The Stargate Executive Producer, and writer of some of your favorite SGA and SGU episodes, sits down to discuss his career, Stargate legacy, and answer your pre-submitted questions!

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Timecodes
0:00 – Opening Credits
0:25 – Welcome and Episode Outline
00:49 – Call to Action
01:38 – Guest Introduction
02:15 – “Demons” was his first entry to Stargate (SG-1 3×08)
04:25 – Tell Us About Yourself
07:35 – Who made you the person you are today?
08:58 – Defining moments in your career
14:21 – Getting Into Stargate Atlantis (1×14 “Before I Sleep”)
22:32 – Was the Sci-fi intimidating?
30:01 – What do you come up with when writing?
36:06 – “Epilogue” (SGU 2×18) is his best-written episode
39:40 – “Twin Destinies” (SGU 2×12)
42:02 – “200” (SG-1 10×6)
45:39 – “Irresistible” (SGA 3×03) and Richard Kind
49:55 – Tone of SGU
55:46 – Crews of SGU
57:36 – 2×07 “The Greater Good”, 2×12 “Twin Destinies”, 1×13 “Faith”
1:03:20 – A fan thanks Carl
1:03:47 – Were there ever any thoughts of adding any of the cast from SG1 or SGA to the SGU cast permanently?
1:04:25 – Directing Jane Seymour (Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman)
1:07:51 – The Scriptwriting of Stargate
1:12:41 – Were you going to play Kiryk (SGA 5×09 “Tracker”)
1:15:59 – Favorite character to write for
1:22:17 – Has Brad Wright contacted you about the next Stargate?
1:28:17 – David thanks Carl for his appearance
1:29:30 – Post-Interview Housekeeping
1:32:27 – End Credits

***

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TRANSCRIPT
Find an error? Submit it here.

David Read:
Welcome, everyone, to another episode of Dial the Gate. I am so pleased to be joined in this episode by Stargate’s executive producer and writer, Carl Binder, responsible for a lot of my favorite episodes from the show. He’s going to be joining us for over an hour of memories we just pre-recorded with him. But before I bring him in, and before we get into this episode, I really would like you to consider clicking the Like button. It makes a huge difference with YouTube’s algorithm and will definitely help the show grow its audience. Please also consider sharing the video with a Stargate friend, and if you wanna get notified about future episodes, click that Subscribe icon. And giving the Bell icon a click will notify you the moment a new video drops, and you’ll get any that I may send out of any last-minute guest changes, which have happened from time to time. Clips from this livestream will also be released over the course of the next several days on the gateworld.net YouTube channel. I’m not gonna delay this much further, this was an excellent show, and I can’t wait for you to hear it. Stargate writer and executive producer, Carl Binder, is joining us now. Carl Binder, writer and executive producer, Stargate. Writer of Stargate SG-1, Atlantis, and Universe, executive producer of Atlantis and Universe. Do I have that right?

Carl Binder:
Correct.

David Read:
Thank you.

Carl Binder:
Technically correct.

David Read:
But everyone in that kitchen wore all kinds of chef’s hats, really, at the end of the day. Thank you for being on Dial the Gate. It is a pleasure to have you.

Carl Binder:
My pleasure. I’m intimidated, but let’s do this.

David Read:
So, you went back as far as SG-1’s “Demons.” I was going through this list here, “Demons” was your first entry into Stargate. And I’m just going down the list and I’m like, “Man, this guy has done so much stuff that I loved.” And I would be remiss if I didn’t bring up, and I know I didn’t send this to you, but Dr Quinn. What an amazing experience that had to have been. What a cast. It’s Jane friggin’ Seymour, for crying out loud.

Carl Binder:
Yeah. It was great. It ran for six seasons. I joined it from the end of the third season on. And Beth Sullivan hired me right off after I did Pocahontas, and she really promoted me instantly, and next thing I know I’m an executive producer. And then she said, “I really like this script you did, you’re gonna direct it.” And I’d never directed anything. And so, I got opportunity to direct two episodes. I rose up the ladder on the show. She just gave me all kinds of benefits from being there. And it was just great because I’ve been fortunate in my career to work on shows that are just sort of either an Old West village where we had a working steam train coming in, and you’d see the big crane coming down as the steam train came, and I’d be like, “This is Hollywood.” And then I’m working on a spaceship later, and it’s just like– I never really– Later with Unspeakable, working in houses and normal, regular everyday kind of surroundings, I’ve been fortunate to be on these kind of weird, fun, Hollywood-type shows. And that was a blast, it was an absolute blast working on that show.

David Read:
I wanted to know, before we get too deep in the sci-fi world here, and I do wanna bring up Unspeakable as well, man, what a miniseries. I wanted to know a little bit about where you are from, and who you were as a young person, and the person who became this writer who created the content that we love.

Carl Binder:
I was born in Canada, in Windsor, Ontario, which is right across the river from Detroit. And as I always say, my parents were lucky enough to escape when I was eight. We moved to California. I don’t know what my life would have become had we stayed in Windsor. I don’t know if you’ve ever been to Windsor?

David Read:
I have not. Toronto is about as close as I’ve been.

Carl Binder:
Well, Toronto’s great. Windsor was not. Hopefully there’s nobody listening to this that’s from Windsor, but they probably would agree. It’s not the kind of place you wanna grow up in and live in. Oddly, my wife grew up in Buffalo, which is not too far from Windsor, so we could’ve still met each other had her family not moved to Southern California either. But anyway, I grew up in Southern California and always kept my Canadian citizenship. At a certain point I became an American but, when I signed with my agent, she said at that time, “The fact that you’re Canadian is very good, ’cause a lot of shows are starting to go up to Canada too.” This is the late ‘80s. And so, I was able to get a story editor job on a Canadian show called Adderly. But how I was as a little kid is an interes– Because we moved so much. I went to kindergarten in one school, first grade in another school, second grade in another school. We moved to California, third grade, first half of third grade in one school, and second half in third grade. And my mom kept my report cards from my whole time I was in school, and they were always the same: very shy, very sensitive, very quiet, doesn’t say anything, doesn’t say anything. But by fifth grade, after I’d had a couple years in the same school, we started seeing the talks too much in class, more interested in making the other kids laugh. And so, I …

David Read:
What changed? What was the trigger? Did you just have enough? It’s like, “You know what? This is …”

Carl Binder:
I just got to meet other kids, and it became stable, and I had friends. And then I could make a joke in class and everybody would laugh, and I got more comfortable. Up until then, I didn’t know anybody and I was very worried. But I was always into drawing. I wanted to be an animator. I loved the Disney cartoons. But I couldn’t draw really well. So, then I would make up stories, and then I got into acting. And in high school, I went into drama and did plays and then my parents let me go to USC where I entered the film school there, and then that just sort of got me off and running in the end.

David Read:
Carl, who are the people most responsible for turning you into the person you are?

Carl Binder:
It’s corny, but …

David Read:
No corn on this show, sir.

Carl Binder:
Obviously, my parents because of what I just said, by moving here and by allowing me– ‘Cause my dad– I was a baseball player. I was supposed to become a baseball player. I got a scholarship offer, but I didn’t wanna go to that university. I wanted to go to USC film school. And so, instead of having free college, my parents said, “OK, we’ll pay to have you go to USC.” So, that was a major deal for helping me to become– And then family friends, but as far as that, that’s pretty much how I became who I am. And I was always, as I said, a huge fan of Disney growing up. And then my teenage years, 14, 15, I discovered Steven Spielberg and Jaws and Sugarland Express, and that sort of just made me go, “Oh, man, I’ve gotta do this. I’ve gotta get into this business.” And so, …

David Read:
Did you have– Go ahead.

Carl Binder:
No, no, no.

David Read:
Did you have to pinch yourself when you actually worked for Disney?

