Stargate: SG-1 Memories - Fragile Balance, Orpheus, Revisions

FRAGILE BALANCE (703)

Actor Michael Welch delivers one of the show’s most impressive guest performances in the role of a young, cloned Jack O’Neill. He captures (Rick as) Jack’s mannerisms and rhythms perfectly and so wowed us that, in the following months, we tried to spin several different stories that would have seen Young Jack make a return. Unfortunately, none of these stories panned out. I did end up running into Michael Welch at the that year’s Saturn Awards (Best Award Show Ever!). He told me how much he’d enjoyed his experience on the show while I told him how much we’d enjoyed having him. Interestingly enough, that was the same night I first met actor Ben Browder. We discussed Farscape, scifi, and the possibility of him doing a guest spot on the show. I ended up writing a part for him as a potential recurring character on Atlantis but a scheduling conflict prevented him from accepting the role – which, in the long run, was a good thing because it allowed him to accept the more substantial role of SG-1’s Cameron Mitchell two years later.

This episode also sees an appearance by the beautiful Theresa Lee, a friend and huge film and t.v. star in Hong Kong and China (where she headlined their version of Dancing With the Stars). Whenever Theresa comes into town, we try to grab dim sum and rare is the occasion when she is not recognized by someone at a neighboring table. One time we grabbed a bite, I glanced up from my sticky rice purse to catch her on the restaurant’s t.v. screen, starring in some Hong Kong comedy. Loved her in Big Bullet!

ORPHEUS (704)

Not to be confused with season 9’s Morpheus, Orpheus is another Peter DeLuise extravaganza. You can always recognize Peter’s episode because they always contained one of three things: Unas, noble Jaffa, and/or explosions.

Loved Carter’s review of Signs in the gym scene. Other movies I would have liked to see receive the onscreen review treatment: The Village, Lady in the Water, and The Happening.

REVISIONS (705)

This story started out as a pitch about a town living within a hermetically sealed bubble surrounded by a toxic atmosphere. SG-1 happens upon the scene and discovers its inhabitants are hiding a terrible secret. I hesitate to reveal the shocking conclusion I originally envisioned because the story we ended up with was so different that I’d love to repurpose it given some future opportunity. Anyway, even though the episode ended up quite different from the way I’d originally envisioned it, I loved it nevertheless. And I wasn’t the only one. Then VFX Supervisor James Tichenor really enjoyed the script. It’s a great SF standalone episode. And the location we found for the town was perfect in its bizarre cross-cultural architectural weirdness. It is, in reality, a former amusement park, Fantasy Gardens, with a fairly interesting history: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fantasy_Gardens.