ALEC COLSON

Alec Colson was a brilliant engineer and a billionaire industrialist. When he was 24, his wife and daughter had died in a plane crash, and he started Colson Aviation, vowing to make flying as safe as possible. His company grew into Colson Industries, a global empire of companies including communications, biotechnology, aerospace, and aviation. By age 42, Colson was number eight on the Fortune 500, personally held over 200 proprietary patents, owned several Earth observer and weather satellites, and had a net worth of over $60 billion.

Over the years, Colson Industries, headquartered in Seattle, had acquired a number of government contracts that were loosely related to research and development of alien technologies the SGC had procured off-world, including the development of a multi-engine control system for the F-302, the salvage and cleanup after the battle with Anubis over Antarctica, and a project from the Department of Defense involving the sequencing of a sample of Asgard DNA.

Colson had always been an idealist, and although his passion and enthusiasm were sometimes taken as eccentricity, he was widely respected. His father had been a newspaper reporter who was jailed during the McCarthy Era, and Colson believed strongly in freedom of speech and the right of the people to know what their government is doing. It was this belief that led him to hold a press conference in which he declared that he had proof that the governments of the world were covering up the truth about alien life beyond our world, and that aliens with technology far beyond ours have been intervening in our existence for quite some time. He gave the government 24 hours to reveal the truth, and when no such admission was forthcoming, he held a second press conference to present his proof, a living Asgard clone created from the DNA sample his biotech research company had been given.

The Pentagon's response to Colson's revelation was to discredit him. The SGC, with Thor's cooperation, beamed up Colson's Asgard clone, and used holographic projection to give the impression on national television that the alien had been merely special effects. However, members of the Trust used more extreme measures to ensure that the stargate would remain secret, and Colson's private jet was tampered with and forced into an emergency landing after almost crashing on take-off from Seattle. SG-1 hoped that knowing the truth would convince Colson not to go public, and Carter invited him to the SGC where she revealed the existence of the stargate, took him to the Alpha Site, and allowed him to test-fly an F-302.

Despite the attempts to stop him, Colson remained undeterred, however, he returned to Earth to learn that the Trust had been behind the financial ruin of his company. Colson Industries had been overextended, and Colson had failed to heed the warnings of his friend and business partner, Brian Vogler, leaving Vogler no choice but to doctor the books, and opening the company to blackmail by the Trust. Overnight, Colson Industries stock fell 80%, and the company came under investigation by the FCC for securities fraud. In an attempt to expose the members of the Trust, Vogler agreed to cooperate with the SGC and Agent Barrett of the NID, however, out of fear for his family's safety, he committed suicide instead. Distraught over the death of his best friend, facing the loss of his company as well as public disgrace and jail time, Colson too contemplated suicide, but he was convinced instead to accept Carter's offer to take a new identity and to begin a new life off-world.

Portrayed by: Charles Shaughnessy

Cross Reference: Clones, Julia Donovan, Trust, Brian Vogler

Episode Reference: Covenant