SEASON EIGHT PREVIEW
Peter DeLuise offers a look ahead to what season eight has in store
By Kate Ritter
On July 9th, the SciFi channel launches the eighth season of “Stargate SG-1” with a 3-hour special including “From Stargate to Atlantis: A SciFi Lowdown”, a behind the scenes look at the series, and the big two-part season premiere, “New Order”. Peter DeLuise offered to share his own unique glimpse into what fans can look forward to in the first half of season eight. Please note that the synopses that follow contain spoilers.
FROM STARGATE TO ATLANTIS: A SCIFI LOWDOWN
(Airdate July 5, 2004 at 10pm, repeated July 9, 2004 at 8pm)
[Synopsis from SciFi:] ‘From Stargate to Atlantis: A SciFi Lowdown’ looks at the history of ‘Stargate SG-1’ as the series prepares for season eight and launches into the next phase of the ongoing saga: ‘Stargate Atlantis’. The one-hour special features new interviews with Richard Dean Anderson, Amanda Tapping, Christopher Judge and Michael Shanks, as well as classic clips from ‘SG-1’ and exclusive behind-the-scenes footage of both shows in production - including a never-before-seen look at the amazing ‘Stargate Atlantis’ sets. Get a sneak peek into what's upcoming, meet the creators and the casts of both shows and catch up on the stories and the backstory of television's hippest science-fiction programs!”
NEW ORDER
Airdate: July 9, 2004 [2-hour season premiere]
Part 1: Written by Joseph Mallozzi and Paul Mullie
Part 2: Written by Robert C. Cooper
Directed by Andy Mikita
“In ‘New Order’, O’Neill has to be brought back, as you know, because he was frozen, Han Solo Guy. So that has to be dealt with. Of course we can’t keep him frozen the whole time. He’s got to be reanimated. O’Neill gets upgraded in rank to brigadier general, but we just say ‘general’ because it’s easier, and he takes over the SGC. He’s in charge. Carter gets promoted as well, to lieutenant colonel, but we just say ‘colonel’ because it’s easier, and she is made head of SG-1, and it stays a three-person team. Then there is the issue of the human form Replicators that have to be dealt with as well, because there’s quite a lot of them. There’s not just Fifth. There’s more than just him. We have to figure that out as well, and they’re a force to be reckoned with. We can’t just go, ‘Ah, the Asgard will take care of them,’ because that’s not really working out. They’ve been fighting a losing battle for a very long time. But, ‘Fifth is back, and he’s very upset. This time it’s personal.’ And he has a horrible crush on Carter. But then, who doesn’t?”
LOCKDOWN
Airdate: July 23, 2004
Written by Joseph Mallozzi and Paul Mullie
Directed by Will Waring
“In ‘Lockdown’, a hostile entity, an alien non-corporeal presence, takes over the base. Most of these stories are happening in and around the SGC, some on Earth. In the case of ‘Lockdown’, it can’t happen anywhere else, because they’re completely isolated on the base and they can’t leave. ‘New Order’ happens on ships, in space, and stuff like that. ‘Avatar’ happens on the base, because that’s a simulation. ‘Zero Hour’ is base. ‘Icon’ is off-world and base. ‘Covenant’ has a lot of base in it too. It’s quite ironic, because we said that O’Neill would be in charge of the SGC, thinking all the stories would be somewhere else, and that he would have as much screen time as possibly Don Davis. Well, the exact opposite happened. All the stories start happening in the SGC now!”
ZERO HOUR
Airdate: July 30, 2004
Written by Robert C. Cooper
Directed by Peter Woeste
“‘Zero Hour’ is ‘A Day in the Life of General O’Neill’. It talks about how hard it is to be the commander of the SGC. What the audience will find out is that General Hammond has been dealing with a whole lot of crap that we never see. When SG-1 is going off having a grand old time, there’s tons of stuff that needs to be dealt with off camera with other SG teams that we never actually see. And now we do see. In ‘Zero Hour’ we actually do see General O’Neill dealing with stuff that General Hammond always had to deal with, but we never knew it.”
ICON
Airdate: August 6, 2004
Written by Damian Kindler
Directed by Peter Woeste
“‘Icon’ is ‘English Patient Daniel’. Daniel wakes up in a strange place and he’s got a blindfold on because his face is all messed up. And there’s a very pretty girl nursing him back to health. And he’s on another planet. A lot of the story is told through flashback, and it has to do with the idea that the stargate is, in fact, a religious icon on this one planet. And when it comes to life, and we come through, we set in motion a domino effect whereby religious zealots cause the planet to go on an apocalyptic course of events, where they use their weapons to ensure mutual destruction. And we completely devastate the planet, merely because we opened the stargate and said hello. We confirmed the idea that their religious icon is in fact a working, living, real, truthful thing. And so the religious zealots sort of screwed everything up for everybody else. And Daniel feels responsible for that, so he stays and tries to make a difference, and tries to set it all right, and therefore gets hurt.”
