Nemesis (Stargate SG-1) - Production

Production

The season 3 finale "Nemesis" was written by Robert C. Cooper and directed by Martin Wood. After the first three seasons of Stargate SG-1 had been filmed on 16 mm film (although scenes involving visual effects had always been shot on 35 mm film for various technical reasons), "Nemesis" was the first episode filmed entirely on 35 mm film. Stargate SG-1 switched to 35 mm film for all purposes at the beginning of season 4. The visual effects team used the episode to experiment with the design of the Replicators, a new recurring enemy to whom the character Thor had first alluded in the early season 3 episode "Fair Game". "Nemesis" featured more visual effects than any previous episode, but was excelled by the season 4 premiere, "Small Victories", which showed the best computer-generated shots of "Nemesis" in its "Previously on" segment. Visual effects supervisor James Tichenor considered the few episodes with big visual effects budgets the most likely works to contain visual cues that impress Academy of Television Arts & Sciences (Emmy Awards) voters. Tichenor claimed that effective visual effects do not call attention to themselves and instead rely on the actors' reactions to nonexistent things.

Daniel Jackson's appendicitis reflected Michael Shanks' real-world condition at the end of season 3. During the last shooting day of "Crystal Skull", Shanks suffered an appendicitis attack, which he had first misinterpreted as food poisoning from the Thanksgiving dinner. While Robert C. Cooper desperately tried to rewrite the script of "Nemesis", producer Brad Wright contrived elaborate storylines to reduce Shanks' involvement in the episode. Cooper eventually decided to use a common health issue to explain Daniel's absence from the episode's action scenes. Shanks appeared in four scenes set at Stargate Command, although he also provided the voice of the Asgard Thor in post-production. Although much of Daniel's and O'Neill's exchange in the infirmary was improvised, critic Jo Storm speculated in his book Approaching The Possible that Daniel's question in the infirmary bed to O'Neill ("Did you get a haircut?") may reflect the actors' hairstyles which had significantly changed since the season 2 finale; the lines may have been added to appease the many viewers who had commented on the characters' new looks on the online boards. "Nemesis" was the last episode before actor Christopher Judge started sporting a small blond beard for several episodes in season 4.