"Vegas" as a reset button....
So I was watching "Vegas" again the other night and I had a thought.
What if you treated "Vegas" as the pilot to a show? Assume your viewers don't know anything more about the SGC than John does and that all the stuff Rodney talked about were hints and set ups for the rest of the season(s) of...whatever you want to call this show.
All of a sudden, you have a chance to do anything you want in the SG universe because it's an alternate reality. What do you do?
Me? After rescuing him from the wreckage, I keep John on Earth. Well, for at least the first half of the first season or even the whole first season. The rift accidentally opened up by the Wraith creates all kinds of problems; it pulls in aliens and so on from other realities and he ends up forming a team to deal with it. So you have Ronon, who's maybe a young FBI agent they meet in the course of the second or third episode. And maybe Teyla was one of John's regular contacts at one of the casino's; she knows everyone in town and might even be an alien herself. Rodney is obviously their connection to the SGC and Keller is their doctor on call and Woolsey is vaguely in charge of the whole operation, like he was in the ep.
At first Rodney almost resents his time away from Atlantis, but once they realize that most of the things they're dealing with are either the results of the rift (maybe it pops open now and then?) or threats from Pegasus, he figures he'd be called in all the time anyway, plus they work so well as a team.
At the end of the first season, they find out about John's gene and end up having to go to Atlantis or something as a big season finale, at which point season two can go any number of ways.
Just think about it; you can do a complete reset--deal with the race and gender issues and fix the fucked up relationships. You can make Keller a more believable character. You can fix a broken John, create a Ronon and Teyla who aren't invisible most of the time, and humanize an arrogant Rodney. You could bring back Ford as someone other than a junkie!
You can pick and choose what you want out of SGC history, bring in other SG-1 characters if you like or not.
So, what do you do with Stargate: Vegas?
What if you treated "Vegas" as the pilot to a show? Assume your viewers don't know anything more about the SGC than John does and that all the stuff Rodney talked about were hints and set ups for the rest of the season(s) of...whatever you want to call this show.
All of a sudden, you have a chance to do anything you want in the SG universe because it's an alternate reality. What do you do?
Me? After rescuing him from the wreckage, I keep John on Earth. Well, for at least the first half of the first season or even the whole first season. The rift accidentally opened up by the Wraith creates all kinds of problems; it pulls in aliens and so on from other realities and he ends up forming a team to deal with it. So you have Ronon, who's maybe a young FBI agent they meet in the course of the second or third episode. And maybe Teyla was one of John's regular contacts at one of the casino's; she knows everyone in town and might even be an alien herself. Rodney is obviously their connection to the SGC and Keller is their doctor on call and Woolsey is vaguely in charge of the whole operation, like he was in the ep.
At first Rodney almost resents his time away from Atlantis, but once they realize that most of the things they're dealing with are either the results of the rift (maybe it pops open now and then?) or threats from Pegasus, he figures he'd be called in all the time anyway, plus they work so well as a team.
At the end of the first season, they find out about John's gene and end up having to go to Atlantis or something as a big season finale, at which point season two can go any number of ways.
Just think about it; you can do a complete reset--deal with the race and gender issues and fix the fucked up relationships. You can make Keller a more believable character. You can fix a broken John, create a Ronon and Teyla who aren't invisible most of the time, and humanize an arrogant Rodney. You could bring back Ford as someone other than a junkie!
You can pick and choose what you want out of SGC history, bring in other SG-1 characters if you like or not.
So, what do you do with Stargate: Vegas?