Why was Paul McGillion written out of Atlantis?

[Davey]

I don't understand the motivation to write him out of the show. He was an integral and at least one could say a more productive part of the show than good old Ronon Dex, who basically just stands around. What exactly happened, and how did Paul McGillion feel about it?

[hedwig]

One of the reasons that was tossed around was that the writers and producers of the show really liked Jewel Staite and wanted her in the show, and booted Paul out so Jewel could take his place.

[Falcon Horus]

I thought it was to "shake things up" and then diminished that shake by bringing him back.

[Platschu]

We will never know the whole truth what happened behind the closed doors. Maybe he wanted a carrier in Hollywood or to do a different bigger project what needed more free time, or some family related issues, maybe he had an arguement with the staff, or he demanded more salary from the producers, or they just simply swinged the death lottery about the main cast and he lost it. It doesn't matter now as 10+ years have passed.

[DigiFluid]

I could be misremembering, but I thought it was down to money. Heading into season 4, at the direction of Seefee, they were exercising their contract rights with Amanda Tapping to bring her onto the Atlantis cast. Meaning, at the time of Amanda's Atlantis debut, she was an 'employee' in her 11th year of seniority and salary. So Torri Higginson and Paul McGillion were dumped to make room in the budget.

[Platschu]

It is sad, but probably you are right about it....

[Davey]

Then how did they manage to bring back Carson Beckett as a clone (which I haven't watched yet)???
With all due respect to Jason Mamoa, why was Paul sacrificed with Torrie for Amanda's benefit while Ronon Dex just continued hanging around with no specific role except occasionally fighting???

[DigiFluid]

Then how did they manage to bring back Carson Beckett as a clone (which I haven't watched yet)???

It was near the end of Season 4--Amanda was leaving, so suddenly the hole in the show's budget that the network forced on them was gone.

With all due respect to Jason Mamoa, why was Paul sacrificed with Torrie for Amanda's benefit while Ronon Dex just continued hanging around with no specific role except occasionally fighting???

Personally, I agree with you. I don't think he brought a great deal to the show. But people liked him, and he was eye candy for the ladies, so he stayed.

[P-90_177]

Yeah what Digi said. There was a particular sex appeal about him. I mean I'm not Gay... but with Jason Momoa I'd have to take a moment to think.

[Falcon Horus]

Teyla was the drool-object for the straight males and gay females, and bi-all, and Ronon was the drool-object for the straight females, the gay males and bi-all (and apparently some straight males).

A popular misconception in TV-world is that some characters are only interesting if they are sexy enough. Content doesn't matter. All they have to do is stand around and look hot.

[/end sarcasm]

[Davey]

I think this is all rather sad. In the first instance to ruin the quality of a show with vain hopes of letting it dance along simply because of a budget consideration in relation to a single actor (Amanda). It's as if the powers that be didn't really care about the success of SGA per se, they just wanted to hobble along with their commitments all set up, both contractual and budgetary. Why did they make this arrangement with Amanda in the first place?? I must say that Teyla contributed a lot more substance to the show that Ronon. I would have thought they would have dumped Ronon instead of Torrie and Paul. Would anyone in the audience have cared?? After all, the show worked fine before he arrived. So then they turn around on a budgetary dime and bring back McGillion. It's all rather pathetic and destroys the creativity of the creators of Stargate. But I guess it tells us something about the real world outside of the BBC, CBC, and PBS.
And yes, I do understand the perceived need for sex appeal to keep people watching the show, even if they don't really care about the show stories, but simply want to watch a particular actor like Mamoa or anyone else. I guess Amanda, Flanagan and others weren't good enough.

[P-90_177]

I think this is all rather sad. In the first instance to ruin the quality of a show with vain hopes of letting it dance along simply because of a budget consideration in relation to a single actor (Amanda). It's as if the powers that be didn't really care about the success of SGA per se, they just wanted to hobble along with their commitments all set up, both contractual and budgetary. Why did they make this arrangement with Amanda in the first place?? I must say that Teyla contributed a lot more substance to the show that Ronon. I would have thought they would have dumped Ronon instead of Torrie and Paul. Would anyone in the audience have cared?? After all, the show worked fine before he arrived. So then they turn around on a budgetary dime and bring back McGillion. It's all rather pathetic and destroys the creativity of the creators of Stargate. But I guess it tells us something about the real world outside of the BBC, CBC, and PBS.
And yes, I do understand the perceived need for sex appeal to keep people watching the show, even if they don't really care about the show stories, but simply want to watch a particular actor like Mamoa or anyone else. I guess Amanda, Flanagan and others weren't good enough.

