This is without a doubt the best sci fi ever !!!

“Here we come ,on the run, our coal fires burning.

Here we come, fife and drum, under the radar we crept on!”

I spent the morning rocking out to Abney Park. I finally got the chance to listen to their new album Aether Shanties. Which, totally rocks.  It was a funny picture today of me in my kitchen, making custard dancing and grooving.  Even more funny if someone had seen me, as I was listening on my mp3 player and thus I was the only one who could hear it.

What can I say… when I hear good music, I get the urge to move to it. Especially if I’m slaving over the stove for at 15 minutes of nothing but continuous stirring.  (Yes, I rock out while dyeing as well)

Once the dyeing was done, I realized it was quite chilly in the house. I opened the front door and when “holy crap… it’s snowing.”  I had no idea that snow was even in the forecast. But it’s my own fault. When I switched over from Firefox to Chrome, I lost my little toolbar that told me the weather, and I haven’t had a “real” television channel on in 3 days.

And on that note… Superbowl day? Really?

Who knew.  No… really I did know… I’ve just chosen to ignore it.  But I couldn’t for the life of me tell you who was playing etc.   Sometimes ignorance is bliss.  Sometimes it leaves you cold and wondering how many inches we are gonna get.

Today has been a Stargate Atlantis marathon and dyeing.

Yesterday I did the bulk of the dyeing.  Today was tweaking and fixing some things.  I dyed a skein of Bellatrix on silk sock, and a new one. One I have been meaning to do for over 6 months now. Coraline Duvall from Moonlight.  I also dyed a skein of Romp in the Heather for a customer. I’m proud to know that I was able to recreate it.

Hopefully tomorrow they will be dry enough so that I can take photos. Also hopefully the sun will be out enough to take those photos.

My original plan for Monday was to get up super early and be at the gym at 7. Yup, not getting out of bed at 7, but be at the gym.

The snow on the car will most likely prevent this.  But I’ll still drag my butt out of bed early enough to attempt it.  I would really like to make up for not going to the gym on Friday.  After class tomorrow shall be running errands.

The good thing about rocking out to Abney Park this morning, meant I got inspired for writing.

The bad news, is it’s not getting me inspired to finish the novella. I need to find some nice WW2 music for that. If anyone has any suggestions, I’m more than willing to give it a listen.

i’ll warn you now that everything in this post is going to be moderately embarrassing for me.

last night spelled a large snowstorm. as fun as driving home from work in seven inches of snow on a 30 minute commute was, i plan to spend today in bed.

ideal plans: eat some farina and watch season 1 of stargate atlantis
obstacle 1: this would require me to get up to change the dvd in my dvd player. i barely moved to take this picture, and that didn’t even require getting out of bed.
obstacle 2: walking outside to get milk. ugh.

current status: laying down in my leopard print snuggie, listening to tik tok,  and downloading the halo three mythic II map pack. oh golly, it’s done! time to watch charles in charge until i manage to get up to put stargate in.

eventually i will go to juliette’s house to help them unpack or something. maybe. this bed is really comfortable.

Aliens Made It Happen

Original Work: Stargate Atlantis

Summary: They had all been there long enough that they knew anything was possible. So John had no difficulty drawing conclusions when he overheard the tail end of a discussion regarding him.

Spoilers: Nothing, unless you count OMG THE WRITERS OF THIS SHOW ARE ON THE GOOD DRUGS, and if you read SGA fic you have probably noticed.

Warnings: Mpreg.

Preference Warnings: This is so epically contrived but I think it is worth it for the traumatic mental images.

Notes: It was while I was writing this that I realised my brain had been irrevocably changed.

For ten minutes that morning, John Sheppard had felt good. Kind of perky, even. It didn’t do anyone any good to be on edge all the time, especially not when death, torture or harvest festival might and usually did lurk at the opposite end of any gate trip. There had to be a breaking of the tension somewhere. And it was a day designed for feeling good: the sun was spreading its sparkly self across every window and balcony, no unusual crises had surfaced, and a few other people had smiled at him without warning as he crossed their paths on a swoop of the city, so clearly the feeling was catching.

He felt good, at least, until he wandered past Dr. Beckett’s base of operations and heard Rodney in there, speaking very fast and higher than he ever remembered hearing.

Beckett, too, sounded uniquely distressed. “Was it not funny enough to make me say I’m a doctor, not a every other day, that you all had to start coming up with reasons for me to say I’m not that type of doctor?”

“What, you think I planned for this to happen? You think maybe this morning in the lab I put down that highly uninteresting Ancient stun gun I was investigating and said, ‘you know what, screw this, I’m not having enough thoroughly irritating personal interactions here, and I don’t really feel the need to bring up my unexplained weight gains and their probable causes but I’m going to do it anyway’?”

“It’s possible?” said Beckett. Rodney made an enraged noise. “Well, I don’t know why you told me! There’s no… no test for that.”

“Well, there should be,” Rodney muttered, his voice lowering sharply in a move towards self-preservation that Rodney didn’t usually have even in the face of his imminent demise. John looked up and down the corridor. Seeing nobody, he took the opportunity to slot himself into a gap between some unprocessed crates from the mainland. It wasn’t his most brilliant moment, as that stack of crates now had a tuft of hair and a shoulder. He’d just have to hope his dumb luck outweighed Rodney’s.

“If only it had been made clear at the start that the two of you would be so integral to the mission, I’m sure there would be.” Beckett’s voice cracked. He sounded halfway between hysterics and willing his body into the spontaneous production of tranquilisers. “Only you and Major Sheppard – and speaking of which, shouldn’t you be talking to him about this?”

“I am not talking to him,” Rodney snapped. “I am talking to you, because you are the only one who can possibly do something about-”

“And I am telling you even if I could, I wouldn’t want to get involved! Don’t get me wrong here, you and the Major, you’re entitled to… ah. But I simply couldn’t cope with that level of involvement. I’d be forced to do something drastic inside of a week.”

“You-”

“And really, I don’t know why you’re making such a big deal of it. It’s clear to me the Major thinks the world of you, even when he doesn’t, which is a miracle in anyone’s life. He is a military man, but he is also very much his own man and we are a very long way from home. If everything you told me before I could stop you is true, then I don’t see how this changes things.”

“He-”

“Rodney. Come back to me when the baby is born,” said Beckett. “I can help you with that. For everything else, you might have to go through that inexplicably expanding waistline of yours to consult your heart.”

Rodney made a few very rude half-insults and then the next sound was of him storming out, fortunately heading away from the crates-that-resembled-John, because that way John didn’t see him and he really didn’t think he could deal with seeing any part of Rodney at that moment. If he was processing what he’d just heard right, which… fuck.

As soon as it was apparent that he would not be stumbled upon at any point in the near future, John extricated himself from his hiding place and hauled his ass back to his quarters. In privacy he lay on the floor and laughed and laughed, until he remembered that he was intimately involved in this situation, at which point he decided there really wasn’t anything to laugh about after all.

He could remember how it had happened, so clearly it was kind of weird considering how hazy everything had been on the actual occasion.

*

John yawned. He was keeping up with Rodney more by sound than sight, his eyes open a third of the time maximum. The bruises seemed to hurt less that way.

“Hey, Rodney.” He pawed in the air for his arm, didn’t quite connect with anything. “Mind if I crash at yours for now?”

He caught a flash of Rodney’s eyes as he looked back. They seemed wider than usual – holding onto notions of personal space after being stuck on a base in Antarctica was Rodney for you – but the expression checked itself quickly, and he nodded. John thought it might only be because when he thought about it he was too freaked out over there having been a brief possibility his life would end prematurely as a part of a dinosaur-sized space turtle’s shell to be alone, but he’d take whatever meant he didn’t have to stagger through the halls of Atlantis any more that night.

Once they were in the room, Rodney rushed for the bed and managed to put distance between the two of them impressive even considering the added size of his mattress.

“I’ll try not to jump you in your sleep,” John muttered as he flopped down, kicking at his boots before he remembered that boots needed undoing to come off.

The next thing he knew was being much, much more awake on top of Rodney’s bed with Rodney half on top of him as a very, very unconscious dead weight, and Rodney’s hand resting somewhere that had apparently been interested enough about that to send the rest of him a wake-up call.

