Watch out for SPOILERS from Stargate Universe in this story!

Today Stargate Universe marks its fifteenth anniversary, premiering on Syfy Channel in the United States on October 2, 2009. It’s hard to believe this remarkable show has been with us so long — and it still hurts that the show was cut short in the middle of its story.

From the first frame, Stargate Universe was designed to be a different kind of Stargate television series. After 15 seasons of tongue-in-cheek action-adventure, the writing team was eager to try a different form of storytelling and stretch some different creative muscles. SGU was more serialized, with complicated characters who weren’t always worth emulating, who began the show at one another’s throats as they hurtled through deep space on a derelict Ancient ship.

But there was a big turn in the story in Season Two: Dr. Rush (Robert Carlyle) gained control of the ship, revealed the reason that the Ancients launched the ship so many eons ago, and finally buried the hatchet with Colonel Young (Louis Ferreira). The crew set aside their differences and now chose to be there, to try and fulfill Destiny‘s mission as they fight for survival.

The show was evolving, ready to enter its third season with renewed purpose and characters who were starting to treat each other like a found family. But the network ended the mission prematurely, leaving that planned 5-year story unfinished.

To mark 15 years of SGU, let’s look back at the big-picture story that the show was building, that bittersweet finale, and — here’s where things get really fun! — the plans that the writers had for how they might resolve the cliffhanger in Season Three.

AN ANCIENT MYSTERY

Where does the Stargate’s ninth chevron lead? The singular 9-chevron address dials a very, very old Stargate on board Destiny, an unmanned vessel launched by the Ancients eons ago. Destiny was part of an ambitious research program, traveling along a preprogrammed course for millennia, gathering data as it jumped through F.T.L. from one galaxy to the next.

The Milky Way and Pegasus were left far behind, as the ship moved deeper and deeper into the vastness of the universe — places even the Ancients themselves had never reached. Their plan, evidently, was to use the Stargate to send a crew to man the ship for the final leg of its journey … but the Ancients never arrived. (This was probably because they discovered the secrets of ascension to a higher plane of existence, and gained an understanding of the mystery that the Destiny project was meant to solve.)

What was the mystery? Dr. Nicholas Rush gave the accidental crew of humans an answer in the second season episode “The Greater Good.” Long ago the Ancients discovered what appears to be a pattern in the cosmic microwave background radiation that permeates the fabric of the universe, which scientists believe is left over from the Big Bang. Destiny was sent to somehow investigate this mystery — a sign of intelligence from the beginning of the universe itself.

When the finale episode aired in 2011, the crew had joined together to accomplish Destiny‘s mission and learn the secrets of the origins of the universe. First, though, they had to survive an absolutely relentless onslaught of automated drone weapons, left behind by a war between long extinct species. Because the drones were able to track the ship through F.T.L., they could follow Destiny and attack as soon as the ship dropped back to normal space.

Eli Wallace (David Blue) hit upon a bold solution: Destiny would jump ahead into the void between galaxies … hoping to leave the drones behind for good (“Gauntlet”). But the trip across the vast emptiness will take three years, with no stars or waypoints for the ship to refuel. Destiny didn’t have enough power to sustain the life support systems and make it across the void. And so, one by one, each person entered stasis units to sleep through the trip.

All except one, that is. There weren’t enough pods for everyone, and Eli volunteered to stay awake and try to repair the last pod. Destiny powered down, running in low-power mode as it entered F.T.L. — with only Eli left awake. If he can fix his pod in time he will join his friends in a three-year sleep. If he can’t, he will turn off the ship’s life support so that everyone else can make it to the other side.

RESCUING DESTINY

Stargate Universe was cancelled, as Syfy Channel — now under new management — changed directions for its programming strategy. But the show’s writers were not finished with their story, and in the course of wrapping up the 2010 production year they had begun strategizing how to resolve this cliffhanger when they reconvened for Season Three.

Writer and executive producer Joseph Mallozzi later revealed these conversations to fans (first on his blog, then in later years revisited on Reddit and Twitter). The writers had not gotten far enough to decide on the winning idea for how the crew would be rescued, let alone break the five acts of the season premiere. But the ideas they were considering are an amazing look into the season that might have been.

Mallozzi says that there were six scenarios in play for how to rescue the crew from the void — or even perhaps pick up with them years later, after they reached the other side. Three of these focus on Eli, and three on a rescue from some outside force. Let’s break them down one by one:

IDEA #1: DEEP SLEEP

Eli fixes a pod. The simplest and most obvious solution is that Eli’s plan works: he manages to repair the last pod before time expires and puts himself into stasis. He awakens with the rest of the crew … though Mallozzi suggests this might have been much, much more than three years. He would have considered a time jump anywhere from three to 1,000 years, potentially resetting the show (and Destiny‘s connection with Earth, via the communication stones) in a more radical way.

IDEA #2: ISOLATION

Eli survives by finding more power. Mallozzi suggested that the ship’s lone remaining shuttle could have provided a satisfying solution. Eli is unable to fix the stasis pod but he manages to survive awake for three years, not simply by routing power from the shuttle’s systems into Destiny but just the opposite. “Given its independent system,” Mallozzi says, “Eli could reroute all of Destiny’s power reserves to maintaining life support within the closed confines of the shuttle and, perhaps, the sealed-off antechamber to the ship where he could store enough food to last him three years.”

