Development The burning of Vala in "Avalon (Part 2)" was a challenging sequence for safety reasons and for still making it believable. Stunt people stood in for the fire scenes that Claudia Black couldn't film. Locked-off cameras and different "plates" were later combined to so-called VisFX compshots. "The Ties That Bind" marks the first appearance of the
Atlantis-style
wormhole effect on the actual series, rather than in just the opening credits.
Cast Ben Browder and
Beau Bridges joined the main cast in Season 9, as
Cameron Mitchell and
Hank Landry, respectively.
Richard Dean Anderson had left the main cast after Season 8 to spend more time with his young daughter in Los Angeles. Despite being listed in the cast credits for the whole season and short scenes in
Avalon (Part 1),
Amanda Tapping as
Samantha Carter is absent during the first five episodes as she was in the last stages of pregnancy at that time. Her empty spot was filled by guest star
Claudia Black, who would leave in "Beachhead" and return for the last two episodes of Season 9, which involved her real-life pregnancy. Another new recurring actor was
Lexa Doig as
Carolyn Lam, Landry's daughter and the new doctor at
Stargate Command.
Writing After writing the end of Season 8 as the third series finale in a row and having a positive creative experience with the first season of
Stargate Atlantis, the producers considered starting a new spin-off show called
Stargate Command, but the
Sci Fi Channel chose to renew the series into a ninth season. With the departure of
Richard Dean Anderson, the producers then decided to start a new chapter and introduced new elements into the series. A major change was the departure from
Egyptian mythology and the
Goa'uld Empire which had found its climax in the season 8 episode "
Threads", and the introduction of
Arthurian mythology. "Avalon" was treated like a pilot film, consisting of originally two episodes, but a long script resulted in the extension of the story into the episode "Origin", in which the
Ori make their first appearance as new antagonistic race. The title of the episode "Ex Deus Machina" is a
hyperbaton of "
deus ex machina" (literally "God out of a Machine", meaning "God appearing on a crane", a literary device for a kind of turn of events) after he jokingly suggested to his writing partners a plot about Ba'al working undercover as a mechanic on Earth. The title also makes a reference to Ba'al as an ex-deus (a former god). The episode "Ripple Effect" was overly long and had many scenes edited and cut for time. Writer
Joseph Mallozzi later posted script sections of all cut scenes online. Asked what the cryptic remark by Black Mitchell meant when he left through the gate at the end of the episode, Mallozzi answered the meaning of this remark will not be revealed in the series but might come up in the
Stargate SG-1 sequels,
Stargate: The Ark of Truth and
Stargate: Continuum. "Camelot" was the first
Stargate SG-1 season finale since "
Revelations" that was not intended to be the
SG-1 series finale, and the first one since "
Exodus" that was a cliffhanger. The episode was written without the knowledge that
Stargate SG-1 would be picked up for a tenth season. == Release and reception ==