I watched Supernatural and Arrow this afternoon and got a healthy dose of two former Stargate actors, the first is Alaina Huffman who played Lt. Tamara Johansen in Stargate Universe as well as Dinah Lance (Black Canary) in Smallville. She played Josie Sands in the Supernatural episode As Time Goes By which aired on Wednesday the 30th January.
My next pleasant surprise was seeing Janina Gavankar in Arrow playing the cop McKenna Hall in the episode Vertigo which also aired on the 30th. Janina is a regular in True Blood and also appeared in The Gates but for our purposes she played Sgt Dusty Mehra in the excellent Stargate Atlantis episode Whispers.
A routine recon through the gate leads to the jumper being disabled by some form of advanced energy dampening device. Stranded on the world the team discover a society of young people no older than 25 who believe that if they kill themselves on their 25th birthday it maintains a community that is too young for the Wraith to being interested in culling. McKay discovers an ancient type device powered by a ZPM which is powering the shield and it’s that which has kept these people safe from the Wraith, maybe should not have turned it off and taken the ZPM to Atlantis. Meanwhile a power struggle between the current leader and next in line leads to an open confrontation between bow and arrow armed youngsters and the P90 equipped SG team while Wraith probes scan the planet for food.
Childhoods End was the only episode of Stargate directed by David Winning and it received many plaudits for the direction. It is a very highly produced episode, the location shooting of the camp is very well done and there is some top notch matt paintings as well a very atmospheric lighting effects. Perhaps the highlight is McKay’s interaction with the two children who pretty much act exactly like kids exposed to new people and new things, intense curiosity classes with the typical McKay intolerance but this time chocolate comes to the rescue.
Atmospheric woodland.
I certainly would have liked to see David Winning direct more Stargate episodes but it never came to pass for whatever reason but everyone involved with this episode worked well and we got an entertaining story with a little backbone although there were certainly deeper aspects to explore if the writers had gone that way.
Peek a Boo
Many thanks to Brad who took time out of his work night to record with us, it was around 3am in Australia and well you can’t buy that commitment:)
This weeks promo is from Tuning Into Scifi TV and next week we are going to discuss the SG1 episode Affinity. We got some feedback from Facebook and a new itunes review from Ryan which we are very thankful for and if you want to get in touch then you can do so via the links on this website or by email. We can also be found under Gatecast on Facebook, Google+, iTunes and Stitcher Internet Radio as well as on Twitter.
A couple of television spots for Stargate alumni this week on shows broadcast in the states. Up first we have Mr Woolsey himself Robert Picardo who played Jason Cooper in The Mentalist episode “The Red Barn” and then we have Jacqueline Samuda who played a TV anchor woman in the episode “Burned” from Arrow. Kudos to Jeff for spotting Jacqueline, it’s been a while since we saw her playing the Gou’ald Nirti.
Ben Browder finally made his appearance as Ted Gaynor in the episode of Arrow entitled “Trust But Verify”. The episode aired last Wednesday in the US/Canada and will air Monday 28th on SKY1 in the UK.
It was announced yesterday that Ben Browder (SG1, Farscape) will be making a guest appearance on the new CW show Arrow in the role of Ted Gaynor. It was also tweeted that Ben was currently on his first day on set, lets hope this provides him with a recurring part of the smash hit series for the network. Ben has guest starred on a number of shows genre and not so much since his regular role on Stargate came to an end, these include Chuck, CSI Miami and Dr Who.
