Stargate SG-1, Atlantis and Unniverse’s Executive Producer returns to Dial the Gate, alongside GateWorld’s Darren Sumner, to take fan questions and share more memories from the franchise!

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TRANSCRIPT
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David Read:
Hello, everyone, and welcome to Dial the Gate: The Stargate Oral History Project. My name is David Read. I appreciate you being with me for this episode. Robert C. Cooper, writer, director, executive producer of Stargate SG-1, Atlantis, and Universe is gonna be joining us for over an hour and 40 minutes of discussion about his industry and the franchise, the involvement from the Air Force, continuity, and perception about the different components of the show that we love. Some things that we thought were one way and were actually another in the original concept for specific episodes. There is a lot to cover in these coming minutes, and I really hope that you can join us for all of it because it was fascinating to get his insight. And I am joined by my original partner in crime over at GateWorld, Darren Sumner, for this episode. We’re going to go back and forth with Rob and share some stories with you. I do want to dedicate this episode to a friend of mine whom I just recently lost. His name is Mike Vondracek. Mike recently lost a fight, and he was a huge Stargate fan. And his wife, LuAnn Vondracek actually recently joined us in an episode on Dial the Gate about Stargate and the US military, where she discussed her background in the Army. But Mike was very special to me, and I would like to take this opportunity to recognize him and his love for the show and the franchise, with this episode being a tribute to him. So, this interview with Rob, this one is for you, Mike, and I hope that you all enjoy the conversation. Thanks so much for being here.

Darren Sumner:
Welcome in … everybody. We’re joined here today by one of our favorite creatives in the Stargate space who brought us so much of the TV and film that we know and love, that we celebrate here on Dial the Gate and over at GateWorld, Mr. Robert C. Cooper, former story editor, I wanna ask you a question about that, but we know you, of course, as an executive producer a long time on Stargate SG-1, Atlantis, and Universe, and the executive producer and writer turned director of several episodes as well. You’ve done a little bit of everything, so welcome back to the show. Thank you …

David Read:
Thank you, Robert.

Darren Sumner:
… both of you guys for having me here with you this time.

David Read:
Thank you, Daren, for being here.

Darren Sumner:
It’s very exciting for me. Rob, let’s start with updates. What’s been going on in your life these days? What are you working on?

Robert C. Cooper:
I’ve been pitching projects. I have a small company with a few people who work with me, and we’ve been developing ideas and taking them out there. It’s a tough world right now in television. There’s a lot of changes happening, and the changes create difficulties in terms of consistent relationships with people. There’s a lot of turnover, and the business is, you’re not just pitching an entity. You’re not going to the company. You’re going to people, and when people switch jobs or get fired or whatever, it’s difficult, so a lot of turnover in the business right now.

Darren Sumner:
I’m always curious how much of the sort of front-loaded work that you guys do as creatives trying to get a show up and running, or any kind of project, when you’re pitching stuff, is it–

Robert C. Cooper:
Yeah, sorry to cut off your question. It’s really changed so drastically. We could talk forever about the business and where things are at, and I–

David Read:
Can we? Can we do that?

Robert C. Cooper:
How it’s changed and why it is the way it is and what the problems are in that. But let me explain to you a little of the difference in how my job has changed. You used to go in to a network, and you used to pitch an idea, a basic framework for the show, a concept. You’d pitch who the sort of lead character was, the star on the poster, and you would pitch the pilot. Even now, that sounds quaint and almost insane that that’s how it worked. Nowadays, I’ve pitched, in great detail, the first season, beat for beat, and outlined each of the characters’ stories and arcs. You then had somebody come back and say, “Well, we don’t understand what the rest of the series is.” And you then have to pitch, “What’s Season Two? What’s Season Three? What’s your vision for the full five-season arc?” There’s a lot of skepticism that I think was borne out of shows not really running very long or gaining very much traction, and now executives and networks are asking for so much. I can’t tell you how much time it takes in development to answer all those questions. I mean, you’re essentially creating a whole series as opposed to somebody believing in you and the idea and the character at the core of it, and the evolution of how shows naturally evolve through the creative process. Even post-casting, you look at things like chemistry between real people and see how that evolves and things change, and of course they would anyway, even in this scenario. You can’t possibly tell me that every writer out there pitching Season Three is gonna actually execute Season Three the way they’re pitching it. But that’s the work you need to do or people decide that there’s not enough for them to dig into, and then in many cases you need to be coming with some sort of IP that has value that can be recognized by an audience. It’s months and months and months of work to put a– I was gonna say, and then you potentially need certain high-level attachments or auspices because the few places that are buying right now, Apple and Amazon and Netflix, you’re competing with A-list actors and A-list directors. They have a stack of shows, offers on their desks and so that’s what’s making it very challenging, are the demands of how much you need to pitch and present–

Darren Sumner:
That’s fascinating.

Robert C. Cooper:
Even for someone with my track record.

David Read:
Robert, if you were to steel-man their argument, I’m curious, what would you suppose their answer would be? Is it that there’s less money to go around now or is it that everyone is expecting a Stranger Things-level hit?

Robert C. Cooper:
The funny thing is, OK, I’ve got the original Stranger Things pitch, you go back and read it. It was pitched as a miniseries. It was not a series. It was a closed-ended miniseries, and only when the network liked it did they start evolving the pitch and come up with the ongoing aspects of it. None of the things that people are attributing to it being all thought out at the beginning and what have you, was really in the initial pitch that they made. So, I think that show was actually pre this particular problem. And by the way, the other component to it that is really challenging is that they still only allot the amount of time they always allotted to the pitch, so you basically have to get across all that information inside of 20 minutes. They give you– Honestly, the best pitch I’ve ever done, maybe one of the best pitches I’ve ever done. I didn’t even–it was for Dirk Gently– I didn’t even obviously write the pilot. Max Landis did, but I was kinda brought in to help figure out what the season was and convince the network that there was a show behind the idea. And we had a couple of months to work that out, and then at the end of that, all of the executives from the network and the studio and the various production companies all came and sat in a boardroom. And we had lined the entire room with these massive versions of pitch cards, not small ones but the big, giant lined sheets of paper with all the characters’ arcs and the series’ season arc and the stories and the mythology and the themes and what it was about. We talked for an hour and a half. It was an undefined amount of time to convince these people that this was a show, and when we came out, I’m not exaggerating, many of those people came up to me and said that was the best pitch we’ve ever heard. And I’m like, “Because you gave us time.” And then when they asked questions, we had time to answer them in a fulsome way. So, this idea that I’m supposed to do six months of work or whatever to develop an entire series and then pitch it to you in 20 minutes is mental. But, at the same time, most people taking pitches on the other end don’t have the capacity to listen to something for that long. Just me droning on on a Zoom is gonna bore the crap out of you if I start talking for more than that length of time.

David Read:
Not true, but OK. Point taken.

Robert C. Cooper:
OK, but the expectation is not nearly in line with the constraints of the format, let’s put it that way.

Darren Sumner:
And if you’re going on for 15 minutes and they’ve already decided that this is not something that’s grabbing them, I would imagine not getting shuffled out of the room is a great sign when you’re doing a pitch like that. When it goes past 20, 30, 40 minutes, it would be a sign that they’re interested in what you’re saying.

Robert C. Cooper:
The biggest sort of barometer of whether you have a shot or not is in the Q&A that happens after. So, the first 20 minutes is you pitching, and then that’s their opportunity to ask more. And inevitably, I always save a chunk of my pitch for that period because I can’t fit it all in. So, I set aside what I consider to be the Q&A portion. They’ll ask a question, and then I’ve essentially already anticipated those questions and have answers prepared. So, it’s a real process. And a lot of times, what we find is we get out there and we start pitching, and the pitch evolves based on feedback and interactions that we have. It’s a very intensive amount of work for zero dollars back.

Darren Sumner:
‘Cause you’re not getting hired at this point.

Robert C. Cooper:
You’re not getting paid for a pitch.

Darren Sumner:
You’re not getting development–

Robert C. Cooper:
It’s free work.

David Read:
What you’re describing is untenable. It’s like a tightening noose.

Robert C. Cooper:
Look, I only have a certain amount of patience for it, really. There comes a time where you have to read the room and realize that a lot of the reasons they’re not moving forward have nothing to do with your pitch or even their willingness to want to be involved in it. There’s corporate and economic reasons that they’re saying no, or you haven’t put together exactly the thing that is on their to-do list. And that’s another factor involved, is that they have to-do lists, and if you don’t hit that– The trick is to often meet with the companies before you even take a project out to understand what their to-do list is so that you know where your project slots into that. It could be the greatest thing in the world, and they’ll be like, “Yeah, but this is not what we’re looking for right now.” And that, unfortunately, changes with the wind, too.

