Grace (Stargate SG-1)

"Grace" is the 13th episode from the seventh season of military science fiction adventure television show Stargate SG-1 and is the 145th overall. It was first broadcast on January 6 2004, on Sky One in the United Kingdom. The episode was written by Damian Kindler and was directed by Peter F. Woeste.

"Grace"
Stargate SG-1 episode
Episode no.Season 7
Episode 13
Directed byPeter F. Woeste
Written byDamian Kindler
Featured musicJoel Goldsmith
Cinematography byJim Menard
Editing byBrad Rines
Production codeP258
Original air dateJanuary 6, 2004 (2004-01-06)
Guest appearances

In the episode, Prometheus is travelling back to Earth when it is attacked by an unknown vessel. During the attack Major Samantha Carter (Amanda Tapping is knocked unconscious and awakens to find the ships crew are missing and the Prometheus is stuck in a gas cloud.

Actress Amanda Tapping won a Leo Award for her performance in the episode. Sina Oroomchi, David Hibbert, Devan Kraushar and David Cur from the shows sound department were nominated for a Leo Award for their work on the episode.

Plot

The Prometheus is traveling back to Earth using a hyperdrive taken from a Goa'uld Al'kesh. In order to stop the retrofitted hyperdrive from overloading, the ship has been dropping out of hyperspace every few hours to allow the drive to cool down. After dropping out once more, the Prometheus is attacked by an unknown vessel. Unable to use the hyperdrive, Major Samantha Carter (Amanda Tapping) suggests they retreat into an gas cloud with the hope it will make it more difficult for the alien vessel to track them. As the alien vessel continues their attack, Carter is knocked unconscious.

When Carter wakes up, she finds herself alone on board the Prometheus, with the entire crew missing. Suffering from head injury, Carter struggles to stay conscious and soon begins having visions of a little girl (Sasha Pieterse) running around the ship blowing bubbles. Unable to restart the engines the ship is stuck in the cloud. Teal'c (Christopher Judge) appears, warning her that she must not fall asleep, however she is unable to resist. After seeing the little girl once more, she then starts seeing Daniel Jackson (Michael Shanks) and in talking to him believes that she's hallucinating and that he's a figment her subconscious mind. As the ships hull begins to corrode and her concussion worsens, Carter continues to imagine Daniel who wants her to study the gas cloud and believes the gas cloud is a sentient being, whilst Teal'c warns her that she may have in fact been captured by the aliens. She imagines her father, Jacob Carter (Carmen Argenziano) who questions her life choices and whether or not she's happy. As Carter gives up on finding a solution to leave the cloud, she conjures up the image of Jack O'Neill (Richard Dean Anderson) and confronts him about her feelings.

The small girl continues to blow bubbles, giving Carter the idea to partially engage the hyperdrive and take Prometheus out of the cloud's space-time. She contacts the alien ship, offering her solution to escape the gas cloud in exchange for return of the crew and safe passage. The crew are returned and Carter creates a bubble around both ships and they both exit the cloud.

Production

Development and writing
The episode was written by Damian Kindler.

The episode was written by Damian Kindler. It was originally titled "Crossfire", before being titled "Passengers" and then finally "Grace".[1][2] At the start of pre-production on season seven actress Amanda Tapping and showrunner Robert C. Cooper had a conversation regarding the direction to take Samantha Carter in the upcoming season. Tapping asked Cooper for an episode where Carter would "struggle with her demons" and would question her "life choices and questions what she's missing, you know, as a woman and as a contributing member of society".[3] Cooper told Tapping they had already begun developing something in that vain, commenting that he tended to rely upon Carter's voice for technobabble and exposition admitting "we sometimes lose track of the fact that she's also a woman, who has a life, and we wanted to explore that too".[4][3]

The episode continued what Kindler described as a "kind of a mini agenda coming into season seven" where he "really wanted to write some good Carter stories".[5] Kindler had two initial ideas which formed the basis of the episode. The first idea came to Kindler in a dream, in which he imagined "Carter trapped on a planet in a decaying orbit" and "having to deal with this very personal and emotional gauntlet if she hopes to survive".[6][7] Kindler also had the idea "of the team encountering a faceless alien threat" and showrunner Robert C. Cooper believed both ideas could marry together for an episode.[7] Kindler described the story as a "closed-door mystery" where "You never really find out what happened in the epic sense", intending that the episode remain focused around Carter.[8]

