Join David Read and GateWorld’s Darren Sumner as they dissect the latest updates from Brad Wright, as well as Blu Ray releases and the state of Stargate on streaming platforms.

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TRANSCRIPT
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David Read:
Welcome everyone to Episode 42 of Dial the Gate, my name is David Read. With me once again is Mr. Darren Sumner, if I can get this thing to work right. Hello, sir. How are ya?

Darren Sumner:
Hey. Now I’m unmuted.

David Read:
I had mine off as well.

Darren Sumner:
I was expecting the whole run of show thing. I got a good 90 seconds here.

David Read:
Throw a curveball at you here. Wanted to say hey to you for a second here, but we’re gonna be getting with you in just a moment here. The plan for this show is strictly catching up with Darren, seeing what’s going on with him, Stargate news. That’s the main plan for this episode. So, we’re going to have some time to catch up with him, go through the news, take live viewer questions. You can submit more than one in this case because these are not for any special guests, it’s just us in today here.

Darren Sumner:
It’s just us.

David Read:
It’s just us. Before we get into that, I would invite you to click the Like and Subscribe. We are announcing a brand-new Discord channel. The link is right there on the screen, please be sure to copy it exactly. A lot of fans come together each week in YouTube to chat and now the discussion doesn’t have to end. So, go to our Discord channel after today’s shows. Also, if you like Stargate and you wanna see more content like this on YouTube, it would mean a great deal if you click that Like button, because it makes a difference with YouTube’s algorithms and will definitely help the show grow its audience. Please also consider sharing this video with a Stargate friend and if you wanna 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. That’s all she wrote. How are you, man?

Darren Sumner:
I’m doing well.

David Read:
Good.

Darren Sumner:
I’ve been watching Dial the Gate as much as I could over the busy holiday season and on into January and I wanna know how you are feeling about how the show is going. Are there standout awesome moments or things that you would’ve done differently?

David Read:
Man, done differently? I guess I would’ve trimmed a couple of things that I’ve started to trim now. There’s a kind of uniformity with the show that we’re moving into that I’m comfortable with. I’m getting into a couple of bad habits that I don’t particularly like very much, but we’ll keep those to everyone’s imagination. But yeah, I mean, generally speaking, it’s really good. The velocity of the show, in terms of the audience interest in it, is now what I expected it to be at the start. For a while there, we were growing at like a thousand new subscribers every week and that was, “wow,” I couldn’t believe it.

Darren Sumner:
It was a big explosive start.

David Read:
It’s settled into about a thousand a month, which is what I was expecting. So it’s interesting that that has now come to pass.

Darren Sumner:
Which is still a great number.

David Read:
I’m very pleased.

Darren Sumner:
You’re talking about channel subscribers.

David Read:
Yeah, exactly. There are quite a few people who were in the comments who were like, “Why isn’t this thing getting picked up faster?” It’s like, “Well, it’s only been around for three months.”

Darren Sumner:
A lot of YouTubers take two, three, four, five years to really kinda spark.

David Read:
Love it or hate it, it’s a show that’s off the air now. So there’s not gonna be a ton of interest at the start.

Darren Sumner:
I think GateWorld’s a lot of the same, obviously, with reflecting the interests of the audience and people who turn up for Dial the Gate and the people who go to GateWorld on a day-to-day basis are the hardcore Stargate fans.

David Read:
That’s right.

Darren Sumner:
There’s a ton of casual fans out there who, if the studio were to turn around and announce a new show, they’re suddenly gonna start to Google Stargate again and they’re gonna find this show.

David Read:
Things like this and GateWorld, absolutely. I was interested to see, we’d finished a trivia challenge just not 15 minutes ago, if anyone in the group would notice my new addition. No one said anything. I’m kinda surprised.

Darren Sumner:
I was looking at it.

David Read:
Really?

Darren Sumner:
I spent the first half of the show trying to figure out if it was broken glass, like the top of a helmet with a broken face shield, and then I recognized that that’s the acrylic stand.

David Read:
Exactly.

Darren Sumner:
That’s Destiny sitting on top of that.

David Read:
I got it on Wednesday. It came in. I requested one of these back in October. I was standing in the Air Force Museum in, I think, West Virginia, and contacted Tom over at Working Props and said, “I’ve gotta have a Destiny for the show.” So, he came through and made this.

Darren Sumner:
So cool.

David Read:
It is absolutely magnificent what he has done. The detail, I’ll post some photos later, but the detail that he’s put in, I mean, the friggin’ scorch marks and everything else is absolutely magnificent work. I’ve wanted one of these things for years and he just came through.

Darren Sumner:
Is that a resin cast?

David Read:
I think so. It’s definitely some plastic.

Darren Sumner:
It looks pretty light.

David Read:
It is very light. I had problems hanging onto it for the first little bit.

Darren Sumner:
Hopefully that and the shape of the Destiny means it’s not gonna start to sag after a couple years. Like your poor nacelles back there behind you.

David Read:
It’s pretty sturdy. I know, my poor Constitution-class nacelles. I don’t know if this is gonna show up at all, but he made a…

Darren Sumner:
A teeny tiny shuttle?

David Read:
… teeny tiny shuttle.

Darren Sumner:
That’s adorable.

David Read:
That’s in the scale of the ship.

Darren Sumner:
It’s a little micro machine shuttle.

David Read:
Exactly. I don’t know if you’ll recognize this.

Darren Sumner:
It’s a little Kino ball, but it’s not to scale.

David Read:
It’s not a Kino.

Darren Sumner:
It’s not a Kino?

David Read:
Mm-mm.

Darren Sumner:
It’s the Nakai. The Nakai ship. There you go.

David Read:
Is that not legit?

Darren Sumner:
That’s legit.

David Read:
I asked for a custom display stand and he was like, “We’ll see what we can do.” Not necessarily a custom-

Darren Sumner:
I still have this replicator block from Dean.

David Read:
Hang on a second here. That’s one of the originals.

Darren Sumner:
You gotta remind me next time we do this and I’ll pull my screen-used Zat gun out of the garage.

David Read:
You still should have the Asgard communications dome.

Darren Sumner:
I do. It’s in a box.

David Read:
There you go.

Darren Sumner:
I gotta pull that out too.

David Read:
He created a custom display case, or a display stand, which he is now selling as well.

Darren Sumner:
It’s got the whole etching of the ship right on there.

David Read:
The etching of the ship and then you’ve got…

Darren Sumner:
Is that an address?

David Read:
It’s got an address on the front piece here.

Darren Sumner:
There’s some Ancient on the side there.

David Read:
Exactly. The work is stellar.

Darren Sumner:
That’s amazing. What does the Ancient say?

David Read:
I haven’t bothered to translate yet.

Darren Sumner:
Does it say Destiny?

David Read:
It should, if I had to guess. He’s pretty good about that kind of thing. I’m gonna have to go and translate it, but I haven’t really bothered yet.

Darren Sumner:
It’s gonna say something random. It’s gonna say Herald or something.

David Read:
The ice cream cone Ancient Stunners here, on the side, they say, “Made in China.” Whatever, man.

Darren Sumner:
In Ancient.

David Read:
In Ancient, that’s right.

Darren Sumner:
That’s great.

David Read:
So, news items.

Darren Sumner:
We got a bunch.

David Read:
We have you on for news. So, Brad Wright was on The Companion, was it November?

Darren Sumner:
It was in November. It was right before Thanksgiving.

David Read:
OK, and that was his latest update on Stargate. What did he really have to say?

Darren Sumner:
We did a full write-up of what he had to say Stargate-wise over on GateWorld.net if people wanna go read the full thing, but let me read the quote here. Brad started out, he knew that people were gonna show up for an AMA, and the first thing they were gonna ask…

David Read:
Which means ask me anything.

Darren Sumner:
Ask me anything.

David Read:
Which I did not know.

Darren Sumner:
We’ll get there. You and I are both old men, but we’ll get there. People are gonna ask him, “Is there a new Stargate show?” We’ve been reporting on GateWorld since the start of 2019 that Brad was in development on something. Here’s what he said. He said, “I just want everybody to know that MGM and I are working on something. It’s just too early to talk about and it’s partly too early because there is a pandemic going on and that’s ground a few things to a halt, but we are working on something. It’s very exciting. It’s something that we’ve been talking about for a while now and I love it. I’m excited to have the possibility of making it someday soon, or someday period.” Here’s where he gives us some detail, which again confirms what we’ve been reporting for a while now. Brad says, “I’ll say this much, it exists in the universe that you already know. It’s not a reboot. It’s not a completely new thing. It’s a continuation. I’ll leave it at that. I’m not allowed to say anything more. I’m sworn to secrecy.”

David Read:
He would be the last person.

Darren Sumner:
Of course, GateWorld reached out to Brad and said, “Can you say more, though? Can you give us a little…” He wrote me back and said, “No, I can’t. I gotta wait for MGM to have something to say.”

David Read:
That’s fair. Brad would be the last to overwrite his own mythology. I mean, that just makes sense.

Darren Sumner:
The fact that they ended up talking to Brad, end of 2018, early 2019, really shows that MGM sort of turned their attention toward the existing mythology, the past shows, the existing fan base and what most fans wanted.

David Read:
Stargate Command website was still online at that point and when it went down, I was very concerned that everything Stargate-related in MGM’s mindset was gonna go on the back shelf somewhere. I was like, “Please, God, if you’re gonna shelve us, fine.”

Darren Sumner:
It was not a good sign.

David Read:
“But do not shelve him.” I’m still pretty optimistic about it. The question is when? That’s the hard one. Right now, so much stuff has ground to a halt. I don’t know what’s gonna happen.

Darren Sumner:
I do a lot of reading of the tea leaves and making my best guess based on some contacts that I have, yes, but also based on knowing how the industry works. COVID had a big impact on film production, obviously. You can read this across all the trades; the way that everything shut down around March. Some productions started opening up again in September and into October in Vancouver. There’s work being done, but there’s COVID protocols. You talked at length with Joe Flanigan about his COVID protocols for shooting See and Toronto. He was in quarantine while you were interviewing him on Dial the Gate. It’s such a weird time, it makes new Stargate impossible to predict.

