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Timecodes
0:00:00 Opening Credits
0:00:25 Welcome Back, Peter!
0:01:56 Boyd Godfrey, Graphic Designer
0:03:45 Paco Don, Props Builder
0:05:38 Unused Korolev Patch
0:07:34 Strategic Fighter Wing Patches
0:08:32 Atlantis Expedition Logo
0:09:23 Atlantis Consoles
0:11:10 Daedalus Bridge Viewport from “The Siege, Part 3”
0:13:01 Lights Reflecting in Glass
0:14:26 William and His Robot Dog
0:15:21 Genii Labor Robot
0:17:25 Ken Rabehl
0:20:04 Becoming Callous From Rejection
0:24:11 What Are You Asking For?
0:26:59 Puddle Jumper Initial Shape Concept
0:29:23 Spaceship Concept
0:30:11 Goa’uld Ship Concept for “Nightwalkers”
0:32:47 Office Doors??
0:34:08 F-302 Sketches
0:38:35 Death Gliders from Stealth Planes
0:39:55 Anubis’s Superweapon from “Full Circle”
0:41:19 Kelownan Digger Details from “Fallout”
0:43:26 Stasis Pods from “The Long Goodbye”
0:44:33 Over Designing Things
0:48:29 The Workplace Is An Ecosystem
0:51:42 Pod Designs from “The Long Goodbye”
0:52:45 Thumb Guy!
0:55:43 The Spirit Gets Lost in the Transfer
1:00:02 Smoke on AppleTV
1:01:11 Ancient Personal Shield from “Hide and Seek”
1:03:15 Hoffan Archives from “Poisoning the Well”
1:06:08 Puddle Jumper Concepts
1:08:56 No More Puddle Jumper Classes?
1:10:07 Planetary Defense Vehicles for “The Siege, Part 1”
1:11:51 Alternate Puddle Jumper Concept
1:13:23 Lantean Ship Designs
1:16:02 Ancient Console
1:17:11 Seabed Clamp for “Before I Sleep”
1:19:05 Daedalus Concept Art for “The Siege, Part 3”
1:21:20 David’s Daedalus-Class Model
1:23:38 Bridge Location
1:25:15 Daedalus Systems Consoles
1:26:29 Ronon’s Knife
1:26:57 Ancient Reactor from “Trinity”
1:28:01 Jefferies Tube Panel from “Trinity”
1:29:40 Trinity Jeffries Tube
1:30:11 Time Dilation Planet from “Epiphany”
1:31:22 Lantean Whale From “Grace Under Pressure”
1:32:25 Orion Hanger from “Inferno”
1:33:41 Allies Concept Art
1:36:11 Other Ship Art
1:37:11 Thank You, Peter!
1:38:52 Post-Interview Housekeeping
1:40:45 End Credits

***

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

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TRANSCRIPT
Find an error? Submit it here.

David Read:
Welcome back to another episode of Dial the Gate: The Stargate Oral History Project. My name is David Read. Really appreciate you joining me here for this one. Peter Bodnarus, art director for Stargate SG-1 and Stargate Atlantis, has returned to the show. Welcome back, sir. How are you?

Peter Bodnarus:
Great to be back.

David Read:
I’m thrilled to have you. I did not expect to go for two rounds. I gotta be perfectly honest. We started going through this stuff and really jiving, and there was no section that I wanted to cut, and last episode, which no one saw this piece I cut out, but it was a plea to return. Can we just set Atlantis aside, focus on SG-1 and some of this other stuff? Because I really think that we’ve got a lot here to share, and I really appreciate you taking so much time.

Peter Bodnarus:
I certainly appreciate the interest that the fans are showing in the design of Atlantis and SG-1.

David Read:
So, never underestimate a Stargate fan’s desire to drill down as deep as possible into the minutia of their show. It’s just a constant in the universe, and the more that behind-the-scenes people provide the more we want, and it is an Ouroboros. It just keeps on going. I appreciate you being so willing to share not just the Stargate stuff, but all other kinds of things that you have, which we’re gonna be getting into momentarily here.

Peter Bodnarus:
Excellent.

David Read:
You were talking about physical memorabilia that you had from your time in production.

Peter Bodnarus:
Yes. While I was on Stargate, we had a fantastically talented and energetic graphic designer, Boyd Godfrey.

David Read:
Boyd.

Peter Bodnarus:
You know Boyd?

David Read:
I’ve been trying to get him on. He’s very busy with his boats.

Peter Bodnarus:
He’s a good lifer. That man has got it dialed in, pun intended. He created some uniform patches for us that we were very happy to put on our clothes or to have here in the office. And we also had these lovely foil stickers.

David Read:
Those are cool.

Peter Bodnarus:
Yep. I really like the Pegasus logo for Atlantis. I thought that was quite successful, the way we combined the Chiron with the wings of Pegasus. That’s gorgeous.

David Read:
That’s a replica of the one that sat in Dr. Weir’s office. I think this was created in Season Two, if I’m not mistaken.

Peter Bodnarus:
Yes, it was.

David Read:
But you can see even the CNCed bits in between the wings. You can still see where the CNC machine drilled in. And that remains intact in this, even though it’s a replica. The quality of the stuff they were producing, Bridget said it before I did, that you guys could have made stuff for NASA. Wild, the quality.

Peter Bodnarus:
We had very talented crew, but we also had this fantastic special effects builder and props builder, Paco Don is his name. And the guy was a genius in electronics and 3D milling. He was on the cutting edge of things that are kinda commonplace now.

David Read:
Pun intended.

Peter Bodnarus:
Yes. And we had all kinds of beautiful 3D-milled things and electronics. He rigged the Stargate in Atlantis, it functioned electronically, and he ran it from his iPad, which in 2004 was like, “Who is this person?”

David Read:
This would have been a PalmPilot in 2004.

Peter Bodnarus:
PalmPilot, yes.

David Read:
The SGU gate was rigged from a PalmPilot. Absolutely amazing.

Peter Bodnarus:
The Atlantis Gate was rigged from a PalmPilot, and the guy was awe-inspiring. That’s what kept me humble, I’m gonna tell you that. Because you look back at all the work that you did, and you’re like, “Ah, there’s some cool stuff here.” Then you think about what other people did, and you’re like, “OK, I was one of many.”

David Read:
One of many who are seeing the work that everyone else is producing and saying, “Can I do better? Can I up my game here?”

Peter Bodnarus:
Exactly.

David Read:
“What can I do to make him go, not ‘Hmm, I wish I was doing that,’ but ‘Whoa. Now I wanna do something cool to top that.’”

Peter Bodnarus:
And we’re all doing whoa. This is a patch that Boyd made.

David Read:
Is this the Korolev?

Peter Bodnarus:
I guess it’s Daedalus and Korolev. Yeah, Korolev.

David Read:
I’ve never seen– OK, Peter. Stop. Halt everything. There’s only a certain number of patches for the ships that were made. I have never seen one designed for Korolev. The Russian officers did not wear them. So, if you could bring that closer to the camera, I and a bunch of us would really appreciate it. Wow. That is magic, a concept art design for Korolev. Very cool, Peter. Thank you for sharing that.

Peter Bodnarus:
The actual profile of the ship was taken from one of my drawings. I was very excited about that. My office here is a vault of all kinds of secret stuff. Pun intended. And this is one of my favorites. This was the F-302 patch that was made for Season Six. I got a kick out of that. And again, Boyd took my artwork and he used that to create the graphic. We really enjoyed that. That was a lot of fun.

David Read:
His patches were amazing over the years. I’ve been trying to get Boyd on and Paco on, to keep on hammering away. I appreciate you sharing those.

Peter Bodnarus:
My pleasure. That’s exactly this thing where we’re inspiring each other to come up with things that are telling the story and may get used or may not get used. This is one of the things. We called it the Strategic Fighter Wing. I’m not even sure if that’s– I’m sure there’s military people out there who’d be like, “It’s a Tactical Fighter Wing. You cannot have a Strategic.” But we call it a Strategic Fighter Wing because we’re defending the whole damn planet, OK?

David Read:
And the Wraith Waxers for SGA.

Peter Bodnarus:
Wraith Waxers. We had the Snake Skins for SG-1. This was one of the first patches. This was one of the test patches.

David Read:
Very cool.

Peter Bodnarus:
One other thing I wanted to say about the Pegasus logo is I’m pretty sure that was Bridget’s design. I think that was her concept. I think she has a horse farm, and she was like, “I got this.”

David Read:
Just add wings.

Peter Bodnarus:
Just add wings.

