“Then a batch of unexpected villains shows up. Let’s just say, Daniel has a history with them,” Michael Shanks told TV Guide recently about the mysterious armor-clad aliens who abducted his Dr. Daniel Jackson and David Hewlett’s Dr. Rodney McKay in the first part of the mid-season two-parter, “First Contact”. In tonight’s episode, “The Lost Tribe”, we’ll find out exactly what Shanks meant.
“Well, the spacesuits are a big deal and we find out in ‘The Lost Tribe’ who and what are inside them,” director Andy Mikita revealed in a newsaroma.com interview. “The suit itself is a pretty neat concept and design.”
Executive producer Joseph Mallozzi explained the design process in his weblog: “Well, we knew what we wanted. Something cool-looking. And we knew what we didn’t want: lycra, shiny plastic bits, and enormous cod-pieces (q.v. SG-1 super soldier). After much discussion between Marty [Gero, writer] and Production Designer James Robbins, the villains were given their look: sleek, nefarious, body armor chic.”
The single alien left behind in Atlantis self-destructed, so Sheppard and Zelenka weren’t able to discover the identity of this new threat, but in tonight’s episode, Daniel manages to strike up a dialogue with one of his captors and gets the alien to show him what is beneath the armor. Daniel is shocked by the revelation. Mallozzi explained how the idea to link Daniel and the new villain came about: “I had pitched out the idea that given the Wraith’s weakened position in the Pegasus Galaxy as a result of the heavy losses they had suffered over the past year, it would make sense for advanced civilizations that had been in hiding for hundreds of years might seize the opportunity presented by the shift in the galactic status quo to make themselves known. We went back and forth on who these aliens might be until Rob [Cooper] came up with a clever spin on a familiar notion.” [emphasis ours]
In “First Contact”, Daniel and Rodney come to the conclusion that they won’t be rescued soon and in tonight’s episode, they decide that they must turn off the Attero Device on their own. The “unforeseen side effects” have put the entire galaxy at risk—not just the Wraith against whom the Device was engineered as a weapon 10,000 years ago.
In the newsaroma.com interview, Mikita explained some of his directorial decisions about this episode before he actually filmed it and revealed that “Daniel and McKay have to put on these suits in order to go incognito and solve a particular puzzle.
“One of the issues that came up was how do you photograph people wearing these suits that, except for their voices, the audience won’t be able to see who’s inside them. That could be kind of boring just looking at one inanimate suit basically looking at another one. So we’re taking a page from the movie Iron Man and thinking about filming really tight close-ups of the actors from an inside-helmet point of view and maybe adding some reflections and layers without getting as complex as they did in Iron Man. So there are lots of little details to think about, but, again, the scripts are fantastic and will be a blast to shoot.” We’ll see tonight if Mikita’s vision was realized.
And Daniel and Rodney aren’t the only ones with some serious problems! What of Sheppard and Zelenka and Atlantis’s Stargate? What of the crew of the Daedalus that is now under the control of Todd the Wraith? And finally, who are these mysterious aliens that Daniel has a history with? Tune in tonight at 9pm (NEW TIME) on the Sci Fi Channel to find out how the lost tribe’s grip on Pegasus gets loosened (or not)!
Preview Videos – Beware of Spoilers! –
- MGM: The Lost Tribe
- Sci Fi: The Lost Tribe
- Cinema Blend: Clip from Daniel Jackson’s Return to Stargate Atlantis (reveals the identity of the aliens)
Solutions Coverage –
- Episode Guide (spoilers and additional links to interviews and other articles about this episode)
- On site forum: SGA S5 Discussion Board
- Live Journal
[Images from MGM.]