The Shrine - Production

Production

Since Stargate SG-1 produced 214 episodes, and this episode is the 86th produced from Stargate Atlantis, this makes "The Shrine" the 300th episode produced in the Stargate franchise. When writer Brad Wright was asked to write this episode, he originally came up with two ideas, "The Shrine", and "The Replacements", which was meant to be an episode about where Sheppard's team went missing for six months, and finally returned to see completely different crew in the Atlantis Expedition. However, since the cast change from Amanda Tapping (Samantha Carter) to Robert Picardo (Richard Woolsey) from the beginning of the season, the idea for "The Replacement" was dropped, and Wright went with "The Shrine". The working title of the episode was "The Shrine of Talus", but was changed to "The Shrine", due to clearance issues with releasing the title. The final draft of the script was completed around 10 March 2008. Filming for the episode took place on the week starting on 22 April. The episode's writer, Brad Wright was somewhat inspired by the Daniel Keyes novel, Flowers for Algernon for the plot of the episode.

The episode mainly focused on David Hewlett's character, Rodney McKay. Hewlett's real-life sister, Kate Hewlett made an appearance as Jeannie Miller, McKay's sister. This episode was the fourth to star Kate Hewlett's character. David Nykl was credited as his role of Radek Zelenka. However, by the time of the finished product, all of his scenes were cut out. Zelenka was, however mentioned in a scene, and despite having all his scenes cut, he was seen for a few seconds, walking past the camera, where the Czech flag was clearly visible from his arm.