Years before the genre took off in film and TV, the SG-1 team became superheroes themselves! David Rich, the writer behind “Upgrades,” joins us LIVE to explore the premise further!

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TRANSCRIPT
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David Read:
One of these days, that animation will work, for heaven sakes. Welcome everyone to Dial the Gate The Stargate Oral History Project, Episode 360. My name is David Read. I appreciate you tuning in. David Rich, the writer behind Stargate SG-1’s “Upgrades,” is joining me for this episode. This is in my top 10 or 15 of the entire franchise, and it was before superheroes were really cool and caught fire, before Spider-Man, I think, around the time of the first X-Men. If you’re in the YouTube chat, you can submit your questions to David right now. My moderators will take them and get them over to me. I am really looking forward to this conversation. David Rich, writer of “Upgrades,” welcome to Dial the Gate. How are you, sir?

David Rich:
I’m doing great. Thanks for having me.

David Read:
It is terrific to have you. I’ve been wanting to reach out for a while now. Michael Greenberg and I have developed a correspondence over the last little while, and you came up in conversation when he was on a few weeks ago. And I went and I checked, and I’m like, “Surely I’ve had this guy on by now, or at least attempted to reach out to him.” My oversight, my apologies. I would’ve had you …

David Rich:
That’s okay.

David Read:
… on long before now, because …Thank you, but it’s not. This is a tremendous episode, and it introduces a lot of elements. I’m curious to know which of those were imposed on you, and which of those you had originally. I’m really looking forward to having this conversation with you, so it means the world to me that you’re here for this. Are you a sci-fi fan? And how long have you wanted to write and create and publish material? And we’re also gonna talk about your novels as well.

David Rich:
I’m not a huge sci-fi fan. I’d read sci-fi sometimes when I was younger, and sci-fi movies. But I have one sci-fi idea I came up with for a series, and I still love the idea. I came up with it not that long ago. It was just before the pandemic. An agent very thoughtfully said, “Now, you’ve done this wrong and this wrong.” And she was right, and she said something else. She said, “Unless you have real sci-fi bona fides, and a name in the sci-fi world, you can’t get a sci-fi series off the ground these days.” You go with the ideas you have, and I had that idea, but I don’t tend towards sci-fi. As far as writing, man, when you’re … I don’t know how clueless you were at 16 and 17 and 18, but I was pretty clueless. I had a vague sense. I can remember sitting at the kitchen table and just blathering something, and then looking at it a few days later and saying, “Well, this is embarrassing.” At least I knew that much.

David Read:
Yep. What just came out of my face? What just came out of my pencil?

David Rich:
But early on in college, it dawned on me that I wanted to do this, and I can remember some well-known writer came to a class. It was a small class, and I handed something in, and he said, “Well, whoever wrote this clearly wants to be a writer.” So, I thought, “OK, he’s right. If other people can see it, I oughta face it.” And I went to graduate school and got an MA in English. And that, in some ways, teaches you that you’re not good enough to be a writer. That’s one of the things you learn when you get a Master’s Degree.

David Read:
Put your own perspective on things.

David Rich:
Yeah. So, I had to do a paper. I was studying Elizabethan drama. And I went to the library, looking, “What am I gonna write about?” And I came across books about the death of Christopher Marlowe, famous Shakespeare contemporary. And also some people claim that Christopher Marlowe really wrote Shakespeare. I don’t think that’s true.

David Read:
Good old Shakespeare author shit.

David Rich:
But I stood there in the stacks reading this stuff. I was there, I swear, for an hour and a half, standing there, book to book to book to book, and I said, again, you face the truth, saying, “I don’t wanna be an English professor. I wanna be a writer. This is what I wanna do.” So, I finished my MA. There was a little bit of the hippie tour of America involved. So, college was New Orleans, and Master’s Degree was Boulder, and then I went back to Chicago. I’m a Chicagoan.

David Read:
I can hear it.

David Rich:
I went back there, and then Tucson, and eventually, I wrote my first screenplay …

David Read:
What year is this?

David Rich:
… which was a detective story.

David Read:
What year would this have been?

David Rich:
I wrote it, had a draft by late 1975, and I started asking people what the hell I’d do with it? Now that I’ve written it. And a friend, who I hadn’t seen probably since the eighth grade, I mean, we’re still very close friends now, and he’s a screenwriter, very good screenwriter, and he said, “Well, your screenplay’s worthless in Chicago.” So, I packed up the car and headed to, just like Jed Clampett, but without the oil money. Headed west, and wrote more screenplays. I got work. Oy. I got lucky in a funny way. I got hired by two producers. They didn’t have a lot of money, but one of ’em, and his name was Jack Ballard, and he had been head of physical production at Paramount under Bob Evans. So, he was head of physical production on Godfather, Catch-22, Love Story. A guy who has that job knows everything about production, much in the way Michael Greenberg knows everything about production. One thing I saw, Michael, it’s a pleasure. It’s a shame you can’t see him work. When he would get something, he would go to work on the details, everything. Really, it was beautiful to watch. Anyway, so there was Jack and his partner Norman, and Norman was a real character, and on and off we’ve been friends and quarreled through the years. Very political guy. I mean …

David Read:
As friends do, sure.

David Rich:
… So, it was a real lesson in things not literary necessarily, but practical movie making, and a real lesson. I probably wrote at least five scripts for them. I was tending bar, of course, because they weren’t paying me a fortune. I’ll tell you one funny story. Norman … I’d written a script for them that was set in South Africa, and Norman had money, thought he’d raised money over there, and he’d gone to South Africa, and he decided he needed a rewrite. He was from Texas so he flew me to San Antonio, and met me there, and he got me two motel rooms so that I could pace, and I had five days to do a major rewrite on this thing, and he was flying back to South Africa and gonna shoot it in … So, it was, I measured it out, seven pages in the morning, seven in the afternoon, seven in the evening.

David Read:
It’s math.