Darren Sumner:
So, much of what you’re describing is the fact that streamers these days are doing eight-episode, ten-episode seasons. They’re obviously spending a lot more money on them, at least on a per episode basis. But I see more and more, including from Stargate fans, a sort of longing for the good old days of episodic television. Something that Strange New Worlds has dabbled in a little bit. With self-contained weekly stories. Is there any hope that that might come back or find a space? Even on a streamer, where you could actually go in and pitch, “These are the characters. They’re gonna go through the Gate. They get into trouble every week. And we’ll do 13, and then we’ll do a back nine.” Is that era over for good, or do you think it could come back?

Robert C. Cooper:
I do think it’s probably over. I think that I’m certainly not an oracle or someone who is right about everything. But my interpretation of the economics of what we’re seeing does not lend itself to that. When you look at what the traditional streamers’ business model is, if you can say that, because I’m not sure. In some cases, there really is one. It’s all about customer acquisition, not customer retention. So, what you’re talking about is customer retention, and that is not as important to them. And so, the budget money goes into customer acquisition, which is why you see short-run shows. I mean, there’s also the– I’m sure you guys are savvy enough and understand the business enough to know that there’s, as a show goes on, it gets more and more expensive. And so, it’s a balance of what’s cheaper: to make a five-year season, or market a new show. And I think that a lot of times, they think that it’s better to get new eyeballs which are interested in the new show, than retain the audience for the old show. I mean, the problem is that what Apple and Amazon are doing is, I mean, the people who work at those studios are trying to make great television, and in many cases, they do. They’re thinking about, “How many people can we draw to our service?” In terms of the grand scheme of things, if Apple stopped making TV tomorrow, it would not affect Apple whatsoever. Their bottom line’s not gonna change. It would be like, “That was a fun experiment. We’ve decided to stick with software in our hardware.” And the same with Amazon. They’re a soap company, and their television thing is a free giveaway with Amazon Prime. So, if they stop doing it tomorrow, is it a blip on their radar? Not really. Whereas if Disney stopped making TV or films tomorrow, their company ceases to exist. But it’s the Disneys and, frankly, Warner Bros. and all that giant Paramount mess that is suffering from all this, and I guess my final comment on all that is that what’s really driving this and what you’re seeing, even from those giant behemoth streamers, is fear of where the audience eyeballs are actually going, and that’s to a whole other pocket. They’re watching YouTube, they’re going to TikTok, they’re– It’s absolutely crazy to me that Warner Bros., HBO will tout the ratings of their new show or their latest drop as, “Hey look, we got a million or two million viewers.” And I think back about how four million viewers or three and a half million viewers was considered not very good for us worldwide when we were on, and nowadays they’re saying, “Look at the great ratings we’ve gotten.” At the same time, there’s, at any given time, 250 million people on TikTok.

David Read:
That’s the thing. I had a conversation with Armin Shimerman and Diana Dru Botsford, writer and producer, last week and Diana brought it up for the second time, this thing that I’ve heard now, which is that the industry is beginning to take a look more seriously at vertical videos where …

Robert C. Cooper:
For sure.

David Read:
… you have these very brief narratives where they’re planning on filming things specifically designed for the vertical phone, smartphone space and I have no interest whatsoever in this. But it’s not written for me, it’s written for the TikTok generation.

Robert C. Cooper:
Yes, and the other thing that’s happening, which breaks my heart, is that– Yes, first of all, let’s discuss that because for the longest time, the traditional industry tried to utilize, they saw social media as a tool, a marketing tool, as opposed to actually the platform that was going to destroy them.

David Read:
Correct.

Robert C. Cooper:
They tried to manipulate that to their format. So, they would put on widescreen trailers and whatever, or get you to try and turn your phone. It’s crazy that we live in a time right now where literally just doing this is too much trouble.

David Read:
Too much trouble.

Robert C. Cooper:
People rejected that and nowadays they’re actually making movie trailers and things that are shot in widescreen so that they can be on phones.

David Read:
Madness.

Robert C. Cooper:
That was the question. I was also going to bring up the other problem, which is in the creative space where you’ve probably heard about this, but we know so many people talk nowadays about getting what are essentially second-screen notes, and that’s because the streamers are making shows with the idea in mind that the people watching the shows are also looking at their phones while they’re watching, and so they can’t, they want something that they can follow while they’re also scrolling. And so, the scripts, if you ever wonder, “Well, wait a minute. Why is that character doing an update on what just happened in the previous scene when we just watched that previous scene?” I was just watching a show on the weekend, and it happened, and it just drives me crazy. Remember when we were just doing this two minutes ago? They literally say everything out loud, including, you’ll notice, a number of times where characters now always refer to each other by name. So, I will always say, “David, you remember when…” And it’s so that when you’re not looking at the screen, you know who’s talking to who.

David Read:
We used to make fun of this where you’re in a darkened room and all of a sudden, the light’s batteries go off and the character says, “My light’s batteries just went off.” And then the lights come back on, “Oh, they’re on again.” It’s like, “Are we idiots? I saw the effing light go off.” And now I never thought that time would be superseded by something else as the most important resource. And I think it’s come. I think it’s attention. Attention has done it.

Darren Sumner:
And what you’re describing, Rob, is anathema to generations of writers. I remember I think I read this in J. Michael Straczynski’s screenwriting book years ago that television is a visual medium and if you’re writing in such a way that somebody can follow your story without looking at the screen, then you’re doing it wrong.

Robert C. Cooper:
Darren, I absolutely hate it when characters refer to each other by name. It’s one of those triggers that is an extension of exactly what you’re talking about. It’s this need to pander to the audience, and that’s the history of network notes, but it’s gotten so much being driven by this now that there’s just so much fear that the audience we have is not even interested in our product anymore.

David Read:
There’s a couple of takeaways for me with this. I think there is a novelty for the past that is only growing stronger and stronger. I mean, 90s are now coming in vogue, really bigly. I can’t believe I used ‘bigly.’ But if you look at something like 8-bit gaming, the kind of Super Nintendo era, that stuck with Minecraft when one of my friend’s kids was five, six, seven years old, and it hasn’t gone away. It’s still with us, the 8-bit style. And people are producing games for it all the time. It’s really caught up in the cultural zeitgeist, so I think we’re going to reach a stage where people are going to really firmly come back around and say, “Look, I liked this old form of storytelling.” We’re years and years into this, by the way, this new medium. “Here’s examples of this. Oh my gosh, it’s caught fire. It’s amazing.” The problem is, the pool of people creating that will be very small at that point, and where do all the rest of you fit?

Robert C. Cooper:
People are still engaged with stories. I think there hopefully will continue to be an interest in human-created stories. That’s happening in the podcast world, where it’s either people talking like us and telling stories, or audiobooks, people– I don’t know how many people read anymore, but I do think there will be a renaissance of people wanting to disconnect from screens and actually read something that is tangible. But I think human experience will become desirable. You see it in this continued, I think, success of live theater and live performance and music. There’s a glut of digital music and fake music. And there’s lots to listen to, but people still are willing to, unfortunately, that’s another whole conversation, but the ticket price situation is broken. But I do think that that’s why people are willing to pay for this real experience.

David Read:
For sure. Darren, can you wash down this red pill for us with some…?

Robert C. Cooper:
It was interesting. I think you guys were interested also in talking a little bit about why, how things changed and why they changed when the streamers came in at first. And I was gonna mention that Stargate lived through the transition to 16:9. That was a whole thing. We originally were shooting for 4:3. We finished in 4:3. We used to have square TVs back in the day. Yes, kids, there were square TVs. And the evolution to 16:9 brought about a different way of thinking. So, now we had a lot more movies that were being shown on television. You had 16:9, and you had to start thinking more cinematically. So, TV used to be this square box, and people would talk in it, and there would be their heads. And so, that changed storytelling, and I think it was difficult for a lot of television people at first to start thinking more visually. But when the streamers came in, very much what they did, one of the first big shows on Netflix that really cemented who Netflix was was House of Cards, and it was directed by David Fincher. And that kept going, where early Apple shows, early Netflix shows, Amazon was interested in bringing feature people into the television world. And this circles back, I’m closing the loop here to what our original question and answer was, which is, why are shows not going a long time? It’s because features became amusement park rides, so very few actual story-based features were being made at a mid-level, so very low budget. There was stuff, but nobody could find it or it couldn’t find audiences. And then you had the event pictures, which were what they were and whatever. We can dissect that, but it’s not where great storytelling necessarily was happening. That was moving to television, so you had a demand from feature, from streamers, to bring that visual storytelling and feature mentality and feature look to their wide-screen product, but they were bringing in writers who didn’t know how to write ongoing series. And so, you ended up with what are essentially movies for television extended out into, in many cases, limited series, or series that were intended to go longer but didn’t have the story to play it out, and/or feature people who didn’t have the attention span to work on a show that was gonna go multiple years. Coupled with that, they all were– I’m trying to come up with the word that is PC for your podcast, but …

Darren Sumner:
It’s okay.