AVATAR
Airdate: August 13, 2004
Written by Damian Kindler
Directed by Martin Wood
“‘Avatar’ is the video game, the ‘Gamekeeper’ simulation. The VR chairs have never left. If you look really closely at ‘Point of View’, you’ll see them in the Area 51 lockup. The chairs are on the shelf as we go through Area 51, when we end on the quantum mirror, and long-hair Carter and Kawalsky come through. You quite clearly see that the chairs are on the shelf there, because we recovered those chairs from the planet. We took them, from Dwight Schultz, who’s very upset! Dr. Lee and his group of scientists program a VR chair for the purposes of simulation, for training purposes. And Teal’c is in there, and he’s playing his first person shooter video game, trying to deal with potential foothold situations that they might come across. In this particular scenario, it is if an Anubis drone got onto the base, how they would handle that battle. It’s the same premise as ‘Tron’. He can’t get out, ‘Matrix’, if you will, he won’t give up, the game is getting harder and harder, and then suddenly his life is at stake.”
AFFINITY
Airdate: August 20, 2004
Written by Peter DeLuise
Directed by Peter DeLuise
“The theme of ‘Affinity’ is Teal’c’s and Carter’s right to have a life, Carter to have a love life, and Teal’c to have just a life, because he lives on the base, and he’s a security risk. And now that he doesn’t have a symbiote, you can’t just mug him and take his symbiote like they did when the billionaire grabbed him because he was terminally ill, and they grabbed the symbiote out of that other Jaffa guy. Because he no longer has a symbiote, and he has tretonin in his system, he’s not a security risk in that way. So he would like to have something that resembles a normal life, even if it’s not normal for a Jaffa to have that kind of life. He wants to interact with other people, and he feels that he has a right to have relationships with women, and go grocery shopping, and watch movies like everybody else. So he goes out in the world, and gets an apartment and starts to experience life as an Earthling. And we’re forwarding the relationship between Carter and Pete Shanahan. Off camera, as we establish on the show, they meet each other two times a week for lunch, and it’s date night, and they’re continuing the relationship, just like we suggested in ‘Chimera’, that they had more experience together than just what you saw on camera. It’s what would happen if Teal’c and Carter both proactively pursued their right to have a life outside the base. You know, Teal’c has saved the planet a couple times over, and insofar as Carter’s sexual tension with O’Neill, she had ‘Grace’ where she made a decision. She says it’s very easy to be in love with a man I can’t have, so she resolved at that point, even though she was conked on the head, she made a resolution that she would, in fact, investigate her right to have a love life. And because she can’t have a love life with the O’Neill character, she has to look for love and affection elsewhere. And she has a right to be happy.”
COVENANT
Airdate: August 27, 2004
Written by Ron Wilkerson
Directed by Martin Wood
“‘Covenant’ is about a very rich philanthropist who is insistent that the government come clean. He’s sick of the lies, and he wants everyone to come clean. And we are in a position to try to get him to understand that if you reveal all of the truth, then life as we know it on Earth will stop. There will be mass chaos, most likely Roman orgies in the street. Which is not necessarily a bad thing! But you just can’t put it on television! They should probably just show the philanthropist the ‘Icon’ episode, so that he can see how crappy it can get. And Joe and Paul thought that we were overusing too much the phrase ‘Rogue NID’, because it seemed like they were nothing but rogue. There was just nothing but bad guys in there, even though they were a standup organization. So they gave themselves a name that they start using in earnest, and they’re referring to them as ‘The Trust’ now. The Rogue NID have gone off and they actually refer to themselves as The Trust. We never completely wiped out [The Committee], that table full of cigar smoking elderly gentlemen. You know, you can’t ever wipe them all out.”
SACRIFICES
Airdate: September 10, 2004
Written by Christopher Judge
Directed by Andy Mikita
“‘Sacrifices’ is otherwise known as ‘My Big Fat Jaffa Wedding’. That was the original premise of it. And it is Rya’c who is going to get married. One of the Amazon Jaffa women and he have hit it off. He’s been spending time on Ha’ktyl with Bra’tac, trying to get them into the rebel movement. And in so doing, he fell in love with this girl. And Ishta wants to stop Moloc. Moloc, as you know, has a crappy attitude, and he has all the women killed because he needs male warriors. And a lot of the priestesses are spiriting the young female Jaffa away, and they’ve formed their band of Amazon Jaffa. But they have to continuously raid male Jaffa to get the symbiotes, otherwise they’ll die. And so Bra’tac and Rya’c are trying to get them into the rebel movement, but Ishta would like to assassinate Moloc because he continues to kill female Jaffa at birth, which she thinks is reprehensible. But they’re saying, for the bigger picture, for the rebel movement, if you kill Moloc, you’re just going to get another guy to come in and take over all his troops. What you have to do is, you have to surgically assassinate a bunch of Goa’uld at the same time and create a gigantic power vacuum. That’s the only way to really beat them. And so they’re at odds with how to properly deal with their problems. She’s too close to the Moloc problem to see the bigger picture.”
END GAME
Airdate: September 17, 2004
Written by Joseph Mallozzi and Paul Mullie
Directed by Peter DeLuise
“‘End Game’ is the sequel to ‘Affinity’. ‘End Game’ is, the stargate goes missing. It’s gone. The game’s over. It’s endgame. The storyline for this is, in ‘Chimera’ Osiris was visiting Daniel in his sleep and monitoring his subconscious to try to figure out where the Lost City was. We did a sting operation, and we caught her, but we know that she was operating from a ship, somehow, in orbit, because she was able to beam down and mess with him while he was sleeping. In ‘Affinity’, part of what happens is that Teal’c becomes involved in a murder, and eventually that pays off in End Game, [when the stargate is stolen].”
