Analysis of information sources in references of the Wikipedia article "Lifeboat (Stargate SG-1)" in English language version.
So I was very flattered that Brad Wright trusted me enough to sort of throw this in my direction and that was, you know, that's very flattering and it's very humbling as well and you really wanna step up to the plate. Of course then there's that notion of most of the times when we get the finished scripts about four or five days before it actually goes to camera, So, needless to say when you're busy working and you're about to start that next episode and you're reading through the script and you're going 'How the hell am I going to do this?' And what I usually do is, especially with characters like that is, I just start grasping at a few extremes, try to figure out what the writer wants and what kind of caricatures if you will, will suit the roles best and then try and get specific with those caricatures and then as you go along you keep trying to make it more and more specific and more and more unique as you go and sometimes what always ends up happening, especially with me, I always end up looking at the end result and going, yeah it could have been better, it could have been better. But it's still so much fun to do and it's a great challenge and it's very unique. But once you've done it, I guarantee you, I remember saying the day I finished that episode, going, ok I'm very happy now. Let's go back and do my exposition and talk about mythology and play with my pencils at the briefing room table. That's it, I'm happy to do that all over again.
Lifeboat was a story that Brad wanted to tell last year, but 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. This is another fun stand-alone, and sort of a tour de force for the Daniel character. In particular, Michael Shanks gets to show off his acting range. The team goes off-world and they discover a crashed ship, and within the crashed ship are just hundreds and hundreds of people in stasis. As they're checking out the ship, they're knocked unconscious. Teal'c wakes up and discovers that O'Neill and Carter have been moved, and discovers Daniel lying at the foot of one of the stasis chambers. He wakes up, screaming he doesn't know who the heck Teal'c is. They bring him back to the SGC, and it turns out that he has maybe a dozen personalities that have been downloaded into his body, and the Daniel consciousness has been basically buried beneath all these other personalities that are vying for control of his body. It's an interesting episode. It reminds me a little bit of Unnatural Selection. It's one thing I've always said about the Brad Wright scripts, when he pitches them out I think, my God, it's just such a talky script, how is he going to make that an interesting hour of television? And Unnatural Selection was one of my favorites of last year. Even though it was talky, it was a smart script, and it was always entertaining. And Lifeboat is the same way.
So I was very flattered that Brad Wright trusted me enough to sort of throw this in my direction and that was, you know, that's very flattering and it's very humbling as well and you really wanna step up to the plate. Of course then there's that notion of most of the times when we get the finished scripts about four or five days before it actually goes to camera, So, needless to say when you're busy working and you're about to start that next episode and you're reading through the script and you're going 'How the hell am I going to do this?' And what I usually do is, especially with characters like that is, I just start grasping at a few extremes, try to figure out what the writer wants and what kind of caricatures if you will, will suit the roles best and then try and get specific with those caricatures and then as you go along you keep trying to make it more and more specific and more and more unique as you go and sometimes what always ends up happening, especially with me, I always end up looking at the end result and going, yeah it could have been better, it could have been better. But it's still so much fun to do and it's a great challenge and it's very unique. But once you've done it, I guarantee you, I remember saying the day I finished that episode, going, ok I'm very happy now. Let's go back and do my exposition and talk about mythology and play with my pencils at the briefing room table. That's it, I'm happy to do that all over again.
Lifeboat was a story that Brad wanted to tell last year, but 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. This is another fun stand-alone, and sort of a tour de force for the Daniel character. In particular, Michael Shanks gets to show off his acting range. The team goes off-world and they discover a crashed ship, and within the crashed ship are just hundreds and hundreds of people in stasis. As they're checking out the ship, they're knocked unconscious. Teal'c wakes up and discovers that O'Neill and Carter have been moved, and discovers Daniel lying at the foot of one of the stasis chambers. He wakes up, screaming he doesn't know who the heck Teal'c is. They bring him back to the SGC, and it turns out that he has maybe a dozen personalities that have been downloaded into his body, and the Daniel consciousness has been basically buried beneath all these other personalities that are vying for control of his body. It's an interesting episode. It reminds me a little bit of Unnatural Selection. It's one thing I've always said about the Brad Wright scripts, when he pitches them out I think, my God, it's just such a talky script, how is he going to make that an interesting hour of television? And Unnatural Selection was one of my favorites of last year. Even though it was talky, it was a smart script, and it was always entertaining. And Lifeboat is the same way.
