Robert Picardo brought Atlantis to San Francisco, and now he’s across the bridge at Starfleet Academy! Join Dial the Gate in this very special interview as we discuss the latest edition to the Star Trek pantheon.

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TRANSCRIPT
Find an error? Submit it here.

Mel Harris as Oma Desala [clip]:
The future’s never certain.

David Read:
Heliopolis, meaning City of the Sun, was an ancient Egyptian religious center near modern Cairo. It was a central religious site for the sun god, Ra, and it was key for theology and astronomy, considered to be the place where creation began. It’s also the nickname Ernest Littlefield gave the meeting place for the Library of the Four Great Races in “The Torment of Tantalus.” We’ve been developing at Dial the Gate our own version of Heliopolis, a knowledge companion. It’s designed to let you explore the Stargate universe in an interactive way, ask questions, and uncover material that collectors have been preserving for years. It’s an ambitious project and we could use some help. So, if you know how to build rich media-driven web experiences, if retrieval-augmented generation means something to you, ’cause it certainly doesn’t to me — I’m just reading this script from Ian — or if you have hands-on experience with hybrid search or knowledge graphs, reach out to me at [email protected] and I will put you in touch with Ian and Martin on our backend who are building this thing. We would be very grateful for your help. Welcome to Episode 392 of Dial the Gate: The Stargate Oral History Project. I’m David Read. I appreciate you joining me for this episode. Joe Flanigan, Colonel John Sheppard. Here he be. How are you, sir?

Joe Flanigan:
Here you be. I’m good, thank you very much. Yes, I am. I am surviving the zombie apocalypse.

David Read:
God. It’s good to see you.

Joe Flanigan:
And I’m not a taxidermied animal yet on somebody’s shelf, and that’s good news.

David Read:
Something to look forward to. Hopefully a good view from wherever they perch you. I had you on my, the second day I started this thing.

Joe Flanigan:
Wait, let me just say somethin’. I’ve got this on livestream, and we’re already pluggin’ up to, we just passed 100 here. Can you put anything on the screen that says, “Dial in,” or…?

David Read:
So, for folks that are… I don’t know how… So, are you rebroadcasting me? How’s that working on your side?

Joe Flanigan:
I don’t know. I just hit “livestream” and it’s looking at it like this. So, you’re coming through my Instagram livestream feed.

David Read:
Sweet.

Joe Flanigan:
So, if you wanna put your little, moniker on, you can.

David Read:
Youtube.com/dialthegate is where folks can go.

Joe Flanigan:
OK. All right.

David Read:
So, it’d have to go into the backend and update all that, and it wouldn’t load. It would take forever to do it. I appreciate it though, man. We are nearly at 400 episodes on this thing, and there is so much Stargate buzz. I wanna get to the new show in just a moment here, but honestly what I wanna start off with, the fires in California were about a year ago now.

Joe Flanigan:
Correct.

David Read:
The Pacific Palisades one, is that the name of them? Is that what we call them? Or is that…

Joe Flanigan:
The Palisades fire. Yeah, I think part of Malibu is included in the Palisades fire now. ‘Cause it all started from that place. And then there’s the Eaton fire, which is the Altadena area.

David Read:
Was that the one that your home was involved in?

Joe Flanigan:
No, my home was burned in the one five years earlier. Which is called the Woolsey fire. We need an encyclopedia of natural disasters here in California. Mine was the Woolsey fire, and it was pretty darn big. This one was also awfully big. This one was a little more core, in population-dense areas. So, let me give you an idea. In Altadena, I have a sister who has two separate daughters that are my nieces, separately married with kids. All three of them lost houses. So, that’s three houses in one family. And so we’re talking about an incredible dislocation that a lot of people don’t… It’s hard for people to imagine. Maybe people who deal with tornadoes in the Midwest and stuff like that, they can understand it. But beyond that, I think it’s past people’s capacity to measure. But it’s pretty difficult. And I likened the fires… I know some people may agree or disagree, but a lot of people, I’ve gotten a lot of feedback. I said that a fire destroying your house is a little… On the meter of tragedies, it’s not quite there. What it is, it’s in this kind of deeply inconvenient, annoying area. The tragedies are losing heirlooms and family connections, for sure. Everything else is replaceable. But you’ll see that you’re not running from a war zone. You’re dealing with a deeply inconvenient situation in a highly developed world. And so, I try to keep perspective on that. But it’s a totally new experience. Everybody handles it completely differently.

David Read:
My family’s lost property in hurricane Ivan in Florida in 2004. I have this photograph on my wall of a palm tree and our place behind it. And after Ivan, everything in that photo was leveled. So, it’s just kind of… But thankfully, we didn’t really lose anything specific. But what I bring this up about is, I remember you putting out your message to folks who were dealing with this a year ago now. And what stuck with me, and it’s stuck with me ever since, is you mentioned the fact that, “if you’re reading this, it’s OK. That’s the important thing is that you can read this, that you didn’t get taken out with it. And the other thing is that you might be surprised just how lighter weight you feel after this has happened.” And I just remember watching your video…

Joe Flanigan:
Not having to clean out your crowded garage or…

David Read:
Everything resets for you.

