30.Nov.07
Posted in Articles & Updates, Atlantis at 1:31 pm by DeeKayP
The last episode of Stargate Atlantis, “The Seer”, presented the Atlantis Expedition with some of the dire consequences of their actions, and laid a heavy burden on the decision makers by allowing them a glimpse of a possibily catastrophic immediate future. It’s hard to predict what brings that ill-fated future to fruition, but Dr. Rodney McKay realized that his personal actions had more of an effect than he ever realized at the time he made his decision to reactivate both the nanites in Elizabeth Weir and the Wraith attack commands in the Pegasus Replicators.
Even with this lesson, in tonight’s episode, “Miller’s Crossing”, written by Martin Gero, Rodney contacts his sister Jeanie to help with the programming of the nanite technology, and it is because of her involvement that she gets kidnapped from her very own bed in her home in Vancouver.
Henry Wallace wants to save his daughter from a fatal disease. He’s aware of the McKays’ e-mail correspondence concerning the alien nanite technology through his position in a medical technology firm contracted by the government and sees that Jeanie has a better grasp on the healing capabilities of the technology than Rodney. But, getting both McKays to work together is a bonus, as he takes his opportunity to capture Rodney as Rodney attempts to rescue his sister. This situation once again reminds Rodney that his actions have far-reaching consequences that even he could never have begun to calculate.
“Miller’s Crossing” is not only about nanite technology, but chemistry, according to script coordinator Alex Levine in his scifi.com blog. The chemistry to which he was referring had to do with that between actors: “The character Henry Wallace is played by Stephen [sic] Culp of Desperate Housewives fame. According to David Hewlett, Culp and Kate Hewlett (David’s real and on-screen sister) have great chemistry, great repartee. And I concur. It’s a fast paced episode which you’ll enjoy. I also love seeing David and Kate work together. You get the feeling their real life relationship is a lot like what we’re seeing (whether it actually is or not!).”
Even executive producer Joseph Mallozzi identified this episode as having “that incredibly angsty McKay-Sheppard scene” in his personal blog, so it is possible that more actor chemistry will be evident tonight. But why is McKay so angsty? Fan speculation has that Jeanie meets an untimely death, to which Mallozzi responded, “No comment.” Tune in tonight at 10pm Eastern on the Sci Fi Channel to find how far the consequences go.
After viewing the episode, please visit our on-site forum to rate and discuss the episode.
Spoiler previews:
Permalink
Posted in Articles & Updates, News at 11:40 am by michelle
We’ve at long last completed our report and gallery for the Creation Stargate Convention held in Burbank from November 16-18, 2007. Read detailed descriptions of the appearances by Michael Shanks, Joe Flanigan, Cliff Simon, and more! Also over 75 pictures of the 7 actors who appeared.
Read the report here in our features section.
Permalink
28.Nov.07
Posted in News, SG-1 at 7:51 am by DeeKayP
A 10-year anniversary and Stargate: The Ark of Truth trailer has been posted at TrailerPlay.com and at SendIt.com. For viewing only the portion of the trailer for The Ark of Truth, visit YouTube.com.
Several of the scenes in the trailer match those written about by our Solutions staffer Michelle after she saw it at the Comic Con back in July. Going only from memory and a few notes, Michelle gave a remarkable report on the trailer’s contents, which includes a mixture of clips from the movie and the show and old visual effects footage from Seasons Nine and Ten.
Several fans have made screencaps of the trailer, the most notable being from SaberBlade, who has published a list of links to ImageShack.com images on the Gateworld forum.
Stargate: The Ark of Truth closes the Ori story arc that was started in Season Nine. The direct-to-DVD movie was written and directed by Robert C. Cooper and is due to be released in North America on March 11, 2008 (tentative date).
[Thanks to our on-site forum members SueS and Kalliope for the tips.]
Permalink
18.Nov.07
Posted in News at 10:25 am by michelle
During his appearance yesterday at the Creation Burbank Convention, Michael Shanks informed the audience that Brad Wright cannot move forward on writing the third SG-1 movie because of the ongoing strike by the Writers Guild of America (WGA). Brad Wright has pitched his story idea to MGM, but he has to stop there. Although he’s Canadian, due to past writing jobs he is a member of the WGA, so he’s obliged to abide by the strike. The same is true for Robert C. Cooper. Wright and Cooper may continue their producer duties on Stargate, but they can’t write scripts for the third movie or other projects. Either someone not a member of the WGA will have to write the movie script, or it will need to wait for the strike to be settled.