David Read:
No, it’s a great look because– Where’d it go? The wings invoke the wings on the top of the chevron …

Peter Bodnarus:
Hey, that’s what I think.

David Read:
… because the chevrons have wings.

Peter Bodnarus:
That’s what makes it so successful.

David Read:
She bends it into both. And I’m sure the horse is modeled after one of hers. It’s a beautiful piece.

Peter Bodnarus:
I believe that’s Old Paint.

David Read:
Wouldn’t be surprised.

David Read:
We have some doodles that you were doing that you sent over to me last night. We probably should start off with them, because a lot of them led into other concepts for Stargate that you were working on. And some are out there. Some Iron Giant inspiration was going on in there, or something in your mind. I’d really love to have a look.

Peter Bodnarus:
I think it was. Let’s have a look.

David Read:
Let’s have a look here. That’s the wrong one.

Peter Bodnarus:
Depends on what you’re talking about.

David Read:
Wait a second. OK, that’s SGA. So it is the right one. OK. It says Ancient Tech Console. So, that’s probably what it is.

Peter Bodnarus:
So, we played with a number of concepts for the Ancient Tech Consoles. This one was really heavily inspired by, I’m gonna say, Space: 1999. And again, Brad was like, “You know, we gotta step away from that a bit, and we gotta get into more of the crystalline.” But that was a starting point for some of the Ancient tech ideas.

David Read:
I don’t know who started this, but the cast called them grand pianos.

Peter Bodnarus:
That’s a great name. When we’re designing these things, the number one thing is it has to be able to work for the actors to tell a story. There’s this idea that the Ancient technology was almost grown outta crystals. And we gave it this expansiveness, and I think that was drawing on my experience on SG-1 where we had the guest actor who was taking this thing that was inert and bringing it to life. And what we tried to do with those consoles is give opportunity for interaction.

David Read:
Absolutely. You succeeded.

Peter Bodnarus:
Excellent.

David Read:
The front of the Daedalus.

Peter Bodnarus:
Before I even started doing any 3D modeling, that was my first concept sketch. What we did with the Daedalus is we took the Prometheus set and we replaced the front window, and expanded and increased the volume. That came to me. It was in a fever dream. I’m like, “What if it was this, like, radial thing?” Again, thinking about starting with the engines. There’s movement. That’s what was driving that idea.

David Read:
Was there a mandate from upstairs, or down the hall I should say, to make the windows bigger? Or was this your thought, “You know, the front windows really should be bigger. We should be able to see more stuff, because we’re opening to a battle?”

Peter Bodnarus:
Yes. And also not to have them point down to the studio floor. In the original Prometheus, I have the windows tilting downward, which makes sense when you’re a terrestrial battleship. You see how on ships, the windows point downwards. That’s to prevent reflection, so you’re not looking at reflections from the inside of the bridge onto the windows. It makes sense that way, but it doesn’t make sense when you’re on a sound stage. You wanna look up to the blue screen, not down to the stage floor. You see we’ve got a console at the bottom, so we’re hiding the stage floor, and then we’re opening up to the heavens.

David Read:
There’s a couple of things that stick with me, with you bringing up the engines in the design of the shape of the spokes of the front window. Since we last spoke, your line that Daedalus was our first attempt to have this thing reach across the universe, for whatever reason, that has stuck in my head since the last time we talked. But even in “The Siege Part 3,” you can tell they’re still figuring it out, because the plexi behind Caldwell and Sheppard is still reflecting the flashes of the explosions. You can clearly see the lights in the reflections. So, even in that first episode, they’re still dialing it in, in terms of how it is that they’re gonna pull this off. Just like watching the first couple of seasons, or at least the first season of Next Generation. You can really see, especially in Blu-ray now, where they’re putting these black cardboard or stickers over where the lights would be reflecting and haven’t figured out how to pull it off yet. So, it takes a while to dial this stuff in. A lot of trial and error.

Peter Bodnarus:
Oh my God, and it’s recorded for all time, our trying to figure this stuff out.

David Read:
And you know what? It’s something that people can point to as an Easter egg.

Peter Bodnarus:
There you go.

David Read:
Who is this?

Peter Bodnarus:
That is William and a giant robot dog.

David Read:
Do you have a William?

Peter Bodnarus:
William, in that sketch, he would’ve been about three years old. He is now 22 years old. And he’s actually just finished design school.

David Read:
Of course.

Peter Bodnarus:
I was playing around with concepts and big robots, and he saw this and he was like, “I want a robot.” I drew a picture of him with a giant robot dog, and he thought that was pretty great.

David Read:
It is pretty awesome. How familiar are you with the Half-Life video game series?

Peter Bodnarus:
Not at all, but maybe subconsciously.

David Read:
They have a character called Dog. He looks nothing like this, but he’s about the height in terms of the size comparison. Very cool. Whoa. Little Borg in there.

Peter Bodnarus:
Genii labor robot. Again, playing with ideas. I think, like you said, this would’ve been about the time that Iron Giant was around. Thinking about potential concepts that I could pitch.

David Read:
If the Genii kept their technology underground, they might have giant mechs like this, or automatons, helping to run things underground.

Peter Bodnarus:
You’ll notice that the guy next to him is pretty much an Amish farmer. He’s got the coveralls and the broad-brimmed hat. And he’s pretty proud.

David Read:
For sure. You can see it’s industrial. He’s got a smokestack coming out. It’s a really cool idea. But I bet John Lenic would’ve been like, “Do we have the budget for this?”

Peter Bodnarus:
No, we don’t. When I was a kid, I used to watch Captain Scarlet, and the illustrations at the beginning and the end of the show were always more interesting than the actual show itself.

David Read:
You’re keying off of that. I understand.

Peter Bodnarus:
I’m like, “You know what? If it’s pen and paper, why not shoot for the moon and have some fun? And maybe it’ll spark something else that’ll fit in the budget.”

David Read:
That’s it. I can tell you in many cases where I saw that, particularly Ken Rabehl would design stuff, and it almost always got used in something else later. There was a character in Season Two, early on, that Dwight Schultz played, called the Keeper. He was this alien. He had these flaps on his face and a really interesting hat. Dwight got to wear the hat, but he didn’t do the flaps on the face. That went with a race later on called the Spirits. Stuff just comes back around. “I like that, but not now. So, let’s bookmark this.”

Peter Bodnarus:
Ken, honestly, loomed large in our world. ‘Cause he was incredibly prolific.

David Read:
Miss him.

Peter Bodnarus:
Yes, and may he rest in peace. He was prolific and fearless. And he would pitch things, and it would fly or it wouldn’t, and he wouldn’t get fussed about it. I took that from him, where I’m like, “You know what? I’ll pitch it. If it flies, it flies. If it doesn’t, maybe it’ll show up.” And like I said, things are showing up long after I’ve left the show. I’m like, wait a minute, I thought we didn’t have the money. I guess they have the money now.

David Read:
That’s the thing, that their budgets grew as the show grew, because the popularity of the show was really helping to fuel that. It was a reciprocal effect. But you are not the first person who has made that statement to me about Ken. Richard Hudolin was actually the one who first said something along the lines of, “He was never precious. It was very hard to ruffle his feathers.” He was creating content, and I think part of his brain was like, “If they don’t want that, I can file it away,” and use it perhaps for something. I don’t know if you can do that as artists. It may not be in your contract so that you can, or it may be. But I’ve really gotten that impression over hearing people who worked with him. I never got to meet him personally. Amazing artist.

Peter Bodnarus:
My son just finished his design program, and he was actually being taught by some of the people that I went to architecture school with. We found our education was very flawed. And a lot of those things have been attended to. One of the things that William learned in school was they would have a design program, “Design something, make it beautiful, great. Now give me 10 more.” It’s iteration, and the cruel thing is, you have to be able to kill your precious ones. You have to be able to, if you fall in love with your stuff, you’re not going to make it. It’s going to be a painful experience. What’s so fantastic about a show like this, what’s happening now, is that I am now free to love these orphans.

David Read:
Absolutely. They’re not garbage.

Peter Bodnarus:
No, not at all.

David Read:
They were changed for something else. But isn’t there a risk there of becoming–and I wanna tangent for a second if I may–isn’t there a risk of becoming callous to it? I don’t wanna fall in love with my work anymore, because I can’t strike the emotional balance in my heart, so I’m just gonna create stuff. Is there a potential there of losing the spark that makes it brilliant to begin with if you go too far the other way and become desensitized to the critiquing process, or is that a myth?

Peter Bodnarus:
Absolutely. Healthy competition is important, but if you’re in a place where there’s unhealthy competitiveness and …

David Read:
Toxic.