Joe Flanigan:
I think I know what you’re saying. What I was really getting at…

David Read:
And it was so cool, that message.

Joe Flanigan:
What I was getting at was this kind of odd silver lining of gratitude that creeps in. And difficult things happen, and we often assign it to the difficult thing category. But what comes with it is a lot of other stuff that’s far more complex to file. One of them is just gratitude. And I was saying I was grateful to have lived in that house, grateful that I’m still alive, grateful that just to witness so many people trying to help me. And so, you become this odd passenger on a trip that you have no control over. And the gratitude, for me, it was impossible to escape. I couldn’t push the gratitude away. I felt immense gratitude. I think that’s the thing that a lot of people responded to the most on that post. And by the way, it was odd, because I posted that and for months I would be in totally different parts of town, and people would stop me, and it wasn’t for Stargate. They were stopping me because they said, “I watched your fire video, and it was very helpful.” I was trying to give them tangible advice on what to do, and also just kind of the emotional terrain that they’re gonna experience. And it seemed to be helpful, which I was really surprised and I’m glad. I was unexpectedly successful in translating that message.

David Read:
Just when things are raw and you cannot misinterpret sincere. Because people, when they need to hear a certain thing, they’ll be ready to hear it. And I think they were then. And I, who just knew folks like David DeLuise, who had dealt with it. It was what needed to be heard at the time people needed to hear it. So, it’s really cool.

Joe Flanigan:
There were a lot of actors who lost their houses in this last fire. So, they were also able to reach out to people. Cary Elwes is a friend of mine. He lost his house, and you know. I knew people who had moved away from Malibu to the Palisades specifically to escape the fires, only to have their houses burned in the Palisades. You can’t escape it. What I find remarkable… and you’re gonna notice I do something. I tend to take a specific event and extrapolate it to a larger thing, often at my own detriment, and people often say I depersonalize topics. But for people to sit here and to say there’s not global warming, when the fires are super fires. They’re fires that we have not experienced before. And if I’m not mistaken, I could be wrong about this statistic, but it’s pretty darn close, it’s something like seven out of the 10 most devastating fires of all time in California have occurred in the last 10 or 12 years. So, you have to ask yourself… Now, there are elements to that that you have to be aware of. One is the expansion of where people live, true. There’s more people living in more rural areas, 100%. But you get rid of all that stuff, you’re talking about extreme weather events. And if people don’t believe me, talk to the people, the insurance companies who write the actuarials. They’ll tell you, we’re dealing with a different animal here. So, I find it sad that we’re here — I told you I’ve got a big — we’re here, completely sidetracked, with this horse shit circus going on in Washington, and we don’t even discuss environmental issues anymore. Not only that, there’s an almost arrogant pride in dismantling any environmental policies that have been put into place. And it’s sad to me. It’s sad to me that we’re now ensconced in a really shitty high school drama, and we’re not being mature. It’s almost like we’ve stopped being a serious country. And it makes me sad. But we could’ve been leaders on this, and we decided to step away, and being brats, we decided to step away and be spoiled brats. And so now, the rest of the world, maybe they fill in that vacuum. We’ll see. But climate change’s a deal. And by the way, I say this to go back to the issue, people in California can’t get fire insurance. They cannot get fire insurance. And this is crazy. And we have a homeless problem and a housing crisis, and you can’t get fire insurance. None of these issues are being addressed. And so, it all stews. If one is astute enough to look at things, they’ll realize that everything is connected. And I wish we’d all just wake up and sort of pull our collective head out of our asses and start looking at things more wisely. And be aware that a fire like this will happen again. Probably very soon. Blah, blah, blah.

David Read:
You’re fine.

Joe Flanigan:
I know.

David Read:
The next Stargate series is in development.

Joe Flanigan:
Yes.

David Read:
And how did you find out and what are your thoughts?

Joe Flanigan:
It’s very interesting. I’ve been talking to Momoa for a little while about various other things, but I told him, I said, “You and I should get control of the Stargate franchise again.” And he was like, “Ah, I don’t wanna do it. I don’t wanna do it. I got too much on my plate. I don’t wanna do it.” I go, “Just hear me out. The fans love it. It’s one of your original shows. You don’t have to do anything. We’ll do everything, blah, blah, blah. Amazon would be very happy to work with you.” And I knew that if…

David Read:
Oh, so this is recently, past couple years?

Joe Flanigan:
Very recently. I said, “If, with your name on it, and we’re attached as producers, I’ll do all the heavy lifting.” That was about seven to 10 days later… There was an announcement in the press that they had rebooted Stargate. So, I told him, I said, “Well, we’re a day late and a dollar short.” And apparently, they had been in talks with this group for a year, and that’s fine. Honestly, Jason did not want to do it. I think I wanted to get it produced. And so, I got a call, and it was funny ’cause those two probably are many of the same people I would have reached out to help resurrect the franchise. As it is, they’re gonna do it, and they told me that it’s all hush-hush and so forth. I hope the audience can finally get what it wants, which is a reboot. I don’t think any of us… Well, I don’t think I’m involved. I think I would know by now if I was. But then, who knows? Maybe my character shows up every now and then, or maybe I show up occasionally. I have no idea. But I know quite certainly that I’m certainly not going to be a regular cast member on that show.

