Tonight’s episode of Stargate Atlantis is “Doppelganger”, written and directed by Robert C. Cooper. In this story, the Atlantis Expedition suffers from nightmares with Sheppard as the antagonist after he touches a crystalline structure harboring an evil, psychopathic entity.
Script coordinator Alex Levine gave the background behind the story in his scifi.com blog. “When he [Robert Cooper] was a little boy (maybe too little?), his Dad took him to see JAWS, and it had a big effect on him. He was lying there in bed that night, probably scared out of his wits, and thought to himself that some day he wanted to control the power that gripped him the way JAWS did. So that’s why he decided to become a filmmaker. And now he’s turned that power on you people in Doppelganger, a story about nightmares and people’s fear of dreams.”
Cooper digs deep into Stargate SG-1‘s rich ten-year mythology to put his story together. He told Gateworld, “O’Neill went out, touched a crystal and all this stuff happened [1.07 “Cold Lazarus”]. We’ve never done that again. And I thought, ‘Well, wouldn’t it be interesting if we found another crystalline life-form like that.’ But in that case we were kind of lucky that it had reasonably good intentions. There was a sinister aspect to it in that we didn’t know what was going on, but at the end of the day it was kind of just curious. So I took the flip side of that and said, ‘What if it’s a psychopath? What if it’s truly evil?’ And it enduces some pretty freaky nightmares. […] What would our characters dream about? The fun part of the episode is, because it’s Sheppard that initially engages and touches the crystal, and thus unleashes the entity on everyone, the physical form it takes in the nightmares is Sheppard. And so everyone is having these nightmares that are being pulled out of them by the entity, but Sheppard is appearing in those dreams as the sort of negative [inciting] force.”
“Doppleganger” was the first episode to be filmed so that Cooper could move on to the production of the first SG-1 movie, Stargate: The Ark of Truth, which he also wrote and directed. Although it was first to be filmed, it is fourth to be aired, and that presented some interesting challenges. Levine explained, “For example, Carter is settled and in charge of Atlantis now, but Rob and the actors had to sort of guess at how the relationships between her and the other team members would have evolved by this point in time. I think they had some scripts to read, but not all. And even so, things can change from the page to the screen. They also had to think of practical concerns. For example, what’s her office look like now? That sort of thing. So that was a challenge.”
The out-of-airing-order production of the episode also had another effect: somehow iTunes released this episode under the title “Adrift” (the actual first episode to air) for the fans to download! The mistake was soon corrected, but not before several people got an advanced viewing! It remains to be seen if this premature release will affect the live ratings tonight.
Within the storytelling itself were the challenges of not giving away the twists and turns too soon. Levine related, “Rob also told me he found some conflicts between his two roles as writer and director. For example, as a director, he was excited because he thought he would have many opportunities to use interesting camera techniques in the dream sequences. But then he discovered that, in order to maintain the story, he has to keep the audience guessing as to what is a dream and what isn’t. Apparently the technical term for that is a “goof”. So he wasn’t able to go crazy, using wide lenses and making it look very surreal, or else that would tip the goof too soon and the audience wouldn’t be fooled.” Levine then offered a hint as to how to tell the Sheppards apart (read his blog to find out).
In portraying both Sheppard and his doppelganger, Joe Flanigan offered in a Starburst interview, “It’s really important that there’s a distinction between your character and its twin, but in this case it was tricky because for the first two-thirds of Doppelganger you can’t tell which Sheppard is which. It had to be a gradual distinction between the real one and his twin until the latter evolves into complete evil. It was a little complicated, though, because we didn’t quite have all the scenes written in order to qualify the transition. So it was a fairly abrupt evolution from subtle differences to glaring differences.”
Executive producer and co-showrunner Joseph Mallozzi told fans in his personal blog that this episode includes “a Sheppard beat-down to beat all Sheppard beat-downs.” According to Levine, “In fact, this was the first episode that we used a 3D flying rig for stunts. And the stunt in which Sheppard is kicked off the balcony — well that’s really Sheppard. Joe Flanigan did his own stunt there.”
Tune in tonight at 10pm Eastern on the Sci Fi Channel for the premiere of “Doppelganger” (repeats at midnight). If you are recording the episode, keep in mind that lead-in show Flash Gordon will be running over for about two minutes because “flashback” scenes are being shown for Battlestar Galactica: Razor (the midnight showing might be as far behind as four to five minutes).
After viewing, visit our on-site forum to vote and discuss the episode.