Amanda Tapping

Video: SG Actors Talk About "200"

Sci Fi Channel has put up short (several minute) videos of much of the cast of SG-1 talking about their experiences shooting the show that has lasted 200+ episodes. The interviews were filmed at the recent TV Critics Association party. Michael Shanks, Richard Dean Anderson, Amanda Tapping, Chris Judge, and Claudia Black all gave interviews. Michael gave a few spoilers: a mild one is that his 1-yr old daughter Mia will be in a Season 10 episode.

To view the videos, visit Sci Fi Stargate Video.

Thanks to SueB at Our Stargate for the tip!

Stargate at TV Critics Association Tour

Amanda Tapping, Daughter Olivia, Bonnie Hammer

The Stargate literally made an appearance at the recent Television Critics Association summer press tour, as the ‘traveling’ gate was sent down from Vancouver for an elaborate Sci Fi Channel gala on the back lawn of the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Pasadena. On hand was the cast of Stargate: SG-1 including Richard Dean Anderson, Bonnie Hammer, President of USA Networks, and Dave Howe, a Sci Fi Channel executive.

Some of the coverage made fun of the people walking around in super-hero costumes, apparently in honor of Sci Fi’s new reality show, “Who Wants to Be a Superhero?” launching July 27. See for example Nola.com.

There are great high-resolution pictures of the cast, including the one above of Amanda Tapping, her daughter Olivia, and Bonnie Hammer, at emedian.net.

Thanks to Elyse at sg1_spoilme for tracking all of these articles!

Shanks Gets Golden Stargate

Michael Shanks Receives Special ‘Golden Stargate’ Presentation

Legends President Paul Brown presents the Golden Stargate to Michael Shanks

June 2, 2006 (Vancouver, B.C.): Paul Brown, President of Legends Memorabilia, recently presented a special ‘Golden Stargate’ display to Michael Shanks in Vancouver. The company commissioned this special display as a 10th Anniversary Commemorative award in recognition of Michael’s contribution to the long-standing success of Stargate SG-1â„¢.The company also presented Golden Stargate displays to original cast members, Richard Dean Anderson, Amanda Tapping, Christopher Judge, Don S. Davis and Teryl Rothery. Several key production staff personnel including Brad Wright and Robert Cooper were also presented with Golden Stargate displays. In receiving this presentation, Michael commented: “Wow, this is brilliant! Thank you so much, this will stay here in my home with my other ‘treasures’.”

The framed display consists of a highly detailed golden Stargate mounted on a black suede matte with a personalized inscription plaque which reads:

Presented to
MICHAEL SHANKS

In commemoration of the 10th Anniversary of
Stargate SG-1, and in recognition of your
outstanding contribution to the success of the series.

– Legends Memorabilia –

The miniature Stargate was created in precise detail from the design plans that were used for the original Stargate installed on the SGC set at Bridge Studios. The company is considering releasing a limited production series of the same 16″x16″ Golden Stargate display for fans who also may wish to have a special 10th Anniversary memento of the series.

About the Company:
Since its inception in 1995, Legends Memorabilia has pioneered the sale of set-used movie and television props and has a unique position as a specialist supplier of this type of commodity. With clients in 70 countries, the Company is a global player in the memorabilia industry and is the vendor for Stargate SG-1â„¢ set-used props and costumes through its online auctions on eBay and website sales at www.stargateprops.com.

As an official MGM appointed Licensee, the Company manufactures and distributes replica props and collectibles from Stargate SG-1â„¢ as well as limited edition art prints from Stargate SG-1â„¢ and Stargate: Atlantis. Legends Memorabilia also operates the exclusive Stargate cast-authorized autograph site, www.stargate-autographs.com.

Entertainment Weekly Covers SG-1

Entertainment Weekly has published a short article on Stargate: SG-1 and its upcoming Season 10 premiere in its Summer TV Special. Pictured are Amanda Tapping and Ben Browder.

The author confuses episode 10.06 “200” with the season premiere, but in any event describes one part of the episode:

This season’s premiere practically plays like an SNL skit–one series of scenes has SG-1 members portrayed by marionette puppets as they flash back to alternate realities. “There’s been a number of Wizard the Oz references over the years,” says executive producer Robert Cooper. “We have a sequence that pays tribute.”

The perennial ship question was also discussed:

One hotly debated topic: whether Carter and Maj. Gen. “Jack” O’Neill (Richard Dean Anderson, known to most of the world as MacGyver, is back this season for a few episodes) should meld minds. “It’s a huge issue,” says Tapping. “I don’t want to be just pining away for the lead guy.” Anderson agrees: “I think there’s something sort of rewarding about them maintaining the friendship and comradeship.”