David Read:
There were a number of folks who were hoping for General Sheppard. So, do you see him as being promoted to General? Do you see that as a path for him? Potentially?

Joe Flanigan:
No. I don’t. I see him as an institutionally anti-institutional.

David Read:
Well, there’s a little bit of maverick in the guy.

Joe Flanigan:
I don’t see him being bequeathed with high levels of responsibility, because I don’t think he’s capable of carrying the dogma necessary for that. So, no. And I don’t think that’s a big deal. Who knows? He could be retired and be a carpenter for all I know.

David Read:
I don’t see a guy like him quitting. Maybe if the right circumstances came along. But someone like that would have a real hard time just walking away.

Joe Flanigan:
Personally, in my head, I think what a good storyline would have been if he comes back in any way, shape, or form is that they bring back characters, but I think the great character arc is… Say he isn’t in the military anymore. He’s retired and he’s a test pilot or something that has a bit of a drinking problem or something. And is not necessarily at the top of his game, and then getting hooked up with the team again might force him to step away from his demons and whatever. That would be kind of an interesting arc. I don’t know if that’s anything they’re gonna do. Who knows? Martin Gero called me and he said, “Why don’t you drop by the writer’s room here in LA?” So, I think I’m going to on Wednesday, but there’s a lot of NDAs involved in that, so don’t expect me to be able to give you any information.

David Read:
Unless it’s from the man himself, I actually don’t want it. I’m in a much different place now than I was with GateWorld and spoilers all long ago. They have a story to share. Why would you want to unwrap it before Christmas? That’s just something not right about that. But I am sorry to hear that you cannot say, “I cannot talk about it.” That’s what I’m trying to get at. But at the same time, you could be playing 3D chess with me, so I’m just gonna give you that one, because there’s so much potential in this show.

Joe Flanigan:
I love that you think I’m smart enough to play 3D chess, let alone 2D chess.

David Read:
I wouldn’t put it past you. You worked in Washington.

Joe Flanigan:
I wish that I knew something to hide. I really don’t. There’s a lot of other things that we’re all doing in our lives. And I always have known that… What happened with Stargate and Stargate Atlantis was sort of an unusual thing, which doesn’t always happen in Hollywood, which is it was an odd combination of quirky elements coming together in this kind of incongruity to throw a show out, and that includes Stargate and Stargate Atlantis. That was just off center enough that made people wanna watch, and they get hooked to. And the problem with the process here in Hollywood is that the process is so highly vetted and so highly formulized, and it’s run by test groups, and they do everything they can to mitigate every potential risk they will ever have, and in the process, they hand you milquetoast, they hand you pablum, they hand you shit. And it’s just boring as hell, because they figured out how not to offend anybody, and they end up giving you crap. So, hopefully, they’ll avoid that stuff and take some risks and not be too overly concerned with making everybody happy. I think that’s one of the biggest mistakes show runners can make. And by the way, they’re with Amazon now. When we were at MGM, MGM was not that big. It had downsized to something so rudimentary that, if I’m not mistaken, I heard at one point we were the only active production at MGM at one point. So, that gives you an idea of how small it got. Now you’re talking about Amazon, which is an absolute behemoth, one of the largest companies in the world, certainly one of the largest production companies ever. And so I don’t know what the parameters are for people like them. I have no idea.

David Read:
Let’s speak to the parameters of what this IP is, from what you remember about participating in it. What does SG4 — that’s what I call it — need to do, in your mind, to be a true success? You got flour, eggs, and water to bake a cake. What are the raw ingredients that need to go into this fourth one, at this point in time for us now, for it to be a success, in your opinion? As, you know, as playing Sheppard, I mean, what would you expect? “I’ll sit down and I will watch that.”

Joe Flanigan:
I’ll tell you this. And this may come off as self-interested, but if you’re asking me, and nobody is, what my advice would be…

David Read:
I’m asking you right now.

Joe Flanigan:
What advice I would give to people doing the new show, I would be really, really passionate about saying, and this sounds self-interested, but bring back as many old characters as you can from Stargate and Stargate: Atlantis to launch this thing. The mistake they made with Universe was they completely amputated us and decided to start a new show that then no longer had our support. We were off the air, so we couldn’t do a lot of crossovers. And also, they wanted to have something far more serious and less… I think they wanted to get away from the self-deprecating, playful nature of the Stargate franchise into something more Battlestar Galactica and more serious and gritty, and this and that. And that’s fine. I think that’s a different show. I’ll be honest with you. I think one of the most clever aspects of Stargate is its recognition of its own particular limits, and that wink of the eye and that self-deprecation, that playfulness. And I have always said this, I will give Richard Dean Anderson a lot of credit, because that guy stepped into the role and didn’t play it at all like the Kurt Russell character. So, much so you didn’t even recognize there was a connection between the two characters. And you’re also wondering what… Sometimes you’re watching, “What is he doing?” I have no idea what he’s doing. Is he disconnected or is he uber connected? I don’t know what it is. He made people watch, and he bent the show into a weird direction, maybe on purpose, maybe by accident. I have no idea. And that quirkiness is what really got its claws into the fan base and created a fan base. And that quirkiness, I think, continued in Atlantis. And that quirkiness, I think they amputated it in Stargate Universe. Which is too bad, because those actors are all superb actors on Stargate Universe. They didn’t get the type of support that Atlantis got. We got a lot of support.