During the story, a stranded and alone Carter would become concussed. In Carter's fight to survive, Kindler wanted the character to "address some very heavy issues in her life in order to find a reason to keep going", one of the key issues being "her feelings for O'Neill and the hopelessness" she felt regarding their situation. Kindler described wanting to address but not conclude "what that has been doing to her for seven years", whilst also expressing his desire to "stir the pot" of the fans who ship Carter & O'Neill romantically.[5] This would then setup Cooper & Kindler's upcoming episode "Chimera" which would see Carter enter a relationship with a new character.[4] According to writer and co-executive producer Joseph Mallozzi in the early outline of the story Carter would have boarded the alien vessel and come "face to face with its crew", however it was ultimately decided the story "would work better as a self-contained narrative".[9]

Cast and filming
Sasha Pieterse (pictured in 2014 at age 18) guest starred as Grace (at age 7).

Sasha Pieterse guest stars as the titular character, Grace. Tapping believed who or what the character was purposely left open for interpretation, however she personally Grace as "Sam's child if she had chosen family over career" as well as "the potential future for Carter".[10] Tapping also believed the child could be seen as being emblematic of "Carter's inner child, the child that she doesn't play with" and "a representation of what Carter's capable of".[11][3][12] Carmen Argenziano reprises his role as Jacob Carter/Selmak. John Novak and Ingrid Kavelaars reprise their roles of Major Erin Gant and Colonel William Ronson from the episode "Memento". Craig Veroni appears as Weapons Officer. Veroni was subsequently cast the following year as Peter Grodin who was a recurring character during the first season of Stargate Atlantis.[13]

The episode was directed by Peter F. Woeste, with cinematography by Jim Menard. Tapping recorded her voice-over dialog before filming the episode began.[14][15] The episode was predominantly shot by the shows second unit whilst the shows main unit worked on the episodes Death Knell" and "Chimera".[16][17][14] According to Tapping, although the official schedule was for two days of main unit photography and six days of second unit, filming took over a month to complete. Tapping had hoped to use the summer filming hiatus to "map out" her arc and beats within the episode, particularly regarding the effects of her head-injury, however filming ended up starting on the final day of production before the hiatus.[16]

In being concussed and hallucinating, Tapping was mindful of "not going over the top" with her performance, and looked to try and perform her scenes "very softly".[18] According to Tapping Richard Dean Anderson, Christopher Judge and Michael Shanks all played "somewhat different" versions of their characters; Jack O'Neill, Teal'c and Daniel Jackson in Carters hallucinations.[19] In filming the scenes where Carter is concussed and alone onboard Prometheus, Woeste wanted to keep the audience "a little off balance" and shot the scenes with wider lenses on order to "show as much of the set" and to show Carter "somewhat diminutive in that set, just to give it that feeling she's alone and that there's no one else around her". Dutch camera angles and camera rotation were also used with Menard hoping that the audience would be unsure whether "it was a dream or not". Using Dutch angles in the hallways of the Prometheus set meant that the studio ceiling would be visible, therefore the set ceilings had to be filled in.[14]

Reception

Broadcast and ratings
Amanda Tapping won a Leo Award for "Dramatic Series: Best Lead Performance - Female" for her performance as Samantha Carter in the episode.

"Grace" was first broadcast on January 6, 2004 on Sky One in the United Kingdom.[20][21] It was then shown for the first time in the United States on January 16, 2004 on Sci Fi, earning a Nielsen rating of 1.8. This was down on the channel's record breaking 2.2 household rating for the previous week's episode "Evolution", but remained above the season average of 1.7.[22] In Canada the episode was first shown on December 2, 2004 on SPACE.[23][24] The episode was first syndicated in the United States during the week of January 17, 2005 and achieved a 2.5 household rating, equating to approximately 2.7 million viewers which made it the most watched episode of season seven to-date.[25]

