The Hollywood Reporter published a new Q&A with Stargate Universe co-creator Robert C. Cooper on Sunday. It’s the first interview we know of that either he or Brad Wright has done since SGU premiered in October. Cooper addressed some of the criticisms fans have made of SGU, in some cases admitting mistakes, but mostly defending the show the way it is. An excerpt:
THR: There’s been criticism about the female characters. Some of it seems to suggest that having characters who are at all sexual automatically makes a show sexist, that anything less than a neutered “Star Trek” ideal is somehow bad.
Cooper: I think our female actors are playing strong female characters and they are proud of the characters they’re playing. We didn’t do a good enough job establishing them early on, it took too long for those traits to come to the forefront, and I think people are recognizing that in the later episodes. But that’s the other big hot button — whether sex belongs in sci-fi. It’s a huge deal with our fan base and I think it’s bizarre to ignore sex as a part of translating the human condition to fiction. If we’re going to try and tell a more realistic character story we need to include those things.
Read the entire Q&A here. It’s of course impossible to know if Cooper is simplifying criticisms for the sake of easier communications, or whether he actually believes viewers are divided over showing sex on Stargate, as opposed to objecting to the particular portrayal.