Please note: This is a re-upload to repair poor audio. The original episode can be found here: https://youtube.com/live/DBKSvzPNgbw

Hollywood analyst Jenny Stiven returns with the latest intel on the latest newly announced Stargate series, along with GateWorld’s Darren Sumner. Tune in LIVE and submit your questions.

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Timecodes
0:00 – Splash Screen
0:30 – Welcome
0:56 – Guest Introduction
2:14 – Jenny’s Initial Reaction to the News
4:07 – How Jac Schaeffer Got to Develop the New Stargate Show
9:30 – A Creative Brief That Ruled Out a Hard Reboot, But…
12:33 – A Marvel Parliament
16:12 – A Soft Reboot Means New Characters
19:04 – It’s Still Very Early in Development
20:16 – She Brings Experienced Writers into Her Writers’ Room
22:01 – Going Into Turnaround
23:01 – A Jewel in the Crown
24:14 – The Fandom & the Community
27:37 – Everyone Is Entitled to Their Preference
28:37 – Context Behind Stargate Origins
31:26 – Fans Will Have to Accept a New Storyteller
34:16 – Hopefully, Fans Will Respect Each Other’s Opinions
39:18 – A Central Message from a United Fandom
42:21 – The Campaign Contributed to the Current Mandate
45:00 – The Gold Standard for Fans
49:19 – Be Transparent With the Fans
54:52 – Summary of the Discussion
57:39 – Does the Exec Who Wrote the Mandate Still Work There?
58:34 – Should the Campaign Stay the Course?
1:01:32 – Soft Reboot vs. Hard Reboot
1:05:07 – Brainstorming Development Conversations
1:06:19 – Having a Friendly Conversation With Schaeffer
1:08:57 – Safehouse Could Be a Bridge Between Fandom and the Studio
1:12:54 – Some News Sooner Rather Than Later
1:14:00 – Safehouse Seems Open to New Approaches
1:19:04 – Keep the Message Positive
1:24:06 – Possible Filming Locations
1:25:46 – YouTube’s Development
1:28:14 – Make Good Ripples in the Time That You’re Given
1:29:18 – SaveStargate Update
1:35:05 – 30th Anniversary Project
1:37:12 – They Are Exciting Times
1:40:52 – Keep Hope Alive
1:41:21 – This Isn’t Over Yet
1:42:45 – Thank You Both
1:43:00 – A Full Circle Preview
1:44:04 – Post-Interview Housekeeping
1:47:15 – End Credits

***
“Stargate,” “Stargate SG-1,” “Stargate Atlantis,” “Stargate Universe,” and all related materials are owned by Amazon MGM Studios.

#SaveStargate
#Stargate
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#TurtleTimeline

TRANSCRIPT
Find an error? Submit it here.

Jenny Stiven:
All the time.

David Read:
Jenny, we don’t want you to cry. Hey.

Jenny Stiven:
No.

David Read:
Hey, look at that, the internet.

Jenny Stiven:
Hey.

David Read:
Hllo, and stop doing the thingy. Welcome to Dial the Gate: the Stargate Oral History Project. My name is David Weed– And David Read. That is not a Freudian slip.

Darren Sumner:
That’s appropriate.

David Read:
I hate the smell.

Darren Sumner:
Not inappropriate for today.

David Read:
I’m with Darren Sumner of Gateworld.net.

Darren Sumner:
Hello.

David Read:
And Jenny Stiven of Cleo Consulting. Guys, thank you so much for being here. Whoops. And of course, I failed to do the right thingy there.

David Read:
How are you, Jenny?

Jenny Stiven:
I’m doing great. Having a good time, working hard. Just got back from a family reunion, having a good time so far.

David Read:
Wonderful.

Jenny Stiven:
And now I can actually see everybody. Ooh, look at that.

David Read:
Hey, there we go.

David Read:
We are thrilled to have you. And Darren, how are things going by you, sir?

Darren Sumner:
Things are going great.

David Read:
Are you all settled in?

Darren Sumner:
Mostly. I shared on our end of our last livestream that I’m building out a new office over here. I’ve got a friend who’s helping me do construction to finish a room that will be the new GateWorld headquarters. A new office, a new recording studio. I’m really excited about it, but it’s still a work in progress, so stay tuned for a tour.

David Read:
We look forward to that.

Darren Sumner:
I’m excited to be here with you guys and talk Stargate.

David Read:
All right. We’ve got, “Not Cannabis Consulting,” says WP2746. No, Cleo Consulting.

Darren Sumner:
That’s good.

David Read:
That’s correct. And let us know …

Jenny Stiven:
OK, that’s good

David Read:
… if my audio levels are weird ’cause I never know anymore. Jenny …

Jenny Stiven:
Yes, sir.

David Read:
… a thing has happened since we were last on together. What fate Stargate? What’s going on? What is the likelihood– We bring you in to give us the brass tacks and a straight answer. Even if there is no information, this is where we’re at. So, let us know what’s going on, please.

Jenny Stiven:
OK. Hi, everybody. As always, I love being with these guys.

David Read:
Can you introduce yourself real quick, please? Jenny Stiven.

Jenny Stiven:
I’m Jenny Stiven. I own Cleo Consulting. I work with Sci-Fi Geek Properties, doing fandom development and brand franchise development across all platforms, from one end of the spectrum, studios, to the other end of the spectrum in the creator economy. So, I was on my way to a family reunion on Friday driving through the Sonoran Desert when my phone blew up at 12:03 or whatever it was. And I think one of the things that I had to do was take a step back, go to my family reunion and have fun, and then start — what I told everybody on Stargate team — hitting the phones, old school, and find out what I could for background for what might be happening. And so as I always do, 14 asterisks with everything I’m saying, that I do not work for Amazon. I no longer work for Stargate. So, this is based on talking with friends who still work on the project or at Amazon, or work in different areas with Amazon as agencies of record.

David Read:
Thank you for the context. So, based on that, Disney had absorbed 20th Century Fox. You have a lot of folks there who have cross-pollinated and know different — that sounds like a hive thing — know different people and know folks who have boots on the ground there. What’s going on?

Jenny Stiven:
You all had a great simulcast on Friday, by the way, and I think you both covered a lot of territory that answered as many questions as you could within the information that we had. So, I’m gonna back up a little bit to a couple of things — and you’ve already said, so please forgive me, everybody, I’m repeating some things that these guys have said or some of our friends on some of the other podcasts have said — to give context to also get it straight in my head. So, Safehouse Pictures, of which Jac Schaeffer is a part of, she’s not a partner, has been the executive producer and attached with the new Stargate prior to Martin coming on. So, when Martin, over 18 months, was developing this and working with Brad and Joe, Safehouse Pictures was the production company and the executive producer of record on Stargate, period. So, they’re not new, and I know a lot of people probably know that already from different things that have been written, but I’ve seen some slightly off, and I wanna be really clear. They’ve been there from the beginning. Martin was very happy with them as a production company and as executive producers on the IP, and the two owners were very open to Martin and Brad and Joe’s approach to it, and wanted to do a really big sci-fi series that was different from other things they had worked on or that they had seen recently on Amazon and other streamers. I’m not gonna re-litigate; when Martin and Joe and Brad were fired and that was killed, the approach was that Jac Schaeffer already had a three, I don’t know if she had a three-picture deal. Safehouse has a three-series or first-look deal, and Jac Schaeffer was brought on as part of a three-series deal. And my understanding, from what I’m hearing, is that she was not the person who came forward and said, “I wanna do it.” She was approached by Amazon and said, “Hey, we would like you to attack this.” I don’t know the timing of that. I know there’s been speculation on that. I have tried to confirm it through about four different sources. None of those sources can confirm the timing, so let’s leave that as she was approached after Martin and Brad and Joe left. I wanna do a couple of approaches about her. So, regardless if you like anything she’s done before, any showrunner that came on right now was gonna be problematic for us as fans. It doesn’t matter who it was. It could be Terry Matalas. It could be someone that we all love collectively. Some of us would’ve still had an issue because of the way in which this is happening. I know we talked about this before, that I said either Amazon was gonna make an announcement before the end of the year or it would be at the end of third quarter. They obviously wanted to get this announcement out. My understanding was that that had a lot to do with the campaign, that they’re trying to either, depending upon who you’re talking to internally, appease the campaign or stick a wrench in it. So, I think that the dumping on Friday after 12:00 on a holiday weekend as most people, even if you’re not in the industry, you know that that is a dumping ground. So, let’s look at that as well. That is not necessarily any statement by Amazon or Safehouse Pictures or anything. Just like Amazon has never done an official announcement about Martin and Brad, et cetera, this is not an official press release from Amazon. This is a, from my understanding, a media alert from Safehouse Pictures. So, all that is is, “Hey, we have this first-look deal with Amazon. We’ve brought on Jac Schaeffer for a three-series deal. We want her to develop an idea for Stargate.” There’s no pilot. This I do know. She did not come forward with a pilot to Amazon to pitch it. Nothing like that. So, Safehouse, the executive producer, was told, “Hey, you gotta figure this out. We’ve gotten rid of Martin, Brad, and Joe. Now you gotta figure out who are you gonna bring on. Who are you suggesting to us?” And this is who they came forward with. The other thing that I do know, and this is to confirm, I think Shane said this, is that I did get this confirmed that Safehouse Pictures was given a creative brief, that there is to be no hard reboot, period, end of subject. There is to be absolutely within the TV universe canon.

David Read:
OK. Whoa. Can you please say that again?

Darren Sumner:
That’s big.

Jenny Stiven:
I know, but I’m gonna say this with so many caveats.

David Read:
Say that again with all the asterisks on it …

Darren Sumner:
We’ll hear the caveats.

David Read:
… because that’s why I want you to repeat it, because I want us to make sure that we’re hearing it straight.

Jenny Stiven:
You bet. Safehouse Pictures gave Jac Schaeffer, or Amazon gave Safehouse Pictures, a creative brief for this IP, for this series development, that said, “No hard reboot,” and it must be in the TV universe canon. Now, that’s it. There were no more instructions as far as I’ve had confirmed.

David Read:
But that actually happened, or that’s a rumor?

Jenny Stiven:
No, I’ve had that confirmed, but again, I don’t work there.

David Read:
Of course.

Jenny Stiven:
So I can’t say if that was– But I’ve heard this now through two sources, one of whom does work with Amazon, so here’s where the caveat comes in.

Darren Sumner:
I think that’s huge.

Jenny Stiven:
It is.

Jenny Stiven:
And I think that’s incredibly important.

