Tonight’s episode of Stargate Atlantis is “Quarantine”, written by Carl Binder. During normal daily activity, the city suddenly initiates a quarantine lockdown, trapping people all over without a way out or a way in. If there is really a contagion in the city, Dr. Keller can’t get to her patients, and this could be a very bad thing.
Script coordinator Alex Levine explained in his scifi.com blog that “Quarantine” is a “bottle episode”, meaning that the production used existing sets and had very few, if any, guest stars. After having spent a large portion of their budget on the visual effects of “Be All My Sins Remember’d”, the writers decided to go more toward a character-driven story with this episode. The story centers around the relationships emphasized by the odd pairings that result from the lockdown: Carter and Zelenka in a transporter; McKay and Dr. Katie Brown in her lab; and Keller and Ronon in the infirmary.
Although “Quarantine” is a “bottle episode”, it doesn’t mean that there are no visual effects. Levine described the development of this episode’s VFX sequence, “Lastly, I should mention the amazing VFX sequence of the tower climb. When Carl envisioned the script, he knew most of it would take place in interiors, so, even though this was a bottle show, it was going to need a breathtaking sequence to open up the episode. So you get to see your hero, Sheppard, in a death defying climb up the Atlantis tower. Carl called it a ‘visual showpiece’, which is exactly what it is.”
Find out which relationships thrive and which are strained as the city takes over tonight on the Sci Fi Channel at 10pm Eastern and then visit our on-site forum to rate and discuss the episode.
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