Michael reiterated that Stargate Atlantis will not be greatly impacted by the strike. Of all their regular writers, only Carl Binder is a WGA member, and as Joe Mallozzi already said, Carl has left the studios to join the strike in L.A. The rest of the Stargate Atlantis writers are members of the Writers Guild of Canada only. Michael mentioned that Joe Mallozzi had called him to ask if he is interested in appearing as Daniel in “one or two” episodes of Atlantis Season 5. Michael is interested as long as Daniel isn’t killed off. 
Michael also said production of Rage of Angels can move forward, because creator/writer Chris Judge is a member of the WGC only. Michael and Chris’s production company, Slacktwaddle, is currently in negotiations with MGM for the show, and that is the lengthiest part of the process, he said. Once the deal is in place, the show will be filmed in Canada, presumably Vancouver. Michael’s character, Lucifer, will be a recurring character. Michael is happy with this because it will leave him time for other projects.
A complete con report with pictures will follow soon!
Permalink
16.Nov.07
Posted in Articles & Updates, Atlantis at 10:26 am by DeeKayP
If someone who has never been wrong in his visions of the future shows you something devastating is about to happen, what would you do? How you react to avoid it could actually make the vision come true, or you might have interpreted it wrong to start. Is it better to not have known at all?
These questions and more await Col. Samantha Carter in tonight’s Stargate Atlantis episode, “The Seer”, written by Alan McCullough and directed by Andy Mikita. In Teyla’s search for her missing people, the Athosians, the team meets a new race, the Vadeenans, whose leader Davos gives Carter a look into a possibly dangerous immediate future.
Executive producer Joseph Mallozzi explained more about Carter’s situation in an MSN TV Blog interview: “It’s a bit of a bumpy road for her, especially in an episode later on called “The Seer.” It’s an episode that explores her command decision. It forces her to step up and assume that command role in a big way under the scrutiny of Richard Woolsey, who happens to be there while all this is happening. He’s there to review her three-month stay as commander, so there’s added pressure.”
This is not the first time that Carter has encountered someone who has predicted a future event that actually came true. Her former SG-1 teammate Jonas Quinn had several visions after he was genetically altered by the Goa’uld Nirrti in an Ancient DNA manipulation device (“Prophecy”). One of his more intense visions included Carter in a medical emergency. Thinking that she got hit by a staff weapon blast, he urged her not to go on the next mission through the Stargate. SG-1 leader Col. Jack O’Neill agreed to keep Carter out of the mission, so she decided to help with the power generators on the base. She ended up getting injured just as Jonas had foreseen, but his interpretation of the cause of her injury was in error. The team’s reaction to the prophecy was what made it come true.
A similar thing happens with Dr. Rodney McKay in tonight’s episode when he misinterprets the vision that Davos gave to him. Even though the events unfolded exactly as Davos had described, their meaning ultimately was different than what McKay thought. The ailing Davos’s visions are not lengthy, so there is plenty of room for misinterpretion. But the vision given to Carter makes her believe that it cannot be misinterpreted, so she asks Davos more questions about his past predictions, and he tells her that he has never been wrong. Carter tells him that she has always believed that the future is what you make it. Davos warns her that the galaxy is at a crossroad and that the future of many worlds depends on the actions of a few. “And all of it is centered here, in this place,” he concludes about the City of the Ancestors, Atlantis.
The episode “sets some really unexpected wheels in motion. All I can say without giving too much away is that we’re planting some interesting seeds that will emerge, and it gives this season’s plots a twist in a very clever way,” Joe Flanigan told Starburst while they visited him during the episode’s filming. These interesting seeds include the Asuran-Wraith war for which the Expedition is responsible and the reunion of Sheppard with his Wraith “ally” from the time they were both imprisoned by the Genii Kolya (“Common Ground”). This Wraith (his nickname among the producers is “Todd”) claims to have the original virus that the Wraith used to override the Asurans’ programming thousands of years ago. Why would he think that Sheppard and McKay will help him turn off the attack since they were ones to have started it up once again? And what’s even worse, another Wraith hive ship is approaching, and Carter sends Sheppard to the chair room to prepare for an attack. Can “Todd” be trusted?