David Rich:
When I handed it in, Norman said, “OK, we’ll meet 5:00 AM at the Waffle House across the parking lot from there.”

David Read:
Nice.

David Rich:
And I showed up at 5:15, so I got screamed at, but they liked the screenplay. He had shown up at the airport to pick me up with a gun, because he’d hired another writer who was a very expensive writer, well-known writer. That guy got in trouble on a plane and got arrested and wanted Norman to bail him out. Norman wouldn’t, so the guy said, “I’m gonna come down to San Antonio and kill you.” So, Norman was walking around with a gun. It was that kind of …

David Read:
He’s protecting himself.

David Rich:
… world. Anyway, so from there, I wrote more, started to get a few jobs, and then I got real lucky and ran into Michael Greenberg at a party, and I hadn’t seen him … We’d known each other at Tulane one year and then he transferred. So, he said, “Well, give me a script. I work for this guy, George Englund,” and he gave George my scripts and George liked them and he hired me to be their Director of Development, not that I knew what I was doing, out at Warner Bros. So, we worked together and I learned, again, from George. That was a masterclass. He had grown up in the movie business and in entertainment. His mother had been in vaudeville. His uncle was Jack Albertson. So, hanging around George, you learn a lot. Then after that, more things. I wrote a play that got some attention, and then eventually I did a MacGyver. Wrote a movie called Renegades that, Kiefer Sutherland, Lou Diamond Phillips … a few other things. I worked mostly in features. That was what I wanted to do and preferred, but the TV experiences were all good.

David Read:
I really appreciate you being here to talk about this. And I also … I think what’s gonna happen next. You may not. I have someone here who’d like to say hello. So, let me go ahead and bring him in, if I can, in a second. Mr. Michael Greenberg, sir.

David Rich:
Mr. Greenberg.

David Read:
Welcome back to Dial the Gate.

Michael Greenburg:
Thank you.

David Read:
Thank you for being here. David, I was looking through all of your credits, and MacGyver, Legend, Stargate SG-1. Clearly you have a fan, so, Michael. Why keep bringing this guy back? What’s he got?

Michael Greenburg:
He reads books, and he writes books. He’s literary, and I’m an idiot. All I ever read was CINEFX magazines and film-related stuff. David is basically literary. So, having him with me made me seem like I knew what I was talking about.

David Rich: We used to go together, me and Michael, to pitch movie ideas, TV movie ideas mainly, to the network. We’d go to these lunches, and George insisted that we have six pitches. That’s a lot for a lunch. Especially because he didn’t want one-line pitches. He wanted the whole thing worked out. Michael, we made a good team, the two of us, and Michael would charm the executives, and I would bore them. I had the little basic one-liners, and Dave could actually fill out the characters in the story. We pitched one, I remember, Dixie: Changing Habits, was based on Brandy Baldwin, the real madam in San Francisco who took care of all the celebrities and stars up in San Francisco. I read an article on a flight back, I think, from San Francisco, and I think I showed it to Dave and George, and I said, “This would make a good TV movie.” ‘Cause Brandy Baldwin, in real life, the madam, was busted for running a brothel in San Francisco, and I think she had some pretty high-level politicians, people like that. And the judge, instead of sentencing her to prison, sent her to a convent for rehabilitation. So, that’s what we started with, and it was a pretty easy pitch, as I remember. The network was CBS.

David Read:
CBS.

Michael Greenburg:
They picked it up right in the meeting. Those were the good old days, when you could actually go to a pitch meeting in person, sit down with the green-light executive, and if they liked the idea, you’re going. You’re in production the next day. And that’s … Man, I miss those days. They were great because people really reacted to a great story with a green light. I would come in with the article, basically give the article to the executive. Nancy Bean, was that the director’s name?

David Rich:
That’s right, Nancy Bean.

Michael Greenburg:
Nancy Bean. And she read it and said, “I love it. Let’s do it.” It was pretty easy. We didn’t have to say much.

David Rich:
On the other hand —

David Read:
Sounds like so much used to be easier than it is now.

David Rich:
We once pitched … A guy had come into the office, and it was easier to get on the lot in those days. And a guy came in, and he said, “I’ve written a book about Stan Laurel. It’s not published. Would you look at it?” So, I said, “Sure.” I was an easy touch that way. And in truth, it was a really good story, really good. So, I worked it up, how to tell it. Michael and I went with Steve White from ABC. He was the executive, and we pitched a bunch of stories that day, and he responded to it. He liked it, but he calls me up five days later, and he says, “I have good news and bad news.” I said, “OK.” He said, “Here’s the good news. The Stan Laurel story tested higher than anything we’ve ever tested.” I said, “What’s the bad news?” He said, “Brandon.” Brandon Stoddard was head of the network at the time, he goes, “Brandon Stoddard’s not a Laurel and Hardy fan.” I said, “Well, gee, why did you test it then? Why didn’t you just ask him?”

David Read:
So, even though it tested, he wasn’t gonna move forward with it?

David Rich:
Right.

Michael Greenburg:
But that was OK ’cause you gotta … You were in the office, and you got the quick response and you knew you could move on. Back then, it was great. Then we took … We developed, David and I with George … This is under the Newman/Englund banner at Warner Brothers, where we were from ’80 to ’85, and so we had Paul’s name as a good way to get into offices, of course. But that didn’t mean that we would get green lit on everything because we pitched Rubin “Hurricane” Carter 20 years before that film was made, remember, to Mark Canton at Warner Brothers. And it didn’t go. We optioned the book The Palace from Paul Erdman, for Paul, and had some scripts written based on The Palace, which was actually the Vegas strip war between Caesars Palace and the Dunes, and the whole struggle to get the big boxing matches and into live sports in Vegas. Paul was racing at the time, so he wasn’t really looking to work. But the concept was great, so we ended up making it as a TV movie with Rock Hudson and Sharon Stone. It was a huge television success. So, it’s crazy how these things evolve and either get picked up or don’t, but back then, it was fine if people didn’t pick stuff up. Like David said, we would pitch five, six things sometimes. But you’d leave the office with information. Nowadays, you’re just submitting stuff over the internet, and you’re not meeting them live. They don’t even see the passion behind the people that are making the show …

David Read:
You’re praying …

Michael Greenburg:
… because we’re not there.

