probably right at the beginning of the third season, too). But sadly, there will be no third season...
 * Alternatively, it was set up to be an Author's Saving Throw to change the nature of the show in season 3. Three Years is more than enough time to work a treaty with the Langarans and deal with the Lucian Alliance. Come season 3, and a supply line, and we're set for radically changing the tone.
 * You're probly right about the treaty with the Langarans. However, it's entirely possible that the Lucian Alliance thing wouldn't be solved in that time. if anything, it might've gotten worse in the intervening time...

There is more than one nine chevron address.
The seed ships each (there are implications that several of them exist) have their own nine chevron gate address that can be dialed, albeit with the same potential issues (ie incredibly high power requirements) as dialing Destiny presented. Thus, there is in fact more than one nine chevron address. Makes sense, if one thinks about it.

Discovery of the structure in the Cosmic Background Radiation is what caused the Alteran/Ori split seen in Stargate SG-1
We're told that the Stargate on Destiny is the first one (Really need a citation for this). If the first Stargate is on Destiny it can be inferred that the Stargate was invented as a way of reaching Destiny. We've seen that the Alterans who split had plans for a Stargate (Arc of Truth) and thus assuming my previous conclusion is correct, we can assume that the Alterans and the Ori were aware of the structure in the cosmic background radiation at the time of the split.

The fact that Destiny launched from the Milky Way (Air) shows that the project was only started after they arrived their new home. If they knew about it before they left, but only investigated it after they arrived it stands to reason that it was only shortly before the split happened that the structure was discovered. Admittedly we know little of pre-split Ancient society but given the reaction that we have seen the Tauri have to this discovery including calling it "a message from God" and Rush vehemently disagreeing with this point the conclusion can be drawn that this perhaps is what caused the split. Discovery of the structure, that there was an intelligence present at the time of the Big Bang, I could certainly see that causing the tension in our current society between the more fundamentalist religious people and scientists to come to a head, we've already seen that these are the lines that the Alteran/Ori split occurred on and for all the mysticism built up in the early seasons the Ancients were very much like us and so perhaps can be expected to react in the same way. Only instead of ending in the civil war I can imagine our society responding to such a discovery with, the Alterans just up and left.
 * Destiny's gate is most definitely NOT the first one (the seed ships were launched before Destiny). Otherwise, it makes sense.
 * It *could* be if one were to assume that Destiny's gate was the original Earth gate that was transferred to the ship for the mission and replaced with the newly-built Antarctica model. This is just another WMG though.

Dr. Rush is secretly Batman
Because why not?

Simeon blamed Earth/the SGC for the death of someone he cared about
Rightly or wrongly, Simeon was so eager to decieve Stargate Command by providing them with false info and kill Earth soldiers because he blames Earth for the deaths of (a) family member(s)/friend(s)/lover. Perhaps they were killed (presumably by accident or as collateral damage) in an earlier attack by the SGC on a Lucian Alliance planet. After all, it's implied that the war between Earth and the Lucian Alliance has heated up considerably since the end of the Ori arc (which ended about two years prior to the beginning of SGU, I believe). Also, offensives against the LA have been mentioned numerous times in SGU (for example, Telford getting a lieutenant who was infatuated with him killed during one such offensive due to his being brainwashed was discussed in Subversion, I believe). It's not too far-fetched... Either way, he blames Earth and has become mentally unstable since then (though he may have been messed up to begin with, but he was probably only pushed over the edge and into "revenge mode" by something like that).

In the original outline for the show, Lt. Scott would have been the lead character, not Colonel Young. There might have been more off-world missions, and fewer power struggles.
The pilot seemed to be setting up Scott as SGU's equivalent to Jack O'Neill or John Sheppard - knocking out and crippling Young so Scott could first take charge during the initial exploration of Destiny, then lead the recon team to the desert planet. Young would have played a role similar to Hammond or Weir - perhaps his injury would have been permanent.

At some point, they abandoned this plan, probably deciding that they were going to have a recurring theme of power struggles among the crew, and figuring that Scott was a poor opponent for Rush - he would either give in or simply pull rank and shut him down. So they gave the focus back to Young.

The USS-Enterprise-J is based off Destiny
Evidence: They look the same.

The Drones were created by the Novans, as a way of defending themselves against the Drones. D'oh
With Destiny's records the Novans knew that the drones would eventually be a problem. Because no one on Destiny has major experience with the Replicators there's no warning in the Destiny archive about how much of a bad idea that sort of tech is. Therefore the Novans invented a self improving automated system and sent it off Von-Numan style to protect them from the Drones, which the system eventually upgraded itself into. Nice Job Breaking It, Hero

The Origin symbol is really more of an Orientation symbol
Consider that the gates used by Destiny and the seed ships spin their entire ring. There could be a problem with this: if the origin (no, not that Origin) and destination gates weren't oriented the same, then whatever went through could come out upside-down. This issue wasn't discovered by the initial designers until the first thousand production models were being manufactured (for normal use, the Destiny hadn't even been conceived at that point), so they couldn't change the hardware. To fix this, they figured out what symbol was closest to the top when a particular gate was right-side-up, and added that symbol to the end of the dialing sequence for that gate, thus ensuring that the gate was right-side-up when the wormhole opened.

Later versions of the gate either only spun the "dial" (Milky Way gates) or didn't spin at all (Pegasus gates), so they really didn't need an orientation symbol. However, by that time, everyone was used to the concept of dialing a final symbol that depended only on the origin gate, so they kept that feature around.

The show will come back... in 2014
It's three years after they go into stasis.

The long-legged creature Eli, Chloe and Scott are menaced by on the foggy planet in "Lost" is a gink.
This is a little personal - I've always told my kids about ginks. They're my own pretend monster, and the kids know I'm joking. "Ginks" are 15 feet tall, pink, have horse-shaped heads, long, slender legs that taper to points - they go "tap-tap-tap" as they walk. When I saw "Lost" and saw the creature, I pointed out the ratio of body-to-legs to my daughter. It's obviously that galaxy's local gink.

We watched the wrong end-of-series.
Instead of watching the final episodes and the Cut Off cliffhanger, when the Destiny crew leave through the gate to "get to earth" just watch the later Kino recordings on Novus, and then the end of the episode where the last remaining crewmember opens a schoolhouse and we see the town grow into a city. End of series. Ignore the drone robots ever attacking them and you have a pretty happy ending.

The Seed Ships are programmed to protect Destiny.
Instead of the Ursini wanting to help Destiny, it was the Seed Ship responding to some kind of subspace distress signal sent out when it came under threat of the drones. The reason the seed ship allowed the Ursini to go on a kamikaze run was because the seed ship computers realised that the destruction of the seed ship could save Destiny in the short run.

NB: This is Dad's theory, and he didn't really explain it all that well.
 * Whose Dad? Huh?
 * Mine. The writer of this particular WMG. Silly!
 * Maybe the Ursini had nothing to do with the suicide run - the seed ship did it (And the Ursini ran around screaming in futility), with the Destiny crew simply assuming it was the Ursini.
 * That's what I was going for! Thanks.

That's that.
Not long after Eli puts everyone into stasis, Destiny fails and Eli can't fix it. He dies. Everyone else stays in stasis forever, lost to the stars.