David joins forces with GateWorld Founder Darren Sumner to run down the list of 12 things they would like to see in a fourth Stargate television series. Plus a handful of honorable mentions!

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Timecodes
0:00 – Opening Credits
0:27 – Welcome and Episode Outline
1:12 – Call to Action
1:59 – Welcome to Darren
4:28 – Darren’s Honorable Mention 1: Introduce a new galaxy
6:51 – David’s HM 1: Atlantis was Destroyed Saving Pegasus from the Wraith
7:49 – Darren’s HM 2: Bring back the Daedalus Variations Aliens
9:12 – David’s HM 2: Destiny’s Mission Succeeded
12:55 – Darren’s HM 3: Keep the Stargate Program a Secret
15:13 – Darren’s HM 4: Walter back in his chair
17:43 – #12: Set SG4 around 2070
21:00 – #11: A New Team
24:23 – #10: Establish SGC in the Asteroid Belt
26:47 – #09: Maintain Continuity. No Reboot.
30:26 – #08: Eliminate Hyperspace Travel
34:18 – #07: Earth Needs a Setback
39:06 – #06: No Series-Long Villain
42:04 – #05: Weekly Episode Releases
44:51 – #04: Make a Goa’uld or Wraith a Cast Member
49:39 – Why don’t you get a life?
52:33 – #03: Don’t take yourself too seriously
56:13 – #02: Reveal that the Vanir Resurrected the Asgard
59:47 – #01: Prominently feature the Stargate
1:03:54 – Thanks to Darren
1:05:26 – Post-Interview Housekeeping
1:06:53 – End credits

***

“Stargate” and all related materials are owned by MGM Studios and MGM Television.

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TRANSCRIPT
Find an error? Submit it here.

David Read:
Hello, everyone. Welcome to Dial the Gate. My name is David Read. Thanks so much for joining us. This episode, we have GateWorld Managing Editor and Founder Darren Sumner to join us to discuss the 12 things we want from Stargate, i.e. the next Stargate series, SG4. This is going to be a relatively lengthy discussion, so I hope you’re prepared to go down some esoteric rabbit holes, as it were, to explore some of the more specific nooks and crannies of what the Brad Wright Stargate universe had to offer us, and what we can mine from it for future storytelling. But before we get started, if you like Stargate and want to see more content like this on YouTube, it would mean a great deal if you click the Like button. It really makes a difference with YouTube’s algorithm and will definitely help the show grow its audience. And please also consider sharing this video with a Stargate friend. And if you want to get notified about future episodes, click the Subscribe icon. Giving the Bell icon a click will notify you the moment a new video drops, and you’ll get my notifications of any last-minute guest changes. This is key if you plan on watching live. And clips from this live stream will be released over the course of the next several days and weeks on our YouTube channels. Without further ado, let’s go ahead and bring in Darren Sumner to discuss the things that we want out of another Stargate series. Let’s bring him in. Darren Sumner, GateWorld’s owner and managing editor and founder. Welcome back, sir. How you doing?

Darren Sumner:
The founder. I just finished watching Deep Space Nine, and now I’m all confused by being called the founder.

David Read:
Founder.

Darren Sumner:
I am glad to be back on Dial the Gate. How are you, good sir?

David Read:
I am well. I am very well. So, we should probably advise Brad Wright should not watch this because the —

Darren Sumner:
Oh, this is probably gonna make creators angry

David Read:
Do not… unsolicited. This is unsolicited. It’s one of the things… People would approach Brad and Rob at conventions and be like, “I have this idea,” and they’re like, “Stop right there. We can’t hear it. We cannot listen to it.” Just don’t. So, just putting that out there. We don’t expect them to.

Darren Sumner:
And as far as what we want from a fourth live-action, in-canon Stargate TV series, I know for my part, there’s gonna be some looking backwards as well as looking forwards. So, this is a by the fans, for the fans.

David Read:
Exactly right.

Darren Sumner:
We love you, Brad. And we’re looking forward to seeing whatever you create.

David Read:
Exactly right. I would say so. All right. So, we have devised a system whereby — I think it’s pretty cool — we’ve devised a system whereby we don’t know what each other’s topics are for the new series but have also put in a fail-safe so that we don’t overlap. So, if you look really closely, you may…

Darren Sumner:
We’ll see how it works.

David Read:
… you may see that. So, let’s see how it goes.

Darren Sumner:
This will be an interesting experiment.

David Read:
I’m gonna do the even-numbered countdown questions.

Darren Sumner:
OK.

David Read:
Or countdown questions, what I would like to see in SG4, and then Darren will do his odd-numbered countdowns. We’ve got some honorable mentions as well. Actually, you know what? Let’s get to the honorable mentions first. Does that sound good?

Darren Sumner:
Sounds good.

David Read:
OK. So, before we really get into the thick of these, what’s one of your first… How many honorable mentions do you have?

Darren Sumner:
I have four here.

David Read:
OK. I have three. Go ahead with your four.

Darren Sumner:
OK, let me go first. To be honest, I thought, for our main list, I thought big picture. I thought how to approach a TV show and the in-universe world. So, these are more specific: my honorable mentions.

David Read:
OK. You’re gonna find out my later ones are more specific, so this will be interesting.

Darren Sumner:
Number one, I wanna see another galaxy. We saw lots of Milky Way. We saw lots of Pegasus. And then we saw Destiny as kind of skipping like a stone across many, many galaxies. But how about the Andromeda Galaxy? And I’m thinking about this not just because Andromeda gets brought up a lot by fans, but because …

David Read:
It’s a big galaxy.

Darren Sumner:
… you look at the timeline, you look at the fact that the Ancients were around for millions of years, they had been living in the Milky Way galaxy for a very long time, and then they went to Pegasus many millions of years ago. That’s a ridiculous amount of time.

David Read:
Someone went and studied Andromeda.

Darren Sumner:
I like the idea, even if the Lanteans or some other kind of subgroup didn’t settle in the Andromeda Galaxy. I like the idea that maybe they spent 100,000 years kind of kicking around and putting up new Stargates over there, but they kind of never got around to using them. So, there could be a whole Stargate network in another galaxy, potentially with populated worlds. But I don’t want a show that just goes there permanently, like Atlantis, and just explores one galaxy. So, my suggestion is that Atlantis has found their hidden ZPM room and Earth can now dial eight-chevron addresses whenever they want. So, we can dial to one of these planets in the Andromeda Galaxy and then bring along a single-use Mark 11 Naquadria generator and be home in time for supper.

David Read:
A new frontier. Absolutely.

Darren Sumner:
But still based in our galaxy.

David Read:
Diana Botsford and I created a six-book treatment called Stargate Oblivion that was set in a galaxy in the local group called Segue 1, which is believed, at the time, may — I don’t know if it is still — to have the highest concentration of dark matter in the known galaxies. And there was a Stargate network there which had interesting issues because of the dark matter. But this is very similar, for sure.

Darren Sumner:
You could do all kinds of interesting things like that.

