You might be interested in these news tidbits and announcements that have been noted on this editor’s calendar and notebook for this week. If you’ve got more to add, please don’t hesitate to announce them in the comment section below. We’ll update this article if something comes to our attention during the week.
Calendar
| Monday, August 30 | |
| Tuesday, August 31 | David Hewlett will be recording a pod cast at GeekDad tonight at 7:00pm/10:00pm PDT/EDT. Visit the website for more information about joining the chat and listening to the pod cast as it’s being recorded. |
| Wednesday, September 1 | SGU’s Justice, Space, and Divided are on the UK’s Sky2 starting at 9 PM. |
| Thursday, September 2 | |
| Friday, September 3 | Dragon*Con kicks off today in Atlanta and runs through September 6. Scheduled guests of interest include Michael Shanks, Christopher Judge, |
| Saturday, September 4 | |
| Sunday, September 5 | The Hugo Awards at Aussiecon 4 in Melbourne will be awarded tonight. SGU’s creative consultant John Scalzi has been nominated for Best Novella for The God Engines. Good luck, Mr. Scalzi! |
Reminders
For news as it happens, make sure to visit the Stargate Twitter Superfeed for tidbits directly from the Stargate stars and production crew. And don’t forget our new feature Beyond the Event Horizon, which consists of “home pages” with dynamic feeds from our LJ and Blog for the stars of SG-1 and Atlantis.
Our LJ Companion has news bites, polls, and glimpses into the lives of the actors that we don’t necessarily cover here in our more formal news blog. Make sure to visit the LJ’s feed on our front page or visit the site directly to see its mostly fun little tidbits.
For the latest in convention appearances, which are subject to change, make sure to visit Stargate Actor Appearances.
And after some very intense campaigning, it worked out well for the Dr. Carson Beckett fans, too, as Paul McGillion returned for five episodes that each had him involved in a significant way in the story. McGillion told 
And finally, for all of the Dr. Daniel Jackson fans, there were the two mid-season episodes that saw the man who discovered Atlantis finally visit it during less pressing times and explore the city in the only way that the curious archaeologist could. Most of Daniel’s time was spent with McKay, and actor David Hewlett wrote 
“As far as this season goes, it seems they have me and Jason working together more, which is always good because it probably means we are going to do some action sequences. We did one episode [‘The Shrine’] where you could say David Hewlett is senile but there’s no real word for it because it’s a fictional disease, and it is a very good episode. It’s nice to do character pieces because everyone wants some character development. On the show, a lot of the time we are engaged with some exterior problem where you don’t have time for character development, so when you do get a script that has some development, it’s nice. I think everyone did a really amazing job, and everyone has really great moments in the episode.”
“[In ‘Remnants’], that’s where my character basically gets stuck in his own head, for lack of a better way of putting it, although both he and the viewer doesn’t realize this until the very end. Dr. McKay [David Hewlett] and Dr. Zelenka [David Nykl] discover a probe at the bottom of the ocean under Atlantis and it creates a phony physical environment inside your head. However, it’s one in which, for Sheppard, you can still feel pain. We had Robert Davi back for this episode and some rather dark things happen in it.
“That big fight scene [in ‘The Prodigal’] took a great deal of time and energy to shoot, and I love that stuff. Any action-oriented show is always going to be one that I’m not only interested in doing, but also watching. I think adventure and humor is a winning combo every time. You can do spooky and funny stories, too, but the combination of those basic elements is always the right way to go. Sometimes we go in a heavy conceptual direction, you know, like ‘The Daedalus Variations,’ which was challenging in a different sort of way to do because it was VFX [visual effects] dependent. If the VFX don’t work out it can kill the whole show, and oftentimes they [the producers and director] can’t quite describe to the actor what the VFX is going to be. So you’re trying to react to something that hasn’t even been created yet, and you just pray to God that you’re acting at the right level. Hopefully the threat that they then create using VFX isn’t bigger, or smaller, than you’ve anticipated. It’s kind of a tricky situation to be in.
“So ‘The Prodigal’ was one of those basic types of stories that you could sink your teeth into. It’s a great episode and Connor [Trinneer] did a terrific job in it. Bam Bam [stunt coordinator James Bamford] worked on the fight scene for a really long time. However, I then threw him a curveball because they had planned out this big elaborate fight and I said to him, ‘I’m sorry, but my character just isn’t Mr. Jujitsu.’ Sheppard would probably get his ass kicked and barely hold onto his life. He’s a great soldier, but a pretty sloppy fighter compared to Teyla. He tends to improvise, so we had to rearrange the fight a little bit.