David Read:
… to see if something sticks.

Michael Greenburg:
We’re not there. Our agents are sending our pitches in. We work hard on the pitch deck and the script and the treatment, whatever, really hard. We pour our souls into it, but our souls aren’t in the room pitching it. So, it’s a whole different world now. I hate it.

David Read:
Mike, while I’ve got you with David, I would like to skip ahead, and David …

Michael Greenburg:
Sure.

David Read:
When you and I are by ourselves, I’ll work on my way back around to the front of this episode. But “Upgrades” is one of the first shows in Season Four. Teal’c still has his blond patch down here. Carter still has her long hair. That couple of weeks on an alien planet after the replicators really screwed with them. This was, specifically, strictly speaking about production, Mike — What do you remember about “Upgrades?” Because I remember some stories about this particular episode that were divorced from the writing of it, but were interesting challenges, shall we say. And I’m interested to see how much came back to David, how much he heard about.

Michael Greenburg:
‘Cause he was all the way back in Connecticut, or LA at the time. He was both places. What I remember about “Upgrades” is, first of all, Dave’s pitch. It was … The one-liner was just phenomenal, because you strapped on these armbands, these forearm bands, and you became a Marvel character. You became a superhero. So, I’d like to have one for myself today. Dave, if you can send one over, that would be great.

David Read:
No problem.

Michael Greenburg:
So, I remember the concept being out of this world. This was before Marvel and all that. Of course superheroes existed in comics…

David Read:
Hadn’t taken off to the degree where they have now.

Michael Greenburg:
… but it hadn’t. It hadn’t taken off. This idea of Dave’s was just phenomenal. I think it … David Read, you would know best, but I think it’s one of the more popular episodes that we ever did. It’s talked about a lot as being a lot of people’s favorite. But what I remember … in prep, with the art department and the prop department, the design, and getting the armbands, ’cause it was all about the armbands. Getting them looking real and great and ancient. So, a lot had to go into it, ’cause it’s high tech, but it’s also ancient discovery stuff. Artifacts discovered. And I forget the woman on the planet, but it was, I think delivered…

David Read:
Vanessa Angel, Anise and Freya. Yup, the Tok’ra.

David Rich:
Anise

David Read:
Anise.

Michael Greenburg:
The Tok’ra.

David Read:
This is her first episode, by the way. What we need is a sexy female alien on this show.

Michael Greenburg:
So, Kenny, our prop master, I remember him battling with it, battling with the armbands. Once they’re on set, now they had to fit each of the characters that wore them, basically our main SG team. I remember that being a struggle. But we ended up getting it, of course. You got so many people there working on stuff that we got it looking great and feeling great, and the actors loved it. It was a great concept that we were able to pull off and make it come to life. Superheroes. Great. I wish that existed. Maybe they’re working on it somewhere in China or Japan, I don’t know.

David Rich:
Certainly.

David Read:
Michael, I really appreciate you coming in and sharing some stories. Would you work with Dave again, and what do you think you guys would crack next together?

Michael Greenburg:
We talk all the time. Anything that I get greenlit, he’s on. That’s been our whole careers since … We met when we were 18 years old, freshmen at Tulane University, and then he moved out to LA in the mid-’70s when I was an assistant director. Then I got this opportunity to go over to Newman/Englund Production Company at Warner Bros., and I took him with me.

David Read:
Of course.

Michael Greenburg:
‘Cause like I said, I’m way smarter with Dave than without him.

David Rich:
Let me tell you something else, a little different. Michael, I told you before, is a production guy. You see him start to work, and literally my eyes popped open when I saw him start to work and when we got something that was going. But also, you should know that he’s really, really, really good with story. And if you give him something, you better listen. That’s what I learned in working with him is that you’re a fool if you don’t listen. I got caught off guard a few years ago. The same guy I told you at the beginning, said, “My script, I have to come to LA with my script.” He’s a writer and a very good writer. And this topic of Michael came up, and out of the blue … He’s not close with Michael, and out of the blue, he said, “You know, I sent him something.” I didn’t know that, because it’s … You know how you have friends in different groups? But they know each other, and he said, “Yeah.” And he said, “I couldn’t believe how good his comments were. How right and smart …” So, production and story. But I haven’t seen him act.

Michael Greenburg:
A terrible actor. You’re seeing it now.

David Read:
Even in Wormhole X-Treme. No, no. You do have a line of dialogue at the end with Brad. You did speak. You were one of the last … At the end. That’s right. Now, we collect people throughout our lives who help inspire us and shape us to be the people that we later become. And I don’t think that you have to break away from someone just because you’re doing a new thing. There’s no reason to try and fix what isn’t broken. If you’ve got a guy for this that I can bring in to do the job, and I know that it will be done and be of quality, why would I not bring him in? And those are the people that stay with you throughout your life. And they may come and go in seasons, but that’s the thing that I love about this business is because it allows creative people to continue to have the opportunity to stay in one another’s orbit project after project. “You can try something different over here, or maybe we’re doing this thing over here now. What do you think about this?” And it’s clearly worked for you guys from MacGyver to Legends, Stargate, and on and on. So, Michael, I really appreciate you continuing to stay in touch, and mentioning David a few weeks ago. I’m still ashamed that we hadn’t brought him in up to this point, but thank you. Thank you, Michael.

Michael Greenburg:
You got it. Anytime.

David Read:
Absolutely, sir.

Michael Greenburg:
You’re the best.

David Read:
Thank you, sir. David, you’re gonna stick with me. Michael, if you can just go ahead and end it on your end. We’re gonna …

Michael Greenburg:
I can do that.

David Read:
… continue on this side. Yes, sir. I’ll text you soon.