IDEA #3: GOING DIGITAL

Eli uploads his conscious mind to Destiny‘s computer. Unable to fix the stasis pod or find more power, instead of dying Eli joins Ginn and Amanda Perry inside the ship’s computer. This would give him full access to controlling the ship’s systems … but of course Eli giving up his physical form would be a major change for the show. The writers hesitated to keep that situation going for a full season (or more), and reserved this option for a potential Stargate movie.

IDEA #4: EARTH RESCUE

Earth sends a team through the Stargate. During the three (or more) years that Destiny is crossing the void, Earth works the problem — eventually engineering a way to dial Destiny and send a rescue team, probably with a Z.P.M. or other power source in tow. This would no doubt be achieved through the combined brilliance of Samantha Carter and Rodney McKay. And, since we know that the naquadria-rich planet Langara can dial the 9-chevron address (“Seizure”), maybe Season Three would have been a good opportunity to bring back former SG-1 team member Jonas Quinn (Corin Nemec).

It would probably be Colonel Telford (Lou Diamond Phillips) leading the rescue op. And maybe he knows it’s a one-way trip for him and his airmen. “As for what other familiar faces from SG-1 and Atlantis would make an appearance — well, aside from the obvious (Daniel Jackson, who certainly wouldn’t miss this opportunity), it was up in the air.”

IDEA #5: NOVAN RESCUE

The crew is rescued from the void by their own descendants. In Season Two Destiny encountered a colony of Novans, humans descended from a duplicate version of the crew who were sent back in time 2,000 years (“Common Descent”). We knew they had evolved far enough to develop interstellar ships. With a few more centuries to advance, they bring a fleet of ships into the void to find and rescue Destiny — adrift and without power. “They save us but their motives turn out to be less than honorable as, it turns out, they have designs on Destiny,” Mallozzi reveals. “This was probably my favorite scenario as I loved the idea of a plausible human military force becoming our third season Big Bad.”

IDEA #6: BACK IN BLUE

Rescue comes from an alien race. Maybe it’s survivors of the Ursini. Or maybe the blue aliens have used the information they mined from Chloe (“Deliverance”), and arrive to finally board Destiny and seize the ship. “There was also talk of salvation coming in the form of a completely new alien species (Brad’s uber-cool idea),” Mallozzi says, “possibly an energy-based race we unwittingly picked up during a refueling stop at a star. Eli starts glimpsing these entities and assumes, after three years by his lonesome, he is going nuts and hallucinating. Eventually the aliens reach out to him and, being energy based, are able to provide the power needed to ensure Destiny complete its journey.”

Those last two ideas are definitely our favorite, and would have set up a third season to take the crew in a fascinating direction. One could have added new characters from the advanced Novans, and the other might have forged a tenuous alliance with the blue aliens — initially regarded as one of the most grave threats to Destiny.

SEASON THREE

As these six scenarios suggest, the writers were toying with the idea of a longer time jump when the series abruptly ended. Although a three-year jump was the most likely, Mallozzi says he was in favor of shaking up the Earth side of the show with a longer gap.

“A ten year journey would have been more interesting in that it would offer up some great story possibilities as our crew inevitably try to reconnect with loved ones following a decades-long absence,” he says. “Are they still alive? How have they moved on? What has changed in their lives?

“There was even talk of returning to an Earth in the midst of a multi-year war with the Lucian Alliance” — the hostile force that invaded Destiny at the end of Season One. “For my part, I preferred the idea that our characters don’t know how long they’ve been in stasis and, when they contact Earth, are horrified to discover it’s been 100+ years. Their loved ones are long-gone, the lives they led distant memories, and they must adjust to a world very different from the one they left behind.”

That would have made for a very different show moving forward. Destiny is still able to make contact with Earth, but the names and faces have all changed. The characters (and guest stars) the audience knows and loves are all gone, Earth has advanced, and Destiny‘s mission is cast in a whole new light.

The third season would have also revisited the loose thread of T.J.’s health, as the show left her with a terminal diagnosis of ALS (Lou Gehrig’s disease). “We probably would have found a cure for T.J.’s condition – but only eventually,” Mallozzi says. “I liked the idea of one of our main characters having to face her mortality,” and if Mallozzi got his way T.J.’s battle would have played out over the course of at least a season before she was cured. (A similar scenario may have been in the cards for Lisa Park’s blindness.)

Ginn and Perry would have definitely returned, as last we saw them they had not been deleted but only quarantined from the ship’s main computer (“Hope”). “Eli would have no doubt found a way to address any potential threat and re-upload them to Destiny. That was one possibility.” But another, more “diabolical” idea (apparently floated by series co-creator Brad Wright) was to have Eli find Chloe’s pod damaged and Chloe near death, and download Ginn’s mind into her body in a desperate effort to save his friend.

While Stargate Universe is over (for now), in the years since it aired fans have been quick to point out the story possibilities offered by leaving the crew in stasis. The writers too were aware of how easy it would be to revive the story, even all these years later: “From a creative standpoint, it wouldn’t be difficult to continue the series,” Mallozzi says. “SGU offered an ending that permits us to pick up the story at any point in time (who knows how long the journey took?) and explain away any aging on the part of our characters or the failure of some to emerge from stasis with a convenient in-story explanation.”

The ending of the series was bittersweet indeed. And while we always hold on to hope for a future revival, the part of Destiny‘s story that we did get is a sci-fi masterpiece. And fans will continue to treasure it — even if the crew does sleep for a thousand years.

Which of these ideas for SGU Season Three is your favorite? How would you have liked to see Destiny‘s story continue? Post it in the comments below!