Peter Bodnarus:
… if it’s a toxic environment, you’ll be beaten down. Absolutely. For me, though, what I’ve gradually become aware of is that you have to see the value in the process. And then the attention you get afterwards needs to be icing on the cake.

David Read:
I see. You can’t just be going for that. You have to be going for your own edification and creation.

Peter Bodnarus:
If you’re there for the attaboys, you’ll get them, but not always and not consistently. And you’re not gonna hit the nail every time, even if you’re someone as fantastically talented as Ken Rabehl. Sometimes you don’t understand what they’re actually asking for, or your own ideas get in the way of what the story is. And you have to be able to have confidence and trust your own judgment, and also acknowledge that you don’t have all the data. There was a meeting that you weren’t sitting in on where they specifically said, “They can’t have the banana-shaped hats,” and you’re in love with the banana-shaped hats. And they’re like, “No bananas, no hats.” And then, “We’ve seen enough purple. There’s just too much purple.” And you’re like, “You love purple.”

David Read:
But those things come up.

Peter Bodnarus:
And those things come up. And you have to be able to acknowledge that there’s a creative storytelling ecosystem that you’re a part of.

David Read:
To extend that, for instance, green is probably my least favorite color. Atlantis was mostly green in many cases. So, there would be …

Peter Bodnarus:
I love green.

David Read:
… things that you would have to set aside in your mind if you preferentially weren’t crazy about it, but this is what’s needed for this project.

Peter Bodnarus:
For Prometheus, the interior of the Prometheus, we had all these different shades of gray because it’s a military ship. That worked–

David Read:
It looks like an aircraft carrier in space.

Peter Bodnarus:
It looks like an aircraft carrier in space. But that’s problematic from a cinematic point of view. Where you’ve got these monotone backgrounds. So, when we did the Gate room for Atlantis, Bridget was drawing on Frank Lloyd Wright. Again, we had a subdued color palette, but we had a color palette. There was the stained glass. So, it wasn’t all gray, and it wasn’t like a circus tent. But it struck a balance between those two. And that’s how we approach things, where I think Prometheus was correct. Prometheus was correct. But also, it’s part of a larger show, where you’re contrasting that with other color palettes and other shape languages.

David Read:
And Daedalus, the 302s, they all followed that aesthetic of gray on black against stars. Can I go back to something that you said earlier?

Peter Bodnarus:
Sure.

David Read:
I’m curious as to how, and maybe this never happened to you, that particular production office would handle people going, “I don’t get this.” Or, “I’m not getting this direction.” How much bandwidth would you have to have people assist in reinterpreting their idea for you to– Or did you not ever have that issue? “What is it that you want me to create? I guess I need more information.” Or were they ever like, “A, B, C, D, E?” “OK, got it.”

Peter Bodnarus:
It depends on how important it was. I think the Puddle Jumper, we had an amazingly clear idea of what that thing was going to look like. And I think it came out a lot less dynamic and energetic than we had intended. And I think that was a product of what it was. It was a physical set, it was a room; it was the TARDIS, and we were dragging it, and we would put it on the back of a truck and bring it to locations. It ended up becoming a little more TARDIS-like in its form. But if you go to the original concept art, the raking angle of the nose was …

David Read:
Much greater.

Peter Bodnarus:
… like 20 degrees or something. Again, for me, it was a knife. If you look at an X-ACTO knife, that’s the sense I had. That was my–

David Read:
That angle of attack.

Peter Bodnarus:
The angle of attack for an X-ACTO knife, where basically you’ve got this surgical instrument piercing the fabric of space. And so that was it, but crystalline. They have these super high-tech–

David Read:
Like gap boxes that they would pull down in the back?

Peter Bodnarus:
No, I was thinking more of concept; you have these blades that are made from obsidian. So, you think of blades that are made from crystals. So, the idea with this was piercing the fabric of space. But in the end it ended up becoming not so aggressive and dynamic, because of the nature of what it had to do to get the story told.

David Read:
You’re actually making me think of some of the items that we’re about to see in a little while here, particularly with the Wraith ships. You’re invoking those images later on in your design, so I can see you playing around with that. To make this on the record, moving forward, Bridget McGuire said that she designed the Puddle Jumper, or her initial concept for the shape was, I think, a loom for a shuttle. With those things that they do this.

Peter Bodnarus:
Yes. My wife is actually a weaver, and this is a shuttle. You can see where we’re sort of taking that sort of idea of that kind of shape. And it’s, again, not as aggressive as what I had sort of done in my original sketch. But you can see how it’s telling that story.

David Read:
It just signifies movement.

Peter Bodnarus:
It does. And it’s also carrying things. My original sketch for the Puddle Jumpers, honestly, it’s a little bit more of a fighter than a shuttle. You’re gonna get two guys in there tops. Whereas for this, there’s a lot of room in there for carrying people and information, and fabric.

David Read:
You never know, those Athosians may be making some quilt runs. That’s really funny. We’re gonna get to all of this concept art here in a little bit. Let’s go ahead and see what else you got here. That looks a lot like the Iron Giant to me.

Peter Bodnarus:
That does have that kind of vibe. I think though that was more from Captain something in the World of Tomorrow.

David Read:
Captain, I know what you’re talking about with Jude Law. And Angelina Jolie.

Peter Bodnarus:
That was a little bit more inspired by those guys. Again, I had a three-year-old kid at home and boy did he love it when I drew robots.

David Read:
Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow.

Peter Bodnarus:
Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow.

David Read:
Very cool. This one’s a little harder to tell.

Peter Bodnarus:
That’s just a ship. I was thinking more of a “Space Race” type. I was sitting in a meeting and sketching on my script. And the director of photography really, really loved that image. So, I think that might have been the genesis for some other ships as well. But again, it’s one of those things where I start with a fairly simple shape. In this case it’s almost like a knob. And then I sort of see what I can do to bring some life into it. So this was Season Six, SG-1. It was some sort of Goa’uld technology. They didn’t know what it was and they were trying to figure it out. And we needed some blueprints, but from another civilization. So, I just sketched it, then I created it in 3D, and then I brought it into a drafting program and I was like, “OK, what if their drawings are in perspective.” And it was a whole lot of abstract fun. For the text I went to the NASA website. And I downloaded one of the mission manuals from Apollo. I just copied and pasted. And this was the beginning. We had a lot of fun with this, and Boyd got behind that as well, where we had all these letter-number combinations. NAV 001-2. NASA had all these three-letter acronyms. Who knew what they meant, but they sure sounded cool. We just started doing that all over for our ships. We had all kinds of them for identifying the drawers and the tech panels, we’d have the ID panel–

David Read:
All the pull panels especially on Prometheus and Daedalus, had identification numbers, so that on some database you could pull up the documents to deal with that panel.

Peter Bodnarus:
Exactly. For us, it’s like, “OK, these letters look good. Yep, those numbers look good. Yep, go.”

David Read:
This reminds me. I wonder if this has to do with “Nightwalkers.” I wonder if this has to do with the Goa’uld spaceship that they were trying to build.

Peter Bodnarus:
I think it might be that one.

David Read:
That’s cool.

Peter Bodnarus:
That’s “Nightwalkers.” Again, you can see the top image was the start of the idea. You can see we’ve got that triangular sort of tube?

David Read:
Yes.

Peter Bodnarus:
And then lower on is that same idea just refined a little bit.

David Read:
And at the lower left, were you guys wanting to make sure that it could fit through an office door? With a mail slot?

Peter Bodnarus:
OK, so sketchbooks are actually work. It’s not just sitting at my desk going, “Huh. Wonder what I can–”

David Read:
“I think I’ll draw a door today, something more pedestrian.”

Peter Bodnarus:
No, literally, a lot of it is like, “Dude, we need a door in five… We gotta start building this door and I need something in 10…” I’ll open up my sketchbook, I’ll draw it, I’ll photocopy it, and I’ll say, “There you go.”

David Read:
It’s right in front of you. That makes a lot of sense. This is what you were working on the day.

David Read:
And that’s also good because you’re saving paper. I like that.

Peter Bodnarus:
But it also talks about my work, where playing around designing props is important. But also making sure that scenery is getting built is really important.

David Read:
And I love the mundane against the fantastical in Stargate. There’s something about spaceship and door. Earth door.

Peter Bodnarus:
Anyone who’s raised a family knows all about the fantastical and the mundane living side by side.

David Read:
F-302, look at the top one. You can see where Boyd borrowed.

Peter Bodnarus:
I was going through my sketchbooks and I saw I had page after page of playing with ideas about the F-302. And I’m wondering, I should probably reach out to Brad. I’ve probably got enough stuff here that we could put together a book on the design of that ship. Because a lot of thought went into that thing.

