Stargate SG-1 co-star
Michael Shanks is currently enjoying filming
“The Pegasus Project,” Season Ten’s third episode now in production in Vancouver, B.C. In a new interview with
Sci-Fi Talk, Shanks talked about the episode, as well as the upcoming
200th episode.Beware of minor
spoilers.The episode will follow up on
“Camelot,” the just-aired season finale in which SG-1 goes in search of a weapon invented by the Ancient scientist Merlin … but fails to find it. “During the course of that episode we discover that there is a breadcrumb trail to follow to look for a weapon that might help us against this seemingly invincible foe,” Shanks told Sci-Fi Talk. “And the trail of those breadcrumbs in our third episode back leads us to
Atlantis. And it was based on a pitch I gave to Brad about, ‘Hey man, come on, Daniel has got to go to Atlantis sometime.’ And he said, ‘Do you want to?'”He was going to put Daniel in an
Atlantis episode and decided that it’s much better for
our arc to find this lost city of the Ancients to tie into the SG-1 story arc, because it was such a huge part of the mythology of
SG-1 for years. So, basically, what ends up happening is we are looking for a way to cut our losses, so to speak, with what happened at the end of the cliffhanger — to sort of circle the wagons on one half of storyline. And the other half of the storyline involves Daniel and Vala spending a considerable amount of time digging through the archives of the Atlantis library. And an interesting and titilating discovery is made at that place which I think will surprise the audience.”But it’s definitely part of the arc of our show and it doesn’t take away from Atlantis and doesn’t leave them with something that they have to sort through in their show. But it also involves appearances from most of the Atlantis cast, which I think will be a lot of fun. And we get to see how those dynamics cross over. So I think people have been dying to see how that would happen, and this is definitely the time for it.”Shanks also discussed the upcoming 200th episode of the hit show, in which the series will depart a bit from its typical format.”I would say it’s going to be not unlike
‘Wormhole X-Treme!,'” he said, noting the 100th episode that aired in Season Five. “We’re going to be taking a few potshots at ourselves, but at the same time the audience will certainly be in on the joke. It may also involve the appearance of a face that we’ve missed for some time.”Visit
Sci-Fi Talk to download the complete interview, in which Shanks also talks about his current work producing the
“Women of Sci-Fi” calendar. The audio interview runs about 38 minutes.
(Thanks to KS for the tip!)