David Read:
All kinds. I agree.

Darren Sumner:
Make a galaxy that’s really different than ours.

David Read:
Yep. There we go.

Darren Sumner:
All right.

David Read:
One of my honorable mentions: Atlantis was destroyed saving the Pegasus Galaxy from the Wraith. Atlantis is gone, which cancels out your previous one. Poetic justice on behalf of The Ancients if you think about it. So, I think that there is a story symmetry to this. Whether personnel were on board or not is up for grabs. I would probably say no. But Atlantis has existed forever.

Darren Sumner:
What’s the symmetry?

David Read:
The Ancients created the Wraith. Their crown jewel has to be given up to resolve that threat. That’s the symmetry.

Darren Sumner:
OK. I like the symmetry. I’m not going to endorse the destruction of Atlantis in public. They’ll draw and quarter me along with you. But I like the symmetry. OK. Here’s my next honorable mention.

David Read:
That’s funny. Alright.

Darren Sumner:
This one’s really specific. I gotta see the aliens from the Daedalus Variations.

David Read:
OK.

Darren Sumner:
Remember these guys? They’re gray in skin —

David Read:
Yep, Joe and I just talked about them.

Darren Sumner:
Really mean. Advanced ships. I gotta know who they are. The version that we encountered is from a parallel reality. So, does that race exist in our galaxy? Are they nice? Maybe in our galaxy they’re really nice.

David Read:
Maybe their little red head pieces are green, and green means they’re friendly.

Darren Sumner:
And green… Sure, sure.

David Read:
So don’t get them red.

Darren Sumner:
They’re friendly. They still look exactly the same, but they’re friendly. So, if you’re —

David Read:
The comics did something with them, didn’t they?

Darren Sumner:
The who?

David Read:
The comics did something with them, didn’t they?

Darren Sumner:
They did. They showed up in the Atlantis comics.

David Read:
Did they name them?

Darren Sumner:
I have not read all the Atlantis comics. I don’t know the ans[wer].

David Read:
I think it’s a one-syllable species name. The Gork.

Darren Sumner:
Grr.

David Read:
Or something like that.

Darren Sumner:
The grr.

David Read:
The grr.

Darren Sumner:
So, here’s my theory. In our reality, this species was infected by a parasitic snake-like creature with delusions of civility. It turned them into peace-loving beatniks determined to spread peace and love to the galaxy.

David Read:
Ah, there we go. “Me grr. Me not throw rock.” Geez. All right. Very good. Another one for me. Destiny finished its mission thanks to the Icarus Team. This is long. I apologize, but I wanted to explain myself. Destiny finished its mission thanks to the Icarus Team and the full data package of the cosmic background data is in its core. We found out that while Destiny was traveling, it was actually collecting the data and piecing it together rather than going to an ultimate source.

Darren Sumner:
OK, so now Destiny’s a giant computer that holds this.

David Read:
It holds it. But the nature of the cosmic background data has yet to be truly explained because we humans in our present state of development, any of us who have tried, have gone insane trying to process its sum knowledge. So, Destiny made it back via something similar to wormhole drive, but it has been kept in an undisclosed location. We keep it nearby in the event humans evolve to a point where we are able to assimilate the data ourselves.

Darren Sumner:
Because everybody who goes on board Destiny and flips on the computer terminal… goes mad.

David Read:
Yes. The Ancients were meant to discover it for themselves, and their brain power could handle it. Someone like O’Neill could maybe potentially handle it, but we were too early. We were too young. I like the idea that there are just some things, and I mean, it makes the question of sacrifice and the Destiny’s crew and everything else an issue. But I like the idea that there are some journeys that we’re not ready to take yet. And I don’t think that that’s the message that Brad and Rob were putting out with Universe. I just think that this is an interesting notion.

Darren Sumner:
And the universe is bigger than we are.

David Read:
Universe is bigger than we are. We are not gods. We think that we are on this Earth. We think, “Oh, we’ve got it figured out. We have to do this and then everything will be perfect.” No, no, no, no, no. The odds of exactly what we want happening and nothing else are zero.

Darren Sumner:
I like from a storytelling point of view, if this is in continuity with the existing canon, I like the idea that you really need to provide some answer to the big questions like that. But Stargate Universe was canceled, and you can’t make season three of Stargate Universe necessarily to try and answer that question unless Amazon wants to. Amazon.

David Read:
Amazon.

Darren Sumner:
So, your solution is really elegant because it provides some closure without giving away all the answers of what five seasons of SGU would have given us.

David Read:
Right, we leave it for the future.

Darren Sumner:
We don’t wanna come across Nicholas Rush and have somebody say to him, “Oh, what was Destiny’s mission?” And he just says, “God. We found God.” Now we’ve gotta move on with the episode.

David Read:
Yep, exactly. I want to make that mission remain tantalizing and something that they may be able to use down the road. My ultimate goal here is to give Brad and whoever else he’s with an opportunity to weave it into the story at a future time perfectly, based on whatever he is working on. Exactly what you said. Don’t leave the Destiny mission to a one-off line. Continue to make it mystical, if you will. Any other honorable mentions by you?

Darren Sumner:
I have two more. I think you and I might disagree on this point …

David Read:
My word!

Darren Sumner:
… that if a show is set in the here and now, if it’s set, say, in 2022, I’m thinking I want to keep the Stargate program a secret, at least for now. That was the big next step. Brad wrote a movie script that was gonna reveal the Stargate. Public knowledge is gonna open up new avenues of storytelling, but when we’re trying to get this show, the franchise up and running again after a decade, I’m not sure that I wanna spend a whole lot of time on Earth in Senate chambers having political arguments about what this thing is and there’s 20 minutes with the IOA. Those are important parts of the fabric of the Stargate universe, but I worry that a public Stargate program is gonna, again, take our attention away from the Stargates and from off-world exploration. Does that make sense?

David Read:
It does except for the fact that the program has now been running for what, 20, 25 years now. We’ve got God knows how many spaceships. The IOA isn’t gonna dry up and blow away. So, you’re gonna have to create a story where you sidestep the IOA.

Darren Sumner:
Not even necessarily sidestep. I’m not thinking of them …

David Read:
‘Cause they’re gonna be involved.

Darren Sumner:
… having less involvement than they used to. They can certainly have more involvement, but I think there’s a temptation, if we have a public Stargate program, you think of episodes like “2010” with the future timeline where the Stargate is in a public travel terminal. But that’s really cool and you can do some really interesting things with that. The three o’clock wormhole to Chulak is about to open. I think also there would be a temptation to tell lots of Earth-bound stories …

David Read:
You don’t want to do that.

Darren Sumner:
… which is what I’m nervous about, that the gate itself gets eclipsed by people fighting over the gate.

David Read:
That’s fair. Interesting. One of my ideas is gonna turn that around. I’ll get to that in a moment here. What’s your last one?

Darren Sumner:
Last but not least before we get into the big list, in a fourth Stargate show I wanna see Walter in his chair. Walter sitting in his chair calling out chevrons should be one great constant in the universe.