David Read:
It’s gonna be interesting to see how things unfold and the velocity at which things start to pick back up. I have serious concerns about MGM, if I’m to be speaking completely candidly here.

Darren Sumner:
This is another story.

David Read:
MGM, Bond is costing them millions every month that it doesn’t come out. Didn’t HBO offer to pick it up for 300 million or something?

Darren Sumner:
The headline here from December is that MGM, which owns the Stargate franchise, may go back on the selling block. The whole studio might be bought by someone. Now, that’s different than MGM selling off its assets, which I’ve also heard people talk about. This is not that. This is not MGM selling Stargate or selling Bond or selling other things that they own a stake in. It’s somebody actually coming along and buying the whole studio.

David Read:
And the whole library of movies that go with it.

Darren Sumner:
All the libraries.

David Read:
Thousands of films.

Darren Sumner:
One of the most valuable things that MGM has to offer the industry is its library because they’ve been around for who knows how many years. The better part of a century. They have a huge library of film and television in addition to all the stuff that’s currently in production. They own all this IP and it’s really lucrative. Since we’re on a podcast, we can do the long version of this. Stargate fans remember that MGM went bankrupt in 2010. This was when Stargate Universe was on the air. Just when we needed a studio to step up and say, “Hey, OK, we’re gonna go find a new home for Stargate Universe, or we’re gonna negotiate a better deal with Syfy Channel and get this picked up for a Season Three,” the studio was in bankruptcy.

David Read:
There was no one there to pick up the call.

Darren Sumner:
There was no one there to even try. What happens in 2010 then is that, because MGM went through bankruptcy, its creditors came to own the company, came to own the studio. Everybody that MGM owed money to is now the owners of MGM. Their plan was to build back up the value of the studio and eventually sell it. That was always the plan. As far as I can tell, those investors are trying to recoup their losses when MGM declared bankruptcy. They want to build it back up and then sell it. The question has been over the last decade, “OK, when is that gonna be? When is MGM gonna get to a good enough point in its financials where they’re ready to sell?” Let me read some of the article here.

David Read:
Please.

Darren Sumner:
That’s been punctuated by the Bond films because Bond is the biggest thing that MGM has going.

David Read:
It gives them an infusion of capital every four or five years. Didn’t Skyfall do 800 million? That’s a huge infusion of capital.

Darren Sumner:
Skyfall came out in 2012 and brought in $1.1 billion.

David Read:
That’s worldwide. It’s global.

Darren Sumner:
That’s global numbers.

David Read:
They don’t always recoup all of that. People have to understand, particularly in China, a lot of that money they don’t ever get, they don’t ever turn it over.

Darren Sumner:
It’s also a non-profit. People look at the bottom line and OK, you gotta subtract, obviously, the film’s production costs. You have to subtract the advertising, the marketing budget.

David Read:
Huge chunk. Millions.

Darren Sumner:
Which is very often, for these big tent-pole movies, it could be in the hundreds of millions. Then you have to subtract the amount that screeners take. The theater gets to keep 50% of ticket sales usually. We don’t know what MGM made from that, but Skyfall did great in 2012, 1.1 billion. Spectre was the next Bond movie in 2015; it had a worldwide gross of 880 million.

David Read:
Spectre was what I was thinking of.

Darren Sumner:
Which is still great. What happened then was the person who was in charge of MGM, Gary Barber, was ousted in 2018. The trade reporting says that one of the reasons Barber got kicked out by the other owners of the company is he reportedly entered into unsanctioned negotiations with Apple to buy MGM for around $6 billion. The board said, “No, we’re not ready to do that yet. Barber’s out.” They said, “If we hold onto this, if we keep building up MGM for another couple, three years, we could probably get more like 8 billion out of it.” That was the target three years ago and now it’s 2021 and, according to Variety, MGM is worth about 5.5 billion right now.

David Read:
Was Apple potentially considering buying it for the six billion?

Darren Sumner:
We don’t know.

David Read:
But that’s a price tag that was floating around.

Darren Sumner:
How far those talks went or if Apple was ready to pull the trigger at that point, we don’t know. Obviously, since then, Apple has launched their own streaming service. Some of these other big giants who are getting into streaming are in need of content. So, buying a studio that has a ton, not just a big library, but a ton of IP that you can turn into TV shows and sequel movies and all that for Apple TV+, MGM’s a good fit. As opposed to Disney, Disney is not just a tech company getting into streaming.

David Read:
It also has a library of content.

Darren Sumner:
Disney own also owns a ton of content.

David Read:
It’s the same thing with Warner. Warner is owned, I think, by AT&T if I’m not mistaken, and they’ve got a huge library of content. All 17 or 18 films that were slated for release in the theaters in 2021 are gonna be released now on HBO Max. There are high-up people who are pissed and devastated about it. “I don’t wanna watch The Matrix…”

Darren Sumner:
I think there’s lawsuits.

David Read:
“…on HBO, I don’t wanna watch the new Dune on my television. I wanna go to the theaters for this.”

Darren Sumner:
I’ve really been looking forward to the new Dune.

David Read:
I know that they’ll be in the theaters, but… Exactly, I can’t wait for it. But how many people are actually gonna go and do it?

Darren Sumner:
This is the question. Especially after the impacts of COVID, I’ve said in the past that it always seems to me that MGM is one Bond movie away from bankruptcy. I don’t know if that’s true. I’m not an analyst, but the fact that they could not release the new Bond film, which is No Time to Die, in its original release window…

David Read:
November.

Darren Sumner:
…which was this last fall. As you said, they’ve had to sink a lot of money into the delay and the last delay was April. It’s supposedly coming out in theaters in April, but it’s January. It remains to be seen what the cinemas look like in April and if No Time to Die can make 700, 800 billion.

David Read:
It’s not gonna do that in theaters.

Darren Sumner:
Million, excuse me.

David Read:
It’s not possible. The people that I talk to are not going to movie theaters anymore. I talked to a lot of folks lately and they’re just not interested. I don’t wanna sit there in the movie theater with my mask on when I can go home and watch it on HBO Max or something similar without my mask and have whatever to eat and drink that I want there at more reasonable prices. I really have a feeling that until inflation makes this irrelevant anyway, the billion-dollar film is over. What do you think?

Darren Sumner:
I still think it’s coming back eventually, but not this spring.

David Read:
You do?

Darren Sumner:
I think theatergoing is coming back eventually.

David Read:
You think so?

Darren Sumner:
Yeah. Once we have widespread vaccinations and people are no longer afraid to stand within six feet of each other. Right now, I certainly don’t wanna sit in a dark room with recycled air, surrounded by people I don’t know. I think it’ll come back, but I don’t know if it’ll come back in time. I don’t know if MGM can sit on this movie for another year, 18 months. We don’t know. Again, it’s armchair speculation as to where they’re at. But that was the goal; the goal was to build up the valuation of the company and then sell it. As far as Stargate, we’re all left wondering, are they gonna go ahead and green-light a new Stargate right now before they sell? If they sell, is it gonna be anytime soon, or are they gonna have to wait until they get a big payoff from Bond? If they sell, is the new owner of the company gonna wanna make Brad’s project…

David Read:
Gonna be interested.

Darren Sumner:
…or start over?

David Read:
I think that out of any of that, the last one is the one that makes me the most nervous. Someone else would come in and say, “You know what? I wanna…” A) Hoping that they even like the Stargate property, ’cause you had someone like Les Moonves over at CBS who had no affinity for Star Trek whatsoever. For better or for worse, we have the Star Trek that we have now, which some would argue is a shadow of its original form, but I’m not gonna get into all that. My concern is that someone is gonna pick up MGM, is gonna say either no to Stargate or yes to Stargate, but it’s a Stargate that that person wants to create and, “You know what? 364 episodes is way too much baggage. Let’s get rid of it and start from zero and work our way forward.” Those are my concerns and it’s really gonna be interesting to see what happens in the next few years.

Darren Sumner:
I would hope that it’s not that. I would hope that a new owner would pump the brakes and take the temperature of the fan base to decide what’s best for that franchise. I guess my fear then is that it’s gonna take forever, because if everybody’s basically ready to go now, let’s sign the contracts, let’s do the deal and we can start production on the fourth Stargate series. If MGM gets sold in the spring or in the summer, it might be another year or two before they get all their ducks in a row and figure out what they’re gonna do with the IP.

David Read:
It does seem like, for better or for worse, whatever does come out with Stargate recently, in terms of making it available to new people, we’re not doing so well. I wanted to get into that next with Netflix. Stargate SG-1 was added to Netflix in… Was it December? Was it November? It was somewhere around there.

Darren Sumner:
Let’s see. This is the one I didn’t open.

David Read:
OK, sorry.

Darren Sumner:
I’ll get you details.

David Read:
Either someone at MGM…

Darren Sumner:
Yeah, first of December.

David Read:
…or someone at Netflix requested the library for SG-1, and they gave them the version of “Children of the Gods” with nudity and slapped a TV-MA rating on all 10 seasons, which is not reflective of what the show is at all. Nudity was something that was added to the pilot. It was something that Showtime wanted. It was potentially something that MGM wanted to up the ante of the show.

Darren Sumner:
That was premium cable.

David Read:
the show was always meant to be a family series.

Darren Sumner:
In 1997, scripted television on cable meant F-bombs and nudity. This was before The Sopranos. This was before Dexter and the sort of high-quality drama.

David Read:
It’s made a huge rift in online fandom, because everyone’s, of course, correctly freaking out that there are potential new audience members that are gonna look at that rating and say, “Uh, no, not for me,” or, “No, maybe for me, but not for my family.” It completely misses the point of what the show is.

Darren Sumner:
This is gonna scare off a lot of people. OK, let’s back up here. There are three different versions of “Children of the Gods.” There’s the original that aired on Showtime, which had full frontal nudity. There was the syndication version, which you’ve probably seen in reruns elsewhere, like Syfy Channel, where the scene is still there, but it’s edited from the shoulders up. Then there’s “Children of the Gods,” Final Cut, Brad’s revision from 2009, that also cut out the nudity. I looked around when I was doing the write-up on this, because in the United States, Stargate is currently streaming on three different services. SG-1 is on Netflix, it’s on Amazon Prime Video and it’s on Hulu, and those three services all have three different versions of the pilot.

