(PA) Attention. LeveI four quarantine is now in effect.
Switching to internaI power and Iife support.
Thank goodness you're here. We've had a report that someone or something...
..has been tampering with the SGC computers.
We'll need your expertise to check it out.
We need you to view the SGC log entries, see if all the systems check out.
- Think you can handle that? - Great. We knew we could count on you.
We'll check back with you in a while. Good luck.
Of course!
How do you ensure universaI communication?
You reduce the communication to basic eIements...
..common to everyone and everything in the universe.
Jack, this is a true universaI Ianguage.
The very first time l thought we were really onto something with this show...
..was an episode written by Robert Cooper called ''Torment of Tantalus''.
lt was in season one, and Jonathan directed it.
Jonathan's a terrific director, and it was the first time we made an episode...
..and l said ''Jeez, this is pretty good.'' And l really meant that.
l would have loved to have watched that episode.
This couId be the key to understanding our existence.
Everyone, everything's existence.
A brilliant concept, in which Daniel realises the Stargate had been opened...
..long ago in 1945, when they didn't understand what they were doing.
A man had gone through it,...
..and the government had assumed he had died when he stepped into it,...
..not realising it sent him to another planet.
The show's about going to that planet and seeing if he's still there.
Dr LittIefieId? I'm DanieI Jackson. We just came through the Stargate.
We're reaI.
The answer to the question ''Where does a writer get their ideas?'' l don't know.
- What if our memories were aItered? - Then we can't be sure of anything.
My memory's fine.
- ReaIIy? - Yeah.
What did you do in the mines?
I mined.
Somebody in the group goes ''Hey, l have an idea.''
Rather than hang onto it, we try to get together in the room.
- ''What if this happened?'' - And we sit down.
- Everybody throws in two cents' worth. - And we just spin. ''What if? What if?''
We are part of something caIIed SG-1.
- I am TeaI'c. Do you not remember?. - Get this guy off me!
We have these wonderful ideas, and we sit down to work on the outlines...
..and we realise that...
- None of it works. - And so we have to go back.
Sometimes it'll all just come, and we'll throw it up on the whiteboard...
..and say ''Here's Act One, Act Two, Act Three, Act Four.''
He said we were part of something caIIed SG-1.
Yeah, what is that?
- A team? - What kind of a name is that for a team?
They go away and write the script, and from there it's a production issue.
l'll say ''We can't afford to do that, let's build this, let's not do that.''
I keep trying to remember, but aII I come up with are images of this pIace.
But if you're right, everything we remember about this pIace is a Iie.
It's Iike a facade.
It onIy works if we don't dig too deep beneath the surface, don't question it.
So that's what we have to do. We have to question every assumption, everything.
The beauty of science fiction is that you can take your characters...
..and put them into absolutely extraordinary circumstances...
..that you can't put them into in a medical show, or a cop show or a political show.
A good example is an episode where Daniel Jackson finds a mirror...
..that goes to an alternate reality - the same characters, but different.
The theory is that there are an infinite number of aIternate reaIities.
Some of them are very different and some are aImost identicaI.
So this isn't my worId at aII. This is some sort of... other dimension?
You know, we would sit around and go...
''Gee, how do we take this to the nth degree?''
''How do you see what would happen if the Goa'uld actually attacked Earth?''
Go! Go!
ln the sequel, some of those characters come back to our reality,...
..and it gave us an opportunity to do something we were never able to do.
The air force would not let us have a romance between Carter and O'Neill.
I know you weII enough to know that you don't have a cIue what to say.
But you don't have to say anything.
Come here.
We got to explore something we would not normally have gotten to explore.
You have to understand. My Jack had the same face, same voice, same hands.
Which brings to mind an obvious question.
How couId you marry such a Ioser?.
This is the orb from the episode ''Message in a Bottle''.
And this idea started with Brad Wright and myself thinking
''What if an entire civilisation was put in a time capsule?''
The time capsule concept that we do in the United States.
You know, we package things together and put them in a time capsule...
..so that future civilisations would know what we were all about.
Well, this was ''What if an entire world was put into this?''
lncluding its inhabitants. That's really what the seed of this episode was about.
- That symboI's on the artefact. - Yes, it is.
It's trying to communicate with us.
This crystal skull is based on a Mayan myth of the crystal skull...
..that was believed to have supernatural paranormal powers.
And Brad and l talked about, and always wanted to do, a ghost story,...
..and this gave us the ability to make Daniel Jackson's character a ghost.
Where'd he go?
They like stories that have shades of grey,...
..where there isn't a clear answer to the moral question,...
..and, even better, when members of our own team can have real disagreements...
..and both can have good points.
Of a way to bIow up the ship? I'm not sure that's what Hammond had in mind.
They're gonna stand there and die.
It's a no-win situation. We're not gonna sit around and watch them get sIaughtered.
- You'd bIow up that ship? - Give me another choice.