David Read:
I’ve been hounding James Robbins for a long time now. And so has his wife, apparently. I would completely be behind that.

Peter Bodnarus:
Playing with ideas about what the nose, the pitot tubes, or whatever else it would be that would be on the front. Again, it’s a weapon, so it needs pokey bits. Just what those would look like. Thinking about–

David Read:
Landing gear?

Peter Bodnarus:
Round landing gear, yeah.

David Read:
This is so cool.

Peter Bodnarus:
That’s the original. Even before I did that CG, even before I did the Photoshopping, I whipped together this quick little pencil sketch here. And this was really about scale.

David Read:
Got it.

Peter Bodnarus:
This is, again, looking at the explosive bolts, where the graphics would go. ‘Cause that nose is gonna get a lot of screen time, so I was playing around with what would look good and what would make sense.

David Read:
You wanna get certain things really, really right, as opposed to really right. More of that.

Peter Bodnarus:
That’s more of the explosive bolts there.

David Read:
Is it a lot of reference material that you’re looking at with a lot of our fighters before you incorporate?

Peter Bodnarus:
Absolutely. I do a whole bunch of research about what the actual thing is, and then what’s gonna make sense to the viewer. ‘Cause real is important. Cool trumps real every time. But ridiculous doesn’t help tell the story.

David Read:
If we were making hybrid technology for use on Earth, it could be, who knows? They would do this.

Peter Bodnarus:
Absolutely.

David Read:
Unless they were trying to really conceal it.

Peter Bodnarus:
Like I said, we had these liaisons from the US Air Force, incredibly helpful and very informative and quite engaging and generous with their knowledge. One of the things that is important in the defense of a nation is that your pilots are the valuable asset. You want these guys to come back in one piece. And that’s where all this safety and hard-learned lessons around safety, like in a crisis you need the big, red, shiny, candy-like button.

David Read:
In case of emergency, break glass.

Peter Bodnarus:
Exactly. And that all came from painful, painful lessons throughout World War II, and Korea, and after that. For me, it has a powerful aesthetic. It has this aesthetic of defense. It’s a weapon. It’s serious. It’s functional. It’s highly functional and highly considered. This is something that has undergone a lot of testing and a lot of proving.

David Read:
Iterations.

Peter Bodnarus:
Iterations, exactly.

David Read:
It’d be pretty airtight. Did you wanna draw one of these to give yourself a grounding feel before proceeding further?

Peter Bodnarus:
I think I was trying to explain to someone. Someone wasn’t getting it. “This does not look like a Goa’uld death glider. This looks like, I don’t know, what are we doing here?” And I think I drew that to show someone in the decision-making chain that this is the idea, that we’re taking this language and making a death glider using this language. And I think then they were like, “Oh, OK.”

David Read:
Is that a naquadria hyperdrive on the side of it? That’s because you had those in there for a while. It kinda has that shape in it. I was wondering if you borrowed that.

Peter Bodnarus:
Yes. Actually, I just drew that from memory, but I think that’s pretty much what the F-117– that’s the jet intake on the side there.

David Read:
OK. Got it.

Peter Bodnarus:
It’s screened, and that’s why it was subsonic. There was a limit as to how much air it could take in.

David Read:
Makes sense.

Peter Bodnarus:
That was actually the screen in front of the jet intake.

David Read:
Got it. Wow. Ancient super weapon activation. OK, I think this is Anubis. At the end of “Full Circle.” The flower.

Peter Bodnarus:
Exactly. And that’s just one of those things where I had not looked at this sketch in 15 years, and I opened the page and I’m like, “Huh, that’s kinda cool.” So, I’ve included it for people to enjoy.

David Read:
It was one of those things, I think, that was so awesome about that ship, because we don’t really see it from above except for a couple of shots. In “Full Circle,” it expands and unfolds and does its thing, and then in, I think, “Fallen” they try to do the same thing, and then we see the ship in “Homecoming” and we see it again in Stargate: Continuum, and we never see that feature again. And a lot of work went into this, especially the model in the end with all these kinds of layers and everything. It was such a good– It had docking ports for Goa’uld ships all around its equator. We never got to see any of that. It was really thought through and could have gotten a lot of mileage out of it, and we see it for a few scenes.

Peter Bodnarus:
And that happens sometimes, but it sticks in people’s imaginations, so I’m gonna say mission accomplished.

David Read:
For sure.

Peter Bodnarus:
So, this was, I think it was the earth machine, or sort of details for the Kelowna digger.

David Read:
The digger.

Peter Bodnarus:
And I can’t recall if this was the final design, but you can see there where we’ve got the caterpillar tracks on all sides. And there was an idea for a digger head that would be a rotating drill with rotating cutter heads. I grew up in Alberta, which is oil country, and so a drill head is not how you imagine it looks. It’s basically three kind of things, and they rotate–

David Read:
They’re cutting stuff out.

Peter Bodnarus:
It rotates and rotates, and I was playing with that idea.

David Read:
Wow. Cool. “To the core.”

Peter Bodnarus:
“To the core.” And in this, I had gone to a gallery, an art show in, I think it might’ve been Paris. And I picked up this postcard, and I’m like, “Huh, that could be the layers of the planet Kelowna.” A lot of my stuff is— I do very simple collages as well as sketches.

David Read:
I remember from The Core, “We’ve got diamonds. Diamonds, I want some.” I don’t know why I said it again.

Peter Bodnarus:
I saw Stanley Tucci in Conclave on the weekend and what a presence, hey?

David Read:
He’s amazing in anything he does.

Peter Bodnarus:
He’s a little guy, but he dominates the screen.

David Read:
I think one enforces the other, or reinforces the other. Armin Shimerman is the same way. You will pay attention to him when he’s on screen. It’s like, man.

Peter Bodnarus:
Absolutely. So, this was the stasis pod. I can’t remember the episode.

David Read:
Yes, this is… God, it was right there with me. You designed legs for them to stand on.

Peter Bodnarus:
Exactly.

David Read:
And they took it inside.

Peter Bodnarus:
Exactly.

David Read:
“The Long Goodbye.”

Peter Bodnarus:
“The Long Goodbye.” That “Long Goodbye” pod, I was really happy with how that turned out. But you can see my clever design meant you couldn’t put it on a table.

David Read:
For sure.

Peter Bodnarus:
See, this is the thing. This is why you don’t get the producers designing this stuff, ’cause it’d be, “OK, it’s gonna be flat, it’s gonna–” And you’re like, “I’m sorry, was that the exciting moment?” So, I designed this, like I said, I had the spaceship with all the interesting stuff in the bottom. So I designed this pod where you’ve got this beautiful, and then you’ve got this sweeping shape underneath. And it’s like, “OK, what do we put it on? Let’s design some space legs.”

David Read:
One has to fit into the other. And I have been talking with my buddy Martin McLean, he always talks about his tendency to overdesign things. Over-think through stuff. And at the end of the day, Occam’s razor dictates for him, the simplest was the best. It may not have been arrived at first, and he discarded it at number eight or number nine, but he did come back around to it.

Peter Bodnarus:
There’s an apocryphal, if I can use that word, story where if you’re in a challenging situation with a decision-maker, you’ll present five images, and they’ll be like, “No, no, no, no, no.” And then after about eight, you go back to, “Oh, OK, last,” and it’s the first one, and you’ve resubmitted the first one, and enough time has passed that they’re like, “Oh yeah, this is good.”

David Read:
John Gajdecki has admitted on this show at some point, once or twice, never frequently, inserting a couple of things into shots that someone could say, “Oh, yeah, you need to go and fix that,” so he can check them– There seem to be sometimes people in the production process, especially at the studio, at the top, who—and you’ll occasionally come across this kind of person—who need things to point out to justify the existence of their position.

Peter Bodnarus:
Exactly.

David Read:
There’s a term for it, I forget what it was, where they would add something occasionally and make note of it to remember in the final product to take it out if they missed it.

Peter Bodnarus:
And you have to write it down, “OK, if they don’t miss it, we gotta take it out. Otherwise, it’s gonna be like, ‘What are we doing?'” In architecture, we used to call that cheese, where you leave little cheese crumbs.

David Read:
For the rats.

Peter Bodnarus:
No, not the rat, the mouse that’s the developer’s brother-in-law that’s like–

David Read:
They’re coming in to visit, and they’re like, “What do you think?” “Oh, yeah, my mother’s brother-in-law said this, you really should implement it.” “Oh, OK. Yeah, and then I’ll delete that anyway.” Scratch it off.

