STARGATE ON CONAN O’BRIEN TALK SHOW

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.

SEASON 9 FOR STARGATE?

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…

USAF COLLABORATES ON SG-1 VIDEOGAME

MGM Interactive, Perception PTY to Collaborate With Air Force on ‘Stargate SG-1’ Videogame Development
LOS ANGELES, May 11 /PRNewswire/

MGM Interactive Inc., a unit of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios, Inc., and Perception PTY Ltd. announced they will work closely with the U.S. Air Force to ensure the authenticity found in the hit “Stargate SG-1” television series is carried into the much-awaited videogame based on the show.

The Air Force’s involvement with “Stargate SG-1” has ensured accurate portrayals of military details in the television show, ranging from Air Force character traits, plausibility of plots and storylines to military insignia and weapons depicted in battle. “The U.S. Air Force is pleased to have been part of the “Stargate SG-1″ team since the beginning of this highly successful television series,” said Pentagon spokesman Douglas Thar. “Our continued cooperation with the series and now the eagerly anticipated videogame will ensure the authenticity of each will not be compromised,” said Los Angeles-based Air Force liaison Lt. Danner.

MGM Interactive and Perception will continue the successful collaboration to remain true to “Stargate’s” winning combination of science fiction and realism, bringing into the videogame world the high production values that have captivated TV audiences worldwide.

ABOUT MGM INTERACTIVE

MGM Interactive, a unit of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Inc. manages business development and production of interactive products for a variety of multimedia platforms, as well as talent and developer relationships. MGM Interactive’s other upcoming game titles include “Rocky Legends” from Ubisoft, the next round in the hit “Rocky” franchise, and mobile phone games and downloads for “Pink Panther,” “Rocky” and “Stargate SG-1.” For more
information, visit http://www.mgm.com.

ABOUT PERCEPTION

Perception is a privately owned software developer based in Sydney, Australia, making both original and licensed games for console, PC and coin-op platforms. Games are developed completely in house using facilities that include a state-of-the-art recording studio. For more information on Perception, visit http://www.perception.com.au.

ROBERT COOPER – VANCOUVER SUN

VANCOUVER SUN, MAY 3, 2004
LYNNE McNAMARA

As a kid, Robert C. Cooper experienced a trauma that may well have influenced his career path. When he was an impressionable seven-year-old in Toronto, Cooper’s dad took him to see Jaws, the screechingly scary shark flick that’s kept so many of us out of the water since 1975.

“I don’t know what possessed him,” laughs Cooper, now 36, who still vividly recalls his terror as we chat on the phone from his office at The Bridge Studios, where he now executive produces and writes for MGM’s sci-fi show Stargate SG-1 and its spinoff series, Stargate Atlantis, which he co-created with fellow executive producer Brad Wright.

“It scared the living hell out of me. For two years I didn’t sleep, I had nightmares — I don’t know why they didn’t take me to a therapist,” he says, obviously still smarting a little.

But the incident may have been a learning experience for the kid, albeit a nasty one.

“Despite the fact that it literally scared the crap out of me, I saw the power of that medium. I wanted to control that power that had possessed me. I didn’t want to scare other kids the way I had been scared, but there was a power there, there was a way to get inside people’s heads, and that was very intoxicating.”

He started out writing serial comics for his sisters to read as bedtime stories, and after graduating from York University’s film school in 1990 and being accepted into the prestigious Osgoode Hall law school, much to his mother’s chagrin he decided to postpone further education and take a shot at screenwriting.

She must have been just thrilled when his first few scripts — Blown Away (starring “the two Coreys,” Feldman and Haim), The Dark and the Club — were produced and went straight to video.

“What impressed people, initially, was that I wasn’t just a guy with one script,” laughs Cooper, who’s penned more than 15 features, including The Impossible Elephant, a family film produced in 2001, and Copy Cat, now in development hell.

As many of us understand only too well, there’s nothing less glamorous than being a writer.

“Certainly in features, you get really mistreated,” admits Cooper. “One of the reasons I decided to commit myself more to television is that in TV the writer really becomes the boss. The pinnacle for the writer in television is executive producer and you eventually work your way up to the point where you’re kind of in charge of how that piece of writing gets realized. The immediacy of television is so great. Writing something one week and seeing it produced the next week and seeing it on the air a month later, that’s quite satisfying,” he admits.

“It’s just so great compared to writing a feature and seeing it optioned for years and floating around to different companies and talked about as being attached to this person or that person and, ultimately, never getting made.”

Cooper has been with Stargate SG-1, now shooting its eighth season, since before the pilot was shot back in 1996.

“I flew myself out to Vancouver and they said, ‘So, what brings you to Vancouver?’ and I said, ‘This interview.'”

They hired him on strength of the outline he wrote for the show’s first episode. He began climbing the ladder from executive story editor immediately, even being promoted mid-season a couple of times. By fifth season, he was executive producer (with Wright).

This year, says Cooper, he and Wright are supervising more than $70 million US in production with the two shows, now shooting simultaneously on three large stages at The Bridge and three in a nearby warehouse.