“The Seer” also addresses the mystery surrounding the disappearance of Teyla’s people from last week’s episode, “Missing”. Davos tells Teyla that her people are still alive, but are shrouded in darkness. He warns her that she may not like what she finds.
Additional personal hardship for Teyla also awaits as she reveals that she is pregnant. Rachel Luttrell told SCI FI WIRE, “She is going to be faced with taking care of someone who may be the last of her kind. There are so many interesting colors that are now coming out.”
“For instance, the fact that she was pregnant,” continued Mallozzi in his interview, “it’s something she’s afraid of revealing to the rest of the team, because she’s afraid of how they’re going to react and whether they’ll still want her on the team. When she finally comes forward and reveals it, I can tell you some are happy and one is not very happy to find that basically she’d been keeping it a secret from him that long. So it strains relationships in that respect as well.
“What we set out to do in Season Four is untidy things a bit and strain relationships a bit and just see where we can go with that.” The strain begins tonight at 10pm Eastern on the Sci Fi Channel (re-airs at midnight). After viewing, please visit our on-site forum to rate and discuss the episode.
Spoiler previews:
Permalink
11.Nov.07
Posted in Atlantis, SG-1, Views at 1:45 pm by DeeKayP
It has almost become a running joke — the Many Deaths of Daniel Jackon — and maybe even Michael Shanks will join in on it for a few laughs, but after a while, one does have to wonder, “Does Daniel fear permanent death?”
At his recent appearance at the Creation Con in Secaucus, New Jersey, Shanks answered several questions dealing with Stargate character deaths and their impact on the actors who play them. In his usual playful manner, he answered some of them lightly, but for others, there was definitely a sense that he’s pondered the issue a great deal from the actor’s point of view, as well as from the storyteller’s. “It’s kind of losing that cliff-hanging, biting-your-nails, edge-of-your-seat kind of thing,” he told the audience.
Shanks remembers when he read the script for Season Eight’s “Reckoning Part 2″ in which Daniel is brutally stabbed to death through the chest by Replicator Carter. His reaction to writer Robert C. Cooper was, “Rob! Come on, man! This is like what? The tenth time?” Shanks declared about Cooper, “He gets a kick out of this stuff!”
He has even told the story from years back about how Brad Wright handed him the script for “Fire and Water” where in the teaser, Daniel is pronounced dead. Then, Wright devilishly takes the script back so that Shanks couldn’t read the rest of the story. That probably made the actor really start to wonder, but now, he’s taking the adage of “no one really dies in sci-fi” to heart. “I think I lost track at about eight,” he replied when asked how many times Daniel has died. Shanks might want to consider reading Michelle’s con report from the San Diego Comic Con held back in July where it clearly states that Martin Wood said that the magic number for sci-fi deaths is supposed to be “6″. What does that mean for Daniel and his actor, then?
Should Daniel’s fans be worried that he’ll be permanently killed off? After hearing at the New Jersey con about the recent death of Dr. Kate Heightmeyer from this season’s Atlantis episode of “Doppelganger” (which Rob Cooper wrote, by the way), Shanks declared, “Maybe I won’t guest star over there! Wouldn’t that be a mother, huh? Get through ten seasons of Stargate, die a few times, but get killed off permanently guest starring on Atlantis!” Hopefully, when executive producer and co-showrunner Joseph Mallozzi recently talked with Shanks over the phone, presumably to see if Daniel Jackson can make an appearance in a Season Five episode, Daniel’s actor covered the character’s tailbone with a guarantee that he’ll make it out alive.
Even still, Cooper told the San Diego crowd that it wouldn’t be a movie if Daniel wasn’t dying. Cooper is responsible for Stargate: The Ark of Truth, the first of the direct-to-DVD movies that will be released next year. Will Daniel die or come close to it in that movie? That’s not certain, but Shanks had this to say about Brad Wright’s Stargate: Continuum, the second movie to be released in 2008: “There’s a scene in Continuum that’s very dramatic in the sense that Daniel’s left in a precarious situation where he realizes that he might not make it out of it.” He then says that as an actor who is playing a character who has died and returned to life so many times, “It’s hard to build up the energy … how do I sell this one without acknowledging the backstory?” Shanks offers, “Even he’s stopping to believe in the fact that he might die permanently. So it can have an impact on it, believe it or not.”
