Please be advised, there are spoilers for the second half of Atlantis Season 3.
A short history of “Saving Carson Beckett”…
The first hints of Carson Beckett’s fate came in August 2006, when both Torri Higginson and David Hewlett warned of shocking developments to come in the latter half of Season 3 that would “set the internet on fire.” [Note: they were not referencing Weir’s change in status; they did not yet know about it.]
Next came rumors that an extra who had been on set during the filming of “Sunday” had seen the filming of a funeral scene in which a coffin was draped with a Scottish flag.
Then in October, Jewel Staite announced at a convention in the UK that she was considering a recurring role as a doctor on Stargate Atlantis. She let slip to a table of fans that Paul McGillion would no longer be on the show, but this was not said in public. Jewel quickly backed away from her statements, declining to provide any information about her role. But, a casting director at the New Jersey Stargate convention that same month told fans Jewel was contracted for 12 episodes, nearly as many as Paul had been appearing in even as a regular.
To this point, it’s fair to say many fans did not believe that the rumors and various bits of news added up to Carson Beckett being written out of the show. The campaign to save him had started in September, with many expressions of support but also a fair number accusations of overreaction by fans.
Then on the weekend of 17-18 November, at a con in the UK, producer N. John Smith explained that Carson Beckett would “disappear” by the end of Season 3. He softened the news with the much-used cliché that “no one ever dies sci fi,” but fans were still shocked to hear it. It later became clear that Smith was not supposed to have given this news publicly.
The campaign certainly gained momentum with this news, but Smith’s reported use of the term “disappeared” leant enough doubt for some fans to declare Carson’s absence must be temporary and that surely he’d be back.
Once the news was public, Jewel Staite admitted it was true Paul was leaving, but claimed her new character, a prodigy doctor, would not be “replacing” Carson in the sense she would be playing a different character of a different gender. As much as no one blamed Jewel for taking a job, fans were led to question the swap and whether some assumptions about “desired demographics” played a role.
Final confirmation that Carson Beckett was to die and that Paul McGillion was being dismissed from the cast came on the weekend of 13-14 January 2007, when someone at MGM put unedited, raw video interviews of crew and cast members of Stargate on their web site. In David Hewlett’s interview, which was not supposed to be released until Season 3 had aired in the US, he talked about the loss of Paul from the set and of Carson from the show, and how it would happen in the episode “Sunday,” just as the campaign had said all along.
The next day, on 15 January, “Sunday” aired in Canada. Finally, it was shown that Carson died irrevocably, his body sent home to Earth for burial. Fans should not be comforted by his spirit “appearing” to Rodney in the final scene. Taken all together, it is unavoidably true that Carson and Paul are gone from Stargate Atlantis. In fact, in true Stargate tradition, Carson was not even mentioned in the next episode of Season 3, “Submersion.” As usual, he was killed off and forgotten as if his loss meant nothing to those remaining.
We don’t know why this decision was made. Carson was a very popular character, the “Heart of Atlantis,” and by all accounts, Paul McGillion was absolutely loved by the cast and crew. Paul has also made it clear it was not his decision to leave and that he would love to “play the good doctor” again.
Those of us who started fighting this decision in September are fighting even harder now, both because we love Carson and because, based on what we know, Paul McGillion did not deserve to be “fired.”
If you’re a fan of Carson, we invite you to join us in fighting to return him to his place on the show. Please visit us: SaveCarsonBeckett.com to read the details behind each discussion point above, sign our guestbook, write a letter to TPTB for us to send for you… in other words, join our fight!
