"Lifeboat" is the 6th episode from the seventh season of military science fiction adventure television show Stargate SG-1 and is the 138th overall. It was first broadcast on July 18, 2003, on the Sci-Fi Channel. The episode was written by the shows co-creator Brad Wright, and was directed by Peter DeLuise.
In the episode, SG-1 discover a crashed alien spaceship carrying hundreds of people who have are frozen in stasis pods. Whilst exploring, the team are knocked unconscious and upon awakening discover that several of the ships passengers have somehow been downloaded into Daniel Jackson's (Michael Shanks) body.
Due to his father dying, Richard Dean Anderson was not present during the original filming of the episode, with all of his scenes being filmed separately after filming the episode had otherwise been completed. Michael Shanks, who portrays Dr. Daniel Jackson, won a Leo Award in the category "Dramatic Series: Best Lead Performance - Male" for his performance in the episode, whilst Teryl Rothery was nominated for a Leo Award in the category "Dramatic Series: Best Supporting Performance - Female" for her performance as Dr. Janet Fraiser in the episode.
Plot
While exploring an alien planet, SG-1 finds a crashed alien space ship and onboard they discover hundreds of people frozen in stasis pods. Colonel Jack O'Neill (Richard Dean Anderson) orders a headcount and the team split up. Soon Dr. Daniel Jackson (Michael Shanks) discovers a pod that has failed, when suddenly a bright burst of energy courses throughout the ship knocking SG-1 unconscious. Teal'c (Christopher Judge) recovers first and then soon locates O'Neill and Samantha Carter (Amanda Tapping) who are both fine. However they soon locate Jackson, who becomes hysterical upon seeing his teammates. The team bring Jackson back to Stargate Command, where he becomes enraged and claims that he is the Sovereign of Talthus, and that his name is in fact Martice. Dr. Janet Fraiser (Teryl Rothery) conducts an EEG of Jackson which suggests he is in a coma, and his body is now host to a number of personalities.
Through the different personalities, Dr. Fraiser learns that the people they found are passengers of the ship Stromos which was bound for the world Ardena. One of the personalities, a young and fearful boy named Keenin, explains that they boarded the ship to escape the destruction of their homeworld. Another personality, Tryan, one of the ship's engineers, tells them that the passengers are stored in a cyrosleep and that each person's consciousness has been uploaded to a memory module to avoid deteriorating during the long voyage. He also informs Dr. Fraiser that there is no way to separate the cryosleeper from their consciousness or send it to any other than their corresponding body — unless that person dies. Believing that someone may have awoken from cyrosleep and caused this, Carter and Teal'c head back to the Stromos to search for the guilty party.
On board the Stromos, Teal'c captures Pharrin (James Parks), who tells Teal'c and Carter that he was awoken from cyrosleep after the ship crashed. With the ship, its cyrosleep pods and memory module all losing power, Pharrin decided to bypass its safety failsafes, and confesses to using Daniel as a lifeboat to host some of the souls once stored in the ship's memory. He also reveals that he too is hosting a number of other passengers in order to keep them alive. Carter offers Pharrin help in powering their ship and saving their race in exchange for restoring Daniel, but Pharrin informs them that his own son, Keenin, is now being kept alive in Daniel Jackson.
Back at Stargate Command, Pharrin agrees to make the ultimate sacrifice in order to save his people, restoring Daniel Jackson and permanently removing the other souls from inside of him. However, the Sovereign Martice comes to the forefront of Daniel's body and orders Pharrin not to make any sacrifice. The personalities controlling Daniel shift again, and Keenin emerges and shares a final goodbye with his father. Pharrin transfers the souls in Daniel into his own mind. The ship restored, they can continue their journey to a new world.
Production Development and writing
Series co-creator and former executive producer Brad Wright made the decision during the shows sixth season that should the show be picked up for a seventh, he would take a "sabbatical" in order to continue developing a potential spinoff series, Stargate Atlantis, making Robert C. Cooper as executive producer. After SG-1 was renewed, Wright sat in on early meetings for the seventh season, but soon left his office at The Bridge Studios, limiting his involvement to just phoning Cooper "almost daily - or at least a few times each week" which Wright described as "almost a courtesy call to let me know what was going on, as much as it was for the occasional piece of advise". Wright did however want to pen "a few episodes", which would ultimately end up being "Lifeboat" and the season finale "Lost City", which he co-wrote with Cooper. Originally referred to as "Voices", Wright had first outlined the idea for the episode in 2002 during the writing of the shows sixth season, however the absence of Michael Shanks, who had left the shows main cast, meant that the episode was shelved. Co-producer and writer Joseph Mallozzi explained "because of the type of story it was, it only worked with the Daniel character, which was why when Daniel came back, Brad dusted off the pitch and wrote the script", with it eventually being retitled to "Lifeboat".