John had just thought, well, that was one way to break the tension of the mission and possibly to ensure at least one of them had a really awkward night, but when he jerked his shoulder upward and said, “Uh, Rodney,” the expression on Rodney’s face before he was awake enough to remember context was… not what he had expected.

Rodney backed all the way to the absolute opposite edge of his bed. John on impulse said, “Hey, wait,” because Rodney’s ass would probably be safer that way than if he rolled off the bed, and what was the worst that could happen, really, and thus sealed his fate and his lack of imagination in two words.

*

Of course, it had been a reasonable thing to not-expect, except they’d really been in the Pegasus Galaxy long enough to automatically take whatever they thought was reasonable and go with the opposite.

But… pregnant. That was… not even the weirdest thing that had happened to them, although it sure as hell beat out all the other things for significance value.

And fuck, he’d been in the Pegasus Galaxy long enough that he could see it, as if it were sketched out in equations and gesticulating, bellied stick figures on the ceiling of his quarters. Rodney in a few more months bloated and blossoming, waddling about the labs at that point, because of course nobody had a hope of convincing him it was okay to back off for a while – although maybe John could argue for the sake of the child? His occasional tendency to be insufferable would start increasing exponentially as the hormones went partying. He’d demand citrus-flavoured delicacies in the middle of the night and threaten John with murder for attempting to protect him from his own treacherous body, although he’d have a case for being a little pissed over John’s belated protection.

Missions were definitely out. He’d probably cry when John left Atlantis. Perhaps John would have to give missions up too. No amount of concilatory backrubs could make up for made you worry your baby was going to be born without a… a… sperm donor? How would Rodney feel about being an unwed… incubator, anyway? They couldn’t exactly get married, although claiming the kid as his wasn’t likely to be a problem; nobody from the ‘Old Galaxy’ would ever believe it anyway.

He was interrupted mid-puzzling the question of the surname – Sheppard-McKay? Too obvious, but he was hardly giving up his claim… McShep? – by the sounds of scrabbling outside his door, as if Beckett had sent his rodenty test subjects on a hit as revenge for his part in inflicting the earlier conversation on him. He got up and let… oh shit, Rodney in.

“Hey,” said Rodney. He wasn’t waddling yet. He hardly showed at all, really. Probably he’d show differently, because… and where was the kid growing, anyway? Did John want to know? “I was… uh… were you busy at the moment?”

“Not at all,” said John. Rodney was staring at him as if he was some not-quite-human on some planet Teyla had no information on. He recalled the latter parts of the conversation with Beckett and oh hell, he had no idea how inclined Rodney was to keep the baby. What if Rodney decided he couldn’t deal with being a co-parent with someone as… as John as himself?

“You should sit down,” he said, and steered Rodney onto the bed. “That’s not, uh, too hard for you, is it?”

“It’s fine,” said Rodney with a through-the-eyelashes glare. “Look, Major, are you… is this a… because… and why are you staring at my stomach like that?”

“I know,” said John.

Rodney exchanged glances with the ceiling. “Yes, because I just called your attention to it, in case you thought that was a divine visitation of an auditory nature. Now you are aware of it, could you please stop?”

“No, I mean, I know, Rodney. I heard you talking to Carson before.”

“Oh.” Rodney’s eyes went even bigger than usual and his mouth went still.

“And it’s okay,” John barrelled on. “I mean, I was surprised, and it’s really weird, but it’ll be okay. Are you okay?” Rodney’s lips parted, his fingers twitched; he wasn’t sure if he could trust that yet. “I mean, I heard Carson doesn’t really know what’s going to happen, how could he, this is… uh… but you’d do it Caesarian, I suppose? You’ll be okay, right? He wouldn’t have… if you weren’t going to be okay. And don’t be stoic just because you think medicine is all voodoo: I want the truth. I need to know. And-”

“John,” said Rodney, which made him pause because he didn’t think Rodney had used his name even when they’d… ah, conceived Junior, although he had the excuse of incoherence then, but they really needed to fix that whole ‘Major’ thing before the birth or it might scar the kid. “You’re talking… pregnancy.”

“And I’m going to be there to save you from your lemon cravings,” John added. “Just so we’re clear.”

“John,” Rodney repeated, in a sort of pitying voice this time. “I am not pregnant.”

“…What.” John shook his head. “No, I heard what you-”

“You’d better sit down,” said Rodney, patting the mattress alongside him. John obeyed, his mind definitely not along for the ride.

“I heard you. I heard it. Oh, shit, did Carson figure out a test?”

“You see, this is exactly why I am the scientist and you get paid to run around shooting at things that move.” Rodney put his face into his hands. “Let’s sketch this out by numbers. One, I am not pregnant, two, I was never pregnant… and three, I am never going to forgive you for how unspeakably uncomfortable you have made this situation.”

“This is all your fault,” John retorted. “Who the hell goes around yelling privately about… about weight gains and tests and me in this freaking galaxy?”

“As I remember it, Major, I wasn’t the one who said, ‘would you like to touch it?’ that night.”

“N-o, but I wouldn’t have thought of sticking it in half those places without your encouragement.”

“All right,” said Rodney, lifting his head, taking a deep breath and turning towards John. “All this yelling is counterproductive. And it wouldn’t be the weirdest thing that had happened since we’ve been out here and I am sure that, somewhere, there is a planet we are of course going to visit that can make this happen and it will be you and me, of course, because I have no doubt this galaxy is only keeping us alive because it has a really big ‘gotcha’ in mind. But I am not, at present, having your baby.”

“Oh,” said John. It was probably for the best, when all the good colleges were very much out of their reach. Strangely, though, he no longer wanted to laugh. “Then what… the… and me?”

“I’d sort of decided I wasn’t going to tell you,” Rodney whimpered. “It isn’t really something you-” John narrowed his eyes. “Okay, okay. I’d just noticed, since we… since the unexpected occurrence we have already gone into far too much detail about in this conversation, I was putting on more weight than was normal. I mean, considering I am not exactly leading a sedentary lifestyle here. And I thought…”

“What,” urged John.

“I thought, perhaps, this was some sign that a certain, ridiculous part of my brain that has thus far seemed to serve only to humiliate me at every made-available opportunity was trying to inform me…”

“What?” said John. And then, “…Oh. You thought you were nesting?”

“Don’t you dare judge me. You thought I was pregnant,” Rodney snorted.

“You scientists can’t talk. Neither of you took time out from being traumatised to start thinking of, I don’t know, muscle tone.”

“Oh,” moaned Rodney. It seemed to be the word of the occasion. “Well. This is more humiliating than I anticipated it would be only moments earlier.”

John patted his shoulder, tentatively. “If it makes you feel any better, you would definitely be on my shortlist if I had to pick a man to carry my baby through weird alien conception techniques. Perhaps even number two on the list.”

“I’m not sure it does,” said Rodney. “Make me feel better, that is.” He was staring at his midsection with the sort of vagueness that would have left the uninitiated completely fooled as to the intensity of the mind inside that head.

“And that was the most… unique love confession I have ever received, including everything that has ever been said to me under the influence.”

“Love confession,” Rodney repeated. John remembered a little too late that Rodney was still stuck on the external characteristics. Well, he was too, to a point. It wasn’t so distant a point that he wasn’t thoroughly impressed with himself for breaking Rodney’s science.

“Announcement of physiological response, whatever. So are we on again, some time?”

Rodney exhaled loudly. “Uh. Maybe? Given sufficient time for this to be humorous instead of…”

“After all,” John couldn’t resist adding, “you do kind of owe me. Technically I just lost a kid.”

It was a really stupid thing to do, but Rodney just glared at him like he was direly calculating the probability of them running into that alien pregnancy planet very soon, so he knew when they were not going to be on. John thought he’d gotten away with that one.

“Next time, I’m bringing the protection,” said Rodney.

“That’s the first good idea either of us has had today,” said John. “Now we’ve got that sorted, what Ancient stun gun?”

I finished watching Fringe, at least all the way up to the most recent episode. It’s good, although I have to say that I enjoy the episodes that concern The Pattern much more than the stand-alone episodes. I hope as the show progresses the plot becomes more concerned with The Pattern and more explanation is provided to viewers. I don’t mind the idea of episodes being independent of one another, but I think continuity will give the show more focus and direction.