Reception and awards

Reviewing for SFX Jayne Dearsley awarded the episode five out of five stars, praising Tapping's "pitch-perfect performance". Dearsley believed the episode delivered "some genuine, creepy chills, a good dollop of emotion and some lovely effects" and called the use of hallucinations "refreshing", writing "Carter's visions could've been explained away as some sort of technobabble-heavy anomaly, but, happily, they're not supernatural at all; just side effects of the bang on her bonce".[26] Reviewing for TV Zone Jan Vincent-Rudzki called it "Not a great episode, but well executed" and compared the premise to Star Trek, awarding the episode 7 out of 10.[27] Reviewing for fansite Gateworld, Ali Snow awarded the episode three and a half stars, hailing Tapping for carrying the episode, calling her performance "brilliant". Snow also praised how Kindler appeared to flirt with Star Trek tropes such as "sentient space anomaly" and "alien mind trick" "then veers back into an original and satisfying story".[28] James Hoare for The Companion believed "When we think of Sam at her finest, it's episodes like ‘Grace’ that immediately offer themselves up as evidence"[29] Reviewing for Sci-Fi Online, Darren Rea felt the episode was "a bit of a sci-fi cliché", awarding it 6 out of 10.[30]

Amanda Tapping won a Leo Award in the category "Dramatic Series: Best Lead Performance - Female" for her performance as Samantha Carter in the episode.[31][32] Sina Oroomchi, David Hibbert, Devan Kraushar and David Cur were nominated for a Leo Award in "Best Overall Sound in a Dramatic Series", losing to The Collector episode "The Rapper".[33][34]

Home media

"Grace" along with the episodes Chimera", "Fallout" and "Death Knell" were first released on Region 2 DVD on May 3, 2004 as part of the "Volume 35" standalone disc, before being released as part of the Season 7 boxset on October 19, 2004.[35][36] The episodes audio commentary is provided by director Peter Woeste, director of photography Jim Menard, camera operator Will Waring and set decorator Mark Davidson.[37] "Grace" along with the rest of season 7 was first made available digitally in January 2008 through iTunes and Amazon Unbox.[38] The episode, along with every other episode of the series, were made available to stream for the first time through Netflix in the USA on August 15, 2010.[39] The episode, along with the rest of the series has been upscaled for releases on various streaming platforms and the 2020 Blu-ray release.[40]

