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In the Making

Summary | Analysis | Production | Transcript | In the Making | Review

Daniel is stranded on another planet after the team's arrival on an alien world sparks a violent civil war.

EPISODE #805
ORIGINAL AIR DATE: 08.06.2004
SYNDICATION AIR DATE: 10.17.2005
DVD DISC: Season 8, Disc 2
WRITTEN BY: Damian Kindler
DIRECTED BY: Peter F. Woeste
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By Joseph Mallozzi
Writer and Executive Producer, Stargate SG-1

Late last year, Damian Kindler pitched out a story in which Carter is stranded off-world, struggling to survive, while the rest of the team mounts a desperate bid to rescue her. As we began to prepare for Season Eight, it was felt that we had already done a fair amount of Sam stories and so, to redress the balance, "Get Carter" became "English Patient Daniel." The writing department broke the story in November and, over the hiatus, Damian wrote what turned out to be, in my opinion, his best script for SG-1 (for his best Atlantis script, check out an episode called "Poisoning the Well").

"Icon" was actually the third episode Paul and I produced, following "Lockdown" and "Affinity" (which actually preceded it in the production schedule), and stands as one of my favorites.

  • And one of the reasons I like it so much is because it's simply a terrific-looking episode, beautifully shot. No small wonder that it was directed by SG-1's former director of photography, Peter Woeste.
  • You may recognize the ultra-talented actor who plays Kane, Matthew Bennett, from his earlier SG-1 appearance as one of Martin Lloyd's fellow aliens in "Point of No Return."
  • When writing science fiction, you have to walk a fine line between fact and fantasy or, more to the point, what is contextually credible and what is just plain implausible even within the sci-fi framework we've created. For instance, why are the planets we visit almost always populated by humans rather than more exotic alien life forms? Well, two reasons: 1) We're descendants of the Ancients who seeded this galaxy; and 2) When they left Earth, the Goa'uld brought many of their slaves with them, transporting them to other worlds.

    Okay, but why do they all speak English? The short answer is: Because if they didn't, it would make for some pretty dull episodes. But, in my mind, the Ancients foresaw the problems associated with gate travel and ensured straight-forward communication between worlds by building a default into the gate system itself. Every time a traveler goes through the gate, he or she acquires "conversion nanites" that allow them to understand and be understood wherever they go. Of course, certain symbiote-related physiologies may resist the process ...

    All this to say that you have to walk that fine line. In "Beneath the Surface," for instance, a scene called for the workers to be hammering. Despite my writing partner Paul's assertion that "a hammer is a hammer" regardless of where you are in the universe, props came up with an "alien hammer" for the episode. Similarly, we had to come up with "alien fruit" for a later scene (remember those red spray-painted kiwis we referred to in "Wormhole X-Treme!"?). Some things, like colloquial-speak, seem too bizarre for an alien world context and are nixed at the script stage while other borderline objects like ties or, in the case of this episode, a hat rack, get by.

    Fair enough, but I must draw the line at the smoke detector clearly present when Daniel tries to convince Kane to mount an attack on the bunker. Of course, it isn't a smoke detector at all. It's an alien air purifier.
  • And while we're on the subject: It's great to be as realistic as possible when shooting an episode. For that reason, we have a technical advisor on set to inform the cast of proper military protocol in certain situations -- say, the use of hand signals for instance. With the enemy just a stone's throw away, hand signals are a silent and effective means of communicating with your troops. It's fortunate then that Kane and his troops are well-versed in this silent form of communication as evidenced in this episode's climax.

    Hand signals and love ... truly the universal languages.