“Carl Binder [Atlantis executive producer and writer of ‘The Prodigal’] and I agreed that the point of this fight was to show how painful it was. I wanted to convey pain, disorganization and fear, whereas the fight originally conveyed an almost Crouching Tiger-type quality. That was cool, but it wasn’t my character. I felt bad for poor Bam Bam, who had worked so hard on the fight, and then I came along and kind of changed the whole thing. I was like, Michael needs to hit Sheppard and he falls to the floor. Maybe then he grabs Michael’s leg and bites it or whatever. Michael is clearly a better fighter and Sheppard has to do whatever he can to make it work out in his favor. So we were able to make some changes and I think it worked out better for us. It’s the difference between watching Bruce Lee and Harrison Ford. The characters they play get into these difficult fights, but one is a martial artist and the other is someone who improvises and just hopes he gets out of the situation alive. It’s an important character distinction, especially for someone like Sheppard, who has a team full of Jujitsu experts, Dr. McKay not being one of them. [jokes]
“Sometimes it’s such a life and death thing for our characters that you don’t get a chance to see them enjoying the adventure. It’s almost as if they’re always fighting for their lives, but Sheppard does enjoy it. It’s like a wild ride for him. Also, he doesn’t have his personal life together, so this has been a replacement for what would otherwise be a normal, healthy functioning life on Earth, which is non-existent for him. Sheppard doesn’t know anything else. As long as he keeps getting Budweiser in space he’ll stay up there.
“Shooting ‘Vegas’ with Robert Cooper [was the highlight for me this year]. We shot most of it already out in the Okinaga valley, which is stunning. It looks great because we’re shooting on film, and it was written to capture behavior as opposed to dialogue. A lot of times our shows become about incredibly elaborate plotlines that we don’t have the time or the money to show so we have to explain them. The curse falls primarily on David Hewlett to do that. And doing it in any kind of entertaining fashion where people don’t turn the channel is a major success. But this particular show is not heavy on dialogue, thankfully, except for David Hewlett! Now that I think about it, David actually saves this episode because he explains the whole thing in two scenes! So it’s a lot of fun. I also like Robert Cooper. I like working with him. I think I have a connection with him in terms of the character. He’s written a couple of great episodes for my character.
“You know, [Richard Woolsey is] a bureaucrat. And McKay understands bureaucrats because up until Atlantis, he kind of was one. He’s the academic version of a bureaucrat; he wants everything by the book, by the things that he’s read. So there’s this weird sense of complete and utter disgust at the fact that he’s taking over, but at the same time, he’s not going to argue with someone who takes the safer route through things. McKay’s generally not the one to leap into the fray! So I think there’s a sort of begrudging agreement. It puts McKay in a strange position, because he somehow sees himself somewhere between Sheppard and Woolsey. Somewhere in between those two, there’s a McKay, because McKay definitely has to dial up the hero thing once in a while, but for the most part he’s probably more Woolsey than Woolsey.
“The lines [in ‘The Shrine’ are the highlight of the season for me.] But for ‘The Shrine,’ we did all of the video stuff in a couple of hours one afternoon. We sat and knocked off every different stage of this disease in literally two hours. Basically, it was Brad, Andy Mikita and myself and a very slimmed down splinter crew. This is the way I like making films—with tiny little budgets and tiny little crews. We got to establish exactly where we wanted to go with each session of this breakdown, so that really set the tone—it was great. What was really nice is that Brad Wright was there. I did all of those lines with Brad, which was fun. It’s very hard to look at Brad Wright and tell him that you’ve loved him for some time. He cried, which was very funny! We were doing the scene, and he started crying. I asked him, ‘Are your crying? Hey! You’re crying because your lines are so good, and not because of the way I’m delivering them!’ It was also a great episode for cracking up the other actors while they’re all doing their ‘acting’ stuff—I’m supposed to be in my own little world, so they were prefect targets.”
From “Stargate Atlantis’ David Hewlett – The Deconstructed Man” at 
“As I mentioned, Michael and I ended up in those armor-clad suits for a period of time. All I can say is, I now have a new respect for those people at Comic-Con who dress up as Storm Troopers [from Star Wars]; I don’t know how they stand it because you sweat buckets in an outfit like that. That’s what happened to me in that spacesuit. Of course, Michael glowed and was in a really good mood. Again, we had a ball. There’s some fantastic back and forth banter when Daniel and McKay get together, if I do say so myself. You’ve got that great sense of McKay being up against someone who’s as smart as he is and knows as much as he does, so there’s a lot of attitude being exchanged.”