Robert C. Cooper:
… looking for stars, and stars didn’t want to be in TV but they were willing to come and do a short thing ’cause it fit into their schedules between their movies or they didn’t feel like they were doing TV. It was prestige television. So, you had these miniseries that had big superstars, big directors, and feature writers all doing that on television for big money. And that was originally pulling people in and it won a lot of Emmys, but they’re not ongoing series. That was the question you asked, Darren. Where are the 100-episode or more series coming from? And now we’re back to this place where the creatives and the economics of making all these giant miniseries don’t really work. They need some ongoing content.

Darren Sumner:
Exactly.

Robert C. Cooper:
And they do, but they don’t know who to turn to. They don’t trust anyone because the people they had been trusting were only interested in making these short, closed-ended stories. And so, that’s again where we’re at, where everything became let’s get the cinema audience watching our stuff at home or on their phone or in the public transport, and no thought was really given to how to create something that’s got ongoing livelihood.

Darren Sumner:
And I asked the question the way that I did because I’ve seen so many folks online who say, “You know, recommend me a good show. I want something that has at least 100 episodes. I want something that’s not gonna be over–I watch it for three days and then it’s done. I gotta find something else.”

Robert C. Cooper:
Because there’s a lot of work that goes into a show. And then find the show that you wanna watch, and then–

Darren Sumner:
I wanna live in the world and experience those characters as they go through, you know, five, ten years.”

Robert C. Cooper:
Life.

David Read:
But there’s no one young asking those things who want to go on that journey. It’s very few.

Darren Sumner:
That desire, I hope it’s coming back. I think it’s coming back. But in the streaming era, it’s been funded so much by library content, by legacy content. So, folks are discovering stuff from the ’80s and ’90s and early 2000s.

Robert C. Cooper:
But again, if you wanna do a little bit of an economic analysis of it, Netflix, I think, drew an audience but kept that audience on the library material of other studios. And then studios realized, “Oh, they’re making money on us. We need to do that ourselves.” So, everybody …

David Read:
That’s right.

Robert C. Cooper:
… siloed their own stuff, created their own streaming services, and now everybody’s flailing because people, A, don’t wanna subscribe to eight different services in order to watch the one show that they like. Nobody is benefiting from that competition, and a bunch of people are gonna die because of it.

Darren Sumner:
It’s bringing about bundles and it’s bringing about acquisitions. So, it’s gonna go back to the same three companies.

David Read:
Sooner or later, that’s where this carries on going.

Robert C. Cooper:
Let’s move on to some nostalgia.

David Read:
I’m curious, Rob. When did you start shooting with 4:3 taking a backseat? When did you start shooting, because the footage was captured obviously, but when did you specifically start shooting with 16:9 in mind first?

Robert C. Cooper:
That’s a good question. I don’t remember. I would think it was around Season Four or Five, maybe, with 16:9.

David Read:
Wow, because Season Four was the season that had the HD test in it, which was the episode “Entity” where Sam gets taken over by the computer program.

Robert C. Cooper:
Might have been before then.

David Read:
OK. Wow. I am so thankful the show exists in 16:9. You future-proofed the heck out of that thing, at least for the time being. So, where’s the vertical version of Stargate gonna come?

Robert C. Cooper:
It was ’cause, look, this is how sort of old-school we were. We were shooting on film. That 16:9 was shot on 35-millimeter film.

David Read:
And Super 16.

Robert C. Cooper:
So, the material was there; we were just blowing it up to– And shooting it. You’ll notice there’s really nothing happening in the margins on those shots.

Darren Sumner:
Let’s shift gears to Stargate. I think I probably asked you this at some point, but I’ve been enjoying watching your appearances on Dial the Gate, talking about the business, talking about Stargate history and your role on the show over the years as it evolved. I think you’ve got a great story as somebody who started lower down on the totem pole and worked your way up through the ranks. But I’ve always been really fascinated by your first job, which was story editor in Season One of SG-1. What is a story editor and how, how does a story editor balance the scripts that you’re contributing and what I imagine in the job description is whipping other people’s scripts into shape, especially outside writers, to get the script to a point where it’s ready to shoot? Is that an accurate description of what you do as story editor?

Robert C. Cooper:
No. The truth is that all those credits are kind of meaningless other than, from a writer’s perspective, designating how much money you’re gonna make.

David Read:
This is not the first time I’ve heard that.

Robert C. Cooper:
And at some level, what it does is it’s like, in the military, a command badge that tells other people how high you rank, so how much respect they should give you or where you fall in the pecking order. So, when I tell somebody, “Oh, no, this should really be this way,” they don’t go, “Oh, he’s nothing. I don’t listen to him. I have to go ask someone else the question.” So, story editor is kind of the lowest level of entry point for writers on a staff. There are a few other things, but usually you’d go from some form of assistant to first hire as a story editor on a show, and at that point you are at the service of the writers’ room. You’re present in the writers’ room. You are contributing any way you can. You’re pitching ideas for shows. You’re then hopefully taking those ideas and running with them and developing them, writing, once you get a pitch to the point where it’s approved by the executive producers, you go write the outline. You write the first draft. At each stage you get notes. You finish it, and usually at the stage of second draft on that script, the showrunner will take over and probably do a pass on your script and, depending on how strong your personality is and also how much power you think you wield, you can sort of give notes or fight back on how that work goes. So, yeah. I was hired as a story editor. I’ve told, I’m sure I’ve told the story of my interview here before. I don’t really want to repeat myself too much, but I flew myself out to Vancouver to meet with Jon and Brad, and I had about, I don’t know, three or four fairly well-fleshed-out ideas, and then I had a list of maybe 10 one-liners, and I was in the room with them pitching my ass off, and Jon had a pad of paper on his desk and an old-fashioned pencil sitting over the piece of paper. I talked for maybe, I don’t know, 20 minutes, half an hour, and he never wrote one thing down. Which was a bad sign. I’m getting flop sweat as I see the further I get into my material, and him not writing anything. I literally had a couple of, “Well, what if none of this flies? I should just have a couple of maybe quick, offhand pitched ideas to throw out there,” and I got to those and I was …

David Read:
This is great.

Robert C. Cooper:
… “What about an Apocalypse Now type of thing?” And Jon was like, “Hmm, that’s interesting.” Heart of Darkness, blah, blah, blah. He wrote that down, and I was like, “Yes.”

David Read:
Thank God for “The First Commandment,” Rob. Thank God for it.

Robert C. Cooper:
I’m not that proud of that episode. It has its flaws, but yeah, that was kind of what got their interest, and then, to be honest, it was also the fact that I told Brad I was a golfer, even though I wasn’t really good. And they also, looking back, would say it was probably because I flew myself out to Vancouver to meet with them in person.

David Read:
You wanted this.

Robert C. Cooper:
I was just the– And I was young and eager and whatever. So, I wrote that script. I’m pretty sure Jon ended up being the one who produced it and did a rewrite on that script. And of course, then it was, OK, I was on a– Originally, I wrote the outline, I sent it in to them. That’s what made them hire me as story editor. I was on a first half of the season contract, wrote the script, that started to get made. And then basically they were like, “OK, what else do you got?” And so, at this point, you have to prove you’re not just a one-trick pony. So, I had to come up with something else. And again, I’m sure I’ve told this story, but just quickly for context. I was driving with my wife in the car, and now they need, I need to come up with something else and it better be good or I’m not gonna get picked up, and she’s like, “What about something in the past?” And I was like, “I got it.” She still to this day takes credit for that script and my career.

Darren Sumner:
Something in the past, that’s “Torment of Tantalus?”

Robert C. Cooper:
“Torment of Tantalus.”

Darren Sumner:
Experimenting with the Stargate in the ’40s.

Robert C. Cooper:
Yeah.

Darren Sumner:
The great first [inaudible] a pitch.

Robert C. Cooper:
It was here all along.

