... the Apophis agenda ...

... when you score a part on a television series you don't necessarily expect it to run for ten seasons, spawn spin-offs or become part of popular culture ... you can wish for it, yes, but it's advisable not to bet the farm on runaway success ... however, science-fiction serials often go viral and achieve immortality in unexpected ways, like Star Trek and the mega-movie franchise Star Wars ... so, my lengthy involvement as Apophis in the Stargate phenomenon had both precedent and portent ...

... being cast as the grand nemesis, successor to the flamboyant Ra character played by Jaye Davidson in Stargate-the-movie, promised a measure of singularity, not just owing to extravagant make-up, "Mickey Mouse" ears, killer bling and golden costumery, but also a virtual exemption from absolute vanquishment ...

... these days, well into episodic syndication (a fancy way of saying re-runs), it occurs to us we never actually saw him die but assumed his demise based on the predicament leading up to the fireball thought to have consumed him ... in the tradition of Elvis sightings, reports of the death of Apophis seem greatly exaggerated, and there has proven to be quite an afterlife for this pompous false God ... the identification in 2004 of an orbiting asteroid with a statistical potential to collide with planet Earth has raised the spectre of this resurgent villain once again ...

... the astronomers who named this threat after my character, David Tholen and Roy Tucker, are Stargate fans only too familiar with the predictably unpredictable re-appearances of Apophis ... a pattern mirrored by this inter-galactic rock that resembles a huge Irish potato or a flaming Idaho super-spud ...

... calculations have Apophis close enough to Earth in 2012 to make better observations, but not close enough to counteract any Tea Party tilt at the American Presidency ... some likely gravitational adjustment in 2029 makes 2036 the year to ditch those insurance policies and have your bucket lists completed ...

... even Dick Cheney's successors, Blackwater and the mighty U.S. military would have to bow to Apophis ... the Russians, not trusting NASA projections that put most of the former Soviet Union under the asteroid's trajectory, want to pre-emptively shoot it down or deflect it over Washington, Waco or Wasilla ... they may only succeed in making Apophis really mad ...

... knowing Apophis like I do (I remain one of this world's foremost experts on the mindset of this persistent antagonist), I can safely state; Apophis will not throw the babes out with the bathwater ... before unleashing Armageddon he'll most likely take a sampling of Tau'ri (read Earthling) womankind as tithe or entitlement, to play Caligula while amassing an army or two on some distant planet in preparation for a future assault ...

... meanwhile, ever since the great civilisations of ancient Egypt, his mythology builds to crescendo ... there's even contemporary reasoning that the coming of Apophis was predicted in The Bible, and all sorts of creative souls continue to pay homage via artwork like this ethereal representation from a fan named Renee ...

... if the unthinkable happens, and the force that is Lord Apophis returns, riding on a baked potato to wreak havoc on the world which repeatedly frustrated him on televisions across the known universe, we can't say we weren't amply warned ... a penultimate twist-in-the-tale perhaps, is seen in this impact-rendering by the coincidentally named NASA-affiliated artist Don E. Davis ...

... I suspect that, somewhere, the late actor Don S. Davis, who portrayed Stargate Command's General Hammond helping to repel the early attacks of Apophis, would chuckle at the irony ...