Month: March 2008

SGA S5 Spoilers: "Whispers"

5.07 “Whispers”

Sheppard and Beckett join Maj. Anne Teldy’s team on a planet with one of Michael’s research facilities for the early versions of his human-iratus hybrids concealed inside a cave system. Unfortunately, the explorers have a role in setting loose creatures that hunt down each of them as they get separated in a blinding fog.

Details

Sheppard and Beckett are on their way to rendezvous with Maj. Anne Teldy’s team to see something of great interest. It’s a far walk to their destination from the Stargate, enough that Beckett complains that he’s not in shape for such a trek that included rappelling down the side of a mountain and walking through a forest. The two men compare their times in stasis pods and its effects on the body. Sheppard has Beckett beat, though, since he was in a pod for 800 years versus Beckett’s two months.

Maj. Teldy introduces Sheppard and Beckett to her team: Sgt. Dusty Wells, Capt. Alicia Vega, and Dr. Alison Porter. Once the group arrives at the destination inside a cave system, Beckett immediately recognizes it as a research facility that Michael used to create the early versions of his human-iratus hybrids. There are twelve people in stasis, but Beckett and Porter decide not to revive them until they understand their conditions first.

This kind of mission isn’t much fun for the members of the team who have no scientific interest in the discovery, but Beckett and Porter hit it off as they share in each new discovery. The two scientists request to stay the night so that they can read the records they’ve downloaded into their tablets, so Sheppard and Teldy start to make preparations in a nearby abandoned village. They meet a lone man from another village named Mirellus who was on a hunting trip when he saw them. He wanted to find out what they were doing there and to warn them about the village’s curse: villagers had begun disappearing about a year and a half ago, and eventually, the remaining villagers left because they felt that the village was cursed by some kind of creature.

Mirellus is an observant man, and he is aware that Sheppard came from the direction of the cave system, which he says is cursed by wild animals as well. But, what Mirellus stupidly does next puts everyone in tremendous danger as a blinding fog, which also affects flashlights and electronics, begins to pour in, and the team gets separated in it.

Guest Characters

  • Dr. Carson Beckett (Paul McGillion)
  • Maj. Anne Teldy
  • Dr. Alison Porter
  • Capt. Alicia Vega (Leela Savasta)
  • Sgt. Dusty Wells
  • Mirellus

Production

  • Written by Joseph Mallozzi
  • Directed by William Waring

SPOILERS ARE SUBJECT TO CHANGE AS THE EPISODE IS IN PRODUCTION.

SCI FI and Tapping: "Sanctuary" Is All New

Emilie Ullerup as Ashley Magnus, Amanda Tapping as Helen Magnus, Robin Dunne as Will Zimmerman of "Sanctuary"

SCI FI WIRE’s Ian Spelling talked recently with Amanda Tapping about her new series Sanctuary, which will be making its television debut this fall on the Sci Fi Channel. Tapping represented her new show, for which she is starring and executive producing, at the channel’s Up Front event in New York held earlier this month.

The show already has a ready-made fan base thanks to its web-based predecessor, an eight-episode season that was made available for purchased downloads in May last year. Tapping did say, however, that the 13-episode first season of the television show will be significantly different, starting with the making of a new pilot for the series, created by Damian Kindler and co-written by Martin Wood, two Stargate veterans. “The fact is it’s already evolving. Our pilot that we’re now going to start shooting is very different from what you’ve seen on the Web.”

How significant the differences will be remains to be seen, but Tapping reassured her fans that her character Dr. Helen Magnus “is still this crazy character. She’s 157 years old, and she’s very eccentric and very sexy and very unapologetic. I love it.”

To read the full article, visit Sanctuary Is All New. Visit the web-based series’ homepage at Sanctuary for All.

ETA: A follow-up story was published by SCI FI: Sanctuary‘s Tapping Also Producer.

"The Ark of Truth" Broadcast Premiere on Sky One

Cover art for "Stargate: The Ark of Truth" DVD

Stargate: The Ark of Truth made its world premiere on DVD on March 11 in North America, but fans in the UK will be seeing the movie broadcast first on television before it makes its DVD release.

