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.
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