In the episode, twelve different personalities are downloaded into Daniel Jackson's (Michael Shanks) body, three of which are concentrated on: Tryan, who is a loyal engineer on board the Stromos, Martice - the Sovereign leader, and Keenin - who is a young boy. Shanks wanted to make sure all of the different characters he would portray were "clearly defined" as "structurally, they all had to be certain extremities", however the schedule constraints of the show meant Shanks did not have much time in order to flesh the characters out. In order to make the different characters stand out, Shanks used a number of different methods in constructing his performances, looking to "attach a recognisable quirk or trait to each of them" as well as borrowing "from other different shows that I had watched". Shanks initial idea for playing Martice was based around Ralph Fiennes depiction of Amon Göth in the 1993 film Schindler's List, with Shanks giving the character a thick German accent. This was eventually changed more towards what Shanks described as a faux-British accent, inspired somewhat by Patrick Stewart. Tryan, the ships engineer was inspired by Jack Lemmon's character Jack Godell from the 1979 film The China Syndrome. For the character of Keenin, Shanks decided to base his performance on that of actor Ryan Drescher's, who would be portraying the character in flashback sequences. Shanks felt Drescher "had given such an interesting read" and studied his audition tapes, attempting to copy certain mannerisms that he was able to find in his performance and apply them to his own depiction of the character.
Teryl Rothery returns as Dr. Janet Fraiser. James Parks portrays the character of Pharrin and Ryan Drescher plays Keenin, who is Pharrin's son, both who are passengers on board the Stromos. Frequent background actor Dean Redman had originally been cast to portray Tryan, but had to pull out due to another job. According to director of the episode Peter DeLuise, this would have been Redman's first speaking role and that Redman was "mortified" that he could not do it, but DeLuise instead gave him a speaking role in the episode "Enemy Mine". DeLuise instead auditioned background actors on the day, reportedly by going from table to table during a lunch break, asking the extras to recite the line 'Compartment is secure, sir' in a Boston accent and eventually arriving at actor Travis Webster who DeLuise awarded the part to. Gary Jones and Dan Shea reprise their roles as technician and Siler. Kimberly Unger, Rob Hayter, Colin Corrigan and Fraser Aitcheson all portray Stargate Command personnel. Peter DeLuise cameos as a man in a status pod.
Design and filming
For the interior of the crashed alien spaceship Stromos, production designer Bridget McGuire explained "After doing a very stark Sci-Fi type of set in "Revisions", I wanted to go completely in the other direction and create a space that was more traditional and warm, almost Jules Verne-like". Originally, the Stromos interior was expected to feature far less, with only four pages of the script taking place there and only calling for a set wall that would be covered in suspended animation pods. After rewrites, around twelve pages of the script would take place on board the Stromos set, and therefore far more of the ship would need to be seen. In order to not have to build a far larger set, Rodrigo Segovia designed the pods on wheels, constructing around 20 pods total which could be easily moved into different configurations, to give the impression of different rooms and corridors on board the ship. Parts of the interior were then extended using matte paintings. Once background actors were put inside the pods DeLuise recalled that one extra had a panic attack from the enclosed space, whilst another fell asleep.
Whilst not usually the case, in order to help with Shanks' portrayal of multiple personalities DeLuise tried where possible to shoot the episode in chronological order. Richard Dean Anderson was not available for the majority of the episode due to his father dying. In order to still feature Jack O'Neill, Anderson's stand-in Bill Nykolite was used where possible, whilst DeLuise limited his use of wider group shots. Filming had been otherwise completed by the time Anderson returned to work, with the rest of the cast moving on to other episodes, therefore DeLuise filmed all of Anderson's scenes separately so he could be inserted into the episode. Where possible, DeLuise had cast members return to read with Anderson, however most of Anderson's scenes were filmed either alone or with stand-ins. As so much of the episode would take place in a single observation room on the Stargate Command set at The Bridge Studio and feature just the characters of Daniel Jackson and Janet Fraiser, DeLuise considered it a difficult episode to shoot. In order to "make it interesting for the viewer" DeLuise, who would normally spend much more time blocking but instead allowed Shanks and Rothery to move around the set much more freely, with DeLuise keeping the camera locked on them. DeLuise and Director of Photography Peter Woeste also opted to light just the actors in the observation room scene, giving the impression of a dark, black room. DeLuise had Teryl Rothery play some of her scenes with Michael Shanks in different ways. In one take, Rothery described having "Janet blow her stack, which is quite rare because she is usually very contained and in control", whilst in other takes were not as heated. For some of the shots of characters watching Daniel Jackson and Janet Fraiser from the observation rooms gallery, DeLuise took influence from the film The Rock, panning from a live video feed of Jackson and Fraiser on a monitor, to the characters in the room itself. For some of the most abrupt, rapid personality changes between that Michael Shanks was portraying, DeLuise took inspiration for his filming and editing from the way Gollum/Sméagol was sometimes shown in The Lord of the Rings film series, making quick, close-up cuts between camera angles.
Release Broadcast and ratings