Also, I have finally made a decision and started watching Stargate Universe by way of circumnavigation—I have bypassed Stargate Atlantis for now and will return to it once I am all caught up on Stargate Universe. I’m up to episode 5 thus far and so far I’m really enjoying Universe. It’s like Stargate meets Battlestar Galactica. At least, that’s the impression I’m getting. We’ll see how it develops from here.

   I tried to watch the new stargate show SU but i just cant get into it. I will admit it was one show and only part of one. I could still be mad about the CLX of Atlantis. Any way how are the rest of you doing/liking the new show SU?

Stargate Atlantis follows the present-day adventures of John Sheppard and his military team from Earth that, along with two dozen other teams, venture to distant planets. They use an alien device known as a Stargate, which is housed inside the city of Atlantis on the planet “Lantea”. The city was built millions of decades ago by one on the most superior races with the Stargate universe: the Ancients. Five to ten million decades ago, thanks to a plague in the Milky Way Galaxy, they were forced to flee to the Pegasus Galaxy, and there they seeded life on hundreds of worlds as they had done to Earth in the Milky Way. Watch Stargate Atlantis full episodes now!

Stargate Atlantis Season

Watch Stargate Atlantis
Watch Stargate Atlantis
Watch Stargate
Watch Stargate Atlantis

Stargate Atlantis practices the present-day adventures of John Sheppard and his military team from Earth that, together with two dozen other teams, travel to isolated planets. They use an alien device known as a Stargate, which is housed within the city of Atlantis on the planet “Lantea”. The city was built millions of decades ago by one with the most advanced races with the Stargate universe: the Ancients. Five to ten million years ago, due to a plague within the Milky Way Galaxy, they were forced to flee on the Pegasus Galaxy, and there they seeded existence on hundreds of worlds as they had done to Earth within the Milky Way. Following encountering a powerful enemy known as the Wraith and going to war with them for one hundred decades, the Ancients ultimately lost and were forced to submerge their city beneath Lantea’s ocean, which, within the Stargate universe, could be the source of the Greek myth of the Lost City of Atlantis. Watch Stargate Atlantis full episodes now!

Stargate Atlantis Season

Stargate Atlantis practices the present-day adventures of John Sheppard and his military team from Earth that, together with two dozen other teams, travel to distant planets. They use an alien device known as a Stargate, which is housed inside the city of Atlantis on the planet “Lantea”. The city was built millions of years ago by one from the most advanced races belonging to the Stargate universe: the Ancients. Five to ten million years ago, thanks to a plague inside the Milky Way Galaxy, they were forced to flee towards the Pegasus Galaxy, and there they seeded existence on hundreds of worlds as they had done to Earth within the Milky Way. Following encountering a powerful enemy known as the Wraith and going to war with them for one hundred decades, the Ancients surely lost and were forced to submerge their city beneath Lantea’s ocean, which, while in the Stargate universe, may be the source of the Greek myth of the Lost City of Atlantis. Watch Stargate Atlantis full episodes now!

Stargate Atlantis Season

Scientists Prefer Blondes

Original Work: Stargate Atlantis

Summary: There are some things Rodney McKay was not prepared to be made aware of.

Spoilers: Nothing obvious. I don’t even know when the hell this is set, actually.

Warnings: None.

Preference Warnings: Oh man, this is so, so silly.

Notes: I think this came about while I was in bed bemoaning my inability to insert myself into the Stargate Atlantis universe. I DON’T MEAN TO WANT TO STEAL RODNEY, HONEST.

It might never have occurred to him if not for the thing on M66-399 where they helped the Greeg acquire a much more rational view of the universe, and the Greeg showed their appreciation (and contrition for the whole initially shooting at them business) by loading them up with crates of…

“Hair products,” said Sheppard, pulling his head out of the one he’d peeked into quickly. He sneezed a few times and blinked violently. “I think we might actually be able to use these against the Wraith. One whiff and-”

“In other words, they have no idea how to properly thank people,” Rodney growled. He could have thought of many better uses of his time than teaching high school to trigger-happy aliens.

“It’s not like we saved their lives or anything, Rodney.” Sheppard dumped two small crates from the top of the pile into his arms. “Looked out for our own asses, more likely. Make sure those ones go back on the top.”

Rodney thought about telling him that this was an even worse use of his time, but Sheppard had come charging right between him and that Greeg warrior before any of them knew this was a civilisation that could be conquered by science. And there was a lot of hair product nobody else was rushing to get within smelling range of. So he consoled himself by perfecting the unused diatribe in his head and hauled crate with the others.

*

A few weeks later Rodney was tempted to go back to Sheppard to suggest that he had, in fact, possibly prolonged the lives of the Greeg with his delivery of Your Planet And You 101, as it was really all they seemed to have going for them at that point. As well as sounding like they had been named by a five-year-old who thought Saturday morning cartoons were good food for a growing mind, the mention of their wares made even high-tech civilisations grimace and back away. On one planet, when Sheppard decided they might have better luck trading the stuff everyone already didn’t want if they wafted its unique bouquet into the air, an otherwise docile group of nomadic herders threatened to beat them to death with herding sticks if they opened one more package.

Teyla was first back on the puddlejumper on that occasion.

Eventually Elizabeth started yelling at Sheppard to just get those crates out of the storerooms before the gradually heightening stink soaked into the walls permanently. Over the course of a week Rodney saw Sheppard emerging from heated discussions with a series of scientific staff carrying the sort of focus in his eyes that on normal occasions was accompanied by shooting, yelling or possibly the world disintegrating around him. After fifteen minutes with Beckett he was muttering about no sense of adventure, the lot of them.

At the start of their next mission, Sheppard offered some of the least offensive samples to Teyla. “I thought… I mean, we’re trying to work out what to do with this and I figure, you’re a woman, you should get first dibs…”

Teyla answered him with a look. “If you leave those crates anywhere near my people, they will also hunt you down,” she added.

Rodney was in his room puzzling over some test results and directing a small portion of his thoughts towards which non-threatening alien race had most irritated him if Sheppard should decide a secret dumping mission was in order, when a knock jolted him out of his thoughts.

“McKay? I heard you’re into blondes, right?”

Rodney got up to let Sheppard in. And stared.

“Help,” said Sheppard, and pushed past him into the room, bringing with him a fresher tang of Greeg ointments just when Rodney had been getting excited at working the smell out of his personal space.

Rodney was, admittedly, a little diverted by that and by the fact that Sheppard’s hair was now a rich gold most of the way through except for its spiky extremities where it appeared to be straw-yellow. The colouring clashed with his eyebrows; who wouldn’t be given pause at that? It didn’t take him that much longer than it otherwise might have to figure out what was going on, though.

“You tried out the Greeg One-Step Formula To A New You.”

“They said it would give my hair that natural sun-kissed look!”

“And you seriously-”

Sheppard sank onto his bed and exhaled. “Rodney, I was just trying to get rid of some of it. I am really not here to-”

“You seriously thought that playing with something nobody else native to this galaxy will touch was likely to result in a positive experience?”

“McKay…”

Rodney sat down next to Sheppard and startled both of them by bursting into loud, hysterical laughter. Sheppard groaned. Rodney flopped onto his back and laughed until tears leaked from his eyes, then wiped them up, got a clear view of Sheppard and started laughing all over again.

“As I was going to say before we were interrupted by your amusement at my expense,” said Sheppard, “it would be quite unfair for you to say anything to me about messing with things without fully understanding the ramifications of doing so.”

“That’s true,” Rodney muttered, catching his breath, although he felt Sheppard was missing a crucial point there. With the heights of exceptional brilliance came hand-in-hand the potential for greater-than-average falls. He didn’t think Surprise Blonde Sheppard was in an appropriate frame of mind to take that sort of argument in, though.

“However, there are a lot of others who would be perfectly justified in being… negatively amused.” Sheppard grimaced. “Which is why I need you to get me back to normal before anyone sees.” Words began spilling out of him. “I’ve tried everything I could think of: washing, removers – everything I wasn’t too scared to-”

“So you were thorough then,” muttered Rodney.

Sheppard paused long enough to narrow his eyes, which was a lot more effective than usual what with the contrast between eyes and hair, “-and it didn’t shift it at all. We did not come prepared for this sort of crisis.”

Rodney sighed. “I can put together a serviceable dye with what we have on hand. Wait about half an hour, and I should be able to take care of it without anyone around to ask questions.”

“Thank you,” said Sheppard.

