Dr. Rodney McKay is watching The Outer Limits (1963), though the "control voice" that is played at the beginning is voiced by Christopher Judge.
This is the first episode of the series not to feature a puddle jumper and the only such episode from its first season.
Unusually, all the background/incidental music used in the scenes on Earth was originally written for and used in Stargate SG-1 (1997); most music used in other episodes of Stargate: Atlantis (2004) was written specifically for the series.