Just how would that Stargate Atlantis movie have played out? Writer and executive producer Joseph Mallozzi described the script’s opening scenes to readers on his blog a few months ago (story). Now he’s offered up a few more details on the storyline that would have taken the city of the Ancients back to the Pegasus Galaxy.
Mallozzi previously revealed that Stargate: Extinction would have opened with Atlantis relocated from its landing site in the San Francisco Bay (“Enemy At the Gate”) to the far side of the Moon, away from prying eyes. But the Ancients programmed an automated self-destruct should the city ever be taken out of Pegasus — which activates, prompting the team to fire up the stardrive and make a mad dash home.
“It’s time to get the band back together,” Mallozzi continued, “and we check in with our various team members as they are called up and beamed away for the return journey: Teyla and her family, Keller, Beckett, Lorne, Zelenka and, of course, Sheppard and Ronon who are plucked away while receiving treatment at a local hospital following a barroom brawl (we went back and incorporated the scar actor Jason Momoa received following an incident near his L.A. home). Once everyone has assembled, McKay gives them the 411.
“Given the time constraints they face, they have to get back to Pegasus as quickly as possible — meaning they’ll have to use the wormhole drive again. Zelenka calculates that two jumps should do it.
Todd (Christopher Heyerdahl)
“And they’re off. Sort of. The first jump ends up burning out the drive, rendering it useless and leaving them stranded with the countdown clock ticking down. However, a scan of the surrounding plants turns up a habitable world within range. They go there seeking help and, instead, end up involved in a wild time-travel themed adventure in which Todd, the Wraith, turns out to be, simultaneously, their hugest threat and biggest ally.”
Stargate: Extinction was announced by MGM and Syfy Channel in 2008, and scripted by Mallozzi and Paul Mullie. Financial issues forced the studio to put the film on the back burner. After MGM passed through bankruptcy and took on new CEOs at the end of 2010, hopes for Extinction were ended.
There are still hopes that the studio might allow a publisher to turn the script into a novel or comic book, but so far MGM hasn’t made any plans known — not even to Mallozzi. Stay tuned to GateWorld for any future developments.
(Thanks to Marc for the tip!)
Another time travel movie? Seems like a cop-out to me.
I really wish that those in charge of Spyglass would realize what they have with the Stargate franchise. They are stupid to not give us more Stargate.
:( This sounds like it would have been good. Damn you SGU. (Before anyone comes rushing to SGU’s defence: If it hadn’t have been made Stargate wouldn’t be looked at as a recent failure by MGM, and when it was time to make the movies there would have been a greater probability of the movies being made)
Jedi_Master_Bra’tac – since you apparently know so much about how things “would” have been, do you have any other information from that alternate reality of yours that you can share? Like, where’s the next terrorist attack gonna happen?
As much I would of loved to have seen a movie, i’m glad it wasn’t this, these time travel episodes have been done to death =/
The Fandemonium novelization of the return to the Pegasus Galaxy had a much more plausible plot, in my opinion (political).
This seems to me like a bad idea… I doubt I would have liked it. Ticking clock, time travel – haven’t we been down this road before?
No one is pointing out the blatant plot holes in this script. Atlantis all of a sudden warns everyone that it will self-destruct after being in the Milky Way Galaxy for weeks to months? My car alerts me the second I take off my seatbelt (if the car is still moving). The Atlantis team should have been able to either find this self-destruct protocol beforehand (over the years they’ve been there) or alarms should have been going off as soon as Atlantis left the Pegasus galaxy. And once again, it brings in the wormhole drive that was pulled out of… Read more »
I’m with JohnSN7 on this. Why did Atlantis not start this as soon as it was taken out of the Pegasus galaxy? Why did the ancients even want to install such a feature on Atlantis, and shouldn’t there be a way to just disable it? Not to mention…time travel? AGAIN? REALLY? This is becoming worse than Star Trek. I think this script is proof that Stargate has jumped the shark story-wise and needs to be put on a rest and brought back with new people. I can’t really see myself enjoying this film based on what was discussed. It kind… Read more »
I hate to say this, but I’m glad this film wasn’t made. It sounds pretty weak. ANOTHER time-travel story? That is such a cliche at this point.