David Read:
Seriously?

Darren Sumner:
So, now you’re starting to think, “OK, did they request them? Did MGM deliberately decide to send each streamer a different copy?” Or more than likely, I think my take on it, again, knowing how the industry works. My wife used to be a librarian for a media company. More than likely, it’s somebody inside MGM or…

David Read:
Pull it off the shelf.

Darren Sumner:
…working for a third party that MGM hired to manage its library who says, “OK, Stargate SG-1,” and pulled it off the shelf and sent it, and doesn’t know what…

David Read:
Having no context.

Darren Sumner:
…the difference is or what they have or what the impact is gonna be for Netflix viewership or for the show. Now, that’s one problem. One problem is they get that copy. It’s also a worse copy of the show. TV-MA or not, nudity or not, it’s not the best that Stargate has.

David Read:
It’s not representative of the whole.

Darren Sumner:
Because MGM has also recently upscaled SG-1. The originals, the first seven seasons before they switched to digital cameras, were available in standard definition, 480p or so, in 4:3 aspect ratio, which was the original broadcast.

David Read:
Which is not what’s available on the DVDs. So, the DVD quality is still better.

Darren Sumner:
We got the DVDs and we got widescreen for the first time. I was having an argument with somebody in the comments on GateWorld and went back and was watching your old walkthrough with Bruce Woloshyn when he took you and Denise through Rainmaker Digital. You have a whole day at Rainmaker video that’s still archived on GateWorld’s YouTube channel where Bruce shows you the process. At one point, he explicitly says, “You’re only seeing 4:3, but the show is actually shot for 16:9.” So, now that the DVDs were coming out for the first time, we actually saw the show that they were making, which was the widescreen. If you wanna watch widescreen and if you wanna watch upscaled to a higher resolution, in the US, the only place you can do that right now is on Amazon. Netflix doesn’t have those copies.

David Read:
Now, do you have to have Amazon Prime to get it or do you have to buy it separately?

Darren Sumner:
It’s included free right now with Amazon Prime. It’s also for sale if you wanna buy it separately. Amazon Prime subscribers, that’s the best place to watch it right now.

David Read:
We wanna make it available to everyone over at Netflix, because that’s a huge new potential audience for seeing this thing. These are the numbers that MGM needs to see.

Darren Sumner:
A lot of people say, “I don’t have Netflix, it doesn’t matter.” But really, a lot of people have Netflix. It’s a huge audience and the exposure of Stargate SG-1 to that audience, it’s a big deal for the franchise. It has the potential to get a lot of new viewers.

David Read:
If it’s successful, then they can bring in Atlantis and then they can bring in Universe.

Darren Sumner:
Who knows? Maybe MGM behind the scenes is talking with Netflix about doing the fourth Stargate series. Maybe Netflix wants to know what the audience is like. But what they’ve done is they’ve classified all 10 seasons, 214 episodes, as for mature audiences only. They’re cutting their own audience in half. You don’t even have to watch from the first episode. I just picked an episode at random. I dropped into Season Three and I clicked on “Urgo.” Guess what? As the first shot opens with the TV screen, the M.A.L.P transmission of the tropical planet at the beginning of “Urgo,” up there in the corner it says, “TV-MA Nudity.”

David Read:
It’s wrong.

Darren Sumner:
I’ve been really riding this on Netflix. I think all the effort that fans have put into having the Twitter campaigns to rally people to bring back the show, to make an impression on MGM that this fan base is here, fans gotta rally around this. The fact that Netflix has the entire series labeled TV-MA is the worst thing to happen to Stargate in years.

David Read:
It’s irresponsible. Robert C. Cooper had similar comments at the end of his recent chat in Part Two of our interview with him. He’s like, “What the heck’s going on, guys? This was a huge misfire.”

Darren Sumner:
The data’s also there. Every episode of the series has received an official rating from the studio. If you watch it on Syfy channel, it pops up as TV-14, TV-PG. Not every episode is the same, but the data’s in there. It’s in a spreadsheet somewhere at MGM what each of those episodes is actually rated.

David Read:
They need to take advantage of it. The merchandise for Stargate has continued recently. It’s like, “you know, we could, we could do this, we could spend all the money on it, but we’re gonna do just enough.”

Darren Sumner:
We’re burning through these news stories, aren’t we?

David Read:
I know. I’m sorry. There’s not gonna be a great deal of time taken into them. The Stargate SG-1 Complete Series Blu-ray set is now available with Jonas on the cover.

Darren Sumner:
Amazing. SG-1 is finally on Blu-ray.

David Read:
On Blu-ray.

Darren Sumner:
Which we’ve been clamoring for, for what, 12 years? 15 years?

David Read:
At least. I love Corin Nemec and if I were Corin Nemec, I’d be like, “Yes, I’m on the Blu-ray cover.” But it’s not telling of what the show is, any more than it would be to have the Season Nine cast in that photo on the box art and not have RDA. It’s not telling of what the show is at its core; to not have Michael Shanks on there at the very least, alongside Corin, maybe.

Darren Sumner:
It’s not representative of the show. It’s nothing against Season Six or against Corin; it’s evidence that somebody was given a job to make this box art who doesn’t know the show and they grabbed some assets that they had available.

David Read:
These are from Stargate. Yes, they’re from Stargate, but they’re not…

Darren Sumner:
So, you have the picture of the box up on the stream. Have you looked closely at it? Can you tell what else is wrong? Other than the fact that it doesn’t have Daniel on it, what else is wrong with this picture?

David Read:
10 seasons, 214 episodes, 127 hours of bonus content. There’s something wrong with it?

Darren Sumner:
It shows, again, a lack of knowledge of the show and a lack of effort. What I affectionately refer to as a one-cheap job.

David Read:
I’m missing it. I’ve stared at this thing.

Darren Sumner:
Does anybody in the chat know what’s wrong with this picture? Let’s start here.

David Read:
You mean it doesn’t have “The Ark of Truth” and “Continuum” in it.

Darren Sumner:
No.

David Read:
Or does it?

Darren Sumner:
‘Cause those are not part of the television show.

David Read:
Says the complete series, OK.

Darren Sumner:
How many chevrons are on that Stargate?

David Read:
Oh my God. I wasn’t paying any attention whatsoever.

Darren Sumner:
Not only are there eight, but you’ll notice they’re not equidistant.

David Read:
No. It looks like they Photoshopped in at the 10:00 and 2:00 marks. They’ve just cut it so that they can tweak it.

Darren Sumner:
So, you had an asset that somebody found when they were putting this together, presumably at VEI, which is the sort of budget DVD company that released this under license from MGM. They probably had a half of a Stargate and they’ve just mirrored it and flipped it. So, if you go around the gate, you’ll also notice there are repeated symbols. It’s too small to see on my screen here, but I think the symbol just past 12:00 is mirrored just before 6:00, straight below it.

David Read:
Yep. I didn’t even notice that. Look at you.

Darren Sumner:
So, they took part of a gate and they made a whole gate out of it, which is fine. It looks nice if you don’t care.

David Read:
It’s serviceable at best.

Darren Sumner:
It looks like the cover of a Stargate Blu-ray set if you are not a fan.

David Read:
Or if you’re walking through the discount stores on the street of China at night.

Darren Sumner:
So, that doesn’t bode well.

David Read:
No.

Darren Sumner:
But I think the real issue is what’s on the disks.

David Read:
So, they’re not actual transfers back to the original film negatives. They are HD up-res, which, when Star Trek: The Next Generation was going through it, there’s an extensive Blu-ray special feature that came out for Season One and they had done HD up-res tests and they were deemed unsatisfactory. But for Stargate SG-1, apparently, they are deemed satisfactory. They are fuzzy compared to film, but they are better than the 480 DVDs.

Darren Sumner:
They’re likely better than what we have. With Star Trek: The Next Generation, you had a whole multi-million dollar remastering project that was led by Michael and Denise Okuda to go back and not only remaster the episodes, I think they went back to the film negatives.

David Read:
They went back to the film negatives. A lot of the digital assets no longer existed so they re-created, from scratch, phaser shots. The crystalline entity, the whole bit.

Darren Sumner:
All the visual effects, all the external ship shots, they re-did it all in CG. So, it looks gorgeous and it’s 1080. I watched through TNG with my kids in the new remastered versions.

David Read:
Beautiful.

Darren Sumner:
Oh my God, that’s my favorite show of all time.

David Read:
Yeah?

Darren Sumner:
It’s the show that made me the fan that I am.

David Read:
Of sci-fi?

Darren Sumner:
Of sci-fi. It’s such an incredible experience. They did things like; this ship was shot as a model.

David Read:
ILM did a lot of those original shots.

Darren Sumner:
And lit. So, when they built it digitally, they, in certain cases, wanna match what was on screen as much as possible. They did these little things. This is not how we would do this digitally today. We’d maybe make it more smooth as the ship is moving or whatever the effect on screen is, but actually tried to match what the original models were doing, which is fantastic. Stargate SG-1 is not that. These are not remastered. As far as we know, they’re upscaled. GateWorld has confirmed with MGM that Stargate SG-1 Seasons One through Seven have been upscaled.

David Read:
So what does that mean when you take it out of the box?

Darren Sumner:
What is upscaling? Do you know anything about that process?

David Read:
Not specifically, no. I’m just aware that it’s not the same as the rendering that’s being done now with AI. It’s something separate and it’s something that’s been around for about 10 years, if not more.

Darren Sumner:
It’s not the AI stuff that we see. Lots of fans are doing AI projects as sort of proof of concept, “This is how DS9 would look in HD today.” Using these artificial intelligence algorithms.

David Read:
AI upscaling.

Darren Sumner:
But for Stargate’s upscaling, I’m not a tech guy. I don’t know how it works, but you’re basically improving the image by doing some sort of interpolation of pixels so that you get a crisper image. It looks better. It really does. This is what we see on Amazon if you go watch the episodes on Amazon Prime Video.

