Stargate SG-1's Commitment To Authenticity Ended Up Injuring A Famous Guest Star

This post contains spoilers for "Stargate SG-1."

The "Stargate" franchise's commitment to authenticity can be traced back to Roland Emmerich's eponymous sci-fi action flick, which went the extra mile to recreate ancient Egypt. Its explosively popular follow-up, the Syfy series "Stargate SG-1," also relished a commitment to authenticity, as most of the special effects were practically achieved with very little CGI involved. This dedication, while impressive, proved to be a double-edged sword, as it was very easy for things to get overly complicated on a technical level, leading to production nightmares that posed potential safety concerns.

Marina Sirtis, best known for playing Counselor Deanna Troi in "Star Trek: The Next Generation" and its four franchise feature film follow-ups, echoes these sentiments. Sirtis was featured as a guest star in Season 4, Episode 7 of "SG-1" (titled "Watergate"), in which she played Russian envoy Svetlana Markov. At one point in the story, Markov needs to jump off an airplane alongside the SG-1 crew, so these sequences were filmed under the supervision of real Air Force personnel. This commendable commitment to realism didn't sit well with Sirtis, as she explains how she was injured after being made to wear a really heavy parachute:

"At one point, we had to jump out of the aeroplane. And because SG-1 [crew] is Air Force, and it's not set hundreds of years in the future, they actually had real Air Force guys there as advisors [...] And he [Air Force personnel] said, 'That's a real parachute that you're wearing. You know, everything is authentic on this show.' So, we're practicing jumping out of the aeroplane onto a mattress pad [...] And I was dropping like a bag of potatoes on the mattress. So, anyway, we finally got the shot. The next day, I can't move. My back is killing me."

Sirtis isn't necessarily miffed about the experience, as her tone during the anecdote was rather tongue-in-cheek, but she does have a point about "SG-1" overdoing realism for the sake of it. For instance, she says that the parachute remains inside the bag throughout, so there's no actual need for any actor to don "an authentic Russian effing parachute" during the scene. "You could have filled it up with newspaper. It would have been 50 pounds lighter. And I wouldn't have a bad back today," Sirtis joked, while stating that she isn't a fan of rigid authenticity on the small screen.

This isn't the only instance of the "SG-1" production crew going a tad overboard. The show's Season 3 premiere, "Into the Fire," ends with a tower being blown to pieces, but achieving this proved to be more than a hassle. The production crew ended up using way more firepower than intended, and the prop wooden tower was essentially atomized due to the sheer intensity of the explosion. Thankfully, the crew was merely taken aback, and nobody was hurt. There was also the time when "SG-1" lead Richard Dean Anderson accidentally got stabbed on set (!), but it was more an unintended incident than something that can be blamed on a faulty prop.

On the flip side, the show's determination to lovingly craft visual effects that effectively enhanced the quality of its worldbuilding has helped create some classic images. For example, the unstable vortex effect created by the Stargate (generating a kawoosh! sound) in Emmerich's original was incredibly difficult to recreate, but the VFX team achieved it with the help of an air cannon and a water tank. Now, that's the kind of on-set ingenuity that deserves to be appreciated.