David Read:
It’s a frustrating situation, because Stargate Productions was not necessarily… Were they to do exactly what they wanted, you would’ve gone on to do Stargate: Extinction pretty quickly. So, there would’ve been no reason for crossover into Season One of Universe, because you guys would’ve been busy with that. And a little bit, the anticipation was for Atlantis to go and do a DVD movie, and so that’s where Atlantis was gonna live on, and then that didn’t happen. And so, the result now is they…

Joe Flanigan:
I love when you say “DVD.” “DVD,” I almost feel like we might as well do a silent film. That’s how archaic that sounds, “DVD.”

David Read:
From our perspective, no. But, I mean, Ark of Truth and Continuum made a ton of money. And MGM was like, “Yes, we needed a ton of money.” And the guys were like, “OK, so are we ready to do more now?” They’re like, “No, we’re seeing it’s cooling down. We’re not gonna…” “What? What about it?” “We’ve got Revolutions, we’ve got Extinction, we’ve got ready to go.” “Is Atlantis on the moon?” “Is it still sitting there in the bay blocking water traffic? I mean, what the hell?” There’s a lot left undone. And I’m really interested to see how they’re gonna navigate that in the new show being 14, 15 years removed from what happened with Universe, 16, 17 removed with you guys. Is it gonna be mentioned in dialogue? Are they gonna completely ignore it until they have the ability to say, “OK, this was successful. Now let’s go make another one and let’s answer them in that one?” But I really think this needs to be at least 51% all new.

Joe Flanigan:
I think that would be a very smart thing for Amazon to do, which is pick up where they left off and do the two movies that they were committed to doing that at least resolved the show. And whether that bleeds over into the new show or not, I don’t know. That’s up to them. At this point, Momoa and I have traveled all over the world signing autographs for this show, and I think we have heard repeatedly, like, “What happened? How did it end? It didn’t end. I don’t know. Why did it…”

David Read:
And you have nothing to say.

Joe Flanigan:
And I think a lot of them are angry. They’re like, “We could’ve gone another five years.” I’m like, “Yeah, fine, but at least we could’ve gone a couple more episodes and explained what the hell happened.” It’ll be interesting to see what they do. I have always said, way back when I was interested in the franchise, that there is no reason Stargate could not be as powerful as Star Trek. There’s no reason. It has all the mythological parameters to expand, expand, expand. It can go different. Star Trek was just very… For one, it has a brand recognition that you can’t deny. But it has a very, very astute and savvy business plan, which is [to] throw something out there. That one’s a little dark, that one’s a little funnier. But it’s not so different that they don’t all connect. And so, Star Trek was clever. And I just thought to myself, “What in God’s name are they letting that collect dust for?” And that was more of a structural issue with MGM going bankrupt and so forth. So, now that it’s landed in Amazon, let’s see what happens, you know?

David Read:
See what happens.

Joe Flanigan:
I know the people at Amazon are… Let’s just say they’re interested in making money. So, I doubt they’re gonna want it to sit there and collect dust.

David Read:
We were beginning to think they were after all this time. It’s like, “Well, guys, maybe it’s time to cut bait ’cause the fish aren’t biting.” But I was thrilled. Just thrilled. What do you think?

Joe Flanigan:
My suggestion is to do that. And then my other suggestion is to hopefully have enough screen tests or table reads or what have you to start seeing some chemistry between characters. The chemistry between characters is so critical, and it’s so absent sometimes in shows. Because they go into a hole and they go, “We want that person. He looks perfect, he plays that character perfectly. That girl is perfect, she plays her character. Now let’s put them together.” And then they have no connection.

David Read:
Exactly.

Joe Flanigan:
And so you have to… By the way, when I started shooting Stargate, I don’t think David Hewlett was even cast yet, if I’m not mistaken.

David Read:
They were still looking for a Benjamin Ingram and they couldn’t find him. They’re like, “We’ll pop in McKay.”

Joe Flanigan:
I don’t remember. But the minute he walked onto set, the minute I started acting with Paul McGillion or David Hewlett, there was an instant chemistry. And it was… Even David Hewlett said, I think I remember him saying something to the effect, after the first episode… Somebody goes, “You think this’ll do well?” I had done 12 pilots, so I was pretty skeptical. He goes, “I think this is odd enough that it might actually succeed.”

David Read:
Have you heard Paul McGillion’s impression of you?

Joe Flanigan:
It’s so annoying. I don’t wanna talk like that. He wants to make me as annoying as possible.

David Read:
Is he Scottish? Aw, geez. Emmabentley7945 wanted to know about, “Did you enjoy your onscreen chemistry with Robert Davi?” And I was actually wanting to bring up Robert Davi, because we had him on about a year and a half ago. And he loved his character, and he loved the relationship between Sheppard and Kolya on screen. He wanted to come back and do more of that. It’s one of my favorite parts of the franchise, is that, “God, I just want to kill you. But ethically, I just feel like, mm, I think that my boss might have a problem with me just killing you.” it’s a Western ending, so.