David Read:
But they’re probably still compressed on Amazon too, as they’re streaming.

Darren Sumner:
Probably so, because they’re streaming. We don’t know. Amazon doesn’t tell us the visual quality of those. I’m guessing it’s probably 720. 720p is technically HD. It’s the bottom rung of HD, but what do we usually get when you go to the store and buy a Blu-ray set?

David Read:
Now you can get 4K, 6K.

Darren Sumner:
But if you’re not investing in 4K, Blu-rays are usually 1080.

David Read:
1080. So, it’s not even that.

Darren Sumner:
So, I don’t think that these episodes of SG-1 are 1080. But here’s the problem, we don’t know. VEI is not talking. We’ve asked them.

David Read:
They’re not?

Darren Sumner:
They have a very limited amount of information on their webpage that this is a super clean copy, but not a lot of technical specs. I’ve reached out to them, probably three times now, and I can’t get anything back from anybody. They’re not talking. So, we don’t know what’s on these disks.

David Read:
This says including extended episodes. Now, did they preserve “Threads,” the extended edition of “Threads?”

Darren Sumner:
This was on my list of questions to ask them. Does it have the longer version of “Threads,” which you’ll remember we didn’t get on the first DVD release. Fans had to go back to MGM and point out the fact that they included the shorter cut of “Threads.” MGM did a free disk replacement by mail. We don’t know that. I’m looking at the chat now. There’s also been some early analysis done. Now that it’s shipping and people are getting this in their hands, which I haven’t gotten yet, the audio also apparently has some issues because the 5.1 surround sound audio has not been mixed properly. So, you’re getting the wrong channels.

David Read:
Boy. OK.

Darren Sumner:
I can’t confirm that, but that’s what I’ve seen fans say online who have actually popped these disks into their surround sound systems.

David Read:
I’m pissed, man. Gosh.

Darren Sumner:
I love MGM and the people who work on Stargate.

David Read:
I do too, man.

Darren Sumner:
GateWorld, for the last 20 years, we’ve been going out of our way to really help and support licensees. But this looks like a low-budget job. It looks like somebody did not put any care or attention into this.

David Read:
They’re trying to squeeze some money out of it. It’s really, really simple little things. With the audio, I didn’t even know about that, that’s not so simple or little. We just keep on missing the target and I get the feeling that it’s like, “Well, it’s Stargate.” If this were Star Wars, this would be unacceptable.

Darren Sumner:
It is unacceptable. I know what you mean. It’s a huge franchise, but this is unacceptable. This should not have happened.

David Read:
Reading online over the years, people are like, “Why don’t they bring Stargate back?” Well, they tried and not enough people bought it and that was on Stargate Command. We were looking at those numbers. We were looking to see what was going to happen and the subscribers weren’t there. I talked with a lot of people; they wanted it for free. You can’t get it for free now; you have to pay for it. People voted with their wallets and most of them deemed Origins sub-satisfactory.

Darren Sumner:
With respect to Origins, over the last two years since it came out, I’ve seen a lot of people say, “I didn’t know this thing existed.”

David Read:
Didn’t even know it existed at all.

Darren Sumner:
The fact that it was ghettoed on Stargate Command, no offense to Stargate Command, but…

David Read:
Stargate Command is gone.

Darren Sumner:
… most of Stargate’s audience is not its hardcore fan base.

David Read:
When it went onto iTunes, it exploded, Stargate Origins exploded. The film version is far superior to the 10-episode cut, in my opinion.

Darren Sumner:
I agree, for sure.

David Read:
Stargate Universe finally has a Season Two release on Blu-ray. I put that box art up here as well.

Darren Sumner:
Isn’t that weird that Season Two was never released on Blu-ray until this point?

David Read:
Yeah. I’ll take it. This is actually the DVD box art for Stargate Universe. The complete series is now available on Blu-ray. I’ve had 1080 copies of Season Two, but those are from the Apple releases back in the day. So, it’s nice to have ’em.

Darren Sumner:
That’s where I got it originally.

David Read:
It’s nice to have a physical copy.

Darren Sumner:
We were living in Scotland when we got them on Apple, iTunes.

David Read:
So, that is at least being done right.

Darren Sumner:
That’s the new one. That’s shipping this week, SGU the complete season, starting on the 15th, it’s now shipping. It’s, again, a situation where we don’t actually know what’s in the box, on the discs.

David Read:
Kino diaries, things like that?

Darren Sumner:
I can’t confirm for you that it has all the bonus features. I can’t confirm that it’s 1080.

David Read:
Does VEI want to sell this stuff?

Darren Sumner:
You would think that it is, because it’s readily available. But I don’t know. We’ve talked about MGM librarians reaching up off the shelf and sending something out. We don’t know if these are 1080 episodes.

David Read:
OK. One of the things that was frustrating when we were working on Stargate Command was the inconsistency from season to season of what was streaming online. Some of the seasons were widescreen, some of them were full screen. There were different reasons for each. It was all over the place and my line of thinking was, incorrectly, “Why don’t you just go to the DVDs?” “I can rip them for you right now and turn everything over.” You can’t do that, that’s not how it works. It has to go through a specific process. We provided the product to fans for what, was it seven, eight months that it was online? No, that was the second version of the website. So, the first version was up there far longer.

Darren Sumner:
Stargate Command was online?

David Read:
Stargate Command was online. I can’t even tell you how long. It wasn’t two years.

Darren Sumner:
It was September 2017 through December 2019. So, a little over two years.

David Read:
It was a little over two years? Wow. Man, how time has flown. I don’t remember that at all. May it rest in peace.

Darren Sumner:
Maybe get some of that content that you guys made.

David Read:
Your lips to God’s ear, man. Dialing Home, not even half of the Dialing Home content is up on YouTube. There was a promise to have a complete transfer of pretty much all of that library for free, because only six or seven countries were able to see the content that was posted on Stargate Command because it was geo-locked everywhere else. It was like, “Use a VPN!” I could never say anything. People are like, “Well, I can’t access it.” It’s like, “VPN.” You could still pay for it. It’s not like you’re gonna get it for free.

Darren Sumner:
Some people think VPN usage is shady. For the most part, I don’t think it’s shady. VPNs are perfectly legal. Usually, depending on what you’re doing with your VPN, you’re not breaking any laws. You’re just circumventing a company’s effort to restrict their services.

David Read:
Correct. That’s exactly right.

Darren Sumner:
Now with VEI, we have DVD and Blu-ray editions for all three shows, for SG-1, for Atlantis as well, and now for Universe. So, you can own Blu-rays for the whole franchise, but again, buyer beware. GateWorld can’t tell you what’s on these just yet until we actually get our hands on them and can start to do some testing.

David Read:
Yup, absolutely. Anything else on any of these topics? It’s gonna be an interesting year. We’ll see how things unfold.

Darren Sumner:
It’s gonna be really interesting. I’d love to have something to talk about. Obviously, we’ve got the news here to hit on here, but you titled our live stream “Q1 News Updates,” so I’m picturing us back here in April for Q2. I’m thinking, “I don’t know how much there’s gonna be to talk about three months from now.”

David Read:
You know what? We can skip it.

Darren Sumner:
There’s not a lot going on right now.

David Read:
If there isn’t, then we won’t do it. I’m not gonna have you on just to look at your pretty face.

Darren Sumner:
The people demand. No. There could be huge news, and this is obviously another reason why the GateWorld podcast that I’m now doing with Adam Barnard is very irregular. We’ll do two or three a year maybe.

David Read:
If there’s no news, there’s no news.

Darren Sumner:
We could come up with things to talk about. We could do a re-watch. We could talk about the Tollan. But there’s nothing in Stargate world going on right now, other than we keep releasing a new YouTube video every time Brad or Joe Mallozzi says something. The new Stargate project is still a thing and is not dead yet. That’s worth covering. It’s worth telling fans that this hasn’t gone into the dustbin yet.

David Read:
Four chevrons locked, I think, was the last one.

Darren Sumner:
Five.

David Read:
Five chevrons are… Five?

Darren Sumner:
That’s what Joe said.

David Read:
Five chevrons are locked?

Darren Sumner:
Five chevrons locked.

David Read:
Wow, OK. All right. I’ve got submissions.

Darren Sumner:
We have questions?

David Read:
A number of questions.

Darren Sumner:
Cool. Let’s do it.

David Read:
Some of them are related to what we’ve been talking about. Some of them are completely unrelated. Teresa, “Question for David and Darren. If you were able to choose any role or type of character in the Stargate series, what would it be, villain, commander, alien?” I guess any role for ourselves? I’d probably have to be a tech guy, something like Eli.

Darren Sumner:
I want a non-speaking role that is just walking across the background, but I want to appear all the time. I want to be a background extra who gets conspicuous after five or six episodes.

David Read:
Sommer, “Is there a place we can write to officially protest the Netflix rating that would make a difference?” It’s not an incorrect rating for the pilot. That’s the problem.

Darren Sumner:
What they’ve done is they’ve taken the pilot’s rating and applied it to the whole series.

David Read:
What they need is to either get their hands on the syndicated version of the pilot, or ideally, the final cut. The only thing I can think of is to keep on bringing it up on Twitter.

Darren Sumner:
Tell Netflix. I don’t know who runs Netflix’s Twitter account. Usually, big companies’ customer service will run that and certain topics will get collated and reported up the chain. “These 30 people are talking about Stargate.” So, if you make enough noise, there’s potentially a way for it to get in front of people at Netflix.

David Read:
That’s how anything gets done at this point.

Darren Sumner:
It’s gotta be volume. it’s gotta be a tweet storm.

David Read:
That’s what it takes.

Darren Sumner:
It’s not gonna be you, me, and the next guy, a couple of times a week.

David Read:
There’s not enough of us.

Darren Sumner:
It’s gotta be a big event.

David Read:
Eva Lipenska, “What streaming platform would fit to make a new Stargate in your opinion?” Unless it’s extremely explosive and amazing, it doesn’t get more than one or two seasons anymore. Stargate is not a cheap show to make, despite the fact that it’s not perhaps as expensive as a Star Trek Discovery or a Star Trek Picard.

