SGA S5: "Whispers" Casting

Stargate Atlantis executive producer and co-showrunner Joseph Mallozzi has been keeping his readers up-to-date on the writing and production process of his Season Five episode “Whispers” in which Dr. Carson Beckett and Lt. Col. John Sheppard are surveying a planet with an all-female Stargate team. The episode is also a horror story, complete with mutants, strange dolls, gas masks, and blinding fog that interferes with flashlights and electronics.

Yesterday, Mallozzi published the names of the actors who will be portraying the new team members:

	The four-member all-female team is commanded by Major Anne Teldy, the character being named after one of the regular visitors to Mallozzi’s blog who won a contest the producer held there. The talk is that she was supposed to be killed by mutant space cows, but things do have a way of changing as the script moves along the production line. Teldy will be played by SG-1 veteran Christina Cox, who had starred in her own Lifetime series Blood Ties. Cox played in “Spirits” and “The Sentinel”, and now she’s making the move to Atlantis.
	Our readers should already be familiar with Leela Savasta, who is in the new recurring role of Captain Alicia Vega. Her character will make her debut in Season Five’s premiere episode, “Search and Rescue”, when she joins Col. Samantha Carter on an S&R mission in the collapsed building that swallowed several members of the Expedition in Season Four’s finale, “The Last Man”.
	Sgt. “Dusty” Mehra (formerly known as “Dusty” Wells) is being played by Janina Gavankar, who played Eva ‘Papi’ Torres in The L Word. Dusty is a no-nonsense soldier who shows a teasing side in her interactions with Beckett and Dr. Alison Porter, the fourth member of the new team.
	Dr. Alison Porter will be portrayed by sci-fi veteran Nicole de Boer, known as Lt. Ezri Dax in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and Sarah Bannerman in The Dead Zone. Beckett and Porter geek out on the technology left behind by Michael in one of his research facilities where the first human-iratus hybrids were being created. “Dusty” sees the mutual attraction and makes herself scarce so that the two can be alone together.