Watching SG1 s10e7, and a jaffa uses one of the team’s radios to talk with Daniel Jackson and then to deliver orders to his subordinate, and it made me wonder why the goa’uld never gave the jaffa handheld communicators. It seems like all messages are delivered by word of mouth except for ship to ship communication, and the communication balls which are apparently only used by the goa’uld themselves. Given how useful it would be for coordinating troops I’m surprised they don’t have them. I wonder why the showrunners never thought to give them something like a goa’uld radio.
goa’uld are paranoid creatures right? Maybe makes the possibility of coordinated uprising/betrayal too high.
thats certainly the canonical answer. the tactical advantages would far outweigh any paranoia though. all it would take is one goa’uld to do it and the rest would be forced to follow suit. rapid communications in a war are incredibly valuable, so some minor goa’uld would risk it in their arrogance and lust for power.
Do major goa’uld fear military defeat more than rebellion though? Seems like a minor goa’uld who recklessly empowers their soldiers would be safer to stop via overwhelming power by the system lords rather than set a new baseline for everyone that allows for their soldiers to turn on them.
The jaffa were really bad at military tactics in general, which makes the most sense if you assume they were more for putting down human rebellions than fighting wars. And before SG-1 they mostly just fought each other, so everyone involved has reason to not empower them.