Producers of Fox’s SF series ‘Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles’ surprised audiences at last month’s Comic-Con International with the announcement that a major character will die in the upcoming second season.

For the Stargate franchise to enter a new era and attract a new audience, SCI FI network president Dave Howe believes that ‘Universe’ should update its storytelling for a new generation. “The ambition with Universe is to skew it younger than the previous two chapters and fill it with a fresh-faced cast,” he said this week, adding that the producers needed to provide “storytelling that is more for the late 2000s than it is for the 1990s.”

This week was a week of number twos on a variety of fronts. In the US, Joe Biden became Barack Obama’s new sidekick, while in Australia, the minor parties in the Senate geared up to take on their new roles as second fiddles. Meanwhile, in the entertainment world, ‘Stargate Atlantis’ was cancelled and replaced by ‘Stargate Universe’.

Assuming that the SCI FI Channel eventually picks up ‘Stargate Universe’ as a television series, executive producer Brad Wright told GateWorld that the Stargate franchise will be stronger than ever with four “brand” legs to stand on: ‘Stargate SG-1′ and ‘Atlantis’ in the movie format, Universe on television, and the upcoming video game ‘Stargate Worlds’ reaching into yet another medium.

The SCI FI Channel is calling it quits with ‘Stargate Atlantis’ — or at least in its current format — the network confirmed today. The ‘Stargate SG-1′ spin-off series, which began in 2004, will conclude in January with the current, fifth season, finale. It will be closely followed by a 2-hour Atlantis movie, to be aired on SCI FI and released on DVD by MGM.

The ‘Stargate SG-1′ and ‘Stargate Atlantis’ director is up for recognition for his work on the Atlantis Season Four episode “Trio.” Wood also directed the recent direct-to-DVD release of ‘Stargate: Continuum’, which featured unprecedented Arctic footage, as well as the raising of a Los Angeles-class submarine.

Producer George Lucas said at a news conference: “At the end of Episode II, [Anakin's] kind of a wild child, and he and Obi-Wan don’t get along. So the idea was to see how they become friends, how they become partners, how they become a team.”