Michael Greenburg:
Let me see if I can figure out how to end it on my end now.

David Read:
I can actually press it here.

Michael Greenburg:
OK. There you go.

David Read:
I’m gonna boop you. Take care of yourself.

Michael Greenburg:
OK. You guys too. See you, David.

David Read:
Bye-bye. All right. OK, perfect. Alrighty. It said remove, and it said, “But be warned, he’ll never be able to come back in, and you’ll report him to Zoom.” I’m like, “That’s not the button I want.” Gosh. Good guy. Great guy.

David Rich:
Really good guy. He’s a really … I’ll tell you something else. One more thing.

David Read:
Behind his back, OK.

David Rich:
You work in Hollywood. Everybody thinks they know a lot of stuff. Everyone is saying it’s got to be this way, and this way, and this way. They don’t mean it necessarily to be negative. They think it’s wisdom, but it’s negative. Michael is the opposite. When something looks like it’s going to get going, he’s the most positive guy. It’s wonderful to be around. He’s like, “Yeah, let’s go.”

David Read:
He’s not in it for his own aggrandizement.

David Rich:
Not at all.

David Read:
He’s in it because he’s there to make … I hate the word product in this this case, but the project as cool as possible. I think it’s one of the reasons he’s continued to be so successful, and he and Rick set the tone for that set for eight years, and everything that came after as well. And it’s exemplified in their work together. It’s great stuff. Where did this idea for “Upgrades” come along? When did the kernel of it pop in your head like Orville Redenbacher? I love this episode. Please tell me there’s … it’s interesting stuff.

David Rich:
I wish I could tell you exactly. When I watched, I remember how I first came up with the idea. It’s something my father used to say, and you hear other people say it is, “As you get older, you become the same only more so.” And I thought, “OK, well, what if you have these people in this Stargate team, and in a way somehow who they are … Something’s gonna make who they are become more intense.” And I said, “OK, superpowers, what would that do to somebody?” People take drugs, think they’re giving them superpowers, and of course, the people only become themselves only more so. They don’t become somebody different.

David Read:
Their judgment goes away.

David Rich:
The judgment goes away. So, I thought that would be an interesting thing for the Stargate team. Then, as I recall, I could be wrong. Believe me, I don’t —

David Read:
Only been 30 years.

David Rich:
I had it reversed from the way it is. I could be wrong about this. I think that I had them on another planet. They’d gone through the gate and came across these things, and that things gave them superpowers and they brought them home, and then had to deal with them. I think that was my origin– but again …

David Read:
That sounds…

David Rich:
… if somebody told me no, I’d say OK.

David Read:
So, Hank Cohen said at the beginning of Season Four, “What we need on this show is a sexy female alien.” Because Jeri Ryan had exploded Star Trek: Voyager’s numbers as Seven of Nine. So, that kind of thing was catching fire. So, I suspect your story was adjusted so that she could then, as Anise and Freya, come in and deliver them. And that was the vehicle for her to start her episode, multi-episode arc, and also facilitate your story. I suspect you’re right about that being your original intent.

David Rich:
Ah, well, thank you. Thank you. That’s interesting. And then I don’t remember much. I remember seeing it and going, “OK, they changed things.” That’s how it is, the staff writers do great work. I know when I first went to MacGyver, that was the first episode I’d ever written, and I was really impressed by the people on the staff and how focused they were on MacGyver, and who he was, and what, everything. I’d been a casual watcher of it. I liked the show, but I wasn’t studying it, and then I didn’t meet the Stargate team ’cause I was here in Connecticut, but I assume they’re the same. They’re really zeroed in on the whole team and everything they’re doing.

David Read:
The amount of talent that was running this thing, especially by Season Four, and it’s not just that everyone knew who those characters were. Everyone had them all pegged. So, as long as they stayed out of each other’s way and stayed in each other’s lane, providing the right stuff to fuel these performers and the visual effects people and the production teams, you really had a win. I love the idea of this story because you’re taking … And I love your original nugget here. You’re taking basically The Right Stuff meets, pick your superhero. When Daniel is quoting what’s on the armband …

David Rich:
Yes.

David Read:
… I rewatched it yesterday, and he said, “It says, ‘With great power comes great responsibility.'” For my generation, for today, that’s a cliché because Spider-Man, that is the theme of that first film. And X-Men and Spider-Man really reinvigorated the superhero genre to the explosion that took off a few late, years later with Iron Man and the MCU and the just absolute concussive wave that these 35, 40 films have been. But that really was a much more novel idea at that point, because anyone who hears that now will be like, “OK, that’s uncle what’s-his-face, Peter Parker’s uncle.” But it really is the nugget of that theme, and it makes a lot of sense that SG-1, their base instinct is to be there for people and to do the right thing, even when no one is looking. And if your judgment is subtracted, how far would you be willing to take that, even to your own peril? What else do you remember from that original script?

David Rich:
Not much.

David Read:
OK.

David Rich:
Honestly, I’ve gotta tell you, I don’t. At the time, I think after I pitched it and after I wrote a draft, I had two jobs writing features, and your mind, you try to give everything you’re doing the best you can. So, whatever happened, I went into those things and I don’t know.

David Read:
OK.

David Rich:
I wish I could tell you more.

David Read:
No. Let’s see what comes out as we move forward with this. Kevin Weaver wants to know, was the line about “with great power comes great responsibility,” was that part of your original idea, or did that get added later?

David Rich:
I can’t say that I put that line on there.

David Read:
OK.

David Rich:
But I can tell you that if I did, I probably wrote it differently. Because Michael said I’m a literary guy, I’ll be a little literary here. There’s a very famous short story that I read and reread by Delmore Schwartz called In Dreams Begins Responsibility. And that’s actually a quote from a poem, and I can’t tell you the name of the poet. And it’s something I think about all the time. “In dreams begin responsibilities.” Delmore Schwartz. I can’t say, yes, I put that on the armbands. But I bet if I did put it on the armbands, rather than the way it’s phrased, I probably phrased it, “In dreams begin responsibilities.”