Joe Flanigan:
Playing the bad guy is one of the most satisfying things you can ever do. And you ask guys like Colm Meaney and Robert Davi and those guys. But playing a bad guy is so enjoyable. The problem with playing the bad guy is often you’re vanquished by the good guy. And the bad guys are like, “Oh, well, gotta keep my bad guy alive.”

David Read:
Then you’re done.

Joe Flanigan:
Davi, Colm Meaney, and even the guy who played our Wraith…

David Read:
Chris Heyerdahl.

Joe Flanigan:
… Chris Heyerdahl. Chris is just a supremely talented actor who can fit into different roles, so playing the Wraith, he played different Wraiths, he didn’t just play one. But I found that sometimes the good guy is only as good as the bad guy.

David Read:
Awesome.

Joe Flanigan:
So, the stronger the bad guy, the more the hero has to show up. So, it’s interesting. I don’t know how to put it. But a lot of shows, and the way I approached Atlantis, I was super conscious of the choices I was making. I remember not liking certain films that say, Sylvester Stallone or Arnold Schwarzenegger in terms of their choices because their choices were unswerving confidence of the hero. And I’m like, “That’s cool, you’re an iconic character, I get it. There’s something cool about it.” But it doesn’t interest me that much. What interested me… Bruce Willis had a little more, “Uh, I hope this works out.” And Harrison Ford was like, “I don’t know if this is gonna work.” That doubt is so much more interesting to play. And that allows the bad guy to come crawl in and have a presence. And it gives him space to be threatening. When you’re Rambo, everybody’s gonna show up, a bad guy’s gonna show up, but you’re like, “Whatever.” Doesn’t matter how bad the bad guy is, he’s just one more bad guy that’s gonna get vanquished. I think that limits the actors who play bad guys. I think it limits the storytelling. And so, having really good bad guys is one of the best things you can do for a show.

David Read:
That’s key.

Joe Flanigan:
Yeah, 100%.

David Read:
You can’t be a brick wall. You have to have some depth. I think that that’s one of the things that I think Stargate does well, is it really transfers that Han Solo, Harrison Ford kinda quality, infuses it into the show. Like, you, Rick, you guys had swagger. There is a little bit of, “Yeah, uh, this guy wants to suck the life out of me. For God’s sakes, he wants to suck the life out of me. Can we pause and just bring that up?” And so, you acknowledge that. It’s like “This is ridiculous. Now I have to take care of business. But this is ridiculous.” There’s a familiarity to it.

Joe Flanigan:
I have to say that particular choice for certain actors in sci-fi has become… Listen, I don’t wanna say that we influenced anything, ’cause I don’t know if we did.

David Read:
Marvel does this all the time.

Joe Flanigan:
I was just gonna say, my kids all watched Galaxy Quest, or no, Galaxy Quest also.

David Read:
That’s right. Well, that’s a lot of we…

Joe Flanigan:
We were definitely influenced by Galaxy Quest.

David Read:
Oh, for sure.

Joe Flanigan:
Guardians of the Galaxy, and they said, “You know that guy Chris Pratt is doing what you did in Atlantis. He’s doing exactly what you did.” And listen, I’m not taking away from his choice, he’s a good actor. But I was like, “Yeah, I think it is a good choice on a lot of things.” But whether we kind of paved that path or not, I have no idea. I don’t wanna be cocky enough to think we did. But those, to me… it’s a more interesting choice as an actor.

David Read:
For sure. And the fact of the matter is, I think someone mentioned earlier that they’ve traveled around the world with someone that was really cool in this Irish drinking commercial that you may have heard of. And there’s a few people who are interested in more of it. So, I think that something was hit on the head there pretty squarely that worked. And we’re all thankful for it all the same. PennyWood-ib2fw wants to know, “is there anything about Sheppard that you just adored about that character? And is there anything about Sheppard that you just resented?” I’m curious how you respond to that.

Joe Flanigan:
I’m still to this day pretty surprised how little is known about Sheppard and how little backstory it was, was they got into. But that’s OK. David Hewlett’s character McKay was, is so well done. And his proclivities and his habits are far closer to the writing room than mine. And I think it was much easier to write for David and get into David’s backstory. And the truth is, what I do is, I come in and I kind of solve a problem. I don’t know how much backstory you need necessarily. But I do wish we had gone into more backstory, because I also wanted to introduce some…

David Read:
Yeah. “Outcast” was good. “Outcast” was good.

Joe Flanigan:
Yeah, but I wanted to introduce my father and things, ’cause I thought that would be an interesting kind of shadow over the character. But as far as, oh, how would I say? As far as the good parts about him, what I liked was that after the first episode aired, nobody ever told me how to play the character. And that’s true, with every character on the show. It became clear that we owned the character and we knew, and then the writers…

David Read:
That’s right.