Darren Sumner:
Trusting your sources, I think that’s a massive, massive piece to have fall into place.

Jenny Stiven:
And Shane had heard that, too, so that makes me feel good. We’re hearing this from a couple of different places. The caveat to this, and I think you all mentioned this in your simulcast on Friday, is that doesn’t mean they won’t attack this a different way or come at this in a way we don’t. Martin, Brad, they were given that creative brief. I also know that The Expanse guys, when they did their pitch two years ago now, they were given that brief, and they did a whole bible and did this whole great thing. Everybody’s been given that brief is my understanding. The fact that Safehouse Pictures is still the executive producer and still the production company on record with that creative brief is encouraging. So they’re not the ones, and I wanna be super clear, Safehouse Pictures, as far as I know and from early conversations, was not involved in getting rid of Martin, Brad, and Joe at all. They were executive producers, they were a production company, and my understanding is they were told at the same time. I have no other information on that. And there’s a lot of rumors. I want everybody to be very, very, very careful about– Rumors are fine. There are a ton of meetings every day between journalists, between execs. And you gotta look at the fact that there are three different entities involved in this deal. And there could be a meeting at Safehouse Pictures that never sees the light of day, but a rumor comes out of that meeting. It’s a legit rumor because they had that meeting and they had that conversation, but nothing may ever come of that. And I think everybody needs to remember that things need to be verified and validated by — and Darren, you know this, old-school journalism — by a minimum of three sources before you can feel comfortable saying something. So that’s the context I’ve got. Now, Jac Schaeffer, I’m not gonna give any personal opinions about any of this. I know that it’s a bit of a hot topic, a trigger point to say the least. But a couple of things that I would like to address that I’ve heard on a couple of different podcasts. Yes, she was asked to come in for Marvel for WandaVision and Agatha All Along, and yes, her interviews in 2019 were not particularly encouraging because she talked about the fact that she didn’t go back and read the canon. I worked on some of those with Marvel, and I wanna be super clear that this I do know firsthand. What she did do is that she was given certain books. Tom King’s story about Scarlet Witch. I think the other one was– Hold on, I wrote it down ’cause I had to go back in my notes.

David Read:
Please. Let’s get it right.

Jenny Stiven:
Brian Bendis’s book. So, she was given by Marvel executive producers very specific books, comic arcs to read–

Darren Sumner:
Some key storylines [inaudible].

David Read:
In other words, direction.

Jenny Stiven:
Exactly. So when she said she didn’t go back, she clarified later. And at first when she clarified it, I thought, “Are you backpedaling?” And then I actually had it confirmed by people who work internally at Marvel. And there’s something called a Marvel Parliament, but basically what it is, it’s an oversight creative direction team. And their job is to make sure that any show or movie in Marvel either is consistent in the MCU, or if it’s being taken directly from a book, that it is consistent to that canon in a way that can adapt to the MCU. So when she was writing this, she was given by a producer by the name of Mary something … I can’t remember what it was. What’s her name? Mary Livanos. So Mary Livanos is a producer, and what she’s asked to be is essentially the creative bible internally at Marvel to make sure that what was written stayed within these storylines that they had chosen to adapt this show. When Jac Schaeffer was talking about the fact that she wanted to bring these characters to life and she was looking to take those original stories and adapt them into something new, that’s it. That’s all she was saying. That aside, and this is the caveat, what I would need to see is that Safehouse Pictures is doing the same for us.

Darren Sumner:
That’s my next question. Is there such a team, such a keeper of the flame for Stargate?

Jenny Stiven:
And that is the big question. At Lucasfilm when– You guys talked about Star Wars. There’s so many things we could talk about. We could talk about Star Trek, Star Wars, the announcement today with Ryan Coogler and X-Files, which I worked on, so we could talk about that comparison. We could talk about the Lanterns. There’s a lot of parallels here, and I think the one or two facts that I would really need to see that would really, really assure me is that, just like they have Pablo over at Lucasfilm or Mary Livanos at Marvel, who are they gonna bring in that is that creative bible? Or if not a huge canon knowledge like you and David, then is it someone who says, “OK, here are the storylines that we would like you to stay within. Here’s the TV universe canon, and here are the guardrails. Outside of that, have a great time.” The other rumor that I’ve heard is that it’s a soft reboot, and I don’t want everybody to panic. What that means is that it’s within the universe, it does not go outside the universe, but it may tell new stories with new characters. That’s it.

David Read:
[muted]

Darren Sumner:
David, you’re muted.

David Read:
Thank you. Now, when you say soft reboot, I hear potential of alternate dimension with characters brought over from that other dimension are still a possibility, that kind of thing.

Jenny Stiven:
That’s actually what they internally called Martin’s, was a soft reboot. He was calling it a remake, which I think was a more appropriate term. Not to get technical–

David Read:
I get hung up on the nomenclature. I apologize.

Jenny Stiven:
No, no, no, no. You shouldn’t apologize, because that’s exactly right. The soft reboot that you described is exactly what I’ve heard, but that is rumor. The only thing I know for sure is that she’s been told, “No hard reboot. Stay within the canon … with the TV universe canon.” I know that Roland came out, Dean came out and basically did the cautiously optimistic. I did hear that somebody had reached out to Dean and talked to him about this before this announcement was made. So I’m hoping that there is respect that’s going to happen, that this is going to be approached in this way, that Jac Schaeffer herself would say, “Hey, based on my experience, we need someone internally that can give me, ‘Here’s the story, here are the guardrails. I don’t want someone to come in and dictate to me, but what are those guardrails, and what is that canon?'” If that happens–

David Read:
What options do you have in lieu of those guardrails? What options might present themselves creatively?

Jenny Stiven:
Exactly.

David Read:
“You can’t really do this. We don’t recommend this. But because of this, this is an option. These things–” You can go in any of these directions.

Jenny Stiven:
That’s right, and I think there’s … as we all know– And again, we don’t have to go through that. There are so many possibilities. And if I’m her and I’m coming into this for the first time, I’d be giddy about it, “Oh my God, the things I could do with this would be amazing.” And again, I’m not touching whether you liked WandaVision or any of that. We can talk about that later. I’m talking about from a straight-up industry standpoint, a showrunner, when they come in, for the most part is coming in– And Darren, I know you know this, and David, you’ve seen it when we worked together and all those times at Fox. Someone either comes in as a showrunner with an idea that they’re selling or they are approached with an existing treatment and said, “Go to town. Come back with your idea.” And once in a while there’s things in between, but that is the way it works, whether you’re in streaming or broadcast or linear TV. And Darren, you touched about this, and David, you did too on Friday, I also wanna say — this is not to be a downer or a good thing — she’s in pre-development. Pre-development means she is just exploring. And I don’t know if this was leaked or if it was an actual media alert from Safehouse Pictures. Again, Amazon is gonna play it pretty close to the chest. They are unlikely to ever announce anything until it is again in a place where they feel that it is ready to go. Now, we’ve gone through that, and it still didn’t go, and it still got the rug pulled out from underneath us. But an announcement, an official PR corporate communications, Amazon in particular does not make those announcements until it’s gotten to a certain point. So whatever you’re gonna read right now is going to be speculation, unless it comes from herself, Jac Schaeffer, Safehouse Pictures directly and they’re quoted, Mike Hopkins, Peter Friedlander, Blair Fetter — wait for all the boos — then the potential other people that could come into her writer’s room. A note about her writer’s room. When she was doing WandaVision and Agatha All Along, and she did pitch for Vision Quest, but they obviously went in another direction …

David Read:
Terry Matalas.

Jenny Stiven:
… which I think was a good choice, frankly, obviously. I love him, and I love what he does and I think that was the right choice. She’s been very broad-spectrum varietal in her writer’s room. She does not have her own writer’s room and says, “I’m only taking these people.” In each of the different things, whether it was Black Widow or going back to when she did — and Safehouse Pictures has done some not great sci-fi projects — in each of those cases, she asked for people from different walks of life that knew that subject matter to come in and be part of her writer’s room. My guess is that if this went forward, she’d do the same thing. That has been a very consistent variable in her equation of putting together a show. And I think, depending upon, and this is where everything becomes open speculation, what leeway Amazon gives Safehouse Pictures to develop this now is really going to be the biggest question. There are only a few options. She does the pilot, develops it, Amazon reads it and says, “Not what we wanna do. Moving on. You’ve got a three-picture or a three-series. Do something else with us.” That she develops it, they shoot the pilot, and they still say, “Nope, don’t like it. Sorry. Great try.” She develops it, shoots the entire thing, and they move forward. The issue in all of these cases is the more likelihood is that it’ll probably go into turnaround. This is pre-development. All she’s gonna do right now is write a pilot. That’s it. That’s as far as she’s gonna get. She’s going to work. She’ll show a pilot. She’ll show her treatment before that. If they like it, and trust me, these are back and… Look at how long it took Martin, 18 months going back and forth. And he knows the material backwards and forwards. So it is more than likely that this will be a back and forth, and they’ll get to her pilot or her treatment, and they’ll say yay or nay. If they say no–

David Read:
Explain turnaround, please.

Jenny Stiven:
Pardon me?

David Read:
Explain turnaround, please, but finish your thought. If they say no?

Jenny Stiven:
That’s what I was gonna say. Perfect timing. It would go into turnaround, meaning one of two things. Either Safehouse Pictures has an opportunity to go find somebody else, or Amazon takes it back, and they find another executive producer and production company to work on it. I will say the thing that I find odd in this whole thing is that I heard this when we closed the doors on March of 2020, and it went off to do the audit to be sold to Amazon. What I heard over and over and over and over again from Amazon reps that came in and talked was that they viewed Stargate as the jewel of the crown. I’m a little tired of hearing that phrase, but that is what I heard. I then heard it again in ’22 when it was potentially going to be another group, which was The Expanse group. I heard it again when I heard that Martin was coming in and had been reached out to, to ask if he wants to come in, that what was said was, “This is one of our legacy IPs from MGM. We wanna treat it right. It is absolutely a jewel in the crown.” I don’t know what to say to that, because if it is, then I’m not really sure where their head’s at. And I can cert[ainly]–

David Read:
Crown of a redheaded stepchild.

Jenny Stiven:
It’s how it feels, right? And I hate to say that Stargate has dealt with that for a long time, but they have. It’s hard to be the TV series when you’ve got Star Wars and Star Trek that had this other echelon of viewpoint, fandom, whatever. But I always think of ourselves as the gold standard of fandom, personally. And one of the aspects that I’ve always been so proud of in this fandom is that it’s been so open to anybody. And I did listen to you guys on Friday about SGU, and God, do I remember that. And David, you and I were in the trenches with that, and it was not fun. And Darren, I remember you were trying so hard to stay super neutral and agnostic as a journalist, and it was painful.