“Unlike the other characters who came in and developed, the weird thing with McKay is that he came in developed, and tore himself apart—you see why he is the way he is. That was a lot of the fun of it. Basically, you’ve got a guest star role who’s there to cause trouble, and he gets kicked up to Siberia or wherever he was. All of a sudden they go back and start pulling him apart, ‘OK, he’s a complete knob about this, why? Let’s learn why he’s the way he is.’ With sci-fi, I think there are a lot of people who feel an affinity to that kind of character. A lot of people into sci-fi are very smart and not always terribly good socially—I know I wasn’t—and part of the whole love of sci-fi is about escaping. The idea that there’s this guy who’s like you is very appealing. He can’t get his smart out fast enough, he has no social boundaries, he says exacty what he thinks, and he does everything you want to do. For me, that stuff usually requires a lot of drinks—McKay just does it! He says whatever he needs to say and then goes, ‘Oh.’ I love him. I really love him. I make jokes about it, but I’ve learned an awful lot from McKay. What you see is what you get with him, he doesn’t try to be nice if he doesn’t fee like it, but he does try when he wants to.”
“I already miss McKay. Being an actor is kind of like playing the lottery, I mean, you get these roles and some of them stick and when they hit, it’s an amazing thing. I think McKay was one of those roles. I find it weird to let that go. But at the same time, I don’t have to yet. I don’t want to sound trite, it’s like when you break up with a woman, you never really get over them until you meet someone else. And with McKay, I hope I’m not always going to miss him. I hope there will be other characters that resonate the same way. McKay is a great character and I hope he’s not a once in a career character. So, basically, I’m kind of excited because maybe there’s another… I have a sneaking suspicion that McKay is not going to disappear—I think we’ll see him again. …”
“[Teyla has] matured, definitely. She’s come into her own and she’s become stronger. Her journey has become quite broad and extensive. She’s become a very grounded and stronger just because that’s what the situation has called for. I mean just the fact that she’s had a baby definitely has caused her to change.
“I connect with all of them in different ways; even with Woolsey there’s a connection. 
“It’s an honor to be able to play such a character. It’s so wonderful to be able to bring a character to life, who is a woman, who is strong physically as well as intellectually, but without being a bitch or being masculine in any way. She didn’t lose any of her femininity, or strength—that was something I didn’t want to compromise on. … I was very clear that that’s what I wanted to do with her. I’ve had a lot of strong female role models in my own life and one of them have been bitchy! They’ve all been great women. Let’s face it, that’s what we are, that’s what we do!
“Sitting on top of the Stargate in ‘The Shrine’—that was a fun moment! We had a ball splashing the water before takes, and we were spraying each other. 
“Obviously, number one [highlight for me] would be the camaraderie between myself and my fellow cast mates, as well as our wonderful crew. We just had a terrific group of people to work with. It was very fortunate, it doesn’t happen very often…but we all got along with each other. Certainly in the early days we would spend a lot of time with each other and that was a ball, and our crew was great, so the sense of family was fantastic. I also loved being able to play such a strong, vibrant and intelligent, physical character… Teyla wasn’t a cookie cutter, kind of [character]… she wasn’t sexy without intelligence, or smart without the physicality, she was really well-rounded and that was great. It was wonderful to be able to take on such a physical character as well, I hadn’t done that before and so the whole aspect of martial arts and fighting was something that I very much enjoyed as well.”
“When it comes to the acting, I’ve learned a great deal on Atlantis. I get really nervous on-camera, so I’ve tried to relax and slow down. This season I’ve had the chance to go much deeper into this character and really experiment with him. ‘Broken Ties’ was a huge breakthrough for me, especially when it came to the scenes where I cried. I find it very difficult to cry, and as an actor you have to look inside yourself as much as possible and be aware of your emotions. Thank God I got to work with [director] Ken Girotti on ‘Broken Ties,’ who’s incredible. He got me to relax and would say to me, ‘You know you can do this.’ When you’re on-set and, for example, the lighting people are doing their thing, the camera guys are moving the camera into place, and someone from make-up is powdering your face, it’s hard to channel your emotions. It takes a lot of practice, and I’m not good at getting all emotional and crying. Ken just came up to me and said, ‘Jason, you know what you want to do. You’re there, just relax.’
“When I heard Ken tell me to relax I thought, ‘OK, just breathe into your stomach and listen for a second to what he’s saying.’ When that one word [relax] hit me, it was just awesome. That’s where you think, ‘This is why I do what I do.’ I’ve had times in my career where I’ve been able to stretch myself acting-wise doing those types of scenes. Action helps that entire process because it throws you into that particular moment. As far as the acting, though, when you get to just perform and do your thing, that’s when you truly realize why you love your job so much.”
“I broke two gurneys on the set and the crew were like ‘holy crap!’ I was a broken man by the end of that day—I didn’t have anything left. It was just rewarding to hear them say, ‘I didn’t even know he could do that, he doesn’t even talk!’ That was nice.
