Torri Higginson Joins Stargate Atlantis Comic-Con Celebration

Another member of the Stargate Atlantis family is joining the big fifteenth anniversary celebration in San Diego this week.

Stargate Command has announced that actress Torri Higginson (“Elizabeth Weir”) will appear on stage at Thursday’s official Stargate panel, today at 1 p.m. (Room 7AB).

She joins co-stars Paul McGillion (“Carson Beckett”) and Jewel Staite (“Jennifer Keller”), plus writer and executive producer Joseph Mallozzi, and Stargate SG-1 actor Gary Jones (“Walter Harriman”) — who over the years also put in a dozen appearances on Atlantis.

Christopher Heyerdahl (“Todd” the Wraith) has also been announced for the evening event at the Fluxx Club.

Both events will feature a live table read from Stargate: Extinction, the script for the Atlantis movie that never went before cameras.

Mallozzi tells GateWorld that, with Higginson’s appearance at this week’s reunion, he is ready to reveal what the writers had planned for her character.

“But wait! There’s more!” Mallozzi said. “With Torri Higginson’s announced appearance at this special event, I will also include a double-Weir scene — long planned and plotted — that offers what we had planned for Elizabeth beyond ‘Ghost in the Machine,’ had circumstances (and a potential sixth season pick-up) panned out.”

After her character was written out as a series regular in Atlantis‘s fourth season, Higginson returned as a Replicator-made copy of herself in “This Mortal Coil.” Then she turned up again, evidently in command of a secret faction of Replicators, after the destruction of the planet Asuras (“Be All My Sins Remember’d”).

When producers invited her back to continue the character’s arc in Season Five, though, Higginson opted to turn down the offer. A bit of sci-fi creativity led to Replicator Weir being played by another actress, Michelle Morgan, in “Ghost in the Machine.” (That episode left Morgan’s Weir adrift in space.)

As Mallozzi’s comments indicate, however, the writers were not done with Weir’s character — nor with trying to get Higginson herself back on set. There were designs on continuing her story, had the series been picked up for a sixth season.

Hopefully Stargate fans in attendance at Thursday’s Comic-Con anniversary celebration will get the full scoop, and Mallozzi promises a special “Elizabeth Weir Returns” scene at the panel.

MGM also tells us that the events will be recorded and made available online for those who can’t make it in person. Stay tuned for more coverage in the days ahead!