The Stargate – Atlantis scene that cemented Joe Flannigan’s role in science fiction

After the extremely popular Syfy series “Stargate SG-1” ending its seventh season with the finale of The Lost City, a new spin-off series was born. This is an offshoot of the Stargate Atlantis series, intimately explores the Antarctic outpost found by the SG-1 crew in the main show, and the aftermath of the excavation of the lost city of Atlantis. You might know it Roland Emmerich’s film “Stargate” 1994 started this very franchise: in the film, linguist Daniel Jackson (James Spader) was deeply involved in a cataclysm that was instigated by aliens on the desert planet of Abydos. In “Stargate SG-1,” Michael Shanks plays a different iteration of Daniel, making a brief cameo in the pilot “Stargate Atlantis” to officially hand over the Atlantis project to a new team of experts.

The Stargate Atlantis military crew is led by Major John Sheppard (Joe Flannigan), a capable officer with a somewhat tarnished reputation due to an incident that inadvertently resulted in several casualties. Sheppard is uniquely suited to lead Project Atlantis because he is naturally attuned to the navigational technology left over from the Ancients—an alien race that built the Antarctic outpost—despite lacking the genetic predisposition to activate it. The impetus for Sheppard’s adventure (along with his crew) is discovering more about the Ancients, including why they fled Atlantis after encountering the Ghosts, an antagonistic alien race. In the spirit of the typical but exciting Stargate exploration missions, Stargate Atlantis had many episodes that could be considered either delightfully insane or downright shocking.

In an interview with The world of the gateFlannigan singled out a specific Season 1 episode that gave him a real taste of the weird, wonderful surprises that awaited him on his Stargate to Atlantis journey. Let’s talk at length about “Thirty-Eight Minutes,” the fourth episode of the first season of this beloved spin-off.

The plot of “Thirty-Eight Minutes” is, you guessed it, a race against time. The Atlantis crew, who are overseas in a small ancient spaceship called the Puddle Jumper, get stuck halfway through the titular Stargate. A quick update: the stargate is a ring portal which allows humans to travel to distant planets and this device remains open for a certain amount of time before automatically closing. Stranded in space and facing imminent death, the crew tries to appoint another team to lead the rescue mission before it’s too late. However, this is not even the worst. Sheppard’s life is in real danger as an alien bug self-healing property attached to his neck. Unless the crew finds a way to destroy the bug, Sheppard will die as the parasitic bug slowly drains the life out of him.

Needless to say, this is a crazy stressful situation. Flannigan talked about filming this particular episode, for which he had to lie on his back for long days in the cramped space of the Puddle Jumper set. While the experience was uncomfortable, it was also quite funny and exciting:

“I was on the floor for eight days filming the episode and I had the bug. And it was this big, classic, ugly mistake that looked, you know, completely fake. It hurt like hell and I was on my own And I thought, “Well, I don’t know what the producers are doing, but there’s something very sadistic about it” (…) And I just thought it was very funny, sitting there , lie down. my back for eight days with a bug on my neck, and you hear people say, “Oh, put some more blood on the bug!” It became clear to me that at that moment I was completely immersed in the genre of science fiction.”

Well, Flannigan’s painstaking efforts paid off, as the catharsis caused by the bug eventually getting shot is immense, even if Sheppard dies for a few moments to facilitate that outcome. Of course, there’s no reason to worry, as Sheppard is reborn shortly after the Puddle Jumper makes it safely through the Stargate. All it takes is 38 tense, harrowing minutes to make one hell of a leap of faith that eventually works.