David Read:
Gary Jones will thank you and applaud you.

Darren Sumner:
Gary Jones, I’m thinking about you. I’ve worked out some story ideas here if you wanna hear them. By episode four we learn that Walter has been taking an experimental form of tretonin designed for middle-aged human males to combat male-pattern baldness and erectile dysfunction. As a side effect, he has become immortal. There can be only one.

David Read:
Walter. That’s ridiculous, man. Yes, you must write the rest of that out.

Darren Sumner:
It’s already halfway to fan fiction.

David Read:
Your April Fools’ gag. Was it an April Fools’ gag where you did the Wormhole X-Treme Season One?

Darren Sumner:
Oh yeah, that was ages ago.

David Read:
Water and fire.

David Read:
Dr. Levant… A fire breaks out in Dr. Levant’s office and he puts it out.

Darren Sumner:
As an April Fools’, I did a whole Season One Episode Guide for Wormhole X-Treme, and they were all paralleled to SG-1 Season One.

David Read:
The April Fools’ gag that we did, that’s the kinda thing I wish we had done more of.

Darren Sumner:
Enigsma. Lieutenant Enig’s mother comes to the SGC for a visit.

Darren Sumner:
They were not funny, but it was fun.

David Read:
Enigsma. You were trying to figure it out. OK, with the honorable mentions out of the way, let’s go ahead and get to the 12 that we really, really mean about what we’d like to see in SG4.

Darren Sumner:
The cream of the crop. This is what we wanna see most from the new show.

David Read:
Yes, all righty. I have the even numbered wishlist.

Darren Sumner:
That means you’re going second.

David Read:
I’m going first, starting at 12 and working our way down.

Darren Sumner:
We’re counting down.

David Read:
We’re counting down.

David Read:
I have to make this extremely complicated, or as complicated as possible.

Darren Sumner:
All right, should I reverse my order then? No, I won’t reverse my order.

David Read:
Whichever is the most impactful one, keep that to the last. I’m interested to see which ones filter out where because we could’ve put really anything. I wanted to be unconventional, and the first one follows with a theme, and with fans listening, they’re either going to like it or they’re not and don’t expect them to. But this is what I would like to see in order to keep the franchise fresh.

Darren Sumner:
That’s an intriguing setup.

Darren Sumner:
You’re about to make half the audience angry.

David Read:
It’s entirely, probably more than half. Number 12, you ready for this?

Darren Sumner:
Yeah.

David Read:
SG4 should be set around 2070, with the Stargate …

Darren Sumner:
A future show.

David Read:
Slightly. With the Stargate and aliens as public knowledge.

Darren Sumner:
OK. So, we have a twofer here. We have a future setting and a public Stargate program on Earth. So, what’s the case for this for the next show?

David Read:
Stargate has always been about the here and now, and I understand that and I appreciate that. I think later on in this century is still close enough to the here and now that it’s still relevant to us, but you can take advantage of technological advances, thematic advances in sci-fi storytelling, and you can have certain things fixed, which I will get to in a little bit later, that were plot holes, while still leaving room in the present for additional individual stories, i.e. DVD movies or feature films what off, in the present. But I would personally really like to see a time shift change, and everyone’s go to is prequels. We had that with Stargate Origins, and I would really… It’s an unpopular opinion, I suspect, but I would really appreciate nudging it a few years ahead. And I was thinking about that. When are we gonna do that? And it’s like, everyone’s thinking Jack-Sam-Teal’c, Shepherd-McKay, young Scott… We’ll get there, let’s just say, down the list.

Darren Sumner:
We’re gonna need, in that case, to think creatively about how to get our favorite actors and our favorite characters …

David Read:
Correct.

Darren Sumner:
… put in guest appearances.

David Read:
Exactly.

Darren Sumner:
Next Generation did this, of course. They had to think really hard about it. You had to have Scotty stuck in a transporter buffer. You had to have, “Well, Spock is a Vulcan. He’s very, very long lived,” in order to bring one-off characters into the next generation. That’s what you’d be faced with here if you want …

David Read:
All fair points.

Darren Sumner:
… Amanda or David Hewlett to put in a guest appearance.

David Read:
I think it’s more important that the bones of the show, in terms of what they can do next, take precedent over who we can see coming back, because that’s at least 50% of the agenda in all the fans’ minds. It’s like, “Who can we get back?” And I want a new show by Brad Wright that takes place in his universe that is completely new. What’s your number 11?

Darren Sumner:
Number 11. This relates directly to what we were just talking about, almost as though we had planned it. It does not —

David Read:
Again, I’ve not heard these.

Darren Sumner:
No, no. Number 11, I want a new team. Now, a new show is gonna have lots of fan service. If it’s created by Brad, and it’s written by Brad, and it’s set in the same universe, it’s gonna have callbacks. It’s gonna have, hopefully, those familiar faces popping up, but I want a new team. I want a group of youngsters, maybe a bunch of unknown actors, and I want a team that is… What I mean by this is not just an SG-1 reunion, not just getting those actors back for a movie or for a whole TV series. A team that is diverse, that has different kinds of characters. So, ethnically diverse, yes. Gender diverse, yes. But I also mean civilians and military, humans and aliens. That kind of classic formula of SG-1 that I keep going back to over and over again. There’s only four characters on SG-1, but there was such an interesting cross-section that every character was different to write for. You could tell. You could hear it from the scripts. When a piece of dialogue came up, there was an obvious character who should say that piece of dialogue: Jack, or Sam, or Daniel, or Teal’c.

David Read:
You know how they would respond, given the opportunity to have the next line in the script. It’s like, “OK. We have an idea of who’s gonna say what here,” but the question is which of them in this will the script service. That’s it. I love the idea of always having an alien on the team because you have to have that mirror pointing back to humanity. That was what was always effective about Teal’c and Teyla was that you have, “OK. Why do you get to be Mr. Fantastic?” For someone who has no context. Those kinds of questions, and Teal’c’s … On and on. But yeah, that’s a … All right. So, you’re indicating here that —

Darren Sumner:
“What is an Oprah?” “I am not Lucy.”

David Read:
Sorry, again?

Darren Sumner:
“What is an Oprah?” “I am not Lucy.”

David Read:
“What is an Oprah?” “I’m not Lucy.” Yes. Exactly. “You refer to me as Lucy.” So, what you’re saying here is you don’t want any, primarily out of this, you don’t want any classic actors to be one of the placeholders on the team.

Darren Sumner:
One of the main cast members, I would say. Now, there’s a good argument to be made for a General Carter being in charge of the base. If you could get Amanda on a semi-permanent basis, but for the core team, I think it should be brand new characters. And I think there should be a mix of not just all young people who are fresh out of Stargate Academy, but a mix of the seasoned vets and the youngster. You’ve got your Jack O’Neill with his black-ops background. You’ve got an Aiden Ford who’s a demolitions expert and a kind of a young, brash kid. That kind of mix and diversity, but mainly new characters is my point. New characters so that the characters that we know and love have a supporting role.

