It’s kind of hard to find a good illustration image of the bug-version Replicators. They are constantly moving computer animations and much, much smaller than the actors. So they’re rarely in the same frame at the same time as one of our heroes. The Replicators were apparently one of the hits of the early 2000s on the sci-fi con circuit, and lots of dealers at shows would have little replica Replicator blocks at their tables. If only 3-D printing had been developed twenty years earlier, dealers could have been selling full-sized bugs. I imagine the market kind of moved on by 2015 or so, when printers became a bit more common and affordable.
We were very proud of our son showing off a little deduction. While Carter is in space helping the Asgard come up with an unlikely tactic to fight against the Replicators, the others are in a Russian sub. The surviving bug from the last episode killed the crew of the submarine and has been eating and replicating. Daniel notes they’re a different color. A supporting character asks whether it’s a kind of camouflage. We asked whether our son knew why, and he reasoned it’s because they’re made of a different metal, which turns out to be an important plot point. Good for him!
I also asked whether he could tell any differences between the interior of the real submarine used here and the submarine set used on a few episodes of The Champions. SG-1 used a decommissioned and privately-owned Foxtrot-class sub, B-39. The sub is only 25 feet wide, with barely enough room in the narrow interior hallways for the actors, never mind a film crew. ITC’s version, first used in “Twelve Hours,” is a good-looking set, and I suppose nuclear-class subs must be a bit bigger than Foxtrots, but this really drove home just how incredibly small the real thing is.
And with that, we’ll take a break from Stargate SG-1 for a few weeks. We like to rotate things around to keep them fresh, but we’ll resume season four in September. Stay tuned!
Fire Breathing Dimetrodon Time 