PART ONE OF THIS INTERVIEW is available on my Multichannel News blog. CLICK HERE TO READ the first part of the story.
It’s one of the things I love about working on television, You have the ability to draw on years of relationship with characters to create dramatic impact. When you’ve been with a character an hour and half in a movie it can only ever have so much impact, whereas if you’ve known someone for essentially ten years an hour a week, it [creates attachment]. - I know I as a viewer on certain shows have almost felt I’d lost a family member when someone died or been heartbroken when they [a couple] broke up. It’s the sort of thing that becomes a part of the fabric of your life and I think that’s the power of television that no other medium has.
One of the first times I ever experienced that was when Henry Blake died on Mash. That just floored me. That was so well done. It’s not even death necessarily [that keeps viewers tuned-in]. Sometimes it’s the romantic tension. You can play with a relationship the way they did with Ross and Rachel on Friends. Those things just keep you coming back. The week-to-week story isn’t as paramount as the overriding core of the relationships between the characters.
When action adventure fails it’s when it’s hollow, when it’s just action for action’s sake. There’s no resonance to it, you don’t care about the people.
What’s unique about Stargate is the sense of humor. Science fiction is often very dry, it’s very technical. Science fiction can be really weird. We don’t take it too seriously.
[On violence] –gratuitous violence is unfortunate. It’s has it’s place in the medium. It can be very cathartic. You can explore that aspect of human nature and get a certain satisfaction from it because it’s not real. It’s where the line is drawn between reality and fiction that become the judgement call. In Atlantis – Ronan is being hunted by the Wraith and dealing with the fact that the Wraith exterminated his planet and he’s channeling that anger on the Wraith hunting him. The retribution he gets is meant to be somewhat satisfying to the viewer.
I’ve had the opportunity to write widely. Stargate has provided a forum to explore action, romantic comedy, heartfelt drama and even an occasional intellectual essay.
[Q: Name two or three of your personal favorite episodes]
So many people have different episodes in terms of their favorites and it’s so diverse!! They love certain ones and hate others. Over the course of the season, I’ll have favorite episodes and I look at the fan polls and I’m amazed at how our opinions differ.
I’ve written 40 to 50 of the 200 episodes and drafts of 50 or so more with other writers’ names on them. In terms of the finished product Heroes I look back on most fondly. Saul Rubinek played the reporter. It’s an episode that I’m proud of. I felt it had something to say without being too heavy-handed. The emotional impact came about organically. It wasn’t forced or melodramatic. It was an accomplishment from a production standpoint. The episode was shot the over the course of three months, cobbled together as a second unit show simultaneous to the shooting of other episodes. We shot scenes that were months apart. It was a bit of a chemistry experiment. We were throwing things in there and hoping it all stuck and the fact that it all eventually came together is also a testament to Andy Mikita’s incredible single-minded devotion to that project. He directed it and I think he did a brilliant job.
I was forced into it for no other reason than I needed the money. We were significantly over budget. In previous years we had done these little second unit things that had saved us money and I realized we were going to be in some financial trouble during season seven and I needed a way to save a significant amount of money. I realized if I did a whole episode second unit then it would save us a ton. I designed that episode and it was originally only a single part. And Saul came in and had some ideas. It shot out at about 58 minutes. Normal cut time for a single episode is about 43 minutes. It wasn’t a full two-parter. It was about a part and a quarter. Thing was that material was really good and I didn’t want to lose it. Rather than cut 15 minutes of good material out I decided to write more scenes to turn it a two parter. So after the show had been shot, I went back and took the script and interwove the scenes throughout. It wasn’t like I added more material on the end. I added material interspersed throughout that I meant to be bridge scenes. And the whole story line with Woolsey where he came to do an interrogation or investigation of the team, that was behind the scenes so there were now two layers of interviews going on. The one above the board and there was the secret one that was the true story. They were happening parallel to each other. It was a layer that was added completely after the fact. It was a very interesting creative process.
When Robert Picard came out to shoot his piece of the show, an hour and 15 minutes had already been shot and he was able to sit down and look at it. The whole piece with the actor from Firefly, he played the Colonel Dickson in that ep,, his story line was added after. That part was shot later. I’ve done it before w/ scripts. I’ve had scripts turn into two and three parters. Like the first three scripts of season nine originally started as a two parter.