Carl Binder:
It’s weird because both of those things, I was working on a Canadian TV show with Brad Wright, the only two staff writers on the show, and then in between seasons, I get a call from my agent who said, “I got a meeting for Pocahontas, for Disney.” And I could not believe the directors, the producer, and one of the execs at Disney had read a feature spec that I wrote, and for whatever reason, they thought, “Oh, he could do this.” So, they brought me in, I had two or three meetings. Next thing I know, I got hired, and it was two years on that project. There were two other writers that came in after me that worked, we all worked together. But yeah, it was great. And when Pocahontas was finished, it was right around when DreamWorks was starting up. And Katzenberg called my agent and said, “We’re forming this new company, DreamWorks, we wanna do this animated feature called Prince of Egypt, and we’d like Carl and Susannah to come in and meet about it.” Me and Susannah Grant went in, and who walks in but Steven Spielberg? For six months, I got to work with Steven Spielberg. So, I got to do both things that I dreamed about. And I actually got to pitch on the board our version of what we thought Prince of Egypt should be to Steven Spielberg. And it was, that was very intimidating, but it was rewarding. We ended up leaving the project, but I was like, “OK. All right. I did what I wanted to do.”

David Read:
Pocahontas, that was the golden age of Disney, as far as I’m concerned, Disney Animation. Just hit after hit after hit every single year. And I’m, of course, I was 12, 13 at the time, so I’m biased. But man, what a resume of just– That was a great time, had to have been a great time to be in that industry.

Carl Binder:
It really was. And it was great because it was the last animated feature before Jeffrey left to go do DreamWorks. And so, getting to work with him, which was quite an experience, incredibly difficult. I mean, just really, really hard.

David Read:
He demanded a lot out of you?

Carl Binder:
Yeah. Like really early meetings, weekend meetings, Mother’s Day meetings.

David Read:
He was serious.

Carl Binder:
Yeah. This guy, he was relentless. And he would schedule his meetings every 15 minutes and after a half hour, if you weren’t done, he’s up and out and onto the next meeting. Then you have to schedule– Or you’d pitch him something in the morning and he’d say, “OK, I’m not sure about that. Work it up and we’ll talk again at 5:00.” So, you’re like, “We have to solve something and work–” This is how it was for the entire time I was there, and it was just– But I got to fly to Dublin to record Mel Gibson while he was shooting Braveheart. And then he took us down to his trailer to show us a rough cut, on VHS, of a battle scene he had just cut together for his little action film, he called it. I’m like, this is, this is more– A lot of the stuff we got to do because of that movie was just incredible. So, I was very fortunate and loved every minute of it, even though it was difficult.

David Read:
I feel like I defeated my next question. You answered it so well. Are there any other projects that you consider defining moments in your career before we move on to some other topics?

Carl Binder:
Dr. Quinn was probably defining in that I got to direct, it was a pretty high-profile show. I wrote a lot of episodes, and it was so much fun walking into, every morning, this other world. You cross the bridge and you’re in this Old West town. And I got to work with Mr. Rogers, and Willie Nelson. There was a lot of great stuff. And it sort of set me up. Unfortunately, after Dr. Quinn, I got typecast as a soft writer, a writer of this kind of Harlequin romance, so they hired me to do these Mary Higgins Clark mysteries. I did a show called Mysterious Ways, which was fun, on Fox Network. But it was getting hard to get work and to be taken seriously. And then my buddy Brad called to say, “Come on to this spinoff we’re doing of SG-1, called Atlantis.” I’m like, “I can’t, I’m not a science fiction writer, I can’t do that.” He said, “Yes, you can. Yes, you can. Don’t worry about the science fiction. You worry about character. I’ll worry about the science part of it.”

David Read:
We cannot glaze over this in the slightest. You’re at a transition phase, point in your career …

Carl Binder:
Correct.

David Read:
… and Brad reaches out to you?

Carl Binder:
Yep.

David Read:
And we’re already in 2004 spinoff Atlantis territory at this point. So, you get the call?

Carl Binder:
They were just beginning Season One of Atlantis. You brought up “Demons.” I don’t remember much of how they brought me up. I don’t remember, did I pitch that story? Did they give me that story?

David Read:
It says it’s a written by, it’s not a teleplay.

Carl Binder:
You know how it works.

David Read:
Vaguely.

Carl Binder:
Either I pitched it or they gave it to me, and we worked it up on the board, and then I went home and I did an outline, and then I did a script, and then Brad did a page one rewrite, pretty much, of it.

David Read:
And never takes credit for it.

Carl Binder:
No. This happens a lot in this business. I’ve done page one rewrites of writers when I was showrunner on various projects. This is what we did on Dr. Quinn and Mysterious Ways. We did it all the time. I don’t really remember much from that at all. So, then he said, “Look.” He sent me the pilot and a few rough cuts of the first few episodes or whatever, and then said, “See if you can come up with something.” So, I did a phone pitch with him and Rob Cooper. And Rob was skeptical of me, and I know Joe and Paul were skeptical. But Brad was very confident, and so I remember I pitched a couple things, and one of the stories I pitched was “Before I Sleep.” It’s not what ended up as “Before I Sleep.” From what I remember, it was simply we’re investigating a portion of Atlantis that we haven’t been to, and we uncover this lab, and in it is a stasis pod with an old woman who’s been in there for years and years and years, and when we thaw her out and revive her, it’s Elizabeth Weir.

David Read:
Sounds about right to me.

Carl Binder:
But how she got there was completely different. I had envisioned, I had pitched something like, when we first come through the Gate, there’s some kind of mech– Now remember, I don’t know much about, I’m jumping in cold, I’m a freelancer. There’s some kind of mechanism that sort of scans bodies coming through, and the city does this, and it picks out the leader, and it starts to recreate a clone that ages rapidly, and it’s studying who these people are, what their genetic makeup is. And Rob was like, “Nah, I don’t know about that.” But they liked the teaser. And that, by the way, that’s how we ended up buying a lot of pitches from outside writers, is we liked the teaser. And then we worked out the rest of the show. But then they flew me up there to discuss it further, and in the time that I flew up there, Rob sat down and said, “What if the reason it’s Elizabeth Weir is this isn’t the first time we’ve come through the Gate?” And then boom, it just started spinning and coming together. And then they all left Martin and I in a room together to break parts of the story, and then we pitched it when they all came back in. Then I delivered the draft, and I’ve worked as a freelancer, I’ve also worked as a showrunner. What you want as a showrunner from a freelancer is for them to just get it in the ZIP code. Just get the scaffolding there that you can work from to then get the voices right, to get the interactions correct. And so, that’s all I was hoping to do. I was hoping to just give Brad something that he could then– And I was surprised that a fair amount of stuff that I had written remained in the final show, so I was happy.

David Read:
You weren’t just in the ZIP code, you were in the city block on some of it too.

Carl Binder:
It was a large block, but I was somewhere on that block.

David Read:
It’s one of my favorite episodes of Atlantis, and it is my favorite Weir episode. Torri is a force in that one and all of the angles from which she plays that character come to bear. Janus, I don’t know who came up with Janus, but he was a pivotal player, and I think if we were really to delve into the mythology of the franchise, I think we would find out he was responsible for more than we realized.

Carl Binder:
I think so.

David Read:
And it was just a solid episode for her and a great way for you to enter. Those teasers, I see what you’re saying, the teaser element, if that’s good then we can tweak some of the things that follow it in order to make it fit the kind of stories that they want to tell. So, your original idea was that the city kind of scans the leader and starts building a clone of it? That’s interesting.

Carl Binder:
Yeah, if I remember correctly. And they just were like, “No, no, no. That’s not–” You know how Rob is. “No, no, no. That’s not gonna work at all.” And I was just like, “It is.” I tell you, it was intimidating. Working with those guys was– So, after that, Brad asked me to do this, I guess kind of a clip show sort of, semi-clip show, semi, semi-not, “Letters from Pegasus.”

David Read:
It’s like 10% clip show.