David Read:
We got modern social media eight or nine years before the rest of the world got it.

Jenny Stiven:
Exactly.

David Read:
It was beat for beat what everyone experiences now. And the only thing that I was trying to do last week was to establish what’s going to be coming next, because it’s a mathematical equation with this fandom, for better and for worse. They are very …

Jenny Stiven:
It is.

David Read:
… predictable, typically speaking, when it comes to reactions like this, because they don’t care a lot. They love this property as their own.

Jenny Stiven:
That’s exactly it.

David Read:
And when you love something this much, you feel very possessive of it.

Jenny Stiven:
It’s an ownership. And I would say that if there’s a lesson that we can learn from that, it’s that I genuinely don’t care if you love Jac Schaeffer, hated WandaVision, or are neutral about it. I saw a lot of people say, “I’m out.” Totally cool. That is 100% your right as a Stargate fan with the passion and the belief that you have in this IP to feel however the — OK, wait, sorry, I can’t swear — to feel however the hell you wanna feel. What I would wanna say is, can we learn from that lesson to be holding two truths at once, which is I can love Stargate and be open to Jac Schaeffer, and also acknowledge that people won’t be, and I’m totally cool with that. There are people who are looking at her stuff, and they’re like, “Oh my God, not what I expected, not what I wanted.” OK. What I wanna see is this continuation of … I wish it wasn’t because of the cancellation, but since June, there’s been this amazing tsunami of community, and bonding, and getting together, and springing up around the world, all of these watch parties. Just crazy. And I’ve got execs calling me saying, “Oh my God, I didn’t even know this was happening. Where do I go find Stargate?” Out of the blue, asking me that. So, there’s power in staying as a unified fandom that allows for different opinions. I would prefer that we stay the gold standard and show other fandoms how to do it right.

David Read:
Stand tall. Darren. Thoughts?

Darren Sumner:
Thoughts on fandom specifically?

David Read:
No, your thoughts on all of this analysis.

Darren Sumner:
We’ve covered a whole lot here. Thank you, Jenny.

David Read:
Thank you.

Darren Sumner:
On the fandom piece, those of us who’ve been around for a lot of years have the battle scars to show for it. Stargate fandom wars is probably too strong of a way to say it. This goes all the way back to Season Five when Michael left the show and when Corin came on. That was a big knockdown, drag-out fight among fans long before SGU came on the scene. So, it comes and goes, and people have their favorite show, and they have their things that they love about Stargate. Anytime that your fandom becomes a franchise with multiple properties in it, multiple shows and movies, et cetera, it’s gonna start to fragment. There’s gonna be different kinds of fans who enjoy different kinds of content. There are people out there who enjoyed Stargate Origins. God bless them. Different strokes for different folks.

David Read:
The movie is completely different from the miniseries.

Jenny Stiven:
It is. I always feel like I have to add something to that every time.

David Read:
You and I worked on it.

Darren Sumner:
I know. You guys worked on it. So, you understandably get defensive.

David Read:
We laid seeds in there.

Jenny Stiven:
OK, wait. I have to say this every time.

Darren Sumner:
For what it was.

Jenny Stiven:
No, not that.

Darren Sumner:
With the budget?

Jenny Stiven:
No. I love you, but not multiple choice. So, the thing is that we were only given rights to the movie at that moment that we started Stargate Command. All of the negotiations with Brad had been, quite frankly, fucked up. And so they could only use the movie while a bunch of us behind the scenes were going to Brad saying, “Mea culpa, we should’ve come to you first. Can you please come on board and be part of this as a creative consultant?” and having to make up for what didn’t happen that should’ve happened. And so that first one was given a green light before we had a chance to get Brad and Joe to come on board. And that was because we got the approval … Not just approval. We only got the rights to do anything new with the movie. That was it. As soon as we got the rights to work within the TV universe, we started working on the Jaffa origin story. We started working on the Ancients origin story. And we actually got into a script for the Jaffa one, which would’ve been with Tony and Chris, and it was being written by Chris and Mike Disa. And I think your example on Friday of Stargate Origins is a perfect example of– I got a lot of, “Holy shit, what are you doing? I can’t stand this, this is ridiculous, this is cheap,” whatever.

Darren Sumner:
If it’s not gonna be of quality, don’t do it at all.

Jenny Stiven:
But I will say, when I met people in person, they were great about it. They were like, “Look, not my cup of tea.” It’s cool. And that’s what I would like to see happen here, is that same: you might hate it, but if it helps us continue and gets us to another place that we wanna get to, I kinda wanna keep that door open.

Darren Sumner:
This is one of the points that I wanted to make.

David Read:
For the record, didn’t it make its money back in the first week?

Jenny Stiven:
Pardon me?

David Read:
For the record, didn’t it make its money back in the first week on Apple?

Jenny Stiven:
Yes.

Jenny Stiven:
And it still makes money. I hate to say it.

David Read:
Please continue.

Darren Sumner:
This is one of the points that I wanted to make. My brain is falling outside the back of my head. What were we talking about again? Stargate?

Jenny Stiven:
When I interrupted you?

Darren Sumner:
Yes.

Jenny Stiven:
About Stargate Origins?

David Read:
And then I interrupted him.

Darren Sumner:
Not about Origins per se, but a lot of the commentary that I hear from fans is, “If it’s not X, if it’s not, ‘fill in the blank,’ what I love about Stargate, then I’m not interested and I would rather that they not make it.” That’s taking it a step further. Not just, “I’m not interested in watching this one, good luck” but, “I would rather it not exist in the universe to somehow perhaps taint what I knew and love.” So, for a lot of fans, that is SG-1 Season 11. If it’s not Rick, and Amanda, and Chris, and Michael walking through the gate and talking about their fond memories of General Hammond, then it’s not their Stargate and they don’t want it. I understand that. That’s the corner of nostalgia that lives inside all of our hearts. As far as reviving Stargate in the 2020s, that was, I think, never in the cards.

Jenny Stiven:
No.

Darren Sumner:
At least once we got to the point where Amazon bought the studio and, evidently in Brad’s own telling, passed on Brad’s existing script, whatever that looked like content-wise, he gave us lots of hints over a few years about who he was bringing back in it. Once that ship sailed, once Amazon decided that they weren’t interested in producing what Brad had pulled together for a fourth show, then it’s gonna be something completely different. So, I’m not shocked when I hear that Martin’s pitch was, or the show that he was working on that had been green-lit by Amazon, involved travel to a parallel universe and some kind of a soft-reboot context. Again, it’s not the be-all, end-all for the franchise. Doesn’t mean we never come back to the prime universe. Because Amazon owns the thing. Amazon holds the keys. If it’s gonna be anything, it’s gonna be a different kind of story with different characters set in this universe. I understand a lot of people don’t want that. I do. I think there’s a lot of storytelling room left in the Stargate universe. So, the fact that you’re now telling us that the mandate is still on the table, right? We don’t have a show yet, but the mandate is still being briefed, that this should be not a hard reboot, and it should be in the existing TV canon, I find that incredibly encouraging. It’s now getting used to the idea, if it works out that way, it’s, I think, for a lot of us fans, gonna be getting used to the idea of having different storytellers, having different voices come in. Potentially without the Brad Wrights and the Rob Coopers and the Joe Mallozzis of the world weighing in on it.

Jenny Stiven:
I think that it’s interesting. There was a whole point in time from about ’22, no, ’23, to this announcement in November that we got, that I didn’t think it was ever going back to Martin and those guys. I knew that they were talking to Martin, but I didn’t know how serious it was until summer of ’25, because they had other pitches on the table that I was being told they were looking at. In my head, I thought we were always gonna have to deal with a brand-new group of writers and a brand-new approach. I do wanna address a little bit of that, if that’s OK.

David Read:
Please.

Jenny Stiven:
I’m gonna leave the Star Trek comparisons aside, because I think that while we make those parallels, I don’t think it is a good parallel. I think that the setup by Gene Roddenberry and how his estate has worked with Terry Matalas, for instance, on Picard, but then broke away with some other newer shows, is a different issue. I think in our case it is a bit unique. Now, there are a couple of comparisons we can make. Certainly we could make a comparison to Ryan Coogler’s X-Files, but what I do know about that is that he has Chris Carter’s blessing, so that’s a big difference. And when you have that, and you have that creative consultant working with you that is from that original universe, that’s a huge difference. And I think that goes back to what we were talking earlier, that for all of us, regardless if you like her or not, the non-negotiable — I hate to say that ’cause that’s not my personality — but the non-negotiable has to be that there should be somebody on that staff — it doesn’t have to be the writers’ room but on staff — that is keeping that creative guardrail that’s within that universe. And I think that that’s what the fan base that’s open to this needs to focus on as a message. As far as the fandom is concerned, I would really like this fandom to continue to be as joyful and fun as it’s been over the past five months, regardless of what happens next. I have the most amazing relationships with people in this fandom that we disagree on a lot of different things, but we all enjoy Stargate together. And we even disagree on different storylines, but we have fun having those conversations. We don’t get into arguments about it. I have a hard time with a lot of my friends having any Star Trek or Star Wars conversation without it devolving into, “I’m not a fan.” If I get gatekept one more — sorry, I’m gonna swear — fucking time about that I’m not a Star Wars fan– Sorry Darren.

David Read:
Because you don’t X, Y, Z?

Darren Sumner:
Ow, my freaking ears.

Jenny Stiven:
I know. Sorry, Darren. Because I don’t know or adhere to certain canon, I get it much worse on Star Trek than Star Wars, but it used to be that I was told I couldn’t work on Star Wars because I didn’t know all of Pablo’s Wookieepedia. Seriously? I want us to not devolve into that. I’d like us to be fans that can hold two things at one time. I feel the way I do, and you feel the way you do, and I get where you’re coming from. I will put the caveat that it doesn’t devolve into hate speech or hatred of certain types of people. But be able to be understanding, and I know I sound super kumbaya, and I can even hear it in my head. Sorry, guys. But if we can be understanding of each other’s opinion about how passionate we are, and as you guys said earlier, that’s where all this is rooted in. We’re all really super passionate, and we all own this show because it means something very different in each of our lives, because it had impact in our lives. I don’t have many fandoms that I’ve worked in, and I’ve worked in a lot of sci-fi fantasy fandoms, that has quite the impact that Stargate has had on every single fan I’ve worked with, ever. And that makes total sense. So, to me, I wanna know your story. Why does it mean that much to you? Why is it that Jac Schaeffer
doesn’t work for you? Cool. Talk to me about this. I wanna hear why. Why doesn’t it work for you? And if it doesn’t, cool. All right. Then let’s focus on Stargate Atlantis or SG-1, and let’s go talk about that. I don’t need to have a relationship with a fan that agrees with me on everything in my geekdom. That’d be boring.