David Read:
OK. I think we can both hang our hats on that. Absolutely. Good number 11. Number 10. Establish Stargate command in the asteroid belt as part of an Earth defense perimeter.

Darren Sumner:
And not on Earth?

David Read:
Not on Earth, not on the Moon. It could have been on the moon, but I’m talking around circa 2070 here, so I think the belt would be a reason. I have not seen The Expanse. I heard that —

Darren Sumner:
I was gonna say, you need to watch The Expanse, I keep telling people.

David Read:
It’s on my… No. Once it’s finished, I’ll watch it, absolutely, unquestionably. So, I know that there’s something to do with the belt in that series, but this is not borne out of that. I think that’s a good place to establish a defense perimeter around Earth. Especially if we’ve had the ability to manipulate gravity and can throw some rocks at some rather large aliens that try and come our way. We have an unlimited supply of ammunition.

Darren Sumner:
That would be very cool. I love… If it’s a future series, I love the idea that it’s not set on Earth, that it’s not just you know, we have a different base we’re gonna build a new set and make it look a little more futuristic. But it’s actually not on the surface of the Earth.

David Read:
That’s exactly right.

Darren Sumner:
That’s really intriguing. Now, you might have to throw down with The Expanse folks, because once you get to about the third season of the show, you’re gonna see there’s some potential, I don’t wanna say intellectual infringement, but the ideas here are overlapping.

David Read:
OK. So, it’s not likely that they would go for this?

Darren Sumner:
Belters and Stargates overlap a bit between these shows.

David Read:
Really? All right. Interesting.

Darren Sumner:
You’re gonna love it.

David Read:
I know I will. I know I will, but I want it to be done. Like Breaking Bad, then I’ll mow it down. And Fringe, I did the same thing. It’s not going anywhere. What? The last season’s being produced right now, isn’t it? Or second to last?

Darren Sumner:
The Expanse?

David Read:
Yeah.

Darren Sumner:
They say Season Six is gonna be the last for now. The writers wanna do more down the road.

David Read:
There’s something in the story that allows them to do potentially more later. So, that’s fine by me. I think Stargate Command needs to be in the belt.

Darren Sumner:
OK, you’re filling out this future Stargate, the Next Generation idea. I like it.

David Read:
OK. What’s your number nine?

Darren Sumner:
Number nine is the red thread of continuity.

David Read:
The red thread?

Darren Sumner:
Red thread of continuity. David, you and I have been friends for a long time.

David Read:
Pleasure.

Darren Sumner:
We’ve been talking on GateWorld and Dial the Gate for years about Stargate, and you know that I love continuity. I love the show making references back to previous episodes, previous seasons, rewarding viewers for paying attention.

David Read:
It is safe to say that we are continuity whores.

Darren Sumner:
Continuity whores. So, what I wanna see from a new show that comes from Brad Wright that is continuing rather than rebooting his universe is elements, and actors, and characters, callbacks to the Stargate that we know and love. Of course. Don’t pretend that it doesn’t exist. And I don’t just mean bring on McKay for a guest appearance. Answer those questions that the shows left us with: where’s Atlantis, what happened to the crew of the Destiny? Et cetera. Show me that the past matters. That’s what this boils down to for me. Show me that those 17 seasons that I invested in are still informing this universe, that we’re telling new stories now.

David Read:
I think that… I would surmise that that’s pretty much a guarantee, in this —

Darren Sumner:
If it’s a Brad show, I think it’s a guarantee.

David Read:
If it’s a Brad show.

Darren Sumner:
It’s not a reboot, yeah.

David Read:
What do you think about the news about Amazon?

Darren Sumner:
[inaudible]

David Read:
That’s a pretty high number if that’s true. If that’s true, ’cause they were looking to sell, what, at eight billion? And what —

Darren Sumner:
Six billion.

David Read:
Well, with Apple that was …

Darren Sumner:
A few years.

David Read:
… that was the rumor before the ousting.

Darren Sumner:
Yeah, so they were toying around, reportedly, they were toying around with the idea of a six-billion-dollar sale to Apple in 2018. And the chief of MGM was allegedly negotiating this without permission from MGM’s board, and he got ousted. Then the impact of coronavirus has obviously challenged MGM’s business model quite a lot. Everybody else as well. So, it felt heading into 2021 if they could get six billion for the company in 2021, that would be a win, but Amazon’s talking about now maybe spending close to nine billion. If that’s right, I think it should be a done deal. It should be full steam ahead.

David Read:
The next few days will be certainly interesting. All right.

Darren Sumner:
It’s entirely possible that this gets announced before this episode of Dial the Gate goes up.

David Read:
We’ll see. That’s… It’s just a few days from now, so it’s entirely possible that that’s the case.

Darren Sumner:
If MGM announces, if Amazon and MGM announce a deal’s going through, then I think it’s just a question of timing.

David Read:
What are you thinking?

Darren Sumner:
Stargate’s a big, ripe franchise that’s ready for something new.

David Read:
I completely agree with that, and I think that Amazon will recognize that. My concern is that I’m feeling 50/50 that Amazon will want to either proceed with Brad or start all over again with someone else.

Darren Sumner:
Good question.

David Read:
I have a 50/50 suspicion on that. So, we’ll have to see.

Darren Sumner:
That’s a good question. If the deal goes through, it’s time for Stargate fans to start laying on the pressure again.

David Read:
Absolutely.

Darren Sumner:
A whole campaign that says, “We want a new show set in this universe and not a reboot.” That’s a message that needs to be loud.

David Read:
Loud and clear, absolutely. All right, very good number nine. Yes, absolutely, the past matters for sure.

Darren Sumner:
We’re ready for number eight?

David Read:
Number eight, hyperspace travel was destroyed by something similar to the Attero device.

Darren Sumner:
Hyperspace travel, completely, for everyone.

David Read:
For everyone. Hyperspace travel was destroyed. It may have been a last-ditch effort to stop the Wraith in their tracks, who knows? But Earth now builds its own Stargates and Supergates, using newly found intact subspace frequencies to move about the galaxy.

Darren Sumner:
Only Stargates, unless you want to take a ship somewhere, you can build a Supergate? There’s presumably gonna be a much more limited number of these?

David Read:
Yes.

Darren Sumner:
Interesting.

David Read:
So, we get rid of hyperspace, and if we wanna go somewhere now, we have to have a Stargate or a Super Gate to do it. So, one of the reasons that I wanted to set it when I said it is because I want the next Stargate to be a humanity-created gate. That’s not really something that we’ve even considered.

Darren Sumner:
That would have to be built. No, the Stargate’s always been built by the ancients. It’s always been found technology.

David Read:
Not always.

Darren Sumner:
Both for the Tau’ri and for the Goa’uld, it was found technology.

David Read:
That’s true. The Tollan built one.

Darren Sumner:
That’s true.

David Read:
The Ori built a gate network completely independently.

David Read:
Amelius also said that. Was it Amelius? What was his name? The Ori … The Stargate inventor?

