'Neill's a general and running the SGC! Carter's a lieutenant colonel and the replicators have cloned her! Teal'c has hair!
The two-hour season premiere of Stargate SG-1 set in motion big changes for our intrepid heros, and it's only the beginning of the eighth season, which brings back regulars Richard Dean Anderson (O'Neill), Amanda Tapping (Carter), Michael Shanks (Daniel Jackson) and Christopher Judge (Teal'c).
Now, the show is about to be twinned with its first spinoff, the much-anticipated
Stargate Atlantis, in which an entirely new team of explorers, led by Dr. Elizabeth Weir (Torri Higginson), journey to the lost city of Atlantis in the distant Pegasus galaxy.
Producers promise to continue surprising fans with developments this season. In SG-1, expect further stories involving Anubis (David Palffy) and Fifth (Patrick Currie), the return of Carter's Denver cop boyfriend, Pete (David DeLuise) and Teal'c's Jaffa warrior friend Ishta (Jolene Blalock).
In Atlantis, Weir is joined by Maj. John Sheppard (Joe Flanigan), Lt. Aiden Ford (Rainbow Sun Francks), Dr. Rodney McKay (David Hewlett) and Teyla Emmagan (Rachel Luttrell), a leader of the planet Athos. And there's a sinister new race of villains, the Wraith. Cast and crew of both series took time to speak with Science Fiction Weekly about the upcoming seasons during a visit to the set in Vancouver, B.C., recently. Stargate SG-1 kicked off its eighth season with a two-hour premiere July 9. Stargate Atlantis premieres with a two-hour episode, "Rising," at 9 p.m. ET/PT on July 16.
Executive producer Robert C. Cooper, what were you aiming at with Atlantis?
Cooper: Well, it's a spinoff. We want to appeal to the audience of SG-1, and we wanted to capitalize on what we feel has made SG-1 a success and made it this long-running show . And yet we also wanted it to feel like it wasn't SG-2, that it's a new show. ... Originally there was a plan to basically have SG-1 come to a close as a television series and maybe roll into a series of feature films, and have that be more of a passing of the baton into the new series. But SCI FI asked us to do season eight [of SG-1] and season one of Atlantis at the same time. So that caused us to rethink the concept a little bit for the spinoff series, so that it would exist at the same time.
I think that made the spinoff series better, made it stand alone a little bit more. ... We decided to set it in a different galaxy, which allowed us to kind of wipe the slate clean and meant that the new team of heroes wasn't going to be running into the same old enemies or crossing over ... with SG-1. We didn't want people to wonder, "Well, why isn't SG-1 coming to save the day?" ... And there was also something about why hadn't we discovered where the lost city was? And the fact that it was moved to a whole other galaxy, and there's this other new frontier, so to speak: a whole new network of Stargates that you can't really connect ... easily with from the network in our galaxy. And then coming up with a different enemy that ultimately ... set the tone for the show.
A lot of the stories we're telling in Atlantis don't necessarily have the Wraith in them. They're not necessarily about this villain of the week. But all of the planets we visit are cultures that are shaped by the Wraith and the context of having this enemy. ... In many ways, the tone of SG-1 was set by the fact that the Goa'uld had taken people from various times in Earth's history and transplanted them in other galaxies, and we kind of went around finding these little pockets of ancient culture. ... The cultures in the Pegasus galaxy are all being shaped by how they've dealt with the overriding presence of the Wraith.
One of the things I know that fans love about SG-1 is the interaction among the four main characters. They're all so nicely balanced, and the actors who play them seem to have found a nice chemistry. How are you going to work that out with Atlantis?
Cooper: Well, yeah, since we're still going with a core group of five, [with] Dr. Weir, as played by Torri Higginson, [as] sort of [the Gen. Hammond] role in Atlantis. ... I think that there are a lot of fans of SG-1 who have felt that that aspect of the show has ... maybe not been as strong in the recent seasons as it was in the earlier years, because of a number of factors, one being the shooting schedule that we had to deal with as far as Richard Dean Anderson's ... personal life and his commitment to the show. But, you know, we obviously have all of the actors available to us full time on Atlantis this season, and I think ... we're going to be able to capture that ... team interaction a lot better and much more like we did on the first three or four seasons of SG-1. ... So I think that's something the fans can look forward to.
