of Dr. Elizabeth Weir, a role that the producers intended to carry over to the upcoming spinoff series, Stargate Atlantis. Cooper commented that he found it challenging writing Weir's character, as she was an antagonist in the story, "dethroning Hammond, and threatening the role of SG-1", but they wanted her to be a character that the audience would ultimately embrace and want to see in the spin-off series. Steen hadn't seen any of SG-1 prior to auditioning and being cast in the show, feeling it would best serve her performance to learn about the mythology of the series as her character did within the story. Anticipating the character becoming one of the leads in the Atlantis spinoff, Steen had a lot of questions for the writers and producers during filming, as she wanted to best understand what direction the character was heading in order to inform her performance. Steen later felt as though she must have "drove the writers, producers bannanas, to a not good degree" with her questions as she was such a "stickler for detail". In Steen's contract, an end date for filming the episode had also been set, as Steen was attending and producing a themed camp at Burning Man festival, with family. Steen was advised by her management to leave out the detail of it being for Burning Man, due to the stigma attached to attending the event. Whilst on set, Steen commented that in her excitment and ease in getting to know the cast and crew, she told people she was going to Burning Man, something she'd done every year since 1998. After completing filming, Steen was under contract from Stargate SG-1 not to take on work whilst casting and development for Atlantis was underway and in fall 2003, Steen was let go without explanation. Sometime later, Steen recalled meeting with SG-1 producer N. John Smith who explained to her how the shows producers were worried about casting someone potentially "committed to naked drugging in the desert" at Burning Man and how that might interfere with a permanent role on Stargate Atlantis. Steen commented that she was hurt and felt misunderstood by the shows producers, whilst recalled that Smith and the shows producers regretted how the situation had been handled. Ultimately the character was recast, with Torri Higginson portraying the character on subsequent appearances in SG-1 and spinoff, Atlantis. The then real world Air Force