Feature: Stargate

As Stargate SG-1 reaches its end, one of the franchise’s Powers That Be, producer Joe Mallozzi, reflects on the ending, and the aftermath…

The time has finally come, America! After several agonizing months of waiting, Sci-Fi Channel has finally began airing the latter halves of Stargate Atlantis’s third season and Stargate SG-1’s 10th season in the States. For SG-1 fans this is a bittersweet occasion as these next 10 episodes mark the end of the long-running TV show, which will leave the air, at least as a weekly fixture, late in June, though for British viewers the final episode is already a thing of the past. The adventures of the SG-1 team will continue, though, in the form of direct-to-DVD films, and in the meantime there’s plenty to keep audiences’ eyes glued to the small screen, promises series writer/executive producer Joseph Mallozzi.

“We kick off the second half of SG-1’s 10th season with The Quest, Part 2, which I think is a phenomenal episode,” says Mallozzi. “It was written by Paul Mullie,” who’s now one of the series’ executive producers, “and basically things come to a head insofar as our heroes’ search for the Sangraal, which they’ve been after for long time. Their mission takes a surprising turn, and instead of the Sangraal, they wind up finding Merlin in stasis.

“A number of story elements we set up in The Quest, Part 1, pay off in a very different way. Adria comes back in this episode, as does Ba’al, and we also had a contractual obligation to fulfil with Michael Shanks which required his character, Dr Jackson, to ‘disappear’ for a couple of episodes. So, at the end of this story, Adria doesn’t get her hands on the Sangraal, but does get her hands on Daniel, and we leave it at that.

“Following part two of The Quest, we have Line in the Sand, another very strong episode written by Alan McCullough,” an executive story editor, “which sees the return of Tomin, an interesting and conflicted character. The Road Not Taken is an alternate universe/what-if type of story that features the Sam Carter character. In The Shroud, Daniel Jackson returns under rather shocking circumstances, and Richard Dean Anderson does a guest-spot as Colonel O’Neill in this story as well. Then we’ve got Bounty, an amusing one-off episode where the SG-1 team is split up and pursued by alien bounty hunters. After that there’s Bad Guys, and in that one, our heroes are trapped off-world and subsequently get caught up in a hostage drama.

“One of my favourite stories in the back half of Season 10 is Family Ties, which explores Vala’s backstory and her estranged relationship with her con artist father Jasec, played by Fred Willard, who gave an excellent performance. This story is kind of the pay-off for the episode that preceded it, Talion, involving a former First Prime rival of Teal’c’s, who is supposedly plotting a terrorist strike against Earth. Because Family Ties was the last SG-1 episode I’d ever write, I took some not-so-subtle potshots at the show’s cancellation,” chuckles the executive producer. ”There’s also a scene I wrote as a gag that everyone loved and I thought eventually someone would make me take out, but they never did, so it made it into the final cut. It’s a very atypical Stargate ending scene, but an amusing one.

by Steven Eramo

Read the full interview in
TV Zone #215

Image © Visual Imagination Ltd, Stargate image © The Sci-Fi Channel
Feature © Visual Imagination 2007. Not for reproduction

Taken from

TV Zone #215
June 2007
ships from Apr 25 2007
News-stand Price
UK £3.99 / US $7.99

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