“And I should probably look at a sample of that stuff you used to be sure if you do get poisoned or stop pulling those mental arithmetic party tricks all of a sudden it has nothing to do with me.” If this was Sheppard’s way of convincing him to play with something nobody else was willing to sit in close quarters with, he would kill him. Doubly so if it actually turned out to be a serviceable weapon against the Wraith.

“I owe you one.”

“Yes, well.” Having Sheppard eye him appreciatively for once was exactly as satisfying as he had imagined, although it was also a little like suddenly realising you’d done a great deal of work on a dataset you were reading upside-down the whole time. “You know, I think I do actually find you more attractive as a blonde,” he commented, without thinking.

“Really,” said Sheppard.

“I’m surprised too, because actually you look ridiculous that way. But.” He squinted. “There’s definitely something in it. Perhaps you should just tell everyone you meant to do it to impress me.” Sheppard snorted. “It would save both of us a lot of trouble. It is far less humiliating to look ridiculous if you can convincingly argue it was intentional. Then you can always just hide in my quarters while we’re not in the field if everyone looks at you too oddly. Tell them it worked perfectly.”

“You… what. Did you just…”

“I could catch up on some work if only people thought there was some reason to not bother me,” said Rodney, shrugging.

“All the time we’re not in the field.”

“I have a lot of work to catch up on,” said Rodney.

“You have an extremely exaggerated view of your sexual prowess,” said Sheppard.

*

“I’m gonna wash that plan-et out of my hair…” warbled Sheppard, kneeling over a basin.

“You do not want to annoy me while I am massaging your scalp,” said Rodney. “And, in case you’ve forgotten, I’ve already covered the furniture.”

*

Sheppard was impressed at how closely Rodney had managed to match the colour of his real hair. He stopped by Rodney’s desk to mention it after taking a surreptitious tour of the city’s social hubs, because apparently he couldn’t just be impressed with Rodney until he was certain nobody else would suspect. Rodney supposed it showed he’d learned something about his own judgment. He just didn’t find it flattering.

“…so I’ll swing around again later and tell you about this mission that I’m just taking you along for,” Sheppard concluded, more loudly for the benefit of anyone else who happened to be taking too great an interest.

“I can’t say if I’ll still be here,” Rodney said, deciding that if Sheppard asked, he was all for paying a visit to those arrogant peasants who had thrown him with clearly flawed logic when not one of them had a degree in sight.

“I’ll find you,” Sheppard insisted, and strutted off, presumably to sneak all the remaining crates into the puddlejumper before anyone got curious about the strutting.

Rodney watched him leave, looking exactly as he always did, no more weird distracting modifications – and really the dye wasn’t as perfect as it could have been, it was lacking in certain Sheppard-nuances, but he did the best with what he had on hand and nobody expects John Sheppard, really – and his face fell as it hit him. It wasn’t just the blonde. Not the blonde at all.

Oh, hell.

Stargate Atlantis practices the present-day adventures of John Sheppard and his military team from Earth that, along with two dozen other teams, venture to distant planets. They use an alien device known as a Stargate, which is housed inside the city of Atlantis on the planet “Lantea”. The city was built millions of years ago by one with the most advanced races on the Stargate universe: the Ancients. Five to ten million decades ago, as a result of a plague in the Milky Way Galaxy, they were forced to flee on the Pegasus Galaxy, and there they seeded life on hundreds of worlds as they had done to Earth inside the Milky Way. After encountering a powerful enemy known as the Wraith and going to war with them for one hundred decades, the Ancients finally lost and were forced to submerge their city beneath Lantea’s ocean, which, inside the Stargate universe, is the source of the Greek myth of the Lost City of Atlantis. Watch Stargate Atlantis full episodes now!

Stargate Atlantis Season

Writer/co-executive producer Alan McCullough in his Sanctuary digs. Photo by Jeff Weddell and copyright of Sanctuary 2 Productions

When Stargate Atlantis‘ TV run was brought to an end after five years, series writer/producer Alan McCullough, who had previously served as a writer/story editor on Stargate SG-1, relocated from the Pegasus Galaxy to take on a new creative challenge. He joined Sanctuary as a writer as well as co-executive producer and penned four scripts for the show’s second season. In his first one, Hero, Chris Gauthier, best known as Walter in Eureka, plays an ordinary man who is transformed into an unlikely costumed crusader against crime in the show’s fictional New City.

“Hero was a really fun script to write,” says McCullough. “It’s a fast-paced and humorous episode, which I never really had the opportunity to do on Stargate. There was always humor embedded in the dialogue in Stargate, but it was rare that I got to write a comedic script. There were people who were sort of the go-to guys for that; Martin Gero and Brad Wright, in particular, and Rob Cooper also wrote a couple of great comedy scripts and Carl Binder wrote one, too. So when I came on Sanctuary there was a chance for me to do the same.

“In Hero, our people are on a mission to track down an Abnormal when all of a sudden they’re thwarted by a guy in a neoprene suit. He drops out of the sky, grabs the person we’re chasing and flies off, so we’re left wondering where the hell this guy came from and how he can fly. He’s apparently human and appears to be wearing a homemade outfit, but nevertheless seems to possess miraculous powers. Chris Gauthier played the part to a tee. He was hilarious in it and brought so much to the role.

“The actual shooting of this episode was difficult because there were a lot of stunts. We actually brought in a flying rig which, I believe, is one of the most advanced ones you can get. I’m not well-versed in the technology of it, but you sit in front of a giant computer screen and program in all the moves you want to do and draw all the vectors on the screen. The operator then turns the rig on and it flies you around in the exact way that it was programmed to. So they did a full day of shooting just with that rig and came away with some fantastic stuff, including a scene where, at one point, our superhero has to fight a monster.

“Again, it was a fun episode and Chris has a blast and we had a blast working with him. It was a nice break, too, in the season. We had just come off shooting the two-part End of Nights, which is an energetic and tension-filled story where we’re fighting for the survival of the Sanctuary, and if you saw the episodes you know that something big happens to one of our characters at the end of part two. Then in the following story, Eulogy, we’re dealing with the death of a character. It’s a very poignant episode, so it was good to then come in with episode four, which was lighter in tone and a total breath of fresh air. Personally, I think Hero is one of the best scripts I’ve ever written and one that I’m really proud of.”

There was a very specific idea in mind for McCullough’s next Sanctuary script, Veritas, but, as is often the case in the world of TV, it eventually evolved into something quite different. “We started out with marching orders to come up with a background story for Bigfoot [Christopher Heyerdahl],” explains the writer. “We pitched story after story to the Syfy Channel but there was always one thing they didn’t like, so we would go back and try to retool the script. However, by pulling out that one thing, the whole story collapsed.

“So we’d start fresh, and ultimately we came up with a story that the network loved but that had nothing to do with Bigfoot’s back story whatsoever,” chuckles McCullough. “It does, however, involve Bigfoot in a very major and pivotal way. At the very beginning of the episode, Will [Robin Dunne] arrives back from a trip and he’s frantic; he’s been told that Bigfoot has been killed. Will goes to the morgue where he finds Bigfoot lying there with two bullet holes in his chest, and we further learn that Magnus [Amanda Tapping] is the prime suspect.

“From there, it becomes a bit of a murder mystery that takes place within the context of the Sanctuary. They have specific charter rules for how they deal with situations such as this, including summoning what’s called The Triad, which is a group of telepaths that arrive on the scene and start questioning people. Within the Sanctuary network we have individuals with these incredible abilities, so why not use them to solve crimes. Will, of course, sets out to prove that Magnus had nothing to do with this, but the deeper he digs, the more evidence seems to mount that she actually did shoot Bigfoot.

“It’s a real mindbender of an episode where, quite honestly, all is not revealed until the very end. We designed it so that at every single turn you think, ‘Oh, they’re going to tell us who really did it,’ but you get no satisfaction until the story is nearly over. This was another fun episode for me to write and, coming off Hero, much more of a subdued, emotional type of potboiler. We had a great guest-cast, too, including Erica Cerra [Deputy Jo Lupo in Eureka], who did a fantastic job playing one of the telepaths. And Amanda Tapping did an incredible job directing the episode.”

