The Best of John Sheppard
This Friday marks the U.S. premiere of the final episode of Stargate Atlantis. We’re celebrating five years of the show with a count-down of our five favorite episodes featuring Lt. Colonel John Sheppard! Come back tomorrow for our favorite five Teyla episodes, and more for other characters every day this week.
Atlantis’s leading man was a tough role to cast back in early 2004. The producers wanted an actor who could pull off the action, bravado, and humor that Jack O’Neill brought to the show’s predecessor, yet still make this new character his own man. They finally found their man in Joe Flanigan, then a 37-year-old actor from Los Angeles who had studied history at the University of Colorado before turning to acting.
In a bout of good timing, today is Joe’s birthday. He shares it with fellow Atlantis actor Paul McGillion (“Carson Beckett”).
Without further ado, here are our top five episodes featuring John Sheppard! Post a comment below to let us know which episodes make your list.
5. PHANTOMS
(Season Three, Episode 9)
After years of fan requests that we get to learn more about John’s back-story, the writers finally delivered with this third season episode. The team travels to a forested world and comes under the influence of a mind-altering Wraith device. We see flashbacks to a mission in Sheppard’s past, during which he acted against orders to try and rescue a friend from the deserts of Afghantistan, and was shot down. Sheppard begins to relive this incident in the present — opening fire on his friends, believing they are the enemy.
While not a particularly memorable episode in its own right, this one earns a spot on our Top 5 list because it filled in a vital piece of John’s history, an incident that has helped shape him into the man he is.
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Oh, great. Common Ground is my favourite, too. And then I like Doppelganger very much. I don’t know Vegas yet (I’m from Germany), but Phantoms and The Eye are really great, too. I love so much Atlantis episodes, but my five favourite sheppard episodes are:
shep_forever | January 6 @ 6:39 am1. Common Ground
2. Doppelganger
3. Conversion
4. Search And Rescue
5. Phantoms
Happy Birthday Joe and Paul, hope you both have a great day. You are both amazing actors have a good one !!!
thegreatthor | January 6 @ 8:01 amthegreatthor
my 5 favourites are:
thegreatthor | January 6 @ 8:08 amremnants
doppelganger
and two cos of the humour harmony and the game
and conversion
Really enjoyed Vegas. It showed us how disturbed Sheppard’s character was even in a different reality. I also loved Common Ground and Phantoms, Outcast, Doppelganger, Remnants and anything else that Joe Flanigan is in. Happy birthday Joe and Paul.
pg | January 6 @ 8:43 amI haven’t seen Vegas yet so I can’t comment but “Phantoms” and “Doppleganger”?! Two of the worst SGA episodes ever… “Commmon Ground” though was excellent. I absolutely loved the interaction between Shep and Todd.
And happy belated birthday to Joe and Paul!
Lady Vaako | January 6 @ 10:54 amI totally agree about Common Ground. The very best of JF. A also loved Conversion and, though not strictly a JS ep, he was great in Millers’ Crossing too. I think that he deserves real praise for the way he has developed the character and some terrific acting over the 5 years.
fifi | January 6 @ 12:49 pmI can’t agree about Doppelganger. Loved it and Joe’s performance as ‘evil’ John.
fifi | January 6 @ 12:51 pmhhmmm… my top five shep eps? thats a hard one. well i’d have to say…
flyboyfan23 | January 6 @ 3:57 pmdoppleganger
common ground
the eye
conversion
phantoms
oh i can’t decide. defiant one, thirty-eight minutes, infection. they are all so good… there’s no way for me to pick five…
oh well, happy birthday anyways!!!
no, no, no, not common ground, that episode created a character that just wont go away and is responsible for ratings dropping. why not epiphany or something esle focusing on Joe?
pudljumper | January 6 @ 4:09 pmPhantoms not a memorable episode? I think it’s one of the best Atlantis eps we’ve had. Credible performances from every actor on the show, all in one ep? Almost never happens, especially put together with engaging writing and respectable directing, as well as plot twists that we don’t see walking slowly towards us waving a red flag over the horizon. Once or twice, I even cared about what happened to the characters, because they developed and we learnt about them. It’s always the problem with action shows in which we know none of the leads are ever going to die; if they also aren’t affected as people by anything that happens to them, always handy with a witty retort no matter what trauma hits them, how can we ever really care about them? In this episode, they were all affected, so I was. This wasn’t just Sheppard’s ep, I really felt Teyla’s panic as she realised that Sheppard had no idea where he was and she was completely at his mercy, and when Beckett realised he had been so busy talking to a person that wasn’t really there, he had let someone die alone, unaware that they were even badly injured. Hallucinations is not an original premise for a sci-fi show, but its execution here was imaginatively, cleverly and movingly handled. Great stuff.
topaz_bean | January 6 @ 9:06 pmIf we are talking about the character of John Sheppard, I think that “Sunday”, “Epiphany” and “Travelers” are perhaps more revealing than eps that focus on action. These obviously took more work out of Joe to come up with believable interraction, show feelings (yes…) and even in Sunday, interact on a personal level with Jason and others. Vegas struck me as a filler episode, interesting in that it cast Sheppard in a role which at first looks like it has nothing to do with his role in Atlantis, but in the end, loosely written and lacking continuity. Maybe it is time to stop the show, the writers are getting tired and running out of ideas.
alaska | January 9 @ 2:42 amThat must have been hard to narrow it down for John Sheppard; he shines in like EVERY episode!! I wasn’t a fan of Vegas but Sheppard stood out, like usual.
Yanks4Life23519 | January 13 @ 9:44 pm