Script coordinator Alex Levine told of the beginnings of tonight’s episode, Brad Wright’s “The Shrine”, in his scifi.com blog: “Brad came up with the concept while all the writers were in the room spinning ideas. He wanted to do a ‘reverse Flowers for Algernon’ where McKay starts to lose his mind. In fact, the working title for the episode for a long time was ‘Flowers for McKay’. And at the start, Brad only had a couple of beats – the one I just mentioned, and the realization that Teyla or Ronon, being native to the Pegasus galaxy, might have a non-scientific remedy for McKay’s ailment.
“Okay, that’s all I’m going to tell you about the episode (because that’s all that Brad told me). Except that just before shooting, I ran into director Andy Mikita in the lunch room and he told me the cast was really excited about the episode, especially David Hewlett, who gets to flex his acting muscles in this one.”
“The Shrine” has been described as a tour de force for actor David Hewlett, allowing him to go from obnoxious to innocent in a single episode as McKay slowly loses himself to his affliction. McKay’s sister Jeanie Miller (played by Hewlett’s real-life sister Kate) is called in to say her goodbyes.
Joe Flanigan said in a recent Cinema Spy interview, “It’s a very good episode. It’s nice to do character pieces with some character development. If you watch the show you’ll realise that a lot of times we’re engaged with some exterior problem on a level where you’re constantly engaged with something and you don’t have time for character development. So when you do get a script that has that it’s kind of nice. And I think everybody did a really amazing job. Everybody has really great moments in that episode.”
Rumor has it that the script made Jewel Staite cry. Watch tonight, 10pm ET on the Sci Fi Channel, and see if you aren’t affected the same way.
Preview Videos – Beware of Spoilers! –
Solutions Coverage –
[Image from MGM Official Stargate website.]