David Read:
Wow. That’s cool. 100%. Were you ever made aware … Let me tell it this way. David Sinclair was the property master at the time, to my knowledge. Kenny Gibbs, Evil Kenny, was on set underneath him helping. He wasn’t, I don’t believe, property master just yet. But I spoke with Kenny in 2011 for the Stargate SG-1 and Atlantis props auction that we were putting together. And I interviewed him for our first catalog, and I said, “What was the most difficult prop to work with?” And without hesitation, he said, “The armbands.” Did you know that?

David Rich:
Really? No, I did not know that. And I will tell you that when I wrote it, I pitched it, I had no idea the armbands would look like that. I was very pleasantly surprised because I had bracelets, this wide bracelet that they would slip on. So, congrats to them for designing that very cool thing.

David Read:
Infamous thing. I’m trying to think here. This is interesting because what you’re describing is very much what came later on here. This was created for Atlantis. This was a wrist device, and it wrapped around a character called Kiryk in– And we also sold those as well. So, what you described is very much that right there. But they created something that had flaps to it. And the original one that they made, it would open and close, and it would fly off the actor’s arms during production. And not only that, it … which would damage the electronics, obviously. It had lights that were constantly going. And they were having to cool these things in ice and it slowed down production so much. They eventually went back and they fabricated ones that didn’t open and close, but would stay on their arms. So, for one or two of the final days of shooting, it was a little bit better. But it was an absolute nightmare.

David Rich:
I didn’t know that.

David Read:
It isn’t even what you conceived of in your mind. They took it in a different direction. I think it was Ken Rabehl who probably did the artwork for it. I’ve got it here. I should actually pull it up. But it’s interesting that something which was not your original intent in imagining it, but really did look awesome on the screen, ended up being such a pain in the neck for everybody. It was outrageous.

David Rich:
It was a pain in the neck, but it’s a big improvement over what I imagined. I saw it, I said, “Oh yeah, they’re right. That’s how it should be.”

David Read:
100%. When you create something, you hand it off to someone else and who knows how it’s gonna come out the other end. I’m curious because you’re not on staff in this, in this case. You are submitting ideas.

David Rich:
No.

David Read:
Would you be permitted to submit, in notes, “This is how I had this thing in mind,” and would they, I guess depending on production to production, be willing to add that idea to the mix or not based on what the story that they wanted to tell needed to be told?

David Rich:
I think in general my experience is once they’re going, they’re going. They don’t want to hear from you too much extra. I did have one advantage is that I’m very close to Michael. If I’d wanted to … If I’d seen it and said, “No, Michael, it should be a different way.” I think he’s very practical and he had big responsibility to move things forward. Television. The schedule is everything. You got this many days to do the episode, and you don’t have this many days and a half.

David Read:
That’s it. It has to come out.

David Rich:
It has to come out. Feature film’s different. You know, “Oh, we’re five days over.” Everybody complains, but it’s not a tragedy.

David Read:
There’s a lot of money to fuel that. Here, let me pull this up here. Here it is. That’s the piece.

David Rich:
Those things are cool.

David Read:
Absolutely. Conceptualizing something is one thing; willing it into reality and making sure that it can work on set can be something completely different. And they got their days in, but you never know what is gonna be more interesting or difficult or challenging to pull off …

David Rich:
You wouldn’t think a little thing like that would be the issue. Because if you’re thinking, “Well, they’re gonna blow up this ship and they’ve gotta do the cooling system.” You think, “Well, maybe that’s gonna be a problem or an issue.” But no, it was this.

David Read:
I’m presuming you got a chance to look at the episode again.

David Rich:
Yes.

David Read:
Which of the performances do you think really, really pop on screen? This is a
great episode for Rick.

David Rich:
… Rick. Here’s the thing, and I got to know him a little bit, and he’s a really good guy and a cool cat. But when you watch him in this episode and others, clearly he’s a big team player. Here’s a guy who goes from being MacGyver’s the whole show, to now he’s part of a team, and he fits right in on the team. But doesn’t he remind you, nobody talks about this, he reminds me so much of James Garner. He’s got that kind of Garner can do it one way, and he can be amusing, he can be funny, and he can be serious, and he can be very understanding and sympathetic. He can do all these different things. And Rick was like James Garner in that way.

David Read:
OK.

David Rich:
So, in this episode, it comes across, that he’s having fun. He’s cracking wise.

David Read:
100%. I think of Harrison Ford as…

David Rich:
There you go.

David Read:
… as Han or as Indy. There’s a little bit of a wink at the audience. The situation sucks, and he turns and he goes, “Ugh.” He’s acknowledging, he’s bringing you in on the situation. That scene with him and Don in Hammond’s office, “Jack, get the hell out of my office.” That’s peak SG-1. And how they all interrelate together as characters really makes the show what it is, ’cause you …

David Rich:
Very much.

David Read:
… they loved being together …

David Rich:
It’s a real…

David Read:
… and you loved watching them.

David Rich:
When they, they say, it’s the SG-1 team, but it really was the team. You see the show. You go, “It’s clear they are a team,” with all the things that go on, in personal relationships. That really was the engine of the show, more than the sci-fi. The sci-fi’s cool, but it’s those characters with each other, all the time.

David Read:
That’s why you stay.

David Rich:
That’s why you stay. Absolutely.

David Read:
Antony wants to know from the O’Malley’s restaurant scene, was the line, “I want Diet Coke, I prefer the taste,” in the diner written by you, or do you recall that either being an ad lib or written by someone else? I’m curious, because I watched that and for years it was like, “So, do I!”

David Rich:
I don’t know. I cannot claim it. I can’t. So, the staff writers would know more.

David Read:
Absolutely. Raj wanted to know, was there ever any consideration to a follow-up?

David Rich:
No. They used clips in two other episodes. I think the Carter-O’Neill clips.