Peter Bodnarus:
So you put in the cheese crumbs. Brad would sniff out that cheese in a moment.

David Read:
I bet he would.

Peter Bodnarus:
You’re not putting anything past him. I suspect Brad probably did that as well in the final edits or something. He actually probably had things that he could lose to get the timing down and still get in the things that he wanted.

David Read:
It’s so much politics.

Peter Bodnarus:
So much politics.

David Read:
Back stroking.

Peter Bodnarus:
Exactly.

David Read:
I will admit, on designing the hardcover books for the Propworx catalog, Damaris, the designer, was very intense, and she enjoyed praise. Man, I would butter her up if I wanted her to make an adjustment for me, because I wanted her to also be inclined to acknowledge my perspective as well. And it wasn’t bullshit per se, but it was a little extra on the top, so that when it came around for me to give my input, I had a road in, and she always moved forward with it, because I felt that that was only fair. She was very good. But I also wanted to make sure that my ideas would be considered, and she was receptive to it. When you’re dealing with a person, you find a way to make it work one way or the other. And hopefully remain as genuine and human as possible. ‘Cause you’re gonna deal with all kinds of people.

Peter Bodnarus:
People can sniff that insincerity out. Some people can, a lot of people can’t. The mental framework that I talk about for friendships or a workplace is that it’s basically an ecosystem. An ecosystem functions at different levels. Not every part of that ecosystem is going to be a lush, verdant orchard with glistening fruit. Some of it is gonna be a scraggly, gravelly, gross, patchy gravel down the road, ugly, covered with weeds and stuff, but that provides the drainage for the orchard.

David Read:
That’s right. It has function.

Peter Bodnarus:
It has function. Not everything can be the top of the food chain. If you can bring that to your work and to your work relationships– Sometimes it’s really hard. Some people are just absolutely very, very insecure about their role, and what they’re doing, and doubting themselves, and by extension, doubting you. I’ve been in painful, painful– I’ve created brilliant work and everything has been shot down, and you’re like, “Mother of God.” So, here’s this. And they’re like, “Yeah, that’ll work.” And you’re like, “God.” And that’s what was magical about– Stargate wasn’t a holiday. We were producing 22 episodes of TV a year. There was a lot of stress, a lot of demands, a lot of conflicting goals, a lot of miscommunication, a lot of back and forth.

David Read:
Like any space.

Peter Bodnarus:
Like any space.

David Read:
But based on the people that I’ve communicated with over the years, there were more adults in the room than not.

Peter Bodnarus:
Exactly.

David Read:
John Smith, I think, fired two people in the entire time that he was there, internally, so it was small. It was a small number.

Peter Bodnarus:
And there was a clear vision at the top, and that really takes a huge pressure off. When you’re on a show with 17 co-executive producers and seven co-executive writers, you pretty much know that show is doomed. And I’ve seen it. I’ve been on amazingly high-budget, high-concept shows that have withered on the vine because there’s no one at the top with a clear sense. It doesn’t have to be one person. It could be a couple of people, but it has to be three people or less that are like, “This is where we’re going with this.” Sometimes if it’s just one person, if the show is just the one person’s vision, that can be equally dysfunctional.

David Read:
Depends on the person.

Peter Bodnarus:
It depends on the person. Again, I’m a big fan of process. So, you can see with the pod here how I started quite complex, and like I said, there’s Occam’s razor. Look, you’ve got the cooling fins, you’ve got a number of air intakes, and hoopalah, and in the end, I’m pretty sure subconsciously, a lot of my design is inspired by Ferrari race cars.

David Read:
Hey, nothing wrong with that.

Peter Bodnarus:
And I think this pod, that line, that sort of gap between the top and the bottom shells, that line is pretty much, I think, inspired by the 512BB, the Boxster Berlinetta.

David Read:
Wow. Hello there. Alien friendly. Alien and everything.

Peter Bodnarus:
Friendly, but deadly. This is an idea I had, I think it might have been during the hiatus. These are these creatures and their legs are actually, if you zoom in, they’re actually like thumbs with hair on the knuckles. And the idea is that this is a… You can see the thumbnail through.

David Read:
You totally can.

Peter Bodnarus:
The idea is that you’ve got this alien creature in this mech, but he’s a pilot. He’s this little potatoey blob, and the actual mech is completely separate from what the creature can actually do physically. There’s a little quote on the top of that page. What does it say? It says, “Did going to architecture school help you draw robots, Dad?” I think William would’ve been about five when– Again, the same guy playing with– I never really pursued that because, when I got into film, I was already into my 30s and I had a mortgage. I had …

David Read:
Gotta make it work.

Peter Bodnarus:
… very small children. And I valued art direction because it allowed me to do a number of things. I love drawing, I love 3D modeling, but I also love working with people and building real things. And things have come around. There seems to be much more of an equilibrium now, where a lot of the digital world has been brought back into the real world with volume stages and 3D printing, 3D milling. They will actually build the object in real time, photograph it, and then they’ll do the compositing after, like in claymation now where it’s all claymation and then they just remove the armatures and add backgrounds. But the actual–

David Read:
It’s like they’ve taken the best of each design choice and technology and used it for rig removal over here and something else over here.

Peter Bodnarus:
Because one of the problems with visual effects and CG, no offense, John, but what was happening is we would design all this stuff and then we would hand it over to a vendor and then it would all be technicians. And a lot of the spirit, a lot of the energy would get lost. In relation to performance and stuff, the more you can do in front of the camera, even if it requires later playing with editing and the data, it just gives you more control. And, I think, a better product. Back when I was on Stargate, there was a lot of push towards doing everything visual effects. And there was this sterility to the product that was being produced because it was so separate from the actual filming. And I remember, in particular, we did a Netflix movie for a release of Halo. It was included with the Halo box set, it was called Halo Forward Unto Dawn. And the production designer was a young guy at the time, Kasra Farahani, a very, very talented young guy, and we had produced this amazing interior. And he was coming up from Los Angeles and he was bringing some of that idea about bringing the digital age into the practical age. So we had a lot of our flooring and a lot of these really ornate surfaces that would be very, very expensive and time-consuming if they’re hand-painted. We actually created them in Photoshop, printed them, and then covered them in an acrylic, almost like an epoxy finish, it was ironclad. So you had this amazing depth of texture and feeling, but it had been made in a computer but then printed in real life, instead of a gray screen and then mapping it over and all the problems that causes. So we had just finished this incredible barracks. And I was walking it with the visual effects coordinator who was Lidar scanning it for the scenes. And he walked around, looks around, sighs, and he goes, “This is what pixels can’t do.” And you could just see the longing and the awe that my team were producing things IRL. In meat space.

David Read:
What year was this?

Peter Bodnarus:
This was maybe 2006, 2007. Again, like I said, there’s way more visual effects now than there’s ever been, but the partnership between the digital world and the real world, they’ve started to figure that out a little bit. And I think a lot of credit goes to Nathan Crowley and Interstellar, the amount of stuff that they did practically on Interstellar. And practically in air quotes, we’re not going back to Godzilla movies where we– The rock slide of foam rocks that are massive.

David Read:
No, everything’s definitely upped its game for the most part. It’s that triad of good, cheap and fast. Sometimes, unless it’s like a sci-fi movie of the week, your chances are you’re gonna have two of the three.

Peter Bodnarus:
And it’s funny because, in the old days, “Oh wow, they’re doing things with computers.” Nowadays, the shows that have money are doing things practical. We have just finished an incredible, incredible TV limited series for Apple TV, and it’s coming out sometime in June.

David Read:
You can’t announce the name?

Peter Bodnarus:
I can’t announce the name. Incredible amount of practical effects. And with a stellar cast and a creator/producer who was this visionary genius. It was more work than Shogun. Oh my God.

David Read:
That’s saying something. All right.

Peter Bodnarus:
That’s the stuff that I really love about my work is that I’m in my head, I’m on the computer, but I’m also in the real world.

David Read:
Absolutely. That’s that one. OK. So let’s move over to SGA. This is one of my favorite props from the entire show, and they went with green. You designed blue. Going back to that.

Peter Bodnarus:
They did go with green, that is true. I said, “I don’t know how David Read’s gonna feel about this 15 years from now.”

David Read:
Of course you did. No, I would have preferred this color. Absolutely.

Peter Bodnarus:
That sketch there, hand rendering as a final was kind of in its death throes. Everything was being done with Photoshop. Including my work. But for this one, I was like, “You know what? It’s gonna be hand-carved. Let’s do a hand illustration.”

