I suppose you'd think it'd fine if it was called a wormhole or whatever? Also in what way are portals always lazy? They can be used for super convenient transportation and that can do it, but usually the portal goes to some weird fucking place that there is no way the protagonist could walk or drive to. Stargate is all about the availability of a portal and it's consequences, portals can be pretty cool.
If you're going to invent a made up technology, it should be one that increases the cool factor (things like "warp drives", spaceships, cyborgs, whatever) or or leads to interesting plot points or dilemmas (like time travel, but that's pretty overplayed as well). At least Stargate has a cool looking portal, but as far as I can remember, all it does is take them somewhere, and it doesn't even look cool when they arrive. Like Star Trek but without the cool spaceships.
portals have always been lame. A top tier lazy plot device.
I suppose you'd think it'd fine if it was called a wormhole or whatever? Also in what way are portals always lazy? They can be used for super convenient transportation and that can do it, but usually the portal goes to some weird fucking place that there is no way the protagonist could walk or drive to. Stargate is all about the availability of a portal and it's consequences, portals can be pretty cool.
If you're going to invent a made up technology, it should be one that increases the cool factor (things like "warp drives", spaceships, cyborgs, whatever) or or leads to interesting plot points or dilemmas (like time travel, but that's pretty overplayed as well). At least Stargate has a cool looking portal, but as far as I can remember, all it does is take them somewhere, and it doesn't even look cool when they arrive. Like Star Trek but without the cool spaceships.
City on the Edge of Forever, highest rated original series episode, portal.
Stargate did a ton of interesting stuff with the gate. Also they get cool spaceships later on.