Bonus Footage: The Mind/Body Problem
As Punk and I assemble the Definitive Director's DVD cut of The Mind/Body Problem [SGA], we figure it's only fair to share some deleted scenes and bloopers from the earlier versions of this story. Enjoy!
A Surge of Rodney
Heightmeyer was sitting in Beckett's lab like she owned the place, sipping coffee and tapping at her laptop. She looked up when they came in, lilting, "Oh, don't mind me, Carson will be back in just a second, but he said I could use his --"
"Fine, good, like we care," said Rodney. "Where's, I mean, do you know where he went, at least? Did he give some indication of, of when he might --"
John took him by the arm. "Breathe, McKay."
"Oh my god," Rodney gasped, hands opening and closing spasmodically. "My brain, it needs air!"
Zelenka, along for moral and scientific support, cast him the evil eye. "What you need is gag," Zelenka muttered.
"Hold on, I'm sure Carson'll be right here." John steered Rodney over to an exam bed, thinking he couldn't be too bad off if he was back to his usual histrionics. Rodney hiked up his pants, sat down, and swung his legs again. He wasn't wearing socks and his ankles were inhumanly white, poking out from his heavy hiking sneakers.
Beckett wheeled in with his coat flapping out behind him, kissed Heightmeyer square on the head, and then trotted over to John. "What's the problem this time, then, Colonel?"
John nodded at Rodney. "His brains are still broken."
Carson rolled his eyes. "Great," he said. "Well, you'll be glad to know I've done some testing on the blood sample ye gave last time --"
"My blood," Rodney pointed out. "Not Sheppard's, mine."
"Aye, of course, Rodney, yes, your blood, your very own --" Carson went on, slapping a couple of sticky sensors on Rodney's temples and then scurrying over to his computer again. "Aha! Colonel, you see these spikes in McKay's delta wave activity? Means he's producing high concentrations of electrochemical suppressants, probably to fight off an invading chemical in the brain. It's what's making him so lethargic, certainly, though the behavioral changes --"
John stepped between Rodney and Carson, and whispered, "So, he really is experiencing behavioral changes, then? He's not --"
"What, faking it?" Rodney asked, and then sighed. "I don't know anymore."
Carson nodded. "Aye. Anyway, the blood sample suggested a B vitamin deficiency, along with the serotonin deficiency. Which means it's very likely that a B-12 shot's all it'd take to return McKay to his normal resting state of insufferable cockiness."
Rodney hopped a little further away from Carson on the med bed. "Shot," he said, looking panicky. John put a hand on Rodney's shoulder.
"You're cool," John said to him. Then, to Carson, "That's all very...complicated, but, uh, where'd this invading chemical come from exactly?"
This time Heightmeyer, who had somehow magically appeared beside Carson, responded. "The insect," she said, looking at Rodney. "Carson believes Rodney had a reaction to whatever it was that bit him on the neck, and his brain tried to protect him by strategically shutting down."
"My brain would never do that to me!" Rodney sounded like he was about to cry. Heightmeyer reached out and stroked Rodney's hair.
"It's just making sure you don't put yourself in any further danger," she lilted.
John felt compelled to pet Rodney on the head too, but forced himself not to. "Yeah," he said. "Don't worry, Rodney, your strategic brain's gonna be just fine." He looked at Carson. "His brain will be fine, right?"
Carson gave the B-12 needle a test squirt. "Ye might want to hold him still," he said to John.
Rodney immediately pulled his hands up into his sleeves and tried to lunge off the table, but John grabbed a handful of his waistband and stopped him short. "Which arm do you need?" John asked.
"Oh, this won't be going in his arm, Colonel."
"I'm fine! I'm fine!" Rodney insisted, straining against John's hold, desperately trying to get away. John threw an arm across his chest and bore him down flat. Rodney gaped at him.
"C'mon, Rodney, we need your big powerful brain back in action. I mean, it's either this or letting Zelenka at the DHD with a box of hammers. Do you really want Zelenka messing with your gate?"
Zelenka sniffed angrily from the corner, and John flashed him a teasing grin.
"It's for yer own good, Rodney," Carson said. "Buck up."
"Oh, like I've never heard that before!" McKay writhed and spat, feet kicking. John leaned into him, hard. "Roll over."
"Fine, fine!" Rodney said, flopping onto his stomach. "But I'm only doing this for the greater good! Zelenka shouldn't be anywhere near a DHD. I don't want to be trapped here forever because he forgot to remodulate the, oh, oh --"
"You're a prince," John said as Carson tugged Rodney's pants down and jabbed the needle into the fleshy part of his ass.