Carl Binder:
And most of that he ended up rewriting anyway, but then he said, “Do you wanna come aboard full-time?” And I said, “OK.” And so, we worked out a deal where I was only guaranteed half the season in case I flamed out. But the first few months working on the show, I was just overwhelmed because we were doing Atlantis and SG-1. I was trying to catch up on SG-1, watching episode after episode and studying, and just walking around the hallways in a blur. And I remember Brad coming into my office saying, “Hey, how are you doing today?” And I said, “Good.” And he went, “Are you? Are you doing OK?” ‘Cause it took a long time to catch up with this guy.

David Read:
So, you’re taking SG-1 as homework. Was the sci-fi intimidating? Or were you like, “Oh, I get this. It’s not so bad. It’s not as bad as I thought it was?”

Carl Binder:
Some of it. No, no, no, it was as bad as I thought it was. It was very intimidating, but you have to learn it, and you have to get it. And you have this great backstop of Rob Cooper and Joe Mallozzi and Paul Mullie and Brad Wright who, the great thing about those guys is they won’t let you get away with anything that’s not right. And fortunately, my entire time there, even on SGU, I was given shows that were more character-based, and so there was a lot more– Like “Quarantine,” it’s just a bunch of two-handers. People just isolated and, “Oh, let’s see. How are we gonna pair these people up in a way that– Oh, I didn’t see that Zelenka and Carter in an elevator.”

David Read:
In pigeon talk.

Carl Binder:
Exactly. Those were the kind of smaller episodes that we could save some money on, and so that was what they were giving me to do, which I was thrilled to be able to do. I think the biggest space battle I ever had in an episode was in “The Hive.” We would sit in the writers’ room and we’d talk about– If I had questions, I’d write very detailed outlines, and then they’d be able to tell me, “Well, this is wrong or do this or change this,” or whatever. I became comfortable because I could then trust the guys to protect me.

David Read:
One of the things that’s frustrating about the landscape, and I suppose it’s true in any genre, but I would think especially true in this one, is that you’re going in there and pitching, and you’re fortunate to have these monoliths of television in the room with you to be able to say, “Well, Star Trek did that,” or, “We did that.”

Carl Binder:
All the time.

David Read:
Or, “Maybe we can make it work for us, but Star Trek did that.” There’s only so much stuff out there.

Carl Binder:
At a certain point I just gave up because I would come up with something, “Oh, wow, what about this?” And I would go in and they’d be like, “Are you kidding? It’s been done 800,000 times.” And then I just, after a while– So, what would end up happening is one of the guys would come in and say, “Oh, I’ve got an idea.” Or they would talk about different ideas that they had for the season and, “Is anybody interested in any of these?” Or where we wanted to go with the retrovirus and then we’re gonna capture a Wraith and we’re gonna give it to him and make him an Atlantis …

David Read:
A human.

Carl Binder:
… a member, a human.

David Read:
I see. We’re talking Michael.

Carl Binder:
I was like, “Oh, I wanna do that one. I wanna do that. That one sounds really– That sounds like a great character study.” Also, something else I love doing are moral dilemmas. “Are we doing the right thing here?” That wasn’t my idea. I didn’t pitch that idea. And in fact, I was trying to make it work with the team going out, capturing a Wraith, injecting him, we’re studying him, we’re arguing, and he becomes a human, and now what? And it just felt so linear and it felt so uninteresting. And then Mallozzi says, “We start with him waking up and we don’t know who this guy is.” From then on it was, “Yes, that’s how to tell this story.” Why are we behaving like this.

David Read:
You’re right. It’s not necessarily– It is about the story, but it’s not necessarily, it’s the angle that you tell it as well …

Carl Binder:
The POV.

David Read:
… that makes it interesting.

Carl Binder:
It’s the POV. We’re telling it from his POV instead of our POV. To me that was much more interesting ’cause it’s much more character-based and it’s a mystery. What’s going on with this? Why are we behaving this way?

David Read:
You want people to care for it too, and half of that I think largely comes from the story, but the other half comes from Connor. You pick someone that people are going to intrinsically have a predisposition to liking anyway. Based on the sci-fi background there. He’s wonderful.

Carl Binder:
He’s an innocent. And he’s trying to figure it out, and he’s like, “They keep telling me I’m this and this and this, and I guess I believe them, but why am I feeling these weird sensations?”

David Read:
Why is the big, tall caveman always after me?

Carl Binder:
What’s his problem? Those are the kinds of stories that I was interested in. And they would also say, “Hey, look, we have something.” I remember in Universe when Rob said, “I have this idea where Volker needs a kidney. We need to do a kidney transplant. And I think you’d be good for that one.” I got that one. And that became “Hope.” They kind of knew which episodes were better for me, which I would be better to handle. And “Aurora” was like that as well. When I first joined, that was my first script, was “Aurora.”

David Read:
Really?

Carl Binder:
“Condemned” aired before it, but “Aurora” was the first script, and I just remember doing an outline that I don’t think anybody liked. Then they gave me notes, and then I did another outline. And then slowly but surely it sort of got there. And then that first season, and even the second season, Brad was doing a lot of rewriting on, he would do his pass to get the voices right, to get– And I’m learning. When you jump in, you don’t have the voices of these people. You watch and you think you do and then, nope, McKay says this line and, ah, that’s so much better. That’s McKay. Why did I write that other line? You’re trying to learn and pick it up as you go along and hopefully get better at it.

David Read:
What do you initially come up with when you are writing? And I think a little bit of this has been telegraphed already with coming in and finding Elizabeth in stasis, but that may not have been your original idea. I do mean the first idea of that script. The reason I wanna ask is, when you’re writing, do you come up with individual themes like Rob Cooper does? He wants to tell, he typically thinks about his stories and themes, or do scenes come first for you or something else?

Carl Binder:
I don’t necessarily– It’s more of a theme, I think. Unless somebody pitches me a story that I immediately see– For instance, on Universe, we were talking about the first 9 or 10 episodes of different things that, fire, water, earth, …

David Read:
Elements.

Carl Binder:
… time, all those. And then life. I forget if it was Rob or Brad or whoever said, “We wanna do an episode like a day in the life on the ship, and how bleak it is for them.” I right away started thinking; that spurred some scenes. I thought of the opening and closing with a montage, and it was …

David Read:
Is that The Worst Day Since Yesterday?

Carl Binder:
The great thing is, my daughter was in college, and she would send me– My daughter, Brianna, would send me these playlists and songs so that I could stay hip and stay current. She actually became my technical advisor ’cause she’s an astrophysicist. She’s an astronomer now. I would always call her to run stuff by her and get her input and her notes and whatever. But anyway, she would send me music. And Flogging Molly was one of the things, and that song became my theme song. I love that song because it just speaks to me. And when they talked about “Life,” and I thought about this montage, I thought, “Wouldn’t it be cool if we could get that song?” And we did.

David Read:
And Janelle Monáe, I believe, is in that episode as well, if I’m …

Carl Binder:
No, she was in “Earth.”

David Read:
“Earth.” Dagummit! Foolish, David. But still, what a catch, before she had risen to huge stardom. That was great. I remember getting the– I’ve got the book around here somewhere. It’s like, “Janelle Monáe is in Stargate Universe.” And I’m like, “Wow, they’re really leveraging this more popular side of the show.” And now it’s, I don’t know anyone who doesn’t know who Janelle Monáe is.

Carl Binder:
Also, Kerry McDowall, our post-production supervisor, and she would help find the music. We’d talk about, “Hey, could we maybe get something like this?” And she would come back, yes or no or whatever.

David Read:
“Yeah, that’ll be $10 million please.”

Carl Binder:
‘Cause Rob originally wanted to have a Coldplay song in “Air,” or “Lost,” one of the episodes. Oh no, I thought that wasn’t gonna happen. But she pitched this unknown band, and we loved this music. And so, we used it. It was Season Two. I get the seasons confused sometimes. But it was Mumford & Sons, and it was with T.J. and the baby, and I forget the name of the song.