“I have to say, too, that Mike Dopud, who played Kiryk, does a terrific job in the episode. He’s a fantastic actor and we had such a good time working with him. Like Mike’s character, Ronon brought death upon an entire village because of the Wraith, so my character is able to relate to him on that level. However, they’re two testosterone-driven don’t-show-any-emotion guys, but they do share one tiny moment of understanding in the episode. I’m really pleased our writers did something like that, rather than having Ronon put the blinders on and have him just seeing red because this Runner took someone who he loves and respects. It would have been neat if they were able to bring back Mike’s character and have him and Ronon take on some Wraith together.”
From “The 100th Episode Wrap Party” video at 
“They called in the fall and told me that we had been picked up for a fifth season, and once contract negotiations began, they asked if I was willing to come on for more time. It’s a great show, a great cast, the hours are great… It’s a very easy set to be on but at the same time, there’s all these extreme situations that we’re playing out every week, so it’s kind of fun. You never really know what your character is going to go through next, so it’s a bit of a challenge as well, which is good. It shoots in my home town and I’ve bonded with everybody – I definitely wasn’t ready to say goodbye, so I was happy to keep exploring the character.
“I feel very comfortable here. I feel like I know everybody very well and they know me very well. I just feel trusted and confident in letting loose with what I can do. I don’t second guess what I’m doing and I don’t worry about whether my choice about something in a scene is going to be wrong, because I feel like I now own this character, and it’s a great feeling. It’s hard to grasp that when you’re just starting a job, especially since you’re essentially replacing somebody who was very well loved in the fandom. It was a little touch and go at first, and I was feeling like the new kid – but that was good because I think Keller felt the same way, so it just seemed to work on set and feel very real. I don’t feel so new anymore. I just feel like one of the gang, which is awesome.”
“In season four, I was kidnapped and bound and gagged. This year, it’s happened to me twice so far. And I just read yet another script where I am again bound and gagged. I don’t know what I did. … I’m starting to wonder. It’s a fetish thing. And it’s the same writer every time that writes the episode where I’m being kidnapped. Maybe he likes seeing me dragged through the woods. I don’t know what’s going on. And you know what? I don’t question it. I guess. At least he’s writing for me.”
“I’ve been able to help develop the relationship between Keller and McKay a lot more. They’ve become much closer and better friends. I’ve been a lot more involved this year. I signed on for more episodes, so it’s been almost every day and I feel good. I feel like I’ve realised my place here and know everybody and feel very at ease and comfortable. It’s really nice.
“I’m usually just drawn to really well written characters. I don’t limit my career choices on any particular genre. And I guess I’ve just fallen into this world of sci-fi over and over again because a lot of the time in this genre there’s some really well-written, intelligent women characters to play, luckily.
“I’ve enjoyed not only playing the character but the experience of working with both casts. The writer-producers have treated me very nicely and I think rather amazingly they’ve rehabilitated a character that was originally introduced, not so much as a villain, but as an unpleasant bureaucrat. I think the producers kind of liked me [laughs], and they thought, ‘Well this guy’s not so bad, why don’t we try to bring him back?’ So my next appearance, they rehabilitated him quite a bit by making him a guy that may rub people the wrong way and may be annoying, but at least he means well. He has a high ethical standard and thinks that secret military operations really need to have civilian oversight to stop them spinning out of control. And when he found out that he was being manipulated by the evil senator Kinsey, he provided evidence against Kinsey at extreme risk to himself—career-wise and probably also health-wise! So he’s shown a certain courage and backbone.” [Note: These are references to Woolsey’s first episodes during Season Seven of Stargate SG-1.]
“I had some chats with Joe Mallozzi. We had got a little comic mileage, especially in the two part episode I did with Richard Dean Anderson [Season Four’s ‘The Return’], where Woolsey is afraid in a dangerous situation. And I said, ‘Well, we certainly won’t be able to mine that territory for comedy any more. We can’t look to the new leader being afraid to lead. But I think we can still find some comic possibilities in his bad people skills. He doesn’t have an easy way of getting on with other people—he can be a little brusque and arrogant. What I find interesting is that he’s aware of his limitations and he wants to work to change them. There was a wonderful moment I had with Amanda Tapping’s character last season. I’m brought into evaluate her character, and I say, ‘It’s been brought to my attention that I can sometimes rub people the wrong way.’ She just looks at me and lets the comment hang, until about four or five eggs are dripping off my face! So he has an awareness that people don’t find him easy to get along with, and he wants to work on that too. That’s part of him building himself into a leader. I love the idea that he wants to leave the boardroom and enter the command room, and I hope that they’ll put him in missions later in the season. In anticipation of that, I chatted to the writers about whether or not he might try to train himself, first physically, and then with regard to weapons and combat, and then try to get some basic boot camp training that he never had because of the career he’d chosen. So I think there could be all sorts of fun possibilities!