About three quarters of the way into part one I called Brad. He’s used to this already. I said‘I have a three parter.’. He said, ‘Alright go. Whatever. It’s one less script for everyone else to worry about.” I felt like last season’s Avalon was a pilot. It felt like the beginning of a new series. We talk about the last year as season one, not season nine. I was introducing three major new characters and whole new bunch of villains and new arena for the show to be told in and it didn’t feel right to not develop those characters. We’d always spent so much time worrying about characters that to jump right into the story without knowing these characters [didn’t feel right]. Avalon Part One is very much a more character piece. The meat of the storyis in Part Two and the real intro of the Ori. The whole Vala story itself was a mini-series. We would have brought Claudia Black back earlier, at the end of the year, but then she got pregnant.
The whole point of lst year was to wipe the slate clean and to set up the Ori as much as a challenge as the Goa’uld were in season one.
Joel Goldsmith music is brilliant and never gets recognized and brings a layer that people don’t recognize. We talked about the end of the season as an epic tragedy in Camelot. The success of season nine and ten have come from the fact that Ben Browder and Claudia Black and be have almost seamlessly blended in the chemistry. What we tried to do with Ben’s character is make you feel like he was part of the tapestry for awhile. He wasn’t just the new guy but he had been involved with the team in the past. It makes you feel that the SG1 universe is bigger than it seems on screen.
That has opened up a world for fans to participate in. There’s so much fanfiction out there! People fill in the blanks and I think that’s a credit to the franchise. There are so many possibilities out there, there are so many things we can’t do for budgetary reasons or screen time reasons. People want to explore that universe.
[Q: About background, how he got started with the series.]
I sort of started here at Stargate.
I went to film school @ York Univ. in Toronto and studied directing/writing. I worked for Northstar Entertainment. Their claim to fame was Prom night. I wrote a bunch low budget features for them. It was an education. I got stuff produced. It was nothing to brag about. They were all schlocky horror, teen movies, but being involved in the process was a real eduction. I got a couple of television gigs in Toronto and ended up writing for about a half season of Psi Factor (with Dan Aykroyd). That introduced me to television.
I’m only 37 and I’ve been doing this show for ten years. It’s been a great ride. I started out as story editor on season one. I sat in on the tread through at the pilot as a babe in the woods and I owe Brad Wright a great debt of gratitude. I also shake the tree and grab what I want. Jonathan Glassner wasn’t interesting in staying in Vancouver for long and I knew there would be openings, so I measured the office. [a quip.] Season five I became executive producer and took over showrunning duties for season seven. Brad and I oversee both shows. He handles day to day on Atlantis and I handle Stargate. We’re partners We’ve had a good working relationship for a long time. This has been a wonderful opportunity.
I started directing my first episode last year. I started out in the business wanting to direct . I just had to get into a position to hire myself. [quip] My first SG-1 script was Ist Commandment, the third broadcast, kind of a riff on Apocalypse Now. Not the most successful episode. It had some flaws and the show was still finding it’s legs. And the second was Torment of Tantalus. I was back in Toronto where I’m from and driving in the car with my wife who my fiancé a the time and I was saying to her ‘They liked my first script. I think they think I’ve got potential. But you’re only as good as the last hing you’ve done. My next script has to prove that I’m not a fluke.’ what about something in the past, she suggested. That was the genesis. To this day she still complains that she never got story credit. [quip]
That story started as two people, the older people, were people we had never met but it came up a level when Brad suggested that the woman be Katherine. That added a layer that hadn’t been there before, gave it a richness. It introduced the five races mythology - and the infamous Furlings. I can’t tell you how many times I hear the question ‘when are we going to see the Furlings.’ It’s the most asked question at conventions.
I mentioned them in season five thinking it would kill the inquiries.
Stargate was never a meteoric hit in N. America. Probably the tv guide cover in season seven was one of the bigger moments. Initially, Showtime ordered 44 epsisodes but early into season one we got an 88 episode order. So you trade off all of things that come with being a popular network show for knowing that you’re not going to get canelled for fours year. That’s a rare thing. Season five was great for syndication that’s the 100th episode. Everything after this is gravy. We made the switch to Scifi That’s when we felt like we were gaining the big mo. I wrote season six Full Circle as the finale. It felt like it was going to be the series finale and we were either going to roll into a movie or a spin-off series and then we were doing too well for SciFi to give it up. Season seven they started talking spin-off, that’s when when we knew we had a franchise, that we had something much bigger. You have a show that’s available on DVD, it’s run upteen times by Sci Fi on television. And three million are tuning in on Saturday afternoon in syndication and there’s no regular time. Sci if is in their 20’s in terms of the number of times they’ve recycled the block. We’re surprised there’s any magnetic material left on the tape.