David Read:
It’s the end of the episode when she’s staring at the nebula.

Carl Binder:
“It’s Gonna Be Fine.” But anyway, they were unknowns that she got from the record company, and we used them. And in the course of the season, shooting the season, by the time we got to the end, we wanted to use a Mumford & Sons song sort of at the bookend at the end, and they were way too expensive by then, and said no. Or no, they just declined. They said, “No, thank you.”

David Read:
At the last shot of the show?

Carl Binder:
No, no. It was in one of the later episodes where– But by then they had broken out.

David Read:
“No, no. Sci-fi, yeah.” “We’re good. We’ve got your money. Thanks so much.” Joel’s music.

Carl Binder:
That last cue.

David Read:
That last cue is, in my opinion, the best thing he ever wrote.

Carl Binder:
It’s the best. It’s one of the best things.

David Read:
I would give a digit to get my hands on that file, and to be able to release some of his SGU music to the world, ’cause it’s just extraordinary how good he was. He was always good. But near the end of that, I mean, SGU was his show.

Carl Binder:
I loved what he did. It’s funny because I had found some temp music to play over the little montage in “Epilogue” where T.J.’s succumbing to ALS. And then ending with the empty chair. And it was a Mark Knopfler piece that was heartbreaking. And in the rough cut, when we put that temp music on, everybody in the room was, it was so emotional. I thought, “How is he going to replace that with…” It was great. Sensational.

David Read:
Exactly. Absolutely. And “Epilogue” is my favorite episode from that show.

Carl Binder:
Thank you. It’s also mine. I should say it’s my favorite– Actually, I should say it’s my favorite script of my entire career that I have ever written. I felt like at that point, it’s all downhill from here. This is the best I can do and I was really– I was very proud and pleased with how that episode came out. I was thrilled that the cast had such a good time doing it. And that the crew had a good time doing it, and it was really difficult. It was a big undertaking, but I’m most proud of that more than anything else I’ve done in my career.

David Read:
It benefits from already having the circumstance established in the previous episode, which is great because you don’t have to spend time explaining why you’re opening this to an old Chloe. We already know that there’s a previous version of them out there. But I love especially “Gauntlet” is a perfectly serviceable ending, and I’m grinding my teeth when saying that, to the series. It is a perfectly serviceable ending. But, because I’m grinding my teeth because there was no more. But at the same time in many, in many respects depending on how from a certain point of view, Luke, the episode “Epilogue,” I think, is just as fairly a series finale as well. How many times do we get to see a story where we see the outcome of a group of characters over generations?

Carl Binder:
But it’s not the outcome of our characters.

David Read:
This is true.

Carl Binder:
It’s the outcome of the other characters, the other life. So, in that way it’s probably not, but what was for me so much fun was that kind of It’s a Wonderful Life. The first thing when I sat down, “OK, what’s gonna happen when all these people are on this planet and building that– Oh, Volker’s gonna need a kidney.”

David Read:
Because that happened anyway.

Carl Binder:
Because that happened, and you didn’t have Destiny, and so he became the first casualty. So, it was fun to look at all that, but what was interesting is there was no real stakes to it. And as we were working on it, there was nothing, nothing that has real-world implication, and I don’t know why; I think it was Paul Mullie who came up with the idea of giving one of our characters either he said ALS or said a disease that our character is gonna get, and that ups the tension and the stakes as far as what our team is going through right now and will go through for the rest of the series. And so, I thought that was a great idea. Of course, it wasn’t– it was one of the guys giving me the idea. But I ran with it.

David Read:
Whose idea was it, because I’ve not asked any of the group, of the core group yet, whose idea was it to create an alternate Destiny crew? Um, because obviously that’s what happens when they try to activate the portal back to Earth in a star.

Carl Binder:
It was pretty cool.

David Read:
It creates this whole copy of them, yeah. As soon as that happened, I as an audience member was like, “We’re gonna see these people again.” You know? They’re gonna use that as leverage in later episodes. And it made, I think, the most rich tapestry of the show at that point. But whose initial idea was that? Do you recall?

Carl Binder:
I believe that was Brad. Brad came in with this idea of doing “Twin Destinies,” yeah.

David Read:
But the amount of research that had to go into, OK, we’ve created a civilization that has 2,000 years of history that has the benefits of video logs so they will continue to use English more than likely, but spellings are going to change, and music is going to evolve. And these little, teeny tiny things that they’re all, interesting Muzak, things like that, that would be out of phase from us, had to have been delicious to plan out.

Carl Binder:
I wanted Girl from Ipanema playing in that– And I don’t know why we ended up not being able to get it or to do it in Muzak, I don’t know why, but it still worked, the Muzak. But it would’ve been funnier if it was the Girl from Ipanema because why not? It would’ve survived. It would’ve survived thousands of years. But those kind of things, and also the beef jerky, that still survived, that could’ve survived after so long. So, that was fun. That was fun to– And they were starting ahead of the game. They weren’t starting from scratch, but they were starting with a lot of knowledge that they didn’t have.

David Read:
Scientists. They already know that they’re going to have to mix certain alloys together in order to start making metals and things like that. So, they do have a heads up. There are little things though that you would probably get lost had Eli, the college dropout, not written all their textbooks. I wanna skip over to “200.” Which scenes in “200” were you responsible for writing? Which vignettes?

Carl Binder:
Look, I don’t remember. Martin and I were assigned a group of scenes. And then, of that group of scenes Martin said, “I’ll write these and you write these.” OK, so we both wrote our scenes. We handed it in to the guys who rewrote the whole thing. So, it was a Brad/Rob undertaking. One of my lines made it through. One line that I wrote survived into the final, and it’s the, “The singularity is about to explode.” That was my line.

David Read:
That makes no sense.

Carl Binder:
Exactly. That little exchange was me. But the rest of it was– I will be honest that I was a skeptic of “200.” When they were pitching it, I kept thinking like, “Clearly, Brad and Rob know their audience, know their fans better than I knew them.” This was my, what? My second season in the franchise. It was Season 10, so I was in Season Three …

David Read:
Season Three of Atlantis.

Carl Binder:
So, I was like, “You guys are making fun of a show that a lot of people take very seriously.” And Brad and Rob kept saying, “No, no, no, don’t worry. They’ll get the joke. They’ll get the joke. It’ll be fun for them. They’ll love it.” And I kept thinking, “But aren’t you– By making fun of the show, aren’t you making fun of the fans? I kept thinking, “No, you’re going too far. You’re going too far.” But Rob would just tell me to shut up. “Let me… We’re gonna do this.” So, that was pretty much– I was wrong, obviously.

David Read:
There were instances, and Mallozzi and I were on Episode Seven or Eight, we’re doing deep dives of each of his straight through from beginning to end. And when we got to the Jay Felger ones of, this kind of mad scientist at the SGC who has dolls of the team members at his house and everything else, even Joe was like, “Mm…” But when you’re making fun of the mechanics of your show and the in-jokes that are among the characters and the circumstances that you’re putting them in, you know? I mean, they even used the literary reference, “Well, we’ll hang a lantern on it.” There were a lot of lanterns hung in Stargate. I think it just works. I remember being in Brad’s office when they were– You guys were getting ready to do it. And Brad was like, “People are either going to love it or they’re going to hate it.” And I remember sitting in my living room with my folks just three days before SG-1’s cancellation was announced, ’cause it was announced that Monday, thinking, “This is brilliant.” It was absolutely brilliant.

Carl Binder:
I walked in the next day after it aired and all the fans were raving about it. I said, “Clearly, I don’t know what the hell I’m talking about.” I’m just gonna trust you guys. If you guys say this is gonna work, I’m all for it.” But yeah, obviously, I was wrong about that one.