“The very first episode that I’m featured in is the second episode of season five, called ‘The Seed.’ Woolsey has to handle his first crisis—which I of course won’t give away. He is immediately amazed at his own behavior, that he chooses to break protocol and not follow the by-the-book way of dealing with the security threat that the base is facing. He turns away from that and makes some riskier choices in order to try to save one of our endangered crew members. The book clearly states, ‘restore security with minimum collateral damage,’ which means sacrifice the one life for the good of the many. He doesn’t do that, and I think he’s kind of shocked by himself. There’s a quite nice scene that I have with Joe Flanigan at the end where he confesses to Sheppard that if he can’t trust the rules that he’s supposed to follow, he doesn’t know whether or not he can really do this. He’s a theorist that’s put in a real situation, and he doesn’t know how much of the theory that he’s memorized he can truly trust to guide his decisions. That’s a major step for his character right off the bat. The Woolsey that you saw in the alternate time line at the end of season four [in ‘The Last Man’] is the guy before he faced this kind of crisis and finds out that he cannot lead effectively the way he thought he would.
“It’s been great so far. We’re only on the fifth episode right now and I appear in four of the first five. So I’ve been having a fun time getting to know my fellow cast members and, of course, the crew. And we’re getting some comedic moments out of the fact that Woolsey is the new guy, who doesn’t know the base very well. He doesn’t know how things work or his way around. So there’s some things with him getting a little bit lost and with him not knowing how to get the doors open, so we have been having some nice humorous moments, which I’m happy about. We’re also learning more about his back story. He’s divorced, obviously married to his work and he doesn’t seem to have a lot of friends. He seems a little lonely in his new position. So I think they’re getting some things lined up for later on, with people trying to get him to socialize a little bit. To let his hair down if you’ll excuse the irony of that image!”
“The most fun for me to shoot was ‘Remnants,’ which Joe Mallozzi wrote. It has a certain emotional journey for the Woolsey character—there’s a good deal of humor in it, but also it has a surprisingly touching pay-off. And, I get to flirt with a girl, which is always a good thing! Woolsey can see this woman that he’s attracted to, and other people can’t. When he becomes aware the he’s going a little crazy because he’s not sure if he has an imaginary friend or not, there are scenes where he’s torn between hearing what the person no one else can hear is saying, while trying to appear to everyone else that he’s not talking to imaginary people. That dynamic is funny. Like Harvey! Those scenes were great fun to play.
Stargate legend Richard Dean Anderson made three appearances this season. He had a pivotal role in the mid-season two-parter “The Return,” teaming up with Robert Picardo as Richard Woolsey for most of his scenes. The two needed Sheppard’s team to rescue them from the 
“One of the interesting things is that there are parameters for a hero—to be a pillar of morality and strength and to come through at all times. That is what the audience wants, and it’s funny, when you watch the show sometimes [as an actor] that’s what you want too. But as a performer, the richest material is in problems and weaknesses. And so I find myself not able to explore problems and weaknesses that maybe other characters can explore. You can’t lead and be indecisive or have problems. And those problems are what’s interesting from a creative standpoint. So you actually have to exist within pretty tight parameters, that a heroic character has to exist in lest he become less heroic. At some point, his heroic properties will be diminished if he continues to explore weaknesses and bad decisions.
“[Working on ‘Common Ground’] was a great time from beginning to end. Will Waring is one of my favourite directors on the show, it was a strong script and Sheppard got to go toe-to-toe with a Wraith. It’s what I said before about us having more individual stories this year and more character development, the latter of which really comes out in this episode. ‘Common Ground’ was mainly Sheppard and a Wraith and we had some neat scenes that are both funny and dramatic. Even if the episode hadn’t turned out as good as it did, I still would have said it was a positive experience and I’m thankful to the writers for putting it together. Luckily, the final cut was great, and hopefully they’ll decide to do more of these mano-e-mano type stories. The only thing I didn’t like, though, were the prosthetics. They take forever and I can’t stand them. I’m just praying I look a heck of a lot better than Sheppard did when I get older!
“Robert Davi is a superb actor, and so he knows exactly what to do, which is cause tension in a scene, and he’s good at it! He took something small and sucked the life out if it. He did it for, what, seven episodes or something like that. And they killed him off and they didn’t even need to. He could have gone on and on. He was a formidable opponent, and it was hard to find a formidable opponent, and when you do you need to keep them coming. Colm Meaney was another guy that was very good. Those guys were good. They’d just lay it into you and it just comes through, and it’s hard to find guys like that.”