One of the reasons they continue to renew the show. They don’t have to make money on the new episodes. They cost too much. It’s a loss leader thing. When new eps are on, and the fact that the fact that show is continuing to live bolsters the reruns, so that [ratings for] the stack and all the re-runs go up significantly when there are new eps being broadcast.
Any new Stargate series would potentially go somewhere else [than Vancouver]. MGM just had a movie they were looking at doing up here and decided to do it in Shreveport [Louisiana]. They ended up getting a tax credit there, the difference in the dollar wasn’t significant. There’s a lot of places in the United States now that are offering very competitive tax credits. I think this franchise is bigger than both shows. I think there will be one of each in the future. I’d be surprised if we didn’t have a feature film or a third series. The economics of a television show makes it impossible for a show to go on forever. Salaries go up incrementally as seasons go on. At some point there is no profit to be made and you have to start fresh.
MGM is spending roughly 75 million/year to make both shows. Both shows are in the top ten pirated downloads. And we’re the #2 selling franchise next to Bond for MGM. I remember reading some reports when the [MGM] sale went through that SG is one of the biggest single assets that MGM has is the SG franchise.
[Q:What kind of stories would you still like to tell?}
The evolution has helped us tell new stories. Vala’s reaction is going to be significantly different. The scifi concept is the same but the character is very different.
I think we’ve been consistent with [with the touchstone moments]. Right out of the gate in Vala and Daniel bonded in a way that made their characters interwoven. They have a depth to their relationship that happened right out of the gate. The moment she was burned he went over to her and held her. It was incredibly powerful it was very well directed and acted. Michael did a wonderful job, Claudia did a brilliant job. Vala’s façade was gone for just a few moments. That’s what I wanted to play with and expand upon in Crusade, to see what Vala was like when she was around the team and what would happen when she fell into a situation where she really did start to feel comfortable again, even tho there was something wrong with the situation.
[per the touchstone moments the viewers seem to love.]
Some of this is just the talent of the cast and they know that’s what makes the show work. To a certain extent we took for granted that would happen on Atlantis. It doesn’t just happen naturally, it’s work, you have to work at it. It comes a little bit from the chemistry of the cast. The moment is there on the page but it was made into a powerful moment on screen by Michael and Claudia. And there are times where you write and it just doesn’t happen and it doesn’t work the way you imagined it. And there are other times you haven’t imagined it. You’ve written it but you haven’t imagine it quite that way and it happens and it’s a surprise and it’s wonderful and natural. So, I do think there have been those moment in Stargate. When Mitchell… this was something that happened as much off screen as it did on screen. But when Mitchell is fighting the knight in Avalon part 2 and he’s unwilling to quit and absolutely killing himself and giving his all to get past this challenge. The other characters felt like, hey, this guy is a good guy to have in your foxhole. He’s willing to go to the ends of the earth. That was a thing that happened on set as well, Ben just went all out, physically and energy-wise, to actually do that sword fight. He nearly killed himself throwing himself around the set that day.
And the other actors kind of looked at him and thought, ‘ guys cares. This guy is the kind of guy who isn’t just doing a job, punching a time clock. That was that something that helped the chemistry between the actors. He watched all the previous episodes. We said there were some we would prefer he didn’t watch but he said “no, no, I want to see the dogs too. I want to see the failures as well as the successes” because sometimes the failures are the result of reaching. You’re trying to do something that either ends up being too esoteric or production-wise didn’t ultimately work out or is something that you thought would work but just didn’t. In many cases, some of our lesser episodes are really more a result of trying to do something that ultimately just didn’t work as opposed to not caring.
I tend to try to forget the ones that didn’t work. Space Race was one that fans truly hated. To me, that story was supposed to be about Carter showing off her fun side. What if she was showing off her technological knowledge for having a good time for a change. A lot of people thought that ep. wasn’t very successful. I can see their opinion, though.
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Old School moment: Blair Sandburg (Garett Maggart, from UPN's The Sentinel), a much-loved Jewish character explored in the fanfic universe.
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