Darren Sumner:
Some of these streaming shows are getting big budgets these days.

David Read:
Unless they’re really bringing in a number of viewers and unless they’re making a real big impact on social media, they just kill ’em. Travelers was picked up by Netflix for a third season. It was a great third season and I’m guessing they didn’t get the numbers that they wanted for it and they killed it. Would you be content with a one- or two-season Stargate series?

Darren Sumner:
I think we have to get used to that idea, honestly. If a new Stargate series is announced on Monday, tomorrow, I think we have to get used to the idea that streamers are looking for a smaller portion. You’re not gonna get an NCIS that goes on forever.

David Read:
No.

Darren Sumner:
There’s been some reporting on this the last few years. Folks might have seen reporting on Netflix cancellations. For Netflix at least, unless a show really hits the cultural zeitgeist, like Stranger Things…

David Read:
Stranger Things is the one I think of and that’s only doing four years.

Darren Sumner:
It seems to be Netflix is capping most of their originals at about three seasons. It’s because they’re not ad supported; they’re subscription supported. Once they hit a maximum number of people that are gonna be drawn to the service or stay with the service, renew their monthly for Stargate, then the show ends. I think that was the case with Travelers. They were going for a kind of magic three seasons, because Netflix’s internals tell them that’s about how much their viewers want of a show in order to feel satisfied, in order to feel like they got a complete product.

David Read:
Regardless of where the story goes, it’s a volume thing. JohnFourtyTwo: “What happened to the notebook props Daniel and Jonas wrote in?” I didn’t get them at Propworx, so they were already gone at that point. There were people before Propworx were involved that did get their hands on a lot of that stuff.

Darren Sumner:
A different auction house?

David Read:
Yeah. I forget the name of it. They were involved with Gatecon for a little while there and you would show up at Gatecon and these props would be for sale and these costumes would be for sale. Fortunately, they got into the hands of a lot of fans, but there’s some private collector out there that has that. I’m pretty sure.

Darren Sumner:
I’ve always been curious if there were pieces that you were looking for that never showed up in all the work that you did with Propworx, that you just never saw come across.

David Read:
I had some interesting stories, man, that I can tell you. One is absolutely wild. The Kull Warrior battle armor wasn’t complete. It was missing his codpiece and a belt.

Darren Sumner:
Somebody stole Dan Payne’s codpiece.

David Read:
Someone stole Dan Payne’s codpiece and belt. There was an attachment on his arm that wasn’t there either. We had the props organized for the first auction to get them photographed. We’re putting the Kull Warrior together and we’re getting him ready for photographing, I think for the first auction. This stuff has been in my warehouse in Orange County for ten months. We’ve moved some stuff around, including the Goa’uld dashboard for the Mother Ship, the bridge set.

Darren Sumner:
The big pel’tac?

David Read:
Pel’tac, yeah.

Darren Sumner:
Thing that kinda goes up and down?

David Read:
Yeah, the piece that opens and closes. I have my hand there while we’re getting ready to shoot this thing for the Kull Warrior. My hand shifts a plate on the side of one of the pieces for the Goa’uld pel’tac dashboard. I push it aside and inside is the missing piece for the Kull Warrior.

Darren Sumner:
The codpiece?

David Read:
Not the codpiece, that was never recoverable. But one of his arm pieces, right when it was needed. Of thousands of items in the entire warehouse….

Darren Sumner:
Somebody just slipped it in there.

David Read:
It had been there for years and at the time that it was needed, it was reconnected with its… You couldn’t make this up.

Darren Sumner:
That’s hilarious.

David Read:
Extremely strange. Similarly, I had the original SG-1 location gate down with me in Orange County. We were going to take it up to the CMP SFM Museum, I think I’ve told this story before, in Seattle, for the auction. The week it was needed, the week that we were doing the auction, a few hundred miles north was when they were filming the episode with Kelowna for SGU. It was needed that same week and I already had it for a year. So, we weren’t able to put up the Stargate, to have it reassembled for the location gate for the auction, because they were filming SGU Season Two.

Darren Sumner:
Was it supposed to be sold at that auction? Or just as a set piece?

David Read:
We did sell it at that auction. The Sci-Fi Museum bought it for 75 grand. Those were a couple of interesting stories for you.

Darren Sumner:
That’s amazing.

David Read:
Ákos Tamás Nováki: “The Destiny gate is also wrong on the cover of the bi…” No way.

Darren Sumner:
Let’s see this box art again.

David Read:
Let me pull this up. I see it.

Darren Sumner:
The Destiny or the Destiny Gate?

David Read:
The Destiny Gate.

Darren Sumner:
That’s not right.

David Read:
They deleted at least one chevron.

Darren Sumner:
The symbols are not there. The dots and dashes are not there.

David Read:
That’s the back side of it.

Darren Sumner:
It’s the back of it.

David Read:
There’s at least one whole chevron missing. My God. For Pete’s sake.

Darren Sumner:
Somebody took a class on Photoshop.

David Read:
I guess so. They were able to blend pretty well for the most part, but come on, guys. Come on, what are we doing? Anyway, thank you, Ákos Tamás Nováki. Ian, “Hey dude, Joseph Mallozzi’s show just got green lit. Do you see that as good news for an SG show?” I did not know this. So, congratulations, Joe, I’m gonna have to text him.

Darren Sumner:
I’ve been meaning to do a write-up on this for the site and haven’t had a chance to do it yet.

David Read:
Good for him.

Darren Sumner:
The show is called, I believe, Powder Mage. It’s an adaptation of a fantasy book series. The report that I read did not indicate a broadcaster. So, it might be currently being shopped. So, we don’t know where it’s gonna show up. Joe’s showrunner. Awesome.

David Read:
Good for him. That’s fantastic.

Darren Sumner:
As to how it might impact Stargate, I wouldn’t anticipate that it would impact Stargate at all, because that project is currently in production and Stargate is not. Even if they were in production at the same time, we would hope that Joe would get to do some writing and producing on a new Stargate series, but there’s no guarantee that the old writer’s room would get reassembled.

David Read:
No, there’s no guarantee of that at all. The only one for sure is Brad. He would be more than able to go back to the likes of Rob and Joe and Paul and Carl Binder.

Darren Sumner:
And Carl.

David Read:
Martin Gero’s a little busy now.

Darren Sumner:
Martin’s too famous for Stargate now.

David Read:
Damien Kindler is showrunning as well. All right. Brianonealsingleton, “Would SGU have eventually touched on the mysterious Furlings?” I think that’s probably a definitive no, but I don’t know for sure. They were always like, “We dealt with the Furlings in Season 10 with “200.” We gave you a version of them.” I seriously doubt it. It’s always a possibility, I guess.

Darren Sumner:
It’s always a possibility. I get the distinct impression that the powers that be were content never fleshing out the Furlings. They never really had any intention. Rob’s told the story of how he felt like the Fifth Race sounded better than the Fourth Race, so he was making up names.

David Read:
Made another name.

Darren Sumner:
And fans really grabbed onto it.

David Read:
From a mythology perspective, not the name perspective.

Darren Sumner:
We kept asking about the Furlings. Every interview, every convention, people were constantly asking the writers about the Furlings. They did the “200” thing as a joke, but I don’t think they ever intended to flesh out the Furlings.

David Read:
I don’t think so either. Akos, another question, “Have you heard that Brad Wright is interested in using the LED wall technology of The Mandalorian in the next Stargate show?” Have we heard that? Is he interested in that?

Darren Sumner:
It was brought up in The Companion’s AMA.

David Read:
And he is interested?

Darren Sumner:
If people don’t know this, you should go, if you’ve got Disney+ and you’ve watched The Mandalorian, go and watch the behind-the-scenes special. What’s that called?

David Read:
The one that’s as long as the series itself?

Darren Sumner:
There’s a Star Wars design special.

David Read:
I have it, I’ve not watched it yet. Let me see the same here.

Darren Sumner:
Go and watch those and you’ll see how they shot the Mandalorian. They’ve got gigantic surround walls.

David Read:
I forget it, there’s a name for it.

Darren Sumner:
With projection. It enabled them to do amazing stuff. It uses video game technology so the camera can move around.

David Read:
It’s Unreal.

Darren Sumner:
The background that’s being projected on the screen moves, tracks with the camera. It’s incredible. Somebody ask Brad if he’d like to use something like this for a new Stargate show. Of course, he said yes. It’s the cool, shiny, new toy in film and television production that is really suited to sci-fi environments. I imagine it’s also still pretty expensive.

David Read:
You can render stuff in real time and then reflections are the big thing. You get actual, genuine reflections of light and texture and everything else. It’s called Disney Gallery: The Mandalorian.

Darren Sumner:
Disney Gallery is the behind-the-scenes show.

David Read:
They were planning on doing more than one season, but the first season is the Mandalorian Season One and it’s eight episodes. I’ve not watched all of it yet, I’ve watched a piece of it. It’s good.

Darren Sumner:
It’s really fantastic.

David Read:
That LED light wall is just huge.

Darren Sumner:
You’ll get to meet all the directors. You’ll see shooting on set. It was at the end of that, the last episode for Season One, where they revealed Mark Hamill. Mark Hamill has a cameo in Season One of The Mandalorian.

David Read:
I’ve not seen Season Two of Mandalorian yet.

Darren Sumner:
You should watch it.

David Read:
I know.

Darren Sumner:
That’s a good television show.

David Read:
I had it all spoiled for me, so. All the secrets are spoiled.

Darren Sumner:
The world we live in nowadays, you gotta keep up on stuff. Literally, there’s so much television to keep up on. Almost everything I watch is sci-fi/fantasy. There’s so much to keep up on. I literally have to decide, “I’m gonna watch this one weekly so I don’t get spoiled. I’m OK being spoiled on these.”

David Read:
I’ve gotten to the point where I don’t care.

Darren Sumner:
That’s the calculation now. I choose which shows I’m gonna get spoiled on.

David Read:
All right. I need to watch the Mandalorian Season Two at some point here. It’s on my list.

Darren Sumner:
It’s fantastic.