David Read:
These institutions, these IPs, these modern churches — let’s face it, the NFL ate up God on Sunday; largely — are the things that we revere and look to as being most pure. There’s a reason that Paramount folks got death threats when it was leaked that the Enterprise was gonna be destroyed in The Wrath of Khan. There’s two that I know of, and that’s not this fandom. But that doesn’t mean that people aren’t as passionate about it. And if this thing does go into production, if the bridge isn’t too well-guarded, we will cross that bridge when we come to it — to borrow from Bra’tac — but now, as you say, Jenny, all of this is … it’s not rumor but it’s not far past it, and the likelihood of it going into production is slim.

Jenny Stiven:
It genuinely is a 50/50 operation right now. And I don’t think that anybody should take that as a positive or a negative. Either way, it is the industry. I’m working on … and I do have to say, I worked on two Paramount Star Trek movies, and I got a death threat. So the thing is, is that it is not this fandom. So what I would love to see is for us to focus on now the same things we were focusing on over the past couple of months, before we expected this announcement, is, “All right, what can we do together? What can we keep doing together? How can we be together, talk about this, keep it alive, protect that IP that we love?” And that’s it. The rest of it isn’t in our control. I will say that– I know that our campaign had an impact. I know that the campaign guided certain decisions post-cancellation. That, we can control, and that, we can make sure that those messages are together. I don’t wanna see those divisive. I wanna see that same message of “We love this IP, we love Stargate TV Universe.” That’s what we wanna see. And then we can all agree or disagree once the story comes out, and we can say, “Eh, not me. Ugh, God, I hate it,” or, “I love it.” But before we even get there, it should all be the central message of we want it within the TV universe. That’s it.

David Read:
Do you think that, and here’s the $64,000 question, do you think that SaveStargate, #SaveStargate, and all of the wellspring that’s come forward contributed to that being a mandate for this? That’s what I wanna know.

Jenny Stiven:
Yes. That’s all I can say.

David Read:
It’s been an incredible campaign. It really has.

Jenny Stiven:
That team, you guys, I was talking the other day–

David Read:
James’s been doing stuff.

Jenny Stiven:
They don’t believe me when I say this, that the graphics design team and the way that they all organically fell into a structure, I’ve never had that happen before.

David Read:
It’s almost as if they’ve been watching a military series for years.

Jenny Stiven:
Seriously. And a lot of it is because people self-identified what skillsets they could contribute, which was, again– I’m sorry. Anybody who’s worked in a volunteer organization, there’s always those four people that step forward. There’s 20 people, easily, 25 more, that are stepping forward to do super key opportunities, projects, activations, infrastructure for the fandom organization. And outside of you guys– And this is something that blows my mind, and I had this conversation, David, with you the other day. Outside of GateWorld and Dial the Gate, and what we tried to do with Stargate Command — but that doesn’t count because that would have been a studio underwritten — here’s never been a 501st Legion, a Browncoats, a Hellmouth. It has always been a Trekkies. It’s always been these amazing individual spontaneous generated communities around the world who are still alive. Stargate Fusion, I was working with back when it was a broadcast. Nicole Saelzle in Germany, that community we worked with when it was still being broadcast. So these communities … to have a way to bring all of those communities together like we’ve all been doing, that’s really cool. It’s not by a studio. They’re not underwriting it. It’s official in the sense that it’s by the fans, for the fans. And Stargate really hasn’t had that outside of what you guys did. And I think that’s amazing. I love this. I hope that we can make this continue and keep going and use this momentum and motivation to– OK, I’m so sorry, ’cause this is my soapbox. To go back to what I said, which is the Hollywood industry can bury you. I love what I do. I love my career. I’m incredibly blessed, genuinely blessed, that I have gotten to be in the different aspects of this career and do what I love to do. It can chew you up and spit you out, and what I don’t wanna see is the fans become collateral damage to what happens in the industry. And the only way that happens is if you let yourself get sucked in to the whiplash of, “It’s been canceled. Now we have development. Now we might not have a pilot.” And if we let ourselves go back and forth with that, we will get burnt out, and we will unfortunately die an incredibly painful death as a fandom, because it’ll– Sorry. Not to be–

David Read:
Figurative death.

Jenny Stiven:
Sorry.

David Read:
To YouTube algorithms.

Jenny Stiven:
Sorry about that. The only way we avoid that or sidestep that or counter it, which is really what my soapbox is about, is to focus on the fact that we’re a pretty phenomenal community. I genuinely have never met a community quite like this one.

David Read:
Not a large one, but I think that’s immaterial to a large degree.

Jenny Stiven:
Oh, my God. OK, but you know what? OK, sorry, ’cause I know we weren’t gonna go in this conversation, but I’m still pissed about this. The thing that drives me batshit bananas is that, David, you and I and Kyla spent so much time doing research on the numbers and the fans and where it was. And we continued post-2021 to do that research and to do the numbers. The active fan base, based on a comp, because I’m working on other sci-fi fantasy, I always use Stargate as a comp, a comparison. So, when I’m working on other pitches or shows or fandoms, I use Stargate as, like I said earlier, a gold standard. It has never dropped below 300,000 active fans globally, ever. The fact that certain shows have been greenlit with less than that is infuriating to me that that’s used as an excuse. The data and the analytics are numbers. If you’re not looking at the story behind that and the context, for instance, my latest poll is that we have something insane, over 30% Gen Z.

David Read:
For Gen Z, that’s good.

Jenny Stiven:
That’s better than most shows are being greenlit right now. The irony is the older Millennials and Gen Xers are the ones that have the money. They’re the ones that are gonna spend the money. So, again, I go back to, in my head, and again, I come from Fox and Disney. I’ve never worked for Amazon, so this doesn’t make sense to me, that you should be looking at the holistic of it. So, here’s your content, that’s your hub. That should be your driver. From that, you’ve got your marketing, you’ve got your license and merchandising, you’ve got all the different aspects that come with that. And if you’re not tying that together in an infinite loop, then how are you having a successful anything? How is that a successful franchise, an IP, a show, a movie? It’s not. And you can see that in the absolute corpses that have been left behind of attempted franchises or attempted reboots of franchises that didn’t do that right, and they didn’t go to the fandom, and they didn’t do what they should have done, which is not fan service, but make sure that you’re involving fans, that you’re listening to fans, that you aren’t looking at numbers. And if all you’re looking at is a number that in my world I’m not getting the same numbers that they’re getting, and I’m running these independently. It’s not anything that I’m putting my finger on the scale. These are independent reports that are being run by Brandwatch, and Brand24, and platforms that do this for a business. So, sorry, that’s– OK, I got it out.

David Read:
Can I borrow from another fandom real quick?

Jenny Stiven:
Yeah.

David Read:
And I don’t know a great deal about it. Zach Cregger’s recent Resident Evil. So, he was very much on the bandwagon of, “I have this idea.” And fans were slings and arrows at him because it didn’t have X, Y, or Z characters in it. And my understanding is he went out and he said, “I’m a huge fan.” He demonstrated that by communicating to the fans and saying, “I understand those characters. I love those characters. This specific story that I wanna tell, the architecture doesn’t happen to include them. The story that I wanna tell is kind of like this. Would you show up for it if I create that?” And by going hat in hand to that fandom and saying, “I know I’m not gonna get all of you.” That’s a fool’s errand. “But what I am attempting to demonstrate is sincerity. And it doesn’t erase anything that came before. There are gonna be people who come after me who play in this property. But this is a story that I’m passionate about. Will you try it?” I think that that says …

Jenny Stiven:
That’s exactly right.

David Read:
… a tremendous amount of good things about the constitution and integrity of the person and their willingness to basically say, “I’m not the shit necessarily. I’m not the be-all, end-all. I have an idea, and I wanna express myself.”

Jenny Stiven:
“I don’t know everything.”

David Read:
“Will you take my hand for this one journey?”

Jenny Stiven:
That’s a great example. I knew nothing about that until I listened to Todd Garner’s podcast, The Producer Con [sic!], I think. That was the first time I’d ever heard that story, exactly what you said, and I was blown away because I love the Resident Evil movies. And again, you guys know I’m an easy audience. I am not the bellwether. Do not use me as any kind of a fandom test run of what’s gonna work or not work, because I give you–

David Read:
You got your pom-poms all the time. But you’re always ready to put your combat boots on and jump over the back fence.

Jenny Stiven:
I’ll go watch everything. I don’t care. I won’t necessarily think it’s great, but I’ll go watch it. And I was blown away. And David, that is a great example because if anybody wants to go and learn more about it, go listen to Todd Garner’s podcast. I think it’s called The Producer’s Guild. And he interviews the German head of production studio who works directly with Zach, and he tells that whole story, and that is such a perfect parallel, David. And that’s what I think we need to hope for. And hey, here’s something we can do as a fandom. Let’s ask for that. Let’s say, “Hey, OK, cool. We’re not sure about her, but what we’re asking for is stay within the TV universe, and come talk to us.” That’s it. Be transparent. That’s all we’re asking. And hey, you’re gonna get good, bad, and different, but it’s not like she hasn’t already run into that. She knows what that’s like. She gets it. And I think that’d be so cool if they did that. That’s what Joe Mallozzi did. So, that’s what Joe did, and he had to fight so hard against internal MGM bullshit to go talk directly to the fans. And it’s one of the reasons that I love him and I get along with him, because here was someone who fought to be transparent with the fans about what was happening behind the scenes.

David Read:
And he enjoys that process because he …

Jenny Stiven:
He does.

David Read:
… himself is a fan. He’s not aloof.

