Martin Lloyd
Summary
Martin Lloyd is a human from another planet which was destroyed in a war with the Goa'uld and is hiding on Earth because he and four other soldiers deserted when they realized the war was lost. He was introduced in the episode, 4.11 "Point of No Return".
Character Biography
Martin was one of five aliens from a distant planet. Though their technology was advanced, the people were unable to properly fight against the Goa'uld. Martin and the rest of his ship's crew were under orders to travel to Earth and seek help from the Tau'ri. When they arrived, they discovered Earth was not as advanced as their own culture. The crew decided to desert and hide on Earth. They hid their ship further in the solar system and crashed in Montana using an escape pod.
Martin eventually realized that deserting their people was wrong and tried to convince the others to return. He was not able to convince the others, but, realizing Martin was now a liability, they drugged him with an alien pharmaceutical that made him forget his long term memory. They kept his home under surveillance and ensured he continued to remain oblivious about his alien origins. One of his shipmates posed as his psychiatrist, Dr. Peter Tanner, and continued to prescribe him various drugs laced with the memory-loss chemical.
Martin fought against the drugs. A side effect caused him to become paranoid, and he became obsessed with conspiracy theories such as a secret government, CIA microwave harrassment, and lizard people. During one of his searches on the internet, he came across talk of a Stargate project. Somehow, he was able to garner up enough information to know about Colonel O'Neill and the project's location in Cheyenne Mountain. Martin telephoned the SGC with his knowledge. He also believed he wasn't just interested in outer space, he was "from outer space."
O'Neill met him at the Montana diner Martin specified, with the rest of SG-1 conducting surveillance. While O'Neill kept Martin occupied, searching for his spaceship, Teal'c, Daniel Jackson, and Samantha Carter searched Martin's home. From their search, they believed Martin to just be conspiracy addled harmless kook, but they take samples of his numerous medications to be tested. Bob, Ted, and another of Martin's alien shipmates caught SG-1's investigation from their camera surveillance.
A Montana lab forwarded the results of Martin's medications to Dr. Fraiser, who found traces of an unknown alien chemical present in several of his prescriptions. Armed with this knowledge, Daniel and Sam visited Dr. Tanner, while Martin approached Jack about his evidence there were intruders in his home. Martin also gave Jack a Stargate address he remembered in his dreams. With this Stargate address and now Daniel and Sam missing, Jack began to suspect there was truth behind Martin's insistence he was an alien. In any case, Martin Lloyd was the only lead to find Sam and Daniel.
O'Neill and "Murray", the pseudonym used for Teal'c, would not allow Martin to take any more of his medication, so Martin's memory was spottily returning. He was finally able to correctly lead them to the site of his ship's escape pod, and remembered it was rigged to notify the others if anyone tampered with it. Martin nervously allowed himself to be used as bait to lead O'Neill's men to where the other alien fugitives were holding Sam and Daniel. They found Sam and Daniel, but Martin's shipmates disappeared, rigging the escape pod to explode. However, Martin was able to steal the ship's remote control from Tanner.
Martin accompanied Teal'c and Colonel O'Neill to his homeworld, only to find that the Goa'uld had destroyed everything and there appeared to be no survivors. The Air Force set Martin up with a real estate job, so that he could live out his life on Earth. However, Martin was devastated at the loss of his homeworld. He began to take the same medications Tanner had dosed him with to make himself forget what had happened. He succeeded for a time, not remembering that he had laced his own vitamins.
However, this time, Martin still retained some memory of SG-1 and the Stargate program, though he thought they were merely a product of his imagination. He created a story based on the team, including an idealized rendition of himself. Although rejected everywhere, the manuscript was finally picked up by a network, and Martin was hired as a creative consultant on the show: Wormhole X-Treme, which began filming approximately one year after Martin's initial meeting with O'Neill and SG-1.
Martin only had limited status as creative consultant. His advice was not listened to by the producers, and the network executives had no qualms about leaving him behind when they were heading to lunch. However the director sought his opinion and the costume and make-up people sought his approval.
In the meantime, Martin's spaceship was returning to Earth because of a timed homing mechanism keyed into the remote control. Because of this, SG-1 tracked down Martin once again. Colonel O'Neill became assigned to Wormhole X-Treme as the Air Force consultant. He was shocked when Martin had no memory of him or ever being in Montana. O'Neill found the vitamins and sent them to Fraiser for analysis. Believing Martin's shipmates were up to their old tricks, the rest of the team joined O'Neill as backup.
Meanwhile, Martin did not believe O'Neill when confronted with the truth and suspected O'Neill was trying to sell him a story. Even when led into a trap and captured by his shipmates, Martin insisted that O'Neill, who was captured with him, must have been the real target. Only after Tanner injected Martin with the antidote to the memory loss drugs did Martin remember everything. He realized they were after the device, which was being used as a prop for the television show. They found the device, and met with a standoff with the others. Although three of his teammates beamed on board the ship, Martin seemed happy with the filming crew and expressed no interest in going back with them, so they left him behind.
Martin may have been one of the people sued by Joe Spencer when the barber believed Wormhole X-Treme was stolen from his own stories. The suit was later dropped since Wormhole X-Treme was cancelled.
Although Wormhole X-Treme only aired three episodes, DVD sales were successful and the studio approached Martin about developing a television movie based on the series (10.06 "200"). Martin approached the SGC to review the movie script, and the Pentagon agreed for plausible deniability reasons. Martin was excited to conduct a spin session with SG-1. The three veteran members of the team found the situation ridiculous, while Vala and Mitchell were intrigued.
Mitchell too became less excited when Martin continuously shot down his ideas such as zombies and puppets. Martin scoffed Vala would know what people from Earth would like in a science fiction show, but equivocated when Vala pointed out he too was an alien. However, Vala's plot ideas were blatant ripoffs from well known tv and movie ideas, and Martin called her on them. Although he was completely ignorant when she pitched him Farscape.
During the spin session, Martin dealt with the studio and the networks and worried how he could get the actors to sign without paying them money. He became inspired at the Stargate malfunction and badly tried to copy Major Carter's scientific explanation. In the end, it didn't matter. The movie was off the table because they had decided to restart the television series.
The renewed Wormhole X-Treme went on for ten years with Martin Lloyd as producer. Based on an interview done with him around the 200th episode, Martin had completely "gone Hollywood" and used false modesty to praise his own influence as writer and when he thought cameras were not rolling to berate someone for one of the actors trying to renegotiate his contract.
Episodes
Related Characters
- Col. Jack O'Neill
- Dr. Daniel Jackson
- Maj. Samantha Carter
- Teal'c
- Lt. Col. Cameron Mitchell
- Dr. Janet Fraiser
- Vala Mal Doran
- Bob
- Joe Spencer
- Dr. Peter Tanner
- Ted
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Actor
--Aurora 14:09, 19 April 2006 (PDT)