Sky One will be showing the movie twice this coming week. The lastest entry in the online version of the broadcaster’s schedule indicates that the movie will premiere on March 24 at 8pm (there has been some confusion about the time, since earlier reports had the movie starting at 9pm). Also, there will be a repeat on March 26 at 8pm. Sky One HD will also be showing the movie at those times.

The broadcaster’s description of the movie: “This feature-length follow-up to the action-packed series sees the SG-1 team embark on their deadliest mission yet. With the fate of Earth hanging in the balance, will they succeed?”

The DVD for Region 2 has a scheduled release date of April 28 (originally was April 14).

The next events for the movie are the screenings in Australia at the Supanova convention on March 28 in Melbourne and April 4 in Brisbane. Representing Stargate will be Teryl Rothery (Dr. Janet Fraiser) and Jewel Staite (Dr. Jennifer Keller).

The following are the known dates for future international DVD releases (thanks to our readers for helping put the list together):

  • April 8, 2008: New Zealand
  • April 9, 2008: Australia
  • April 23, 2008: France
  • April 23, 2008: The Netherlands
  • April 28, 2008: UK (Note: moved from April 14)
  • April 29, 2008: Italy
  • May 2, 2008: Germany
  • June 25, 2008: Spain
  • July 28, 2008: Czech Republic

If you’ve heard of other release dates, please leave the information in our comment section below. Thanks!

Claudia Black on Filming and Motherhood

Claudia Black as Vala (SciFi 3)Claudia Black was recently interviewed by Steve Eramo for TV Zone Magazine, Issue 226 (available for purchase here). Among many things, she speaks about her experiences filming Stargate SG-1’s Season 10 as a new mom, and filming the movies while pregnant with her second son. From the interview,

“On the personal side, I thought I could do what Amanda Tapping had done the prior season and have a baby,” she says. “Nurse the baby on set, which production was willing to accommodate (amazingly rare in the workplace) and do a decent job. I was wrong and I failed. While everyone else was celebrating 200 episodes — a milestone in Science Fiction television — I was experiencing in stark contrast, a personal and professional low. We had relocated from Australia to Vancouver with a newborn who was ill and no family or friends around to help. My hours were hell, the workload more than sizeable, and when my poor husband got pneumonia and I got postnatal hyperthyroidism, our family and household crashed.

“When I finally admitted defeat — personal, first, then professional — and went to Rob Cooper,” Stargate SG-1’s executive producer, “to ask for help, there was little he could do. I was used to the fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants production that was Farscape, where the scripts were delivered on the day if you were lucky and production got used to being very flexible. These guys in Vancouver, however, are extremely organized; the scripts had been written well in advance and were wall-to-wall Va-la-la! So Rob asked me if I could hold off having a ‘breakdown’ until the upcoming hiatus, and I obliged to the best of my ability.”

Regarding filming the movies, she said, “Vala was low-ish maintenance in Continuum,”… “I was on strict doctor’s orders to work limited hours with Continuum due to a miscarriage scare during the first movie, so that put a lot of pressure on production to get me out every day on time… On both movies I struggled monumentally with shocking morning sickness. If anyone mentioned food I started to cry, and then dug my knuckles into my palms until they were close to drawing blood… Cliff [Simon] was incredibly sweet and careful about what he consumed around me, but one day I caught a whiff of something and gagged through my lines ’til I heard Martin Wood yell, ‘Cut!’ and then raced to a trashcan just next to set. I hope Cliff didn’t take it personally.”

To read more of this interesting interview, purchase Issue 226 of TV Zone!

North Shore News Interviews Amanda Tapping

Amanda Tapping (spring/summer of 2007)

Vancouver’s North Shore News conducted an interview with Stargate star Amanda Tapping earlier this month to talk about her career with the franchise and other endeavors.

Tapping described her character Samantha Carter, “She’s strong, she’s smart, she’s capable, she’s unapologetic for it. I like her because she’s really well-rounded. Even from the start she wasn’t a stereotypical female sci-fi character. She had a lot more going on. And over the course of the years obviously the writers have really rounded her out as a human being and as a woman. And (she was) also just so physical too, which really appealed to me.”