The shows co-creator and executive producer, Brad Wright has been away from the lot on a regular basis this season, his role on a day-to-day basis taken by Robert C. Cooper.
I wanted to make sure that I did keep that promise, so I helped in making the first batch of episodes in the sense that I sat in on the early staff meetings. But then, they were so under control, it was just a simple matter of me saying that if I came in too often, I'd be stepping on people's toes.
I've stayed involved, and I've stayed in touch," he explains. "Robert and I talked almost daily - or at least a few times each week - so I could find out what was going on. He's so capable of taking care of things that it was almost a courtesy call to let me know what was going on, as much as it was for the occasional piece of advise.
Agreeing that maintaining the correct distances has been "a bit of a dance", Wright adds, "I made sure I wrote a few episodes." In fact when SFX visited Stargate at the start of the year, Wright was gleefully discussing his upcoming episode "Lifeboat" with the cast down on the studio floor. "I wrote that, and Robert and I co-wrote the two-parter that finishes the season."
After episode six there will be an episode called Voices, written by Brad Wright. Even though he's not with us, he's with us in spirit - and hopefully in script as well soon! That's another stand-alone, where the team goes off-world and discovers a dormant civilisation in 'cyro-sleep'. In trying to wake them we create a situation, and the character of Daniel Jackson will be front and centre of that episode.
Last season, Brad Wright had an idea for a story that was going to be a vehicle for the Daniel Jackson character. Because Daniel wasn't around, the story was shelved. However, with Michael Shanks back this year, it was dusted off and Wright penned the script for Lifeboat. "SG-1 come across a crashed ship during an off-world mission," says Joe Mallozzi. "Inside the ship they find a number of stasis chambers containing the entire crew and its passengers. A few of the chambers have been dam:1ged and the people are dead. The rest, however, are still alive and in suspended animation. Suddenly, the team is knocked unconscious. Teal'c recovers first, followed by Major Carter and O'Neill. When Daniel wakes up he freaks out and starts screaming to be brought back to the SGC. Once back there, Dr Fraiser discovers that 12 different personalities now reside in Daniel's brain. There's no way they can be removed without destroying them, so it's a big dilemma for our heroes. Michael Shanks really got to stretch himself as an actor by playing all these different personalities and he did a terrific job.
Director-writer Peter DeLuise worked on the episode "Lifeboat." "We find this crowded ship with a genetic chamber full of bodies in it," he describes. "A bunch of personalities get downloaded into Daniel's head and he becomes kind of frantic. His life is in jeopardy and they're very afraid of losing him. Daniel's in a big, black room with Dr. Fraiser, who tries counselling him. Twelve different identities are in Daniel's head, but we are concentrating on four: a little boy, a very sophisticated leader, a crewman and a slightly Nordic passenger and Daniel himself." DeLuise says "Lifeboat" was equally challenging visually, but for distinctly different reasons. "We didn't have a bunch of spaceships or explosions," he says "It's just a character study. It's completely, totally dependent on Michael's ability to portray the characters, that have been downloaded into Daniel's head. It just speaks to how much trust we have in Michael's acting ability, and he did a wonderful job.
Michael Shanks gets to flex his acting muscles with the episode Lifeboat in which Daniel Jackson is suffering from a severe case of multiple personalities. "Brad Wright [series co-creator and former executive producer], bless his heart, knew l really wanted something to sink my teeth into," says the actor. "So he gave me pretty much the most challenging episode I could've ever imagined doing, next to Holiday back in the second season. In Lifeboat, a number of personalities - all of whom are experiencing physical and psychological stress - are suddenly transferred into Daniel's brain. I then had to play scenes in which one or more of these personalities interact with each other at the same time. "Talk about a complete mindbender," jokes Shanks. "It was certainly something to wrap one's head around, and it was a big challenge given the time constraints of TY. We had to make sure certain things were done in order for all the characters to be clearly defined. It was tough going but I thoroughly enjoyed it. Whether or not I pulled it off is another matter. I'll have to decide that when l actually watch the episode. Regardless, it's always nice to be given the chance to do something you've never tried to do before. Believe me, I learnt a lot."
