Category: News

Nialla’s Breadbox Edition Parodies are the subject of a great article on a German Stargate web site: Stargate and More Breadbox Article. We don’t claim to read German, but according to the Altavista babelfish translation, the author of the article enjoyed Nialla’s work very much and recommended it to fellow fans, translating some excerpts into German along the way. We congratulate Nialla on her world-wide recognition!

As an introduction to the new seasons of SG-1 and Atlantis, SCI FI Channel will be showing “From Stargate to Atlantis: A SCI FI Lowdown” on Monday July 5 at 10pm.

Season 8 of Stargate SG-1 premieres on the SCI FI Channel on Friday July 9. Festivities begin with “From Stargate to Atlantis: A SCI FI Lowdown”,airing at 8pm. The two hour Season 8 premiere, “New Order”, picks up where Season 7 finale “Lost City” left off, airing at 9pm, repeating at 11pm.

On Friday July 16, the Lowdown is repeated at 6pm and 1am. Stargate SG-1 has a 2 hour slot beginning at 7pm, possibly a reprise of “New Order”. The Stargate: Atlantis premiere “Rising” is airing at 9pm, repeating at 11pm.

Friday July 23, Stargate SG-1’s 8th season settles into its regular timeslot of 9pm, repeating at 11pm, while Atlantis’ 1st season follows, airing at 10pm and repeating at 12am.

For more information, check out the SCI FI Channel schedule

Stargate gets a long segment on the Conan O’Brien show

On Thursday, May 13, on the NBC late-night talk show Late Night with Conan O’Brien, there was a segment devoted to Stargate SG-1. In the segment, the show’s graphic designer, Pierre Bernard, got to visit the Vancouver set of Stargate and Atlantis, and even got to play the role of “Gate Technician Sgt. O’Brien” in a scene from an upcoming episode, opposite Richard Dean Anderson. The segment featured Pierre getting to chat with Robert C. Cooper and Brad Wright, meeting Amanda Tapping and chatting with Anderson, and showed the director (Peter Woeste) coaching him on his one line of dialog. Conan showed the final produced scene, from which we can deduce that Pierre won’t be putting any professional actors out of work any time soon.

The visit to Vancouver was the result of an earlier “Recliner of Rage” editorial by Pierre, in which he lamented that Stargate is better without Daniel Jackson, because Daniel has a tendency to try to understand the different alien cultures the team encounters rather than just killing them outright. This segment, which we enjoyed in the ironic sense we assume it was intended, can be seen now on SciFi’s web site, at the SciFi Stargate Gallery Page. Click on the image at the bottom of the page for a Quicktime movie.

The end of Thursday’s segment showed a fitting retribution by Daniel, when an off-screen Dr. Jackson shot Pierre many times. We hope that segment will be made available on the SciFi site soon as well.

Is there life for Stargate SG-1 beyond Season 8?

‘Stargate’: Rise of a Fertile Franchise
Sci Fi’s Risk Pays Off With a Signature Show That’s a Spawning Ground
BY MARY MCNAMARA — Multichannel News, 5/3/2004

SG-1 inhabits Sci Fi’s Friday 9 p.m. slot. The series recently concluded the latter half of its seventh season ­ its second on Sci Fi since leaving Showtime ­ with a 1.9 HH average, up almost 20% from the same period the year before.

The season finale leaped to 2.1, just shy of the 2.2 record set in January, when the show delivered more viewers than any episode of any original series on Sci Fi Channel.

“And then we gave the viewers a Monday night block,” said [Sci Fi Channel President Bonnie] Hammer. “We figured this was a way to give the fans consistency. It was there in a reliable block where they could come to it at their leisure. “

This popular stack of reruns from Stargate seasons one through five is telecast every Monday night from 7 to 11 p.m. Even though these classics are now in their fourth round of continuous play, ratings continue to climb. The Stack has delivered for the network since its launch in 2002. As of the first quarter of 2004, Sci Fi’s Monday numbers were up 114% over first-quarter 2002.

In the first quarter of 2004, the block averaged a 1.5 rating ­its third consecutive quarterly uptick. The highest rated hour, the 8 p.m. telecast, averages a 1.6 rating. Sometimes single episodes score between a 1.7 and 1.9, rivaling the numbers achieved by the first-run Friday originals.

In October 2003, Sci Fi introduced a Monday-Friday 6 p.m. telecast of reruns from the first through fifth season of Stargate. Ratings jumped 100% in the time slot, first-quarter 2004 versus a year ago. Stargate SG-1 alone now comprises 22% of the network’s primetime (8-11 p.m.) schedule.

SG-1’s ratings momentum begs the obvious question: Is season eight, rumored to be the last, truly the end of the line?

“I don’t! I don’t think it will be.“ [Stargate SG-1 Executive Producer Michael] Greenburg asserted, “If the demand is there, I think the show will be there. I think it can continue. Sci Fi’s a fairly new network. We’re the highest rated show they’ve ever had. We’ve broken their records. It just feels like it’s too early to go away.”