At the time of the interview, Tapping was filming an episode for Season Five of Stargate Atlantis before moving over full-time to her role of Dr. Helen Magnus of Sanctuary at the end of this month. Sanctuary, for which Tapping also serves as executive producer, has been picked up by the Sci Fi Channel and TMN (The Movie Network in Canada) for a 13-episode season. The show had a unique way of presenting a pilot by showing it first on the Internet. “It’s such an interesting model. And I think it is the way that things are going to be going. We were riding the crest of that wave. And I’m not going to say that TV will ever become obsolete because I don’t think that it will, but a lot of people are going to the web for their entertainment. We just wanted to try it out.”

Tapping talked about some of her career history and how it was built up slowly as she started out filming commercials. She has a theatre background and co-founded a comedy troop in Toronto. She guest starred on the Vancouver television circuit until she landed the role of Captain Samantha Carter. As far as future roles, Tapping admitted, “I’d love to do a period drama. Starting out on stage and doing a lot of classic theatre, I’d love to get back to that.”

For the two direct-to-DVD movies, Stargate: The Ark of Truth and Stargate: Continuum, Tapping was enthused about returning to the sets to work with her SG-1 co-stars. “These people become not just your friends, but your family, and such a part of your life. It was fantastic getting back together for the DVD. It was so much fun.”

Stargate: The Ark of Truth was recently released in North America (Region 1) on March 11. Stargate: Continuum is due for a July release (the date of July 29 is being bandied about, but has not yet been confirmed). Tapping explained that the resolution of the Ori storyline in The Ark of Truth “will allow for future stand-alone movies that don’t have to keep reaching back into the mythology of the show,” according to Rosalind Duane of North Shore News. Tapping told Duane that she’s looking forward to possibly more Stargate features.

To read the complete two-page interview, visit Gifted group behind Stargate’s success.

Bridges Cast in "Max Payne" Film

Beau Bridges

According to The Hollywood Reporter, Stargate star Beau Bridges has been cast in the film Max Payne that is based on the Rockstar video game with the same name.

The movie started filming March 3 in Toronto, and according to Gaming Today, will be completed May 9. It is being directed by John Moore and was written by Beau Thorne.

Gaming Today described the movie as the “story of a New York cop whose wife and baby are killed by thugs high on a designer drug called Valkyr. Devastated, the cop joins the Drug Enforcement Agency and goes undercover with the mob to find the source of the drug. Framed for the murder of his partner and hunted down by both the mob and the police, he is forced to wage a one-man war against crime.”

“Bridges will play B.B. Hensley, a former cop and mentor figure to Max Payne, who helps him track down a cunning, ruthless killer,” according to the Reporter. Mark Wahlberg is playing the title role, and “Mila Kunis will play an assassin who teams with Payne to avenge her sister’s death.”

Bridges is also continuing to play in his recurring role as Carl Hickey in My Name Is Earl, and according to the Reporter, he’s already filmed one episode and is due back this month to film another. The Reporter also mentions that Bridges had a regular role in Stargate SG-1.

Hewlett's "Starcrossed": A Web-Based Series on Scifi.com

At their “upfront” event held today, the Sci Fi Channel announced its upcoming slate of offerings not only for their cable network, but also for their website http://www.scifi.com. Included in the list of web-based programming is Stargate star David Hewlett’s Starcrossed series.

The following was announced by Multichannel News: “Sci Fi is also buttressing its cyberspace presence with the fourth-quarter launch of a Web-exclusive series Starcrossed on Scifi.com. David Hewlett (Stargate Atlantis) penned the series that takes a comical look at life behind the camera at a long-running science-fiction space soap.”

Starcrossed made a type of debut within Hewlett’s dark comedy A Dog’s Breakfast. Casting for the new web series, however, has not yet been announced.

To get further information on what Sci Fi plans to offer, including the backdoor pilot Caprica, a prequel to Battlestar Galactica, visit Multichannel News.

SGA S5 Spoilers: "Ghost in the Machine"

5.05 “Ghost in the Machine”

Surviving human form Replicators wish to achieve ascension by uploading their consciousnesses into subspace to live indefinitely as fields of energy, but Atlantis is put into danger when their experiment yields some surprising results.