David Read:
I know it is. I just haven’t gotten around to it. I don’t watch stuff as it airs anymore. I wait until it finishes and then I watch it all.

Darren Sumner:
You’ve been that way for a while.

David Read:
I have.

Darren Sumner:
You were one of my first friends who adopted the DVD binge philosophy, back when Lost was on.

David Read:
Not with everything. Lost, because of the nature of Lost. But Game of Thrones, I watched that week to week. There’s nothing really on TV anymore, as far as I’m concerned, that’s must-watch television that can’t wait.

Darren Sumner:
If you haven’t done it yet, it would be worth going back through Clone Wars and Star Wars Rebels, if you haven’t seen them.

David Read:
They’re great.

Darren Sumner:
Before you start Season Two of the Mandalorian.

David Read:
You want me to rewatch them?

Darren Sumner:
I could give you a list of some key episodes.

David Read:
OK. I know there are some pieces that definitely play.

Darren Sumner:
If you’ve been spoiled, a lot of the big characters from the animated series turn up.

David Read:
That’s all been blown out.

Darren Sumner:
So, it’s worth knowing their backstories.

David Read:
I’ve only watched those in the last year anyway, so it’s pretty fresh.

Darren Sumner:
OK. Did you finish Clone Wars and Rebels?

David Read:
Uh-huh.

Darren Sumner:
Good.

David Read:
They’re brilliant. Akos, another question. Akos has got a lot of questions here. “Could GateWorld reprint the SG-1 book Celebration of Ten Years? Would you officially produce or fan raise ones of Atlantis and Universe?” We just had the rights to release them. Didn’t you get a call at a certain point saying to get rid of the others that were left over?

Darren Sumner:
Yeah. Here’s the story. I’ll give you the full scoop on this. The Celebration of Ten Years is a big, square paperback volume that was given out as a crew gift during the 10th season of SG-1. Every year, they had a big crew party and the producers would give a gift to the entire cast and crew. They tried to do really cool things for the crew gifts. In Season 10, they wanted to do a memory book, especially once they had gotten the sense that it was gonna be their last year. They didn’t know that it was gonna be their last year, but they created a memory book. It’s full of memories of production and they wanted to do a big, full-color glossy book. Rob Cooper called me and said, “We wanna offset the cost. We wanna make it really cool, so in order to help us offset the cost of printing this thing, how about we autograph them and have GateWorld sell them to fans?” So, that was our role. We got them from the studio. We got about 1000 of them originally. They went into a warehouse and we sold them online. We didn’t sell out. They were a premium item that was a couple hundred bucks. It was a premium item. It was autographed. Every copy was autographed by a main cast member and a member of the writer’s room. It was really fun for a few months there for everybody to go on to GateWorld forum and sort of try and decipher the autograph that they got. “Who did you get? This looks like a Joe Mallozzi and a Claudia Black.” So, they sold for GateWorld for several years. They never sold out and eventually, MGM asked us to stop selling them, because they were not an officially licensed product. It was a favor for the production studio. So, the rest of the stock, I held onto a few, which we’ve done for giveaways, rather than sell them. We auctioned some off at Gatecon two years ago. I’ve got a few more copies that I’m gonna bring to Gatecon the next time that it’s held, hopefully 2021. The rest of them were destroyed. That’s the shame of it. The rest of them were pulped. We didn’t print those. The answer to the question is we never printed those and they will never exist again. The copies that are out there in the wild are the only copies that exist.

David Read:
I think you can occasionally get one on eBay for a pretty penny.

Darren Sumner:
They’ll pop up and the Stargate cast and crew all got them.

David Read:
They got the hardback ones.

Darren Sumner:
Every once in a while, you’ll find one that is not autographed that pops up on eBay. That’s because it was a crew gift.

David Read:
All right. Redux, “Any chance of doing a stream/talking/exploring like this about the various history of the strange development of the games that never launched?” I wouldn’t be opposed to it, but I would want to bring in some experts.

Darren Sumner:
That’d be a good experts conversation.

David Read:
I still have connections with a lot of the people at Stargate Worlds and it’s my intent, once we get a few more dozen of these in, I do want to ask a lot of those Stargate creators, particularly Chris Klug, who was developing the story on Stargate Worlds. I do want him on. I haven’t asked him yet. I’m not even sure that he would do it. Maybe he would say no, but there’s always a chance he would say yes.

Darren Sumner:
That’d be really interesting.

David Read:
He was a huge fan of Brad’s vision for what Stargate was. He wrote a… is this it, over here? Let me see it real quick. No, that’s not it. Anyway. He created an outline for Stargate Worlds. It wasn’t exactly an outline for Stargate Worlds, but it was what he took away from what Stargate SG-1 was. It was a brilliant document and it really solidified where they wanted to take Stargate Worlds in the long term, philosophically. It was sent to Brad Wright and Brad’s like, “This guy’s got it. He knows what he’s talking about.”

Darren Sumner:
He gets it.

David Read:
“He gets it.”

Darren Sumner:
“He’s got the vision.”

David Read:
I wanna bring Chris, at the very least, on at some point, and discuss what his vision of Stargate Worlds was. They were all failed in one degree or another; the Stargate SG-1 video game that was in development down in Australia.

Darren Sumner:
Prior to Stargate Worlds, a studio in Australia called Perception was developing Stargate SG-1: The Alliance. This was in the, I think, PS2 era. We are working on a feature. I’ve got some info that the head of Perception has sent me. He’s answered some questions about the history of that and how it fell apart and he sent me some new assets that I don’t think have ever been seen online. So, we’re gonna have a kind of “Whatever happened to Stargate SG-1: The Alliance?” feature on GateWorld pretty soon.

David Read:
I played pieces of the game and the parts of it I played were definitely fun. It wasn’t completed, so it just kept on crashing.

Darren Sumner:
They had voice acting in it.

David Read:
The voice acting for it was complete.

Darren Sumner:
They had the main cast do voices for that.

David Read:
There are whole chains of dialogue that you can connect together and listen to them talk. Everybody came back. Corin Nemec, Carmen Argenziano. I don’t know about Tony Amendola, but it was tremendous work that they had going on. One of the things that’s really frustrating about the modern era is that we had the mobile games that came out, and it was two parts of, I think, three. I think there was at least a third part planned. I keep forgetting its name now, as well. The name escapes me, what it was called. Stargate SG-1: Unleashed.

Darren Sumner:
I just added a new entry to gateworld.net/videogames this week because there was another mobile game that I had forgotten existed until it popped up on Twitter. Somebody’s gotten his hands on it and is gonna make a YouTube video, the whole walkthrough of this game, Stargate SG-1: Entropy Syndrome, for mobile devices.

David Read:
Was it completed?

Darren Sumner:
Yeah. This was completed and released in 2007. It looks like a collection of mini-games. There’s a shoot the replicators as they’re coming down the hallway toward you.

David Read:
Really?

Darren Sumner:
There’s a puzzle lineup thing.

David Read:
Never heard of it.

Darren Sumner:
An isometric top-down adventure sort of run-and-gun thing. It looks pretty fun.

David Read:
Stargate SG-1: Unleashed was great. It was really good and once the company went belly-up, you can’t play it anymore.

Darren Sumner:
It exists nowhere. I didn’t have a device that supported it, so I never bought it. I never played it.

David Read:
I had it on my iPhone and I loved it.

Darren Sumner:
The trailers are fantastic. This came out from Arkalis Interactive in 2013.

David Read:
Arkalis is the same one that did Unleashed.

Darren Sumner:
That’s what I’m talking about, Stargate SG-1: Unleashed. One of the novelists wrote this story. Who is it?

David Read:
I think it’s Sally Malcolm.

Darren Sumner:
Sally Malcolm. Sally herself did. Sally’s one of the chiefs of Fandemonium, who publishes the Stargate novels. She wrote an original story for this, and did they ever release part three?

David Read:
No. I guess it didn’t make enough money. They went bankrupt. The first two parts were out and they were Sekhmet. It was really cool.

Darren Sumner:
She was the big bad.

David Read:
She was the big bad. The Russians, while they had their Stargate open, had a Goa’uld, and the Goa’uld escaped and took over a Russian lass.

Darren Sumner:
It looks great.

David Read:
It was.

Darren Sumner:
I’d love to play it.

David Read:
You good?

Darren Sumner:
I was gonna say, we should talk to Sally about…

David Read:
I would love to.

Darren Sumner:
… the rest of that story, what the story was and how it was gonna end, ’cause part three never came out.

David Read:
That’s right. I’d love to talk to her about it. Jeremy Heiner, “I know you worked on Stargate Worlds as a community manager. Did you ever get to see the game played or play it yourself? Also, do you know if there are any working builds out there?” I did play the game a fair amount and I really loved it. I really loved where the story was going and what was coming down the pipe for it. They were gonna do stuff with the Furlings. The Furlings were actually gonna play a key role in the mythology of the game. They were gonna introduce a new Crystalline race called the Straegis. The studio was actually asking them, “Can you replace that with the Titans?” The people who were developing Stargate Worlds loved the name Straegis and Brad and Rob and the others were like, “Well, we’ve never done the Titans. Why don’t you just use that angle to it?” They were thinking about it, the last I heard, but the funding wasn’t there for it at the end. The studio tried to expand its portfolio, launching a racing game title. They were working on a title for Deadlands and my understanding, I don’t know if this is true or not, was that these funds were earmarked for Stargate Worlds and the money went to these other titles. Stargate Worlds lost thrust and it didn’t come out. It’s such a huge shame ’cause as far as I’m aware, millions of dollars were spent on this thing.

Darren Sumner:
At least.

David Read:
You reported on GateWorld, everything that went down with that.

Darren Sumner:
Boy, it was sad that the Alliance never came out. Worlds died in a massive fireball.

David Read:
I knew these people. People who were affected by it, who didn’t get paid.

Darren Sumner:
Mutual recriminations and lawsuits and it was gross.