Joe Flanigan:
… could respond accordingly. Funny thing happens on shows. Like I told you, I did a lot of pilots. Writers write something, they’re very invested in this character. Then they hand you the character and you’re reading it and you’re trying to interpret the character. They’re like, “No, no, no. A little more like this. A little edgy. A little happier. No, a little sadder.” And they’re trying to mold you into their thing. And it’s understandable, but it denies the kind of cooperative, collaborative nature of this business. And you let an actor step into the role and start making some choices and then write from that point. And so, I would encourage them hopefully to do that and let actors own their characters. And that doesn’t always happen. I think a lot of actors are nervous, they wanna make everybody happy. Maybe that’s a good survival instinct, but I don’t know that it is, to be honest with you. We had a lot of guest stars who would come up and they would say things like… we had one or two guest stars for every episode, and we did like 100 episodes. So, you’re talking about a lot of actors that come in and out of this. And they will often, for reasons that I’m not entirely sure, ask me, I guess, ’cause I’m number one on the call sheet, saying, “Hey, was that good? Do you think it was good? Do you think they like it?” And I would say to them, for one, I understood the nervousness, ’cause I’ve been guest star and recurring, and sometimes in the absence of feedback, you don’t know what’s going on. But I’ve always said to them something that I’ve never heard in acting class. Maybe I just made it up, but I go, “Your job isn’t to be good. Everybody’s obsessed with good, good or bad, good or bad. Forget it. Your job is to not be forgotten.” That’s it. Don’t get forgotten. How you achieve that is up to you. I don’t know. Sometimes the storyline in and of itself can take care of it. But very often, you’re not being given a significant bone of the plot that will secure your character, so you figure out how not to be forgotten. And I know this ’cause I’ve been on so many other pilots and TV shows. I was on one show for CBS, and it was actually not a bad show. It was Charles Durning and Joe Mantegna and we had Rockford on it. And I had to play a Supreme Court clerk, and I was like, “This could get really boring.” And I wasn’t getting the amount of lines that I thought was necessary to be remembered. So, one, I had to master listening. “Mm.” I do a lot of this. So, when the camera turned, I was like, “I’m gonna give the editor some choices here so he keeps me on the goddamn show.” And I would have to really figure out how many, how many ways can I look to be listening? And so I was like, “Cool, get whatever you can.” But then also I was like, “Bow tie. How annoying is a bow tie? I should have a bow tie.” They wanted to grease my hair down and comb it back. I go, “No.”

David Read:
No, you can’t hold the hair back. It’s an animal onto itself.

Joe Flanigan:
I wanted to tell you, but they learned that because we had a very famous show runner named Don Bellisario who had done everything from Quantum Leap to… He’s done it all. And God bless the guy ’cause he doesn’t put up with any bullshit. They flew people into set to have a discussion about my hair. And when he found out and he…

David Read:
Well, it is a new wonder of the world.

Joe Flanigan:
I’m supposed to be a conservative Supreme Court clerk. I guess they expected me to look like maybe a Donald Trump Jr., Addams Family sort of character. But he was like, “What are you doing? Let the goddamn hair be the way it is. Let’s concentrate on the story.” And it was really funny because it could be stupid like that. It could be quite literally stupid like that, like your hair sticks up, people aren’t gonna forget it. And I hate to say these are distractions ’cause they can’t be distractions, but they have to be remembered.

David Read:
That’s true.

Joe Flanigan:
It’s very hard to be remembered. I learned, in little ways to do little things. And I think Jason even said this recently in some interview, I don’t remember. He goes, ’cause he directed me in that commercial. He said, “A lot of people don’t realize that when I work with Joe, Joe does all these little things. And it’s not until you get into the editing room that you have all these little things that he’s done, his funny little looks, even when he’s not talking and stuff, and great things to cut to.” And that helps. That would’ve been my suggestion for any actors, guest stars, recurrence, even regulars, is to be distinct in your choices, be clear in your choices, and try to be remembered.

David Read:
That’s it.

Joe Flanigan:
Everybody’s obsessed with being good. I don’t know what being good means. There’s so many good actors. There are a lot of good actors.

David Read:
And not all with as cool hair. It’s like, what’s it doing? Just leave it alone. Whatever it does, it’s doing it right now.

Joe Flanigan:
I’m just happy I have hair because at my age, there’s a lot of people that don’t even have hair.

David Read:
It’s true. I wanna speak to you real quick about the Guinness commercial. Paulbrickler asks, “Did you enjoy doing it with Jason? And can you tell us more about that whole thing?” ‘Cause that was a dream of yours, wasn’t it, to be in a Guinness commercial? Or am I hearing that from…

Joe Flanigan:
Well, that was Jason’s dream.

David Read:
That was Jason’s dream?

Joe Flanigan:
Jason’s dream was to be in a Guinness commercial or inside the keg of a Guinness.

David Read:
Tell us about this story.

Joe Flanigan:
No, you gotta remember that my… I come from a family that has been brewing beer for many generations.

David Read:
That’s why I thought it would be your dream.

