Damnit! I forgot about the live chat we were supposed to do. I’d like to give everyone a 24 hour reminder. How’s tomorrow night for you guys? 9:00 p.m. EST, 6:00 PST? [correction]
Akemi and I went out with Rob and Hillary last night. We discussed a lot of strategy – and ate a fair amount of sushi. And then some.
Then, today, I was downtown and met up with blog regular, Maryanne, who was in town visiting. We, of course, ended up doing the food truck tour…
And then capping things off with dessert at Cadeaux Bakery.
Hey, Maryanne, nice meeting you – and thanks for keeping up. Enjoy the rest of your stay in Van!
Days of Stargate: Atlantis past continues…
ECHOES (312)
Here we go again. Carl Binder and his damn ghosts. Or variations thereof. While members of the Atlantis expedition start seeing (long) dead people roaming the corridors of the city, McKay’s whale-watching yields some interesting findings on Lantian whale behavior and coronal mass ejections. Although the stakes are extremely high, the episode itself delivers a nice balance of action, humor, and memorable character moments (who’d have thunk Rodney would have a soft spot for alien marine mammals?).
Although Carl wrote the script, he received uncredited input from his brilliant daughter – and by brilliant, I do mean brilliant. The proud owner of a Ph.D in Astronomy, she provided insights, information, and admonishments on many a story. We always walked the line between science and science fiction on the show and having someone like Carl’s daughter to rely on invariably made that line all the more narrow.
We ended up saving the planet – and the whales in this episode. In a later episode, the planet comes under threat again. When we were spinning this episode, we suggested that Atlantis take flight and abandon the planet. Exec Producer Robert Cooper hated the idea given the effort we had put in to saving the whales in this episode. After much heated discussion, I offered a creative solution. Since these were alien whales, we had no way of knowing what type of defense systems they possessed. So, what if, as Atlantis is flying away, they pick up movement on their short-range sensors. They bring the image up on screen in time to catch the winged whales sail up out of the water and fly away in search of another world. Martin Gero dubbed them “whangels”. Sadly, they did not make the final cut.
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