To see a scan of the article, visit BenBrowderPortal.com.

Sci Fi Monday Night Snippets

The April 24th Sci Fi Monday SG-1 marathon was “One is Never Enough,” which included two two-parters from Season 7, “Heroes” and “The Lost City”. Below are the interview snippets shown throughout the night, courtesy of Elyse at sg1_spoilme. Thanks, Elyse!

Also this week, you can view very high quality Quicktime movies of the snippets at Farscapism.com. Well worth watching.

Ben Browder

“Well, what I think is interesting about the SG1 team is that it is continuing to change and evolve. You still have the core – you have Teal’c, you have Colonel Carter, you have Daniel – and in the last two years, we’ve added Landry, and Mitchell and this year we’ve added Vala, and you have a group of people who have saved the universe on countless times and now you have new people to come in and ask the stupid questions (said with big grin). ‘I’m sorry, we’re going through the gate, why?’ and ‘who is that? Great, okay, let’s go!’ (ends with thumbs up gesture).”

Michael Shanks

“Heroes, part one and two, really sort of delved into the character relationships in terms of what they mean, or what they could mean in our theoretical world, what they could mean to the outside world that we’re trying to represent, and uh, I think that was a great example of the characters interacting and making you care about them so that when all the explosions and bombs and the aliens are happening that you actually care about the characters so I think that’s one of my most favorite episodes, if that’s proper English.”

“What I’ve enjoyed building over the last ten years is the relationship with Teal’c. They just really love each other and it’s so nice that they now express it. An arm around the shoulder, or a hug, or a look between the two of them that says everything, and Chris and I really enjoy playing that. Like yesterday we were shooting a moment with this new character Vala – Claudia Black’s character – and she went up and did something and we just shared a look that said everything, that we’d known each other so long, and that’s quintessentially what makes SG-1.”

Beau Bridges

“One of my favorites of last year was ‘Ripple Effect.’ I really enjoyed that. It was very imaginative, and I still get a thrill because it’s sort of new to me – all the sci-fi stuff, when you have clones of all these people, and it gets kind of tedious doing it, because there’s a lot of technical stuff going on. You have to shoot scenes over and over again to get those effects, but watching it, just as an audience, it made me giggle. I thought it was cool.”

Ten New Interviews Excerpted

We’ve extracted excerpts of ten recent interviews of SG-1 cast and crew, past and present, from the Stargate Official Magazine. Here are direct links to each:

Daniel Dares
Judge for Yourself
Got Carter
Creating Cameron
Vala Unveiled
Taking a Beau
Fraiser’s Unfaded
Noble Prize
Sha’re Shares
The Write Director

Enjoy, and be sure to pick up the March/April 06 Official Magazine Yearbook from Titan Magazines, which has the full interviews and many exclusive photos.

Sci Fi Monday Night Snippets

The theme of April 17th’s Sci Fi SG-1 marathon was “Those Darned Russians”; it featured four eps with Jack’s favorite comrades. Once again, there were interview snippets interspersed through the episodes. Thanks once more to Elyse from SG1_spoilme, here are the transcripts of those mini-interviews.

Chris Judge

Early on in the show’s run, we didn’t get to see a lot of the concept drawings, so the director would say ‘there’s a big ship, a BIG huge ship,’ so what you imagine is like a big ship, but we would see the final cut and it would be MONSTROUS. It would eclipse the horizon and so we learned early on, we had to kind of imagine bigger and better and I think that made us better as actors.

Claudia Black

I think Richard Dean Anderson is so specifically identified with the show that, you know, when I said I was coming to join the cast of Stargate, they’d say ‘oh, the one with Richard Dean Anderson,’ and to turn up and have him not be here, it’s kind of weird, and even more peculiar to have Ben [Browder] in his place, for want of a better word, but he is someone as an actor and a character who can’t ever really be replaced.

Michael Shanks

God, we had one great location which was the sand dunes of Richmond which gave us this whole otherworldly feel, gave us back to our grassroots of the original Stargate movie, has unfortunately been developed. We’ve been doing the show so long we’ve actually watched the city grow over our locations that we started off in. The GVRD – which was our go-to place which is the Greater Vancouver Regional District Water Reservoir – and that’s gone by the wayside too, so we’re kind of running out – it’s odd to say in British Columbia – we’re running out of forest to shoot in.

Amanda Tapping

I love it when it’s the four of us going off, wreaking havoc in the universe. And all of our little idiosyncrancies and dysfunctions coming together in, you know, a crisis moment and how we deal with it, how the interpersonal relationships play. I love it when there’s an episode about all four of us. Those are kind of my favorite stories. Of course now it will be all five of us. Six, if you count Beau. It just keeps getting bigger and bigger and bigger…

Shipper Monday: What Does It Mean?