Darren Sumner:
Nelus, I think.

David Read:
Nelus,

Darren Sumner:
I just watched it yesterday. I might have heard it mispronounced ’cause I went to check the Omnipedia, and I couldn’t find it under N. So, I might have misheard it.

David Read:
Let’s see here. Designer was Amelius.

Darren Sumner:
Amelius, OK.

David Read:
There we go. He was already on the way out the door with his ship, flying into space, the Ori went ahead to invent … I think it’s one of those, to get back around to the point of it, scientific inevitabilities. I think that’s one of the things that we discover wormhole travel after tinkering with it. And I think it’s time for Earth to start building our own.

Darren Sumner:
Once we discovered certain technologies and acquired technologies from the Asgard, our scientists got really good at repurposing it. And making different versions of it and miniaturizing it. I’m working on a video right now for GateWorld for next month on the Naquadah generator. This starts with the Orbanian device and then it gets adapted and improved by Earth. So, I like the idea if it’s set … 2070 makes it almost 75 years …

David Read:
Correct.

Darren Sumner:
… after we’ve opened the Stargate that, at that point, we have enough Naquadah and enough know-how, enough astrophysics talent …

David Read:
Correct.

Darren Sumner:
… that maybe we could do that. That’s very next gen.

David Read:
Yep. That’s the intent there. And I wanted to get rid of hyperspace. I wanted —

Darren Sumner:
Or maybe the Nox can help us.

David Read:
Maybe the Nox can.

Darren Sumner:
Because the Nox are still around and the Nox helped the Tollan build their gate.

David Read:
That’s true too. A big point to this one is to return to basics. Take this back to some more fundamental. It’s not to say that hyperspace travel can’t be, but I really wanted to curtail it with this one and bring it back to the Gates. Maybe wormhole drive is still a thing, ’cause Atlantis used wormhole drive off screen.

Darren Sumner:
If it’s still a thing, I think it needs to be explained.

David Read:
Yes.

Darren Sumner:
It needs to be fleshed out.

David Read:
Exactly. You have a number seven?

Darren Sumner:
Number seven is, this is the point where people start to furrow their eyebrows and say, “OK, you guys clearly planned this in advance.” Earth needs a setback or maybe multiple setbacks, which I think is exactly what you’re going for by disabling hyperspace. We need to get back to basics. We need to get back to a point where the Stargates are important, are central. But let me riff on what I’ve written here. Earth has had ships for 20 years. By this point now, I’m presuming a show that is set in the present day. So, a show that comes out in 2022 would be set around 2022. If that’s when the show is set, Earth has had ships for 20 years. They’ve had Asgard tech for most of that. We can blast through Ori ships. We can beam SG teams in and out of danger at will. We are, say it with me, OP, OPAF, Earth is overpowered.

David Read:
AF.

Darren Sumner:
So, we need to be dealt a setback. Now, this is a challenge for the writers, right? So, in Season Nine and 10, the SG-1 writers dealt with the power that Earth had by creating a new antagonist in the Ori who were even more super powered.

David Read:
You have to up the ante.

Darren Sumner:
Vastly more powerful than the Goa’uld. But let’s think around that by dealing our heroes a setback, something like the destruction of hyperspace, like you suggested, something that prevents us from using our Asgard tech. The beaming technology, it’s going back into an R&D phase because too many people got their molecules scattered across the atmosphere. Something maybe that separates our heroes from Stargate command, that was the solution to this problem that SGU wrote. There’s a distance between our OP home base and our heroes who are out on Destiny.

David Read:
And Atlantis Season One.

Darren Sumner:
That’s one of the reasons —

David Read:
One of the reasons I think Atlantis Season One was as good as it was in terms of storytelling, and I wish that they had extended it further, was that we were out of contact.

Darren Sumner:
We need to create some sort of scarcity. That makes it hard again to go out there and explore and make friends and fight enemies. It needs to be hard again. It needs to be a challenge. Otherwise, I would say a contemporary setting is irrelevant. It doesn’t need to be 2022. If we are as powered as we are now in 2022 in the Stargate universe, it might as well be set in 2070. It might as well be a next generation show, because it’s not really us anymore. You know what I mean?

David Read:
Exactly. Yep. To add to that, I think that piggybacks exactly on what I was saying a minute ago and is going to piggyback on what I’m gonna say in the next one. And I also want to add to mine. I don’t want to use human gates. The Milky Way gate system is still intact. The Pegasus gate system may still be intact. It’d be nice to have a gate that can easily connect to all gates in the ancestral line of Stargates. So, still going to planets and discovering new forms of life and everything like that would be key in my mind. But no, I think you’re absolutely right. We have been so cushioned by the tech that we have come upon and reverse engineered and everything else, that you’re going to need some kind of … And I suspect that this will be a case in some form, truly, some kind of curtailing to make the show interesting and unique in its own right. Because there are gonna be circumstances where if you don’t, fans of this new show… And we want fans of this new show to be fans only of this new show at first and discover the older shows later. I want new fans to find this thing. This is not just for us. That’s pretty egotistical. We want fans to go in and say, “How did humanity –” I don’t want them to go in and say, “How did humanity get that?” “Where did this come from?” I want it to make as much sense to them as possible, so that they don’t have to come online and say, “OK, please explain this for me.”

Darren Sumner:
For sure. It’d be a good jumping-on point. For sure. And this is kind of my response to, I say I don’t want the new show to be just fan service.

Darren Sumner:
I want lots of fan service. Come on. But I don’t want a show that’s just fan service, because it needs to be a jumping-on point for a whole new generation of fans.

Darren Sumner:
It needs to be accessible.

David Read:
Absolutely. We gotta do it. To piggyback off of that in terms of curtailing the environment and the story, this is leaning into what SGU I think did and was doing fairly well. Number six for me, no series-long villain.

Darren Sumner:
No series-long villain.

David Read:
No series-long villain. Only villains which can last from one episode to a couple of seasons. I want the inciting element to adventure and to conflict to be us. Not necessarily within the team and within the base, but I think that there is, with watching what happened with the Trust and everything else, and this may be leaning into The Expanse, there is potential here for alien villains, but also authoritarian humans, corporatists, fundamentalists. I think that once by this time we’ll have gotten our tendrils out into the galaxy and into the wider cosmos, established ourselves on Omega site, Z site, whatever.

Darren Sumner:
Earth colonies.

David Read:
Earth colonies all over the place, and we’ll start jockeying for resources. You know what, though? They’ll get themselves settled on a planet and, “Oops, sorry, never mind, wait, we’re trapped. Now we have something to fight for,” and we’re cut off from the gate network because … or we’re cut off from the wider community without any … if we don’t have the Stargates, we don’t have hyperspace travel. We need a Supergate. So, things like that.

Darren Sumner:
Yeah, and over time… The Novans came to identify themselves as Novans, not as Terrans or Tau’ri.

David Read:
They weren’t. Eventually. So, absolutely.