David Read:
That’s right.

Robert C. Cooper:
So, that got me hired for the back half of the season. But by the time we had gotten to producing that and probably based on my first draft of “Torment of Tantalus,” they promoted me to co-producer. So, halfway through the first season, they promoted me to co-producer.

Darren Sumner:
So, you proved you could do it again. And that was enough.

Robert C. Cooper:
I think they liked that script, and that script was considerably better than “First Commandment.” And look, I was getting the lay of the land and getting my feet and everything, but to be fair to them, they also were sort of figuring out the show. They were doing Outer Limits at the same time. They did not have the burden with Showtime of having to pitch five seasons and what the entire first season was. They didn’t know. They had Richard Dean Anderson, a very successful movie and a decent pilot pitch, and that’s it. So, there was a lot of figuring it out in that first season. And so, I was fortunate enough to have been part of that from the beginning, and I think I demonstrated that I got what the show was with “Torment of Tantalus.” So, yeah, and then from there on, you work your way up the ladder, and people are obviously extremely confused by the use of the term executive producer and co-executive producer and how that’s even credited on screen because there’s often six or seven of them. Usually the last, if the head, if the credits are at the front, the last executive producer is generally the showrunner and/or creator. If the credits are at the end, it’s usually the first credit.

David Read:
Gotcha.

Robert C. Cooper:
But nowadays, in fact, you don’t even see the credits.

David Read:
And if you do, there’s 18 producers on a Star Trek show. What do they all do?

Robert C. Cooper:
A lot of them, nothing.

David Read:
Did they pay? Did someone–

Robert C. Cooper:
They were involved somewhere along the line. They’re part of the company. There’s multiple companies because every creative maybe has their own company, and then those people tag along with the executive producer credits. I mean, they’re doing jobs. I don’t mean they’re sitting there doing nothing with their feet up. But they’re not materially as involved in making the show as the showrunner.

David Read:
When I first noticed that, I asked Martin Gero. I sent him an email, and I said, “What is it with all of these producers now in the credits?” And I don’t remember his answer, but I remember that it wasn’t satisfying. I remember being, he was flicking the question away, and I was–

Robert C. Cooper:
Because it’s implied in some respects that writers tend to maybe– Look, the people who got the show made deserve credit. And sometimes that’s a significant thing. But I think he would probably be concerned with offending people or wanting to show disrespect to those who, whatever. But the term showrunner evolved, I think, because of that. So, you needed some distinction in labeling what role you played so that the people even working on the show understood the difference. If you walked into a room and said, “Oh, I’m an executive producer,” they’d be like, “Which executive producer? An important one?” So, if you actually said, “No, I’m the showrunner,” they go, “Oh, OK, we know who you are. You’re the CEO of this corporation.” And look, I don’t know what the story of it is, I’m sure there is a story, but I’m not quite sure why it hasn’t evolved to the point where that’s actually an onscreen credit. The other part of the story is that Jonathan Glassner, who is American, was up in Vancouver producing the show, had been there for a while doing The Outer Limits, and he really wanted to go back home to LA. And so, he had signed a deal that kept him involved with the show for three years. And so, midway through the third year, I was measuring his office, figuring out where the couch would go and the desk would go, so…

David Read:
I’ve got some questions for you. We’ve spoken a little bit about the Air Force in the past, Robert. I’m fearful of a little bit of retreading too much, so I wanna be cognizant of our Air Force conversation in the past, but since I had you on earlier this year, the water about this has gotten really muddy, and I want to see if you can attempt to clarify it. I had a conversation with some fans who are military, from Army, Air Force, Marines, and for heaven’s sake, Army, Air Force, Marines, and I’m missing–

Robert C. Cooper:
Navy.

David Read:
Thank you, Navy. I’m so sorry, Ryan. God. And they had pointed out that Samuels, I think Robert Wisden’s character, when he comes and gets Jack in the very beginning of the pilot, “Children of the Gods,” he goes up on his roof and Jack’s on his telescope. His uniform, even in the dark, is completely wrong, and all of the Air Force people immediately called it. Non-Air Force people, military people were like, “This is not correct.” And so, I am not sure now when the Air Force became that involved in the day-to-day of SG-1 and making the details like that, making sure that there was a little bit more focus on making those details correct. Is it after the pilot or was it before?

Robert C. Cooper:
I don’t remember whether it was before or after the pilot. I think Jon or Brad would remember that better. I do know a lot of it was about the uniforms.

David Read:
OK, so they were not, the Air Force were not as heavily involved at the word go as they would be later on in the season?

Robert C. Cooper:
I think there was a little bit of not realizing what it was gonna be and how big a deal it would be and how much attention it would get and that sort of thing. So, I guess maybe– I know the scripts were always from the beginning being vetted by the office.

David Read:
Yes.

Robert C. Cooper:
The military office. But I don’t know– And then they had to run all of the stuff by them as far as uniforms and stuff like that goes. But there was consulting about weapons too, like which weapons would be used in certain circumstances. I mean, the decision to use P90s was because the shells came out downward instead of sideways, which made them easier to shoot with. But yeah, no, I don’t remember exactly when that happened. I remember the first time there was a material note that we had to deal with in a significant way that didn’t involve uniforms, like a creative note.

David Read:
Please.

Robert C. Cooper:
That one was “There But For the Grace of God,” where I had rewritten that script and submitted it and they came back and were like, “Yeah, O’Neill can’t kiss Carter. They’re both in the military.” And I was like, “It’s an alternate universe!”

David Read:
That was it.

Robert C. Cooper:
That was an alternate universe. And they’re like, “Nope, won’t do it.” They literally were gonna take their name off that episode. Not the show, but just basically not, quote, “endorse” that episode. And this is where creativity comes in. You can’t– Some people would have stamped their feet and had a tantrum or whatever, and I might have taken a day to think about it? I can’t remember, but I just remember going, “Fine, she’s just not in the military.”

David Read:
Right, exactly. What if Michael Shanks who has appendicitis–

Robert C. Cooper:
I was arguing it’s an alternate universe, your rules don’t apply, and then it occurred to me, dummy, it’s an alternate universe. The rules don’t apply.

Darren Sumner:
And it fixes itself with an alternate universe story. That’s the thing. We had uniform stuff. We had fraternization, especially the Sam/Jack stuff throughout the years, I know was kind of a touching point, a point for them to pay attention to. Did the Air Force, in your recollection, ever actually shoot something down on a story or…

David Read:
Or unofficially take their name off of a script?

Robert C. Cooper:
They never took any off of scripts. I’m trying to remember if they ever shot something down. I don’t remember that ever being the case.

David Read:
I bet that would stand out. I believe that.

Robert C. Cooper:
They were always so– but look, General Ryan blew up with his whole entourage and did a cameo in the show. They were all in by that point.

Darren Sumner:
I imagine as the show went along that trust was built to the point that there would… You folks in the production office sort of knew what they were going to come back with, if they were going to come back on something like an on-screen kiss.

Robert C. Cooper:
And at that point, we got brave and started asking for all kinds of stuff. He would offer too, “You want some planes? I can fly some planes up for you. You want a C-130? Write it into the show.”

David Read:
Wow. I went back and checked because I wasn’t entirely sure that the Air Force would be acknowledged in Atlantis and SGU, and they are. But my understanding through Mallozzi is that they were only approving scripts for SG-1. Joe said the reason for Atlantis is that it was more of an international expedition. Was there ever consideration of having the Air Force have more involvement with approving SGU scripts, or was it considered more of an IOA operation at that point? Was it a logistics thing to not have the Air Force read the other shows’ scripts? What was the thought process behind that? Was it just SG-1, something that you wanted to specifically more so tie to them?

Robert C. Cooper:
Look, don’t quote me. I don’t remember specifically, but I feel like even at the outset of the creation of the show, we saw it as an opportunity to have it not– Because the show is no longer based in Cheyenne Mountain in the US and that the team was not specifically part of the military, we saw it as a chance to make the show feel more international. That it wasn’t US military based. And not that the military in SG-1 was really ever problematic in any way. I thought it was a really interesting representation and conversation often about politics when we got into it, and they didn’t stand in the way of that either. Meeting a lot of the people at the very highest levels of the Air Force was really eye-opening and interesting to me. They’re not politicians. In some cases, they don’t even really love politicians, even though they won’t say that. And their raison d’être is to protect America at all costs and with their lives, and it’s, in most cases, in a non-political way, in my estimation, having talked to them. It’s very respectable. I admire their dedication and patriotism and the risks they take. They are not always on board with the things they’re asked to do, but that’s their job and they do it. And I don’t really like judging them based on the commands they were given. Anyway, that part of it was something that I really learned getting to know them and understand that, look, I’m sure there’s a lot of questionable things that happen and go on at the Pentagon so–

David Read:
I don’t think you have to explain that. That totally makes sense.