Switch gears and talk a little bit about SG-1. Envisioning season eight as possibly the last season of SG-1, are you going to be wrapping everything up?
Cooper: We've been trying to for a long time. We thought, you know, every year has been the last year, and we've been kind of going along on that premise. ... Fans, I think, felt like season five and six had elements in them that felt like they were coming to a close or doors were being closed. But for some reason, every time we do that, other doors also open up. ... Yes, to a certain extent, I hope that fans will feel that at the end of this season that a lot the threads and storylines that ... they want to see resolved will be resolved. One of the big ones is, you know, we've ... brought out a new enemy they have to deal with this year in the human replicators. That was originally introduced in season five or season six. They become a force in our galaxy and then ultimately get into ... a big war with the Goa'ulds. And we kind of get caught in between the two and have to decide who we want to side with and help. ... But there're all kinds of things. Daniel's going to come to a bit of a closure with the whole ascendance storyline and what happened to him while he was ascended and his relationship with Oma and his kind of personal battle with Anubis and his feeling of responsibility for maybe not being able to complete the process of eliminating Anubis and all that.
Anubis isn't gone?
Cooper: I'll say that there are still issues out there.
Baal [Cliff Simon] is back in a big way, kind of causing problems for the Goa'uld and trying to take over. ... And there are going to be some new surprises. But a lot of the storylines we sort of dangled out there—[the] Jaffa and their rebellion—all those things are going to have big resolutions. Having said that, we also are not going to completely end the show. We never wanted to end the show. Our intention was to leave it open so that SG-1 was still out there on adventures and also leave the door open for features or TV movies or direct-to-video movies or whatever, that sort of thing, so that the franchise will continue.
Joe Flanigan, Atlantis kind of reverses some of the dynamic of the original SG-1 show, where you have Daniel Jackson as kind of the moral conscience coming up against the military. In this show, it's the military leader, played by you, butting heads with the leader of the team, who happens to be a civilian, Dr. Weir.
Flanigan: Well, that is accurate. I never really looked at it that way. But essentially that's the dynamic. One is the apparatus and bureaucratic parameters that they operate in. I tend to be a bit of a renegade and want to do things on a different level.
Your character also seems to have a lot of humor in him, that Jack O'Neill kind of humor.
Flanigan: God, I hope so. I hope it comes off that way. That was certainly the criteria for doing this role, that we could inject some fun into it. He's a guy who enjoys having fun, and his way of handling pressure is not to [succumb] to pressure, [but] essentially to make comments that are sometimes funny and sometimes not so funny.
Tell me about the sort of the physicality of the role. Since you're the lead guy and you're a military guy, is there a lot of shooting and running?
Flanigan: There is, yeah. Sometimes not enough. I really enjoy doing it. It really changes from episode to episode. Some episodes it's all exteriors. I'm running around, shooting things. And other episodes it's all interiors, and it's dramatic. It's a very different feel from episode to episode.
There are a couple of extremely powerful weapons that we get to fire. ... It is massive. I mean, it's hard to run around with this thing, and shooting this thing is pretty exhilarating. I bring down one of these Wraiths with this thing. It is absolutely massive. Things like that are a lot of fun.
When you're in a show like this, which is a lot of visual effects and outlandish storylines and science fiction, how do you keep your character sort of grounded in emotional reality or the reality of being a real person? Is that a challenge?
Flanigan: Well, actually, it's not. I think that's an important observation, because I think that my desire to have a character that's fairly normal is also my desire to watch a show with a character I can relate to. And I'm hoping that those who are not super-ardent sci-fi fans can still watch the show, because there is a normal guy going through extraordinary circumstances. And it's not that hard to maintain that level of normality, but I'm not quite sure I believe it myself the whole time, because, really, the character is going through this process for the first time, just like the audience. So ... he thinks it's all perfectly unreal as well. He never quite gets used to all of these incredible events that take place before [him] ... But we are essentially a Stargate show, with the classic elements of Stargate: travel to other worlds, etc. But the dynamic is probably different, because we're younger, and I don't think that my character is as perhaps [as] skeptical maybe as Rick's character. ... I know, having spent a lot of time with both casts and the producers, this is a distinctly different show that maintains the classic elements, so I think the fans will have to make that comparison.