"Ow," said Rodney.
"Okay, then, that should perk ye up right quick. I wouldn't be surprised if you felt a surge of...Rodney?"
John leaned down to peer at Rodney's slack, drooling mouth and fluttering eyelashes. "I think he fell asleep."
"Aye," Carson sighed. "Contrary little bugger."
"He's had a hard day," Heightmeyer reminded them. Rodney twitched, chasing rabbits in his sleep, and John palmed his poor sweaty head and unhooked the radio from his ear.
"He will be fine, right?" John asked.
Carson was doing something with needles that Rodney would have hated if he were awake. "Barring any secondary reaction, of course," Carson said. "It's quite fascinating, really. We're dealing with an alien organism here! Complications could pop up days or even years down the road, there's no way of knowing the long term --" He stopped short in the face of John's scowl and did some hasty backpeddling. "Oh, but I'm sure he'll be fine."
Sometimes it was really obvious that prior to Atlantis the doc had spent more time with test tubes than with actual human beings. He had a bad habit of sounding excited when faced with freaky new diseases. It could be less than comforting if you were the freak in question. It was a very good thing Rodney was asleep.
"Thanks, Doc. That really eases my mind," John said, watching Rodney drool into his pillow. He stood there long enough that he started to get confused about it, and then he figured he might as well finish what he'd started, so by the time Elizabeth called up the infirmary, John was good and embarrassed about how long he'd spent staring at Rodney's pointy nose and stubborn chin.
::
Weir Throws A Meeting
The gate room had a tree in it. It was green, had no leaves or roots, and looked like a pre-schooler drew it. The botanists had it surrounded, arguing with each other and dodging its flailing, sticky branches. John gave 'em a wave on his way through. He was clean, and dry, and his pants weren't sticking to him in uncomfortable places. His hair looked good, the team was safe at the alpha site, and soon he would be having sex with the hot babe who ran the place. It could turn out to be a good day yet. He ran up the stairs to the conference room.
Elizabeth was sitting at the far end of the big torus of a table with her fingers steepled and her skirt still on, which John took as a good sign. He slinked around to take the empty seat beside her. Her shoes were on too, and her legs were crossed away from him, but that was okay, because this was business and there'd be plenty of time for leaving butt prints on her office window after all the missing people and angry trees were where they were supposed to be.
"I was told I could expect a thirty percent increase over twelve hours, or a ten percent increase in an hour with an eighty percent success rate?" Elizabeth kept her eyes on the scientist with the tattooed forearms, even when John wrapped his hand around her thigh.
Dr. Acevela poked mildly at his laptop with a stylus and the mermaid flexed her tail. "Ten percent, but you'd lose shields and site-to-site transport when you did it."
"How's McKay?" John asked, waiting for Elizabeth to look at him.
"He had juice," Elizabeth said. "Now he's napping. And we are attempting to regain use of the wormhole. If you wouldn't mind."
John took his hand off Elizabeth's thigh, and settled into his chair, wishing he had a big cowboy hat so he could tip it over his eyes to block out the overhead lights. He kicked out his legs and crossed his ankles.
"There's a way to augment some of the incipient power loss if we go with the more conservative approach," Dr. Acevela said. "If you look at section 2b, you'll see the plans we've outlined to maintain the gate's shield while we continue to try and restore the wormhole's stability."
John didn't have a laptop along and didn't see the merit in opening his eyes, but he did reach out and hook a toe around Elizabeth's calf, and he ran it right up to her knee. He nearly fell over when she moved her chair away.
"Did you bring any visual documentation to support these equations?" she asked Acevela, and John thought he heard Dr. Simpson sigh, heavily.
This businesslike Elizabeth was really almost as hot as the one who was straddling his chest a short while ago, or at least John was sure she would be hot once she looked at him or touched him or acknowledged him at all, and he sat back in his chair and waited for the inevitable lust to kick in.
Instead, Elizabeth was back in conversation with Teyla and Dr. Simpson, and Simpson was saying, "The resources of the alpha site should be more than sufficient, even if they remain within the half mile radius of the gate, to support our team for several months if necessary."
Elizabeth pursed her lower lip unimpressively. "Several months is out of the question," she said, in a way that sounded like she wouldn't know what to do with the question if she was locked in a room with it. "Get the gate fixed."