David Read:
I own one. It’s been out of my hands for almost two years now because someone’s wanting to turn it in to make replicas of it, but I technically have it. It’s the one with the batteries inside of it and really cool.

Peter Bodnarus:
That was hand-carved?

David Read:
Yeah. Absolutely beautiful piece.

Peter Bodnarus:
That was a hand-carved prop. I was like, “Well, I’m very pleased.”

David Read:
It got a lot of mileage. Come on, button. Button is not working. Hang on a second here. Let me fix, see why. Use hot keys to control slideshow. Yes, why don’t you button? One moment, Peter. I’m sorry. I have to go to yellow alert here. God sakes. Slide.

Peter Bodnarus:
Another Star Trek reference. I love this, man. You got the Thosian Web?

David Read:
The Tholian Web?

Peter Bodnarus:
Tholian Web and now– Yellow alert. I see.

David Read:
What was the Tholian Web?

Peter Bodnarus:
Tholian Web was those little ships that were trying to keep–

David Read:
No, what did I say that-

Peter Bodnarus:
We were talking about the shuttle.

David Read:
OK. Fair point. Yes.

Peter Bodnarus:
A beautiful segue, buddy. You nailed it.

David Read:
The Genii Archive? No.

Peter Bodnarus:
Genii Archives, yep.

David Read:
I wanna get the species right. This is the Hoffans. The Hoffan Archive because they were making the drug to knock out the Wraith. And they were preserving, archiving their people’s knowledge for the future. So, this is one of the ways they were preserving their culture. Very cool.

Peter Bodnarus:
This is the other side of that last– Here I am sort of flexing. The last sketch, that’s 100% hand drawn out of my head. This is painting over top of photo scrapping. The ceiling is actually probably from the Henri Labrouste Library in Paris.

David Read:
Wow. So, you don’t even have to create it.

Peter Bodnarus:
I took the form of the building.

David Read:
I see what you’re saying. OK. So, you did create that. You didn’t just install it into the picture. OK.

Peter Bodnarus:
I took the form and then I painted it. I took that form and made a painting based on that form. And then I took textures, concrete textures from various images and just kinda layered, and that’s the way it’s done now because it’s very efficient. One of the problems with this method, though, is it always creates– There’s a uniformity to how a lot of artwork is looking these days.

David Read:
What do you mean?

Peter Bodnarus:
I think that photorealism is the default now. I’ve always been a big fan of the marker renderings. I’ve got a collection thumbnail up somewhere on my computer of marker concept work for Pontiac grilles from the late ’60s, early ’70s. Back when Pontiac was a performance brand. It was targeted to young men. You had all this concept artwork for possible Pontiac grilles and every one of them was smoking cool.

David Read:
Not to derail us too much about the marker look, but you must have loved Wild Robot. Absolutely brilliant film.

Peter Bodnarus:
Haven’t seen it.

David Read:
You must see it. You will love it.

Peter Bodnarus:
Yes, William and his giant robot dog. That guy is now 22. I’m gonna have to watch some Wild Robot on my own.

David Read:
No, I think he might enjoy it. I’m 41 and I watched it with my folks and they loved it.

Peter Bodnarus:
OK. I’m gonna add that to the list. Thank you.

David Read:
It was very good.

Peter Bodnarus:
Good to know.

David Read:
Hello, Puddle Jumper. So, this is much more angular. It’s meaner.

Peter Bodnarus:
And smaller. You’re not taking a crew of people around. You got two guys and they’re heading to Alpha Centauri for the weekend. That was my initial, based on Bridget’s concept. There, you can see at that very top section, the rake of the nose and how it fits in– And it was oval, it wasn’t round. And you can see its relationship to the Stargate there.

David Read:
And you were playing with inverting the engine pods?

Peter Bodnarus:
Yes. I was playing with a lot of stuff. I think there’s a lot of legs to what’s happening here. You can see how there’s an outer shell and then an inner body. If you see the sort of orthogonal view there, where the outer shell is actually quite a bit outboard of the actual part.

David Read:
It’s like a huge carapace.

Peter Bodnarus:
Carapace. Beautiful. All these things, I stand by. I think they would have been very, very effective in telling the story. But the fundamental thing is that this was like the TARDIS. We had to get a bunch of people in this thing. My concept of it as a hot rod didn’t survive all the production requirements.

David Read:
You leaning into the idea of the TARDIS is really accurate. Because the one that was on location and where the exterior was generally seen I think was one third smaller, if I’m not mistaken?

Peter Bodnarus:
20%.

David Read:
20%? So, one fifth. It had to fit on a truck.

Peter Bodnarus:
A little too much. Our interior set was a little bit– Wow, that’s– This thing’s way bigger than you’d think. Wow, these Puddle Jumpers are really roomier than they look.

David Read:
You gotta sell it. And the thing that I love about this is, you could have seen these sister designs, if they had gone to movies, begin to appear in other bases that we might have found. Other Ancient bases. Because I can’t believe that in however many thousands of years Atlantis and those things were in service, they never had other designs for different types of surface craft. We never really saw an Ancient fighter, so to speak. They would have had them. I believe that the Ancient warships would have been equipped with them. But maybe they just had a Puddle Jumper and it just covered everything.

Peter Bodnarus:
Also too, this is an Ancient society. How much Roman stuff do we actually have?

David Read:
Gosh.

Peter Bodnarus:
We got a few buttons and a bent sword. Guys produced a lotta stuff. There’s stuff out there that we just haven’t found yet. If Brad is …

David Read:
It’s beneath the earth.

Peter Bodnarus:
… Brad is listening, and he’s thinking about that, the SGU movie–

David Read:
Absolutely. Give me a call. Very good. Lantean planetary defense vehicles. It’s very interesting. I did not do this on purpose. So, you were going for that?

Peter Bodnarus:
Exactly. It’s like, wait a minute, you mean Atlantis are the Lanteans?

David Read:
Yes.

Peter Bodnarus:
And this is even before I knew– I don’t know if the word lore was used the way it is now, but my head was always spinning with lore and what’s the physical result of all this– It’s pretty funny, my youngest son is in high school right now, and we play Dungeons and Dragons as a family.

David Read:
You know how to have a good time, don’t you?

Peter Bodnarus:
Dungeons and Dragons is like Homework: The Game for me. It’s really good time. I’m an artist. But my kids, they love it. And anyway, my son is– Lore is big for him. He plays Destiny and he’s very knowledgeable about all the backstories with that. I guess the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree ’cause that’s what I was doing. We’d be talking about– I’d be like, “What would that look like?” And then I’d start playing.

David Read:
This is the way that this is for a reason. It has history. In whatever world that it existed in.

Peter Bodnarus:
Exactly. And you can see that there’s that Ancient technology, that Ancient vibe there with the surface treatment and the angularity.

David Read:
Radical difference design.

Peter Bodnarus:
I was like, “I nailed it. Brad’s gonna love this.” And then I– And again, you can see my fondness for, I think, Thunderbirds and 1999. If you look closely, you’ll see there’s some Wite-Out there. I was playing with shape, and then I changed my mind, and I got in there with the Wite-Out to change the sh-

David Read:
I see.

Peter Bodnarus:
And you can see in the section there, it’s shockingly, the section profile is not unlike the Galileo VII space shuttle from the US. Anyway, Brad looked at this and he’s like, “Wow, this is awesome, but this is not our show.”

David Read:
It looks like a submersible, this three-quarter view.

Peter Bodnarus:
I was always a big fan of submersibles as a kid. I always thought they were so– The shape and the design of them were so fascinating. So, that was an early pitch. That was before we had a chance to think about– I think it has that shuttle, that weaving shuttle shape that Bridget was working with. But again, it wasn’t– It was a little too much, not our universe.

David Read:
This is dated ’03, so this was pretty early on.

Peter Bodnarus:
I still like it, though.

David Read:
Absolutely.

Peter Bodnarus:
Playing again with the Lantean ships.

David Read:
Looks like the Aeroshuttle from the USS Voyager, which was never actually seen on camera. You could only see the bottom of it on the bottom of the primary hull. Very, very similar evoking. These wings, this all single piece, the engine in the back, the passenger pod in the front. Very cool.

Peter Bodnarus:
We call it the oral tradition of science fiction, where you’ll subconsciously absorb all these things you’ve watched. And they’ll show up years later, and you’ll not even realize it. And then you’ll be like, “Oh, hey.” It’s still creative and original and interesting and speaks to the show that you’re working on. But there’s certain things that are understandable to the viewer. And as a kid, you were the viewer. A lot of that stuff gets brought forward.