Darren Sumner:
Expanse is similar in that you’ve got human beings from Earth who are now scattered throughout the solar system, so there are different factions, different home worlds for humans.

David Read:
And apparently it makes for interesting drama.

Darren Sumner:
It’s interesting …

David Read:
Maybe I really need to watch The Expanse. Maybe my list would be a little different.

Darren Sumner:
Don’t wait for Season Six. You should watch The Expanse.

David Read:
You know I will, though.

David Read:
Talk about someone who waited until the end of Lost.

Darren Sumner:
Isn’t this The Expanse podcast? Is that what I signed up for?

David Read:
What now?

Darren Sumner:
Isn’t this The Expanse podcast? Is that what I signed up to plug?

David Read:
I guess so. It could be the next big thing that we do. Number five.

Darren Sumner:
Well, speaking of The Expanse, and speaking of …

David Read:
You’re kidding me.

Darren Sumner:
And speaking of a new Stargate show …

David Read:
This is crazy.

Darren Sumner:
… potentially ending up on Amazon, I want to drop us out of the in-universe storytelling and world-building for a second and talk about the release strategy for this show. If it goes on Amazon or Netflix or anywhere else, you know what? I’ve been thinking about this for a long time and I really want one episode to drop each week. I don’t want to get 10 or 13 episodes all at once. There’s a lot of reasons for that. That’s what The Expanse does. That’s what Amazon does with The Expanse. This is a weekly dole out. I think time plays a really big role in the viewing experience. My experience with TV shows now, I love certain shows that I’ve been able to binge, and blow through a season in a weekend.

David Read:
But you don’t get to sit with it.

Darren Sumner:
Or five seasons in a month. But the advantage of watching a show weekly is you get to live in the world. You get to think about it. You get to know the characters. You have time to re-watch something, go online and talk about it with other fans. And live in the space a little bit more than I do with shows that I binge. So, I want one episode a week. No full season dumps, and that’s all the more important, I think, with a show that is potentially gonna be ten episodes or 13 episodes for a season on a streaming platform. Let’s make it appointment television.

David Read:
Must see TV, that’s what I was thinking again. I haven’t sat down and watched a show on a regular basis since Game of Thrones on a week-to-week basis.

Darren Sumner:
[inaudible]

David Read:
I haven’t had must see television since then. And you’re right, when these shows get dumped online, most of the discussion is, when’s the next season? And there is some discussion about individual episodes, but we’re not all dangling by a thread. And there is some utility in that to fostering the fandom.

Darren Sumner:
I could see the argument from the other side as well. A show like Stranger Things doesn’t just live in the zeitgeist for a weekend. But not everybody can be Stranger Things the way that that hit the zeitgeist. Most shows… We watch most sci-fi and fantasy that drops on the streaming platforms, on Netflix and elsewhere, and we’ll spend a week with it, and then I don’t see something like Shadow and Bone talked about for the rest of the year. It’s just, “OK, are they gonna do another season?”

David Read:
Exactly. “Is it gone or is it back?” It’s a fair point. Definitely, if there’s another Stargate it needs to be weekly. I agree. I want a reason to sit down and have appointment television again. I have more specific ones, going in, to wrap things up here on the last few. Number four, this is more of a Next Generation call back, and I think you’ll see the utility in it. Number four, make a Goa’uld turned Tok’ra or a non-feeding Wraith a member of the core cast.

Darren Sumner:
Not just a Tok’ra, but a Goa’uld who has turned Tok’ra? Interesting. Why the distinction there?

David Read:
Because I want to establish that with the right thinking, the right technology, the right persuasion, like the Klingons were, no one is beyond redemption.

Darren Sumner:
I like that. I like characters like Jonas’ girlfriend in Fallout. What was her name? Kianna Cyr? She was a Goa’uld.

David Read:
You got it. That’s right.

Darren Sumner:
Of course I did.

Darren Sumner:
She was a Goa’uld. She wasn’t a Tok’ra, but she had certain sympathies. Sympathies towards Jonas.

David Read:
So much for my empire.

Darren Sumner:
She had her own agenda, for sure, but she was not a two-dimensional mustache-twirling villain.

Darren Sumner:
And I love the idea that now, decades after the fall of the Goa’uld Empire there’s still Goa’uld out there who are trying to …

David Read:
Correct.

Darren Sumner:
… figure out how to be in this galaxy.

David Read:
I want a modern Egeria or a Wraith that has had his handgina closed up and is now… The species now exists …

Darren Sumner:
It was almost Todd.

David Read:
… able to consume their own nutrients just like everyone else. We know that they do, we know that they can, but their life is now sustained based on some form of biological or organic biomatter rather than life essence sucking.

Darren Sumner:
Yes. It’s a technology that our heroes were working on in the first decade of the 21st century. Though it didn’t work the first time. It went horribly wrong with Todd and his crew in Infection. But why not by 2070 we’ve got that cracked?

David Read:
I would honestly think that, you know, had Atlantis continued, that’s an approach that would’ve ultimately resolved the show, that the Wraith would’ve made peace. Because we’ve already had the Goa’uld annihilated, we’ve already — Largely. We’ve already had the replicators annihilated. I don’t think the answer was that Wraith were going to be annihilated. Our keyboard key is getting stuck. And I think that in that situation, their palm suckers just would’ve been gone. Or the Wraith would’ve been in a position where they had to decide between one or the other. So that feeds back into resolution for past stories, making the past relevant. Not necessarily …

Darren Sumner:
I like that.

David Read:
… a member of the expedition team that goes out week after week, but a member of the core cast at the base. A Zelenka, if you will.

Darren Sumner:
OK. A key supporting character who’s in …

David Read:
Right.

Darren Sumner:
… 50% of the episodes.

David Read:
They only have so much utility. Worf started off as number nine of nine among the cast really. And worked his way up after Armistice and everything else.

Darren Sumner:
Although, I do really like the idea of a main cast member who is under prosthetics. Or in some ways, an alien member of the team who doesn’t just look like a human being with a tattoo on their forehead.

David Read:
Yep. I think one of the most successful elements of Discovery is Doug Jones as Saru. He is the most convincing alien I have ever seen in terms of a regular Star Trek cast member.

Darren Sumner:
Oh yeah.

David Read:
I have my issues with Discovery.

Darren Sumner:
Leans into it fully.

David Read:
But Doug Jones is perfect. For sure. So that’s my number four. El numero tres.

Darren Sumner:
We should’ve, you should’ve had somebody on the show who was gonna fight with you. I think we basically agree on everything here.

David Read:
But this has always been our problem.

Darren Sumner:
I know.

David Read:
Just a couple of white guys.

Darren Sumner:
Always. Well, we got together and started working together because we both enjoy the show in a lot of similar ways. We enjoy the mythology, we enjoy the interconnectedness, and the cast performances.

David Read:
Before you get to that, to hang a lantern on that, not specifically a lantern but to springboard off of that, I was reading on one of the Stargate Facebook forums the other day. And someone had come on and said, “Why are you all so… It’s a show that’s been off the air for over a decade now. Why are you all picking it apart so much?” And I am not getting it all out correctly, but the kind of point that they were coming across was, “Get a life.”

