Radek Zelenka - Conceptual History

Conceptual History

From the beginning of Stargate Atlantis, the producers were looking for actors to play non-Americans to present the cooperation between different nations and other groups of people in an alien environment. When actor David Nykl mentioned his Czech Canadian background during his audition for a Russian character for the season 1 episode "Thirty-Eight Minutes", the producers changed the character's nationality to Czech and cast him. Nykl made such an impression that producer Brad Wright wrote Zelenka into the Rodney McKay (David Hewlett) scenes of the next episode, "Suspicion".

Zelenka was re-introduced in the mid-season-1 finale "The Storm", Martin Gero's second Atlantis episode. Gero had had difficulty with laying out the dangers of the storm and its solution in a quick and entertaining manner with just the McKay character, and Brad Wright was not opposed to introducing another expository character. Zelenka has since frequently appeared for expository scenes in the control room with McKay and the leader of the Atlantis expedition. Zelenka's given name is first mentioned by McKay in the season 1 finale "The Siege"; McKay had previously been unable to remember Zelenka's name. The producers chose "Radek", a fairly common Czech given name, without input from Nykl. When Colonel Samantha Carter (Amanda Tapping) replaced Dr. Elizabeth Weir (Torri Higginson) as the leader of the Atlantis expedition in season 4, the producers shifted the emphasis of Zelenka's collaboration with McKay to his interaction with Carter. By the end of the show's run, the interactions between Zelenka and McKay become more subtle to the point where they finish each other's sentences and need fewer words and expressions to get by.

Portraying a recurring character, David Nykl was not under contract and neither knew his number of episodes nor his character's story arc in advance. Nevertheless, he appeared in approximately half of each season's episodes. No scenes with Zelenka were cut in the first two seasons of Atlantis, and extra scenes involving Zelenka were shot in the first episodes of the season 3 to fill time. However, all of David Nykl's scenes were cut from the season 5 episode "The Shrine" due to time constraints, although Nykl's credits appear in the finished episode.

Since Zelenka's first appearance, David Nykl's fluent Czech was worked into Stargate Atlantis as part of Zelenka. Approximately half of Zelenka's Czech lines were scripted (in English), which Nykl then translated verbatim. The other half was ad-libbed and usually included swearing. His usual Czech exclamations include Ty vole and Do prdele. Nykl found it increasingly hard to remember to put on the accent as the show went on. The late season 1 episode "Letters from Pegasus" features a minute-long non-subtitled monologue in which Zelenka describes the city of Atlantis in his mothertongue. Nykl translated the scripted monologue at home and performed it in Czech the next day. A version in English was initially planned to be filmed but was dropped after Nykl's successful first take. The end of Zelenka's video message ("drž se miláčku" – "take care, darling") was ad-libbed, but Nykl left it to the writers to create Zelenka's backstory. But during the show's run, Zelenka only ever mentions having a brother, a sister, and a nephew, and is never shown to be or have been in a romantic relationship.