Torri Higginson, your character is Dr. Elizabeth Weir?
Higginson: Dr. Elizabeth Weir ... [is] a smart lady. She's in a world that is brand new to her. ... She has great faith in and curiosity about human nature and the human race and just human relations. That's sort of where she comes from, diplomatic relations, and I think she has a great fondness for the human spirit.
It's kind of unusual for a woman to be a lead like this on any kind of show, let alone what's considered a science fiction show.
Higginson: It's very unusual. Which is why I find it very exciting, and it's very challenging. [Executive producer Brad Wright] has spoken about it, but it is challenging. ... How do you set this woman up in this position, and how do you make it believable that she can be that powerful and that in charge? I mean, [the] military is very masculine. ... It's a wonderful balance, because Joe is portraying Maj. Sheppard in such a ... warm way that that allows her more believability, in a way.
Tell me about some of the story arcs that your character has gone through so far and the challenges that she's had to deal with in this universe.
Higginson: There was one [episode] just recently [shot] where there was a question of using a prisoner for scientific research. And it was a very military and scientific decision, and she got the final say. I think that, to begin with, she felt bowled over that ... she didn't actually have the choice, because she's not the one actually out there on the lines. These people are going out ... and seeing these worlds, and she's back here trying to keep Atlantis going, so she's making decisions based on their information. And it was a very difficult journey for her ... to give up her own sense of ethics and right and wrong and her own need to fortify her power in that moment. ... She eventually said, "OK, yes, I condone this action." ... Joe had a great line where I was bringing up the Geneva Convention and those ideas, and his line was, "Well, if the Wraith were at the Geneva Convention, they would have ate everybody." So you suddenly realize ... this is a different world, so a different set of values. So that was a fun arc to play.
They wrote your dog into an episode?
Higginson: Oh, it was so cool. I think I said it as a joke. I think I actually said to Brad, "Either can I sing, or can my dog come in?" He was so frightened of the idea of me singing, he wrote my dog in an episode. But I was completely shocked. It was very sweet. She did very well. It was her first time acting.
Rachel Luttrell, you play Teyla Emmagan, a human from an alien world who joins the Atlantis team?
Luttrell: I come from a civilization which is, in comparison to Earth, slightly more primitive. We have some technological advances, like we can start fire with lasers and ... stuff like that. And ... we have a civilization that has reached a certain level of advancement. But we're kind of keeping that under wraps right now, because we're living under the threat of this horrific enemy called the Wraith. So we live in tents, and we move our settlements again and again and again to try and stay away from the Wraith. And essentially what ends up happening is ... the Atlantis team members find us, and we end up battling with the Wraith, and my people end up having to evacuate the planet. And so we move to Atlantis, and I end up joining the team.
I am the leader of my people, so I am a warrior, and I am probably, at this point, the one who knows the most about the Wraith. So I make a good addition to the team.
You do a lot of martial arts?
Luttrell: Well, you know, I'm learning. But, yeah, because Teyla is a warrior, ... and I do a lot of fighting. That will be a definite part of my presence on the show. So I'm learning kali, which is a form of Filipino martial arts [stick fighting], and now I'm learning a bit of kung fu and ... boxing and hand-to-hand and knife [fighting].
Is this new to you?
Luttrell: Oh, it's completely new. It's completely new. But I'm really enjoying it.
What's been the most fun for you in terms of stunts or action?
Luttrell: I had a fight ... a couple of episodes back against a Wraith—not a warrior, but one of the Wraith leaders—and that was really cool. So I got to incorporate a lot of the kali, which is you fight with sticks and you learn these patterns, and then, once you're really good at them, you can break them down, and you can sense what angle your opponent is coming, what angle you need to strike with. And so that was really, really cool. And the stunt guy who they had me fighting against was a martial artist himself, very, very talented, so it was just very cool to work with him. ... That was fun. It was a lot of hard work.
Richard Dean Anderson, you mentioned that you're going to be retiring at the end of this season?