David Read:
There is one that is, it’s footage that they had, they more than likely shot during the week that this was shot for an episode later on called “Divide and Conquer.” And then they used one for a clip show that was specifically showing informing a meeting that was going on about the team. But that was actually, I’m really glad that you brought that up, because that was actually really clever. It’s the only instance that I can think of in the show where they either went back and shot new footage for that episode, or they had that shot because they knew in two episodes that this was gonna be a plot point, and saved it until later. Maybe it was in the original episode for time and they cut it. But there is a shot of them making eye contact for an extended period of time. If you go back and look at “Upgrades,” there’s no beat for that to fit in, ’cause the Jaffa are coming. And maybe that was just their recollection of that longer beat in-between them than actually occurred. There’s a lot of subtext going on in that scene.

David Rich:
I see. Yes.

David Read:
Did you find out later that they were planning on carrying that in? Or did you …

David Rich:
I had no idea. No idea at all.

David Read:
So, you found out way later on, then?

David Rich:
Way later on.

David Read:
OK.

David Rich:
And then as far as following it up or doing another episode based on the same thing or something, no one talked about it, and I think I mentioned to you, in looking through my notes and my script, which I couldn’t find, I did find an earlier pitch that I’d made when the show was brand new. Reading it, I can see why they didn’t want it, but it was a little bit too much. There was an awful lot packed in there.

David Read:
Can we sit on that for a moment?

David Rich:
Of course.

David Read:
We can come back around to it? I’m really interested in what you’re gonna have to say.

David Rich:
Yes.

David Read:
But I wanna wrap this little bit up here first. I think part of the reason, although tongue-in-cheek, that they didn’t do it again is the prop department probably would’ve rioted. The other part of it is that it really is an encapsulated warning about what it is that we think that we can do. You can use it as a metaphor for drunk driving, you can use it for any of those things where you’re so high on whatever it is that you’re doing that you lose your objectivity, that what it is that you may be doing may, in every other circumstance, be perfectly legitimate, but you’ve taken it to the nth degree and you’ve lost your objectivity on the situation, and you’re going to cause some real problem. Look at the keys, taking the keys away from the driver situation.

David Rich:
Yes.

David Read:
Alcohol removes any barriers that you might have and you feel that you are on top of the world and can pull anything off. I don’t drink, I’ve never drank, so I don’t know. But this is what it comes down to. And it was very much a thing that you could see happening here, where you could show this episode to your 9- and 10-year-old and say, “OK, so what did we learn from this, besides with great power comes great responsibility?” This is a great episode that you can share with your kids and say, “See what happened here? They were all in, best intentions and well-meaning, but they almost lost each other from this … because they didn’t think everything through.” It’s a great story in that regard.

David Rich:
Yes, absolutely. It’s a story in that way about intoxication.

David Read:
Yes.

David Rich:
When people talk about drinking or drugs, they don’t mention that for a little while you feel great.

David Read:
Yes.

David Rich:
That’s why it’s so dangerous. If it was lousy right away, nobody’d be an addict.

David Read:
No one would be doing it. That’s right. There is something that you’re chasing, that you wanna get back. All of us have that in one way, whether it’s a sensory experience or whether it’s a whatever have you. And I think that that’s one of the reasons why this and other Stargate episodes and these concepts are so evergreen, because there are pieces of it that we can always take away. And while we’re enjoying the entertainment part of it, it’s, “Boy, I can relate to that situation and that experience in one way or another, and at different points in my life in different ways.” Good stuff. Marsha Middleton, she said, apparently Anise and Freya, apparently there’s an affectionate nickname that some fans have developed for her, Tok’ra Spice. From the Spice Girls musical group. This is the first I’ve heard of this, so that’s funny.

David Rich:
That’s funny. Tok’ra Spice.

David Read:
This is the last one that I’m gonna do this to you. Vegan.Peace.Writer2500, “Was the line ‘Do you want me to read to you’ your idea or an ad lib from Rick?” Rick was awesome with his ad libs.

David Rich:
I’m gonna bet that’s Rick.

David Read:
100%.

David Rich:
I’m gonna bet that, yeah.

David Read:
You had pitched an idea earlier on in Stargate, you alluded to it earlier, that they passed on. What can you tell me about this pitch?

David Rich:
Well, they’re on another planet and they’ve gone there because a group, a druid-like group is taking over, and there’s a young Arthur before he was king situation, and it was called “The Spinning Sword.” And it had … I remember, it’s funny, I found the notes and then a lot came back to me. I really liked “The Spinning Sword.” It was instead of a sword in a stone, the sword is spinning in the air, and anyone who tries to grab it ends up getting chopped up. Carter and O’Neill are really working on this because they wanna help the young Arthur. If he can control the sword, then the people will rally around him. Carter figures out it’s spinning in a box canyon, that it’s held there by sound. So, the sound is pitched in a certain way that the air underneath, the molecules underneath are heavier, and above is lighter, so it keeps … And then also the sound is affecting the material the sword is made of, so that the sword is spinning much faster than it appears to be spinning. And one of the ways she found out was she took a piece of fruit and, from underneath the sword, she tossed it up and the fruit got sucked up right away. And then she figured out that. And I had, at the time, Schlumberger is a company that did oil drilling, they had a lot of scientists and I played basketball with these guys. And I remember I came up with a version of it, and I was pretty proud of myself. And I asked one of the physicists, and he was a quiet guy and all. Then the next week he came back to me and he said, “Yeah, your idea would work.” So, I was pretty happy. But the way I structured the story, it was too elaborate. I can see now why they said no.

David Read:
Did you know that they went on to do Arthurian mythology for Seasons 9 and 10?

David Rich:
No, I did not. There you go.

David Read:
They have a sword in the stone, twice.

David Rich:
They have a sword in, is it in the stone though?

David Read:
In the stone. Yeah.

David Rich:
That’s a shame. They should have come back to me for that.