I Agree with all the comments about the self destruct suddenly becoming active after nearly a year and a half on earth (year and a half thing comes from likely time between Enemy at the Gate and the SGU episode Seizure). The time travel bit wasn’t good in Continuum, the whole thing seemed like a rehash of Mobius. It likely wouldn’t be good in here either. Revolution seemed like the only good movie with an interesting plot. I really hope this proves that all the bad writing fans say went into SGU wasn’t exclusive to SGU, because it really started… Read more »
I’d love to have seen this. Love time travel stories too (then again agree with you guys re. that the alarm should have gone off immediately…) Shame that they cannot do this, let’s say within 1-2 years
If they went back in time and met the Ancients, now that would be good. Also might have been a good way to get a SGU mention.
I just dont understand one thing WHY THE F*** DID THE CANCELED STARGATE ATLANTIS? The viewers were like 3 Million! Cant they ever be satisfied with anything? ‘IF’ they hadn’t canceled Atlantis the movies would have PROBABLY ( I cant see trough time so… ) been made, and that is one thing that i would have liked, so, everything the Jedi_Master_Bra’tac said is true, and you dont need to be very smart to see that just put 1+1 together and eventually its doesnt makes 2, it makes success, the thing SGU killed.
The more they divulge, the less I want it to be made. It just sounds like another Stargate time travel extravaganza. I’d rather see something with the human-form replicators. They were technologically able to produce a ship that could make the trip to earth. Sounds more interesting than another time travel story.
The automated self-destruct is just a stupid plot device to bring Atlantis back to the Pegasus galaxy. Really lame. It would have been much more interesting, if it would have been the Atlantis crew vs. earth military/politicians. The first group wants Atlantis back in the Pegasus galaxy, the other wants Atlantis near earth for protection reasons. The Atlantis crew should have gone rogue and “kidnapped” Atlantis. Contact with earth should have stopped. This way it would have been like at the beginning of SGA. That they established contact to earth in SGA, especially so soon, was a bad idea. It… Read more »
Ugly Pig – Especially considering a lot of innocent people have recently been killed in Norway – That snipe referencing Terrorist Attacks was Completely out of line!
Everyone else – I’m with pmartin1. Three plot devices in a row to move Atlantis (Wormhole drive, delayed auto self destruct, drive inconveniently breaks down) followed by a time travel distraction as well? Not for me Thanks. This sounds like a string of plot contrivances joined like daisy chain. A far cry from SG1 and Atlantis’s high points.
@psw I think you should be glad that Atlantis didn’t contact Earth until season 2. Destiny’s crew started contacting Earth in the pilot and continued in half of season 1.
Time travel hasn’t been done to death, time travel is something you can let your imagination go freely, even though you have to keep ig logical xD And besides, you do have to be able to understand the difference between time travel and for instance a different reality or something. And I’m still pretty pissed about this actually, not about the time travel thing, but about the whole movies and how the secret hope is that the studio will make the story into a novel or comic book? I mean I don’t want to be a nag, but there are… Read more »
Asgarder; 3 million? The season 1 pilot maybe. The average of season 5 SGA was 1.610 million. The first half of SGU season 1 was actually considerably higher (1.949 million) and the average of SGU season 1 was 1.684 million. Only SGU season 2’s ratings downright sucked (hovering around 1 million), but it’s causes have been endlessly debated and Sanctuary’s last seasons’ ratings certainly provide some new insight into that.
I’m not really inspired by these new plot details. It is riddled with easy to find plotholes.
People need to stop hating. I mean yeah plot isn’t as great as I had hoped, but Stargate is Stargate and I’ll watch it regardless. People hated SGU and boycotted it… well guess what happened… ALL Stargate died with it…
@ xbladedragonx: True, I’d have watched it anyway even if I already knew these plot details because I think it’ll be better executed than how the summary sounds.
From the title, I always hoped that this film would have finished off the Wraith, they needed to be defeated once and for all at some stage. Maybe that was still going to be the case. Also this film could have redeemed them for bringing in the wormhole drive in the final hour. Bit of back story to it maybe ? Actually showing it ! Like I would assume that it was some ancient tech that McKay only perfected, coz this was huge for him to have coming out of the blue, even for McKay. I’m very tired, what was… Read more »
@The Admiral: “I really hope this proves that all the bad writing fans say went into SGU wasn’t exclusive to SGU, because it really started in Atlantis season 5 and continued on from there.” To me, it was even earlier than that: Season 3. Aside from a few outstanding highlights (Common Ground, McKay and Mrs. Miller, Tao of Rodney, and First Strike), S3 was littered with Replicators and Michaels at every corner of the season’s progress. (I mean, Kolya killed during a Lucius Lavin episode? REALLY??) The writers’ mishandling of Michael, Carson, and Kolya in that season began the downward… Read more »
It seems the Ancients’ greatest power was creating plot devices :P
I honestly don’t care what the plot line was, I would just have been happy to see the characters I loved back in action again.