Jenny Stiven:
No, exactly. And look, Brad was open to it. I went to Brad with a lot of weird ideas. But they were always open to literally anything I threw at the wall. And I think if we can get that relationship in some manner, shape, or form, that would be great. There are two agencies of record that are working with Amazon directly in the sci-fi fantasy silo. As we’ve talked about before, there are silos in Amazon that are in charge of certain genres. Both of those agencies are phenomenally huge geeks. Both of them have people internally who worked on Stargate with me. If we can get people like that to go in there and have that advocacy and say, “Hey, guys, we know that there is this feeling that we’re the old guard. But hey, if you went on and had a conversation with them and with the fans, it’s gonna do you a world of good. And yes, we get it, you wanna get new fans. Guess what? This fandom, we’ve already gotten new fans. So, if we work together, think how much that concentric circle could grow.”

David Read:
That’s been part of the campaign’s argument since June, is that if you wanna grow the audience, you grow it from the center out. If you want new …

Jenny Stiven:
That’s right.

David Read:
… fans, we are the ones who are gonna help you sell the show and get new fans.

Jenny Stiven:
That’s exactly right.

Darren Sumner:
We are the ones who are gonna be telling all of our friends and families and Gen Z-ers about it.

David Read:
But we want it to be good. That’s the thing. We’re at the hour mark. I’ve got some very patient fans who have been asking some questions.

Jenny Stiven:
Sorry. I’ve been talking a lot. Sorry.

David Read:
No.

Jenny Stiven:
I know I went off.

David Read:
This is about the right time that I wanna start segueing into this. Are there any other things that you wanna bring up that you think are supporting the structure of this that we need to discuss before we move into that phase?

Jenny Stiven:
Thank you for asking me. I can’t think of anything right now, but maybe with some questions there– I know there were some miscellaneous threads, but I can’t think — I do wanna talk about Save Stargate at the end — but for right now, I can’t think of anything. I think we covered everything that we were gonna talk about for the most part that I knew.

Darren Sumner:
Let me, David, as you’re transitioning to questions, let me reiterate a bit of what Jenny has laid out for us earlier in the stream, for those of you who maybe weren’t here and haven’t …

David Read:
That’s a good idea.

Darren Sumner:
… caught it. One of the takeaways that I’m coming away from this conversation with is, again, reiterating something that I was hammering on last week when we did a live stream, is development is early in the process, and that’s where we’re at right now. Jac Schaeffer has been brought on to develop something in the Stargate universe, and I’m thrilled to hear that it’s within these certain guardrails. In-canon TV universe, et cetera, no reboot. I’m gonna run a news story on that all day long. But it’s development, and it could have a lot of different kinds of outcomes. It could result in a bunch of paperwork that studio execs look at and say, “OK, I’m not thrilled with this. We’re gonna find somebody else.”

David Read:
“That was interesting.”

Darren Sumner:
Or it could turn into a pilot. They could go and shoot something, and the studio could look at what they shoot and say, “This doesn’t feel quite right. We’re gonna do something different.” It’s not a show. It’s maybe months or years away from ever being announced as a show, and I gotta add, of course, even when they green light a show and announce it and have a writer’s room for 20 weeks it’s still not a show …

David Read:
What does that mean anymore?

Darren Sumner:
… ’cause they can pull the plug on it. So, the timing is interesting to me, the sort of timeline of television production and the unpredictable nature of television production. So, we don’t know that she’s gonna be an executive producer or a showrunner on the next Stargate series. All we know today is that she’s been tapped to develop something. And whether it actually makes it to screen, that’s tomorrow’s news.

David Read:
Ben Horst wants to know — I think this is a valid point — “Jenny, any way of knowing if the Amazon exec who wrote ‘no hard reboot’ into the mandate is still working there?”

Jenny Stiven:
I don’t know, actually. It’s a great question. One of the– And obviously I’ll come back on when I get more information from some of the people that I’m working with, but it was interesting. One source said it was from Amazon internally at the sci-fi fantasy silo. Another source told me it was a Safehouse Pictures creative exec. I don’t know, and I would hope, honestly, that it’s a Safehouse Pictures exec because they’re the ones that are consistent right now in this equation.

David Read:
Good question. OK. Let’s back up here. Raj Luthra, “Jenny, do you think the SaveStargate campaign should continue in its current form? Can you give a little bit more insight into that? Should they pull the rip cord? What’s your thought?” Obviously none of the– What’s your thought process here? ‘Cause you guys are moving with a lot of moving parts, SaveStargate. Do you think the campaign should continue as it is?

Jenny Stiven:
God, yeah.

David Read:
What do you think for those who are on the outside looking in at that and possibly thinking of joining up more than they have been?

Jenny Stiven:
Sure. My Lord, yes. When I was talking about, and getting on my soapbox, about the fandom, what the SaveStargate team’s entire goal is to continue. It doesn’t have to continue under the auspices of SaveStargate. What it wants to do is protect the IP, the television universe canon, and make that message clear to Amazon. But also, there’s a twofer here. It’s, sure, protect the IP, make sure that message is clear to Amazon, and in fact, give context to the data, especially about Gen Z, millennials, numbers we’ve got, but give the story behind it. But the other part of it is this incredible community came together immediately after June 4th and exploded in a tsunami that we haven’t seen, frankly, not even after the announcement of the series happening. So, the entire campaign’s goal is to continue and to be a hub, a destination for people to get together and do the love of Stargate together in whatever manner, shape, or form. I’m doing the Stargate D&D games. Like I said, the infrastructure of this group is insane to me. I would have hired them. David, if we were still at Stargate Command, we would have hired this entire team up, bring them over, and put them in, and maybe we would have convinced the board to keep going. But there’s a whole D&D group, and it’s run by this gal that’s amazingly organized, and she loves it. And I get to go and have fun and play D&D. They’ve got watch parties every– And I’ll tell everybody at the end, but that’s the entire goal, is to keep going regardless of what the whiplash and the vagaries of the Hollywood industry does. This is set in stone. Gonna keep going. We want more people to join us. We wanna celebrate the love, protect the IP, and “Hey, make sure that Amazon knows the right information and data,” because it’s coming from people that they know are the audience. And the more we say that, and the more that we prove that, and the more I can send comps and reports in via these friends of mine, the more they see that it isn’t just, quote, unquote, the old legacy audience.

David Read:
OK. A couple of people have put up some acronyms here, and I’m trying to translate them out. Marcia brought something up that I think is worth wrapping back around and reiterating. Marcia says, “To help clarify what a soft reboot versus a hard reboot might bring, can you give us an example?” So, soft reboots, I would say, is Jurassic World. Hard reboot would be something that doesn’t acknowledge the previous canon at all, that is completely fresh. So, gosh, something that’s– I’m trying to think of a franchise that’s done a hard reboot.

Darren Sumner:
Battlestar is a hard reboot, right?

David Read:
Battlestar was.

Darren Sumner:
It’s going back and …

David Read:
It happened to use …

Darren Sumner:
… retelling the story.

Jenny Stiven:
Battlestar is exactly right.

Darren Sumner:
… certain actors.

Darren Sumner:
That is a hard reboot.

Jenny Stiven:
That’s what I was gonna use. A hard reboot is same characters–

Darren Sumner:
Exceeded the original.

Jenny Stiven:
The definition in the industry is that it is same characters and same storyline, it doesn’t care about the canon or the universe. It might use it, it might not. The whole point is to use the same characters or the same type of characters. So, an example would be, it could be SG-1, but the entire backstory of the Stargate is completely thrown out the window. Movie and TV. That would be a hard reboot. You still have a Stargate, you still have SG-1, but how it came into being is thrown out. A really good comparison, and anybody who is a comic book lover in this audience is gonna know this, comic books do hard reboots all the time. All the time. Captain America dies. Wait, no, he’s alive. OK, great, but now his origin story is different. It is accepted in comic books because otherwise you would hit a ceiling of the types of stories you could tell over and over and over and over and over again. And what we love as comic book geeks is that we can go and read any of the type of stories we want. We can ignore the ones that are hard reboots that we aren’t interested in, or you could read it for fun, for shits and giggles, ’cause it’s different, but you’re gonna stick to what you like the best about your particular favorites. The difficulty with a series — and I’m not gonna get into films, it’s much harder in a film — in TV series franchises, it’s only been around for 70 years. That’s it. So, hard reboots is a new concept in TV series and streaming. It’s not really been around as long as comics. Films … film franchises have seen that happen a couple of times over. They work or they don’t work, honestly, based on how good was the story and how good were the characters, and how die hard was the audience. A soft reboot, in our case, would be the origin story’s the same, it’s in the TV universe, but from there it could be completely new characters, a new SG-1 story. It could take SG-1, Atlantis, and SGU and put them all together, but it would all stay within the canon. And it could be any number of different stories within that canon, but it will acknowledge the origin story, the way it was written, the way Brad and Robert and Joe and Paul and Martin developed the arc, and it would acknowledge that.

David Read:
Can I take it a level past that, soft reboot, hard reboots?

Jenny Stiven:
Yeah.

David Read:
What if the Stargate is the only thing that’s intact? What if they abandon military science fiction entirely?

Jenny Stiven:
That’s still a hard reboot, or it’s considered a hard reboot. We would consider throwing it out completely at that point. I’ve had conversations– I was at Lucasfilm when they had a conversation about throwing everything out, and all that was gonna be acknowledged at all was that there was this universe. That was it. And those were discussions that happened. They were shouted down pretty vehemently, but those conversations happen pretty often in a writer’s room and in brainstorming, even prior to a writer’s room. What Jac Schaeffer’s doing right now is she’s having brainstorming development conversations. She’s not even in a writer’s room. She’s having conversations like we’re having. “What could this be? How would I like to see this go? What kind of story do I wanna tell? OK, great. Who’s the audience for this? If I wanna tell this story, is there an audience for this?” This is where we have an opportunity. Shoot, that’s what I was gonna say. One of the team on the SaveStargate campaign brought this up, and I thought that this was a great idea. There’s a point at which we should be sending messages to Safehouse and Jac Schaeffer, not obnoxiously, not toxically, but, “Hey, we wanna listen to you. Please keep it within the TV universe. Here’s what we would love to see from you, is some transparency about what you wanna do.” There’s no guarantee that we’d get that. But if we’re giving a very straightforward, very easy message, not hammering it, not being obnoxious about it- It’s quite possible they’ll listen. I know that when I was working at Lucas, when I was at Fox, we listened. Now, I can’t say that that’s what Safehouse Pictures or Amazon would do, but probably the most perfect example of this was Deadpool. Fox execs were not listening at all to a whole bunch of us that were saying, “This is an amazing character. You really should do this.”

David Read:
Yeah, but it’s rated R.

Jenny Stiven:
But even before that. Even before the conversation of rated– Please, Fox did Alien. We had rated R movies.