The writer’s third Sanctuary script, Penance, reunites Helen Magnus with an old friend, Jimmy, played by Tapping’s former SG-1 costar Michael Shanks (Dr. Daniel Jackson). Although it would have been tempting to pair them up on the screen, Shanks actually shared the majority of his scenes with the show’s newest castmember, Agam Darshi, who plays Kate Freelander. Writing-wise, this one was a bit of a whirlwind for McCullough.

“We received notes on the outline last Friday night from Syfy,” he recalls, “so I started writing the script on Saturday and Sunday and, hopefully, I’ll finish it up today [Monday, June 1st, 2009]. It’s certainly the fastest that I’ve ever had to turn around a script. This one starts out with a really action-packed teaser where our characters are in Old City to meet an Abnormal who’s a ‘mule.’ By that I mean he has a pocket in his body that can transport hazardous or very sensitive material, and in this case he’s carrying a container for us in his belly.

“So we get there, but, of course, the bad guys are on our tail and all hell breaks loose. Our people get separated and Kate and Jimmy end up trapped in a derelict hotel room. Kate has been shot and the two of them spend a considerable amount of time together getting to know one another. In the process, Kate opens up to Jimmy and we discover a great deal about her past, including how her father was killed. With Kate being a new character this season, we felt this was a good opportunity for audiences to learn more about her. Meanwhile, Magnus and everyone else are out there looking for Kate and Jimmy, and it’s a bit of a chess match to see who’s going to arrive first and save the day.

“The neat thing about this episode is that we’re going to be doing some location shooting. We do almost all our filming downstairs in the studio, much of which is using a green screen, and we also shoot outside on the studio lot or in the nearby streets. We usually don’t have trucks to go out on-location with, but for episode eight [Next Tuesday], we’re packing up all our equipment to go film at a pool. Thanks to some scheduling magic, we have the truck for the rest of the week, so we’re taking advantage of that and going to shoot for two, possibly three days on the old Watchmen set. At least that’s the plan. We went out to look at the set, which is on Marine Way, and we’re going to use that as Old City. It’s perfect because the story has a lot of skulking around as well as gunplay and a bit of a car chase, so I’m really excited about that.”

Despite being a freshman with Sanctuary, it has not taken McCullough long to find the voices of the new characters he is writing for. “Obviously I’d worked with Amanda before, and although this is Helen Magnus and not Sam Carter, I still hear Amanda’s voice in my head, so it’s just a matter of finding the right words,” says the writer. “Ryan Robbins, who plays Henry, has a very distinctive voice, so I seem to be able to hear his voice quite easily, too.

“The character I struggled with the most was Will. I’ve since found his voice a lot more, but with my first script, Hero, I really struggled. Ultimately, I don’t think anyone picked up on that. The episode moves so quickly and there’s so much going on that I don’t think you would have the time to sit there and think, ‘Hmm, that didn’t quite sound like something Will would say.’ I noticed it, though, and when I’d write a line I’d think, ‘That doesn’t sound right,’ so I’d delete it and write another one. So it took me a while to get Will’s dialogue to sound right, but episode seven is wall-to-wall Will and I think I found his voice a little better for that one.

“It helps, too, that Damian Kindler [series creator/executive producer] is always around, and we go through the scripts with a fine-tooth comb. We’ll look at each line and if there’s one that bothers any of us, we’ll find another way to say what it is we’re trying to say.”

The writer’s fourth and final contribution to Sanctuary’s second season is part one of the show’s two-part season ender, Kali. The germ of the idea for this episode came from a prior one, while the setting was the result of a previously discussed story that never came to be. Catching up again recently with McCullough, he was happy to talk about Kali’s development.

“Earlier in the season we were breaking a story called Justice,” recalls the writer. “It was set in a small town, which is tough to do on our show as we don’t have suitable sets and didn’t want to go out on-location. So Martin Wood [executive producer/director] proposed setting Justice in a Mumbai slum, as that would be relatively easy to re-create. We loved that idea so much that we decided to save it for the [season] finale. Unfortunately, Justice never got produced, which is too bad because it was a great story.

“The idea for Kali came partly from Veritas, where we introduce an Abnormal called Big Bertha, who is capable of creating earthquakes. I’m pretty sure it was me who suggested that we use Big Bertha in the season finale as well. I proposed that Magnus had lied to the heads of the Sanctuary network about destroying the creature and secretly kept her alive in an enclosure at the bottom of the Indian Ocean. And then later on in the writers’ room, we came up with the idea for the Makri, the small spider that telepathically links to Big Bertha.

“We went back and forth for weeks with this story,” continues the writer. “It’s probably the toughest one I’ve ever had to break. We knew we were on to something and felt like it could be big, but we just could not find the story for the life of us. Eventually, and after numerous rewrites, we shaped the story into Kali, parts one and two. Later in the process I was reviewing part two, which Damian wrote, and went to him with a logic problem. Basically, something Will was doing made no sense. And I distinctly remember what followed next; Damian sat back in his chair, thought about it for a long time, and then said, ‘I think I know what to do – Will has to dance a Bollywood number.’

“I nearly fell off my chair. He was exactly right, of course, but I thought we’d be marched right out of the TV business for good if we tried to do a full-scale Bollywood number in a Sci-Fi show. Luckily, Mark Stern [Syfy's Executive Vice President for Original Content ] bought into the idea and off we went.

“Also late in the game, Damian, Martin, Amanda and Robin were invited to Tokyo by Syfy Asia and decided to take advantage of the exotic locale to shoot a scene for the show. We brainstormed and felt it belonged in my episode, and it turned out to be a great way to start things off. Shooting the Mumbai sequences took place on our [studio] backlot, which is where we built a massive labyrinthine Mumbai slum, and it looked photo real. To top it off, it was over 40 degrees Celsius, or 104 Farenheit, pretty much the whole week we were filming. Everyone was dying from the heat, but it helped with the authenticity. I’m not sure how we’re going to replicate that in part three, which will likely be shot this coming February or March.”

Having thoroughly enjoyed his first year with Sanctuary, McCullough is eagerly awaiting the start of work on season three. “I’m definitely looking forward to the challenge of us doing 20 episodes and really pushing the boundary with our season [story] arcs,” he says. “And also somehow getting ourselves out of the conundrum we created at the end of Kali, Part 2.”

Steve Eramo

As noted above, photo is by Jeff Weddell and copyright of Sanctuary 2 Productions, so please no unauthorized copying or duplicating of any kind. Thanks!

Holy crap… I want to write today about as much as I want to punch myself in the nuts with a meat-tenderizer.

Alright, maybe a little less – I can see the latter being amusing once the pain numbs out. I don’t have a good reason to feel so averse to writing; things in the apartment are fairly calm, I slept well, and I am interested in writing this review… I just don’t fucking want to. Next time I decide to discipline myself, someone stop me. This shit is hard.

For a few years, there was one show that absolutely dominated television. Critics and viewers ate it up; they absolutely could not get enough. Its cast became stars, but the cool kind – they didn’t tell you how to vote or to buy useless crap. It changed the way people viewed television, and launched a tidal wave of cheap rip-offs. Then, one night the ride was over; dead silence echoed where greatness once reigned.

Yeah, I took the cancellation of the Golden Girls pretty hard, too.

What does Bear Arthur and Betty White having comedic misadventures have to do with Stargate: Universe? Not much – it’s just damn good TV. SGU is really more of a successor to Battlestar Galactica, because imitation really is the highest form of cashing in on another’s success. This is one show that the wife and I will actually disconnect the Internet Feed Tube to watch directly. SGU may be pandering to everything that is wrong in the genre, but it is fucking addictive and I am thoroughly hooked.

Click below to step through the event horizon. Quotes provided by Colonel General Jack O’Neill.

“You know that ‘we come in peace’ business? Bite me.”

Hollywood gave you a choice in 1994. You could either see Star Trek: Generations (and watch Shatner murder his already shaky characterization), or check out an unknown flick called Stargate. I went to go see Generations, of course – the cool club kicks you out if you miss Trek. My friends however went to see Stargate, and I wish to Pesci I could go back in time and make the wiser choice. Stargate wasn’t just good: it was good with a hardon and a bottle of whiskey, ready to skullfuck you sister while singing show tunes. There are few things more enjoyable than watching Kurt Russel and James Spader running around in the desert, getting snogged by pig-cows and blowing the fuck out of half-naked people. You know they were the bad guys also: they had big metal animal heads. Evil, here’s a hint: try to blend in more. If you are the only power on a dirt poor planet, leave the fucking Rolls Royce at home. When Good manages to get off its ass and fuck things up, it’s going to start with all your expensive shit.