Darren Sumner:
I’ve seen comments like that.

David Read:
And it’s… A, its like “OK, why are you here? If that’s how you truly feel, what are you doing here?” And B, it almost felt like they were trying to pick a fight, but a lot of the… They were like, “Well, what does it matter if the Asgard’s appearance changed from Season Three to that earlier model to Season Seven? What does it matter that the backstory says that they were potentially refining their cloning technique, and so it was literally one form of clone versus another clone?” And little minutia like that. “Why do y’all care about that?” And the responses were very thought out in that the people were responding and saying, “Because A, there’s a chance that we all may have missed something.” So, trying to answer some of these more esoteric questions may lead to a greater understanding of the show in ways that we didn’t realize before, and that’s how I took it. It’s like, “Maybe I missed something.” I had a conversation with Joe Mallozzi this past week and we were talking about the scene in Unending where Daniel is consoling Vala, who’s crying, and it’s during the video montage. And I thought, “Man, they’re just really struggling through this.” And I sit with you in Robert C. Cooper’s office, and I learn, which you picked up on the intent immediately, and Robert was like, “Yeah, that was totally what it was,” that. What was that?

Darren Sumner:
That scene was a scene of mourning of a miscarriage.

David Read:
Yes! Yes. So that’s why we do this.

Darren Sumner:
And as someone who had a kid, and I think at the time when that aired was working on a second kid, that’s present in my mind in the way that I experience television.

David Read:
Correct, and so that’s why we do it. To rewatch something and rediscover it. I cannot tell you how many times I’ve sat down — and you will relate to this, and all of us will relate to this if we have ever rewatched anything — sat down and rewatched something from when we were younger that still holds up as an adult, but we derive new meaning from it because of where we are in time.

Darren Sumner:
That’s great entertainment, that’s great storytelling. It’s gonna catch you differently at a different angle based on where you are in your life and what you need from it.

David Read:
What you need from it is a very clear point too. Number three now, sorry.

Darren Sumner:
Stargate at its best. OK, let’s talk about humor on Stargate, something that is very often cited by fans as a core element of what makes a good Stargate show. An element of humor, Richard Dean Anderson brought this in spades for eight years on Stargate SG-1. SGU was criticized for being too dark and not funny enough. SGU by the end of two seasons has some of my favorite comedic beats in it, like in Hope with Volker’s surgery.

David Read:
Oh man, that was fantastic, and that was not scripted.

Darren Sumner:
And his iPod.

David Read:
Yes, or getting accidentally frozen in the stasis chamber near the end of the show. I love Brian.

Darren Sumner:
So, my number three is I want a serious show that doesn’t take itself too seriously. Let me unpack this. I want a show that has a sense of adventure, that is, to some degree, light-hearted. It’s fun to go out and explore the galaxy, to find new things, meet new people, get into trouble. There’s new opportunities every time that we go through the gate. I want a show that avoids being overly grim and dour, which arguably, again, SGU was, at least in its first season. It was very serious, the characters were fighting a lot, there was an outright coup.

David Read:
SG-1? SGU?

Darren Sumner:
SGU.

David Read:
SGU.

Darren Sumner:
Did I say SG-1?

David Read:
I’m not sure.

Darren Sumner:
The first season of SGU. So, in that regard, great, more humor, more adventure, maybe a show more like SG-1 and Atlantis. But on the other hand, I also want a serious show. I love The Expanse as a serious show that has great humor, but it’s a show that takes itself and its mythology and its stories very seriously. The characters who live in that world are not always winking at the camera. And this I detect, if we wanna, again, look backwards and critique the shows that we love so much, I think the later years of SG-1, the humor got a little on the nose. The humor got a little corny. And I’m thinking of episodes here like “Bounty.” The whole high school reunion plot line was a little bit tongue in cheek for me. Characters like Tenat and Jup.

David Read:
Tenat and Jup.

Darren Sumner:
Remember those guys? “Damn you Cam Mitchell.”

David Read:
Mitchell. That’s true.

Darren Sumner:
It’s funny but, you know, it’s a different kind of sense of humor than RDA brought.

David Read:
It has a comic book texture to it, where I think it has that balance of that kind of humor and that kind of seriousness at the same time, where if you let the pages speak to you, it comes out serious but also very much like — God forbid we take our villains too seriously. Which is kind of what they did a little bit more with the Ori at the end. But it sounds like what you’re basically asking for is the best of SG-1 in the next show.

Darren Sumner:
The best of all of them, I think. SG-1, Atlantis, and SGU all did this in various degrees of success at various times in their lives. But yeah, for me, humor is an important part of Stargate, but too much or the wrong humor, humor that’s a little bit too wink-wink, nudge-nudge, kills the immersion, honestly, or the storytelling.

David Read:
That’s fair. Good one. I like. Number two, I’m getting more specific in terms of past mythology here. This is something that I would like to see. Number two, reveal that the Vanir were used to resurrect the Asgard ultimately.

Darren Sumner:
Now pump the brakes and explain to us who the Vanir are again since they were never mentioned.

David Read:
The evil Asgard, the Pegasus Asgard.

Darren Sumner:
The Pegasus Galaxy.

David Read:
It’s not mentioned on screen, but fandom, and particularly the novels have adopted that subset of Norse mythology. The Aesir and all the others. So, I think, and Joseph Mallozzi has strongly hinted at this, that this was a distinct possibility, that had we had the Pegasus Asgard and the Asgard core, we could have done some magic near the end there and reinstated the Asgard as a species. But it was not something that they had decided absolutely were gonna do. But it was definitely in Joe and Paul’s awareness that this was a thing.

Darren Sumner:
‘Cause we not only, with the Vanir, have a new base of genetic material …

David Read:
Correct.

Darren Sumner:
… for restarting the Asgard species, but also they’re 10,000 years further down the road with their own cloning research.

David Read:
Right, they’re completely different. So, if we still have some original Asgard genetic material that Heimdall was working with, if we can somehow couple that with the Vanir, I think that would have a result. A positive result. I don’t necessarily want the Asgard to be around anymore. Maybe the Asgard ascended. So, I would like to see them.

Darren Sumner:
I don’t know how I feel about that.

David Read:
You don’t know how you feel about that?

Darren Sumner:
I think the Asgard are important to the Stargate universe, and I’d love to see them back in some way, shape, or form, but they’re another example of an ally that is OP, so the writers were having to come up with explanations for why the Asgard weren’t always coming in to save the day. And I don’t know how I feel about the Asgard ascending.

David Read:
If we don’t wanna keep on having excuses about the Asgard coming in and saving the day, but also having our cake and eating it too with the Asgard coming back, what do we do with them?

Darren Sumner:
If you don’t leave ’em extinct, that was one of the problems the show was always balancing. I don’t know if it was a problem, but the fact that Earth was new to the galaxy and was exploring and trying to figure its way out, that great line from Jack O’Neill in “The Fifth Race,” “We’re out there.”

