Season Six That Might Have Been

Beware of SPOILERS for all episodes of Stargate Atlantis in the report below.

Now that Stargate Atlantis has come to an end (at least in the United States, where SCI FI Channel broadcast the final episode on Friday), many fans are left wondering what might have been. Had the network decided to give the show a sixth year, what stories from the Atlantis mythology might have been revisited?

Executive producer and Atlantis co-runner Joseph Mallozzi, fortunately, has given wistful fans their answer. In a post at his blog last fall, he gave a complete run-down of those episodes that were on the drawing board when the cancellation news arrived. The premiere of the final episode sheds additional light on where the show would have gone in 2009.

Here’s a sampling:

NOW WHAT? (PARTS 1 & 2)

The sixth season would have kicked off with a two-parter (as SG-1‘s sixth season did), picking up “after the shocking events of our fifth season finale,” Mallozzi said — namely, the fact that the city of Atlantis now sits on Earth, off the coast of California. Instead, “the idea originally conceived for the opening two-parter will now be the basis of the first Stargate Atlantis movie, the difference being that we’ll be able to tell our story on a much bigger, visual effects-laden, character-centered canvas.”

The plan was to bring the city of Atlantis (which was originally on Earth millions of years ago) full circle for the show’s 100th episode. “It was also intended to be the launching point for a very interesting early Season Six scenario: With Atlantis back on Earth, why the hell would the I.O.A. ever let it go?” Mallozzi revealed yesterday. “And if it remained, which, by all indications seemed likely, what would become of its occupants, especially Ronon and Teyla? Also, with a permanent station in the Milky Way, wouldn‘t Atlantis, logically, cease to be a launch point for gate travel and, instead, become a research center for Ancient technology?”

This idea will instead serve as the set-up for the Atlantis movie, currently being scripted by Mallozzi and Paul Mullie.

CARL’S REPLICATOR STORY

Writer Carl Binder wasn’t done with the Replicators after this season’s “Ghost In the Machine” — not necessarily because there were big plans for that arc, but because “if there are two subjects that Carl Binder embraces more than any others, it’s ghosts and Replicators … so we simply assumed that when he returned from winter hiatus, he’d have a script for us that focused either one or the other.” Whether or not that would have seen another return for the Replicator-ized Elizabeth Weir (now played by Michelle Morgan), left floating in space with the other surviving Replicators, is not known.

CARTER RASHOMON

An Atlantis spin on the classic Kurosawa film, in this episode “Colonel Carter faces a possible court-martial and dismissal after an off-world op goes awry. During the ensuing investigation, we are offered three different flashback versions of the charged events.”

YESTERDAY, TODAY AND TOMORROW

If it’s one thing that Atlantis didn’t seem to get around to much, it was the old sci-fi staple of traveling through time. In this episode “McKay’s experiments with a time-traveling Puddle Jumper send the team both backwards and forwards in time. The story jumps from five years into the past (where one version of the team struggles to acquire the Puddle Jumper and undo the damage done without affecting the time line), five years into the future (where the Wraith have taken over Atlantis and another version of the team is attempting to acquire the Jumper so that they can warn their past selves), and the present (unaffected team) with developments in each timeline influencing events in the other. At the end of the day, despite my detailed, color-coded outline, everybody else’s head threatened to explode so the story was shelved.”

We would have loved to see this one.

REVENGE

Mallozzi hinted: “A certain alien race seeks revenge on Atlantis after we screw up their plans (qv that Season Five episode in which we screw up the plans of that alien race).” After Season Five’s two-parter aired, Mallozzi further clarified that this episode would have brought back the lost tribe of Asgard living in the Pegasus Galaxy.

There is, of course, the promise of an ongoing series of movies for Stargate Atlantis — so some of these story elements are still possibilities. We hope that the writers look to use the films not only to tie up loose story threads (which is important), but also to push Atlantis into exciting, new territory.

Visit Joseph Mallozzi’s blog to read the list of all 20 episodes that were in the very early planning stages, including “The Red Shirt Diaries,” “Sheppard D.O.A.,” and “Entropy!” Stargate Atlantis continues in a TV movie — hopefully the first of many — written by Mallozzi and Paul Mullie and intended to air later this year.

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