References
  1. ""Grace"". Gateworld.
  2. Cooper, Robert C.; Smith, John; Mullie, Paul; Kindler, Damian; Mallozzi, Joseph (June 2003). "Seventh Heaven". TV Zone. No. Special 52. Interviewed by Steven Eramo. Visual Imagination. p. 15. ISSN 0960-8230. In Damian Kindler's Grace (originally titled 'Passengers'), Sam Carter finds herself alone aboard the Promerheus and fighting for her life.
  3. Tapping, Amanda (1 February 2004). "Amanda Speaks Out". Gateworld (Interview). Interviewed by David Read.
  4. Cooper, Robert C. (23 July 2003). "Still Going Strong". rdanderson.com (Interview). Interviewed by Kate Ritter.
  5. Kinder, Damian (23 July 2003). "Between the Real and the Fantastic". rdanderson.com (Interview). Interviewed by Kate Ritter.
  6. Kindler, Damian (13 June 2021). "Sanctuary - Damian Kindler Had Ambition… and Amanda Tapping". The Companion (Interview). Interviewed by Michael Simpson. Sometimes you go and you're hot out of the gate, and you're rubbing your hands together, [and you go], "All right! We begin on a spaceship…" but this time I sort of stumbled in [and said], "Rob, I had a dream about Carter trapped on a planet in a decaying orbit and she's dying, and she had a head injury." And he goes, "Oh, really? Well, the thing that you just said there that's not right, but we can fix it, is that you said 'planet'." I said, "Well, what should I have said? McDonald's? What should I say?" He said, "Say 'spaceship'." I went, "Ooh, that's good." And we talked about it and that became 'Grace', which was one of my favorite Stargates.
  7. Kindler, Damian (June 2003). "Episode: Grace". Season Seven, Part II The Episodes. TV Zone. No. Special 55. Visual Imagination. p. 33. ISSN 0960-8230. I dreamt about Major Carter being trapped somewhere and having to deal with this very personal and emotional gauntlet if she hopes to survive," notes the writer producer. "I had also been toying with the idea of the team encountering a faceless alien threat. Robert Cooper (executive producer) felt both my storylines would marry well with the idea of reusing the Prometheus, which was still where we left it, on the planer Tagera in Memento. In Grace, Carter is bringing the Prometheus home from Tagera. They've taken the hyper-drive core from an Alkesh glider that O"Neill and Tea1'c captured in Avenger 2.0. Because it was designed for a smaller vessel, the core can only operate for so long before having to be shut down and cooled off for a few hours. During one of these 'pit stops', the Prometheus is fired upon by this massive alien mothership. Carter bangs her head and loses consciousness. The major wakes, up to find she's the only one left onboard the Prometheus. She has a concussion and is suffering from hallucinations. While Carter works to get the hyper-drive back online, the image of a little girl, Grace, suddenly appears. She helps Caner discover certain things that ultimately lead her to find and rescue the Prometheus crew and figure our what's gone on. It's all quite dramatic for the character and Amanda Tapping docs a phenomenal job in the episode. It's one of my favourites this season.
  8. Kindler, Damian (June 2003). "Episode: Grace". Season Seven, Part II The Episodes. TV Zone. No. Special 55. Visual Imagination. p. 19. ISSN 0960-8230. ALTHOUGH THERE IS RESOLUTION at the end of Grace, its writer Damian Kindler admits to holding back one or two pieces of the puzzle. "It's very much a closed-door mystery. You never really find out what happened in the epic sense," notes the producer. "That's because you tend to stay quite wrapped up with Carter and Amanda Tapping is deserving of the attention. She finds these beats that are just so real and deep and takes the viewer to some wonderful places. Carter has this amazingly intimate moment with Jack O'Neill - or at least the image of O'Neill chat appears before her - and Amanda pulls it off beautifully.
  9. Mallozzi, Joseph (20 March 2023). "Stargate SG-1 concept art and episodic insights!". josephmallozzi.com.
  10. "Major Player". TV Zone. No. 172. Interviewed by Steven Eramo. Visual Imagination. February 2004. p. 15. ISSN 0960-8230. Some people think she's Sam's inner child. Others feel she's Sam's child if she had chosen family over career. That's the one I'm going with.
  11. Tapping, Amanda (23 July 2003). "Major Changes". rdanderson.com (Interview). Interviewed by Kate Ritter.