Robert C. Cooper:
I’m not sophisticated enough to really comment on that, so don’t come after me for anything I’ve said.

David Read:
Totally fair.

Robert C. Cooper:
But I have a lot of respect for the military outside of the political side.

David Read:
You each have a job to do.

Robert C. Cooper:
So, just on the earlier note where we were talking about the collaboration and creative process and where you are as a writer, very early on in Season Two, I had pitched an episode that everyone had agreed upon. We beat– Look, let me be really clear about how this works. In the room, there’s very little hierarchy. You’re aware that this person who’s the showrunner is your boss, but everybody is supposedly in a healthy and creative environment, free to pitch their ideas. They want you to pitch ideas. It’s your job to contribute and we all come up with every episode. We put it on the board together. Everyone has to be on board. Sometimes people are a little quietly grumpy about some things, but at the end of the day, it’s best idea wins and everyone’s gotta be on board with this. And we ought to be able to say, “Are we going ahead with this? This is an episode.” So, that’s how it works. It’s not like one person writes everything and then they– In some cases, maybe that is on shows. I’m sure there are shows where one person writes everything. But in our world, we all had to sort of give the thumbs up and then you would go away and execute the potential that we had beat out on the board. So, I had– We had done that with this episode, and I wrote the outline and they gave notes on the outline and then I went away and wrote the script and I spent weeks on that script and delivered it. And then Brad and Jonathan called me into Jon’s office and sat down, and they were being sort of super polite and careful about the whole thing, and I was like, “What’s going on? Do they hate it? Did they fire me? Are they gonna fire me? What did I do wrong?” And they’re like, “We really like the script and we know we beat this out and we know we read the outline and you executed the outline very well. But we really think this story would be much better if it was Carter who got the Goa’uld in her.” And I was like, “Oh, that’s interesting.” And they’re like, “How do you feel about going back and doing that?” Because it was gonna mean a page-one rewrite. It was literally I had to go back and completely rewrite the script. Turned into that episode where Carter gets the Goa’uld in her. But it was never originally like that, and I’ll tell you that that sort of stuff happened and you had to be on your feet and really ready to understand that, wow, a good idea should always win out and be the thing that you end up going forward with. And I think that also was another stepping stone for me in the process with them where they were like, “He can roll with the punches and take a good note.” And I credit them for making my script better, and then at the end of the day, I got credit for it.

Darren Sumner:
I love that. I love the best idea wins rule. It’s just a healthy collaborative environment.

Robert C. Cooper:
And then that later translated down the line and the other thing that people, I think, don’t fully understand is that there’s a guild, there are guild rules about rewrites and there’s a point at which a writer who’s been rewritten can take a script to arbitration to get credit, if they deserve it. But in most cases, there are a lot of instances where the original writer has been totally rewritten, page one, and they still get the credit because it’s considered bad form. I mean, the executive producer is still doing their job as showrunner to deliver the right thing for the show, for the actors, for the studio, whatever.

David Read:
They’re at the wheel of the ship.

Robert C. Cooper:
Yes, and they’re also getting paid handsomely. There are situations in which it would be considered not just bad form but almost abuse if you took another writer’s script and rewrote it entirely just so you could get the fee. Not part of the job. Your job is to make sure that script is in shape. So, there were a lot of times where I would do passes on scripts that ended up being total rewrites. I’ve had it done to me. It just happens. So, sometimes you guys will ask questions about scripts, and it turns out that the writer whose name is on it didn’t even write the script. That’s just [inaudible].

David Read:
There have been, this program has been particularly illuminating for me in that regard because I have had one-off writers on, or two-off or three-off writers on, talk and ask them about specific episodes and we glaze over the episode. And it’s illuminating for me and for anyone who’s paying attention because you can read between the lines and know that …

Robert C. Cooper:
That wasn’t what …

David Read:
… more than likely–

Robert C. Cooper:
… got made.

David Read:
That’s right. And that’s the process of storytelling. But even 25 years later, how do you diplomatically say that? In a couple of cases some of them have said, “I’ll be completely honest. I submitted one thing and it went in this direction.” And I really appreciate those people who are willing to say that because they accept the fact that they’re not always the same writer decade after decade and are in a different space now.

Robert C. Cooper:
Look, I appreciated and responded to the trust that Jon and Brad had to give me the note, and they were testing me to a certain extent, and say, “Do you want to make this change or should we?” And I was like, “Me. I’m gonna do it. I think it’s a great idea and I’m gonna change it,” and it turned into a better episode than it would have been if they had shot the original script that I wrote.

Darren Sumner:
And “In the Line of Duty” is obviously transformative for Sam’s character.

David Read:
Oh, God.

Darren Sumner:
And you guys grabbed onto that Jolinar story, and it fed lots of stories for you to–

Robert C. Cooper:
Lots of mythology going forward, yeah.

Darren Sumner:
Lots of mythology, yeah, and gave her a new dimension to what I think was already a three-dimensional character. What was the original? Can you tell us who got the Goa’uld?

Robert C. Cooper:
It was a Red Shirt basically, a guy who’d not met before. It was an entirely …

Darren Sumner:
Really?

Robert C. Cooper:
… new character, yeah.

David Read:
That changes everything. That changes the stakes so much. What? That is the best note that I think I’ve heard. That’s up there. Wow.

Robert C. Cooper:
Yeah, what were we thinking when we came up with that original story. But that’s how early the difference between knowing what your show is versus it kind of evolving. And we’ve talked at length, I’m sure Brad and Joe have talked at length about the fact that it was the fact that we were kind of living in somewhat of an anonymity on Showtime for four seasons, in order to figure out what the show was. I don’t think it really got that good until a little bit later on into three and four. There were good episodes early on, but consistently knowing what the show was didn’t happen until a little bit later. And that was when we were doing 22 episodes a year. Nowadays, this is what I’m saying, there’s so much emphasis on knowing what the show is for every episode because you’re only doing eight, and there’s this hyper-focus on all of that, and I think sometimes the show itself, the creative crumbles under the weight of that pressure as opposed to being allowed to organically grow.

Darren Sumner:
It speaks to the benefit again of having a lot of episodes, more episodes in a season, to some degree episodic storytelling that you can discover those moments and those beats in the process, even though you’re invested in so far as you’ve got a full draft of a script, but there’s still room for discovery and to sort of let the characters take you where they wanna go. We’ve talked a bit about how the show is sort of finding its voice in the early years and, like any show, I imagine SG-1 starts with a story bible. Starts with a feature film which laid out some of the rules of the road. How Stargates work, wormhole travel is one way, et cetera, seven chevrons. As the show grew though, I’m really curious how you managed the growing lore, how you sort of keep it all in your head. We’ve heard stories in years past, like, Paul Mullie ends up being kind of the rule keeper for some of the more timey-wimey challenging stories of time travel, or, “Nope, that doesn’t work. You can’t do that.” Did everybody in the writers’ room kind of have their own sort of piece of Stargate and this, the science fiction world, or how do you manage lore as it expands to 17 seasons and more?

Robert C. Cooper:
You need a lot of people there. It can’t be all one person, so we all definitely contributed and would have each other’s back that way, “Oh, you can’t do that. So-and-so said this in this episode.” But I’m sure there are tons of examples where we failed miserably to maintain that.

David Read:
Not a lot.

Robert C. Cooper:
It’s–

David Read:
I have notes coming up.

Robert C. Cooper:
Yeah, no, I mean, look. It was important to us, I guess is really the bottom line, and so we tried to keep track of that. We had staff who were kind of tracking that as well and being careful that we were being true to the roots. I mean, I think we broke rules sometimes and definitely did things that were outside those rules just because it was cool or ’cause we needed a story that week. But we tried to be respectful of it, for sure. Yeah, there was a lot though.

Darren Sumner:
There’s a great, sort of wonderful, speaks to the writers on this show, the sort of tap dancing that sometimes has to be done around a point of continuity in order to keep it straight. I’m thinking, for example, of Brad’s lensing effect, that’s ahead of the Stargate explanation for time dilation, that sort of thing that he shared on the show in the past.