David Read:
“Now.”

Darren Sumner:
“We’re doing the best we can.” We want Earth to not be OP, to not be ruling the galaxy. But if there are groups out there that are more powerful than Earth, what do we do with them? Either they’re bad guys, like the Ori, and we have to figure out how to conquer them, or they’re potentially allies, like the Asgard. They had to be kind of sidelined by their replicators. The Ancients, we had to say that they have this non-interference directive, that’s why they’re not helping, or they’re disinterested, like the Nox, also kind of a non-interference directive.

David Read:
And we didn’t see the Nox again after Season Three. There were references to them late in season three, and that was it. That’s fair. All right.

Darren Sumner:
That’s good. I liked that.

David Read:
Number one.

Darren Sumner:
Number one brings us full circle back around to number 12. Number one, I wanna see lots and lots of that big spinny puddle device.

David Read:
That round thing.

Darren Sumner:
That round thing you plug in seven symbols or eight or sometimes nine, and there’s a kawoosh, kind of flushes sideways, and you get to go to another planet. I’ve criticized in the past some episodes and some later lines of storytelling that sidelined the Stargate in favor of Earth’s fleet of ships. We could zip over to a planet and beam someone down. That opens up new kinds of storytelling possibilities, but it also kind of shuts the door on —

David Read:
It closes others.

Darren Sumner:
There were entire episodes where we never saw a Stargate. Let alone —

David Read:
Particularly in Atlantis, ’cause they didn’t build a full one off-world. No, it’s fair.

Darren Sumner:
So, I’m gonna see a Stargate. In fact, I’m gonna institute a rule for this show, and I’m in charge, so this is the rule. There should be no episode in which a Stargate never appears. Even if it’s gotta be a shot of a gate in the gate room over somebody’s shoulder, I don’t wanna go 60 minutes without seeing a Stargate.

David Read:
Agreed. That was perhaps my biggest bone of contention with Atlantis. With SG-1 …

Darren Sumner:
With Atlantis?

David Read:
With SG-1 — yes — that gate was a major part of the off-world activity. You take a look at “Redemption Part 1.” Teal’c is with Rya’c. They’re at the funeral pyre for Teal’c’s wife. That gate is lit in the background, and in a lot of shots it is out of focus.

David Read:
But it is present.

Darren Sumner:
‘Cause they had a physical prop.

David Read:
Correct. It is present as a character. With Atlantis, you don’t get that. You get a DHD. This was a cost-cutting thing. It was a trade-off with having access to a puddle jumper a lot so it could take us further afield, which I got. That was one of the issues that I had with SG-1 particularly. You take a look at an episode like “Cor-ai” with the people of Cartago, their settlement is right next to the friggin’ Circle of Woes or whatever they call it, Circ Kakona at that point. It made sense that the human settlements in the Pegasus Galaxy would be pretty far away from the Stargates there. So, that made sense. I got that. And of course, the Wraith would call with darts, so distance was really no issue.

Darren Sumner:
It did make sense for SG-1 if most of these civilizations that we encountered were transplanted from Earth through the Stargate that their settlements would be close to the Stargate.

David Read:
Once they had a chance to get away from Goa’uld occupation at any degree, get the heck out of there. Now, I’m sure you could make an in-universe argument that those civilizations that tried to do that were punished by the Goa’uld in some way, so that is fair.

Darren Sumner:
But the bigger civilizations obviously that we saw like Tegalus that had grown out a bit more were those where the Goa’uld were no longer around.

David Read:
Right, exactly.

Darren Sumner:
For centuries or potentially millennia.

David Read:
But I completely agree with you, make the Stargate a character in its own right of the show as important as the lead.

Darren Sumner:
I love seeing puddle jumpers. I love the space gates as a conceit in Atlantis. And I liked being able to go farther afield on a planet. It was really SGU where I started to notice this, because it was a show that was set on a ship. It was a show that was not about exploring planets or meeting other civilizations. So, the Stargate very much felt like a prop that we would use when we had to. But it didn’t necessarily need to be there. ‘Cause we also had shuttles.

David Read:
Yep, absolutely. Very good list, man.

Darren Sumner:
Hey.

David Read:
I like it.

Darren Sumner:
I like it.

David Read:
Absolutely. This was entertaining. And the fact that we had no overlaps, very good. We had the honorable mentions. We had the core 12. I hope you have been entertained by this as much as we certainly have. That’s a good approach. I really hope Brad didn’t watch. Not because I want him to implement these things, but ’cause some of our ideas are really not that great, so… In terms of what he puts out.

Darren Sumner:
I hope Amazon is… There are a bunch of nerds all over the world who want Stargate …

David Read:
On that point.

Darren Sumner:
… want a new Stargate now that is created by Brad Wright and in this universe that we love.

David Read:
Yep, absolutely. I completely 100% concur. And hire us to help.

Darren Sumner:
We’re available …

David Read:
We are.

Darren Sumner:
… for consulting and bar mitzvahs.

David Read:
Exactly. Very good. We will have a communique. All right. I appreciate you stopping by once again, and it means a lot to me to have you here, especially for a part of a discussion like this.

Darren Sumner:
Always glad to do it.

David Read:
All right, man.

Darren Sumner:
We gotta do trivia again at some point.

David Read:
Yes. I’ll reach out to you to work on that for the month of June. Let’s solidify that, June.

Darren Sumner:
I wanna get my title back. I lost my title the last time we did it.

David Read:
Yes, absolutely. Well, she was pretty good. So, we’ll have to see. We’ll definitely do another one and we’ll invite the whole band back together to do another episode. So, appreciate you stopping by.

Darren Sumner:
Cool. Keep up the good work. I’m watching.

David Read:
Thanks, man. My thanks to Darren Sumner for joining me for this episode. Really appreciate him joining in and stopping by. So, we get along like a house on fire. It’s like it was back in when I started talking to him in 2001, 2000, and it’s something that continues to this day. Dial the Gate is brought to you every week for free, and we do appreciate you watching. But if you wanna support the show further, buy yourself some of our themed swag. All right. So, we are offering T-shirts, tank tops, sweatshirts, and hoodies for all ages in a variety of sizes and colors at Redbubble. And we currently offer four themed designs, hope to add more in the future. Checkout is fast and easy, and you can even use your Amazon or PayPal account. Just visit dialthegate.redbubble.com. And thanks so much for your support. Robert C. Cooper is joining us at 2:00 PM Pacific Time to discuss Atlantis from A to Z, or zed for all of you McKay fans out there. My big thanks, tremendous thanks to Tracy, Keith, Jeremy, Reese, Antony, and welcome back, Summer, as well, my moderating team, and my production assistants, Jennifer Kirby and my co-producer Linda “GateGabber” Furey. You guys make the show go round. My name is David Read for Dial the Gate. Thanks so much for tuning in. Hope you stick around for the fascinating discussion ahead with Robert C. Cooper. We’ll see you on the other side.