David Read:
I wanted to bring up, you said you got one line into that episode. You were responsible– And if you don’t say, “Well, Brad wrote th–” If you say, “Brad wrote this one,” I’m gonna be crushed.

Carl Binder:
Uh-oh.

David Read:
But I’m interested to see if you can remember the episode. You are responsible for giving me the hardest laugh in the history of the show. “The sick have been cured, the lame can walk again. Well, some still crawl, but they crawl a lot faster than they used to.”

Carl Binder:
That was me. There was a lot of stuff that Brad– ‘Cause then he starts– Anyway. Brad did his pass and tweaked a lot and added a lot of funny stuff that really got Richard Kind’s voice. But there were some things that I was very happy, that one, that line right there …

David Read:
It’s so funny.

Carl Binder:
“They can walk, well, they can’t, but they can crawl much faster.” The frozen baby speech, which I liked, and then, “And grew up to be,” and then he points over and, “Her? No, him.” There was a lot of stuff that survived of mine in “Irresistible.”

David Read:
Tell us about that. Richard Kind, who was in the original film. You really gotta harness his Spin City kind of humor. This is a comedic character. This is the Harcourt Fenton Mudd, the Harry Mudd of Atlantis.

Carl Binder:
When Rob first pitched this delicious fat guy episode, about this guy that exuded pheromones and attracted peop– I thought, “Oh, man, I would love to be able to do it. Can I please do this? Can I please do this?” Then Brad and I– Rob was off doing something else, so Brad and I worked on it, and then I went off and I did my pass, and then Brad did his pass. And when we got Richard Kind, I thought, “This is great.” And then he turned out to be this total sweetheart. He was really nice and went to Joe Mallozzi’s chocolate party and it worked out great, and it was fun because the cast really enjoyed doing something that was so different, and it was always intended to be something that was funny. The thing is, he’s not a good guy. He’s not– He’s an evil person. We’re not glorifying this guy. We’re making sure that he gets his comeuppance at the end of it. That’s why I thought it was OK to have fun and make him funny, but by the end, he takes a very dark turn, and ultimately at the end, we’re sending you back and letting your townsfolk …

David Read:
Have their way with you. Absolutely.

Carl Binder:
Exactly.

David Read:
Martin Wood– We were on set for that, me and Darren, through GateWorld, and Martin, we took him aside and talked with him, and he said, “I’m deliberately shooting this like a comedy. And I’m deliberately trying to shoot this almost like there’s a fourth wall. If you’re looking really closely, you can see it. But it was an example, SG-1 has its comedic elements; you think that was funny? Atlantis is gonna throw some funnier ones at you. Some people argue that it works. Some people argue that it didn’t. I thought it was hysterical. And they brought it back.

Carl Binder:
I was surprised that there was a lot of negative reaction to it afterwards, and I understood what they were saying, but what I always kept saying was, “No, we’re not glorifying this guy. We’re not making this guy the good guy. He’s the bad guy.”

David Read:
Look at where we leave him.

Carl Binder:
This guy is gonna get what’s coming to him.

David Read:
Were you– I know that Joe was the one that really had the pulse on the fandom. How often would you poke around after Friday nights and see what people were saying, go online, because those were the days when fan reviews were all the rage and everything else.

Carl Binder:
We would check it out, but to a certain extent because some of it, no one’s harsher than your closest, your deepest fans. And so, sometimes you’re just, like, “Wow, I didn’t–” A lot of people didn’t like “Life” from SGU. OK, I get it, it was a little soapy, but I really loved doing that show. I loved writing it. I loved being on set. I loved working with the actors and Alex Chapple, the director. The cast loved it, and I was really thrilled with the final product. And then people are like, “Oh, boring,” and it’s very– OK, because a lot of it happens on Earth, and it’s– I was surprised by that reaction, and at a certain point, you wanna get feedback and you wanna listen to it. But you also, ultimately, wanna do shows that you wanna watch too.

David Read:
I mean, you and I both know that SGU automatically out of the gate had a couple of strikes against it from the fandom perspective, and there was very little that could be done about that, and there was a lot of behind-the-scenes stuff that there’s no reason to share that was all happening at the time. But I think when you take Universe by itself, and a number of fans who have since rewatched the show, or who were not fans of Stargate at the time have since seen it, they’re like, “What’s wrong with it?” It was five to ten years ahead of its time, in terms of storytelling.

Carl Binder:
Both SG-1 and Atlantis were good guys versus bad guys. And now we have this show where that’s why I love SGU the most of all of them, because I love when Rob and Brad first pitched the spinoff and how they wanted to do it. But the thing that I loved was, there’s no good guys and bad guys. It’s military versus civilian, and what do you do when you’re stranded out in the middle of nowhere on this ship? I love that idea of Young’s not really a good guy. Rush is definitely not a good guy. Even Scott, who is probably– Well, Eli’s probably the most genuine good guy in there, but here’s Lieutenant Scott, who’s this really good, big-hearted lieutenant, but he’s got his issues as well. They all have their issues. I just love that. I love the muddiness of it. I think that was a problem. The darkness of it was a problem. The slow roll of the first season was a problem. I think they just– But I always said, “This is not getting a fair shot.” I think this is a really good show.

David Read:
I wish that, because obviously they could’ve pulled the plug on it, but I wish that, in hindsight, there was a way to communicate to the fandom to say, “Sci-Fi has pretty much given this a two-season order out of the gate, so expect 40 episodes and give us a chance to tell a little bit of a slower story over those 40 episodes.” We’re telling a story where people have been placed in the situation that they’re in, and they’re all not necessarily ideal for the roles that they’re in. I would argue that T.J. is more, on certain days, more reasonable a commander than Young would be, especially at the start. The episode where she takes command is, I mean, it’s like, she needs to be in that chair once they find the captain’s chair and once they find the bridge. But the show is going in such a place where these people will become the people that they need to be in the circumstances that they’re in because they have no choice. Give them a chance to find it. And I think by the end of SGU Season Two, they’re well on their way.

Carl Binder:
Season Two was pivotal, because in the middle of that season, it becomes this, “OK, look. We’re in this together. Let’s start thinking forward instead of always thinking about how we’re gonna get back. Let’s see this mission out.” Suddenly, it became more of that kind of show that I think everybody wanted it to be. I don’t know, you can go back and look at what could we have done different, or should we have sped it up a little bit? We ended up taking one episode and making two out of it. Originally, “Fire” became “Darkness” and “Light,” two episodes. And then we moved some episodes around, “Life” wasn’t originally supposed to be after “Time.” Every show has its ups and downs and you’re finding it. But what I was blown away by right from the get-go was how good that cast was. They were solid, and we discover these gems in there, with Kelamis and all of them, and Jen Spence. There, there’s some really, really great people, actors working on that show.

David Read:
Not just the talent in front of the camera, but the talent behind the camera. People like Mark Savela, the effects supervisor, digital effects supervisor. You had James C.D. Robbins who built those sets out of his mind.

Carl Binder:
That was incredible. Those sets were incredible, how they were able to make that ship look so huge. Repurpose the corridors, the lighting built into the corridors, and that Gate room, that huge Gate room. And then the bridge in the second season, man, he just really– And then Mark was like, “Yeah, we can do that.” What about this? “Yeah, we can do that.” “Yeah, no, no problem. We can do that.” It was incredible, the work that they did.

David Read:
You’d reached a point, in terms of visual effects and everything else, where, “I challenge you to come up with something that we can’t pull off.” It’s just a question of money. It’s, “OK, that will cost X number of dollars. You want the fish people? Fine, we can do fish people.”