  12. Amanda, Tapping (2023). "Grace". Chevrons Locked: The Unofficial Unauthorized Oral History of Stargate SG-1. By Edward Gross. NacelleBooks. ISBN 1737380188. Who Grace actually was is left open for interpretation - it's left open for my own interpretation, too. I mean, Grace could be Sam's child within. Grace could be the child Sam left behind when she focused all her energy on becoming an Astrophysicist Woman and forgot how to be a kid, forgot how to enjoy life. So she's a bunch of different things. In my mind I chose to make her Sam's potential future. Is she giving up family - which is what "Grace" deals with, what Sam struggles with - is she giving up any chance for a family or a "normal life," because she focuses all her energy on S.G.C. and what she's missing out on in life and if she were to have more of a life, could she bring more to her work? I had sat down with Rob Cooper at the beginning of the season and said, "I think we need to do a show where Sam struggles with her demons and where she questions her life choices and questions what she's missing as a woman and as a contributing member of society. Has she focused too much energy on work? When she lays her head on her pillow at night, what does she think about?" And Rob said, "Well, interestingly enough. there is a show coming up that will deal with that." "Ok, OK!"
  13. "Episode of the Week: 'Grace'". Gateworld. 4 August 2014.
  14. Woeste, Peter; Menard, Jim (3 May 2004). "Grace" (DVD commentary). Stargate SG-1. MGM Home Entertainment.
  15. Woeste, Peter (June 2003). "Lens Crafter". TV Zone. No. Special 55. Interviewed by Steven Eramo. Visual Imagination. p. 46. ISSN 0960-8230. Most of our scripts are filled with dialogue and exposition, and a lot of our action/adventure is talked about," he says. "So you're telling the audience about the action rather than involving them in it. In a sense, Grace gave us the chance to do the latter. In it, Sam [Amanda Tapping] is stranded on the Prometheus and cut off from the outside universe. She's entirely by herself on the ship, so for a great portion of the episode she has no one to talk to. Yes, there are voice-overs that include her thoughts, which she record at another time, but her situation and feeling must be conveyed through actions not words. I thought it was great. The story was a real departure from what we normally do on Stargate as well as an amazing challenge and an opportunity that hadn't been presented before. I'm quite pleased with how the episode turned out.
  16. Tapping, Amanda (2005). "Grace". "Stargate SG-1: The Illustrated Companion: Seasons 7 and 8" (Interview). Interviewed by Thomasina Gibson. London: Titan Publishing Group. pp. 38–39. ISBN 1840239344. We shot that episode entirely on second unit, and it took us over a month. The official schedule said two main unit days and six days second unit, but we weren't shooting them together in a straight block. We were shooting it during 'Death Knell'. We were shooting it during 'Chimera'. We were shooting it all over the place. I think we also a shot a part of 'Grace' the day before we went on hiatus, which I wasn't too happy about because it was such a difficult transition to make, and I wanted more time to think about how I was going to play this. In particular I didn't want to play the head injury over the top. My wish was to play the arc of it and map out the entire episode during the hiatus. I wanted to map out my beats for the episode and suddenly it's like, 'We'll shoot scene twenty-three before the hiatus,' and I was like, 'Woah! Woah! I don't know where she is in scene twenty-three'.
  17. "Major Player". TV Zone. No. 172. Interviewed by Steven Eramo. Visual Imagination. February 2004. p. 14. ISSN 0960-8230. A great deal of Grace was shot using the second unit, so it took over a month to finish because I was going back and forth between it, Death Knell and Chimera.
  18. "Major Player". TV Zone. No. 172. Interviewed by Steven Eramo. Visual Imagination. February 2004. p. 14. ISSN 0960-8230. When the Stargate cast and crew returned from their summer hiatus they immediately began working on the Sam Carter-centric episode Grace. "That was a difficult one because my character is suffering from a head injury for 90% of the story and she's hallucinating," notes Tapping. "As an actress, it's my job to make that believable and yet not go over the top with it, so I chose to play my scenes very softly.
  19. "Major Player". TV Zone. No. 172. Interviewed by Steven Eramo. Visual Imagination. February 2004. p. 14. ISSN 0960-8230. "It's interesting because in this story the guys aren't their typical selves," continues the actress. "Daniel is somewhat different, Teal'c is more laid back, and there's the 'big' moment between Sam and O'Neill, who's not quite himself either. I think this has to do with the fact that this is my character's subconscious view of the guys. For example, this is the first time Teal'c calls her Samantha instead of Major Carter. I'm sure it's something she's always wanted him to do, so in her hallucination he does.
  20. "STARGATE SG-1 RATINGS: SEASON SEVEN". Stargate SG-1 Solutions. 24 April 2004.
  21. "TV Focus". TV Zone. No. 171. Visual Imagination. December 2003. p. 77.
  22. "Ratings for 'Grace' and 'Fallout'". Gateworld. 28 January 2004. Archived from the original on 16 February 2004.
  23. "Canada's SPACE will air new SG-1". Gateworld. 17 August 2004. Archived from the original on 13 October 2004. Retrieved 10 February 2021.
