Feature: Stargate SG-1: Season Six preview

Season Six - Last, but not least

It's the last season, with Stargate SG-1 on a new channel, but if you've any concerns about how it's going to look then have no worries…

Each week, Colonel Jack O’Neill and the SG-1 team journey across the galaxy to places never before seen by the Human eye. These strange new worlds are brought to life by the gifted people in the show’s art department. This year, 2002, they are being guided by the creative vision of new production designer Bridget McGuire. She and her staff have been hard at work since the beginning of the year coming up with plenty of visual eye candy for the show’s sixth and final season. “We’re halfway through it and we’re all still alive and well, so that’s a good sign,” smiles McGuire. Fortunately, she is no stranger to the fun but fast-paced world of Stargate SG-1.

“This is my first season as production designer,” says McGuire. “I’d been working as the art director on Stargate for the last five years so I’m very familiar with the programme and the elements from the prior seasons. So sometimes I’ll say things like, ‘Remember that prop we used down in the caves in Episode Two of the second season? Well, let’s dust it off and use that again only this time we’ll do this and that to it and then stick it on a base. No one will recognize it.’ Very often that’s what happens. It’s wonderful to be able to pull out sets and items that have already been built rather than make everything from scratch. It’s a great resource.

“We have new people in the construction and art departments this year. The guys doing the drawings and illustrations for the series started work at the beginning of the season and they haven’t slowed down yet. During prep I think they may have been a little overwhelmed by some of the things that I was telling them we’d be doing. However, they quickly became accustomed to the work. When I said to Peter [Bodnarus] that he’d be drawing a spaceship and that we needed to have it done in five-and-a-half weeks I believe his reaction was, ‘Oh, great!’ The guy was genuinely excited. Any sane person would have said, ‘You have to be crazy. How am I going to do that?’” she jokes. “People keep asking me, ‘How’s everything going?’ and I tell them it’s not boring. We’re having a great time.”

The first project McGuire and her team tackled was designing a new fighter jet for the two-part season opener Redemption. Called the X-302, the ship is, in fact, a new version of the X-301 interceptor, which made its maiden voyage in the fourth-season episode Tangent. “Like the X-301, the X-302 was built using both Goa’uld and Human technology,” says McGuire. ”Its exterior design is based on a Goa’uld death glider, while the inside resembles a jet. The cockpit is a two-seater and equipped with instruments for everything from radar, life-support, weapons and a new type of engine system designed for intergalactic travel. It’s pretty neat."

by Steven Eramo

Get the full highly-illustrated feature when you buy
TV Zone Special #46

Image © Stargate Productions
Feature © Visual Imagination 2002. Not for reproduction

Taken from

TV Zone Special #46
Stargate SG-1 III 2002
ships from Jul 4 2002
News-stand Price
UK £4.99 / US $9.99

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