Carl Binder:
It was quite an experience. And on SGU, on the scripts that we wrote, we were on the set the entire time. That was great because it was so– The cast was so excited about doing these scripts and working on these scripts and– We had this massive day on “Greater Good” in second season, with Young and Rush getting in this big fight and this long discussion in this corridor of this alien ship, and it was a 10 and a half, 11-page day, which is huge for us. With a big fight scene and all the stuff involved in it, and Bobby had a huge amount of dialogue that he had to talk about. They both did, and they came ready to play, and it was such an incredible day, because they were all into it and wanted to make– Instead of saying, “Well, this is what’s wrong with the script,” or, “This is–” or questioning everything we did, they would come and say, “OK, there’s a reason this is here. It’s not arbitrary. This line didn’t just happen. Let’s make it work and let’s figure this out,” and work with us. It was really a positive give and take creative collaboration that was unmatched. I loved it.

David Read:
That particular episode, I think, is the turning point where there are obviously two sides of this issue. One wants to get them back to where they were from, and the other ones to say, “At least we’re here. Let’s move forward.” And this episode and “Twin Destinies,” I think, really began to establish that they have to put aside their issues for the sake of that crew.

Carl Binder:
And for the first time, Rush presents the possibility of maybe seeing this through is our way to get back.

David Read:
Absolutely. Did you like the idea of the– I know that the information was compartmentalized. The nature of Destiny’s mission, did you like the ideas that were presented in terms of where the show was gonna be going? Were you not exposed to those just because Brad and Rob wanted to keep those under wraps?

Carl Binder:
No, not a whole lot. Maybe they did mention something that I didn’t quite get. I had my own ideas about– Because that whole speech, that whole sequence, and that, Paul did a pass. I think Brad did a pass. I think they all did a pass and added to it ’cause it was the pivotal moment in the series where we’re now moving forward. No, I wasn’t really 100% sure as to– ‘Cause sometimes things change too. We’re jumping, at the end of this season, into a whole another galaxy. Well, what are we gonna find there? What are we gonna see? Where are we going? Brad did say they always talked about a five-season arc. So, we were still a ways from really figuring out where we were going. I know that we had talked about the aliens that created the “Faith” planet.

David Read:
The obelisks.

Carl Binder:
That planet that was built, the whole notion that there’s some super intelligent– The whole thing about if you’re so technologically advanced, it’s the same thing as God. That was the whole thought of “Faith.”

David Read:
The show had done that with the Ancients and with the Ori.

Carl Binder:
They never created a planet.

David Read:
Or a solar system.

Carl Binder:
A solar system.

David Read:
I think that, I mean, my personal, and this is me self-indulging for a moment. I do think that, had the show gone on, we would’ve discovered that what was attributed to Destiny’s intelligence would have been actually this race. My impression was that the ship was supposed to be doing a lot of this stuff. I don’t know how much the ship was actually doing that as much as this alien race was actually more responsible …

Carl Binder:
We’re all just part of somebody’s science experiment.

David Read:
… than we were able to believe. Exactly. The ship is out there investigating a possible experiment.

Carl Binder:
I like that ’cause it explains God.

David Read:
Or some version of something. One of my favorite lines from Star Trek: The Next Generation is when Q says he’s God. Picard says, “I refuse that you’d believe that. The universe is not so poorly designed.” I have fan questions for you.

Carl Binder:
Hopefully I can answer them.

David Read:
Honestly from the bottom of my heart, so thankful to say. Matthewhall: “Instead of a question, I’d just like to state, you guys made my growing up and my early adulthood livable, and I owe you my appreciation. Not just for the escapism but fueling my love of science and technology and making me want to learn more.”

Carl Binder:
That’s really great. That’s really cool. I love hearing stuff like that.

David Read:
This is one outta left field. Jason Berning: “Were there ever any thoughts of adding any of the cast from SG-1 or Atlantis to the SGU cast permanently, like had been done on SGA?”

Carl Binder:
Permanently. I don’t think we ever talked about permanently. I know we had ’em. Hewlett was on, and Shanks, and Rick.

David Read:
Picardo. It’s not like you already had 15 new players to deal with. What’s a couple more?

Carl Binder:
I don’t think so, unless Brad or Rob had talked about it, but I was never privy to that.

David Read:
Dr. Essex: “What was it like directing Jane Seymour?”

Carl Binder:
It was great actually, because she’s the perfect person to work with, perfect actor, ’cause showed up every day, lines memorized, ready to go, bought in. Rarely got pushback from her. Rarely had her say– Never pull a tantrum or, “I can’t do this,” none of the traditional star behavior. And my very first episode that I ever directed was a Christmas episode, and she happened to really like the script. And so, she bought in to the idea of me directing. And so, she, because she did, the whole cast …

David Read:
Yeah, she’s the star.

Carl Binder:
She’s the star. And if she’s got all of her lines memorized, you’d better have your lines memorized. She was the ultimate pro as far as being able to work with her director. She was just great. I had a lot of– It was scary as hell, first time directing, but she made it, and the rest of the cast made it very comfortable for me.

David Read:
It was one of the biggest shows on television. I mean, that was Sunday night, if I’m re …

Carl Binder:
Saturday, Saturday night.

David Read:
Saturday night must-see television. It was, and it was a bit of a drama/soap.

Carl Binder:
It was very much a soap.

David Read:
It’s like, “Is she gonna marry Sully? Oh, she married him,” you know?

Carl Binder:
Every season, CBS would sit us down at the end of the season, or at the beginning or end of the season, say, “All right, for next season, we need to have more action because we want more men to watch this show.”

David Read:
Ah, demographics.

Carl Binder:
And I just kept thinking, they kept trying to say, “We gotta make this show bigger demographic.” And I’m like, but men are not going to watch this show unless they’re watching it with their wives. And we don’t wanna alienate the people that are watching the show to begin with. And so, by doing these action shows, women– So, anyway, there was this constant them trying to make the show something it wasn’t, instead of just embracing what it was and going with it. So, anyway, it was a lot of fun working on that. I mean, I did do some episodes that had a fair amount of action in it. But ultimately, it is a Harlequin Romance. It’s a romance show, and when I came aboard I said, “OK, that’s what this is. If you buy into it and you…” Then you get going. It was a very hard show to write for. Freelance, we had a lot of freelance writers come in, good quality writers, that just couldn’t get the voice of the show. ‘Cause it was just what it was. It was very distinctive.

David Read:
I think that’s an advantage of, in a show like Stargate, where you guys have a core, I mean, you guys did take pitches, but you had that core team who really understood those characters, and you had the writers who were previously established who were willing to take on people like yourself and say, “OK, let’s invest in Carl and really sharpen those sci-fi parts of his perspective.”

Carl Binder:
We would have writers come in from the outside and we would take these pitches and then they would go off and they’d write outlines. And quite often what would happen is we’d break the story with the writer in the room. They’d go off, write the outline, and it would be different from what we talked about in the room. And we’d like, “What? Why did it become this?” “Well, I just thought it might be interesting to do this.” And we’re like, “Well, no. We wanted you to do this.”

David Read:
And this would happen on Stargate?

Carl Binder:
Oh, yeah. It happened. But I wrote a couple. “Condemned” was one of them. And “Tracker.”

David Read:
Kiryk. Mike Dopud’s character.

Carl Binder:
“Faith.” Denis McGrath actually wrote the script, but then I did pretty much an overhaul of the script, because we added the whole T.J. pregnancy element to it. But I really wanted to dig into the whole faith, the whole God, is it God, is it not? But with “Condemned,” if I remember correctly, and there was another one, “The Game” was another one. Where they started off a certain way and then it sort of veered off into something that we didn’t want to do. And so, I took over. They didn’t even go to script. They were cut off at outline. So, then I took it and did it the way we wanted to do it.

David Read:
Were there ever situations where you got the script and it’s like, “This is what they pay me for. This is definitely work. But we’ve gotta get this thing ship-shape and Bristol fashion and it was my number to do it.”

Carl Binder:
“Faith” was one of those. But here’s the thing. I wanted to do that one because from the first pitch I was like, “Oh, ah, that’s a really good– I really like that storyline, and I would like to do that.” So, I did that, and that’s uncredited, but it’s pretty much a full rewrite.