  24. "Listings for Thursday, December 02, 2004". Spacecast. Archived from the original on 10 December 2004.
  25. "Ratings: 'Grace' in syndication". Gateworld. 9 February 2005. Archived from the original on 9 April 2005.
  26. Dearsley, Jayne (March 2004). "The Spoiler Zone". SFX. No. 115. Future plc. p. 115. What sounded suspiciously like a discarded Voyager script actually ends up delivering some genuine, creepy chills, a good dollop of emotion and some lovely effects (although with Stargate you're pretty much guaranteed that with every episode). Carter's baffled antics aboard the deserted Prometheus are handled with finesse, from the sweeping camera movements that highlight the empty space around her to the effective use of silence. Tapping gives a pitch-perfect performance as Carter tackles not only the mysterious disappearance of her colleagues and the prospect of death, but a debilitating head injury to boot. This probably explains why she handles her hallucinations so well - the rest of us would have run away screaming, stuck on an empty echoey space ship filled with people you know aren't really there... Carter's visions could've been explained away as some sort of technobabble-heavy anomaly, but, happily, they're not supernatural at all; just side effects of the bang on her bonce. It's refreshing that they're all internal thoughts, not ghosts or projections. It's also nice that each vision tells her something different - Jacob thinks she needs to find true happiness (with a fella, that is); Teal'c thinks she must be being held captive by aliens; Daniel reckons the gas cloud is alive and O'Neill... well more of him in a minute. Meanwhile, the little girl, Grace, seems to symbolise Carter's intuition, as her delight in blowing bubbles eventually gives Carter a way to escape her predicament inside some sort of protective bubble. Way to go, Sam's unconscious! Back to O'Neill, them; he tells Carter that she shouldn't waste her time being in love with him and that she should get on with her life. It's a lovely scene, well-played by both actors, as is Jacob's touching speech about his daughter being very lonely under her hard out shell. There's even a touch of humour as Jack and Sam snog - just for a second though. Aww... (sniff).
  27. Vincent-Rudzki, Jan (February 2004). "The TV Zone Reviews: Stargate SG-1 - G13 - Grace". TV Zone. No. 171. Visual Imagination. p. 66. ISSN 0957-3844. With the episode underway we seem to be on familiar territory, except that it's Star Trek, not Stargate! OK, the former series doesn't have a monopoly on alien spaceships and gas clouds, but as the story unfolds it seems - note that word - to become more and more like a Starfleet tale; done well, naturally. You can almost feel yourself getting just a little bit smug and complaisant that you've seen all this before in countless Trek episodes from the original series onwards, but quite rightly there's that nagging feeling that all is not what it seems. The question is in what way, and I am happy to say the answer is satisfying. Carter sees her fellow team members and a young girl appearing here and there, now and then, warning her to stay awake and that they are illusions created by her subconscious. But wait, Carter calls O'Neill by his first name! Another hint? Now if this was Babylon 5 I'd expect the mysterious spaceship to appear later in the series. Maybe it will, but that wondering is part of the series' fun. Not a great episode, but well executed. 7.
  28. Snow, Ali (2004). "GRACE Review". Gateworld.
  29. Hoare, James (25 May 2021). "How 'Death Knell' Made Sam Carter Real". The Companion.
  30. Rea, Darren (3 May 2004). "Stargate SG-1 Volume 35". sci-fi-online.com.
  31. "2004 Winners". LEO Awards. 2004. Archived from the original on 2 May 2009.
  32. Edwards, Ian (2004-06-07). "Short film The Big Charade tops Leos". Playback. Retrieved 2010-09-10.
  33. "LEO AWARDS 2004 Nominees - Dramatic Series". LEO Awards. 2004. Archived from the original on 8 December 2004.
  34. "LEO AWARDS 2004 Winners". LEO Awards. 2004. Archived from the original on 4 December 2004.
  35. Spragg, Paul (May 2004). "May". In the Ships. TV Zone. No. 175. Visual Imagination. p. 10. ISSN 0960-8230.
  36. "Season Seven gates to DVD!". Gateworld. 19 October 2004. Archived from the original on 4 February 2005. Retrieved 27 January 2021.
  37. Lacey, Gord (3 November 2004). "Stargate SG-1 - Season 7 Box Set Review". TV Shows on DVD. Archived from the original on 6 May 2006.
  38. "Stargate expands iTunes, Amazon presence". Gateworld. 11 January 2008. Archived from the original on 15 January 2008. Retrieved 8 December 2020.
  39. "Entire Stargate television library now streaming on Netflix". Gateworld. 16 August 2010. Retrieved 8 December 2020.
  40. "Stargate's HD Blu-ray Picture: Better Than The DVDs?". GateWorld. 1 March 2021. Retrieved 18 June 2021.
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