Can Atlantis and SG-1 really co-exist in parallel universes? “Yes, absolutely. I don’t know if Rick [SG-1 star and Executive Producer Richard Dean Anderson] would continue. But who knows? You never know until the offer’s on the table. But I think the franchise now is becoming bigger than the people.”

Even Hammer leaves the door ajar. “Never say never. We love it, we embrace it…it’s such an amazing franchise. I couldn’t honestly say to you: now it’s season eight and it’s over. It just might not be.”

SG-1 now costs about $1.7M an episode. As series age and costs escalate, contract negotiations inevitably get tougher.

Asked if he can weather another negotiation season (insiders say an unusually robust game of brinksmanship played out last year between the supporting cast and the powers that be), Greenburg is the sanguine veteran who’s been there, done that.

“There’s a lot of bravado and a lot of hemming and hawing and white knuckling,” he said. “I’ve been doing this for three decades. I just roll with the punches now. As long as there’s a name on a parking spot that resembles mine I’ll pull into it and show up for work.”

Boys, boobs & biscuits
By Jayne Dearsley — SFX 117, May 2004

We know that Stargate is definitely getting an eighth season…could there be more?

“I think there’s a possibility of a ninth season because of our ratings spike in America,” [Michael] Shanks ponders. “I’m not saying that’s a sure thing at all, I’m just saying business logic dictates that they say, ‘Um, maybe we don’t want this to go away!'”

“It’s showbusiness, so you have a responsibility to the shareholders and all that,” [Christopher] Judge declares.

Would they sign up for a ninth year? Both men are evasive; it’s far too early to know such things. “Creatively, if the scripts for season eight are the same quality and integrity as they have been this past year then I’ll be interested,” is all that Shanks will say. In that case, we [SFX] think there’s a good chance. The latter half of Stargate’s seventh season has been great: it’s as though the show has regained some lost energy reserve, and all the characters have had their moment to shine.

Two Worlds Collide
By Paul Spragg — Cult Times Special #29, May 2004

As for the long in-development feature film…”I’ll just say that it seems to change with every year the show gets renewed,” sighs [Michael] Shanks. “As far as we know, if the film does happen, it’ll happen at the end of the series, when it actually does actually really end for good.”

“And when’s that gonna be?” asks Christopher Judge.

“I have no idea! Chris was saying that with the ratings that the show is getting on SCI FI Channel, which are better than they’ve ever been before, there’s renewed interest in another season, which’d be a ninth season. We haven’t even started the eighth, so I’m just going, ‘Naaaaagh!'”

Is a long run a good thing, or will it stretch the premise beyond breaking point? “I don’t think we have been stretched because we’ve definitely had finite end-dates and itwas the reaction and the ratings to the shows that kept us on longer,” believes Judge. “As soon as the show’s shit, the ratings will reflect that, you know?”

“Our show is for the most part about exploration,” adds Shanks. “We’re explorers unravelling different mysteries every week. It is a bit linear in the war aspect of it, but there’s a lot more to the show than just that one dimension. So long as we still have that, it doesn’t end. The exploration doesn’t end. I think that’s what the whole benefit of the magic hula hoop os, there’s a lot more to it than just one continuing arc.”

It seems that no one is willing to completely rule out a ninth season. Watch this space…

SCI FI WIRE, 09:00am ET, 11-May-04

Joseph Mallozzi, co-executive producer of the SCI FI Channel original series Stargate SG-1, told SCI FI Wire that there will be a lot of new developments as the series begins its eighth season. “We’re looking at the return of an old villain and sort of a Freddy vs. Jason-type throwdown, a big villain-vs.-villain conflict on a cosmic scale,” Mallozzi said in an interview. He added: “There will be a big change for a main character, O’Neill [Richard Dean Anderson].”

Mallozzi, who was recently in Los Angeles to collect SG-1’s Saturn Award for best syndicated/cable television series, said that the end of the seventh season saw a few character upheavals as well. “One of our established characters [left] the show at the end of season seven,” he said. Mallozzi declined to indicate who would be leaving, but, he added, “there will be lots of changes for all of our characters.”

Mallozzi also said that the series was in no danger of running out of ideas. “It all hearkens back to the fourth season on the show, when we were looking ahead at season five and saying, ‘We’re all out of ideas. I don’t know how we’re going to come up with ideas for season five,'” Mallozzi said. “Amazingly, the longer the series goes on, the easier it is to come up with ideas, because you’ve got the backstories. You’ve got past episodes you can draw off of for future episodes. The longer we go, the more stories we have. I’m looking ahead to seasons 12 and 13.”

Stargate SG-1 airs Fridays at 9 p.m. ET/PT. Season eight commences July 9. The SCI FI Channel spinoff series Stargate Atlantis premieres July 16.

WHAT
Meetup with other local Stargate Fans

WHO
Stargate Fans Worldwide (and friends.) So far, 790 have signed up.

WHEN
Wednesday, May 12 @ 7:00PM
(2nd Wednesday of every month.)

Stargate SG-1 Meetups can happen in up to 634 cities worldwide on the same day. You can enter your location to find the one near you at the Meetup site.

International Stargate meetup