Shanks cities writer Brad Wright's script for 'Life Boat' as a particularly challenging story to play. "I think five different personalities get downloaded from a computer into Daniel's head and get trapped inside his body," the actor says. "It required a lot of preparation. How I played that was to take different archetypes, personalities that I saw on the page, and attach a recognisable quirk or trait to each of them. You try to make the character your own, find a trigger to it.
We had this child actor who played one of the personalities that is downloaded into Daniel's brain in Lifeboat. I asked our casting people to find someone with gigantic eyes and they hired the cutest little kid. We watched this child's audition and he had these long slow blinks and kind of nodded his head in a very innocent way. He also had these eyebrows that were all the way up to his hairline because he was so, wide-eyed. In the episode ·we did a big close-up of this child when his character was being asked a question. Like most young children he didn't just say. 'Yes,' but also nodded his head up and down from north to south. He was terrific,' smiles Deluise." So Michael Shanks had to personify this little kid and copy his various idiosyncrasies for his performance. It was a huge help to the viewers in figuring out which personality they were dealing with in a particular scene. Once again, this episode was a tour de force acting extravaganza for Michael.
Next was an episode called Lifeboat," she continues. "In it, we have a spaceship full of people in suspended animation. 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. This was one of those stories where originally we were just going to need a wall. That became a corridor and then more and more. The suspended animation pods were built in banks and then put on wheels so that they could be easily moved around the set. There was a centre core area that all the pods fit nearly together in but then they could also be lined up to create the feeling of a corridor. Rodrigo did a beautiful job designing the pods. The set itself wasn't that big but I think by using the pieces the way they did it's going to look substantial on the screen.
Stargate SG-1 co-creator and former executive producer Brad Wright wrote Lifeboat, the next episode directed by Deluise. In it, the personalities of 12 very different people are downloaded into Daniel's brain. "There's a Sybil-type of thing going on with Daniel in this story," says the actor/director. "It's a big testament to Brad's faith in Michael Shanks's ability as an actor. As a director, it was a difficult episode for me to shoot because there were a number of scenes with just two people in a room. To make it interesting for the viewer I decided to keep the camera locked on the actors and then let them move around however they wanted. Usually I'm much more rigorous when blocking a scene but in this case I had to change my tactics. I was very pleased with how it turned out. Luckily, Michael is a trained stage actor so he's used to performing quite a lot of material in one go.
There's a wonderful episode this season called Lifeboat that was written by Brad Wright. In it, you literally see Janet blow her stack. We shot the scene a couple of different ways. One take wasn't so heated but there was one where she really does lose it. That's never happened before and if they keep it in we'll get to see another side of my character.
First off, Michael Shanks does well portraying diverse characters. Each is 'brought alive' by a combination of voice changes and mannerisms. Somehow, though, despite the fact that there seems to be a time limit on how long these 'souls' can stay in Daniel there seems little urgency in the episode. Perhaps most surprising is that Sam, Teal'c and O'Neill seem quite ready to condemn the people inside Daniel to death to get him back. Yet they don't blink an eye when those same people are prepared to sacrifice themselves to return Daniel and so enable the rest of their people to use the Stargate to travel to a new world. Surely this is the point at which Daniel would be seething with moral outrage? The fact that it turns out OK in the end doesn't excuse their reaction. The best line, though, has to be when Daniel has been acting very oddly, and Teal'c solemnly declares, "This is not Daniel Jackson!" Brilliant! 6
In Lifeboat SG-1 stumble across a crashed ship, and before you can say sci-fi cliché they uncover a crew in suspended animation. But it's uphill from there, as multiple personalities are downloaded into Daniels brain, and he goes a bit Gollum; the episode boasts superb work from Shanks.