Anderson: I've said it many times. And I keep saying it with ... the caveat that whatever retirement means to a workaholic. But yeah, I'm ready for a ... break. It's not like I've been taxed too much. The workload in the last two years has been lightened considerably. I've had an abbreviated schedule to accommodate my needs for more time with my daughter in Los Angeles. ... I love traveling, and I don't mind doing the back-and-forth [commute between L.A. and Vancouver], but it's just a matter of kind of being stabilized for a while. ... I mean, at five years old—she's almost six—I just need to be there [for my daughter].
How have they adjusted your schedule to accommodate this so far?
Anderson: Well, by creating nothing but hardship for themselves, primarily. ... It essentially just has to do with time. ... When we were in year five and six, I had pretty much at that time decided that it was time to move on. But in talking with MGM and with production staff here, I just said, "You know, it's no ploy for money. The money has always been just fine." All that they could provide me would be time, which is very expensive. But ... to accommodate that and to keep production in motion, we worked out a schedule that has me working essentially three weeks out of the month and then having a week off. And even, like, three or four days per week that I'm working and then that one week off. So I have weekends with my daughter, and then I'll have some time in midweek on the week that I have off. So it became very workable and acceptable.
In season eight, O'Neill is a general running the SGC and not going on so many away missions. And he's discovering what Gen. Hammond knew all along, but that your character was never really aware of.
Anderson: The cliche that I reference in talking about the character now in his current position is that of a fish out of water. O'Neill, on paper, really doesn't belong in a position of being a general. But he's ... embraced it as much as he can. And he still has his ... bottom line, just cut to the chase, that ... in so many ways [he] would rather be on the front lines. He'd rather be a man of action than a man of great thought or great organization. He works a lot by instinct, and in a position of great authority like a general in the Air Force, ... the opposite would probably be true. But ... we've made the adjustment, I think, and accommodated the character quirks that I've developed over the years. And to a great degree I think that it's been successful. ...
The writers were having a ball in the beginning, because they all know me well enough to know that I'd be putting a certain twist to it. But I still wanted to be respectful to the Air Force and to the credibility of portraying a general in the Air Force.
After playing the same character for eight years, how do you as a performer keep it fresh, keep it alive, keep it vital without just going through the motions?
Anderson: Well, blessedly ... it's almost as though some of my behavior has been condoned by the fact that in changing lines or changing an approach to a scene or bringing really a tilted attitude toward a scene and characterization, that that in itself makes it fresh for me. There's the written page, the written word, and then there's the voice of the character, which I know best, but Brad Wright, I think, out of all the writers ... has had the voice of O'Neill closest. ... [I] try to make it as bright and as interesting as possible. ... I've sort of been blessed with the freedom to play and to find stuff and make things as interesting as possible without fear of reprimand, but also trusting the writers and anybody else who might think that I'm way over the top, as opposed to just over the top. They may give me an eyebrow once in a while and pull me back. So with that kind of working situation, you know, what's to complain about? I haven't tired of this at all. And again, it goes back to my credo of, if it's not fun, it's not worth it. It's still fun.
Have you gotten to do something really fun?
Anderson: [In] the season opener [for Atlantis], ... [director] Martin Wood and I took three helicopters and went up to Pemberton Glacier and shot a sequence. It was actually for ... the pilot of Atlantis. [It was] just kind of the guilty pleasure of being able to ride around for 10 hours over the glacier, being chased by another helicopter. ...
I had given serious thought to bringing my skis up there, but the snow was so baked, there was no [way]. We actually had a pair of skis up there that one of our guides brought. Somebody tried to come down the hill and could not turn the skis at all, that's how thick and set up it was. So it was just as well. But stuff like that, again, they're guilty pleasures that come along with the perks of being ... part of a franchise that is action-oriented, fantasy-oriented.
Amanda Tapping, tell us what's happening with Carter in season eight. There's some big changes for her.
Tapping: Yeah, there are some big changes. First and foremost, she gets promoted, so she's now a [lieutenant] colonel. Lt. Col. ... Carter, which takes us back to the alliteration of Capt. Carter, which I was always fond of. ...