Robert C. Cooper:
Yeah. I mean, I was more, I think, inclined to come up with– I was willing to bend the rules a little bit if it made the story good. There’s a lot, I think there’s a lot of manipulation, shall we say, and technobabble gobbledygook in “48 Hours.” But I just thought it was cool to have Teal’c stuck in the Stargate. The buffer concept was always interesting to me, and I was like, what happens if someone’s data is stuck in that buffer? So, at that point, you’re kind of figuring out how to make up something that makes that story work and yet still contiguous with everything you’ve sort of said so far about how the Stargate works and what it does. So, I was more about let’s make the pseudoscience fit the story logic. That was what was important to me, and if the story beat was great, then you had to figure out a way to do it. And yeah, I mean, Paul certainly– I never liked time travel, I never liked time travel stories, I always resisted it. I know I ended up doing one even late in the franchise. But that, again, always comes about as a product of what is the character beat I want or what is the cool character story thing that I wanna see happen? And does that conceit, that storytelling conceit, serve it?

David Read:
For time travel, Christopher Judge said to me once, and I quote, “Rick hated them.” Sometimes I had to take what Chris says with a grain of salt. How true is that to your recollection?

Robert C. Cooper:
Rick just wanted to be in MacGyver. He was not super comfortable with science fiction, period, which is weird because at the end of the day, he loved acting with Thor …

David Read:
Exactly.

Robert C. Cooper:
… his favorite thing. But I think that had more to do with the fact that Thor was a puppet and he didn’t have to act opposite another actor, ’cause I think he didn’t like acting with other actors either. But he– Yeah, he did not embrace or really want– Why you rarely ever heard him– He hated exposition. He just wanted to comment on things, so everybody else had to do the exposition, and then he got to make a wisecrack. So, whenever… That said, he liked to have cool things happen to him, and he liked to do the cool stuff. But having it happen as a result of some science fiction thing that he somehow had to understand or explain was always a little bit of sandpaper for him.

David Read:
I really want to address more specifically what you were saying earlier, ’cause it fed directly into what I wanted to approach later. And I’ll bring this to the forefront, and then Darren can come back around and finish this off with this point about the lore. Because you were talking specifically about being willing to occasionally break a rule. And I will argue that you guys– I go through the show with people and we’re like, it’s so airtight compared to a series like Voyager that was running at the same time, where people and characters and events and everything else just go sideways and they change details left and right. Compared to that, this thing is really strong. One of the ones that always gets to me is, well, let’s talk about, I wanna talk specifically about retconning just for a beat, which is technically what this is. Daniel says he hasn’t met the others by “Full Circle” in his conversation with Jack in the elevator. But by the information presented in “Threads,” that’s really arguable because he was aware of Anubis on some level with the presence of Jim, and Oma is telling him about, the last time you were here, you said this, you said that. So, under those circumstances, those things, those details had to change for that story. The same thing in “Full Circle,” he says ascension doesn’t make you all-knowing, but by “Reckoning Part Two,” Replicator Sam is extracting Ancient information on some level from his mind. So, my point is to say, you obviously can’t let dialogue from earlier episodes, or perhaps even certain events, completely tie your hands down from a good idea. So, how is it that you strike a balance? So, as Glassner would have said, “You hang a lantern on it,” you move on. So, for 354 shows, this kind of thing happened sincerely remarkably a few times, so something was working.

Robert C. Cooper:
Well, I would love to respond to that. First of all, with the Ancient stuff, I don’t remem– I honestly, I would have to go back and watch “Reckoning 2,” again, to remember exactly what information it was. But I remember having a conversation at the time, and let’s be clear, the phrase “all-knowing” means all-knowing. And even the Ancients didn’t know everything. They were still …

David Read:
That’s a great point.

Robert C. Cooper:
… entities, right? They were entities that existed on a higher plane that allowed them to understand and exist with a far superior amount of knowledge than we have. But that doesn’t mean they are gods. We were very careful to never say they were gods. And by definition, that’s what I perceive to be all-knowing, and all-knowing is all-knowing from the beginning of time to the end of time. And all-knowing is everything everywhere all at once.

David Read:
Oh, OK. So, in his mind, it is perhaps a larger library of their knowledge, not all existence.

Robert C. Cooper:
The repository of the Ancients– which is– Look, that was the point of Destiny. Destiny was an exploration vehicle for the Ancients prior to their ascension. Who’s to say they even knew everything? I think that was something that I felt had enough leeway there to– Because, at the end of the day, they had to be– An individual Ancient had to be defeatable. That’s what the Ori were. You couldn’t make them gods. They had to have some limitations to them, and I think that’s what Daniel’s talking about. He’s like, “Look, they’re not all powerful, all knowing. They are super powerful and super knowing, but there’s a ceiling on that.”

David Read:
I appreciate the clarification. I appreciate you taking the time for that because that’s– That is always gotten me hung up.

Darren Sumner:
This was clarified for me when we saw young Orlin confront the Prior in “The Fourth Horseman,” and he says, “As soon as you stepped through the Gate, your life was an open book to me.”

David Read:
Into that galaxy.

Darren Sumner:
Not that an Ascended being always immediately knows everything but rather has the power to go and discover something if they want to know the truth.

Robert C. Cooper:
Look, I always felt, and we’ve had these conversations before, Darren, that I always felt Stargate was an exploration of powerful beings who were godlike, who were impersonating gods. The conflict humans got into in their questionable worship of those godlike beings, and whether or not those beings had those worshipers’ best interests at heart, that was what the show was. We got to a point where the godlike creatures became fairly indistinguishable between godlike creatures and the actual concept of God, but that doesn’t mean there wasn’t a distinguishing factor between them.

David Read:
It only made it more scary. Because the line was blurred, how do you truly convince someone when part of you can’t convince yourself sometimes? People are being raised from the dead.

Robert C. Cooper:
Or does it really matter when they have that much power over you? And that’s also, I think, an important conversation we are having now, even with human beings on Earth, and AI, which is–

David Read:
And AI.

Robert C. Cooper:
What difference does it make what you call it if it has that profound an impact on you?

David Read:
What difference does it make if it’s sentient, if what you do with it because of how you think of what it is, is the same?

Robert C. Cooper:
Sure. It’s no different than fentanyl. That’s an inanimate object, but it can ruin your life in a way if you worship it the wrong way.

David Read:
Darren has a really important follow-up question here.

Darren Sumner:
David, you mentioned Jim. Before we get to the follow-up question, I don’t know if we’ve ever gotten this on the record, but now I gotta know. So, Jim is George Dzundza’s character in “Threads,” who is the guy Anubis is posing as in the diner.

Robert C. Cooper:
I was so happy to have– That whole cast, it was so–

David Read:
It was great.

Robert C. Cooper:
Tickled to have gotten everybody to do that.

Darren Sumner:
So, the question that I gotta know is when Daniel comes back in “Fallen” at the start of Season Three and has lost his memory, he refers to Jack as Jim. Did you then use the name Jim in “Threads” as a deliberate callback to that?

Robert C. Cooper:
Wow, I don’t remember.

David Read:
And I have a follow-up after that.

Robert C. Cooper:
It would be so great if I did, but I don’t. I think it’s funny.

David Read:
No, no, no. We’re gonna go with yes. We’re gonna go with yes. The other thing is, and thank you, Darren, of course, for making me think of this: when Oma says, “Good luck ever ascending again,” one of the first things that she says is, “If you leave here, if you turn– If you choose to resume your earthly journey,” you’re not gonna take that paper with you. You won’t remember any of the knowledge that you gained here. Once he gets back to Earth, and all of his clothes are gone again, I’m under the impression that he was aware of what still happened in that astral diner and he didn’t just wake up from being killed by Replicator Carter. Is that your assumption as well, that he’s aware of what happened?

Robert C. Cooper:
Yeah. I don’t think I ever said–

David Read:
It’s never clarified.

Robert C. Cooper:
No, no.

David Read:
But do you think it was your intent that he probably had Anubis and Oma during it out for all time?

Robert C. Cooper:
I think in the spirit of how you want people to believe that characters change and evolve and are changed by their experiences, that I would want you to believe that he carried with him, that he was different when he came back.

David Read:
That’s cool.

Robert C. Cooper:
He wasn’t unchanged. Whether that was conscious knowledge.

David Read:
I loved that journey of, even by “Heroes,” he says there are still some holes. But by the time he’s facing Replicator Sam, it’s Daniel again, fully. Everything has come back and he has to use that to bring all of his strength to bear against facing her. That alternate Sam was one of the greatest villains you guys created. You really could’ve milked that for another season. I always–

Robert C. Cooper:
We liked Sam too.