"Well, as I was saying," Dr. Acevela was saying, and Elizabeth still wasn't looking at John when Rodney's voice came through the radio, big and thundering like a nerdy dinosaur.
"Elizabeth! Elizabeth! Um, Colonel Sheppard!"
Elizabeth got to her feet and palmed the table. "What is it, Rodney?"
"Why do I have no scientists? I have zero scientists here! Am I correct in assuming we're trying to get the gate functional again, or did I nap right through the part where we stopped caring about that sort of thing?"
"We're working on it," Elizabeth said, and here she actually did look at John, and smiled at him conspiratorily. "If you come down here I'd love to fill you in on --"
"I got it under control, just, if you see a scientist, send 'em up? Preferably applied physics but I'm not picky, someone with a chicken salad sandwich would also be okay, I'm just gonna -- stop distracting me!" And Rodney hung up.
"I should probably..." said Zelenka, gesturing at his ear. He grabbed his tablet and darted out of the room.
"Me too," Simpson said, Acevela agreed, Kusanagi snatched the last donut, Michaels stuttered something about power relays, and they packed up their stuff and fled the scene, rushing to the control room to circle around McKay and get their hands slapped when they inevitably tried to help.
"I am afraid I must go as well," Teyla said. "Major Lorne is taking me to the mainland so that I may speak with my people. They are anxious to know our progress on repairing the gate." She bowed her head and left the room.
"Looks like it's just you and me," John said, raising an eyebrow at Elizabeth. "Got any plans?"
"As a matter of fact." She tapped a stack of papers against the table, fastened them with a binder clip, then slipped them into her folder. "I've got something in my office that needs my attention," she said, meaningfully.
John figured that was his cue, and followed her out of the room, through gate control, and to the doorway of her office, where she suddenly turned around and held him off with her mug of hot tea.
"I'm sure you've got your own duties to attend to," she said.
He gave her a lazy smile. "Not really."
"Well maybe you could find some, Colonel. This isn't going to happen. I'm sorry." She took a step backwards and the door swept shut in his face. Until today he hadn't even known she had a door, and now he was on the wrong side of it. Her office walls went frosty and opaque and he stood there stupidly. It'd been a sure thing. She'd promised!
The feature length version of The Mind/Body Problem can be found here, packed full of toes and toolbelts and easter eggs for your reading pleasure.
A Surge of Rodney
Heightmeyer was sitting in Beckett's lab like she owned the place, sipping coffee and tapping at her laptop. She looked up when they came in, lilting, "Oh, don't mind me, Carson will be back in just a second, but he said I could use his --"
"Fine, good, like we care," said Rodney. "Where's, I mean, do you know where he went, at least? Did he give some indication of, of when he might --"
John took him by the arm. "Breathe, McKay."
"Oh my god," Rodney gasped, hands opening and closing spasmodically. "My brain, it needs air!"
Zelenka, along for moral and scientific support, cast him the evil eye. "What you need is gag," Zelenka muttered.
"Hold on, I'm sure Carson'll be right here." John steered Rodney over to an exam bed, thinking he couldn't be too bad off if he was back to his usual histrionics. Rodney hiked up his pants, sat down, and swung his legs again. He wasn't wearing socks and his ankles were inhumanly white, poking out from his heavy hiking sneakers.
Beckett wheeled in with his coat flapping out behind him, kissed Heightmeyer square on the head, and then trotted over to John. "What's the problem this time, then, Colonel?"
John nodded at Rodney. "His brains are still broken."
Carson rolled his eyes. "Great," he said. "Well, you'll be glad to know I've done some testing on the blood sample ye gave last time --"
"My blood," Rodney pointed out. "Not Sheppard's, mine."
"Aye, of course, Rodney, yes, your blood, your very own --" Carson went on, slapping a couple of sticky sensors on Rodney's temples and then scurrying over to his computer again. "Aha! Colonel, you see these spikes in McKay's delta wave activity? Means he's producing high concentrations of electrochemical suppressants, probably to fight off an invading chemical in the brain. It's what's making him so lethargic, certainly, though the behavioral changes --"
John stepped between Rodney and Carson, and whispered, "So, he really is experiencing behavioral changes, then? He's not --"
"What, faking it?" Rodney asked, and then sighed. "I don't know anymore."
Carson nodded. "Aye. Anyway, the blood sample suggested a B vitamin deficiency, along with the serotonin deficiency. Which means it's very likely that a B-12 shot's all it'd take to return McKay to his normal resting state of insufferable cockiness."