David Read:
When you’re watching something, you want people to be sucked into the story, not blown out of it. I was doing a lot of editing with something else a few days ago, and I realized, yes, this is a great cut, but the eye needs to focus and adjust. So, the beat needs to move. So, if I’m showing you something, and it’s only on screen for a limited period of time, you better darn be sure you have time to assimilate it instead of going, “Wait, that’s go– Wait, what is that? What… No, no, it’s gone now. Now I just missed it. What was that? I don’t know. What’s going on? Now I’m out of it. Now it’s over.” So, there has to be certain design shortcuts that make sense, especially with whatever species you’re dealing with, because that also connects to what the mind is anticipating, if it’s something we’ve seen before.

Peter Bodnarus:
Exactly. ‘Cause film, television is first and foremost theater. There’s these theatrical conventions that are– Some people could say some of these things are arbitrary or culturally specific, whatever. I think a lot of stuff though is hardwired in us.

David Read:
Like sound in space. We just accept it when we watch it on television. And when it’s absent, we go, “I’m missing something.” The music has to be really good if you’re gonna replace it with something.

Peter Bodnarus:
Or spaceships banking in this air and space. That doesn’t look good.

David Read:
That’s so true. Thrusters, man. Thrusters. All right. Ah, there we go.

Peter Bodnarus:
It’s another Ancient tech console pitch. That one was gonna be a big light. I don’t know. I like that one, but they didn’t go for it. You can see the beginnings of the grand pianos on the top right there. You can see that’s– I think we’re moving towards the piano here. The grand piano.

David Read:
Those shapes for sure evoke that. McKay’s high school science fair A-bomb. He described this in one of the episodes. Very funny. And you envisioned it.

Peter Bodnarus:
I did. Huh, what would his high school A-bomb look like? I don’t think it would be designed as a delivery system, but I did that anyway ’cause I thought it was cool.

David Read:
I would see McKay going the extra mile. I could be thinking of another story, but it probably had something to do with how he got involved with the government to begin with. It’s like, “OK, no, we’re taking you. We don’t want you to get bad ideas going another way, so who knows who will hire you.”

Peter Bodnarus:
Exactly.

David Read:
I think this is the mechanism that held Atlantis to the ocean floor, if I’m not mistaken.

Peter Bodnarus:
That’s the seabed clamp.

David Read:
In “Before I Sleep,” it’s mentioned that the city is not just sitting on the bottom, it’s being held down, and we’ve never gotten a chance to see this. And look at that, it’s the snowflake shape, for each pier it has a pylon. That is so cool, Peter.

Peter Bodnarus:
And all the little fishes.

Peter Bodnarus:
The snowflake crystalline theme was Bridget’s idea. And I was like, “What a great idea. What can we do with this?”

David Read:
Antarctica. There’s all kind of callbacks, so it works.

Peter Bodnarus:
And that’s an example of playing with computer and hand rendering.

David Read:
This one or this one?

Peter Bodnarus:
The seabed clamp.

David Read:
I see, on the right.

Peter Bodnarus:
Right where I did the marker rendering, and I think I did the highlights with grease pencil or something.

David Read:
Very cool. All right. Here’s the Daedalus forward view envisioned. Looking at the Milky Way or some such.

Peter Bodnarus:
Something like that. Andromeda Galaxy, something cool. You can see how we’ve widened it, and we’re getting to see the heavens a bit more than we were with the Prometheus. In architecture, in the kind of the ’90s and into the early 2000s, there was a big thing in presentation drawings where they were layering. You’d layer the section on top of the view, and that was very, very exciting for architects, but created a lot of confusion in film. I only did it for very specific situations, and this was one of them.

David Read:
There she is.

Peter Bodnarus:
There’s our Daedalus.

David Read:
Wow. So, James Robbins designed Prometheus. So, I imagine you used that as a starting point?

Peter Bodnarus:
I did.

David Read:
And then went in your direction. So, you wanna talk about that a little bit?

Peter Bodnarus:
What I did is I took, like down to the bare bones. Just the central spine and the nose. I modified it significantly. I added that kind of prow at the front there. I started adding the protruding sort of sensors, arrays, and other bits, and the stuff at the top as well. So, before I even started this, I went to Brad, and I’m like, “What are we doing?” He’s like, “It’s an aircraft carrier in space.” I’m like, as the designer of the F-302, I’m down with that. So, that’s why it has the flat top and the command pod sorta off to one side,

David Read:
Just like the aircraft carrier does, if the planes were to one side.

Peter Bodnarus:
The jaggedy stuff at the front is referencing– I think one of the best spaceship designs in science fiction ever is the Sulaco.

David Read:
The gun in space.

Peter Bodnarus:
Exactly, it’s meta. James Cameron, he’s a character, but he’s a great filmmaker, and he has an understanding about visual storytelling. I see production design as visual storytelling. The Sulaco, they’re the Marines, so it’s a big gun. This is not that, but it’s also a little bit of that. It has a bit of menace.

David Read:
You’ve got design elements from Earth as well because I’m sure this was your idea. You notice here, and you notice here, folks? We have an evoking of the Earth symbol down the sides. Was that your idea?

Peter Bodnarus:
I can’t recall.

David Read:
OK, that’s fair. But each side has at least two. There’s one here. My light is terrible. And then there’s one over here. And as the ship passes by in the shots, you can really see them. This is my favorite ship design. Now, in your thought process, did they exit here and then return here? Because you got the smaller ones here and here. You got a couple of different kinds. What were those smaller things for?

Peter Bodnarus:
Actually, I’ve got the original sketch right there.

David Read:
Let me pull this up. All right.

Peter Bodnarus:
So, I think that’s what I was thinking. The idea is that they would launch from the smaller nacelles and then return to the large nacelles.

David Read:
I see. So they wouldn’t have to turn around, they could go through a track and then come back out. All right.

Peter Bodnarus:
Exactly. When you’re launching, it’s like the steam catapult on the aircraft carrier. If you look at an aircraft carrier, the actual launching part of it is actually a third of the deck. You’ve got the catapults and however many yards, and good luck, lads.

David Read:
Away they go.

Peter Bodnarus:
They go. But the actual landing deck, a bit off at the angle there, is much more, with all the cables to catch the aircraft. You’ve gotta provide a lot more forgiving environment for getting it back. And that’s the approach here, where when they’re being launched it’s a very specific narrow thing, and when they’re returning, you’ve gotta give them a little bit of real estate.

David Read:
Where do you envision the bridge? Is it here? Or is it here?

Peter Bodnarus:
Let’s see, does this work? The bridge is right there. That’s the bridge.

David Read:
OK. In the front there, that little piece. OK, very good. That’s one of the things that always frustrated me about Star Trek, and frankly about this, is that if we’re that close to the window, we would see the nose of the ship, but we keep it out there because we wanna be able to see the action of what’s going on. And I get the trade-off.

Peter Bodnarus:
That’s why we built that big dash on the bottom of the window.

David Read:
It’s right under that.

Peter Bodnarus:
That was my initial concept for the Prometheus as well. I had a whole bunch of stuff built out on the deck. It’s one of those compromises that, if it was a high-budget feature, it would’ve been addressed.

David Read:
Because if the camera moved, unless it was a locked shot, the orientation of the shape would shift as it went around.

Peter Bodnarus:
That’s why the bridge is in that kind of raised, is the idea is that it’s higher and you have to go to the edge to look down to actually see the ship.

David Read:
Very cool. I would love a signed copy of that, Peter. Whatever you want. OK. So, a redesign of the systems consoles.

Peter Bodnarus:
So, again, I start big and then work my way back. I think I’ve already started to simplify it a bit. I think there’s a few other ones that show it– Yeah, there we go. So, that’s starting with a little more expressiveness and budget. Far more budget than we had. And then I simplified it considerably, but that sort of curved pod at the front survived all the edits. So that was good. That was the original concept there. I had a little bit of fun with that. A little bit military, Syd Mead, maybe.

David Read:
Hey, go big or go home. You can always dial it back.

Peter Bodnarus:
And then, again, another sort of playing with the console.

David Read:
Ronon’s knives.

Peter Bodnarus:
Ronon’s knife. Very famous actor now.

David Read:
Jason.

Peter Bodnarus:
Jason Momoa.

David Read:
Momoa.

Peter Bodnarus:
So, Jason showed us this picture of this knife. And he’s like, “I want a knife like this.” And we’re like, “You bet, Jason.” So, we made that happen. This would have all been for– I think this was the Ancient reactor. This drawing was to explain to visual effects what we’re actually doing, that the reactor would be inside this giant sphere, and that we would be looking at it from this little window, I think indicated it there. There’s a lot of invented or played with or imagined engineering in what we did.

