The Road Not Taken

| Production | Fan Reviews

An experiment gone wrong pulls Samantha Carter into a parallel reality, where she must save Earth from an Ori assault before she will be allowed to return home.

RATINGS SCORECARD
OUR RATING -
FAN RATING - 8.46 
NIELSEN - 1.1 
EPISODE #1013
ORIGINAL AIR DATE: 04.27.2007
SYNDICATION AIR DATE: 01.28.2008
DVD DISC: Season 10, Disc 4
WRITTEN BY: Alan McCullough
DIRECTED BY: Andy Mikita
GUEST STARS: David Hewlett (Rodney McKay), Don S. Davis (General Hammond), Kavan Smith (Major Lorne), Kendall Cross (Julia Donovan), Bill Dow (Dr. Lee), Michael Chase (Chief of Staff), Billy Mitchell (Senator), Lisa Bayliss (Senator's Wife), Travis Woloshyn (Protestor), Robert Mann (Dr. Bennett), Alexander Boynton (Floor Director)
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PRODUCTION NOTES

  • "I love AU (alternate universe) stories. I love them so much that I had come up with an AU story late in the show's tenth season. Titled 'Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow,' it saw the team jumping back and forth through time, influencing events and being influenced by past actions in a story both ambitious and, admittedly, fairly complex. So complex, in fact, that I took the time to produce a detailed, color-coded outline clearly delineating the different time periods and alternate worlds.

    "Unfortunately, at about the same time I was working on my story, Robert and Alan had spun another AU story involving Carter. There wasn't room for two AU stories in the back half of Season Ten but I wasn't about to give up my story without a fight. Ultimately, it was a conversation with executive producer Carl Binder that put things in perspective for me. After I'd weighed the merits of both pitches, Carl threw me a look and said: 'None of that matters. You just do the better story.' And, in hindsight, this episode was the better story.

    "One of the things I love about AU stories is that they allow us to use our pre-established characters in slightly different roles. Or, in some cases, in roles in which we aren't accustomed to seeing them. This episode brought General Hammond and Major Lorne back to the S.G.C. and offered up a more somber take on the Cam Mitchell character. In this reality, Rodney McKay is a millionaire but still a jerk – who ends up doing the right thing. And the President of the United States? Why, none other than Hank Landry.

    "And in universe, fans of the franchise finally got what they'd been asking for: the existence of the Stargate program was finally made public. With predictable results! The decision to reveal the program to the public would have formed the core of the third SG-1 movie, Revolution. After beating out the story with Brad Wright, Carl Binder got as far as completing a first draft before the project was shelved." (Executive producer Joseph Mallozzi, in a post at his blog)
  • "With my second appearance on the series this year, I was very much a last minute substitute in an episode that was supposed to feature William Devane, who plays the President of the United States. The script was changed, some characters' positions were moved around and Hammond ended up being one of three main players along with General Landry and Colonel Carter. It's one of those things I really can't say too much about because the show hasn't aired yet, but I can tell you that it's an alternate universe story.

    "It was a very pleasant experience and it's always nice to see the SG-1 cast and crew. I enjoyed the opportunity to work with Beau Bridges. He's one of the kindest, gentlest, warmest human beings I've ever met and he's a wonderful actor. Beau's character also makes an excellent head of Stargate Command. As for Amanda Tapping, I've always had a particular fondness for her. There aren't many actors in the history of TV who have been called upon to carry the kind of load she's had on this show. Amanda did it graciously and did it well. Very often she was the first one called to the set in the morning and the last one to leave at night. So by any stretch of the imagination she earned her money many times over and created in Sam Carter a character imbued with her own warmth as well as delightfully quirky personality." (Actor Don S. Davis, in an interview with Steve Eramo)