They don't make these decisions in a vacuum. Ronon was extremely popular at the time. You just have to have a look over all of the Ronon threads on Gateworld to see that. Being a fairly episodic series when they look at what characters to cut or add one of the questions that's asked is who they feel has the greatest potential to appeal to an audience and honestly I believe that any character has the potential for great story telling. Unfortunately for Atlantis the actual writing for the show (imo) dipped substantially in season 3. It fell into a rut I think because the writers couldn't figure out a way to progress the story. With the Goa'uld it was easy because you could keep introducing these larger than life, charismatic villains that had a life all their own. But from the start the Wraith (and also the Ori in SG-1) were introduced as this big, unified unstoppable force, or if not unified than certainly very much of similar mindset and objective. There's only so much you can do with that until it either becomes dry or until it gets ridiculous as to how our heroes are about to beat the odds. When as a writer you reach that point you begin to rely on what you know for a fact works. And simply the evidence they had for that was what they'd done before which people seemed to like. At the time that was probably episodes that were Shepherd, McKay and Ronon heavy with less of a focus on the other characters. That's not taking into account any behind the scenes issues that all the actors had and by as far as we can tell, we have a huge amount of information on how much fun and laughs the SG-1 cast and crew had, but a much more hush-hush business like attitude over Atlantis.

[DigiFluid]

It's as if the powers that be didn't really care about the success of SGA per se, they just wanted to hobble along with their commitments all set up, both contractual and budgetary. Why did they make this arrangement with Amanda in the first place??

The Stargate PTB--Brad Wright, Rob Cooper, Paul Mullie, Joe Mallozzi--didn't make the arrangement. Sci Fi Channel had a contract with Amanda for another year, which everyone expected would be SG-1 Season 11. When that didn't happen, Sci Fi elected to exercise their contract rights to require her to work another year--on another of the shows they owned, Atlantis. And when the network gives you, the showrunners, an order, you don't get to say no.

As much as we like to think of our favourite shows as creative, story-driven ventures...they're not. At all. Every movie and TV show is a cutthroat business arrangement, and that's the context we need to view these situations in.

Think of it as a business workplace. You're Joe Mallozzi, manager of the SGA Department of Sci Fi Channel Inc, and the Director of your division calls you in for a meeting. He sits you down and tells you you're doing great work, but he has an employee he's transferring from a different department that you now need to work with and accommodate within your budget. This isn't personal, it isn't a debate, and you don't get a say in the decision. The boss gave you your orders, you just have to make it work.

[Falcon Horus]

And when the network gives you, the showrunners, an order, you don't get to say no.

Unfortunately, a reality for a lot of things...

[Davey]

If removing Paul and Terri involved the contract of Amanda Tapping why doesn't she appear in every single episode in Season 4? It seems she's in every other episode or every third one, and considering she's running Atlantis, it seems strange.

[planet_tv]

If removing Paul and Terri involved the contract of Amanda Tapping why doesn't she appear in every single episode in Season 4? It seems she's in every other episode or every third one, and considering she's running Atlantis, it seems strange.

That may have been the time she was working on the Sanctuary webisodes which would explain why she wasn't in every Season 4 episode.

[Mnikolic]

The same thing happened when her show switched to TV: They offered AT a deal and they wrote her character out of show by having Carter return to Earth to join her SG-1 friends for the Ba'al extraction ceremony. Which puts Stargate:Continuum right after that episode "Search and Rescue".

[Davey]

Either way it isn't fair to Paul and Torri. If it was a matter of the contract for a full season, it's ridiculous to turn around and say, "OK, if you don't want to be in every episode for some reason, no problem."

[Xaeden]

She's in 14 episodes in season 4. I can tell you that from memory because, at the time, showrunner Joseph Mallozzi linked that to his explanation that he wrote out Weir and replaced her with Carter. He never explained why he couldn't simply scale back Torri Higgenson's role, but they continued to give Tapping's replacement, Robert Picardo, only 14 episodes in season 5. The rational was that the reduced time allowed them to make more of the show about the team.

[Chaka-Z0]

SGA's failure (mistakes):

1- Ronon did not get sufficient writing, dialogues and backstory. We know what Momoa is capable of (Frontier) maybe TPTB didn't know him well at the time.

2- Carter came back: Sorry I love her very much but AT didn't belong in SGA. Her acting was off and the script as well, I think that's because the writers were conflicted with having 2 genius (McKay) in Atlantis, they ''dumbed her down'' to prevent rendering McKay useless.

3- Tori & Paul got written out: Weir was great in her role as leader of the SGA expedition, Paul, well I didn't know before reading comments he was that popular, I thought he was a tad annoying so didn't really mind Jewel instead. Also clumsy of TPTB to bring both back a couple times later on.