Details

Told from Elizabeth Weir’s point of view, we learn that a group of Replicators have begun experimenting with ascension. The lead scientist, Koracen, claims he has found a way to preserve their individual consciousnesses indefinitely as fields of energy. The process involves uploading themselves into subspace where they’ll be free to roam the galaxy, no longer requiring their physical bodies, which are destroyed when the nanite bonds holding them together are severed in the final stage of the process.

This research is based on the description of ascension provided to them by Elizabeth Weir. She is present during the first demonstration of Koracen’s process, witnessing first-hand the blue energy that bolts down upon her fellow Replicator, dissolving the subject’s body. Quite possibly, the Replicators have achieved ascension!

But all experiments such as this have their drawbacks, and this experiment produces a most unexpected result: Those in Atlantis are surprised to find that the ghost of Elizabeth Weir lives on — in a new body that looks just like FRAN (Friendly Replicator ANdroid from “Be All My Sins Remember’d”)!

Guest Characters

  • Dr. Radek Zelenka (David Nykl)
  • FRAN (Michelle Morgan)
  • Koracen
  • Lia
  • Female Replicator

Production

  • Written by Carl Binder
  • Directed by Ken Girotti

Spoilers are subject to change as this episode is in production.

Cooper: "Ark" Has "Darker, Edgier Moments"

In Part 4 of MGM’s interview with Robert C. Cooper that covers his new direct-to-DVD movie Stargate: The Ark of Truth, the writer, director, and producer discussed putting a new face on an old enemy. Cooper said, “When it’s just me sitting down with my computer and I have to fill a blank page, I’ll write something I want to see, and hope that there are enough people out there that are fans like me and want to see that stuff!

The IOA recreates the Replicators in "The Ark of Truth"

“I’ve always loved the Replicators. I thought it would be a nostalgic element to the movie that would kind of recall the ‘glory days’ of SG-1,” Cooper admitted.

This generation of the Replicators is brought forth by the International Oversight Advisory (IOA) as a weapon to end the Ori invasion. The blueprint for one of the first-generation bug-like Replicators was stored in the Asgard Core, the legacy given to Earth by the Asgard in the series finale “Unending”. Cooper continued, “A lot of people often criticize the show for not utilizing the technology that’s given to us, so I thought this was a great opportunity. We do kind of have ‘Pandora’s box’ here. The team is smart enough by now — hopefully — not to just go into those things and do whatever they want. But the IOA is not as cautious as that.”

The Replicators nearly wiped out the Asgard, but with SG-1’s help, the nemesis was finally eradicated … or so it was thought (see Season Eight’s “Reckoning Part 2”). Unfortunately, in the movie, the IOA has programmed modifications into the mechanical critters that makes them even more difficult to exterminate.

IOA Representative James Marrick from "The Ark of Truth"

In looking for the IOA’s representative who would be considered the “bad guy” in the movie, Cooper instructed casting director Paul Weber to find someone who could pull off being “the adversary and the opponent for Mitchell” and “someone that can almost look unbeatable. It’s that attitude, to instantly be that guy that you love to hate.” Their man was Currie Graham, and Cooper enjoys the the actor’s great sense of humor, but admits that the tone of the movie didn’t offer him the opportunity to do comedic scenes. Graham’s James Marrick is taken down by the very thing that he sets loose when the IOA ignores SG-1’s suggestions and experience and develops their own plan on how to stop the Ori army.

Marrick’s fate is sealed in a most horrific manner, and Cooper admitted that they would have not presented it at the same graphic level when the SG-1 stories were told in a TV show. “You always want to strike a balance between what people will think is cool and belongs in a movie as opposed to on television but not going so far that it freaks out little kids,” Cooper laughs. But in The Ark of Truth, there were opportunities to present a more graphic story. “There were definitely scenes that I know I would have not wanted to see when I was really young. But hopefully it’s cool that there are some darker, more edgier moments.”

To read the full interview, visit MGM: Ark Angel – The Ark of Truth, Part 4.

Previous parts of the Cooper interview:

Stargate: The Ark of Truth made its world premiere release on DVD in North America on March 11. The next known major movie event is Monday, March 24, when the UK’s Sky One broadcasts the movie at 9pm, with a repeat on Wednesday, March 26, at 8pm. The DVD will be released for this region on April 28.