David Read:
As long as you get paid. That’s the thing.

Carl Binder:
Look, I got paid as far as my producer salary, so…

David Read:
There you go.

Carl Binder:
That’s part of being on staff. You have to do rewrites and that’s– It always drives me crazy when writers, staff writers or producers, or writers, “I’m not gonna rewrite that script.” Well, yes, that’s what we do. And they get the credit and you have to– That’s just part of the deal.

David Read:
I would think that you would benefit in other ways, to compensate, in terms of situ– You have the good fortune of being an executive producer on a franchise that just for the love of Pete will not die.

Carl Binder:
It keeps going and …

David Read:
It does.

Carl Binder:
And just yesterday I got some residual checks for it.

David Read:
Hey, there you go.

Carl Binder:
The gift that keeps giving.

David Read:
That’s right.

Carl Binder:
And that’s another great, Dr. Quinn still running. The time periods and science fiction, they tend to just keep going. It’s the modern-day shows that get dated.

David Read:
Exactly. There is something about stories that focus not so much on, “OK, can you get us into the building? OK, I’m entering the passcode now. Oh no, the garage door isn’t coming up. Ah, we need to get in there. We only have 23 hours in the rest of this season,” versus the humanist storytelling that focuses on who we are as these temporal creatures.

Carl Binder:
Each one of those episodes has to do– It has to be relatable to what people are going through in their day-to-day life, so that’s what I was always interested in.

David Read:
You brought up “Tracker.” ThatDudeRightThere says, “Joseph Mallozzi once joked you were originally supposed to play Kiryk in “Tracker,” but couldn’t because of a food truck-related injury.”

Carl Binder:
Damn, that food truck. Ack!

David Read:
Well, you can’t leave it there, my friend.

Carl Binder:
That’s Joe. That’s so Joe. For God’s sake, I cracked up. That’s pretty funny. That’s pretty funny. No, I think one time, one time I was in Joe’s office and they came up– I think we were in prep for “Tracker,” and they had Mike’s costume, his breastplate or whatever the heck he was wearing. And he wasn’t around. I’m sort of the same size, so they had me try it on to see if it fit. And of course there’s Joe snapping pictures. And then he put it on his blog that Carl’s gonna be playing the part. And then of course he added, I didn’t know he added the food truck. I came so close to playing that part.

David Read:
Well, he had to cover for you some legitimate reason why you weren’t able to pull it off, so… Mike Dopud though, what, I mean …

Carl Binder:
He is great.

David Read:
What a softie.

Carl Binder:
Really great.

David Read:
Holy cow. He was established earlier on in the franchise as, you had him as a Russian, you had him as a bounty hunter, and Kiryk and Varro really were, I mean, they could have come off as the same character in many respects. Not to say that he didn’t have range, but there was just that tone that he regularly hit with the characters in Stargate that was, “Yeah, I’m the big tough guy, but I’m also saving the little girl,”

Carl Binder:
And you buy it, he’s a good guy. There’s some guys you go, “OK, this is gonna be a good–” But just the way they carry themselves, the way they look, they, you go, “Ah, no, they’re not good. These are not good. You’re gonna be the bad guy.” You just like him right from the start. Even when he’s capturing Keller and dragging her through the woods,

David Read:
He’s gotta have his reason.

Carl Binder:
He’s gotta have his reasons to be the good guy.

David Read:
Isn’t it great to turn those kinds of expectations on their ear with the audience too?

Carl Binder:
He’s a softie. I enjoyed that one, that “Tracker.” I liked that one.

David Read:
And I forgot to say, you’re a writer and executive producer of Stargate, and also Jennifer Keller’s dad, if everyone’s paying close attention.

Carl Binder:
That’s right. Well, we need– Oh God, it was that episode, what was it?

David Read:
I can’t remember the name of the episode, but someone’s gonna shout it out in the comments now when this video goes live.

Carl Binder:
“Identity.”

David Read:
There you go.

Carl Binder:
Because I’m thinking, I’m picturing the woman looking through Keller’s room in the picture and we need Keller’s dad. So, I suggested, “How about me?” So, we went out in front of …

David Read:
Oh, you did that?

Carl Binder:
Yeah, it was my idea. We went out in front of the studio, in front of a bush and took a picture.

David Read:
Got her in a gown and a diploma and there you go.

Carl Binder:
That was great.

David Read:
Speaking of unexpected POVs, was there any question– Jen Collin: “As a writer for Stargate, did you have any particular favorite characters that you really relished writing for?” They would come into the room and then your fingers would take off?

Carl Binder:
God, so many of them.

David Read:
I think that’s one of the reasons Martin Gero kept on doing so many McKay episodes. That voice was just rattling around in his head, but I’m curious for you.

Carl Binder:
I think there wasn’t one particular character, but there were aspects of each character. I really related to McKay’s anxiety. And so, I enjoyed writing, I enjoyed McKay. Obviously he was a very fun character to write for because there was such a great comedic arrogance, vulnerability, and satiric …

David Read:
Neurotic.

Carl Binder:
Neurotic, all that. And I related to a lot of that, so I loved that. I loved– I actually, and we just talked about it, I loved the Keller character. Because I loved an underdog, I loved bringing in this really super-young doctor who’s a female doctor who has to prove herself. And I loved throwing her into these situations where she was so out of her element.

David Read:
And didn’t necessarily wear her heart on her sleeve like all the previous Atlantis doctors. She was much more, “OK, this is the situation we’re in. That guy’s got a cut, move on, triage, hello.”

Carl Binder:
And so, I loved that character. I loved Weir, I loved writing for Weir. I ended up doing a lot of Weir stories. In fact, that was one episode where I pitched the idea of Weir waking up in a mental institution and being told that Atlantis is just some fiction she made up. And then I think when I pitched it, it wasn’t the nanites, it was something else. But then they saw an opportunity for the storyline to follow…

David Read:
Yeah, ’cause he grabs her at the end of the episode, so you’re teeing up the next one. Much like in Season Two with the Iratus bug arc with Sheppard. Those little mini arcs were very satisfying for all of us fans to watch ’cause it’s like, “This is a continuing story.”

Carl Binder:
They were fun, so that was a fun episode to write for Weir and then I think there were three– Oh, “Ghost in the Machine.” That ended up not being Weir, but it was Weir.

David Read:
It was Weir enough.

Carl Binder:
It wasn’t Weir, it was Fran, but it was Weir. It was originally supposed to be Weir. But then what was the other one? “Lifeline.” I liked writing for her too. But in Universe, there were a lot. They were all really rich characters, I really enjoyed. At the beginning I was struggling to get the voices of, especially Rush and Young, and so Brad did a major rewrite of “Water.” The bulk of “Water” is written by Brad. And when I would look back on it, I would see that a lot of it is the Rush/Young dynamic. Even in “Life,” all the Rush/Young scenes, Brad did a big pass on those ’cause he had that dynamic down. And so, it was a matter of studying that and trying to understand it. So, I don’t think I ever fully got either of those characters. I liked the secondary character. I loved Volker to the point where I actually– Brad came and said, “What if we got a tick, an alien tick, and it caused you to hallucinate?” And so, I right away went to it, it’s all about what you fear the most, OK? What does everybody fear the most? It gets into your limbic system or whatever. So, Volker, it came to claustrophobia. And Patrick Gilmore was so great, he just– I went, “Ah, I gotta write stuff.” And I hope the second season, the kidney thing, so I really writing for him, I must say.

David Read:
Someone would have had to have had– you’re trapped on board a tin can with a failing life support system. Someone in there is gonna have claustrophobia, and if you have chronic claustrophobia, it would be awful.

Carl Binder:
And I have claustrophobia, so, it was very easy to sort of picture what I’d feel. I could never be an astronaut. I could never do it.

David Read:
You were exorcising your demons like Rob Cooper did in “Doppelganger” with all the nightmare sequences.