David Read:
Akos: “Do you think there could be more SG spinoffs after SG4? That could be successful like Star Trek has done?” I think if we could get Stargate back, we would be on a whole new train ride. I really do. I think that the possibilities for that are absolutely wide open. Teresa: “What Stargate characters would you like to see return for a new Stargate series?” Specifically? I’d love to have Sarah Gardner back.

Darren Sumner:
Good choice.

David Read:
I would love to see Charles Shaughnessy back as Alec Coulson. I assumed that he was on Destiny or out there somewhere. I was actually working on a treatment called Stargate: Oblivion, which was gonna be a six-novel series with Diana Botsford, in which we brought Charles Coulson back as well as a few others, ’cause he’s off-world somewhere and that was never answered. So what happened to him? Someone like that doesn’t just go away. You don’t put Elon Musk on Alpha Site and expect him to stay quiet. So, Darren?

Darren Sumner:
Those are good choices. I’d have to go back through the mythology and figure out who makes sense. 10, 15 years later, who makes sense to still be around? I think it’s gotta make sense for the story. It can’t just be fan service.

David Read:
Exactly right.

Darren Sumner:
It can’t just be to make all of us SG-1 fans stand up and say, “Yay, Bra’tac. There he is, he’s talking about being 168.”

David Read:
It has to have relevance.

Darren Sumner:
I would love to see Bra’tac, but it’s gotta make sense for whatever story they’re telling.

David Read:
Absolutely. Akos: “Do you think Dean Devlin will really pitch his own Stargate series? Would it be part of the Brad Wright universe?” Dean Devlin and Jonathan Glassner were actually talking about a Stargate potential project. That wouldn’t necessarily directly tie into Brad Wright’s universe so much as perhaps sidestep it. They could still sit together, like the alternate reality for Star Trek. We didn’t get into a great deal of information about it, but it’s still possible.

Darren Sumner:
The impression I got was that it was a multiverse idea. It would exist in a separate timeline and wouldn’t necessarily interfere with another project. Although, there’s business reasons for not having more than one universe operative at the same time. That’s all I gotta say about that.

David Read:
Raj Luthra: “Do you think Joe Flanigan would be interested in purchasing Stargate Atlantis once again or perhaps the whole franchise?” Stargate would probably have to be sold altogether and if it were to go up on the selling block, I wouldn’t be surprised if Flanigan put up his paddle and said, “Hey, right here.” That wouldn’t surprise me at all. Be interesting to see what kind of a show he would want. His sensibilities were not necessarily the same as Brad’s. I think he really enjoyed the more action-y angle. I think if he were to showrun, you couldn’t expect a more contemplative version of the franchise. I think he would get a more run-and-gun version of it. Your mileage would vary. I wouldn’t necessarily be opposed.

Darren Sumner:
For people who don’t know this story, after the bankruptcy, after SGU went off the air, Joe Flanigan was talking at one point, not about buying Stargate, but about leasing Stargate, which is a weird idea, to lease IP from the studio that owns it. Basically, to get a license to make his own Stargate show, since they weren’t doing anything with it at the time. But to do that, I don’t know that Joe has pockets that deep. He gathered a group of investors who were interested in that and as far as we know, made a formal pitch to the studio. Though, for him to actually then go and buy it, would obviously require a much bigger investment from partners.

David Read:
It’s not a bad idea.

Darren Sumner:
I’d love to see the franchise in the hands of somebody who cares. Not that MGM doesn’t, I think they do, I think people inside MGM really love Stargate and want the right project to get made.

David Read:
I think they’ve got bigger fish to fry.

Darren Sumner:
It’s not on the forefront of their imagination right now.

David Read:
Jeremy, any update on when Eaglemoss will produce the Stargate ships and what will be available first? Darren?

Darren Sumner:
We’ve asked Eaglemoss. We’re chatting with them behind the scenes to get ready for their big rollout. So, hopefully you’ll hear it first on GateWorld. You’ll probably hear it first on Twitter from Eaglemoss, but you’ll hear it second on GateWorld.

David Read:
This was pretty terrific news when I heard this. ‘Cause they’re a pretty relevant IP right now.

Darren Sumner:
They’re doing diecast model ships from the Stargate universe. We don’t know yet when the first ones will come out. Let me double check my email and see if he told me. Probably the end of 2021, I would guess, would be about the earliest that something would be available for sale. But what ships those would be, we don’t know yet. I don’t know that Eaglemoss knows yet. They probably have a wish list. But everything with licensing has to go through MGM and get approval.

David Read:
Same with vinyl figures and everything. I know a lot of people keep on asking, “When will Pop do Stargate figures?”

Darren Sumner:
Pop’s doing awesome.

David Read:
Pop’s not interested in Stargate figures as far as I’m aware.

Darren Sumner:
The fan-made ones are incredible.

David Read:
They are really good. Akos, “Why was the Stargate Command app not extended outside of six countries?” Licensing. Licensing deals with every individual country. It’s a whole thing that I don’t have time to get into now, but it was a licensing issue. We were planning on expanding it, but that’s where we’re at to begin with. So, VPN. I can say that now, if you couldn’t whisper that to yourself in the past. Teresa, “So would it be better if MGM sold the series or tried to redeem itself?” Your guess is as good as mine at this point. MGM successfully ran 264 hours of television.

Darren Sumner:
354.

David Read:
354. Is that right?

Darren Sumner:
Sounds like it.

David Read:
That’s a lot of TV. So you know what? Anything’s possible.

Darren Sumner:
I think when we’re talking about MGM and what they’re doing and what they’re not doing over the last decade, a lot of people think of MGM as one thing, as one corporate entity. That’s useful to a degree, but you also gotta realize that there are people inside of MGM who have gotta wanna do it and have gotta fight for it and have gotta be in a position where fighting for it is gonna do anything. Stargate benefited for so many years, in the early 2000s, in the aughts, from people like Charlie Cohen. Being on the inside, being an executive at MGM who was in a position…

David Read:
Aa fan of the product.

Darren Sumner:
… to fight for Stargate and make it happen. As Brad tells it, he’s basically responsible for SG-1 moving to Syfy channel. Right from there, we get not only five more seasons of SG-1 and two movies, but we also get a spinoff. Syfy channel now wants to do Atlantis two years later. Charlie Cohen.

David Read:
That’s a big deal. I’d love to have him on. All right. Jo Stallworth, “I know about novelizations of SFF series,” science fiction series? “How do y’all feel about any continuation SG-1 Season 11, so to speak, of Stargate in graphic novels format?” I would love to watch it. The novels have their own continuity. There have been a few comics that have been released. They’re all really cool. I’ve got an Aris Boch one around here somewhere for when Sam Jones comes on. We’re still figuring out the date right now. So, he’s gonna be coming up, as is Saul Rubinek in perhaps February. It’s not gonna be January yet. Side note, there’s some cool people coming down the pipe.

Darren Sumner:
Some cool people are coming up, for sure.

David Read:
Jeremy Heiner, “Have you seen The Expanse?” Darren’s seen it. Is that a hint that you like it?

Darren Sumner:
You made a comment earlier about there not being any appointment TV on anymore that makes you wanna watch week to week. The Expanse is the best science fiction currently being made, period.

David Read:
Really?

Darren Sumner:
Yeah.

David Read:
Wow.

Darren Sumner:
It took me a couple of seasons to get into it.

David Read:
Really?

Darren Sumner:
Season One, I was lost. I couldn’t figure out, “Who’s that guy? What’s their relationship to who? Why is he going over there?” Season Two, it started to click and then Season Three was bananas good. Honestly, for a lot of us, it starts to feel like Stargate a little bit with Season Three, because of a really important plot development that I won’t spoil. Season Five is out now. Season Five is currently streaming and it’s just a fantastic show.

David Read:
I’ve heard that the end is now in sight for it. They’ve got a couple more seasons planned and then that’s gonna be it.

Darren Sumner:
So, they’ve said that Season Six is gonna be the last.

David Read:
‘Cause it’s got 10 books, doesn’t it?

Darren Sumner:
There are two writers of the novels who write together under a shared pen name.

David Read:
Really?

Darren Sumner:
J. Corey or something like that. The two writers are also working on the TV series. I don’t know if they write, but they’re consultants or something like that. So, when the news came out that Season Six of The Expanse was gonna be the last on Amazon, I think one of the writers came out and said, “For now. It’s the end for now, but it’s gonna be written in such a way that it’s not necessarily the last Expanse that will ever be made.”

David Read:
Huh. OK. I have not seen it and I have everything that’s been released and I’m looking forward to getting the rest of it and mowing it down. Shohreh Aghdashloo, is that how you pronounce her name?

Darren Sumner:
I don’t know who you’re talking about.

David Read:
She’s the Iranian actress. She was in Star Trek Beyond as well as Admiral Paris, Commodore Paris.

Darren Sumner:
Beats me.

David Read:
OK. She’s in The Expanse; dude and she’s got this amazing deep voice. I could listen to her read the phone book.

Darren Sumner:
Chrisjen Avasarala, great character. Great character.

David Read:
I love listening to her and I’m really looking forward to the show just for her.

Darren Sumner:
Again, it took me a couple years to figure out who was aligned with who and what their motivations were, but I love all the characters right now. Right now I’m really enjoying Amos. Amos is hilarious. He’s like, “How’d she look?” No, “What was she wearing?”

David Read:
Dr. Essex, “Can you cell shot some set locations for us with trivia?” My intention is to go back up to Vancouver and shoot some stuff. We did some stuff for Season Two of Dialing Home. We were gonna do a spinoff show on Stargate Command called Point of Origin and we filmed six or seven different little docuseries vignettes up there. One was at Jack’s cabin.

Darren Sumner:
Did you go to Simon Fraser?

David Read:
No. Simon Fraser wanted money from us.

Darren Sumner:
Really?

David Read:
It was gonna be a huge amount of money to go there and film. Simon Fraser is used to big, big productions going and spending several days there.

Darren Sumner:
To Vancouver. They probably just have a rate.

David Read:
They were like, “OK, well for one day it’s gonna be X thousands of dollars and for two days it’s gonna be…” It’s like, “No, no, no.” It’s gonna be two people and one camera. It’s not gonna be this whole thing. Every time we planned on doing it, they were like, “This show is shooting this week.” God sakes, if I go up there, I’m gonna go on the campus and film it. My little Dial the Gate show and no one will ever notice.