But seriously, you had to use THAT picture? If that’s gonna be a major theme perhaps I wouldn’t have watched it after all.
I hate to admit this…but now that I know what the movie would have been about, I’m sort of glad it didn’t get filmed. Mallozzi lost me when he mentioned the barroom brawl scene with Sheppard and Dex–seems a bit out of character to me. I did, however, force myself to finish the article and REALLY lost interest when he mentioned the “time-travel themed adventure”. Geez! Were they going to do the whole SG-1 ending again? I’ll just keep my memories of Stargate Atlantis close to my heart and be thankful that Mallozzi et al didn’t make more of a… Read more »
I agree with everyone, the time travel stuff has been done way too many times. The last stargate movie was a time travel one too. I would have like the idea of Atlantis staying on Earth for a few weeks or months and actually do a full sweep of it to find out what else could be on the city. Like in the one episode where we meet the old Dr Weir we discovered they made ZPM’s on Atlantis.
I would have loved to see this movie non the less and most likely enjoyed it though.
Good points It is Stargate and I love the franchise. I would have loved to see the characters one last time with more closure then just landing on Earth and throwing up the cloak. Bad points Don’t hate time travel in fact I quite enjoy the time travel episodes but never good for a series finale. The wormhole drive idea was god awful and should have never been used in the first place (but I do understand the timetable they were working with). If there is a wormhole drive then why don’t they just use it to catch up with… Read more »
Hehehe, I like Mr Mallozzi’s sense of humour. “A wild time-travel themed adventure” :).
If the movie does have even the slightest possibility of getting done sometime (as he says as a movie, book, comic or radio play) then of course he’s not going to give everything, or indeed ANYTHING away.
Although it would be hilarious to see Sheppard and Ronon in a barfight :).
Thunderbird 2 – I’m Norwegian. I live and work in Oslo, where the bombing happened. I am trembling as I’m writing this. Do NOT insinuate that I’m trying to make light of terrorism. And please don’t try to use this horrible tragedy as a means to silence those who have a different opinion than yourself.
Here we go more of the same old same old. I was right the first time I heard about the first part, and now that I have the rest. I now know that it would not have been good. I would like to have movies base off the SGA legacy series books.
instead of a wonderful Stargate movie, we get stuck with gay wrestling,,, morons are moving the market place…
this was supposed to be the movies that ends the series??? Really?? Oh this is bad, I’m glad it wasn’t made.
Given that so much of the movie is being disclosed, I think it’s highly implausible that MGM will be pursuing any more Stargate projects attached to the TV shows in future. If we ever see the franchise again, it is more likely it will be another series.