David Read:
But not in a comic book, something that was designed …

Jenny Stiven:
It was designed.

Darren Sumner:
… originally for children. Alien was designed for adults, even though they made toys.

Jenny Stiven:
Exactly. And it wasn’t until Ryan Reynolds brought it– Well, OK, so even then he had brought it as a pitch to Fox theatrical. And they said, “No. No way. This is not within our wheelhouse. We don’t wanna do this.” So he went and made his own film, and he came back and showed it and said, “So this has–” And I can’t even remember what it was, but it was crazy numbers, millions of views on YouTube. “So you’re an idiot if you don’t wanna do this.” Luckily, we had two execs on the Fox theatrical side who, A, were Gen X-ers, grew up on comic books, this was a different management team at that point, who were willing to listen and who understood that what was happening on YouTube was important. And they listened, and they listened to what the fans were saying. Now, if we could get someone like Ryan Reynolds, maybe that’s Jac Schaeffer
, I don’t know, but I’m gonna go back to what I said earlier. If there’s someone that internally can be our advocate for that TV universe that isn’t from the old guard so that they’ll listen, that I think could turn the tide. I don’t know who that is. I wish I did.

Darren Sumner:
I hate to ask you to speculate too much, but given what we know of how things went down with the cancellation in June, what of the Blair Fetter of it all? If this decision was informed by a new executive who had come into Amazon after development was up and running on Martin’s show and he was convinced that legacy IP was not the way to go right now, that giving, paying some sort of service to fans was not evidently much of interest to him, what does that say about everything that you’re describing here and the sort of work that Safehouse might be doing?

Jenny Stiven:
OK, so I’m gonna be very careful here.

David Read:
I’m gonna lean in here.

Jenny Stiven:
Peter Friedlander has– No, OK, you know what? Sorry, I’m gonna have to speak in euphemisms. Anybody who likes sports, whatever sport you like, a new coach, a new manager comes in, it could be an NBA ring-winning team, it could be NFL, they could have won the Super Bowl, it could be soccer, they won the World Cup, it could be anything, and the next manager/coach that comes in says, “That’s great, but I’ve got new people, and I need to bring in my team, and I need my team to be the one that’s running it.” You don’t have to agree with it. That could be the shittiest decision that’s ever been made, as we’ve seen in multiple examples in multiple sports around the world. But that is how it works, and that’s how it works in Hollywood, exactly the same. We don’t have to like it. We can hate it, but that is the reality.

Darren Sumner:
You bring in people whom you know can do the job. Or it’s nepotism.

Jenny Stiven:
And even if it’s nepotism, even if you think they can do the job, in Hollywood like in sports, you have no guarantees in our industry that you could have an award-winning team that comes in from Netflix, but there’s no guarantee that what they’re gonna do and did over there is gonna work at Amazon at all. So, in an oblique way of answering your question, I don’t know, but what I can say is that whatever’s happening right now politically behind the scenes, Safehouse Pictures is still the production company, and they’re still the executive producer, and they were 100% behind Martin.

Darren Sumner:
That’s good.

Jenny Stiven:
So, if there’s a bridge between this new coach management team and us, it could be Safehouse Pictures. Whether it’s Jac Schaeffer or not really isn’t the question right now because, as we’ve said, there’s no way of knowing she’ll even be continuing at all as a showrunner on this. What I’m more interested in is what is the conversation that’s happening on the Safehouse Pictures side that they’re saying, “Here’s the direction we want you to go in,” and is Amazon backing that up, or is it the other way around?

Darren Sumner:
So, who’s leasing the ship, not necessarily who’s captaining it.

Jenny Stiven:
And I don’t know that yet. That is what I’m pursuing. There are a lot of rumors that I’ve heard, some disturbing and some great. So, what I’ve told you right now are the only things I know for sure, and from my own opinion, I’m not even cautiously optimistic. I’m just holding out. I don’t know. And from a business standpoint, I’m fascinated. From a fan standpoint, I’m waiting. I’m not even neutral. I just don’t know.

Darren Sumner:
We’ll see what happens. We’ll see how this shakes out.

Jenny Stiven:
Exactly.

Darren Sumner:
I’m wondering about the timing of it all. I know that we can only speculate so far, but I feel like with a production that was months in process and there had been a public announcement. We had Martin’s video that David and I did with the team back in November. So it was public. It had a million views on Amazon’s channel. For a new executive to come in and pull the plug on that, and everybody to go away, and now a new development team to spool up, I feel like the new kid has to prove that he made a good decision in pulling the plug, and get something new up and going pretty quickly. So, I feel like it might be sooner rather than later. What do you think of that? Am I off?

Jenny Stiven:
No, I don’t think you’re off at all. In fact, there’s some of the rumors that I don’t have substantiated would back that up. I do wanna say one other thing that is connected to what you’ve posited, Darren, is that while this is devastating, and I am not taking away from the gut punch, rip our heart out, Indiana Jones pulling the heart out as a sacrifice, this is not that unusual. I hate to say it. I’ve worked on– David actually was there for one that I worked on at Fox that was devastating.

David Read:
God, it was brutal.

Jenny Stiven:
It was brutal. And we were not … we had shot the pilot, and it got killed. And I’ve worked with Kurt Sutter, where he got all the way through his second show after Sons of Anarchy, and the rug got pulled out from under his feet, and I was working on that. It is not the norm, but it is not unusual. And I would say that not to be an apologist in any manner, shape, or form, but to give more of a heads-up, an FYI, that what happened in June with Blair coming in is not shocking to me. It doesn’t make it right. It doesn’t make it less of a gut punch. I want fans to be prepared. And here’s the positive that I’ll come up with, and this is something I feel very deeply that I think most of you have heard me drumbeat. Traditional studios, and where traditional studios are and have been, and let’s be honest, Netflix, and Facebook, and Amazon are mainstream now. They would love to think of themselves as the rebels. They’re not. Ironically, YouTube, around slightly longer, is still a rebel, because they’re reinventing themselves constantly. While Amazon owns the IP right now, not that I want everybody to wait as long as I waited in my career, but this is the fourth cycle of technology innovation that everybody’s scared about. “It’s the end of the world. The sky is falling. My God.” Creatives, “We’re all gonna lose our jobs.” This is the fourth time I’ve been through this. And part of that is always, where do the franchises that we love fall in that cycle of reinvention? And the positive for me right now is that the indie, the creator economy, the innovative end of things has been blown open. And I am not saying that I think Amazon’s gonna sell this any time soon. I don’t know that at all. There’s no … I have no news one way or another about that. In fact, I do know they plan on keeping it for a while. But as Amazon pushes its internal technology team to do more — I’m not talking about AI, I’m talking about finding new ways to develop, finding new ways to find an audience — they’re operating somewhat independently from the creative studios, and they’re coming up with some really cool shit, and really cool ideas. And if that team can get together with the creative studios team, then there’s opportunity here for Stargate, because Stargate is nothing but an innovative technology, and I mean in the story, in the content. And I feel very, very positive, because I’m currently working constantly at that end of the spectrum right now. Every single solitary pitch that I have done in the past, and David knows this, year and a half with this IP that I’m working with, has been sold, because I’m working at that end of the spectrum. I’m working in YouTube. I’m working with innovative platforms. I’m working with new writers. I’m working with the creative economy. I’m working with traditional, but as distributors, not creators. And I think that there is space here if we can get the innovative part of Amazon to be talking with the creative studios side. There is a bridge here that could be done, and I know that Safehouse Pictures, and this is the really positive, has been exploring different ways to do things in an innovative way. So, for instance, Darren, to your point that sometimes it could be three years, they’re looking on how can they shorten the pre-vis and post-production. So that a show could happen within 18 months. So, the shoot, the actual live-action shoot, is the important part of the entire process, and that’s where they would spend their time, which means more time is spent on that, on your location, on building your sets, on doing that. But your pre-vis and your post takes out easily, God, three years. So, I think that if we can look for that, and as a fandom, push for that kind of, “Hey, guys, are you looking over here? There’s some really cool stuff we could be doing. We’re open to that. We’re up for that. Just keep it within the TV universe.”

David Read:
There are a number of ways that this could proceed forward that don’t have to be all from the same angle. I have been pitching an idea for at least 10 years now that is like a supplement to existing content that could slide right in, that could be done fairly quickly and with a relatively low cost. And it’s something that I think would–

Jenny Stiven:
Even more now than when you were …

David Read:
Even more so.

Jenny Stiven:
… pitching it before.

David Read:
And it would scratch that itch. And there are so many options now. We get such tunnel vision with things that we love because everyone used to say around the dinner table, “Don’t talk religion, don’t talk politics.” Or with people that you want to be close with, otherwise you may not be close with them anymore. Somewhere along the lines, the message got lost. For those who want to have a seat at the table and continue to use a knife and fork, there are options for those people. Because let’s face it, everyone who’s tuned in here or will eventually hear the sound of my voice, they want their voices to matter.

Jenny Stiven:
Yes.

David Read:
If you want your voice to matter, utilizing honey over vinegar might help.

Jenny Stiven:
No, always. Guaranteed. I’m gonna tell you right now, vinegar never helps. Whether we like that or not, and there are lots of times where David has witnessed me lose my Irish temper and it was not helpful, it is not a good thing.

David Read:
Only at the Canadian border.

Jenny Stiven:
Oh, God.

David Read:
Oh, man.

Jenny Stiven:
Oh my God.

David Read:
Holy cow.

Jenny Stiven:
I forgot about that.

David Read:
There was no question as to who wears the pants in that household when the rubber meets the road.

Jenny Stiven:
I forgot about that.

David Read:
But you did it with such poise.

Jenny Stiven:
God, I forgot totally about that.

David Read:
I could only be half the man you were at that moment.

Jenny Stiven:
No. And the thing is, that Canadian Mountie was such an asshole. The thing is that fandom absolutely 100% makes a difference now. It is an X in the equation of decision-making at the studios, at YouTube, at a creator economy production. I wish that we had a production studio like Dhar Mann or some of these guys that all they do is pay attention to their fan base. But the fan base is that X variable in the equation no matter what now. That is not being ignored. So, to your point, and Darren, to your point earlier, it is 100% getting that message across and being positive about that message. And again, I’m not trying to say be kumbaya. If you don’t like it, that’s fine. You can say that, absolutely. In fact, that is a message. If there is something we don’t like about what we hear, then we need to be able to say, “Hey, guys, a big chunk of your audience isn’t gonna go watch that if it’s done that way.” And I’m not saying that we do an ultimatum. I’m never gonna say work with ultimatums in this industry. It shoots yourself in the foot. But as a voice, we can be a united voice. I’m not asking everybody to agree. What I’m saying is, “Hey, there are amazing opportunities here where we could be pushing and saying, ‘Hey, guys, are you looking at some of these things that are happening down at this end of the spectrum of filmmaking and series making?'”