Darren Sumner:
Ask for forgiveness rather than frustration.

David Read:
I’m not gonna just do it like that. I am actually gonna let them know that I’m there, but at some point when COVID is over we’ll definitely be going back to Vancouver to go to these different places and do trivia.

Darren Sumner:
I can’t wait to go back.

David Read:
I need a co-host to do that ’cause I don’t wanna be on camera for those. I need someone of the female persuasion to do that for me so that we can go up there and film all that together. I’m much more comfortable behind the camera, always have been.

Darren Sumner:
That’d be really fun. If you don’t know what we’re talking about, Simon Fraser University, you’re gonna recognize the campus most as Tollana.

David Read:
Brianonealsingleton, “Were there any topics or storylines that you would have loved to have seen played out or have specific guests come on the shows?” I’m assuming Stargate. I’d love to have had Sarah Gardner back, so Anna-Louise Plowman. I think that I would have loved to have seen more of Lou Diamond Phillips. I think that he would have been great as a lead.

Darren Sumner:
Are you talking about on the show now?

David Read:
Not specifically Dial the Gate.

Darren Sumner:
On Dial the Gate. On Stargate or on Dial the Gate?

David Read:
Yeah, any topics of storylines that you would have loved to have seen play out, so Stargate. Yeah. Lou Diamond Phillips I’d love to get. I’ve been trying to get in touch with his manager, but there’s two phone numbers and they both direct to the other one. If anyone has contact with Lou Diamond Phillips…

Darren Sumner:
Sounds like somebody who doesn’t wanna be gotten ahold of.

David Read:
Exactly. I’ve been trying to do it and I can’t get ahold of him, so if anyone has contact with Lou over Twitter or something like that, please let him know.

Darren Sumner:
He’s pretty responsive to fans on Twitter.

David Read:
He is?

Darren Sumner:
He is.

David Read:
I may just have to do it ’cause I wanna talk to him about Tinderbox. I do wanna talk to him about SGU, but he just wrote a novel and I inhaled it in two days.

Darren Sumner:
Nice.

David Read:
It’s a great book. Redux, “Since it’s been so many years since the shows were left with cliffhangers, do you think a continuation in video game form with the cast returning would be ideal to continue the story?” I have said for years digital animation would be the way to finish it. Not necessarily a video game, but digital animation. It’s come such a long way and it’s only getting cheaper. So, I think that that would be a great way to wrap up Atlantis and wrap up Universe. But, like Rob has said in the interviews that we’ve had him on, there’s very little reason at this point to go back to that other than just fan service. You have to create something that’s going to push the story forward. I suspect in SG4 we will find out what happened to those missions. We’ll find out what happened to the Wraith and we will find out what happened to Destiny. But is there really money at this point in going back and shooting that stuff? To be perfectly honest, I don’t know. I’m not sure.

Darren Sumner:
Fan service makes sense to me if you’ve got a show up and running, you’re doing a live-action SG4 show, to do some kind of fan service as short-form web content. Do five-minute shorts, do something animated with the cast back doing their voices. I’d rather see that as supplemental material to a show.

David Read:
Agreed. Yeah, 100%. Akos, “Last question, will you invite Brad Wright?” Brad has an open invitation to be on Dial the Gate. He has said to me he will do it, it’s just a question of when. Those are the questions. Thank you, guys. Thank you, Darren.

Darren Sumner:
Thanks for the questions. It was a lot of fun.

David Read:
This was tremendous to have you on. I don’t know if we’ll do a Q2 news debrief.

Darren Sumner:
We’ll see.

David Read:
Hopefully there will be a reason to.

Darren Sumner:
I gotta get busy and write some news stories. If there’s no good news to report, maybe I’ll just fabricate stuff.

David Read:
‘Cause that’ll go over well.

Darren Sumner:
Maybe I’ll trash my 20-year reputation. Like the headlines that have been appearing over the last couple of weeks. I don’t know if you’ve seen these Stargate headlines about a new movie reboot that’s based on nothing.

David Read:
Based on one comment somewhere, one stray electron landed on something, and it was like, “Oh there, look.” I don’t know what’s happening.

Darren Sumner:
The source is one person who claims to have insider knowledge, who has locked their stuff behind a Patreon account. So, if you wanna go give him $4.99!

David Read:
Whatever.

Darren Sumner:
You might be able to hear what he thinks an insider knows about MGM making a new Stargate movie.

David Read:
I’d love it if it were a thing.

Darren Sumner:
There’s a reason it’s not appeared on GateWorld, for those who have been asking.

David Read:
If you were gonna run something about it?

Darren Sumner:
Yeah.

David Read:
‘Cause it’s not credible enough. Truth be told, every couple years I would come back to him and say, “Can we please do an April Fools of some sort?” Darren was like, “No.”

Darren Sumner:
I was very against April Fools. It’s not a good feeling to get messed with, to get your hopes up about something. I got fooled several years ago by a Firefly reunion.

David Read:
God. That always comes up.

Darren Sumner:
Pissed me off. Then there was another one, not related to sci-fi, that I was sitting in Panera and Googling. Whatever it was, I ended up coming across this long, extensive essay that I ended up reading that was transforming the way that I was thinking about this particular topic, which is germane to my profession. I got to the end and realized that…

David Read:
It was on April 1st.

Darren Sumner:
It had been published on April 1st and it was now August 14th, six years later.

David Read:
It wasn’t even the day.

Darren Sumner:
It was still left up. I don’t think the author even said at the bottom that it was an April Fools joke. It was kind of tongue-in-cheek. I had to sit there and look at it for another five minutes before I realized…

David Read:
Before it clicked.

Darren Sumner:
… that it was BS. I’m sorry. GateWorld has not done April Fools jokes and never will, as long as I live and breathe.

David Read:
There is some footage of me with Thor at one of the Stargate conventions. We filmed this whole segment and I was trying to grab Michael Shanks to see if he would do some Thor dialogue to get recorded onto this tape recorder. Morris Chapdelaine was there, I’m pretty sure, and he was packing up Thor and putting him away and I asked for this five-minute thing with Thor and we did. We shook hands, we hugged, it was ridiculous. It’s out there, so it’s in one of my hard drives somewhere. All right, man. I think that’s all the news that’s fit to print.

Darren Sumner:
Good times, just like old times.

David Read:
I know. Just a little bit more modern. I appreciate having you on. I appreciate you doing this.

Darren Sumner:
Anytime.

David Read:
Joseph Mallozzi, David Blue and Jan Newman are next weekend. Andy Mikita and James C.D. Robbins will be our prerecorded episodes to finish out January 31st. Andy was great, talked with him last week. So, that’s in the can. James, we’ll be recording him I think the 25th or something like that.

Darren Sumner:
James Robbins is the one I’m most excited about.

David Read:
I am too.

Darren Sumner:
As soon as you decided to have a live-stream show where you were doing long-form conversations and covering Stargate history, James C.D. Robbins was in my top 10 right off the bat. So exciting.

David Read:
One of the most unique guys out there. Him and Ken Rabehl, they defined that show in so many respects.

Darren Sumner:
Production designer.

David Read:
Exactly, production designer, artist. Thank you again and I’m gonna wrap this thing up.

Darren Sumner:
Thanks everybody. Thanks everybody in chat.

David Read:
Talk to you soon, man.

Darren Sumner:
See you next time.

David Read:
You take care of yourself. Darren Sumner from gateworld.net, everyone. Thank you so much for tuning in. Thanks again to Tom over at Working Props for creating this magnificent Destiny here, which will soon be in the background of Ships. You can check his work out at working-props.com. I do have fan art to share with you, if I can pull this up here. This is submitted by Sally Bennett and she has created several pieces, if I can get everything together here in order, and I can’t. You’re gonna have to give me a second here to pick up the pieces. These are little fabric dolls and they’re the coolest little things that I’m seeing because they are absolutely spot on. There we go. OK, got it. Sally says, “I made John, Rodney, Teyla and Ronon out of felt and have recently also made Todd.” There’s Todd. “They have full removable outfits, including vests and weapons which fit into their holsters and have elastic, Velcro, or snap fasteners so that they can hold them. Rodney has a backpack that his laptop fits into as well.” Let me see here. I guess we can’t see Rodney’s backpack from there. “I’ve also attached a couple of views of Atlantis that I pasteled this week.” Let me pull that. That is magnificent. That’s apparently Atlantis in “The Last Man.” That is really cool. Out of pastels. She also did another one here, that classic stock shot of the base. She also did a, wait for this, Lego Atlantis. One of her obsessions is Atlantis, “Along with my SGA stories, as always, during the first lockdown.” I guess she’s been creating some fan content as well. That’s pretty much all I have for you here. I would like to give a shout-out one more time to the Discord channel that is now live. If you’re a Discord user, if you’re a gamer at all, then you’ll know what that is. Claire Burr and Rhys, they set this up, so the Discord address is right there. If you enjoyed the show, please do consider giving us a Like or a Subscribe. It helps tremendously with the algorithm, as well as commenting. Really, really appreciate everyone who’s doing that. Sommer, Ian, Tracy, Keith, Jeremy, you guys are rock stars. Could not do the show without you; as well as Jennifer Kirby and Linda “Gate Gabber” Furey. We’ve got some fun stuff coming for you. Hopefully we’ll be getting some T-shirts to you and the design’s pretty soon here, within the next couple of weeks. Hopefully, crossing my fingers, we’ll release those designs. Really cool stuff. I’m really proud of the work that we’re doing. That’s all that I’ve got for you guys. I really appreciate you tuning in and we will be bringing you, at 11:00 AM Pacific Time on the 23rd, Joseph Mallozzi for Part Four of his interview. David Blue will be joining us at 1:00 PM Pacific Time, January the 23rd, and then at 3:00 PM Pacific Time, Jan Newman, makeup key from Stargate SG-1. Gotta love Jan, you’re gonna love her. My name is David Read; this is Dial the Gate. Thanks so much for stopping by, we’ll see you on the other side.