- WeII, I don't have one at the moment... - ApparentIy time is a factor here.
ln fact, ''Scorched Earth'', there was a lot of response on the lnternet from fans,...
..who were outraged over the team dynamics in this episode.
Because O'Neill felt guilty, he wanted to act, he was a military man,...
..he thought ''l need to save these people. These people are real.''
So he orders Carter to build the naqahdah bomb,...
..yet on the other hand, Daniel's saying ''How can you make that decision?''
And a lot of fans were livid.
Carter... I'm making a choice to heIp these peopIe.
But if you don't make that bomb, I'm out of options.
I know.
So I have to order you to do it.
Yes, sir.
''The Curse'' is one of my favourites because we get to explore...
..a part of Daniel's life that really hadn't been touched on in the series.
Actually, Paul was struggling with a story that would basically...
lt seemed like a story we needed to do.
Here he was a guy who had a life, who was an academic, who had colleagues.
This was in the movie, but before the point in the original Stargate movie...
..where he gives his speech and everybody walks out.
At that point, he disappears for four years out of the world of archaeology.
We thought ''Wouldn't it be interesting if he was thrown back into that world?''
And the irony is that his theories have been proven correct.
I've Iooked for signs of you out there.
There's been no papers, no research projects.
- It's Iike you feII off the face of the earth. - It is a IittIe Iike that.
As I recaII, the Iast time I saw you, you were giving a Iecture to an empty room.
WeII, it was fuII when I started.
We're aII stuck in a time Ioop of some kind.
Anyway, I'm sorry, but that just happens to be how I feeI about it.
What do you think?
Anyway, I'm sorry, but that just happens to be how I feeI about it.
What do you think?
I'm sorry, but that just happens to be how I feeI about it.
What do you think?
Ask me tomorrow.
Lots of shows have done time-loop stories.
But we wanted to find a way to make it interesting for our characters,...
..and the way to do that was to do a role reversal...
..where O'Neill and Teal'c have to figure out the solution to the problem.
- They're not usually the brains. - lt's always Sam or Daniel...
..who has to translate the artefact.
That was the beginning of the humour, and then we thought...
..if we're just doing endless loops, we have to do that Groundhog Day beat...
..where you realise you can do anything you wanna do.
- Vern, how's the wife? - Fine... sir.
The montage sequence came afterwards, because it turned out we were short,...
..so we had to come up with...
We needed a little extra time, so we thought ''We'll do a montage...
..of them doing lots of crazy things.''
Brad mentioned at the beginning of the season ''You know what l want to do?''
''l want them to golf through the Stargate.'' Brad's a big golfer.
Brad and Robert were looking to do a scene...
..where somebody hits a ball through the gate.
There was never a story that really accommodated that until that,...
..and we talked about the montage and Brad went...
''We can golf through the Stargate!''
(Hammond) CoIoneI O'NeiII! What the heII are you doing?
In the middIe of my backswing?!
l started using The Wizard of Oz references in a couple of my scripts,...
..and Rick caught on to that and loved it.
Where's that yeIIow brick road when you need it, Dorothy?
lt became a game to see how many Wizard of Oz references...
..we could stick into the scripts.
It's certainIy not EmeraId City.
Auntie Em? Auntie Em?
Yeah, there's no pIace Iike home.
More often than not, the script you write...
..will never be quite what you envisioned.
But in the case of ''Point of No Return'',...
..the deliveries were there, the action sequences were there. lt was just...
lt's a rare example of an episode turning out...
..almost exactly the way we pictured it in our heads when we wrote it.
PeopIe were taken from Earth.
Maybe as part of some experiment, maybe as sIaves... Who knows?
But the point is there are entire civiIisations up there...
..descended from those originaI humans.
Now that's just crazy taIk.
We'd be writing the script and we'd think ''l don't know if we want to put that...''
''That's too silly. They'll never keep that.''
''We'll just put it in.'' For instance, Teal'c on the vibrating bed.
The ''1 ,000 fingers'' magic bed.
But most of them stayed in, surprisingly, so they embraced it.
We've been waIkin' for haIf an hour.
I don't understand it. The cIearing where I Ianded shouId be round here somewhere.
How do you Iose a spaceship?
They've all gone through so many things. Daniel has died half a dozen times,...
..Samantha's been taken over by an alien, by a computer entity...
And you are...?
(eIectronic voice) I am within. You are O'NeiII.
Yeah. We've estabIished that.
This one has memory of you.
The one you're taIking about is a person.
Her name is Major Samantha Carter.
Then... I am Major...
No. No, you're not.
lt's interesting if you allow those events to change the character,...
..and allow the wisdom of those events to affect their growth as a character.
You get to do all kinds of things:
time travel, alternate realities, aliens with special powers.
Ultimately, it all services one thing,...
..and that is to tell a good, dramatic, interesting story...
..that involves the characters you want to invite into your living room every week.
- Was everything in order? - We can't be too careful,...
..protecting the Stargate project.
Thank you so much for your assistance. You've helped us out.
Yes, thanks again. You did a great job.