Well, I agree with everyone on one of the four plot-devices in the movie, “the Ancients programmed an automated self-destruct should the city ever be taken out of Pegasus”, yeah, that one. To me, that’s lazy writing, they could have come up with a better reason to go back. But, the “burning out the drive, rendering it useless and leaving them stranded”, well, upgrade that to just “powering down to recharge” I could live with. I like the “Todd the Wraith turns out to be, simultaneously, their hugest threat and biggest ally.”, hey, I like the character. And, lastly, “They… Read more »
People place too much emphasis on the plot devices. Any story can be told well or it can be told poorly. You can have a good time travel story and you can have a bad one. We don’t (and may never) know which this would be. Now I’m not saying it would necessarily be good. Just that there’s no reason to assume it wouldn’t be based on such limited information. I, for one, find it hard to believe that they wouldn’t offer some explanation for the delayed reaction of the self-destruct protocol not being found and waiting so long to… Read more »
I myself still think the movie would have been great. I mean I have to admit that even Continuum wasn’t the way I had expected and even hoped, but come on! If we only watch the series and it’s movies because it’s exactly what we want and hope, what’s the point anyways? But I just don’t get it that almost every response I see is of people talking about how the writers and everyone have screwed it up and how bad the story was. Ever thought about that the problem might not be with the writers and people of the… Read more »
@mythos I believe that yes they would tell us everything that is going to happen they’re just that cocky. They might add here or there, but not anything important to the story. I just wanted to say something I’m a Michael fan so I did not mind the ep. with him in it. That is why I tolerated the ep with McKay he just became to much in season five. The show went from SGA to the McKay show. Yeah you saw Michael, but not as much as McKay all the time in season five. Anyway new blood is needed… Read more »
@Heero I couldn’t agree with you more. I love all things Stargate (although the original movie is at the bottom of my list), and I’ve been feeling this way too. I just re-watched SG1 seasons 5-10 in a matter of 2 weeks with audio commentary on many of the episodes and learned some interesting things that I thought would have been cool to see in future years if they had happened, for instance during seasons 10 and 3, they were thinking of having Carter captain the Odyssey and she would have been in both shows. I also learned just how… Read more »
I can’t not have Stargate, I loved them all I can’t stop watching them over and over, gutted they have stopped, can’t wait until the next movie, fingers crossed. I have enjoyed SGU I hope they do come back from that long sleep, I will be waiting…………. See you soon SGU, I hope.
@mythos: “And for those talking about the details that were put out there as if they give the whole story away…seriously? 3 lines of text explains the whole movie? If it were that simple, it never would have been made anyhow. With enough people guessing, yes, someone would likely guess the whole plot, but it would still be just a guess until proven.” This is one of the rare times I *wholeheartedly* disagree with you, my friend. I can’t speak for everyone here who agrees that the above ‘details’ of a possible Atlantis “Extinction” movie smells like doggie poo… but… Read more »
@Heero: “And the most important thing, I’m still convinced that if SGU wasn’t ruined by ignorant and stubborn people who caled themselves fans, both Extinction and Revolution wouldn’t have been the last movies of the two series, that the franchise could have grown even more, but I’m really getting the feeling that my brother, my best friend and I are the only people who still really believe that and still love Stargate that much.” And @Wraithkelso: “@Heero I couldn’t agree with you more.” Not surprisingly, I couldn’t *disagree* with you BOTH more. I do know that, sometimes, fandom majorities of… Read more »
@medegno51 – I have to disagree for a couple of reasons. Extinction was written as a Stargate movie, not as a series episode. I don’t think either of the Stargate SG-1 movies were particularly similar to SG-1 episodes. Same characters and whatnot, but the style was definitely different (at least I thought so). I thought one was good and one not so much. But I didn’t think either was how things would have played out if they were done as episodes of the show. The terms of it being a movie lets those making it think a bit outside of… Read more »
i like joe, and everyone else who has done there part. i’m not feeling the script, but I like Joe’s style. So it’s a toss up.
While I,as most here do not particularily like the script-plot,who knows how it would’ve been.
I think it’s quite a contradiction for Ancients to have made the wormhole drive,which obviously makes sense mostly for inter-galactic travel and then made and switched on such a delayed self-destruct protocol.
So I agree with @mythos.I believe they would’ve explained it if the movie was made.And probably made other,significant changes before they made it.
And it is true,if choices were made based solely on such criteria,reg. shortest possible plot points,none of the Stargate would probably ever have been made.
Just 2 update myself on a point and add something to my last post, regarding the SG1 movies, Robert Cooper wrote Ark of Truth and Brad Wright wrote Continuum. Just want to give credit where credit is due. Also, just to reiterate, I’m not saying that Extinction wouldn’t turn out exactly how people are guessing it would, just that there’s not actually enough information to indicate that. ie it’s more of a ‘gut feeling’ than an ‘educated guess’.
Another countdown? Common, SGA keeps doing episodes where there are countdowns. In fact, SG1 “200” made fun of how the franchise keeps having a countdown clock for things. It’s a little tiring to see that, especially since we know McKay works best with a countdown clock. I’d like to see a different reason for why Atlantis must return to Pegasus.
I forgot to mention a really big plot contradition in my earlier message. Wasn’t it the expedition who originally installed a self destruct in the city in the first place?
The more I hear the less I want to know and this comment section reminds me Trek Fans in withdrawl stargate style. This plot is awful 3 different ways from George W. Bush….