So, lately I watched the series Stargate SG-1, since Stargate is one of the few major sci-fi franchises that I didn't know anything about. And:
- - - Spoilers for the show if you haven't seen it - - -
the main villain of the series was an alien race called the Goa'uld, whose main thing is enslaving the various human populations they come across. The Goa'uld are possessed of a lot of technology that is ridiculously advanced by human standards, but as the series goes on, it's revealed that they didn't invent any of it. In fact, the Goa'uld are a scavenger race, that built their technology mostly on artifacts left behind by an earlier race called the Ancients, who left stuff all over the galaxy after they disappeared from it. It's later revealed that they disappeared by ascending to a higher plane of existence, and they're in fact still around, watching us but not interfering directly because they have some sort of Prime Directive sort of rule. Occasionally, though, when the stakes are high enough, one of the Ancients will break that rule and give us help, although when they do, they tend to speak so cryptically that no one really knows what the heck they're talking about.
Anyway, in 2005, the Goa'uld are finally defeated by our heroes, after having spent the previous eight years inciting a rebellion amongst the Goa'uld's primary client race, the Jaffa. They were then replaced by a new enemy, the Ori. The Ori are basically the counterpart to the Ancients; they're also extremely powerful ascended beings, and eternal enemies of each other. Unfortunately the Ori aren't Lovecraftian horrors like the W'rkncacnter.
They are, however, religious zealots who rampage across the universe spreading the gospel of "Convert or Die."
Oddly, this all seems somewhat familiar.