For characters such as Dr. Janet Fraiser, Dr. Carson Beckett, Dr. Kate Heightmeyer, and possibly Dr. Elizabeth Weir, Shanks believes that deaths like these are for “dramatic impact”. And as an actor, Shanks understands how a character’s death can have an emotional impact on the actor. “As for starting the trend? As far as I know, I was the first one to go, so, hey, I can sympathize, you know? Death has its effect on actors.”
After Shanks explained to his New Jersey crowd that he only counted “human” deaths, instead of game avatar deaths and maybe alternate reality ones, he closed with a near afterthought that fans might consider a spoiler for the movies: “There’s more on the way.”
Permalink
Posted in News, SG-1 at 8:17 am by DeeKayP
Thanks to Andreas of “New Atlantis”, Stargate SG-1 fans have been given a sneak peek into the story behind Robert C. Cooper’s direct-to-DVD movie, Stargate: The Ark of Truth. Andreas has posted several PR images for Michael Shanks, Amanda Tapping, Christopher Judge, and Ben Browder, as well as a few “movie stills” that include Daniel Jackson, Vala Mal Doran, Tomin of Ver Isca (Vala’s husband), and the Administrator-turned-Prior. Also included with the movie stills is a behind-the-scenes image of Ben Browder and Amanda Tapping on location (in a forested area).
You may view these images at: Gateworld Forum: The Ark of Truth – Promotional Photography. Andreas is adding images to this one post so that all of them are in one easy-to-access location.
Thanks, Andreas!
Stargate: The Ark of Truth closes the Ori story arc that was started in Season Nine and will be released on DVD in the spring of 2008 (a tentative release date for North America is March 11, 2008).
Permalink
10.Nov.07
Posted in News at 9:10 am by DeeKayP
Stargate Atlantis executive producer and co-showrunner Joseph Mallozzi recently made the following announcement in his personal blog:
Also, I’m sure you’ve all heard by now that Stargate Atlantis has been nominated for a People’s Choice Award in the category of Favorite Sci-Fi Show. More surprising than the fact that we were nominated is the fact that this category actually exists in the first place. Since when? Although, in all fairness, there were a number of other categories that seem new to me including “Favorite Reunion Tour”, “Favorite Threequel”, and “Most Meticulous Animal Guest Star in a Musical or Variety Series”. Nevertheless, it’s nice to see the genre (and, of course, our series) being recognized. If you’d like to support the show and vote for Atlantis, head on over to -http://www.pcavote.com/pca/index.jsp
About the awards: The People’s Choice Awards has been honoring fan favorites for 34 years. Be a part of history by casting your votes for the stars, shows, movies and music you love (from their website). Fans may vote daily until the polls close (a countdown is at the website and at the time of this writing, was at 25 days, 11 hours, and 57 minutes). You’ll need Flash in order to interact with the polls. Winners will be announced Tuesday, January 8, 2008, at 9pm Eastern on CBS.
Permalink
09.Nov.07
Posted in News at 4:29 pm by michelle
Although produced in Canada, Stargate Atlantis is not immune to the effects of the strike begun this week by the Writers Guild of America against television and motion picture productions. Members of the union are obliged to go on strike unless they work and reside in another country. Stargate writer and producer Carl Binder is a WGA member, and although he is Canadian and works in Vancouver, his residence is in Los Angeles. That rule, in addition perhaps to his loyalty to the cause of the union, forced him to leave Bridge Studios this week after completing his duties as a producer for Season 4, as both Joe Mallozzi and Alex Levine have noted. Carl will not participate in writing episodes for upcoming Season 5 until the strike ends, a big loss to the production and to fans.
Carl joins thousands of union members and many sympathetic actors and producers on the picket lines in Los Angeles. Beau Bridges, SG-1’s General Landry, was on hand with a sign earlier this week (pictured above and at NYTimes.com).