“I just love working with Connor [Trinneer]. He’s a talented actor and a great guy. As for this story itself, I made a point of going up to Brad Wright’s office earlier today, as well as phoning writer Carl Binder yesterday and told them what a good episode I think ‘Vengeance’ is going to turn out to be. Sometimes we [actors] will call the producers with notes about things we feel might be wrong about a script, so they were probably surprised to hear that in this case I thought all the elements came together. I’m a pretty tough critic when it comes to my work and the series, and I like this episode a lot because it enters into the psychological arena. It becomes very much an X-Files-ish sort of thriller, and, honestly, if, like our characters, you’re exploring space and running into weird and spooky creatures, then things are going to turn deeply psychological, do you know what I mean? This is a direction that I’ve been trying to get Atlantis to go in for a while, but for one reason or another it just hasn’t been possible. Then this script came along. I’m a big fan of Carl Binder. He’s a very strong writer and the dialogue in ‘Vengeance’ is wonderful. It was a fun episode to work on, but the actual location wasn’t so hot. We shot in the hollowed out tunnels underneath an abandoned mental institution, which were dark, dank and had this ‘stuff’ on the walls. After a week, most people’s eyes were red and I got sick, so as cool as the story looks, hopefully now audiences will know that there were ‘sacrifices’ involved in making it look that way!”
“I like the big action episodes, and I’m always pushing for more. I actually like being out and about. I prefer to be outside more than I do being inside. All I can do is say to myself is, ‘Is this a show I would want to watch?’ I’m not a big TV watcher, but I will watch certain things, and that’s the only measure I have. So I try to push for that. One of the things that I watch for in a show like this is a lot of action. I’m probably less interested in the interpersonal relationships, although I’m happy that it goes on in our show. I think that’s always tied in with the action, although I think revealing character moments happen during the action. Simply exploring relationships is not what I’m interested in. I’m just a simple guy, what can I say? I’m just a two-dimensional man. I like action and great looking girls!”
“It’s kind of difficult for McKay to evolve, because once you know people like the character, you can’t change him that much. He goes through stuff, but the reality is, people don’t want too much of a dramatic change. The advantages that I have with McKay are that the situations he gets put in change him temporarily. Every single time something goes wrong it’s an absolute disaster for McKay. I get so much range within my episodes—which I think is a fine line to walk. I remember when we first started; the original concern was that you have this sarcastic bastard, who came in for a couple of episodes of SG-1. How does that become part of a show without turning it into Lost in Space’s Dr Smith? Not that that is necessarily a bad thing, but that’s not where they are going with this.
“I’ve got to say that one of the characters who I hadn’t had a chance to really play with up until this season was Ronon. We got to do a number of scenes stuck in a cocoon. Ronon and I are from different worlds. Our characters, and in fact in life as well are absolute opposites—what he does for cool, tall and good-looking I do for the nerds of the world. We’re like Romeo and Juliet. So being stuck in a cocoon with him was fun, because his reaction to being trapped is very different to McKay’s, who gives up before they’ve actually finished building the cocoon. So there’s a lot of fun there. We actually got to shoot that a couple of times because they had a change in design halfway through, and they decided to re-shoot stuff. We’ve been doing lots of exciting things. They’re really concentrating on the characters this year, on bonding all of the characters together. I don’t know how that works for McKay! I’m not supposed to get along with anybody. Its fun making that work—the anti-bond.
“‘Sateda’ is a season unto itself—people might get hurt watching it! They witness McKay getting hit in the ass by an arrow. I am struck by an arrow in the gluteus maximus in one of the first scenes and spend a large portion of the show on my front on morphine. It was interesting—one forgets that one has an arrow in one’s ass after a while, and then the jokes eventually just get tiring, because every single person on the crew has to mention something ass related or arrow related, I suppose. Those were definitely some of my funniest scenes to do. [Robert] Cooper, I believe has no other life. He sits just coming up with awkward, possibly embarrassing situations for McKay to be in, and then he smiles about it! He comes in like he’s done you some big favour. ‘I wrote you some great stuff!’ And it’s like, ‘Well, no you didn’t, you wrote me some embarrassing stuff that my parents will disown me for!’
“When we did ‘Hot Zone,’ where [McKay] confesses he has a sister it had originally been written as a brother. And I said, ‘Look, just on the off chance, I’ve got a lot of sisters and one of them happens to be an actress. I’m not saying you have to cast her, but on the off chance, can I say ‘sister’?’ And they said ‘Oh that’s a good idea. That’s fine.’ I’ve just worked with Kate, because we just did this film together in January. And she’s fantastic. And that’s me saying it—I’m usually tougher than anybody on that kind of stuff. And one of the producers actually saw a couple of things she did recently as well, and said she’s good.”
“In McKay’s mind, he’s done the legwork and really committed his entire life to his profession. As such he’s become part of Atlantis. His sister, however, just happens to speak the language of mathematics and has this innate flair for it. One day she’s playing at home with her children and out of the blue solves a scientific conundrum that she sees no practical use for but it is, in actuality, and interesting theorem that bridges parallel universes. For laughs, Jeanie posts it on the Internet and it attracts the attention of Stargate Command. So my character’s job is to persuade her to sign a nondisclosure agreement and give us a hand implementing her theorem. Sadly I can’t reveal the precise repercussions of all this, but suffice to say we discover that the parallel universe has a few more things running around in it than we expected.