There are some big personal changes for her potentially, this year, which, I have to be honest with you, I balked at in a big way. I read the script and went no. But Pete ... is back, and as much as I love David DeLuise—and I do, truly, he's amazing—and I love the character of Pete—he's totally charming—my concern is sort of that ... she may be rushing into getting a life. ... In [the season seven episode] "Grace," she had this whole epiphany of "What am I doing with my life? And am I sacrificing personal life for my career?" But the show is about career. It's not about our personal lives so much. Having said that, I like the fact that they're bringing Pete back, and that they're opening her up as a woman and as a person. She's expanding her horizons.
I just don't want her to become a victim of her life, you know what I mean? I don't want it to become about Carter's personal life getting in the way of what she does. Because the thing that makes me so proud of this character—and something that we've worked on for eight years—is that she's so professional and so smart and so on top of her game and so competent. And ... the dynamics between the four of them is so important and the loyalty to the team and to the program and to exploration and to science. I mean, I don't want her to become too much the other way. But now I have a life, and I have a boyfriend, and I'm happy. I don't want it to be about that, you know what I mean? That's an interesting part of her that, like I said, opens her up. But I don't want her to become that girl. I've also always said that I don't think that Carter should ever be qualified ... by whether or not they're with somebody.
Your directed the season seven episode "Resurrection." How was that?
Tapping: Phenomenal. I loved it. I still get a huge grin on my face when I think about it. I was in the episode more than I wanted to be. I kind of didn't want to be in the episode I was directing, and I ended up being quite large in it, and I didn't have as much prep as I would have hoped, because we were shooting our season finale prior to my shooting my episode. But having said all that, it was a fantastic experience. Creatively, just coming up with a visual for the show, ... and I think I put my own stamp on it. It's a little bit different visually than other Stargates.
Think they'll let you do another one?
Tapping: I'm begging. And in fact, I've just come from Robert Cooper's office. ... Every two days I go up and say, "There's still a spot open on the director's schedule." And today he actually said, "This is getting a little old, this conversation." And I said, "It's just going to keep happening until that TBA is, you know, taken." So, yeah, I keep bugging him.
Christopher Judge, what's going on with your character for season eight? First difference I notice is you actually have hair this year.
Judge: Yes. It took a lot of years of begging and groveling for me to finally get it, but yeah, ... that will be the most obvious change, definitely.
How did you get them to finally agree to it?
Judge: It first was at least considered when there was going to be all the changes this year. You know, Rick being the general and things like that. ... I'd done a bunch of conventions [during hiatus] and had cornrows. So I talked to Rob Cooper before I left, and he said, "OK, maybe so." So I kind of unveiled the cornrows at the conventions. So we got [back] here, and it was the Friday before the Monday we started shooting. And pictures were sent down to MGM. And they didn't like it. So I had to shave the cornrows. But this is what's left.
So this is sort of a compromise.
Judge: Yes. Exactly. Exactly. Well, believe me, I'm grateful for it.
So you were seven years without any hair. What was that like for your personal life?
Judge: When you consider that it was only supposed to be a couple of years anyway, ... I got really tired of it. Just shaving my head every morning. And by three quarters of the way through the season, it was really painful to actually shave. So, you know, this is very welcome. Very welcome. Hopefully the fans will like it. ... Or at least not hate it. ... I think it was time for it. You know, I mean eight years for this character to be on Earth. I just think that was the next move toward his assimilation. His final assimilation. So, yeah, I think the timing is right.
What else we can expect to see for your character?
Judge: Teal'c will talk more than he has in the previous seven years, and it's really weird having to learn all these lines. It's just a gabfest, you know? And lots of romance for Teal'c this year.
Romance?
Judge: Yeah. ... Well, there's a new character who, I don't know what the future of it will be. ... It kind of pans out in the episode, but then, ultimately, it doesn't really work out in the end, but it's still kind of out there what's going to happen before. And of course, Ishta is coming back this year [in the episode "Sacrifices," which Judge will write]. Jolene Blalock. ... She's just a wonderful actress to work with, and we just got along really, really well, and she was well received by the fans and everything. So when I pitched another episode, it was, it was basically green-lit right away.
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Also in this issue:
The cast and crew of King Arthur