David Read:
There may be an opportunity here.

Jenny Stiven:
There might be an opportunity. Vertical dramas. Obviously there’s a lot going on here. What about listening to us in a transparent way about, “OK, you’re not our favorite choice, Jac Schaeffer, right now, but what if you were open to listening to creative Bible experts, fonts of knowledge, that at least could come in and meet with Safehouse Pictures. You might reject it, but what does it cost you to have an hour meeting with Darren and David and sit down and ask, ‘Hey, guys, you’re connected to 300,000 fans globally, actively. What are you hearing?’ I can’t guarantee that I’m gonna do anything with this, but what are you hearing?” It doesn’t cost an exec anything to do that. And if that’s the message we can get across and say, “We will approach this with an open mind, even if we don’t think you’re gonna do a great job, can you also listen to us with an open mind?” I think that there’s a way forward.

David Read:
I do demand no less than a two-star hotel.

Jenny Stiven:
And green M&M’s in your hotel room in a bowl, right?

David Read:
Don’t push it.

David Read:
Oh, they come in green now?

Jenny Stiven:
Yes. Is that your contract rider? You gotta have that?

Darren Sumner:
That’s right.

David Read:
Jenny, this has been a whirlwind. There’s far more information here than I was anticipating. Mama Nox … hi, Mama Knox.

Jenny Stiven:
Hi, Erica.

David Read:
“You think London is still the likelihood of choice if they were to move forward with this in the next little while?”

Jenny Stiven:
Oh, that’s a great question. I know Safehouse Pictures really likes Pinewood Studios. I don’t know. Honestly, it’s gonna be a cost situation. I know if we pass federally, the federal tax initiative, and if we can get the California one passed, there’d be upwards of 30-some-odd-percent tax break for California, which means they’d probably stay in California. Also remember the shit show that’s going on in this industry right now is that Amazon as a creative studio is going to be walking a very careful line of simultaneously watching to see what Paramount, Warner Brothers, Warner Mount, Skydance, whatever the hell they’re gonna be called, is doing. What the other end of the spectrum, what is the creator economy doing? What is Netflix doing, who they perceive as one of their biggest competitors, and what’s YouTube doing? So, in any one of those– I know Spain is offering a 52% tax break to shoot there. That’s nuts. Why wouldn’t you shoot there? So, I know several series that are shooting in Spain. Obviously Bulgaria, they always offer it. So, I don’t think that that is out of the question. I think it’s probably 100% gonna depend on what the tax credit is, honestly.

David Read:
Side question real quick. YouTube is larger than most of these studios combined. What do you think the odds are that they might approach original programming again at some point in the future, or do you think they’re good there?

Jenny Stiven:
They already are. The problem on our side from a Stargate standpoint is that Amazon doesn’t wanna license the IP, let alone sell it. They just spent $2 billion to buy Bond back. I’m not equating Stargate to Bond, but Amazon’s very territorial about what they’ve bought, rightly so. I will say that they have every right to say, “We spent a lot of money on this. We’re not gonna license it away without giving it a try.”

David Read:
No, you’re absolutely right. It’d be like spending millions of dollars on someone’s project, and then all of a sudden cutting ties with them and going someplace else.

Jenny Stiven:
We’ve never heard that happen before.

Darren Sumner:
That would be ridiculous.

Jenny Stiven:
I know. What a silly thing to do. But I do think that for right now, what’s a bummer from my point of view is I do know that Netflix offered for it immediately. I don’t know if it was serious or not, or if they were stirring Amazon’s pot. But YouTube developing, it’s gonna be huge. It’s gonna be amazing. And I’m excited to see what they do, and they’re working with different production companies that are on that end of the spectrum that I think are doing some cool, phenomenally creative stuff that I would love if we could have something like that for Stargate. But honestly, guys, what’s probably gonna happen is we’re gonna see new IP, and we’re gonna see new franchises come up, and that’s when we have to fight really hard and be united and say, “Hey, this isn’t dead. This is a really good story. There’s a lot here in this universe.” And I’m saying this as a diehard Star Wars fan who worked on it, I actually think it’s a bigger universe than Star Wars with better opportunities. And I don’t know if I’m gonna get tomatoes thrown at me for that, but I think Stargate is a bigger universe.

Darren Sumner:
I would like to hear the full argument. Why don’t you write me an op-ed? We’ll publish it.

Jenny Stiven:
Sorry, I didn’t mean to laugh. Because I talk a great game, and I hate writing.

Darren Sumner:
Talk into your dictaphone. You can have it have these …

David Read:
They have these LLMs now that–

Darren Sumner:
… notes for you and turn it into a–

Jenny Stiven:
I knew you were gonna say that.

Darren Sumner:
I will edit it.

David Read:
I think that that’s a bit of a stretch. I’m not beyond convincing. The fact is that we don’t know what tomorrow is gonna bring. The fact is that we’re never promised every day, the day that we get up. And all I can speak for is myself, that I hope to be the kind of person that wakes up every morning and the devil goes, “Oh, shit, he’s awake.” And I pray that all of you within the sound of my voice make good ripples in the waters which you occupy. And you’re here for a blink, and then it’s over. Do some good with the time that you’re given. And we’ve watched these heroes for years influence larger communities that they would visit, influence them for the better. Watching that television, have it shown that that elevated you. This has been a great discussion.

Jenny Stiven:
Thank you. May I do a couple of shout-outs for the SaveStargate guys?

David Read:
Shout away.

Jenny Stiven:
OK, cool. So, to let everybody know what’s going on, in case you don’t know, savestargate.com is still our basic hub of where to find a lot of what’s going on, but the best place to go is to the GateWorld Discord and the SaveStargate channels. We’ve got a lot of really cool things that are happening over the next couple of months. A Full Circle, which we are so excited about, David, so excited about. This is so cool. I watched the pre the other day. My God. Amazing. Just amazing. The SaveStargate team is gonna be doing a little pre-podcast, and our first one is tomorrow, and it’s a pre-show, basically. That’s it. The main point of it is that we wanna support David. We wanna have this really cool connection, like I was talking about, with all the fans, maybe have some chat. The first one is tomorrow at 7:30 PM Eastern. “The Children of the Gods.” No, we’re starting with Stargate, and then “The Children of the Gods” would come afterwards. And then besides that, which is fully supporting David and what he’s doing, we’ve got a watch party, and we’ve been doing this prior to all of this other stuff. And the schedule’s at stargatewatchparty.com, Monday and Tuesdays at 5:00 PM Pacific, 8:00 Eastern, except when there’s a D&D game. We have D&D games once a month. Please go to the Discord channel if you wanna play. We are asking fans to come on as guests. These are using the Stargate D&D stories and episodes that were written, but we’re then expanding upon it, so we’re having actual fan-written episodes as part of our D&D games, which are really cool. And it’s really fun.

David Read:
That is really cool. There it is right there. Pull back a little bit, Darren. Awesome. That is so sweet.

Jenny Stiven:
So we’re using that, which is so much fun. I’m gonna be at LACC this year at Los Angeles Comic Con. I’ve got a Stargate panel. The original plan was to be talking about the SaveStargate campaign and the fandom organization that we’re growing. Obviously, I’m trying to get a special guest on to talk about this announcement. But LACC panel, I’m gonna shoot it. I’m gonna give it to David and Darren so they can put it on the show afterwards.

David Read:
I’ve felt so bad I was missing it. I’m so thrilled to hear this.

Jenny Stiven:
I know. I’m so bummed. But you’re gonna be shooting a video for me that we’re gonna show at the panel, just so you know. I’m telling you now.

David Read:
Excellent.

David Read:
Add it onto the heap.

Jenny Stiven:
And Darren, so are you. Hey, there you go.

David Read:
There you go.

Jenny Stiven:
You guys now know.

David Read:
There we go.

Jenny Stiven:
So, at LACC we are gonna be making some announcements about what’s happening with the fandom organization, and some really, really amazing plans for the 30th anniversary next year that we’re doing with you guys. We’ve got events planned for the whole year, and that’s why I’m saying in this whole podcast about; this is just about keeping the community.

David Read:
That’s cool.

Jenny Stiven:
It really is. We wanna keep this going. And it’s growing. We’re at something insane on the Discord now, like 2,500 people. And I genuinely did a comp the other day, Darren, because you can look at the tertiary links that people are doing. We’re at over 300,000 unique connections between all of the social. Unique, not duplicate, not overlap, not Venn diagram. So that’s a lot, and that’s between GateWorld from what I–Obviously I don’t have Dial the Gate or GateWorld’s Google ATM code. But what I could pull from Brandwatch and Brand24, we are at approximately 304,000 active fans globally right now.

David Read:
You technically do have mine. Feel free to use it.

Jenny Stiven:
I’m very careful about that. I don’t wanna give it away to anybody that is a platform. So I don’t do that. But that’s the amazing part about this, is that all of these people are super active again, and you guys are that hub. So, that’s what we wanna do with this whole campaign, and what we’re hoping to do with the fandom organization.

David Read:
Alisa reached out to me a few … I guess a couple of months ago at this point, and she pitched some of the ideas that they were going forward with. And I was very much of the mindset of best of luck. This is gonna be a bit of a Sisyphus situation but truly best of luck. And she stuck to her guns. And then you circled back around, and you were telling me with the larger group, and I was doing like, “Oh, my God. They are going for this.”

Jenny Stiven:
They asked me to come in–

David Read:
They are going for broke.

Jenny Stiven:
I can’t remember when they asked. Someone, I can’t even remember who it was, that asked me to come in in June, like the week after. And I’ve been really lucky to be part of it, and it’s been a blast to watch this grow and …

David Read:
They’re lucky to have you.

Jenny Stiven:
… enjoy it. Thank you. But it’s-

David Read:
We’re lucky to have you.

Jenny Stiven:
I appreciate that very much, and I love you for that. I feel that, and I don’t mean this sarcastically, Stargate is such a gift that keeps on giving. It’s a blessing that keeps on giving. I’ve met new fans. I didn’t know Alisa from before. I’ve met people… My God, I feel so bad. Jeremy that’s co-hosting A Full Circle pre-show. So David, apparently he was part of Stargate Command, one of our original members, and he never got the badge. So I went–

David Read:
Oh God.

