Refusing to take no for an answer, fans of the cancelled B.C.-shot television series Stargate Atlantis will pick up placards today to protest the show’s demise.
The rally, to be staged at Burnaby’s Bridge Studios — where the series is finishing its fifth season — is expected to draw at least two dozen protesters, including one fan from Los Angeles and another from Seattle.
“We hope to have a lot of people with signs and a lot of people chanting,” said rally organizer Gwen Groden, a stay-at-home Richmond mother who has religiously watched all four seasons of Stargate Atlantis and all 10 seasons of its predecessor, Stargate SG-1.
The Vancouver rally is the first of its kind, though Groden has heard there will be other protests in Los Angeles and New York, and possibly overseas. An online petition to save the show has gathered 15,000 signatures.
“The fan base is huge,” Groden said. “When I’m on the message board, there are many more messages from the U.K., Germany, Australia and New Zealand than there are from the States and Canada.”
Last month, the U.S.-based Sci Fi Channel cancelled Stargate Atlantis, and studio MGM announced the series would be replaced by a new series, Stargate Universe, also for Sci Fi Channel. Atlantis co-creators and executive producers Brad Wright and Robert Cooper would again write and executive produce the new series, which would begin shooting in early 2009, premiere as a two-hour TV movie and begin airing as a series next summer.
MGM has not announced where the series will be shot, nor who will star in it, although Wright and Cooper were quoted as saying the characters would be “mostly young and desperate explorers.”
Groden and other Atlantis fans are skeptical.
“People are referring to it as Universe 90210,” said Groden, who regularly attends Stargate Atlantis conventions.
Dozens of protesting fans have mailed lemons to the offices of Sci Fi Channel and MGM in honour of Atlantis character Rodney McKay, who is deathly allergic to citrus.
MGM and Sci Fi Channel also announced the production of a two-hour TV movie based on Stargate Atlantis.
News article courtesy of Vancouver Sun
“Petition” where can i sign it
I hope it went well – wish I could have gone. Good luck.