At the core of the dispute is whether and how much writers should be paid when content they write is sold on DVDs or shown on the internet. Currently writers receive $0.04 per DVD sold, literally pennies, and are paid nothing from sales on iTunes, nor for airings on network websites, even when the on-line versions have paid advertisements. In this YouTube video, writers from the popular show The Office describe how they wrote 11 “webisodes” of the show that ended up winning an Emmy award. NBC still provides the webisodes on its website for free, with paid advertisements from which they profit. Yet, the network classified the webisodes as “promotions” and never paid any of the writers for their efforts, nor have they even paid for the Emmy trophies that are due the writers. Steve Carell, the lead actor on the show and also a writer for it, refused to cross the picket lines and did come to work to film this week.
This is not an unusual case. As Battlestar Galactica producer Ron Moore describes in this interview, the Resistance webisodes became a great source of contention between Sci Fi Channel and the production, over payment and credit. Ron Moore is walking the picket line.
In fact it’s hard to find anyone who isn’t on the side of the writers, from film crew to actors and even show runners. Producer Joss Whedon (Buffy, Firefly) posted to Whedonesque about why he supports the writers:
… when it comes to the internet and the emerging media there’s nothing there for the artists. There’s no precedent; these media didn’t exist the last time a contract was negotiated. We’re not just talking about an unfair deal, we’re talking about no deal at all. Four cents from the sale of a DVD (the standing WGA deal) sounds exactly as paltry as it is, but in a decade DVD may have gone the way of the eight-track. We have to protect the rights of the people who tell the stories, however they’re told.
… This is an era of change, and for the giant conglomo-tainment empires, it will either be the Renaissance or the Ice Age. Because we will not stand down. Writers can be replaced, as we are constantly reminded. But so can companies. Power is on the move, and though in this town it’s been hoarded by very few, there are other companies with newer ideas about how to make money off of — or possibly, wonderfully, with — the story-tellers.
There’s no question the impact of this strike is huge, to television viewers and to the many thousands of people who are paid directly or indirectly by the industry. Talk shows such as The Daily Show and David Letterman are already in reruns. Many scripted series will stop filming soon, and others won’t start; the full impacts are listed here. As productions shut down, crews will be laid off and related businesses impacted as well. WGA is aware of the impact, and also that other unions stand to benefit once a fair deal for writers is completed.
Sci Fi projects, including those of Sci Fi Channel, which carries Stargate in the U.S., are not escaping the tumult. Only 10 of the needed 20 Battlestar Galactica episodes have been written, and writing for the third season of Eureka will also be impacted if not halted. Although these shows are filmed in Canada, it’s fair to assume a significant number of their writers are American.
A Farscape convention attendee reported that Ben Browder said his upcoming project, presumably the Going Homer miniseries, would be affected. It’s not clear whether filming of the project by Chris Judge and Michael Shanks, Rage of Angels, will be delayed, since Judge is reported to have already written it.
As Stargate fans, we’re grateful our show is not as heavily impacted as others, and we hope that a fair nationwide resolution can be reached soon.
To read about the strike from the writers’ perspective, visit UnitedHollywood.com.
Permalink
Posted in Articles & Updates, Atlantis at 8:58 am by DeeKayP
Tonight’s episode of Stargate Atlantis, “Missing”, was written by Carl Binder and directed by Andy Mikita. Script coordinator Alex Levine wrote in his scifi.com blog, “Missing is almost a two-hander, as Teyla and the good doctor Jennifer Keller dominate the screen time. But really, it’s an action packed character study of two strong women in a terrible situation. Personally, it’s the character stuff that interests me the most, although I’m also a sucker for big special effects sequences. But when you get to watch a new character, like Keller, go through events that really bring out what she’s made of, that’s when it gets exciting for me. And I think, also, that the character stuff is why people tune in week in and week out.”
Executive producer and co-showrunner Joseph Mallozzi talked with MSN TV Blog about Dr. Jennifer Keller: “She really is the fish out of water, and we really explore that in the episode called “Missing”. She goes off to New Athos with Teyla just to do some checkups on some local Athosian kids and things go horribly awry. Her idea of roughing it was the summer camp she used to attend as a kid. She finds herself on the run for her life, kind of a city girl in the back country with only Teyla there to protect her. Teyla has her hands full with her and is a little impatient with her. I think this episode is our Thelma and Louise episode, if you could call it that. So that’s a fun episode that explores the character. She’s obviously well-educated, she’s young, very capable, but at the same time a little naive just in terms of her expectations regarding the Pegasus galaxy. She’s an interesting character that we get to know more of in “Missing,” and then we explore a lot more in the back half of Season Four.”
