Avenger 2.0
EPISODE #709
ORIGINAL AIR DATE: 08.08.2003
SYNDICATION AIR DATE: 11.01.2004
DVD DISC: Season 7, Disc 3
WRITTEN BY: Joseph Mallozzi & Paul Mullie
DIRECTED BY: Martin Wood
GUEST STARS: Patrick McKenna (Jay Felger), Jocelyne Loewen (Chloe), Gary Jones (Technician)
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PRODUCTION NOTES
- "[Felger] invents a virus capable of infecting a specific gate and scrambling its D.H.D., effectively shutting it down. It seems like a good idea, but when the virus is tested, it spreads rapidly throughout the gate network, shutting down the entire system. Teams are stranded off-world, a certain System Lord is taking advantage of the situation to make a major power play, and O'Neill is somewhat ... displeased. It's a race against time to restore the gate network before its too late." (Executive producer Joseph Mallozzi, in his Season Seven production diary)
- "I suggest the title: 'Domino Effect.' Paul [Mullie] counters with: 'System Crash.' On we go, through: 'Deadlock,' 'Paralysis,' 'Gridlock,' 'No Way Back.' We go back and forth for what seems like forever. Frustrated, fatigued, and borderline giddy, we begin scraping the bottom of the barrel. The titles grow increasingly ridiculous, bearing little if any relation to the story: 'Flashpoint!' 'Dark Gambit!' 'Twilight of Nevermore!,' then so ridiculously all-encompassing they could apply to most any story ever written: 'Conflict!' 'Stuff Happens!' 'Crossroads!' (Oh, we already used that one in Season Four.)
It's not until the day after we hand in our script that Robert [Cooper] comes up with the title to our script: 'Avenger 2.0.'" (Executive producer Joseph Mallozzi, in his Season Seven production diary) - "What happens is, [Felger] tests the virus, and it appears that the virus is self replicating, because in a matter of hours, the entire gate system is shut down. And you've got teams stranded off-world. You've got Daniel stranded on a planet where he was helping to relocate a civilization, and basically their planet was wracked with these seismic disturbances, heavy rains and flooding, so he's trapped off-world. O'Neill and Teal'c were trying to broker a truce between some rival Jaffa, and basically everything went to hell in a hand basket, and he's trapped off-world.
"So Carter has to help Felger, who's suffering his own crisis of conscience, to come up with a patch, or a solution, to fix the virus before the off-world teams are wiped out and the top Goa'uld of the moment presses his advantage and makes effective use of the gate shutdown to consolidate his hold over the System Lords." (Executive producer Joseph Mallozzi, in an interview with the Stargate SG-1 Explorer Unit) - "Okay, in retrospect the title was one of the best things about this episode. We shot Felger's apartment at the Accent Inn across the street from The Bridge Studios (where we also shot Ronon and Sheppard watching BSG on motel TV, Teal'c enjoying the thousand finger massage in 'Point of No Return,' and the scene of Kinsey's shooting in 'Smoke and Mirrors'). In the original script, Felger is painting his Warhammer figures but the gang at Warhammer nixed the idea because they felt suggesting a character like him (i.e. brilliant scientist) played Warhammer would depict the game in an unfavorable light. So we went with Stargate action figures instead.
"At one point in the episode, Felger makes reference to an old science professor of his named Mr. Hoffman. This was a salute to one of my own high school teachers, Mr. Hoffan, a knowledgeable man in his own right. Once, during a class, he informed me that the chocolate bar I was snacking on could contain a maximum of three hairs and one rat turd according to regulations set down by the Canadian Food and Drug Administration. For my part, I always avoided Charleston Chews which seemed to allow for roughly twice that." (Writer / producer Joseph Mallozzi, in a post at his blog) - "Avenger 2.0" includes a seemingly impossible camera shot in the S.G.C. briefing room, conceived by director Martin Wood. He had the large briefing room table cut in half and reassembled with latches, allowing the cameraman to appear to pass through the middle of the table. Look for this shot as Hammond, Carter, and Felger enter the briefing room from the adjoining corridor. When the camera circles back around, the two halves of the table have been pushed back together by the props master, "Evil" Kenny Gibbs – who is playing the uniformed airman in the background.
Wood said: "There's probably a thousand briefing room scenes that we've both shot between us, and how different can you make one thing where you've got people sitting down every time? ... We follow Hammond and Jonas [sic] and Carter into the briefing room, we go through the middle of the table with the camera, around the outside, and we end looking back at a table. Meanwhile, the table's been pushed together by Evil Kenny, [the crew's nickname for Kenny Gibbs], the props guy, and he's dressed in uniform, so you see him at the back of the briefing room. Somebody asked me, what's that guy doing back there? Well, he was pushing the table together as the camera went through it!
"But it's that kind of thing that I like to do because for me, it's not just another briefing room scene. It's a challenge! So, briefing room scenes, control rooms, and coming through the gate, are all challenging scenes to do because you've done them a million times." (Director Martin Wood, in a 2003 interview with RDAnderson.com)