David Read:
They should have. 100%. You said Arthur and I’m like, “Whoa.” So, it’s funny how some things come around years later.

David Read:
That’s wild, for sure. Christina …

David Rich:
It’s natural that they think of Arthur for that show, eventually.

David Read:
Mythology, yeah, they’re doing different mythological stories across SG-1, and that one sooner or later would at least be mentioned. Christina Graziella, do you think that working for MacGyver helped you with Stargate? Did Stargate benefit from your experience with MacGyver, and with, let’s not forget Legend?

David Rich:
Very much. Very much. I was recently telling Michael, I said, the guy who was in charge of MacGyver was a guy named Steve Downing. And as I said, I had worked only in features to that point. And I’d worked quite on a lot of things, and I’d had good mentors, and I’d learned a lot. And I came in and I had a screenwriter’s attitude, like, “I know what I’m doing here.” And this guy, Steve Downing, was very, very straight-forward, and very clear. He’s a real clear thinker. What you need on a show. I pat myself on the back a little bit, is that I said, “Man, I better listen to this guy.” It’s his show. He knows a lot. He’s not … You meet a lot of movie producers who contradict themselves mid-sentence, or they change their mind because they saw a certain billboard that morning, or they’re this or that, or whatever it is. It can be very frustrating. And Steve Downing, and Michael, and the other writer they had, Stephen Kandel, on that show, who was a fantastic writer who’d written everything from Bat Masterson to Mission: Impossible, he’d done everything. So, I learned a lot. A lot! And then Legend, also an excellent experience, and then, so when I came to the Stargate episode, yeah, there’s no question that the experience helped.

David Read:
It is so easy to derail a production by not having someone at the top who has a clear idea of what they want. You can have more than one person at the top, look at, for Season Four, I mean, you’ve got Robert Cooper, Brad Wright, Rick, and Mike. As long as everyone has the vision that we … You can’t have, “You know, I just saw this thing on a billboard today and I’d really like to do that for our show.” It’s not conducive to a positive, creative work environment if you’re going to drop that in on everybody in the middle of a play. It doesn’t come organically. It’s fine if you wanna do that for an episode or something, I suppose, but if you’re at the top you have to have a clear, creative vision, so that your lantern is a guiding light for the people who are following you. And I can only imagine the stress when that’s not the case.

David Rich:
Yes. It’s…

David Read:
It’s what he wants.

David Rich:
If you think of it from, let’s say, Rick’s point of view, or any of the actors, the main actors, how much they value that. Of having the people at the top of the show with a clear vision. Because it … I’ll tell you another MacGyver story: I’d done, I think, the first MacGyver, and it was real good and everything positive. And then I was getting together with Michael, I think we were going to a hockey game, and I got into the car and I said, “And by the way,” this is weeks later, I said, “By the way, thank you for marking up the script with lines I should change.” In other words, he was very close to Rick. He knew how MacGyver would phrase something. I thought I had it right. But anything he said, I did. And I said, “Thank you.” And he goes, “Oh, I do that for everyone, but they don’t all listen.” So, actors, they’re putting themselves on the line, every minute, and it’s … Everybody can see it, 10 years, 20 years, 30 years later.

David Read:
They have a brand to uphold.

David Rich:
So, they don’t wanna go out there with somebody giving ’em the wrong material.

David Read:
That’s it. And I imagine a writer who is receptive to that kind of creative input. Sooner or later, I’m sure there is a line, ’cause he can’t ad lib his way through everything. Brad Wright once told me, “You know, if you’re gonna make it better, great. But if you’re changing it just to change it, that pisses me off.” But it makes a lot of sense and is probably conducive to getting to working again with those people in the future. I’m sure that there are people that you would never wanna work with again, but the ones who do, you’re vibing on a certain creative level, and it’s like, “OK, these people are really getting to the intent of what it was that I was trying to create here, and they’re only shaping it to make it better.”

David Rich:
Absolutely. Absolutely.

David Read:
Agree.

David Rich:
You’re thrilled when they’re making it better, and when you’re a freelancer, you learn pretty fast, it’s their show. They know it inside and out. It’s your job to learn some of what they know and put it on paper.

David Read:
100%. Can you tell me about your books that are available?

David Rich:
Yes.

David Read:
This is davidrichbooks.com. What are you working on these days?

David Rich:
I’m working on a play. Along the way, I wrote some plays. And then last winter, I said, “I’m just gonna …, I had written a new novel and I tried something different in it. I won’t get into the whole description of what I tried, and its form. And my agent wasn’t interested. I said, “I’m gonna write a play and get it on.” So, I wrote a one-act play, and it got on in New York in a festival over the summer, and I directed it. So, that was great fun for me. Really fun. And I had a really good cast, and I was real happy. So, I said, “I’m gonna do this again,” and I’ve written another one-act, and that’s what I’m doing. I have this novel and I’m gonna rewrite it a little bit, and I’m not hot and bothered about another new novel at the moment. And if you’re not hot and bothered, why is anybody else gonna be hot and bothered?

David Read:
That’s a fair point.

David Rich:
So, that’s what I’m doing now. There’s the three novels there, Caravan of Thieves and Middle Man and The Mirrored Palace.

David Read:
Beautiful art. I love the fonts too.

David Rich:
Great.

David Read:
But don’t judge a book by its cover. What’s going on? Are these, are these a series? Are these separate?

David Rich:
Caravan of Thieves and Middle Man are about Lieutenant Raleigh Waters, who’s a Marine lieutenant, and he was raised by a con artist. His mother wasn’t around, so he was basically a street kid a lot of the time. And he’s got his father’s wiles. He knows how to do things in the world. So, his father went to Iraq as a civilian worker, and we shipped a lot, a lot of cash over there. Huge pallets of cash. And inevitably, of course, soldiers are just humans. Some stole.

David Read:
We wanted them to use our currency, yeah.

David Rich:
So, the story of the father, con artist father, has stolen a lot of the money, millions, and shipped it home in coffins. Now the father’s disappeared, and the guys who want the money have come after Raleigh. So, that adventure is the Caravan of Thieves.

