Lifeline (Stargate Atlantis) - Production

Production

"Lifeline" first surfaced in February 2007. Carl Binder wanted to do a heist episode during the off-season, though the writers had no idea where it would fit in the overall season arc. However, as "Adrift" was written, they realized their heist story flowed naturally from it. Even though Martin Wood was credited for directing the episode, Andy Mikita ended up directing most of it instead, as well as directing parts of "Adrift"; Wood was directing Stargate: Continuum at the time of filming. Amanda Tapping requested that showrunners Mallozzi and Mullie not give her a big part for the episode, as she was in the Arctic filming for Stargate: Continuum. Another reason that Carter's appearance was small was that Torri Higginson was still a part of the show, and the producers wanted Carter to be introduced slowly. The episode, as a "third part", was difficult to write, since the second part ("Adrift") is a comeback resolve of the first part ("First Strike"), and the third part has to "resolve the resolve." In the writing stages, there was also talk as to whether or not to save the experimental hyperdrive jumper. Eventually it was decided that it would be saved, to keep open the possibility of using it again.

Tapping felt acting on the new show went a little easier when filming Carter scenes with Bill Dow ("Bill Lee"), with whom she had previously worked on Stargate SG-1. She said another factor that made acting on Atlantis easier was the welcoming cast and crew of the series. Tapping's hair was longer than it was during her time on SG-1, and the military approved of the change as long as it was worn up. To save money on visual effects, the crew built set pieces to represent some of the buildings on M7R-227 and placed them in front of the puddle jumper set. Another measure taken as a substitute to visual effects was to cast mime artists as the frozen Asurans.

While filming Weir guiding the team to find the ZPM, the fact that she can see "everything" without looking at anything was a hard sell for an actor, but with Higginson's drive in her eyes, this would make the scene more believable for the audience. The scene was not written in the original script. The set for the core room in the Asuran city was the same set as Atlantis' gate room, though in order to make it look as different as possible, the cameras were placed at angles not usually used for filming in the gate room, such as where they would normally place lights.