“Funnily enough, this is a very scientific episode in that it deals with an awful lot of the Science Fiction elements of the show, but it’s also one of the most character-driven stories we’ve done yet. There’s this incredible family dynamic between McKay and the rest of the team and then his sister comes along and they’re like ‘She’s quite nice. Why can’t we have her around all the time?’ It’s a pretty neat story, and Kate is fantastic in it. She’s almost as good as me. Seriously, it’s a pleasure to work with Kate, especially as I was personally responsible for trying to stop her from acting. When she first said ‘I want to go to theatre school,’ I was like ‘Are you nuts? Get a real job and forget this acting stuff.’ I did everything I could to dissuade her from acting, but, quite wisely, she ignored me, and things could not be going better for her.”
“Filming that last scene [in ‘Sunday’] with Paul was quite subdued. We’d goof around all the time, no matter how serious the scenes were. Even in ‘Sunday’ where we lost Paul’s character, he goofed around to the end; that’s Paul. However, prior to us shooting that little tag scene at the conclusion of ‘Sunday,’ everyone was laughing and saying ‘Oh David and Paul on the blue-screen. Like that’s not going to be goofy,’ and it actually ended up being kind of morose and really quite depressing. That said, it seemed like a suitable send off for Paul and his character, and it was heartfelt.”
“It’s so odd because I think as the years go by, the more you do a show, the more like life it becomes. You begin to react to it in the same sort of way. Like in life, you have these horrible, horrible things happen; there’s no rhyme or reason, and you sort of begin to take that on with the show as well. It was quite a shock. We lost a very popular guy—both on set and off set—we lost a very popular character. He’s got that great sort of Scotty-like quality. He’s just a fun character to play with and we had a lot of fun bouncing our various grating personalities off each other. It was an odd episode. In fact, it was over before I think we even really figured it out. That last scene was really quite… I was amazed at how sort of choked up I got. I was like, ‘What the hell? The guy’s not dead! Just his character died.’ They can always bring people back. It was a tough episode to do. I certainly had my doubts when I heard about the exploding tumors.”
“I think it’s interesting that the writers chose to put a woman in charge on Atlantis, because Stargate has always been very military oriented, so putting a woman who isn’t military in charge in very interesting. I think it puts out great challenges for the writers and the actors, because how do you write a person in authority who is not military; commanding military people. We’re always going back and forth of which choices empower her, and which choices lessen her power. Also being a woman, men are really not wanting to listen to what women say, just ask my ex-boyfriend! [Laughs]
“Jason Momoa had an amazing episode [‘Sateda’] this year, which I think our entire year’s budget went to this one episode. It was filmed like a feature film, I think they shot it for 20 days, and our usual shooting time is 6 days. So my episode this year [‘The Real World’] was just me alone in padded cell. [Laughs] But I liked that more, because I come from a theatre background and SCI FI is new for me, so the less money they have for special effects usually the happier I am. It’s about acting then, and goes back to the stories and characters.”
“I think we [Weir and I] are similar. I think it is compassion, I think we both have a lot of faith in human nature; I believe that most people are good, I always say it is just unfortunate the bad people are louder. But most people are good and I think she believes that too, and that was her battle with military all the time because the military attitude is beyond the defensive, it is most people you don’t trust. And she was for trust first until they tell you not to trust. So I think we are very similar. She has a lot to teach me as far as discipline and ambition [are concerned], she’s much more disciplined and ambitious than I am.”
“I think all the spaces in between is everything I brought and I think that I did. Something I get moved by when I get letters of people [who] make that comment too, [who] say ‘you didn’t have much to do in this scene, but the pauses in between…’ Because I was trying to fill her, because I was frustrated with how she was written a lot of the time when I just went, ‘She’s not being active. She’s being quite passive,’ and I thought, ‘How can you be a leader and be passive?’ There has to be—so I had to find what I would do in that situation in order to find her strength. So I think I brought a bit of myself that way. But she’s much more patient than I am, she’s much more measured than I am, and she’s definitely much brighter than I am.
“In season three we get to see a lot more of the light-hearted side of who Teyla is. We’ve got a lot more humour injected into the season—in fact, two of the episodes are purely comedic. For me, I play a character who doesn’t really get to laugh all that much, so that was fun for me. We also get to see a little more of who she is when she isn’t on duty, a lot of her interests. There’s an angle that has been touched on right now, which is love interests. It’s always been toyed with for a couple of seasons… I think we’re going to get right into something, which is intriguing and fun for me to play, cos it’s a totally different aspect of who Teyla is.