U.S. Sci Fi Channel viewers were treated to (or subjected to, depending on your point of view) a “Shipper Themed Four-Play” for the SG-1 marathon on Monday April 3. Sci Fi showed four shippy episodes; interspersed through them were short interviews with the cast about the Jack/Sam ship or ship in general, with relevant scenes flashing on the screen under the voiceover.

Thanks to Elyse at the sg1_spoilme group, we have transcriptions of each of the actor’s answers to the “Jack/Sam ship” question:

Amanda Tapping

“Initially I thought it was kind of fun to play, and then I started to resent it because I didn’t want Sam to ‘the girl’ pining for ‘the guy’ and make it about that where it got in the way of what an incredible, strong and smart and savvy character she was. Obviously there’s a huge attraction between the two characters so now that the commanding officer is not in her direct chain of command, she can… maybe she can have some with him.” (big grin)

Ben Browder

“Shippers seem to exist for every show. Short for relationshippers, so, that raises the O’Neill-Carter question. I think that one of the great things about doing television is you can deviate away from just action, just talking and you know you also have the personal interaction, the romance, which can go on at the same time. I love that, but I don’t know whether we’re going to be seeing any out of Mitchell this year.”

Claudia Black

“Do you give the fans everything they’ve been asking for and everything they wanted and will they be satisfied? Obviously I haven’t been here personally to follow and track the potential relationship between O’Neill and Sam Carter, so the general rule is that the minute the characters consummate their unresolved sexual tension, it’s resolved… if television revolves around drama, you’ve lost your tension and your drama right there, so it’s tricky to keep that spark.”

Chris Judge

“For all you shippers out there. I find it interesting, because I don’t think Teal’c actually realized that Sam was a woman until like Season Four, so the whole relationship between Sam and Jack I think was lost on Teal’c. I think Teal’c is fairly confident that he’s going to wind up with Jack in the end. Wouldn’t that be funny? Wouldn’t that be funny for episode 300 that Teal’c and Jack get married? And produce a symbiote?” (lots of laughter).

We can only hope this particular theme is not a portent of things to come in Season 10, but, coupled with Ms. Tapping’s encouragement of shippers at the recent Creation Convention in Vancouver, it seems the writing is on the screen. We look forward to other upcoming “Themed Four-Play” Mondays; it can only get better from here.

2005 Space View Awards Announced

Viewers vote for 2005 favorites in SciFi/Fantasy film and television

The German site Space View has published the winners of their fan-selected SciFi favorites for 2005. Stargate SG-1 still ranks high among the favorites.

In the television categories, Stargate SG-1 took third place behind Smallville and Lost. Number One spots were taken by Richard Dean Anderson for Best Male Actor, Amanda Tapping for Best Female Actor, and Michael Shanks for Sexiest Male Actor (Mr. SciFi). Amanda Tapping also placed in the Sexiest Female Actor (Ms. SciFi) category in third place.

To see the results of the voting, go to http://www.space-view.de/award_vote.htm. Just a reminder: the site is written in German.

[Thanks to MSOL and Sueb45 for the tip.]

Stargate Featured in New York Times

Amanda Tapping as Lt. Col. Samantha Carter Tapping and Cooper interviewed
Summary for Solutions by “Aurora Novarum”

The New York Times featured Stargate SG-1, as well as Battlestar Galactica, recently. Interviewed were SG-1 cast member Amanda Tapping and executive producer Robert C. Cooper.

The article reads in part:

Ms. Tapping, who has been in the cast for that entire run, said she thought one important part of the success was something not often associated with the genre: humor.

“At the core of it all is a chuckle,” she said. Or sometimes, many chuckles: another favorite memory is of a guest appearance by the expert cut-up Dom DeLuise in Season 3. “I don’t know how they got shots of us not laughing,” Ms. Tapping said.

Later, when interviewing Cooper, he agreed stating: “I wouldn’t say it’s full-on tongue-in-cheek, but we do have a unique sense of humor.”

The article notes the second half of Season Nine is about to start, with Season Ten in the works. “And so instead of winding things down, Season 9 has been used to pep them up, with new characters and ideas. “We decided to sort of reinvent the show,” Mr. Cooper said. “We have the best of the old and the best of the new going forward.”

The full article is here: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/01/arts/television/01tv_cover.html (Warning, registration, though free, is required.)

Editor’s note for our newest Stargate SG-1 fans: Even though Neil Genzlinger, the author of the piece, has some inaccuracies concerning the show in this article, the positive exposure in “mainstream” media is noteworthy. — Aurora

[Thanks to ApophisLives for the tip — Aurora]