SPOILER NOTICE: This article contains some spoilers from already-aired episodes. If you haven’t seen all the episodes to date, and don’t want to be spoiled, do not read further.
I sometimes feel like I’m the only one on the planet that watches the two Stargate franchises (Stargate: SG-1 and Stargate: Atlantis), but I love them. Yes, they’re cheesy. Yes, they can be cliché. So what? They’re fun and they entertain me. When I found out that they were canceling Stargate: SG-1 I was upset. Especially when I found out that they’d told the cast just as they were celebrating their 200th episode. That just seemed rude.
Well the rumor is that some of the cast from SG-1 will be moving to Atlantis after the end of the season. I guess this is why the powers that be at Stargate Plot Writing HQ decided to do what they did in the Atlantis episode “Sunday” which aired on the Sci-fi channel last Friday (June 1). Apparently it’s aired elsewhere before, because when I started Googling around, people had been talking about it for months.
What did they do? Well, pretty much out of the blue they killed off one of my favorite characters, Dr. Carson Beckett (played by actor Paul McGillion). After an hour of watching him get turned down repeatedly when asking people to go fishing with him, and feeling bad for him, he then heroically saves a man’s life by removing an explosive tumor from his chest. He delivers the tumor in a cooler to the bomb guy in the hall (who has a big containment unit with him) and just as he turns and starts walking back to the operating room, the thing explodes, killing him.
When I saw the explosion and saw he was caught up in it I thought “wow, I wonder if they’ll fix him this episode or if they will have the episode leave you hanging and fix him next week?” I refused to believe they’d actually killed him. It wouldn’t have made any sense! But then they show the other crew going through his quarters, packing his stuff. And talking about how to tell his family. And sending his body home. And then there was the funeral… Wow. Just wow.
I didn’t all-out bawl, but I know a couple of tears escaped. From a dramatic standpoint the episode was well-crafted and well executed. The acting was good, the plot development was done in an interesting way, and the death was tragic and moving. But dammit, WHY CARSON? He was such an awesome character! I will miss him on the show, for sure.
Given the nature of the Stargate universe, there are several mechanisms by which he could theoretically return. There are the Gua’uld resurrection/healing sarcophaguses. There is ascension à la Daniel Jackson. There are the infinite parallel universes they’ve managed to go to through various means, wherein they’ve encountered alternate versions of themselves. And there is time travel, which they’ve done a few times. So perhaps all is not lost, but not having him around as a full time cast member will be sad.
See also:
www.savecarsonbeckett.com/
— 03:26:10 PM
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