David Read:
I wish that you guys had leveraged that in terms of her walking away from SGC. Having that been one of the reasons why she wanted to be reassigned to Area 51 for a little while. A fan actually went and did a fanfic on that. She’s like, “I have to stay away. My intellect was used to create a doppelganger that almost destroyed the galaxy. I have to step away for a while.” And I always thought that was a great fanfic. And Amanda thought so too.

Robert C. Cooper:
Look, it clearly spiraled off the rails in terms of the original DNA was that it was a procedural. It would revert back to zero at the beginning of every episode, and you could watch an episode clean of having seen the previous ones or out of order and not feel confused or frustrated. Eventually that, obviously– But we still kind of hung onto that a little bit. There was still a little of that original thought process that we gotta maintain some continuity of normal without having an entire season where Sam is somewhere else or something like that.

Darren Sumner:
The quick follow-up question that I wanted to ask on lore was, because there’s so much meat in the Stargate universe, not just rules for Stargate travel, but the characters, the lore, the stories, the bad guys that have been defeated: were another creative team to come in and want to do something with the franchise, do you look at that lore that you guys built over the years as a potential impediment to a new creative team, such that maybe there’s an argument to be made that you can’t do anything other than reboot the show?

Robert C. Cooper:
I don’t think you or the fans will like this answer. They won’t care. Nobody that I think reboots Stargate is going to pay attention to what came before. They’re gonna just take the word Stargate and look at the movie maybe and see what can we do. Just that basic premise. Totally different premise.

David Read:
Do that to Star Wars and see what happens to fandom. I mean, it’s so… It’s Stargate. Who cares?

Robert C. Cooper:
Look, we can talk a lot about the reboot of Star Wars too. I mean–

David Read:
Yeah, we could.

Robert C. Cooper:
I mean, in that case, I think they, in some ways, were too conscious of the original material and literally just remade it to the point where it was literally the same freaking story. Nothing new in that movie.

David Read:
Got it. I think I agree in many instances. Darren?

Darren Sumner:
Rob, you have questions for us? We’ve been …

Robert C. Cooper:
I do.

Darren Sumner:
… interviewing you for the last 20 plus years.

Robert C. Cooper:
Yes, I do. I actually do.

David Read:
I can’t wait.

Robert C. Cooper:
Similar in some ways to some of the questions you’re asking me, I’m interested in if you wanna go back, when was the first time that you noticed that people associated with the show were interacting with your site?

David Read:
Darren?

Darren Sumner:
Wow. I’m very old, aren’t I? That was a long time ago.

Robert C. Cooper:
Now you know how I feel when you ask me these questions.

David Read:
While he’s warming this up, there was an, I’ve checked with him recently and he doesn’t remember this in detail, to my shock and horror. There was a website called SG-1 Archive, which still exists, but it’s just a landing page to this day. At that time, this would have been when Fellowship of the Ring was in theaters, so this would have been ’01. The A.L.E.X.A. rating, which was a website, ranked this website and GateWorld neck and neck.

Darren Sumner:
In terms of internet traffic?

David Read:
In terms of internet traffic, it was right up there. When I was added as an editor and started creating additional content by phoning Cynthia Semon with Amanda Tapping and reaching out to her and starting to get a lot of these exclusives, we began to pull ahead in terms of the Alexa rating. Sorry, everyone out there, and for your devices. And we never looked back. That’s the transition that I remember. When I went from being an encyclopedia editor for our Stargate Omnipedia and started creating our own exclusive content to which Darren fed into his new stories, that’s when I started noticing that people were paying more attention to GateWorld than these other sites that we were competing with directly. I’m curious if Darren can go back even further and answer that question.

Robert C. Cooper:
My question is really more–

Darren Sumner:
Production side?

Robert C. Cooper:
More that moment where you were like, “Hey, wait a minute. One of the writers just commented on my comment,”

David Read:
In production, OK.

Robert C. Cooper:
But that must have been cool when you realized that– I don’t just have a fan site; the show is actually aware of it and now interacting with it. I have a conduit to Brad Wright. Oh my God, I gotta write these, careful about what I say in my comments.

Darren Sumner:
It’s a little scary, ’cause you suddenly have to start minding your ps and qs a little bit more.

David Read:
Snake’s eating its tail almost.

Darren Sumner:
GateWorld was founded in October of 1999. It was the middle of Season Three. There was a point from Season Four to about Season Seven where I was just sort of doing it on the side as a hobby before David joined. And in those years, probably Season Five-ish, I was getting connections from, I think some of the first contacts that I made in production would be some of the visual effects folks. Rainmaker, Bruce Woloshyn was active online and was engaging with the show, was excited to talk to fans about the work that they were doing. But in terms of inside the studio, I don’t know. I bet it’s Joe. I bet Joe Mallozzi was probably the first one who made a visible appearance online and started posting comments, and then the mods and I had to watch the forum when the writers started joining and creating accounts, so then we had to use our back channels to verify the accounts that this is actually Joe Mallozzi, and somebody might–

Robert C. Cooper:
But was that actually a moment for you where you were like, “Oh my God, we’ve become, you know, we’ve hit the big time. We’re talking to Joe Mallozzi?”

David Read:
It would never have occurred to Darren to reach out. He was reclusive, and I’ve beaten that out of him.

Darren Sumner:
Reclusive. Introverted.

David Read:
I’ve beaten that out of him over the years, and he is not the same person he was. He is extraordinary.

Robert C. Cooper:
So, I hope all of us have grown a bit in 25 years.

David Read:
A bit? Completely new human.

Darren Sumner:
I was in my early 20s, I was just out of college, and I was a shy guy who was doing other things with my life, and this was a side hobby. David joining the site really pushed it to the next level of wanting to interact with production, wanting to get interviews. Joe made a lot of that happen. I think he was responsible for my first set visit in 2004 with MGM. That was through MGM, ’cause at that point I was also doing some consulting work for MGM for their online marketing efforts.

David Read:
Did they reach out to you for that?

Darren Sumner:
The first year was an MGM trip, and the second year was a GateWorld trip.

Robert C. Cooper:
And then when did you actually become officially associated with MGM?

Darren Sumner:
I don’t know. I was a consultant. I was writing and editing content for their– They had a little online, it was a Stargate email newsletter, I think is probably where I started, 2002, 2003.

Robert C. Cooper:
And how did that change the content?

Darren Sumner:
The content that I was doing on Gate–

Robert C. Cooper:
Suddenly you have this big studio approaching you officially. Did you suddenly go, “Oh, geez, I need to be careful about what I say about their show, because this could be a real accelerator for the site?”

Darren Sumner:
A little bit, yeah. A little bit, because companies were navigating the internet still. The internet was brand new. Fan sites were brand new, and a lot of studios didn’t know what to do with them. I had started other fan sites sort of to teach myself HTML in college, and used other people’s IP, like Peanuts, Snoopy, and got shut down by United Artists. People were still trying to figure out what to do with the fact that other people were using their IP in ways that broke all the old rules. Fortunately, with MGM, they’ve always been really stellar about it and really open to sort of seeing it as a venue of fan creativity. And so, it became an opportunity to connect with the studio that was making Stargate. Their support has been fantastic. But it was a lot of that, not so much, where can I get this to go? Where, how can I develop this into better access? But “I need to be really careful and tread lightly with somebody else’s IP, or I’m gonna get shut down.”

Robert C. Cooper:
But there’s a big, there’s a lot of attention to the world of influencers now, and the audience of those influencers feeling like their authenticity is being compromised by the products they’re hawking or the corporations that they’re in the pocket of. So, but even from that perspective, you got to be, “Hey, maybe this is a bigger thing than I ever anticipated and could really be good for me with MGM sort of now taking notice.” You got to be able to say, “Wait a minute. At the end of the day, I’m not just moderating. I’m also commenting. I’m also writing these mini reviews and sort of updates on what’s happening.” It was more than, you were more than just an information site. We used to go to see what people were saying about the episode that we had just dropped. We were curious to see if we got two or four stars, you know? It would– So, I can just imagine, though, that there’s this balance between wanting to be an honest critic, or an honest fan, and then having an official association.

David Read:
There’s so much. I’m really curious to know how aware you were–I guess it’s rhetorical–of us, the more that we had access with you guys, how aware you were of us being called shills. The more that GateWorld grew, the more the people who were competing with us, and just fans who didn’t like that Michael was gone or didn’t, or whatever, would label us as being part of the system, because we were now having more access. And I think I can speak for Darren as well. I never felt that that was the case.