Jenny Stiven:
I know. I felt so bad. So I went out when we did the move, and I found a badge.

David Read:
Found one?

Jenny Stiven:
So, I’m gonna give it to him.

David Read:
That’s why you hang on to those things.

Jenny Stiven:
I know. Speaking of this, next year, and this is a big project that Sharon, who’s running the entire event team, is doing, she wants to ask everybody who is a fan, whether you’re part of our campaign or not right now, to please send in, and I’ll give you guys what the email is, photos and videos of yourself as fans of Stargate over the past 30 years. So David, Darren, we want you guys for sure to be part of this.

David Read:
A lot of content.

Jenny Stiven:
It is a big project that she’s putting together, and so we’re gonna be advertising about this nonstop. And it’ll culminate on the date that it premiered, and we want everybody. If I got all 300,000 fans, I’d be thrilled. Now, Sharon’ll kill me, but I’d be thrilled. So, to send this, and obviously I’ll put it out, but it’ll be posted in our SaveStargate Facebook. It’ll be on all our official channels. But you send it to [email protected]. And that’s it.

David Read:
[email protected]. Very good. It’s ambitious.

Jenny Stiven:
I know there’s a lot, but we’re having fun. It is.

David Read:
No, it is. And you don’t have to be involved in all of it, but you can take a slice.

Jenny Stiven:
No.

David Read:
And the friendships that you build in the process are just– You get out of it whatever you put into it. And that’s really how it is. So if you wanna be part of something positive, SaveStargate’s where it is right now.

Jenny Stiven:
I mean, you guys, I met you all online in 2006. David’s essentially unofficial godfather of my son. Darren, I’ve been involved, like, when you hadn’t even had kids yet. David, you were a baby, literally. The friends I’ve made in this community– I was always a fan of Stargate before I worked on it. It is amazing to me the friendships and the deep friendships that you have with people. You guys know this better than anybody in this community.

David Read:
It’s pretty awesome. Darren, anything else before we wrap up?

Darren Sumner:
It’s exciting to see so much positivity, to see fans still engaged. And not just engaged because we’re pissed off. We had reason to be mad for a long time.

David Read:
You’re always going to have.

Darren Sumner:
The message of Save Martin’s Stargate was an important message to have over the summer for that time period. Moving forward, I’m excited to see the energy. I’m excited to see the positivity that so many people are doing so many things. And like you said, we’re heading into the 30th.

Jenny Stiven:
The international guys are crazy. They’re doing some stuff that we never got to do when it was live on broadcast or for Stargate Command. They’re killing it. And the other thing — that just reminded me — it doesn’t take away at all from why we were pissed, and we can still be pissed.

Darren Sumner:
Good point.

Jenny Stiven:
Absolutely. And the SaveStargate is still legitimate, because we still want it to be the TV universe and canon. That is the point.

David Read:
True. Absolutely.

Darren Sumner:
Very good point. But I’m ready to turn the page. I don’t know about the rest of y’all. I still want that message out there. I still want the TV universe to be saved, to be preserved, and I want new Stargate that is good Stargate and is in that universe. But I’m ready to turn the page and start to love talking about Stargate again. Start talking about SG-1 and Atlantis and Universe again. Because, like you said, we’ve got a 30th. We’re heading into a big year for SG-1. July 27th, 2027 is SG-1’s 30th anniversary.

Darren Sumner:
So, we should all be doing fun stuff to celebrate.

Jenny Stiven:
Ooh, you guys, I have a really big … I can’t say.

David Read:
You can’t leave it at that. Give us a bone.

Jenny Stiven:
OK. So, something that you and I worked on, David, that we were probably the most excited that we ever did, is what I’m hoping to recreate for the actual day anniversary, which is after Comic-Con. In San Diego. On a ship.

David Read:
Understood. Very, very nice.

Jenny Stiven:
It’d be super fun.

David Read:
I’ve got the Blu-ray …

Jenny Stiven:
It’ll be great.

David Read:
… of Final Cut.

Jenny Stiven:
Oh, my God. Seriously, every time I watch that, I’m so excited. OK, fine. We did a big premiere of Continuum on the Midway in San Diego at San Diego Comic-Con in whatever the hell year that was.

David Read:
’08.

Darren Sumner:
’08?

David Read:
It was live ’08.

Jenny Stiven:
Is that what it was?

David Read:
Yeah, that was it.

Jenny Stiven:
Damn. And then we actually did Origins there also during Comic-Con. So, what I’m hoping to do is, I’ve already talked to the Midway, is that we can do “Children of the Gods” and Atlantis, the first episodes, and SGU on the Midway over those three days.

David Read:
I was gonna say, that’s seven hours of content.

Jenny Stiven:
I’m not asking to sit around for seven hours. But to give everybody an opportunity, if you’re here for SDCC, I’ve talked to Midway. They’re open to it. We’re gonna try to see what we can do, and it’d be really, really fun.

Darren Sumner:
That’d be cool.

David Read:
I’ve got a Blu-ray copy of Final Cut, which you can’t get. So it’ll be–

Darren Sumner:
I was gonna say, I don’t think there was a Blu-ray release, was there?

David Read:
It was released on Amazon Streaming for a couple of weeks, and then they pulled it, and it was replaced with an SD version. But I’ve got the Blu-ray version.

Jenny Stiven:
No way.

David Read:
And it’s beautiful.

Jenny Stiven:
Super cool.

David Read:
Anything else, folks?

Jenny Stiven:
I’ll be coming to you.

David Read:
I’ll have it ready. Darren, anything else going on? Gonna continue to unpack?

Darren Sumner:
Just a thanks to people who are watching here live and after the fact. Thanks to people who are in the concentric circles of fandom. You might not be running a channel. You might not be a creator. You might not be hands-on in the SaveStargate project. But there are fans out there. There are people who are watching. There are people who love this franchise, and I love what it stands for. So, keep hope alive.

Jenny Stiven:
Thank you.

David Read:
Jenny?

Jenny Stiven:
I am blown away by how amazing and exciting this is to have this still be alive in my career and still be something I can be part of as a fan, and I am so thankful to every single new person that I’ve met that has been so open and welcoming and amazing with me, and the fact that I have the friendship with you guys that we will be celebrating next year as well. I find this genuinely to be a gift that is, 20 years later, still giving me absolute joy, whether it’s as a fan or working on it. Either way. And I can’t wait to do more.

David Read:
Occasional heartburn, but that’s why we have antacid.

Jenny Stiven:
But I gotta say, honestly, and I hate to say this …

David Read:
It’s worth it.

Jenny Stiven:
… it’s part of my career. So, it is something that I’ve become used to. I don’t want anybody else to become used to it. I don’t want anybody else to feel like it’s a normal. But I know a lot of people don’t feel like this right now, but this particular fandom and this particular IP has had a lot of nine lives, and I don’t think it’s over. I really don’t. My gut tells me that this isn’t, in any manner, shape, or form, a pause or the end at all. I am not sure where it’s gonna go.

David Read:
That’s it. Thank you both. I appreciate you guys.

Jenny Stiven:
Thank you for having me.

David Read:
Absolutely. This has been a wealth of information and thought. I’m gonna go ahead and wrap up the show. So, I’ll speak to you guys in a few minutes, OK?

Darren Sumner:
Great.

Jenny Stiven:
Bye, guys.

Darren Sumner:
Thanks again.

David Read:
My name is David Read. You’re watching the Stargate Oral History Project. That is Darren Sumner of GateWorld and Jenny Stiven of Cleo Consulting. I wake up every day, and I am so genuinely thankful to be able to sit in this seat and share such a wonderful fandom with all of you, in ways that I can’t even express yet, because we’re just getting started. Michael Shanks and I have been recording content for the past three weeks now, and we are gonna be rolling that out beginning this coming Saturday with a live stream, and then we’re gonna be releasing some prerecorded content immediately after that onto Patreon at thefullcirclepodcast.com, which will be filtering down into YouTube 72 hours later. If you enjoy Stargate and you wanna see more content like this on YouTube, if you wanna continue to see the franchise grow, do me a favor, click the Like button. But more importantly, if you got something positive back from this, if you got something negative back from this, if you wanna scream at the rooftops, please comment. Engagement counts tremendously. And if you do wanna participate in the Stargate campaign, you can do that at [email protected]. I think I got that right. The only reason that I’m able to continue this mission every single day now at this point, which has become a daily thing, and I’m so thankful, is for this group of people right here in the Dial the Gate Patreon who have helped to make that possible, and it’s grown into A Full Circle with Michael Shanks. So, that’s beginning to roll out as well. We’re moving into the 30th anniversary of Stargate SG-1 with such strength and resilience that I would never have anticipated 10 years ago. I really thought that we were gonna pitter out. Jenny and I — OK, maybe eight years ago — we thought that that was it. We thought that we had done everything and we moved on from MGM, but it is just a cat, the number of lives that this thing has. And I’m so thankful that we can explore this franchise, continue with all of you. Tremendous thanks to my producers, a number of people behind the scenes who have been working with me recently. Cannot thank enough the moderators for helping us pull off tonight, Antony, Lockwatcher, Marcia, Raj, Jakub, Enigma, Stephen, Lord Toth. Thanks to Eagle SG and Venture Pictures for their animated sequences. Frederick Marcoux at Concepts Web keeps dialthegate.com up and running. I’ve got Sergei who’s building my utilities. Ian Bernardo, who’s made stargatetrivia.com a reality. If you’ve not played Stargate Trivia, especially on your phone, type in stargatetrivia.com and go play. We’ve got a huge slate of content for you coming up. Tomorrow we have Grace Park, Lieutenant Satterfield in Stargate SG-1 “Proving Ground.” She went on to play Boomer, Sharon Valerii in Battlestar Galactica. And later on this week, we’ve got Paul McGillion and Rachel Luttrell coming in. A Full Circle launches its series premiere. My mother turns 70 on the same day. Happy early birthday, Mom. October the 17th. And October the 18th, Sunday, we’re gonna have Stargate Trivia with a bunch of trivia vets and new folks who have never done a live stream before, and we’re gonna use a new stargatetrivia.com utility for that. I think that that’s what I’ve got for you here. Thanks to everyone who submitted their questions. Let’s go boldly and make good ripples ’cause you can do it however you want, but look, that’s why I’m sticking around, and that’s how I’m gonna stick around. Appreciate your time. My name is David Read for Dial the Gate. Thanks so much for tuning in and for listening to me yak. See you on the other side.