Mallozzi told a behind-the-scenes tale in his personal blog about how Jewel Staite, who plays Keller, braved crossing a rope bridge built especially for the episode. “Director Andy Mikita assured her that he wouldn’t need much from her. He would yell ‘Action!’ and she would start walking across the scary-as-hell bridge – maybe two or three steps – at which point he would yell ‘Cut!’ and she could turn around and head back to the relative safety of solid ground. Jewel was game. So Andy yelled ‘Action!’ and Jewel started walking. And walking. And waiting for someone to yell ‘Cut!’. And walking. And walking…past the halfway point of the bridge. What a trooper. Apparently, heights aren’t a problem for Jewel as she performed most of the rope bridge stunts herself including the…well, I don’t want to give it away. Check out [the] episode and watch for this memorable sequence.” This memorable sequence might be where Keller ends up dangling from the bridge as seen in the previews put together by MGM and Sci Fi (look for links at the end of this article).
Keller is accompanying Teyla to New Athos to treat the Athosians, just like Dr. Carson Beckett used to do. She’s not comfortable with going off-world, and is especially uneasy because Beckett’s shoes are incredibly big to fill. Still, she packs her medical supplies and lots of lollipops for the kids. Immediately upon arrival at the village, Teyla senses something is wrong. Her people are missing, and in their stead, they encounter the primitive tribesmen of the Bola Kai, a new villain met by the Expedition in the Pegasus Galaxy. And according to Levine, they’re “pretty cool” when he added to “look for the lollipop shot, you’ll know what I mean when you see it.”
Levine wrote, “Carl [Binder, writer] said the genesis of the story was that he wanted to take some of our characters and isolate them from their technology, so it’s basically a survivor scenario.” In this environment, we’ll see the warrior side of Teyla emerge. Mallozzi said in the MSN TV Blog interview, “You see the true warrior come out. We’ve seen the noble warrior, the leader, sort of the forthright, clear-minded, powerful role model if you will that we’ve established in previous seasons. One of the things we set out to do in Season Four is say, ‘Well let’s see the dark side of that.’ Because as a warrior, she kills people. We demonstrate Teyla as an individual, where she’s a warrior who makes use of her skills, but when it’s life or death, she has to make decisions that are shocking.
“We’ve got this one sequence where she takes on a bunch of warriors, she kills a bunch of them and one takes off. She chases him down and kills him. And Dr. Keller is horrified. [Teyla]’s like, ‘This is reality. If he gets away to his band, he’ll give us up. I had no choice but to kill him.’ That’s an aspect of the Teyla character that we wouldn’t have seen the first two or three years but is a reality if she were in that scenario. If she were in that scenario, that’s exactly what she would do. It was an opportunity to see a bit of the darker side of her and some of the other characters as well.”
Levine did say this episode was “action-packed”, and to attest to this, viewers will see the fighting side of Teyla’s nature come on full force. Those interested in the behind-the-scenes production process of Stargate may be interested in visiting the MGM site to view the featurette “Anatomy of a Fight” wherein stunt and fight coordinator James “BamBam” Bamford takes the viewer through the step-by-step process of filming a fight scene for this episode.
Mallozzi added in his personal blog, “It’s an episode that explores the darker facet of Teyla’s warrior persona, and also sets up one of this season’s major story arcs.” Witness the beginning of this arc by tuning in tonight at 10pm Eastern on the Sci Fi Channel. Take note that the schedule is still a bit off as Battlestar Galactica: Razor “flashback” scenes are being shown during Flash Gordon. Also, take note that although the scifi.com schedulebot doesn’t reflect a change in Sci Fi Friday’s line-up, TV Guide has listed that Flash Gordon has been moved to 8pm, with a repeat of last week’s Atlantis episode, “Tabula Rasa”, at 9pm.
After viewing the episode, please visit our on-site forum to cast your vote and to discuss the episode.
Spoiler videos:
Permalink
« Previous entries Next Page » Next Page »