Stargate kicked ass and there was talk of sequel, but critic response to the film was lackluster at best. However, in 2001, Showtime released a show based on the mythology of the series, Stargate: SG1. This version of the show replaced Kurt Russel with MacGyver and fell a few years after the events of the movie. It brought back the character of Dr. Daniel Jackson (Michael Shanks) and added a chick (Amanda Tapping) and a whacky black dude (Chris Judge). Gone was the hefty action adventure, replaces with cheesy one-liners, forced sexual tension, and absurd alien enemies. The result?

Kick ass.

Stargate SG-1 was the longest running science fiction show in North American history (Something ran longer elsewhere? I am way too lazy to “research”), spawning one shitty spin-off and two even shittier movies. The show explored all the same hippy themes as Star Trek, but without taking itself too seriously and making you feel guilty in the process. Colonel O’Neill (McGyver) was happy to shoot the fuck out of people when he could; all the smart stuff just confused him. The show was a critical and commercial success, and we all thought it would be the pinnacle of sci-fi television for some time to come.

Then Battlestar Galactica came out.

If you don’t know anything about BSG, turn off your computer, go find someplace really high and jump (preferably to your doom). After the show wrapped up, Scy Fy (Fucking ugh) was left with an open slot in Friday night. The answer? Capitalize on the success of Battlestar Galactica, add a pinch of Star Trek: Voyager, and toss in some hot chicks. Stargate Universe was born.

“Would you interpret what I just said?”

Do you think the Ancients were compensating for something?

The show has a very direct plot: a bunch of people are trapped in space on a fucked up ship they can’t use. The cool thing about SGU is not the plot; it’s how the show tells that story. This is not Stargate like you’re familiar with. The humor and special effects are subdued; the feel is very dark and insanely fucking tense. It succeeds in a way that Stargate: Atlantis and the movies couldn’t by taking the concept of Stargate and telling it in a new way – much like SG1 did years before. Instead of being about cool worlds or strange aliens, SGU is about its characters and how they react to a terrifying environment. Think back to the first season of Lost and you’ll understand what I am getting at.

The premise is that a bunch of scientist and military types are in a top-secret base on another world when shit goes wrong. Dr. Nicholas Rush (Robert Carlyle) is attempting to unlock the ninth chevron on the Stargate when bad guys attempt to kill the fuck out them. Thanks to the help of geeky computer boy Eli (David Blue), Rush is able to open the gate with the weirdo address at the last moment and save everyone… sort of. They materialize on an Ancient ship called Destiny, roughly a fucktillion light-years from Earth with no way of gating back home.

Colonel Young (Justin Louis) is nominally in command of Destiny, searching for some way to get back to his wife before Lou Diamond Phillips fucks her toes numb. Standing in his path, Dr. Rush is a little nucking futs and is trying to fix the ship, as well as opening up the hatch getting some Ancient chair device working. Fatass computer geek Eli (David Blue) played MMOs and unlocked a cipher Dr. Rush placed in the game, translating an alien intelligence (Never would have happened IRL. A gamer that elite? He’d never miss a raid to join the military). Chloe Armstrong (Elyse Levesque) is a hottie, and hots around hotting up the hot. Lieutenant Scott (Brian K. Smith) is a Captain America at a younger age. The dude really needs to work on his accent and stuff some croissants if he ever wants to be Chief Engineer on the Enterprise though. Sergeant Greer (Jamil Walker Smith) is… you know what; there are a lot of fucking characters. There are more – seriously. Just go watch the show.

Stargate Universe explores some really dark themes; it does not hold back on how desperate the survivor’s situation is. People are dying due to a lack of medical supplies and expertise. Halfway through the first season, a guy kills himself because he just can’t take it. Every time the Destiny can make contact with a planet to retrieve the basics for survival, something really fucked up happens and throughout it all, Dr. Baltar Rush seems like he is working against going back to Earth. There are so many storylines happening simultaneously, it’s hard to keep them straight but the writers masterfully weave them so it doesn’t become too much at once.

“Thank you, Sir. I pride myself on my deductive reasoning skills.”

I love this show, and I really didn’t think I would. From the very beginning, it looked like was just going to be Stargate: Galactica. SGU stands on its own. Where the characters in Galactica were powerfully written, they broke molds from the very beginning and you knew you were dealing with a cast of precious little snowflakes. Stargate Universe tossed that shit out the window and shoved a whole bunch of tired stereotypes at you: that guy is a computer geek, that fucker is Captain America, and he’s the bad boy. As the show continues, you learn about the characters and you realize how wrong you were. They are unique, they are just keeping the weird hidden at first – and that’s wonderful. It feels like you actually got to know them, as you would if you’d met them in the real world.

Another thing I dig about this show is that the problems on the ship are very simple – critical, but simple. The plots are less about finding a solution than it is watching people freak out about them. Sometimes this is taken to extremes (the episode Darkness was a little too reactionary, and a little boring because of it) but it always gives you insight into the characters. Anyone can make a sci-fi show about technology and scrotum-headed aliens; that is not what the creators of SGU were going for. This show is about human motivations and human needs, and it doesn’t shy away from showing you how fucked up we are at heart.

The show is on break now, so if you haven’t watched it yet fire up Hulu or whatever and check out the first half of the season. The actors are amazing – dude, Robert Carlyle and Lou Diamond Phillips. The show is serialized, but not so much that you’ll be totally lost if you missed an episode. I don’t know that this show is as good as SG:1, but it is pretty fucking good – and definitely the best sci-fi show out right now.

Stargate Atlantis practices the present-day journeys of John Sheppard and his military team from Earth that, along with two dozen other teams, travel to isolated planets. They use an alien device known as a Stargate, which is housed within the city of Atlantis on the planet “Lantea”. The city was built millions of years ago by one with the most superior races with the Stargate universe: the Ancients. Five to ten million years ago, due to a plague within the Milky Way Galaxy, they were forced to flee on the Pegasus Galaxy, and there they seeded existence on hundreds of worlds as they had done to Earth within the Milky Way. Watch Stargate Atlantis full episodes now!

stargate atlantis season

It is being reported today that Jason Momoa, one of the stars of the SyFy Channel’s “Stargate Atlantis”, has secured the title role in the upcoming Conan the Barbarian remake. Momoa beat out rumored contenders Kellan Lutz (Twilight) and Jared Padelecki (Supernatural, Friday the 13th) for the role previously occupied by the Govenator, Arnold Schwarzenegger. Filming is scheduled to begin March 15 in Bulgaria.

I have loved Jason Momoa since he began on Stargate Atlantis and while I also love Kellan and Jared, I think that the physicality of the role – especially the fight scenes which are sure to be a huge part of the movie – are probably better suited to Jason, who – as Ronon Dex – is no stranger to fights and conflict. Good luck to you Jason.

Oh, and because I simply have to do this, here’s a photo I was able to have taken with Jason at my very first DragonCon in 2007…he told me I had beautiful hair *sigh*

Major Illusions

Original Work: Stargate Atlantis

Summary: John Sheppard really just wants to sleep. But he has to deal with some unforeseen consequences of his subconscious mind first.

Spoilers: Set immediately after the events of S01 E09 and making vague reference to them and other character-y things that should be apparent to that point.

Warnings: None.

Preference Warnings: Nothing in particular. Dear God, I’m losing my touch.

Notes: This is what happens when you put your brain on a constant diet of Stargate Atlantis for a couple of weeks. Also, I love Teyla. I bet she is totally screwing with all the Earthlings’ heads off-camera.

After the sack of shit he’d been whacked over the head with that day, John really wanted nothing more than to barricade himself in his quarters and sleep until the images of people whose images really should have stayed faded and mindfucks of the Pegasus Galaxy in general receded to a place where they didn’t make him want to punch things.

But of course he had to go with McKay to his quarters and sit by his bed and nod and grunt through an increasingly ridiculous monologue detailing fake-outs and how he would have caught on sooner if he’d been given the unfair advantages that John was, and something about “goddamned fractals” until his drowsiness had mercy on the world and he was just breathing quietly in slumber and occasionally muttering disjointed snippets of some infinite sequence or textbook definitions of gaseous substances. You didn’t let the best brain you had drive himself to insanity and feel like he was all alone in the galaxy. It didn’t matter if that brain’s brilliant schemes were on this occasion and consistently – well, about half the time – responsible for the serious trouble they found themselves in.