Joe Flanigan:
No, it’s the opposite. Had my dad been alive, and Anheuser-Busch not bought, sold, and pillaged fewer years earlier, I wouldn’t have been able to do a Guinness commercial in good conscience. When I grew up, my father, if I drank anything other than Budweiser, which is the beer he made, he would knock it out of my hands. He would go to restaurants, and he would offer to buy everybody there not drinking Budweiser, replace their beers, give them a fresh Budweiser, “I’ll pay for it.” That’s how passionate he was about beer and beer making. And that’s ’cause his great-grandfather had founded this company and they were very passionate about the product. So, Guinness was a little bit of a shock. It would not have gone down well. As it is, no family members are there at the brewery anymore. There was a hostile takeover. And I think we all grew up with the wrong concept that somehow with the lineage, it was our brewery. We had cousins that were still running the brewery, and as it turned out, we owned very little of the brewery. I think Warren Buffett basically reminded us that we didn’t really have much of the brewery. It was a publicly traded company, and there were people that just owned way more than we did, and, “Step out of the way. We’re selling your brewery.” And a lot of people went into depression on that. My dad had mercifully passed away a year or two earlier, and I think he would’ve been heartbroken to have seen that happen. And he certainly would’ve been heartbroken to see me in a Guinness commercial.

David Read:
I stand corrected.

Joe Flanigan:
But of course I had fun. It was Andrew, I mean Brian Mendoza, who’s a great friend, and obviously Momoa, who’s one of my closest friends. And it was a way to go to New Zealand and have fun and do things, and that’s exactly what we did. And it was a blast. And by the way, the Guinness people… I think Jason goes, “Hey, Flanigan, where are you?” And the Guinness people were like, “Oh, we need to change his name.” And they were like, “Why? I mean, Flanigan’s pretty damn Irish. Let’s keep that name.” I don’t know, but he convinced them to keep the name.

David Read:
They better.

Joe Flanigan:
Everybody who works with Jason pretty much will tell you, he has an infectious kind of embrace of situations. It’s a certain joy. And he grabs people and he’s having fun, and it’s almost impossible not to have fun with Jason. And so, we had a great time.

David Read:
Awesome, man. We were talking a bit… Do we have a few more minutes?

Joe Flanigan:
Sure.

David Read:
We were talking a bit… I do agree with you about the characters just working right out of the gate from the pilot. The interesting thing is that there wouldn’t be Ronon without Ford departing from the show. And Rainbow is someone I consider a friend, and it’s one of those things where it’s just… It’s so damn frustrating to me to this point, because A, I love that we got Ronon, but B, it sucks that we lost Aiden Ford. And I never have spoken with you about finding out about that and just dealing with the fact that this is someone who… This is a person you care about as well, departing the show.

Joe Flanigan:
Rainbow is a class act, and I consider him a good friend, and I still stay in touch with him. And he’s just a lovely human being, and he handled it much better than I would have handled it. But what you gotta remember is that there were a number of people fired, and I was upset by every one of those. With the exception of one, they told me… I had learned about all these things after they fired them. One of them, I was technically being told that they had not fired them yet, and then I tried to go about convincing them, “Bad idea, bad idea, don’t do it. The audience loves them. Don’t do it. We need that person.” And then they go, “Well, sort of too late, we already did.” So, there was this whole feeling that I was like… “I’m an actor. I’m not a producer, I’m not an employer, I’m not a boss.” And many times, viewed as simply an employee, and so I only have X amount of pull. And I was really upset that Rainbow got left. And it also became clear to me that nobody really cared what I thought. Which wasn’t heartbreaking. I’ve always known the hierarchical structure of things. Then they sent me to LA to read for the new characters, and that’s when it became real that Rainbow was gonna be leaving. But I will say that in… We got Rainbow back on the show for I don’t know how many episodes, but that was also nice.

David Read:
There were a few in Season Two, and there was a great… Martin Gero wrote him into the introduction of Season Five, which was a great… It’s there for a beat, and it’s perfect. There’s unfinished business in that man’s heart.

Joe Flanigan:
And Martin, in my view, was one of the best writers on that show. I think he was one of the most talented writers on the show. And he had a good handle on humor and everything else. And so, having him as the showrunner of the new show I think is a good sign.

David Read:
Awesome. Last question for you, 095LANA. “What is your impression of –” We already answered this a little bit in the beginning, “– of fandom today compared to what it was when the show ended, and what do you foresee for fandom in the future, its growth, its contraction. What are your thoughts?”

Joe Flanigan:
I’m not exactly sure. I could never tell you the evolution of the fandom when we ended and the fandom now. I am pleasantly surprised that the fandom when we left the show has not dissipated. That’s the shocking thing. And I try to tell people this. Sometimes I get invited to sign autographs in different conventions around the world, and a lot of ’em, the promoters will be trying to chisel you down to no money. They go, “Ah, such an old show.” And I’m, “Yeah, I guess it is.” And that’s what’s shocking is that I’m signing more people. All the people that you started with are rediscovering…

David Read:
Well, they now had kids, and those kids want their own autographs.

Joe Flanigan:
They have kids, and the kids are watching it. And so, I’m surprised. Now, I am, along with Jason, being the only two Americans on that show… Me and Jason Momoa were the only two Americans on the show, and we’re members of the Screen Actors Guild. We get residuals. Most of the time on all the other series I’ve done, you get residuals, they start pretty high, and then they go off a cliff until you get pennies for checks. Stargate has, it kinda went down and then it spiked back up. And the residuals are higher than they’ve normally been. And that’s an indication that it’s running more than it has in the past. And I can’t explain that. So, the fandom is clearly there. The fandom, ironically, is creating new generations of fans. And maybe, you know how that show Suits and things like that became popular again? It’s conceivable that that type of thing could happen. I think you can’t quite prove it, but I wouldn’t be surprised if a number of Jason Momoa fans from other projects rediscovered Stargate Atlantis because he was in it. That’s a possibility.

