20th Century Fox Home Entertainment

We have to keep in mind that "Stargate: Continuum" wasn't some big-budget franchise tentpole, as the film had a production budget of $7 million (a standard 40-minute "Stargate" episode roughly cost $2 million at the time). There was also the question of the returning cast, where some were unavailable for certain scenes due to scheduling conflicts. For instance, Michael Shanks, who played Daniel Jackson in "SG-1," couldn't shoot the Arctic scenes due to unavailability, so his momentary absence was worked around by having the character develop frostbite and having his leg amputated. If you're worried about Jackson, fret not: "Stargate: Continuum" takes place in an alternate timeline with a plot armor that's the equivalent of a "reset button," which keeps the integrity of the original timeline intact. Yep, don't question it.

Anyway, due to the intervention of the Big Bad, Ba'al (Cliff Simon), an alternate timeline where the Stargate Program never existed is formed, prompting the SG-1 crew to time travel to this particular timeline to prevent catastrophe. This doesn't happen immediately, of course, as the SG-1 from the canonical timeline are initially prohibited from interacting with this new reality, but things change when the Antarctic Stargate is excavated in the alternate timeline. This leads to an Arctic mission to the Ancient outpost of Proclarush Taonas, where the goal is to retrieve a Zero Point Module (a power source created by the Ancients) to help power the inactive Stargate that has been freshly excavated.

The Arctic sequences were filmed at the U.S. Navy's Applied Physics Laboratory Ice Station, which is situated 230 miles from Prudhoe Bay, Alaska. This turned out to be the "Most Northerly Film Shoot" to date, securing a spot in the Guinness Book of World Records for being the only movie (to date) to shoot so far north on location. Amanda Tapping, who played Samantha Carter in "SG-1," told GateWorld the following about her experience of filming in the Arctic:

"This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. You're going to live on a moving ice flow, in a camp in the middle of the Arctic Ocean. You're going to see a nuclear submarine crash through the ice, and you're going to get to go on the nuclear submarine, and the whole time you're filming a movie. Ben [Browder] and I were walking along, doing that huge helicopter shot and we were like, 'Oh my god!' Nobody has ever walked here before — this is frozen ocean and nobody will ever walk here again."

This sounds pretty cool, and it is! These Arctic sequences are reason enough to check out "Stargate: Continuum" and everything else it has to offer as a solid conclusion to "SG-1."