Carl Binder:
That’s one of the joys of writing, is therapy. You can work stuff out doing that.

David Read:
Look at “The Shrine” for Brad. Oh, man. What a good show.

Carl Binder:
He came back to do that. That was during– That was at the end? That’s Season Five?

David Read:
Season Five.

Carl Binder:
That’s when Joe and Paul were doing it and Brad comes back and boom.

David Read:
He had a great idea. Speaking of Brad, Geoff Sharp: “Has Brad contacted you about the next Stargate?”

Carl Binder:
No, he has not. No, and that’s fine. He also knows why, that I’m doing daycare, but I would love to work with all of these guys if they wanted to. And Joe’s developing stuff and– But also Brad, this may be one of those things where he’s going to do it. Because that seems to be a trend now where one person writes the series, and especially these orders are now six, seven, eight episodes. I love it, but– I know fans don’t like it, but for writers it’s really– It drives me crazy ’cause at the end of The Crown I’m so pissed off that they only do, what, 10 episodes? It drives me crazy. I want them to do more, but then you realize the undertaking, and for one person to write every episode, that’s crazy, crazy stuff.

David Read:
So, you gotta join me over here, Carl. We’ve got cookies. I wait until the series finishes, but don’t tell anybody. I know you’re not supposed to do that but The Expanse, The Crown, a couple other sci-fi shows, I’m waiting for them to be done.

Carl Binder:
I see. OK. That’s a long time to wait.

David Read:
I can wait.

Carl Binder:
What’s great is I got into Breaking Bad towards the end.

David Read:
See, me too!

Carl Binder:
But it was really fun.

David Read:
Me too, and wasn’t it a blast to mow it all down?

Carl Binder:
It was, and it was only the final season that I had to watch week by week.

David Read:
Same here, man. I remember that. That’s great. This is just about the end of the fan line of question. I really wanna thank everyone who submitted for us here. And I really, really appreciate you being on. Oh, and I remember the point that I was going to make. Just because Brad’s, if he does end up helming it himself doesn’t mean you can’t pitch later on. Say, “You know what? I have this idea.”

Carl Binder:
No, no, no. What did I just spend all this time explaining to you? I don’t pitch. Brad says, “Hey, here’s the idea. What do you think of this idea?” And I’m like, “Oh wow, that is really great.”

David Read:
I don’t know. It’s been a few years now. I wouldn’t be surprised if you’ve been sitting on all these sci-fi experiences and other experiences, like with Unspeakable–we didn’t even crack into Unspeakable–and be like, “You know what? I think I’ve got something here.”

Carl Binder:
That was intense, that one.

David Read:
But was it good. Holy cow.

Carl Binder:
Thank you. It’s Rob. It is all him.

David Read:
So, much from his personal experience.

Carl Binder:
And we were just talking about getting it in the ZIP code. All the writers, we broke everything. We did really detailed. There’s so much research. It was a ridiculous amount of research. And then you just hoped you got the script somewhere to a point that he could work with it. ‘Cause he did– It may say written by Carl Binder but it’s Rob. Every script in that, all eight scripts were Rob. And which was great. It was his thing and his story and I just wanted to– When he first pitched it to me I thought, “This is something…” Everyone knows the AIDS epidemic but we didn’t know how it affected this community, the hemophiliacs …

David Read:
I’d never heard about them until.

Carl Binder:
And what Rob’s parents did for him and this– When he was pitching I was like, “This is so important and so good and you gotta do it.” And then he brought me aboard, and I, again, I was very intimidated by it all. I was intimidated by the amount of research, the amount– And then just being on set every single day with him it was, wow.

David Read:
Well, I can only imagine. You’re dealing with something that happened historically so you want to get, on behalf of the people who went through it, you wanna get that right. But also you don’t wanna disappoint your friend. This is bringing everything to bear.

Carl Binder:
That was the biggest thing. Those moments when I was on set and he wasn’t because he was either editing or he was directing second unit or he was prepping, doing a production meeting or something and there I am on set and an actor is confronting me and saying, “What about… What about…” There was a huge amount of pressure and stress to not screw it up, and to try to adhere to what– That was the great thing ’cause we had all the scripts written and locked down, and just trust the material and let’s go. And again, a really great cast that was really supportive and eager, and on board to do the best work they could do, and they were just, it was pretty stellar.

David Read:
I’ve only watched it through the pandemic and the scene in the supermarket with the mother and son and then the other woman coming in and saying, “He can’t be in here.” I was thinking, “Man, how relevant is that?” It was really creepy.

Carl Binder:
That’s right. It’s got a whole different meaning now.

David Read:
I cannot recommend that series enough. It’s available on Amazon Prime in most markets, and it’s eight parts, right?

Carl Binder:
Yes.

David Read:
And it’s good. Carl, thank you so much for coming by and telling some stories from the show. I am doing multi-part interviews with as many people as I can. Later on this year I would love to have you back and it’s terrific to be able to sit down with you and your team and getting to share some of these stories, in some cases with a brand new generation of Stargate fans who are just discovering the show online on streaming now, despite the fact that it’s rated NC17 or whatever it is on Netflix.

Carl Binder:
It’s cool that it endures. It’s really, really wonderful to have been a part of something that still has an enduring fan base. That’s really cool. Very, very cool. Very fortunate.

David Read:
We’ll see what happens next. I have confidence in Brad’s vision, and I really hope that it gets off the ground.

Carl Binder:
He has a way of making things happen.

David Read:
He does.

Carl Binder:
Never count that guy out, man. He will make it happen.

David Read:
Absolutely.

Carl Binder:
It’s in good hands.

David Read:
Carl Binder, executive producer and writer, Stargate. My big thanks to Carl for joining us in this episode and for all of my team who make this possible: Tracy, Keith, Jeremy, Reese, Antony, Sommer, Jennifer, Kirby, GateGab[ber]. You guys are the ones that make this happen. We have T-shirts. 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 or sell some of our themed swag. We’re now 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 and hope to add more in the future. The word cloud designs have both a solid background or transparent background options so you’ve got some flexibility between choosing a light or dark color. Do keep that in mind when you’re making your selection. Checkout is fast and easy and you can use your Amazon or PayPal account. Visit dialthegate.redbubble.com, and thanks for your support. And we couldn’t do the show without offering you something absolutely. So, for the month of April, we have partnered with Big J Customs to give you a chance to get your very own custom Pop figure. To enter to win one of these, all you need to do is use a desktop or laptop computer and visit dialthegate.com, which is right there. Scroll down to Submit trivia questions. Your trivia may be used in a future episode of Dial the Gate either for our monthly trivia night or a special guest to ask me in a round of trivia. There’s three slots. You just need to fill one in. You can fill up to three, easy, medium, hard, if you wish. The submission form currently does not work on mobile devices, so keep that in mind. Your trivia must be received before May the 1st, and if you’re the lucky winner, I’ll be notifying you via email to get your address. And please be sure to check out our partner’s website for more Stargate-related merchandise at BigJCustomsArt.com. For next week we will be bringing you Stargate novelist and Fandemonium founder Sally Malcolm. She’ll be joining us at 10 AM Pacific Time on April the 25th, followed at 12 noon by part seven of our ongoing interview with Joseph Mallozzi. He is gonna be discussing with us Season Nine of Stargate SG-1, and April 25th at 2 PM Pacific Time, Musetta Vander, Shan’auc from Stargate SG-1 as well. And we are announcing prosthetics makeup artist Todd Masters is gonna be joining us May the 2nd at 2 PM Pacific Time. Really excited about this guy. I’ve got one of his Borg from First Contact in my bedroom right now. So, he’s gonna have all kinds of stories to tell, not just in Stargate but all kinds of sci-fi projects. My thanks again to Carl Binder for making this show possible. Love that guy. His Stargate writing credits are some of the best. And thank you so much for tuning in to Dial the Gate. My name is David Read. Thanks for joining us. We’ll see you on the other side.