And then, for himself, he had to find Ford and spend just enough time with him that he no longer felt unduly weird about pointing a gun at him even though he hadn’t, really, which strangely enough seemed to be what made it feel weird, and finally Elizabeth. The two of them discussed measures to ensure they weren’t fooled for so long the next time such a thing happened, which was ridiculous in this galaxy, sort of like spending time erecting a tiny picket fence to keep away a space rodent being chased by a velociraptor, but this had just been that much worse than all the other ways they’d been screwed with. John guessed Elizabeth needed to feel like she was doing something to keep the inside of her brain from being dumped out in a pile for any other alien race’s perusal. He was definitely with that endeavour.

Finally Elizabeth wore herself out and staggered off to bed, which seemed to leave John free to do what he needed to for himself. He hadn’t seen Teyla since immediately after they returned to Atlantis, but this had really been nothing but a scrape for her and she tended to deal with things in her own way, which was fine with him at that moment.

John took the long way to bed, taking routes least likely to lead him to encounter anyone else. He was half a hallway from his destination when he saw her, leaning on her elbows against the wall outside his door.

“Hey, Teyla,” he said, managing to not groan. “What’s up?”

“I will only take a few moments of your time, Major.” Teyla was smirking a little, which at first irritated and then seriously freaked him out because he really couldn’t think of anything that had been funny that day. “I have been doing some research.”

“Please tell me it’s going to stop insubstantial alien races from crawling into my head in future,” John growled.

“Not… quite.” From behind her back Teyla produced a glossy photograph that… well… John felt his eyebrows rise over the top of his hair. He tried not to stare at the twice-enhanced and barely bikini-covered breasts, which happened to be the part of the photograph Teyla was thrusting into his face. It was a challenge because the light was reflecting off the image in a quite interesting manner even if it was two-dimensional, but glancing beyond it at Teyla’s face cured him well enough of his curiosity.

“Where did you get that from?”

Teyla gave him a look that made him not want to know what she’d offered to who to get hold of it. “I hear that, on Earth, such displays are much sought after.”

Oh, no. He was not going to be talking to Teyla about the porn industry that night, or any night, really. “Look, Teyla, I get that this is your… thing, after a stressful mission, trading society and all that, but I really don’t think the Athosians-”

“I do not think you understand,” Teyla interrupted. “I merely wished to tell you that I was finally able to comprehend the significance of the clothing you had me acquire while I was subject to your created world.”

The clothing he had her wear. …His idea, right, because Teyla’s idea of Earth fashions would have been a far more dubious thing, and hell, she’d been in that top, and those shoes…

“I… I really…” She’d come to play with her food before she killed it. “I didn’t plan any of that, I swear, you were there, I had no idea I could influence any of that until after…”

“Oh, I am not offended,” said Teyla. John felt a planetary atmosphere’s worth of air explode out of him. “To the contrary, I am grateful to you for enabling me to better understand the motivations of your people.”

She looked more like she was counting down the hours until she could skip over to the mainland to share the joke with the rest of her people. John really wanted to point out to her that there was no way Earth harboured the only or the worst fans of visually stimulatory material, and in any case there was nothing wrong with that, especially not when there were races out there that thought munching on other races was a great time. He wasn’t entirely sure he was in a good position to debate from, though.

While he was dazedly trying to work out what Teyla’s feelings on accidental sexual harassment in the workplace were likely to be, Teyla herself slipped the revealing image into an unseen pocket, said a soft, “Sleep well, Major,” and flitted off down the hall still smirking. Why, exactly, had he been so adamant about being assured a way back to Atlantis so he could be laughed at and confused out of his mind by his own team?

Only some minutes later, as he stretched out finally on his own bunk exactly where he was supposed to be in the universe, did John realise Teyla had managed to make the whole experience just a little bit funny inside of his head. Or, at least, it might be funny once he had learned the Athosian way of never letting someone forget a humiliating experience and become resigned to it.

I have been faithfully watching Stargate SG-1 to get the gist of the series so that I might finally start watching Stargate Universe. I’ve done this over the last couple of months and recently finished Season 7 of SG-1. Overall the experience was not terrible. The episodes of SG-1, however, are really scattered, some being good and others being real duds.

But my dilemma has to do with choice: I can now proceed with watching the rest of SG-1 (seasons 8, 9 &10), I can jump into Stargate Atlantis, or I can jump right into Stargate Universe. I have not yet delved into Season 8 of SG-1, nor do I know anything about Atlantis; I have, however, watched the pilot episode for Stargate Universe and it looks awesome. I’m itching to get into the series and I’d love to continue watching, but my dilemma is that I am afraid that I might miss out on some important details pertaining to the overall Stargate Universe (multiverse?) if I don’t introduce myself to Stargate Atlantis.

For all those that have been wondering when Real Life would stop interfering long enough for the author to get the next chapter published, you need wonder no more. Chapter 5 has just been published on the Fanfiction website and heralds a return of our favourite boys to the plotline.

So what are you still doing here. Follow the link to my fanfiction and check out the latest addition and be safe in the knowledge that Chapter 6 is being worked upon and shouldn’t take six weeks to appear. Of course while you wait for the following chapters you could visit my RedBubble site and check out my photographs. I’ll be adding some new entries from my latest vacation of the next week or two. You never know you just might find that special gift for your Valentine amongst my work.

Stargate Atlantis' Dr. Rodney McKay (David Hewlett). Photo copyright of the Syfy Channel

Stargate Atlantis‘ swan song fifth season proved to be one heck of a ride for the show’s resident genius, Dr. Rodney McKay. Having been buried alive together with some of his colleagues at the end of season four, he and his teammates were eventually found alive in Search and Rescue. Soon after in The Shrine, McKay contracted a deadly virus that temporarily robbed him of his intellect as well as memories and almost killed him, while in Tracker, the scientist wound up off-world with Ronon and trying to track down a Runner who was hellbent on eluding them. By mid-season, McKay was playing host to Stargate SG-1’s Dr. Daniel Jackson, who visited Atlantis in the two-part First Contact and The Lost Tribe. McKay was not exactly thrilled with Jackson’s arrival, as his alter ego, actor David Hewlett, explains. 

“The dynamic between Daniel [Michael Shanks] and McKay is not a particularly friendly one,” says Hewlett. “He shows up on Atlantis to do some more research, and my character is not happy because McKay then gets stuck taking him around the city while dismissing Daniel’s theories about various things and then ending being horribly wrong on many occasions. The two of them eventually get pulled off to another planet where they meet an armor-clad race, and then get to become a bit of an armor-clad race themselves. 

“It was terrific to have Shanks on the show,” continues the actor, ‘and fun, too, as I got to sort of pick his brain because he did this [Stargate] for so long. As for our scenes together, well, we both talk incredibly fast, and I’m not used to lines being picked up so quickly and thrown back at me in such a way, because Michael adds in these cool little character-related things. The guy is amazing. I don’t know how he does it, and not only that, but he gets younger every time I see him. Actually, the whole SG-1 cast is on some kind of reverse aging process, whereas I’m on an advanced aging process. By the time we finish this conversation I’ll have aged 10 years,” he jokes. 

Not doing too good in "Search and Rescue." Photo copyright of The Syfy Channel

“As I mentioned, Michael and I ended up in those armor-clad suits for a period of time. All I can say is, I now have a new respect for those people at Comic-Con who dress up as Storm Troopers [from Star Wars]; I don’t know how they stand it because you sweat buckets in an outfit like that. That’s what happened to me in that spacesuit. Of course, Michael glowed and was in a really good mood,” teases Hewlett. “Again, we had a ball. There’s some fantastic back and forth banter when Daniel and McKay get together, if I do say so myself. You’ve got that great sense of McKay being up against someone who’s as smart as he is and knows as much as he does, so there’s a lot of attitude being exchanged.” 

At the start of Atlantis‘ fourth year, Rodney McKay thought for sure he was next in line to take over command of Atlantis after the loss of Dr. Elizabeth Weir (Torri Higginson) to the Replicators. His ego took quite a beating when, in fact, Colonel Samantha Carter (Amanda Tapping) got the job. In the fifth season, he and the rest of the base personnel had to get used to yet another change in leadership when International Oversight Authority (IOA) member Richard Woolsey (Robert Picardo) replaced Carter. In Hewlett’s eyes, his character saw a number of similarities between himself and Woolsey. 