David Read:
This is reminding me of a certain Cormac McCarthy book.

David Rich:
In some ways. Then he has a second adventure, also involves going back to Iraq, to Northern Iraq, and he’s dealing with the Kurds. Again, though, there’s stolen money. Then the third book is The Mirrored Palace. I had a long, long fascination with Richard Francis Burton. Do you know who he is?

David Read:
I vaguely remember coming across the name.

David Rich:
He was an astounding adventurer. He’s most famous for having found the source of the Nile. He had many wild adventures, and one of ’em was he disguised himself as a Muslim and went on the Hajj. The Hajj is the pilgrimage every Muslim must make at least once in his lifetime. This is the mid-1850s. And it’s a great danger if you’re caught, no non-Muslim is allowed into Mecca. He had mastered many languages and he studied the religion and … For a long time I was just really fascinated by this and I … Finally, I came across a true story. His niece had said something about him. He was a great ladies’ man, famous for this also. He translated the Kama Sutra. He translated the Arabian Nights. He’d done all these things, and his niece said the love of his life was a young Muslim woman, and when her parents found out about the romance, they killed her. And I said, “OK, well, that’s like a story from the Arabian Nights, and if it happened to Burton and the Arabian Nights …” I turned it into a spy story with some unexpected twists.

David Read:
That’s the third one, The Mirrored Palace.

David Rich:
I’ve got some people with the … we’ve turned it into a mini-series, but we’ll see.

David Read:
OK. I would enjoy definitely seeing that one. Folks, if you go to the description beneath this episode, you will find the link to davidrichbooks.com so you can check those out. David, what’s next? What’s goin’ on? What are your plans?

David Rich:
My plans. I’m one of these people, man, I can’t stop writing. I like it.

David Read:
You have a drip you can’t shut off.

David Rich:
It gets harder selling movie and TV projects, living in Connecticut. Most of my contacts are gone. The people who liked my stuff, that’s not happening. So, the novels, I’ll write, fool with some ideas, and I’ve got the novel I told you about that I’ve gotta work on, and then I’m enjoying this with the plays. I’m gonna turn this one-act into two acts, and we’ll see. I don’t know. I’ll just keep writing and keep trying. I like it too much to stop. I don’t know what I’d do every day if I didn’t.

David Read:
There is something about just the process of creating that is its own reward. It’s very nice to get reimbursed for some of that work every now and then. It’s in some ways like giving birth, getting to see the looks on other people’s face, of folks who enjoy and have derived some satisfaction from something that you imagined. “Upgrades” is truly one of the best episodes of Stargate SG-1, and I am thrilled to have had the chance to sit down with you and mull over some of your original thoughts behind it. It means a lot to me that you came in, and also that Michael was willing to join as well. He’s a good, good guy.

David Rich:
Very much. Well, thank you. This has been terrific, and I really appreciate it.

David Read:
I appreciate you taking the time. We are slowly but surely gathering up these stories to preserve them for the future, and I’m sorry that we took as long as we did to get yours in, but we’ve got you here, and it means a lot to have you, sir. So, thank you.

David Rich:
Thank you very much, David. Great interview.

David Read:
Thank you. I’m gonna wrap up the show on this end, sir, so you be well.

David Rich:
OK. Take care.

David Read:
Thank you. That’s David Rich, writer of Stargate SG-1’s “Upgrades.” My name is David Read. You are watching The Stargate Oral History Project. Let’s take a look at what’s coming down the pike here real quick. Is it pike, pipe, pike? I think it’s pike. Let me pull this up. Just a moment here. Herbert Duncanson, who played Grell the robot, who was played by Douglas Anders, who was based on the character of Teal’c played by the actor Christopher Judge, who was not in the feature film, is gonna be joining us tomorrow. And if you don’t get that joke, you are not a real Stargate fan. A new one here, and God, I’m hoping for a better title: Actors as Authors. So, Diana Dru Botsford, who was the writer behind the Stargate SG-1’s Four Dragons and The Drift tie-in novels, is going to be host, and she’s also a Hollywood producer and writer. She wrote a Star Trek: The Next Generation episode. She worked on Terminator 2 for one of their shots. She is hosting. And we have Armin Shimerman, who played Anteaus, and Harley Jane Kozak, who played Sara O’Neill. This is gonna be Sunday, October the 26th at 10:00 in the morning, so not tomorrow, but next Sunday. And then Saturday, November the 1st, Robert C. Cooper, Executive Producer, Writer, and Director, is gonna be joining myself and Darren Sumner for a pre-recorded show. I will try to get out a request for you guys if you wanna submit questions for Robert for his interview here. But we’re going to be focusing pretty laser-focused on a few different topics. And we are currently rescheduling Stargate Trivia, the last one for the year, this time with Suanne Braun. I really appreciate you tuning in. If you enjoy Stargate and you wanna see more content like this on YouTube, please click that like button. It really does help the show and will continue to help us grow our audience, and please also consider sharing this with a Stargate friend. And if you wanna get notified about future episodes, click subscribe. If you click the bell icon, it’ll give you notifications the moment a new video drops, and you’ll get my notifications of any last-minute guest changes as well. That’s what I’ve got for you here. My thanks to my moderator team, Raj and Kevin, for this episode. Really appreciate you guys. Antony, Jeremy, Lockwatcher, Marsha, and Jakub, all of my moderators, thank you so much. Matt “EagleSG” Wilson for his amazing opening sequences, and Frederick Marcoux at ConceptsWeb for keeping dialthegate.com up and running. And thank you so much to Michael Greenburg for his surprise pop-in. He’s not gonna get credit, unfortunately, at the end of the episodes when I titled this one, but he will in IMDb at the very least. So, thank you, Michael, for coming on and sharing some stories about David and the production during “Upgrades.” My name is David Read for Dial the Gate. I appreciate you tuning in, and I will see you on the other side.