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January 13, 2006

Front and Center

I just talked with Brad Wright about this week’s Atlantis episode, Epiphany. Now, if you look closely at the credits, you’ll see a familiar name in an unfamiliar place: Story written by Brad Wright & Joe Flanigan. Joe Flanigan? Colonel Sheppard? Yes, space fans, Joe Flanigan.

He came to Brad last year with a story idea in which Colonel Sheppard lives with a people for a protracted amount of time, and affects those people in a significant way. Now, Joe was probably thinking of being their saviour in a guns blazing, “Magnificent Seven” kind of way, but when you watch it, you’ll see that his impact on the people in this episode is different, but just as significant. He does get to do some fighting, don’t you worry, but if I remember correctly, he gets his butt kicked a few times.

Anyway, I don’t want to spoil the episode before you see it, but another issue Brad had to deal with is how to have Sheppard away from Atlantis long enough to bond with a people, but not too long that things on Atlantis will have changed in a significant way. How would you do that?

Brad also added that he wished he could have explored Sheppard’s backstory more in this episode, but he promises (promises!) to reveal more in season 3.

On Stargate SG-1, Ben Browder is featured in fanboy’s favourite episode of season 9, Collateral Damage. And not only is it my favourite episode, it’s Paul Mullie’s favourite episode too – and he wrote it!

So I asked Paul about it, and he said… “Can’t you just wait for the DVD commentary?” And so I said to him, “Well that’s going in the blog for sure. Thanks for your cooperation.” And then he felt bad because I guilt tripped him, and so we chatted about it.

Be warned, Collateral Damage is pretty violent at the beginning. And even though the violence has been toned down and stylized (especially since the rough cut) – well, those of you with weak stomachs will want to hide behind your TV dinners. But I think you’ll really enjoy it – great performance by Ben, amazing guest performances by William Atherton (you may remember him from Die Hard as the journalist) and Anna Galvin.

And here’s a bit of trivia for you – the guy who plays Colonel Mitchell’s father is actually younger than Ben Browder!

ATL

Posted by Alex Levine at January 13, 2006 06:30 PM