“To be truthful, we really haven’t had a chance to bite into anything … I haven’t had a chance to bite into anything that I feel really progresses Teyla in the eyes of the audience. I mean I have my ideas about who she is, but this season thus far we really haven’t had an opportunity to show that to the fans so … so yes, that’s how I feel. So we’ll see if we’ve got a few more to do, the season is not over yet but we shall see.
“It’s wonderful to bring [Teyla] to life. I mean, she’s feminine, but she’s also tough. She doesn’t lose any of her womanliness by being a kick-ass girl, and I love that about her…that’s something that the fans really enjoy as well. I’ve met a lot of young, cute girls who are inspired to take action and to learn martial arts and to just be empowered just by watching Teyla, so to me, that’s a thrill.
From “The Warrior Within” in Stargate SG-1/Atlantis: The Official Magazine #13 (Dec./Jan. 2007):
“Robert was fantastic to work with. I hadn’t talked too much with him before that. He’s a very quiet guy and I never go up to the office unless there is a serious problem. I came with my ideas and when I first met him, they were having a little meeting so I went in and gave him the hugest hug. I had to prove to him that I could act. He was there every scene, if I needed the set to be quiet, he would make sure they were. He gave me my time. Not to float his boat but he is definitely one of the top directors I’ve worked with on the show, let alone my career.”
“I love being Sheppard’s ‘sidekick’, because the way Joe plays his character, he’s like the unsung hero. And it’s nice, because Ronon was one of the top [military] guys on his planet, and when he came in, he had no trust for anyone else. Sheppard is the one he does trust, and throughout ‘Runner’ he trusts him more and more. I think it’s just a level of respect that we both have [for each other]. It’s really nice. Whether they call it a sidekick or his partner, it’s great and we’re a perfect match. I think it’s good for Joe because he’s got someone to go, ‘Ronon, kill!'”
“Sheppard is Ronon’s commander but to me, he and Teyla are the only ones I can trust. I go to Teyla for everything because Sheppard isn’t big on the emotional things. If I had a problem, I would go to Teyla since we are both aliens. She’s like my sister. Shep is like my best friend through the whole thing. Weir is just my boss. I don’t know too much about her but at the same time, I respect her. Rodney is the brains and I’m the brawn and it will always be like that between us. I can kick his ass but he’ll outwit me. Beckett saved my life numerous times and in these episodes, you’ll see he’s probably saved me more than anybody. He is someone I trust and Beckett is like a good buddy now.
“Season 3 has certainly been an eventful one for Carson Beckett. Stand-out episodes for me include : ‘Misbegotten’ – the retrovirus story is very interesting and I believe it’ll be developed further. ‘Irresistible’ – working with Richard Kind was a real pleasure and Beckett crying with Sheppard in a puddle jumper is always something to behold. ‘Phantoms’ – I thought it was such an interesting script that Carl Binder wrote. Seeing all the main characters encountering moral dilemmas made for a really exciting episode of Atlantis. And finally ‘Sunday’ – well, when you watch it you’ll know what I mean!
“‘Misbegotten’ for Beckett was interesting. The whole Michael/retrovirus aspect of the storyline is really developed heavily in that episode. The great thing about Beckett is they wrote him with such humanity, and he stands up for his cause. As much a cowardly lion as he is, when push comes to shove, Beckett is very brave which I really like about the character.
“…I loved ‘Phantoms.’ It was great because every character was stepping outside their normal beats and insecurities surfaced. It was a cleverly written episode by Carl Binder and i enjoyed the opportunity Beckett had in it. As an actor, it really let your muscles stretch.
“I initially found out about Beckett’s demise right after I filmed the episode ‘Phantoms,’ which Martin Wood directed and Carl Binder wrote. Shortly after we finished that, I was back on set and John Smith, Brad Wright, and Robert Cooper asked to have a chat with me and brought me up to the office. To be quite honest, I thought they were going to say ‘Really good work on ‘Phantoms.” To say the least, I didn’t see it coming. They said ‘We want to shake the show up a little bit, we don’t know if Stargate SG-1 is going to go for another season, and in doing that, sometimes you have to kill a character off that will make a big impact. Unfortunately, it is your character we are going to kill off.’ They told me their reasons for it and what their thoughts were. I was a little shocked and at the same time, disappointed. On the other hand, it has been such a great opportunity. I’ve done almost 60 episodes of the show and went from a recurring character to a main cast member, so I have nothing but good things to say about those guys.
“Initially, that scene [at the end with McKay] wasn’t in the script. They added it in later which I thought was a nice move. It was really difficult. David Hewlett and I are such good friends and have really grown close over the years we’ve been on the show together. McKay and Beckett had a terrific energy together and David and I certainly do. I think the fans would agree on that one. We didn’t rehearse a whole lot and I think it was difficult for David. He was amazing and supportive throughout the whole process. That is the goodbye scene and you could hear a pin drop on the set.