Actor Michael Shanks will make the first in a series of guest appearances on the hit FOX series 24 next week, Monday, April 30, according to fan site Michael Shanks Online. Shanks -- SG-1's Dr. Daniel Jackson -- will play a Washington lobbyist named Mark Bishop, a new love interest for Lisa Williams (Kari Matchett), assistant to Vice President Noah Daniels (Powers Boothe).

The actor recently discussed his role in an interview with GateWorld.

"There's a storyline that is going on with the President this year, and an attempted assassination on D.B. Woodside, who plays the President -- President Palmer," he said. "And then taking over for his character is the Vice President. And so there's an on-going storyline that is involved in the White House that I'm part of.

"My character is a lobbyist, Mark Bishop, who is in a sort of covert relationship with one of Vice President Daniels' staff. And that will sort of come to fruition in a lot of different ways. And the character also has an ace up his sleeve, as well. So there is a lot more intrigue that goes on than is immediately apparent."

Shanks will appear in several episodes between now and the end of the season. The opportunity also reunited him with director Brad Turner, who directed several episodes of Stargate SG-1.

"I'm very happy working over there," he said. "One of my favorite people in the universe, Brad Turner -- who directed a few episodes of SG-1 -- is a supervising producer over there and has been for a couple of years. And he directed the first two episodes I was in. It's a wonderful, familiar feeling."

Turner wasn't the only familiar face Shanks worked with.

"The gal that plays my love interest is an actress I worked with 13 years ago in Stratford," he told GateWorld. "And we hadn't really seen a lot of each other till we showed up on set."

"It was a very comfortable environment. They have a wonderful crew -- it felt very much like home over there, and I've enjoyed my time that I've spent over there. It's a lot of fun."

What's to come for Shanks beyond Stargate and 24? "Continuing acting, of course," he told fans at last month's Official Stargate SG-1/Stargate Atlantis Convention in Vancouver, B.C., hosted by Creation Entertainment. "I plan things as they come. Right now Christopher Judge [ "Teal'c"] has written a pilot script that he and I are looking to produce and be executive producers on. That's something we are working on."

The upcoming Stargate Atlantisthriller "Doppelganger" will see an alien entity invade the team's minds -- using a familiar form. Executive producer Robert C. Cooper, who also wrote and directed the episode, described the story in an interview with GateWorld.

Beware of minor spoilers below.

"I've always been fascinated by nightmares and dreams," Cooper said. "So that's what this is about. It's about an alien entity that lives in crystal form. I've kind of paid a little homage to 'Cold Lazarus' and said, 'Well, OK -- there's something that we've established in the Stargate universe that we've never really dealt with before. And that is, again, lifeforms can exist in that state.'"

In the first season episode of Stargate SG-1, Jack O'Neill and SG-1 encountered a race of crystal-based beings who had been decimated by the Jaffa. When O'Neill touched one of the crystals he was knocked unconscious and duplicated by one of the beings -- who proceeded to return to Earth with SG-1 in an attempt to heal the colonel's 'pain.'"

"O'Neill went out, touched a crystal and all this stuff happened," Cooper said of the episode. "We've never done that again. And I thought, 'Well, wouldn't it be interesting if we found another crystalline life-form like that.' But in that case we were kind of lucky that it had reasonably good intentions. There was a sinister aspect to it in that we didn't know what was going on, but at the end of the day it was kind of just curious.

"So I took the flip side of that and said, 'What if it's a psychopath? What if it's truly evil?' And it enduces some pretty freaky nightmares."

The entity appears in the dreams of each member of Sheppard's team -- but as a familiar face. "What would our characters dream about? The fun part of the episode is, because it's Sheppard that initially engages and touches the crystal, and thus unleashes the entity on everyone, the physical form it takes in the nightmares is Sheppard. And so everyone is having these nightmares that are being pulled out of them by the entity, but Sheppard is appearing in those dreams as the sort of negative enciting force."

Cooper reached back not only to the first season of Stargate SG-1 in conceiving the story, but to his own childhood as well. "My dad took me to see Jaws when I was seven years old. I was seven. There's a line in the script: one of McKay's histories is that his dad read him 'Moby Dick' when he was seven years old. The line was: 'What was the man thinking?!'"

"I think I probably didn't sleep for two years," Cooper laughed. "Honestly, I probably needed therapy! This was not the sort of thing you did back then, but I probably should have gotten some sort of counseling. But instead I spent my nights thinking to myself, 'One day I shall control the power that left me so terrified!'"

The connections to the ****c horror movie "Nightmare on Elm Street" were certainly not lost on the cast and crew. "The joke is in the show," Cooper said. "Sheppard at one point, when it's explained to him, says, 'So are we talking Freddy Krueger here?' And it's him. He also turns to Teyla at one point and says, 'Did I have a goatee?'"

"Doppelganger" will air in the first half of Atlantis's fourth season, which premieres this fall on SCI FI Channel in the United States! Learn more about upcoming episodes in GateWorld's Season Three and Season Four episode guides. Season Three is now airing Fridays at 9 p.m. Eastern/Pacific.