Elizabeth Weir

"This is Dr . Weir Elizabeth"

- Major/Colonel John Sheperd

Elizabeth Weir was an American diplomat, the first civilian commander of Stargate Command and the original commander of the Atlantis expedition in the Pegasus Galaxy.

Biography
Before becoming involved with the Stargate program, Weir was a skilled civilian diplomat who worked behind the scenes in the U.S. government for several years. An expert in international politics, Weir was well-known for mediating for the United Nations. She brokered a dozen of the most sensitive international accords in modern history. She has two Ph.D.s, taught political science at Georgetown University, served in embassies all over the world and speaks five languages, including Russian and Latin. Though she began her career as a political activist lobbying against government spending on the military, she later decided to change things from the inside and entered the realm of government. She concluded that the best way to stop weapons proliferation was to try and end the need for them. Daniel Jackson referenced her work while drafting the Earth-Tok'ra Alliance.

SGC Commanders
She was handpicked by President Henry Hayes to replace George S. Hammond at the SGC, as part of his restructuring of the program. Hayes indicated that her diplomatic background, and ideological problems with the military, would make her both an effective leader of the SGC and a suitable public face for the program if and when it was made public. Vice President Robert Kinsey also attempted to manipulate Weir as part of his own agenda, and the circumstances of her arrival led some members of SG-1 initially to distrust her. In the ensuing confrontation with Anubis, however, she rebuffed Kinsey and made a good impression on the staff at the SGC, and seems to have struck a very quick friendship with Dr. Jackson.

For most of her tenure, travel through the Stargate was discontinued as part of Hayes' reorganization, though Major Samantha Carter did convince Weir to authorize a mission to the Ida galaxy using a recovered Goa'uld cargo ship, so that Carter and Teal'c could seek help from the Asgard in saving the life of Colonel Jack O'Neill. Shortly afterward, the System Lords contacted the SGC for help in defeating Ba'al; Weir and Jackson entered into negotiations with them. In order to prevent the System Lords from suspecting Earth's vulnerability, she attempted to stall the talks, to the point of demanding Ba'al's territory in exchange for helping defeat him. The attempt failed, but she did grant political asylum to Camulus, whose domain had already been destroyed.

Atlantis Expedition
Weir soon departed the SGC to focus on negotiations over the Ancient weapons platform in Antarctica, eventually organizing an expedition team to explore the lost city of Atlantis. It was at her insistence that then-Major John Sheppard was included, due to his particular affinity for using Ancient technology.

When Weir departed for Atlantis, she left behind her fiancé, Simon Wallis. She was forced to end the relationship for good when she found that she was stranded indefinitely in the Pegasus Galaxy. She later discovered that he had indeed "moved on" when she returned to Earth several months later.

At first, Weir retained the strong backing of the International Oversight Advisory that oversaw the Atlantis expedition, to the point where she bluntly overruled the U.S. Air Force's attempt to replace Sheppard as the expedition's military commander, forcing them to promote him instead. However, once regular communication with Atlantis became possible, the Air Force and IOA began to demand an increasingly larger role in the city's management and operation, especially after a failed alliance with one Wraith faction allowed a pair of hive ships to learn the location of Earth. Though Weir managed to coordinated an attack that stopped the ships just outside the Pegasus galaxy, she was recalled by the IOA to answer in person for the situation. Interestingly, she seemed to develop a stronger relationship with the SGC's military commander, General Hank Landry, partly as a result. By the end of her third year on Atlantis, the military began to increasingly marginalize Weir, to the point where she considered resigning. Despite this concern, General O'Neill, the real final say on both the expedition and the SGC, continued to support her.

Despite this, she seemed to become increasingly personally invested in the expedition, at one point telling Daniel Jackson that she hoped to spend the rest of her life exploring the city. After a group of Ancients took up residence in the city again and asked the expedition to leave, she had difficulty moving on after her experiences, ultimately attempting to write a memoir of her experiences &mdash; mostly for herself, she admitted, as few would likely be able to read it. When she heard about this attack she joined the team that went to stop it herself in order to save the city she called home and like the rest of the team, played in major role in the destruction of the Asurans inhabiting it.

In the Expedition's third year, they encountered the Asurans, a form of replicators created by the Ancients to better combat the Wraith, but who possessed a violent hatred of humans. Weir was infected with nanites, which for a time imprisoned her within her own mind, causing her to believe that her time on Atlantis was only a false memory. Though she eventually overcame the experience and the nanites were shut down, they remained within her system.