David Read:
I think that’s a factor.

Joe Flanigan:
It’s not quantifiable, but anecdotally I’d say there’s definitely some influence there. And then also there’s a lack of good, true-blue science fiction TV shows out there. Not a lot of ’em. That mix in action and the whole bit, they tend… There’s not a lot of ’em.

David Read:
I think you guys hold a very special place in pop culture, and I think that you’re gonna be around for a while.

Joe Flanigan:
Be around in a digital heaven.

David Read:
But you’ll still be suave, and that hair will still be doing its thing. Joe…

Joe Flanigan:
Hey, let’s hope so.

David Read:
… thank you so much for spending some time today. It means a lot to have you back.

Joe Flanigan:
You bet.

David Read:
I’d love to have you back later this year. It just meant a lot to have you this week.

Joe Flanigan:
You bet. And listen, I hope that the fans really do get what they want in the new show.

David Read:
For sure.

Joe Flanigan:
They deserve it. They’ve stuck with everybody, stuck with me, they’ve stuck with everybody, and they deserve their loyalty to be paid off.

David Read:
Awesome.

Joe Flanigan:
Good talking to you, David.

David Read:
It’s good to see you, man. I’m gonna go ahead and wrap up the show…

Joe Flanigan:
All right.

David Read:
… on this end, please stay well. Bye-bye, sir. Thank you. Joe Flanigan, Major John Sheppard… Colonel John Sheppard, excuse me — Thank God he’s gone — on Stargate Atlantis. My name is David Read. You’re watching the Stargate Oral History Project. ErikaStroem was the one who asked, “Was Joe as upset as we were when Rainbow got taken off the show?” I apologize, Erica. I missed that. I was scrolling down. I was like, “She asked that question. I’m gonna give her credit for it,” even though I also had the same nugget, ’cause we had never talked about Rainbow. So, that was awesome to have him back. I have to give a couple of shout-outs before we go. To Brice Ors, Ibrec, I-B-R-E-C. You can find him on social media. He created our opening sequence today, flying over Atlantis. And then to James over at Venture Pictures, who created our… What you’re about to see, the closing credits here. And you can find him on social media, Venture, I think @venture.pictures. He’s done a ton of Stargate stuff, Stargate eye candy, as I call it, and he’s going to be coming over to Dial the Gate here pretty soon to discuss that. We are going to try to… Am I gonna say this aloud? I’m gonna. We’re gonna try and do 20 shows in 20 days to open up Season Six. That was one. So, let’s see what happens. Most of them are pre-recorded. We have a ton of stuff that we shot in Vancouver, really excited to share with y’all. Christopher Judge, I rescheduled him a little bit later ’cause he’s gonna need a little bit more retooling. He’s going to be up at 2:00 PM Pacific Time. We talked this morning. The man looks good. Tomorrow, Stargate production art, James CD Robbins, February the 8th at 10:00 AM. And then our first pre-recorded episode from Vancouver. It is going to be a round table discussion between Tom McBeath and Jacqueline Samuda and Garwin Sanford, as they talk about their careers, their characters, and acting. That’s gonna be February the 8th at 12 noon Pacific Time. February the 9th, we’re gonna talk about this little Stargate command light-up logo that I’ve got. We’re gonna take a look at a Stargate props and costumes exhibition from Germany on February the 10th… I need to double check those times there. I’ve gotta check that out on the back end. So, I’m just gonna stop there because God knows what else is wrong on that page. We have a little bit more business to go through. Just a second here for me. Where is that file? Brice for the opening sequence. My tremendous thanks to my moderators for making this episode possible today. Antony Rawling is doing the chapters. Kevinweaver1455 was our mod captain, and Enigma, our mod co-captain. I appreciate you guys manning the store, and make sure that everyone behaves themselves in there, ’cause I could not do the show without you guys. And a special shout-out to Tilemachos Kopanos, who has been working tirelessly with me to build a new video infrastructure on my side here, on my tools. I was spinning 10 plates the last time I talked with Joe for episode four, and now nine of those plates are automated. Did I say I was spinning 10? Yeah, nine of those are automated now. It has become so much easier thanks to him, and it means a lot to have him. And he’s also helped me launch Dial the Gate’s third YouTube channel as of today. We had Wormhole X-Tremists launch a couple of years ago, three years ago, and today we’re launching a third called The Daily Gate. And you can type in YouTube “The Daily Gate.” I wanted to create a channel that is just my favorite Stargate clips, my favorite scenes from the franchise. And so, my hope is to release one a day for the foreseeable future in there. And dress them up a little bit, make them look good, make it look… ‘Cause there’s a lot of clip channels out there on YouTube, and I didn’t wanna create just another one. So, it’s nice at this point. I think we’re ready to expand a little bit more. But there’s a ton heading your way this season. Thanks again to Joe for joining us for this episode. And stick around for Christopher Judge coming soon and keep your eye on DialtheGate.com because all kinds of new Stargate content is heading your way. My name is David Read for Dial the Gate. I appreciate you tuning in, and I will see you on the other side.