“And that goes to local Canadian crews, actors, post-production houses and visual effects vendors. There’s a lot of feeling in the Canadian business that we’re (Stargate) the big bad American show, but really we’re a Canadian show. We have an American star (Richard Dean Anderson) but the fact of the matter is that everybody — all the writers, the executive producers, the entire cast, the entire crew, except Richard — are Canadian.” (Ditto for the Atlantis spinoff– with the exception of Joe Flanigan, who has the lead role of Major John Sheppard on the show, which premieres July 16 on Sci Fi channel.)

Stargate, which is also seen and lauded in Germany, Japan, Australia, England and France, premieres its eighth season on the network July 9.

“It’s a phenomenon around the world,” says Cooper of the cable show, “and it’s just starting to catch up in the States, but more and more we’re getting mainstream recognition. (After the cover shot on TV Guide last year, ratings spiked.)

But, ironically, the economics of producing the show are becoming increasingly difficult to sustain, due partly to the rising Canadian dollar and actor’s rising fees.

“It’s salaries, it’s all about salaries,” says Cooper. “By the time you get to season eight, you kind of get top heavy, even with the crew, too. So when you start fresh, you start fresh, with everyone. That’s why we created Atlantis. To a certain extent, it has been designed to take over.”

They’re hoping that the core Stargate audience will be able to transfer the passion to Atlantis. To that end, Anderson’s character, Col. Jack O’Neill, appears in the Atlantis pilot and is “wall to wall” in a couple of episodes.

“We’re going to thin it out with him in the middle of the season, and get back to him toward the end,” says Cooper. In spite of it all, Anderson, who’s made it clear he wants to work less and less these days, is doing so, but, says Cooper, “I don’t want to put words in his mouth, but he seems to be having a great time.”

And, as for season nine, who knows?

“Most shows start to peter out towards the end — it’s more of a question, ‘When do we cut this thing off before it becomes embarrassing.'”

SG-1’s move from Showtime to Sci Fi a few seasons ago made the show available to 80 million homes or more and its ratings only get stronger each year, with re-run ratings now as high as first-runs.

“We grew not just in season six but in season seven,” adds Cooper, incredulously. “Our ratings have really kind of anchored their whole network.”

So where will Cooper be this time next year?

“We won’t know until mid-October whether Atlantis is picked up for season two,” he concedes. “We’re very positive and hopeful. The cast is really jelling and there’s a great chemistry there, we feel very good about it, but jeez, you never know.”

“‘We’ll see,’ is what is keep telling my wife (Hillary) and everyone in my family,” which includes daughters Megan, 4, and Emma, 2. “We love Vancouver, we’re very torn. It has really become our home and it’s a beautiful city with all the best elements of Canada, really, but certainly, the one thing that still draws us back east is family.”

Obviously he holds no grudge against his dad about that shark thing. “He certainly lost as much sleep as I did, so he paid,” says Cooper with a laugh.

STARGATE SG-1 CHANGES COMING

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.

SG-1 WINS SATURN AWARD

The Academy of Science Fiction Fantasy & Horror Films
30th Annual Saturn Awards

Stargate SG-1 was honoured to receive a Saturn Award for Best Syndicated/Cable Television Series for SCI FI Channel in the Academy’s 30th Annual Awards. The award was collected by writer and Co-Executive Producer Joseph Mallozzi, who flew to Los Angeles to represent the makers of the show.

SG-1 received 4 nominations in the 30th Annual Saturn Awards: Best Syndicated/Cable Television Series, Best Actor in a Television Series for Richard Dean Anderson and Michael Shanks and Best Supporting Actress for Amanda Tapping.

NEW SG-1 NOVEL “TRIAL BY FIRE”

Trial by Fire, the first Stargate:SG-1 novel from Fandemonium Books, follows the team as they embark on a mission to Tyros, an ancient society teetering on the brink of war.

Written by Sabine C Bauer, Trial by Fire is scheduled for publication in June 2004 and will be available from the online bookstore on this website and all good bookshops in the UK.

Trial by Fire
By Sabine C. Bauer
Price: £5.99
ISBN: 0-9547343-0-0
Availability: Will be available online at the Stargate Novels bookshop followed by retail shops in the summer.

Trial by Fire, the first Stargate:SG-1 novel from Fandemonium Books, follows the team as they embark on a mission to Tyros, an ancient society teetering on the brink of war.

A pious people, the Tyreans are devoted to the Canaanite deity, Meleq. When their spiritual leader is savagely murdered during a mission of peace, they beg SG-1 for help against their sworn enemies, the Phrygians.

Initially reluctant to get involved, the team have no choice when Colonel Jack O’Neill is abducted. O’Neill soon discovers his only hope of escape is to join the ruthless Phrygians – if he can survive their barbaric initiation rite.

As Major Samantha Carter, Dr Daniel Jackson and Teal’c race to his rescue, they find themselves embroiled in a war of shifting allegiances, where truth has many shades and nothing is as it seems.

And, unbeknownst to them all, an old enemy is hiding in the shadows…

Look out for details of how to pre-order your copy of Trial by Fire from the Fandemonium website as well as sneak previews and sample chapters of other Stargate:SG-1 books.

Click for a preview of the cover art and more information
Fandemonium – Stargate Novels home

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