Replicators return with a vengeance

Beware of minor spoilers for the fourth season premiere of Stargate Atlantis in the story below.

Atlantis’s newest enemy is back in the fourth season premiere, with a new twist or two. The Replicators will return for a major story that will pick up on the Season Three cliffhanger and span two episodes, “Adrift” and “Lifeline.”

“It’s kind of hard to kill a self-replicating nanite, as we’ve discovered,” actor David Hewlett (“Rodney McKay”) told GateWorld in an interview. “And there’s a neat twist on that at the beginning of the season as well where we use a bit of the old Replicator tech for good as opposed to evil. And I think [it] establishes a very interesting possible character arc for one of our regulars.”

As the show’s third year ended, Earth had launched a preemptive first strike against the Replicator homeworld, devastating the planet’s surface with six catastrophically powerful explosive devices. The Replicators retaliated with a satellite weapon that focused a sustained energy weapon on Atlantis. The only way to save the city was to fire up the stardrive and flee the planet, heading into deep space.

But despite the city’s cliffhanger predicament — adrift in space with power running out — the conflict with the Replicators is far from over.

The start of Season Four will bring more hands in the forehead — and twists on the idea.

Returning to lead the mechanical foes is Oberoth, played by veteran genre actor David Ogden Stiers. Stiers first appeared in last year’s “Progeny,” which introduced the Asurans as children of the Ancients — only to reveal that they are technological, not biological. The Ancients engineered the Replicators (who are made up of trillions of microscopic nanites) to combat the Wraith.

In “First Strike,” Stiers returned briefly to communicate with Atlantis remotely from the Asuran homeworld.

Hewlett assures us that in the episodes there will be “lots more hands in foreheads and things. And twists on that as well. It’s funny — Joe [Mallozzi] and Paul [Mullie, executive producers] were really excited about, I think, playing with the established stuff. Leading people to believe things are going to be like they were, and then throwing them a curve. There’s some great use of that, especially with the Replicator stuff, where the Replicators are getting stuff thrown back at them that they’re not expecting. We fight back in weird and devious ways.”

Season Four of Stargate Atlantis will premiere September 28 at 9 p.m. Eastern/Pacific on SCI FI Channel in the United States. Learn more about the upcoming season in GateWorld’s episode guide.

Also, don’t miss our full audio interview with David Hewlett, online now!