Robert C. Cooper:
No, but there’s got to have been some influence on you from the fact that you were getting the straight answers from us. And we’re forthcoming people, and we were decent people, and we kind of welcomed you in and appreciated your fandom.

David Read:
More than.

Robert C. Cooper:
And so, when you took that back to the world, you were probably presenting a more positive version of some of the things that were upsetting fans. And they would be like, “Oh, well, you’re just toeing the party line now.” Whereas you were actually acting on information and experiences that you had that were genuinely positive. So, when the explanation for why Daniel left came out officially, we had sort of explained it to you in a way that you might not have been as happy with, but nevertheless, presented it in a more fair way because you had an inside track on what really went on.

David Read:
Bottom line is we loved the show.

Darren Sumner:
We loved the show, and we appreciated the friendship that was shown, the openness that was shown by the studio and by you guys at Bridge. I come from a journalism background in college and …

Robert C. Cooper:
Me too.

Darren Sumner:
… we ended up in a spot where we sort of wanted to follow the rules of good, honest, objective reporting, while also recognizing we’re doing a fan site here. This is not the New York Times.

David Read:
This is entertainment journalism.

Darren Sumner:
But it’s also, we ended up in that spot that’s kind of in between the studio and fandom, where we’re some days making both sides mad because we’re in the pocket of big Stargate, as far as some fans were concerned. And then we ruffled some feathers with some critical reviews of episodes. There were stretches of time where we would publish weekly fan-written episodes, and then really have a writer who stuck their foot in their mouth, or in some cases, stuck their foot in our mouths. And we kind of had to shut down reviews for a while because they were not constructive to the relationship for a bit. Because it was always kind of going between those two things, the studio and fandom, and wanting to do justice to both, wanting to tell honest stories and give honest opinions.

Robert C. Cooper:
But you did a great job.

David Read:
And only discovering it years… Sorry?

Robert C. Cooper:
I said you did a great job.

Darren Sumner:
Thank you. That’s good to hear.

David Read:
We’re really proud of it. Can we get through some–

Robert C. Cooper:
Couple more minutes, we’ll do some rapid fire …

David Read:
OK. Real quick.

Robert C. Cooper:
… audience questions.

David Read:
Seth Aaron 95. “Were there any Atlantis character pairings you were rooting for personally at any point along the series?” Who would have been the best fit for you, or the best fit as far as you are concerned, had people paired in any way? I’m curious.

Robert C. Cooper:
Ronon and Dr. Teller.

David Read:
OK.

Darren Sumner:
Do you want that to go further?

Robert C. Cooper:
No, I answered the question.

David Read:
There you go. I’m sorry. Rob, where was a big hangout for you when you weren’t working on Stargate in Vancouver? 121 Daybreak says, “We visited last summer.” They had an amazing experience.

Robert C. Cooper:
It is incredible. We would go for hikes on the North Shore, and golf courses is really the answer. Brad and I golfed a lot. We still see each other and golf together. The beach. We got everything here. We got mountains, the beach, golf courses. It’s amazing.

David Read:
BMW1MF, “Robert, as time goes on, it feels less and less likely we’ll ever see a return of our Stargate, but are you done producing sci-fi?” Do you have a few more left in you?

Robert C. Cooper:
No, I’ve got another– I’ve pitched one recently that unfortunately didn’t go forward, and timing’s everything. But I’ve got another that I’m working on that I’m– It’s a bit of a long process to come up with a pitch nowadays. But I’ve got one more I’m gonna take a shot with.

David Read:
Awesome. We’re gonna keep our ears to the ground. JojitBR, “Did you know that Ori meant light in Hebrew?”

Robert C. Cooper:
I did.

David Read:
Wow. OK. I always assumed you took the prefix because–

Robert C. Cooper:
Of origin.

David Read:
Of origin. Which came first?

Robert C. Cooper:
Happy accident that it all worked out.

David Read:
OK. Arabian Lady, it says, “For Rob, for Rob.” Stop saying, “For Rob,” David. Arabian Lady: “Rob, when you were directing, what was one of the bigger challenges that were revealed to you when you would direct personally? What turned out to be your greatest enemy? Was it time? Was it resources? What did you struggle with ultimately as a director?”

Robert C. Cooper:
Initially, my inexperience. I slowly worked up to doing the bigger stuff. But look, talk about privilege. I controlled the budget, so I could build the biggest sets for my episodes. I could choose the best locations. I remember when we were shooting the pilot of Universe, Andy– We were scouting the location in White Sands, and Andy had one of the location managers say, “You gotta come and see this location up north.” He went, and he took a bunch of pictures, and he said, “Rob, this would be great for the next show I do,” and I, “I’m gonna steal that one, Andy.” I could say, “Oh, guess what? I wanna go to Las Vegas and shoot there,” and ask the studio for some extra money to go there. I was incredibly lucky to be able to set myself up to do the things I wanted to do as a director, and what I wanted to do were things that were different. You commented before that my episodes tend to be stylistically different from the show, and I know that, in some cases, ruffled some feathers. But that’s really what I wanted to do. I wanted to sort of stretch as a director and also take that opportunity to maybe stretch the show a little bit into doing things it didn’t normally do. But also, I remember we talked about this, and I’m sorry, but I’m blanking on the actor’s name, but you interviewed–

David Read:
It’s all right.

Robert C. Cooper:
You interviewed a guy, and then you sent me the clip of the actor who had commented to me on set during “Heroes.” We had been standing together and–

David Read:
Mitchell Costerman.

Robert C. Cooper:
Yes, Mitch. That’s right. And he said, “Oh, I didn’t know Stargate did this.” And that comment kind of stuck with me, and I was, “Why do you think that, and why not?” Certainly, I was already trying to do something different with “Heroes.” But I felt like that’s where I wanted to live when I was– Directing’s hard. It’s an added job. Showrunning’s already hard. If I was gonna take that on, I wanted it to be for something that was gonna be, at least that I would think would be something special. So, I always looked for a different way to play when I was directing, and I think the hardest one was “Sateda.” It was the most physically demanding and challenging. There was– It was rain. It was cold. There was tough locations. It was a lot of different locations. It was huge. It was a huge undertaking that I learned a lot from so that I knew not to do that again, and that when I took something on, I could maybe pay a little more attention to performances and stuff like that, which I didn’t have as much time to do on “Sateda,” so…

David Read:
I still can’t believe that everything that happens in “Sateda” happens in 42 minutes. I don’t know how that’s possible. It’s so– Such a tightly packed show. Rob, this has been amazing. Darren, do you wanna wrap us up?

Darren Sumner:
Thank you, Rob, for giving us so much of your time and being willing to go down memory lane with us. Not everybody who works on a project wants to talk about it 20-plus years later. But it’s a real joy to get to pick your brain and share in those memories with you, so thank you.

Robert C. Cooper:
A huge part of my life, 14-plus years of my life, and has been really good to me, and so I very much appreciate the fans and the people who continue to watch and love the show. I hope it carries on.

David Read:
Thank you for everything.

Robert C. Cooper:
Thank you. Thank you, guys.

David Read:
That was Robert C. Cooper, Stargate SG-1, Atlantis, and Universe writer, director, executive producer, and Darren Sumner of GateWorld.net, your complete guide to Stargate. My name is David Read. You’re watching The Stargate Oral History Project. If you enjoy Stargate and you wanna see more content like this on YouTube, do me a favor. Click that Like button. It does really make a difference with the show and will continue to help us grow our audience. And consider sharing this video with a Stargate friend, and if you wanna get notified about future episodes, click Subscribe. And clips from this show will be released over the course of the next few weeks on the Dial the Gate and GateWorld.net YouTube channels. Tremendous thanks to my moderating team, Antony, Jeremy, Kevin, Lockwatcher, Marcia, Raj, and Jakub, my own producers, Antony Rawling, Kevin Weaver, Sommer Roy, and Brice Ors. Thanks to Matt “Eagle SG” Wilson for his beautiful opening sequences with the ships, and to Frederick Marcoux over at Concept Web who keeps DialtheGate.com up and running. I am so privileged to be able to bring as many episodes as I have over the course of the last few years, and we’re gonna get a few more in before we wrap up Season Five and I go into hiatus. There’s a lot in development already for next year that is going to be exciting for Stargate fans, and I can’t wait to share it with all of you. I really appreciate you taking the time to tune in, and it means so much that Rob would stop by and give us nearly two hours of his time years after this franchise has come to an end. It’s so wonderful that it means so much to him still. My name is David Read for Dial the Gate. I appreciate you tuning in, and I will see you on the other side.