Stargate: Ideas and Infection

December 1, 2008

Ideas and Infection

Everybody always asks writers where their ideas come from, and in science fiction, ideas are king. Happily, Stargate Atlantis has a crack staff of experienced writers who can turn good ideas into compelling stories, but they still need the ideas. So for all you people who wonder where ideas for Stargate Atlantis episodes come from, I went around and asked some of the writers for you. So this blog's for you.

This all started, by the way, from a conversation I had with Robert Cooper. He told me his process is to imagine situations he would like to put his characters in, and he goes from there. You can see it in episodes such as Sateda, in which we saw Ronon deal with his memories of the downfall of his home planet, and Doppelganger, where Sheppard goes dark side.

But Joe Mallozzi has a different attack. He told me he reads a lot of science fiction that often gives him a starting point from which to think about a situation, perhaps a different way than he thought of it before. Sometimes he anticipates a story he's reading going in a particular direction, and then it takes a right turn. He'll return to that "misinterpretation" and develop it. Of course then he has to situate all these stories in the Pegasus Galaxy, and plug our characters in, which no small feat. I recall at the beginning of Season 3 of Atlantis Joe came in with not less than 12 ideas for episodes - six or so for Atlantis and six or so for SG-1. Of those six or so ideas (pitches) for Atlantis, none were used. Zero. Zip. Nada. So you can imagine how difficult this actually is.

Carl Binder had the most honest answer. Generally, he told me, he gets his ideas from other writers. Then he says to them, "Hey that's a great idea. Can I write it?" But Carl is just being modest. He comes up with great story ideas of his own too, which he described as "the occasional lightning bolt." Other times he thinks in terms of a specific character - a "Weir episode" or a "Teyla episode". His best ideas, he told me, usually come to him in the shower. That was my cue to leave his office.

Alan McCullough didn't like the question. I think his initial response was, "Oh Jeeze." But then he thought it through, and told me he usually look for loose ends in existing story lines and finds areas on which to expand. So in this way, new episodes are seeded in past story lines or character arcs. You only have to look at "Outsiders" from this season for a perfect example. In that episode, we got to see how the Wraith dealt with the distribution of the Hoffan drug. Or "Ghost in the Machine", which answers the question of what Weir and some other Replicators did after they survived the destruction of the Replicator planet.

The episode you'll see this week, "Infection", is yet another episode that continues an existing story line. We needed to tell a story that wraps up the Queen/gene therapy story line and also revisits our favorite Wraith, Todd. Alan came up with an interesting tease, so the other writers told him to run with it. There is a lot of prosthetic work in this one, as it's heavy on Wraith. Alan also told me they went back to the same Wraith set that we used in the Queen, and it was a challenge for Andy Mikita to find new and interesting angles to shoot. But our directors are very crafty and can make familiar sets seem completely different. For example, did you know that the SG-1 cafeteria is also the Gate Room? Well it's true. And the Infirmary doubles as any particular character's quarters. The chair room is the observation room. And the list goes on. Ah, the magic of television.

Enjoy this week's episode!

Posted by Alex Levine at December 1, 2008 11:55 PM