David Read:
With the title, are you invoking threes in this? Like sets of threes?

Peter Bodnarus:
I don’t know.

David Read:
The top left there, you’ve got three on one side and three on the other.

Peter Bodnarus:
I think that must’ve been subconscious. I think it was more about the– I was working with the tessellated sphere that’s made up of the triangles. So, that’s where that must come from.

David Read:
Jefferies tube.

Peter Bodnarus:
This was one of my favorite interactive pieces. They take the panel off and inside is this very sleek and possibly electronics, possibly mechanical, we’re not sure. And I was really happy with that. And that one I started with just a graphic layout. I did a graphic layout, handed it off to Boyd, and then we CNC milled it and hooked up the lighting, and it turned out. I was pretty happy with that.

David Read:
The things that you guys pulled off with these, especially these backlit LED panels, were so cool. The Daedalus, so much of the Daedalus is that it’s a piece of plexi with CNC-milled lines into it, and when you hit those at a certain angle with the LED boards, they light up. And it’s so cool how the accents take off when you do that.

Peter Bodnarus:
Like I said, we had this amazing team where I would come up with these concepts and then I’d hand them off to Boyd, and Boyd would be like, “I got this.” And then we’d be working with really talented vendors, and we were doing— A lot of 3D milling is very, very expensive. But 2D cutting is much more economical. So, what we did is we would build up a series of 2D elements to create the effects that we were looking for.

David Read:
Same chamber. I was on set before this was struck. I saw this there, and that was really cool. You’ve got the Atlantis chiclets at the bottom and at the top.

Peter Bodnarus:
The Atlantis chiclets?

David Read:
Yeah.

Peter Bodnarus:
I guess I didn’t realize that came back. That’s actually one of my favorite sets. I really was happy with how that came together.

David Read:
Very cool set. There you go. It’s taken off. “Epiphany,” the domed Ancient world, where on the inside, time moves much, much slower.

Peter Bodnarus:
That’s an example again, flexing a bit with hand drawings. So, that was drawn completely freehand.

David Read:
I’m impressed. That’s really cool.

Peter Bodnarus:
The perspective work and the landscaping, that was all pencil and pen and going at it.

David Read:
You have to wonder, what would a planet look like if part of it changed rapidly and the other part of it didn’t? How would the exterior respond to that? And you really evoke that in this image.

Peter Bodnarus:
And then two concepts: the dome black and then the dome transparent. And the dismal sky in the background.

David Read:
Ah, the sea creature. I forget what they named this. I see catfish, I see whale.

Peter Bodnarus:
That’s pretty much it. That’s a catfish, a whale, and there’s a coel– ancient sort of fish that has a tail like that. So, that was a catfish, a whale, maybe a little bit of a shark, whale shark, and then these prehistoric fish.

David Read:
I’m I think that it’s canon, but it’s called a flagisallus.

Peter Bodnarus:
Poor guy.

David Read:
Ah, the pods. There we go.

Peter Bodnarus:
So, that’s the final design of the pod.

David Read:
“Inferno,” the Orion hangar, or the Hippaforalkus. Named after the general.

Peter Bodnarus:
Yes. Again, that one, I was playing with designing in 3D. So, that was all 3D from scratch. And then I went online, and oh my God, it’s there and it’s exactly as I designed it.

David Read:
Was the light rig casting the shadows– Was that all in the computer at the time?

Peter Bodnarus:
Yeah, that was all done with the computer program. And I did everything black and white because one of the problems at this stage is if you start adding too many textures and colors, it takes away– At this stage, I wanna make sure they’re happy with the shape, they’re happy with the scale, they’re happy with the proportions, and then we can start playing with color and texture.

David Read:
Wow. I don’t have any drawings of the Orion itself. We just don’t have those?

Peter Bodnarus:
That’s the only thing that I kept with that.

David Read:
I see. OK. Very cool. All right, we’re moving to the Season Two finale, “Allies.” In this case, the royal Wraith shuttle was launched from Daedalus rather than from the Hive ship down to Atlantis.

Peter Bodnarus:
Again, the Wraith with the bone structure and the anthropomorphic shapes. This one, we’re evoking Sulaco, where you’ve got this maw with all these teeth, and these dead eyes. This one, I tried to go a little more– Again, this is an example of iterations. I think I did a bunch of these. This one is carrying the bone motif a little bit farther. This one, I’m not sure what I was doing with that one. I wasn’t happy with it at all, but I stuck it in to show you, sometimes, you can’t get it right every time.

David Read:
No. Failure can always lead to some interesting places, including eventually success. Delicate shuttle.

Peter Bodnarus:
This is where we were playing with scale here. You can see the F-302 alongside for reference.

David Read:
The 302s were ultimately fairly comparable in size to the shuttle at the end.

Peter Bodnarus:
This is early days. I was playing with this double layer of hull.

David Read:
I love the shot in “Allies” where the ship comes down and the 302s come side by side. We’ve never really seen them at low speed in atmosphere before, and then once they’re down, they part and take off. It’s a really cool shot.

Peter Bodnarus:
That was cool. And that’s the final design that I pitched. I think the actual ship was quite different from this. But this was my final pitch as the Wraith royal shuttle.

David Read:
So cool. Now, look at this. We were talking a little bit earlier about obsidian being cut from glass, volcanic glass. This really has that look and feel to it. Was this earlier than the ultimate design? Tell me where this fell in the process.

Peter Bodnarus:
This was after the ultimate design. Later on in the season, I decided I was gonna– Let’s finish– What would this look like landing in a hostile atmosphere? And that’s what I came up with.

David Read:
I love the debris. It’s really evoking movement.

Peter Bodnarus:
That violence of landing with the jets. That’s one of the earlier pencil concepts of what it might look like. I guess that would be pen, pencil, marker.

David Read:
That’s it. That’s the …

Peter Bodnarus:
That’s it.

David Read:
… beginning. This has been a thrill for me. I really appreciate you being so thoughtful about taking me through each of the pieces that you have designed and showing how they connect to the grander lore of what it is that you’re working with. I can see your passion, I can see your determination in getting it right. And your willingness to play here and there in coming up with some more zany things. Especially the robots. And the aliens with the thumb hands. The thumb feet. That’s really cool. Thank you for being willing to share so much. It’s meant a lot to me.

Peter Bodnarus:
My pleasure, David. I think that Stargate means so much to a lot of people. And to me as well. And I just wanted to be able to show that you don’t get it right the first time. And you need to figure things out and sometimes you get it right, sometimes you don’t. Sometimes you hit it on the first try, like with the F-302, that was there ready to go.

David Read:
So, that was the one that was right on the first try.

Peter Bodnarus:
Yeah, it was the one that was right on the first try. There’s been a few others. But there’s been some that, with the royal shuttle, that was a lot of backing and forthing. And then I think finally even the final product was still not quite what we were envisioning. It’s been a pleasure, David. Thank you.

David Read:
I appreciate you taking the time, sir. That was Peter Bodnarus, art director for Stargate SG-1 and Stargate Atlantis. We had such a good time with him the first time around, and he really did not disappoint this time. Really, thank you, Peter, for the amount of time that you were willing to spend, especially this time around, to get all these thoughts out. Some really tremendous things I learned in this episode as well. You think that you have all the information, sometimes it’s like, “Ah, there’s a reason for that, and I never even thought of it before.” Before we go, if you enjoy Stargate and you wanna see more content like this on YouTube, it’d mean a lot to me if you click the Like button. It really makes a difference with the show and will continue to help us grow our audience. Please also consider sharing this video with a Stargate friend, and if you want to get notified about future episodes, click the Subscribe icon. And 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. And clips from this episode will be released over the course of the next few weeks on both the Dial the Gate and gateworld.net YouTube channels. My tremendous thanks to my production team, Antony Rawling, Kevin Weaver, and Linda “GateGabber” Furey. My moderators Antony, Jeremy, Kevin, Lockwatcher, Marcia, Raj, Sommer, and Tracy. Thank you guys for all that you do. And big thanks over to ConceptsWeb, Frederick Marcoux, who keeps Dial the Gate up and running. I can’t do the show without these folks, at least not as competently as I occasionally manage to pull it off. So it means the world to me to have you guys. Dialthegate.com has all the information on upcoming guests and episodes. So, check it out. That’s where even I go to make sure that I have everything correct, ’cause the schedule, the master schedule, that’s where we pull it from. That’s where it goes first and last. My name is David Read for Dial the Gate. I appreciate you tuning in, and I will see you on the other side.