Kidnapping by the Asurans
When the Asurans launched an attack that forced the Expedition to move Atlantis, Weir was seriously injured and suffered brain damage as a result. Rodney McKay used the deactivated nanites in her system to repair the damage. This had the side effect of allowing her to interface directly with the replicator collective; as a result, she accompanied Sheppard's team on a mission to gather a Zero Point Module from Asuras, but the team discovered a code that would cause the Asurans to attack the Wraith. Weir managed to delay the Asurans, but Oberoth, their leader, physically grabbed her. Weir ordered Sheppard to take the team out, and she was left behind. According to a Replicator version of Jennifer Keller, Weir was subsequently killed because Oberoth deemed her too great a threat.

It was revealed that she was not in fact killed but somehow became a member or leader of a group of Replicators that left the main group. Weir believes that with the Asurans dead, they can implement their plan without having to look over their shoulders anymore.

It was revealed that her group was in fact what was left of Niam's group that was seeking ascension. There were only nine left including Elizabeth. She and her group digitally ascended, but became trapped. In a desperate attempt to regain physcial form she hitched a ride along with Sheppard and his team on a Jumper. She took control over the Atlantis computer systems and eventually used the city's technology to build herself a new body, albeit one that looks like FRAN. She explained that she was never killed but was turned into a full Replicator when she was captured. Her human self remained despite being a Replicator and it was only detected by the members of Niam's group. That group ended up on the run until the other Replicators were destroyed in the Battle of Asuras. She summoned the others in the hopes of them being able to build themselves new bodies with the same technology that gave her one and ultimately proposed that the Replicators build themselves human bodies to live in. When Koracen goes rogue and tried to escape, she saved Sheppard from him and killed Koracen. She believed that the Asurans were now too much of a threat and helped the team trick the Replicators through the Stargate to a space gate, leaving all of the remaining Replicators, herself included, trapped and effectively neutralized.



John Sheppard
Although she initially only recruited John Sheppard for his powerful ATA gene, Elizabeth came to greately respect John's abilities as a soldier, particularly after he single-handedly saved Atlantis from a Genii invasion. When Colonel Dillon Everett arrived to take command of Atlantis following Earth's discovery of a new Zero Point Module and the news of the approaching Wraith Hive-ships, it was John who convinced Everett to keep Elizabeth in the loop if he wanted to maintain the support of the rest of the city. Elizabeth reciprocated this respect by insisting John be promoted to Lieutenant Colonel rather than allow someone else to take command of Atlantis. Elizabeth continued to visit John even after he began to mutate into a Wraith-like creature following his confrontation with Ellia and the mutated Iratus bug retrovirus, John reciprocating this compassion by risking his life to try and urge her to keep fighting after she was infected by Asuran nanites during her enounter with Niam. John was clearly deeply affected by Elizabeth's loss when he was forced to leave her behind on the Asuran homeworld, and his grief when he learned that she was dead- having first heard a second-hand account from the Organic Asuran duplicates of his team and subsequently witnessing her return and sacrifice to defeat the remaining Asurans- was particularly pronounced, hinting at the strong bond between them that was never given the chance to develop into something more.

Alternate timeline
''In an alternate timeline Elizabeth Weir's expedition team was killed when the shield around Atlantis collapsed. Weir, along with John Sheppard and Radek Zelenka, managed to board a puddle jumper, but were thrown back in time to the siege of Atlantis by the Wraith. Sheppard and Zelenka were killed when the Puddle Jumper they were in crashed. Weir was healed by Janus, who built the time machine, and later secured her an audience with the Ancient Council, asking them to allow her to travel back to her time with a ZPM that would prevent Atlantis from being flooded. While Melia was sympathetic to her plight, High Counselor Moros refused, fearing for the timeline, and offered her a chance to return to Earth with the Lanteans. Instead, Janus calculated that three ZPMs rotated sequentially would allow the city to survive ten thousand years. Janus programed a stasis pod for Weir to use, as well as included a failsafe-mechanism into the city. Janus told Moros that Weir went through the Stargate, when in fact she stayed behind. Every 3,300 years, Weir would awaken to rotate the ZPMs. Ten thousand years later, Weir was revived by the Atlantis Expedition—ironically, on her own birthday—and told her story to them. However, she was already weak, and died by day's end. Elizabeth Weir poured her ashes over the city in a pot that John Sheppard had gotten her that day.''

Behind the scenes

 * Weir was originally played by Jessica Steen in the Season 7 finale, but was soon replaced by Torri Higginson by Season 8 and Stargate Atlantis.
 * Torri was originally contracted to appear as a regular for six years. However, she was later given a recurring status after only three years.
 * When Weir was declared dead, Torri Higginson had been contracted for four episodes of Season 4. As of This Mortal Coil, she had only appeared in three episodes. This led to speculation that Weir was still alive, a theory given credence by Joseph Mallozzi, who mentioned on his blog that RepliKeller may have been lying . Confirmed deaths turning into survivals are nothing new to the Stargate franchise (the various deaths of Daniel Jackson and Apophis being prime examples). Since Dr Weir appeared on the next episode, it is probable that RepliKeller was working for her all along and lied at her command.