Rodney hopped a little further away from Carson on the med bed. "Shot," he said, looking panicky. John put a hand on Rodney's shoulder.
"You're cool," John said to him. Then, to Carson, "That's all very...complicated, but, uh, where'd this invading chemical come from exactly?"
This time Heightmeyer, who had somehow magically appeared beside Carson, responded. "The insect," she said, looking at Rodney. "Carson believes Rodney had a reaction to whatever it was that bit him on the neck, and his brain tried to protect him by strategically shutting down."
"My brain would never do that to me!" Rodney sounded like he was about to cry. Heightmeyer reached out and stroked Rodney's hair.
"It's just making sure you don't put yourself in any further danger," she lilted.
John felt compelled to pet Rodney on the head too, but forced himself not to. "Yeah," he said. "Don't worry, Rodney, your strategic brain's gonna be just fine." He looked at Carson. "His brain will be fine, right?"
Carson gave the B-12 needle a test squirt. "Ye might want to hold him still," he said to John.
Rodney immediately pulled his hands up into his sleeves and tried to lunge off the table, but John grabbed a handful of his waistband and stopped him short. "Which arm do you need?" John asked.
"Oh, this won't be going in his arm, Colonel."
"I'm fine! I'm fine!" Rodney insisted, straining against John's hold, desperately trying to get away. John threw an arm across his chest and bore him down flat. Rodney gaped at him.
"C'mon, Rodney, we need your big powerful brain back in action. I mean, it's either this or letting Zelenka at the DHD with a box of hammers. Do you really want Zelenka messing with your gate?"
Zelenka sniffed angrily from the corner, and John flashed him a teasing grin.
"It's for yer own good, Rodney," Carson said. "Buck up."
"Oh, like I've never heard that before!" McKay writhed and spat, feet kicking. John leaned into him, hard. "Roll over."
"Fine, fine!" Rodney said, flopping onto his stomach. "But I'm only doing this for the greater good! Zelenka shouldn't be anywhere near a DHD. I don't want to be trapped here forever because he forgot to remodulate the, oh, oh --"
"You're a prince," John said as Carson tugged Rodney's pants down and jabbed the needle into the fleshy part of his ass.
"Ow," said Rodney.
"Okay, then, that should perk ye up right quick. I wouldn't be surprised if you felt a surge of...Rodney?"
John leaned down to peer at Rodney's slack, drooling mouth and fluttering eyelashes. "I think he fell asleep."
"Aye," Carson sighed. "Contrary little bugger."
"He's had a hard day," Heightmeyer reminded them. Rodney twitched, chasing rabbits in his sleep, and John palmed his poor sweaty head and unhooked the radio from his ear.
"He will be fine, right?" John asked.
Carson was doing something with needles that Rodney would have hated if he were awake. "Barring any secondary reaction, of course," Carson said. "It's quite fascinating, really. We're dealing with an alien organism here! Complications could pop up days or even years down the road, there's no way of knowing the long term --" He stopped short in the face of John's scowl and did some hasty backpeddling. "Oh, but I'm sure he'll be fine."
Sometimes it was really obvious that prior to Atlantis the doc had spent more time with test tubes than with actual human beings. He had a bad habit of sounding excited when faced with freaky new diseases. It could be less than comforting if you were the freak in question. It was a very good thing Rodney was asleep.
"Thanks, Doc. That really eases my mind," John said, watching Rodney drool into his pillow. He stood there long enough that he started to get confused about it, and then he figured he might as well finish what he'd started, so by the time Elizabeth called up the infirmary, John was good and embarrassed about how long he'd spent staring at Rodney's pointy nose and stubborn chin.
::
Weir Throws A Meeting
The gate room had a tree in it. It was green, had no leaves or roots, and looked like a pre-schooler drew it. The botanists had it surrounded, arguing with each other and dodging its flailing, sticky branches. John gave 'em a wave on his way through. He was clean, and dry, and his pants weren't sticking to him in uncomfortable places. His hair looked good, the team was safe at the alpha site, and soon he would be having sex with the hot babe who ran the place. It could turn out to be a good day yet. He ran up the stairs to the conference room.
Elizabeth was sitting at the far end of the big torus of a table with her fingers steepled and her skirt still on, which John took as a good sign. He slinked around to take the empty seat beside her. Her shoes were on too, and her legs were crossed away from him, but that was okay, because this was business and there'd be plenty of time for leaving butt prints on her office window after all the missing people and angry trees were where they were supposed to be.
