Stargate: Extinction, the Stargate Atlantis movie written by Joseph Mallozzi and Paul Mullie, will have to be tweaked a bit to make way for the guest appearances of David Hewlett and Robert Picardo, who are reprising their roles of Dr. Rodney McKay and Richard Woolsey, respectively, in the fifteenth episode of Stargate Universe‘s second season, “Seizure”.
We won’t be seeing this episode until sometime in 2011, but preliminary spoilers indicate that Woolsey and McKay will be involved heavily in negotiations with a Milky Way planet’s ambassador to dial Destiny using their naquadria core (like what was done at Icaruse Base). There is science involved, of course, and McKay must explain it for the laypersons while Woolsey puts on his legal hat.
“I’m back in a business suit, so I’m apparently no longer a commander,” Picardo recently told his fans in a Q&A hosted by StarTrek.com. This may or may not be a spoiler, since Woolsey could be donning a business suit for this special occasion, having been called away temporarily from Atlantis Base, but we don’t know for certain. What if he isn’t the commander of Atlantis anymore? What does that mean for Woolsey and the rest of the Atlantis Base personnel?
All of which leads to the big question: “Where is Atlantis, anyway?”
So far, what we know for certain is that the Stargate timeline has been impacted by Woolsey’s and McKay’s presence in the negotiations, happening over a year since Atlantis returned to Earth in “Enemy at the Gate” in 2009. Mallozzi explained in his weblog back in July, “There was a reluctance to move ahead with an SGA crossover, particularly on my part, because the feeling was it would step on the timing of the SGA movie, Stargate: Extinction, the events of which directly proceed the Atlantis series finale, Enemy at the Gate. But given the delay on the movie front and the ideal premise pitched out by Remi Aubuchon and Brad Wright, it was decided to go ahead with the crossover. Not a big deal, but it will require some changes to the Stargate: Extinction timeline which, in turn, will beg a host of questions, some of which will be answered in episode #15, some of which won’t…at least not right away…”
Mallozzi had previously told his readers that a certain amount of time has passed since “Enemy at the Gate” relative to SGU and the movie: “Oh, if you’re wondering about in relation to SGU – maybe days. And if you’re wondering in relation to the Atlantis movie – maybe a week.” So, theoretically, Atlantis would still have been located on Earth when Icarus Base was evacuated in the series premiere “Air”. Then, the events of Stargate: Extinction would have taken place a few days later. Mallozzi gave away only a portion of the events happening in the movie (“The action starts on Earth, then shifts to Atlantis, then shifts to a planet, then back to Atlantis.”), but doesn’t tell us whether or not Atlantis started on Earth and ends up back in Pegasus. But he did say that the movie covers “Earth-based intrigue, intergalactic travel, a looming threat to the city of Atlantis, and a sometime friend and foe who may hold the key to averting disaster.” (Emphasis mine.)
When asked to confirm the new timeline, Mallozzi put his stamp of approval (he said “Correct”) on the following:
1. Stargate Atlantis: “Enemy at the Gate”
2. The third SG-1 movie: Stargate: Revolution
3. Stargate Universe: Seasons One and Two
4. The SGA movie: Stargate: Extinction
This change in the timeline might seem to have a big impact on the movie, Atlantis’s location at the time of the Milky Way-based negotiations in “Seizure”, and Woolsey’s status as commander, but Mallozzi said that it only requires “some minor re-jigging to the opening” of the movie’s script. We still don’t know whether or not the Stargate Program’s base of operations on Earth was moved from Stargate Command in Cheyenne Mountain to Homeworld Security in the Pentagon or to Atlantis nearby, and Mallozzi has teased that we might not know via SGU, but will have to wait for the SGA movie, which he still hopes will be produced soon.
As far as I’m concerned SGU doesn’t exist. It’s a crappy show, dark and boring.