Stargate Atlantis returns to the Sci Fi Channel tonight with its penultimate episode, “Vegas”, written and directed by Robert C. Cooper. Set in an alternate reality, viewers get to see some of their favorite Expedition members in different settings and life’s paths. But, Las Vegas is still Las Vegas, all bright and shiny and the place where many people—or a super-intelligent alien—could actually hide in plain sight.
Detective John Sheppard doesn’t know about Wraith, but he’s seen the results of the feeding process on several corpses found in his jurisdiction. To put some wrinkles in his on-going investigation, Sheppard must deal with the press and the federal government.
“Vegas” had a working title of “CSI: Atlantis” and with good reason: the style of presentation is very much like that of the popular CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, which is also set in Vegas. Cooper stated in an interview, “If you tuned in late, you might think you had turned on the wrong show.”
Although the penultimate episode, “Vegas” was the last episode to be filmed. The location shoot in Vegas itself marked the end of Atlantis as a television series. One top-notch location in the city known for its gambling casinos was Planet Hollywood. Carol Cling of the Vegas Voice blog on the Review Journal website posted that the crew spent two days “in front of the casino, inside the casino — and on the roof, where a stunt player will perform a nine-story fall.”
“Nothing makes an episode feel more realistic than shooting on location,” script coordinator Alex Levine posted in his scifi.com blog. “And nothing else really feels like a Vegas casino.” And a Vegas casino wouldn’t have the right feel if it didn’t have an interesting variety of gamblers. Look for Soprano actors Steve Schirripa and Frank Vincent, MGM’s Charlie Cohen, and real-life poker players Todd Brunson and Roy Winston. The Wraith who joins in on a game might not be as recognizable as actor Neil Jackson, familiar to SG-1 fans as Anubis’s “son” Khalek from Season Nine’s “Prototype”.
“Other supposed ‘Nevada’ locations were actually shot here in British Columbia,” Levine continued. “Even the desert! And no, they’re not VFX; rather they’re a sampling of the incredibly diverse terrain we have up here in the Great White (and not so white) North.” One of these Canadian filming locations made the Penticton Western News with its incredible explosions: “An explosion tears apart a trailer on the outdoor set during Wednesday’s filming of an episode of Stargate Atlantis in a field just east of Oliver. RCMP closed off a section of Camp McKinney Road during the blast which sent flames over 30 metres into the sky.”
You know how that saying starts out with “What happens in Vegas”? Well, when it comes to Stargate Atlantis and sci-fi, we’ll have to find out if it actually finishes with “stays in Vegas” tonight at 9PM ET/PT on the Sci Fi Channel (repeats at 11 PM).
Preview Video – Beware of Spoilers! –
Solutions Coverage –
- Episode Guide (includes spoilers and links to other articles of interest about the episode)
- On site forum: SGA S5 Discussion Board
- Live Journal
[Images from MGM.]