The Best of John Sheppard
4. THE EYE
(Season One, Episode 11)
When we look back on the history of John Sheppard, it’s hard to separate it from his greatest foes. The first season’s mid-season two-parter introduced Sheppard’s own personal nemesis in the Pegasus Galaxy, the shrewd Genii military commander Acastus Kolya (played by Robert Davi). Under orders from the Genii leader, Cowen, Kolya led a strike force that infiltrated Atlantis and tried to seize control of the city and its advanced treasures. After he took the city’s control tower, only Sheppard remained at large — playing a game of cat-and-mouse to take out the Genii soldiers one by one.
Kolya was absolutely cut-throat, and when Major Sheppard got in his way and started killing off his men, Kolya was sure to hold a permanent grudge. After this first encounter, Kolya always seemed to hold a very personal grudge against Sheppard. Getting shot by the man will do that.
3. VEGAS
(Season Five, Episode 19)
(Beware of SPOILERS!)
The second-to-last episode of Atlantis’s final season was a major departure, both stylistically and in terms of the story it told. The John Sheppard and Atlantis team we know and love does not appear for even a moment in this episode. Instead we follow the life of Detective John Sheppard, a struggling cop investigating a string of bizarre murders in the city of Las Vegas.
In this parallel reality, John Sheppard was booted out of the Air Force (rather than being restationed as a helicopter transport pilot in the Antarctic, where he would have met Jack O’Neill and Elizabeth Weir). He barely passed the detective exam (after a few tries), and is drowning in gambling debt. Things go from bad to worse when Richard Woolsey and Rodney McKay let him in on a big secret: the serial killer he is chasing is a Wraith, an alien that is living in hiding on Earth.
The episode is just cool, and it’s great to see another life that Sheppard could have lived. He seems to be in a much better place in our reality, demonstrating the value of his friendships and his participation in the Atlantis expedition. But Detective Sheppard is still the man we know at the core, and at the end he makes the right choice and is apparently killed in the line of duty, protecting Earth.
< PREVIOUSNEXT > PAGES: 1 2 3
DID YOU KNOW GATEWORLD IS ON TWITTER?
Follow us now for breaking Stargate news and site updates! |
Sign in below or register to post a comment.
Register |
Forgot password
RSS FEEDS |
DISCUSS AT GATEWORLD FORUM >
©2006-2009 GateWorld.net. All rights reserved. This material may not be reprinted without written consent from GateWorld. Click here to learn more.
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