“Woolsey is a bureaucrat in the same way that McKay took a professional type of approach to the entire Stargate program,” says the actor. “Woolsey’s background is government, diplomacy, the IOA, etc., whereas McKay’s is very much academic. So in a way, Woolsey has had similar growing pains to those that my character initially had. First of all, he’s learning to like these people on Atlantis, which he never expected. Woolsey is also getting his nose out of books and regulations and into the real world. So it’s neat to watch him go through that, and, again, because McKay has been through it as well, he’s more disdainful of it than, perhaps, others are. I think you tend to jump on people for making the same mistakes as you and having the same weaknesses as you. McKay is like, ‘My God, doesn’t Woolsey realize that you can’t live your life with your nose in books.’ Of course, it’s taken my character five years to figure that out, which is rather amusing. 

Rodney McKay, helping to save the universe - again! Photo copyright of the Syfy Channel

“One of the things I really like about Atlantis and Stargate as a whole is that sense of humor. Sci-Fi can be incredibly dry and dark, and what we have here, which really helps, is that underlying sense of humor. There’s almost, not a winking at the camera, but a realistic humorous response to certain situations. I think there was a lot of that on our show, and Robert Picardo was the ideal person to bring that out. For example, our conference room scenes became hilarious because there was so much going on. I mean, Joe Flanigan [Colonel John Sheppard] had his sense of humor, I had my uptight McKay stuff, and Robert added a whole other level to it. As a result, the directors had to occasionally rein us in a bit so that it didn’t turn into an all-out comedy, like Scrubs in Space,” laughs Hewlett. “So it was definitely a pleasure to have Robert around, and he enjoyed himself, too. As new people came onto the show you got a new lease on your performance because you got caught up in their own excitement about the work.” 

After the disastrous end to his budding relationship with Katie Brown (Brenda James) in season four’s Quarantine, Dr. McKay was decidedly cautious when it came to further romantic entanglements. Lucky for him, he chose to take another chance at love and, in the fifth season, became involved with Dr. Jennifer Keller (Jewel Staite). They go on their first official date in the season five episode Brain Storm, but, naturally, things do not go quite as planned. 

“Prior to this, McKay and Jennifer had had a beer together, but this is the first time they go somewhere as a couple,” says Hewlett. “My character has to attend a presentation with all these famous astrophysicists who are basically his peers and did their doctorates at the same time as he did. Not surprisingly, McKay gets as prickly as he gets. Meanwhile, poor Keller has shown up for some champagne and a couple of little sandwiches, and all hell breaks loose. The experiment that is being shown goes horribly wrong and my character has to save the day. I think it’s a great payoff to a number of things that had already been established on the series, and to top it off, Jewel and I got to do some actual romantic stuff, which was fun. 

Trying to put on a brave face. Photo copyright of the Syfy Channel

“We had a great guest-cast in Brain Storm, which included Neil deGrasse Tyson, who was an advisor to God knows how many presidents. Not only is he a genius, but he’s hilarious, too. He and Bill Nye, the Science Guy, who’s in this episode as well, are friends and Bill is just as funny. Their banter was amazing. Nye is an improv master, except you actually learn something when he speaks. so it was like a dream come true for a nerd like me. We also had Dave Foley [Malcolm Tunney], who’s a super-nerd himself. He’s a Sci-Fi fan and knows a lot about this sort of stuff. So it was this amazing combination of some of the world’s smartest people all in the same room. As a result, I didn’t say much. I tended to keep pretty quiet and retiring in-between scenes.” 

Besides The Shrine and Brain Storm, another season five Atlantis story that the actor especially enjoyed shooting is Remnants, in which McKay and Dr. Zelenka (David Nykl) discover an alien device that uses  an unusual method to communicate with select members of the Atlantis team. 

“This is kind of a creepy episode and one that really throws people off,” says Hewlett. “David Nykl and I had a number of scenes together, and it was neat because we were playing a very different type of dynamic between Zelenka and McKay. My big joke was that Robert Picardo’s character got to see this beautiful Australian woman as his vision, while McKay got Zelenka. I was like, ‘Can he [David Nykl] at least wear some nice lip gloss or something else to sexy his character up a bit?’” says the actor with a laugh. 

McKay senses something is not quite right here. Photo copyright of the Syfy Channel

“We had fun messing with the usual dynamic of McKay’s and Zelenka’s relationship, and, of course, there was lots of bantering back and forth with the two of them. When in doubt, McKay just talks, as does Hewlett in a lot of cases. It’s that horrible mix between the two, otherwise known as McKaylett.” 

While filming season five of Atlantis, the cast and crew were told that the show would, unfortunately, not be returning for a sixth year. In the show’s finale, Enemy at the Gate, our heroes fly the entire city of Atlantis to Earth to help defend the planet against an attack by a rogue Wraith hive ship. While this was the last episode to air, it was not, in fact, the last one to be shot. That distinction goes to Vegas, an alternate universe story involving a series of Wraith killings in the city that never sleeps. 

“I’m generally not a fan of alternate reality stories because they can easily feel like a cop-out, but I really wanted Vegas to be our final episode,” notes Hewlett. “We knew that Atlantis was cancelled and I thought it would be a daring and original way to end the series. Of course, they [the producers/writers] would have had to figure out how to get Teyla [Rachel Luttrell] and Ronon [Jason Momoa] into the story. They could have had the role that I wanted – exotic dancer at a casino. That was my first suggestion for McKay, partly just so I could actually go to Las Vegas, but also to showcase my pole dancing talents,” chuckles the actor. 

Things were not looking too good for poor Rodney in "The Shrine." Photo copyright of the Syfy Channel

It was way back in season five of Stargate SG-1 that Dr. Rodney McKay first arrived on the scene in the episode 48 Hours. Little did anyone, let alone Hewlett, know that he along with the fans would become better acquainted with the character over the next eight years. 

“That was a lot of hair ago on SG-1. I don’t know if I actually lost the hair or if I’ve just expanded so that it looks like I’ve got less hair,” jokes the actor. “It’s weird because McKay seems like a different guy now. I think what happened in Atlantis is that we began to see the cracks in the character’s armor. He came into SG-1, I feel, fully protected. McKay had sort of inch-thick armor around him, which made him incredibly prickly from the very beginning. And it’s not so much that he warmed on Atlantis, but rather he cracked a bit. 

“I’ve always said that the neat thing about McKay is that he’s unlike the other characters. You’re learning about them as you go along, whereas with my character it’s as if you’re deconstructing him. We already knew what McKay was like, and later on we got figure out why he’s like that. After five seasons, we’d deconstructed him enough to roughly know what his deep dark secrets are, but I have a sneaking suspicion that there are a few more,” laughs Hewlett. “So as a character he did evolve. McKay’s own personality finally began to shine though, which was a real joy for me to play.” 

Steve Eramo 

As noted above, all photos copyright of The Syfy Channel, so please no unauthorized copying or duplicating of any kind. Thanks!

Today is the last day of my holidays which means tomorrow Real Life dictates that I must return to my paid employment so that I can keep putting food on my table. For the last two weeks my husband and I have been touring around country Victoria, tasting wines, going bush-walking, watching the fireworks on New Year’s Eve and boating on a remote river in the Croajingolong National Park.

I also took quite a few photos which I now have to sort through and process. The best ones will find their way onto my RedBubble portfolio for the public to view and purchase. Others will be appearing in travel articles that I’m writing on the regions visited. Hopefully one of these will be appearing in the new free online travel magazine Discover Australia that I’m involved with through the RedBubble site. The first edition is due out in March and I’ll be supplying a link to it from here once it is up and running.

And for those of you waiting patiently for news of my latest saga Promises Made, the wait will soon be over. The most recent chapter is with my beta for review and hopefully won’t be far away from publication. In the meantime I’m working on the next chapter. So those of you who have been waiting for Sheppard to make another appearance in the story you won’t have to wait long.  And I think there will be more whump in his future and definitely some more adventures for him and Weir with enough leftover for all of our other favourite characters!

In the meantime why not drop me a line or check out my photos at RedBubble.