"I was told I could expect a thirty percent increase over twelve hours, or a ten percent increase in an hour with an eighty percent success rate?" Elizabeth kept her eyes on the scientist with the tattooed forearms, even when John wrapped his hand around her thigh.
Dr. Acevela poked mildly at his laptop with a stylus and the mermaid flexed her tail. "Ten percent, but you'd lose shields and site-to-site transport when you did it."
"How's McKay?" John asked, waiting for Elizabeth to look at him.
"He had juice," Elizabeth said. "Now he's napping. And we are attempting to regain use of the wormhole. If you wouldn't mind."
John took his hand off Elizabeth's thigh, and settled into his chair, wishing he had a big cowboy hat so he could tip it over his eyes to block out the overhead lights. He kicked out his legs and crossed his ankles.
"There's a way to augment some of the incipient power loss if we go with the more conservative approach," Dr. Acevela said. "If you look at section 2b, you'll see the plans we've outlined to maintain the gate's shield while we continue to try and restore the wormhole's stability."
John didn't have a laptop along and didn't see the merit in opening his eyes, but he did reach out and hook a toe around Elizabeth's calf, and he ran it right up to her knee. He nearly fell over when she moved her chair away.
"Did you bring any visual documentation to support these equations?" she asked Acevela, and John thought he heard Dr. Simpson sigh, heavily.
This businesslike Elizabeth was really almost as hot as the one who was straddling his chest a short while ago, or at least John was sure she would be hot once she looked at him or touched him or acknowledged him at all, and he sat back in his chair and waited for the inevitable lust to kick in.
Instead, Elizabeth was back in conversation with Teyla and Dr. Simpson, and Simpson was saying, "The resources of the alpha site should be more than sufficient, even if they remain within the half mile radius of the gate, to support our team for several months if necessary."
Elizabeth pursed her lower lip unimpressively. "Several months is out of the question," she said, in a way that sounded like she wouldn't know what to do with the question if she was locked in a room with it. "Get the gate fixed."
"Well, as I was saying," Dr. Acevela was saying, and Elizabeth still wasn't looking at John when Rodney's voice came through the radio, big and thundering like a nerdy dinosaur.
"Elizabeth! Elizabeth! Um, Colonel Sheppard!"
Elizabeth got to her feet and palmed the table. "What is it, Rodney?"
"Why do I have no scientists? I have zero scientists here! Am I correct in assuming we're trying to get the gate functional again, or did I nap right through the part where we stopped caring about that sort of thing?"
"We're working on it," Elizabeth said, and here she actually did look at John, and smiled at him conspiratorily. "If you come down here I'd love to fill you in on --"
"I got it under control, just, if you see a scientist, send 'em up? Preferably applied physics but I'm not picky, someone with a chicken salad sandwich would also be okay, I'm just gonna -- stop distracting me!" And Rodney hung up.
"I should probably..." said Zelenka, gesturing at his ear. He grabbed his tablet and darted out of the room.
"Me too," Simpson said, Acevela agreed, Kusanagi snatched the last donut, Michaels stuttered something about power relays, and they packed up their stuff and fled the scene, rushing to the control room to circle around McKay and get their hands slapped when they inevitably tried to help.
"I am afraid I must go as well," Teyla said. "Major Lorne is taking me to the mainland so that I may speak with my people. They are anxious to know our progress on repairing the gate." She bowed her head and left the room.
"Looks like it's just you and me," John said, raising an eyebrow at Elizabeth. "Got any plans?"
"As a matter of fact." She tapped a stack of papers against the table, fastened them with a binder clip, then slipped them into her folder. "I've got something in my office that needs my attention," she said, meaningfully.
John figured that was his cue, and followed her out of the room, through gate control, and to the doorway of her office, where she suddenly turned around and held him off with her mug of hot tea.
"I'm sure you've got your own duties to attend to," she said.
He gave her a lazy smile. "Not really."
"Well maybe you could find some, Colonel. This isn't going to happen. I'm sorry." She took a step backwards and the door swept shut in his face. Until today he hadn't even known she had a door, and now he was on the wrong side of it. Her office walls went frosty and opaque and he stood there stupidly. It'd been a sure thing. She'd promised!
The feature length version of The Mind/Body Problem can be found here, packed full of toes and toolbelts and easter eggs for your reading pleasure.