SGA S5 Spoilers: "Vegas" on Location

Joe Flanigan and crew have gone to Las Vegas, Nevada, to film the penultimate episode of Season Five of Stargate Atlantis, “Vegas”, written and directed by Robert C. Cooper. Carol Cling of the Vegas Voice blog on the Review Journal website posted a brief interview with Cooper about the shoot in SHOOTING STARS: ‘Stargate: Atlantis’ orbits Planet Hollywood. Cooper explained the plot of the episode that sees Detective John Sheppard and FBI Agent Richard Woolsey investigating Wraith killings on Earth.

Cooper confirms that “Vegas” is an alternate reality story, with “a slightly askew version of Earth.” Sheppard “ended up as a homicide detective in this reality,” Cooper told Cling.

The Wraith is played by Neil Jackson (SG-1 fans will remember him as Anubis’s “son”, Khalek). Amazingly, this Wraith has come to Earth and has blended into society, but he’s left several dead bodies exposed to the elements that Sheppard is investigating. The two finally meet in a casino playing high-stakes poker! Additional poker-playing guest stars include Sopranos veterans Steve Schirripa and Frank Vincent.

Cooper admits that the episode is shot in a style similar to CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, which is also set in Las Vegas. He said, “If you tuned in late, you might think you had turned on the wrong show.”

There will be an amazing stunt performed by stunt coordinator James Bamford’s team, as Cling reveals in the opening paragraphs of the article: “To some, Las Vegas already qualifies as an alternate universe, complete with alien life-forms. But Stargate: Atlantis puts that description into practice at Planet Hollywood, spending Monday and Tuesday in front of the casino, inside the casino — and on the roof, where a stunt player will perform a nine-story fall.”

Principal photography of the show’s finale, “Enemy at the Gate”, has already been completed in Vancouver. These scenes shot in Vegas will be the final scenes shot of the television series. Already, though, Joseph Mallozzi and Paul Mullie are spinning the story for the first Atlantis telemovie that will be broadcast first on the Sci Fi Channel and then distributed on DVD in 2009.