As part of WonderCon 2021, Dial the Gate is proud to present a look back on our first six months of production with this two-part special! It’s hard to believe we have only been going that long with nearly 70 episodes of content, but we are extremely grateful for your support. And, hey, what would a Stargate channel be without its very own clip show? Enjoy!

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0:00 – Opening Credits
0:27 – Welcome
1:25 – Joe Flanigan working with David Hewlett
5:54 – Tony Amendola Being Cast as Bra’tac
14:03 – Paul McGillion Pranking Rachel Luttrell
16:54 – Dean Devlin and the Two Follow-Up Films
20:54 – Gary Jones on an RDA Walk-and-Talk
24:25 – Tom McBeath on Maybourne’s Humanity
27:35 – Martin Wood Getting New Cheyenne Mountain Footage
32:32 – Andee Frizzell Submerging with Makeup
37:09 – Teryl Rothery on the memory of Don S. Davis
42:04 – Suanne Braun’s Hathor Audition
46:23 – Rainbow Sun Francks’ Rising Memorabilia
49:35 – Joseph Mallozzi’s Original Window of Opportunity Pitch
58:33 – Wrap-Up
58:54 – End Credits

***

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

#Stargate
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#TurtleTimeline

TRANSCRIPT
Find an error? Submit it here.

David Read:
Hello, WonderCon, and thanks so much for joining us on Dial the Gate. My name is David Read. Welcome to our show. We broadcast every weekend on YouTube at youtube.com/dialthegate. We started in October of last year, and have now reached over 65 episodes, as various casts and crew of Stargate SG-1, Atlantis, and Universe have been featured. What we’re gonna do with this two-part retrospective here at WonderCon is take a look back at some of our more favorite moments over the past six months, give you a taste of the show, and we hope you’ll come back on youtube.com/dialthegate, or go to dialthegate.com and look at our ongoing schedule of live events, so you can take part yourself and celebrate the Stargate franchise. Thanks so much for joining us and enjoy the show.

David Read:
I think it’s fitting that Jack O’Neill asks this: “Hey, Joe, what was it like to work with Meredith?”

Joe Flanigan:
“What was it like to work with Meredith?” I’m confused.

David Read:
Really?

Joe Flanigan:
Yeah.

David Read:
Dr. Meredith Rodney McKay? Ah, Joe.

Joe Flanigan:
My God. I thought you… First, I was like, “Oh, my God. You’re talking about a guest star named Meredith?”

David Read:
Nope.

Joe Flanigan:
I’m so sorry. That is… OK. I forget that his middle name is a woman’s name.

David Read:
His middle name is Rodney.

Joe Flanigan:
I think it’s fitting. What was it like to work with Rod… OK, so I have so much to say about this.

David Read:
Go ahead.

Joe Flanigan:
First of all, when Rodney and I, or when David and I started working together, something clicked right away, and it was not unlike the roadshows with Bob Hope and Fred Astaire. There was just this easy banter, and we were so different that it was really funny, and it was really fun to work with. And David is a really talented actor, and so, it… I have to lay down the context really fast. I’m flying back between LA and Vancouver quite a bit, and I find myself occasionally sitting with Rick on the plane. And I remember sitting next to him, and I said, “So Rick, do you have any advice now that I’m doing this show?” And he’s like… He can be a little gruff. And he’s like, “Advice? Like, what kind of advice? I don’t have any advice.” I was like, “Wow, OK. MacGyver. My God, MacGyver’s a little grumpy.” Now, I didn’t realize it wasn’t about that at all. And like 30 minutes later, he goes, “Ho. Don’t do the gobbledygook.” And I was like, “OK, what is the gobbledygook?” He said, “You know the gobbledygook. The gobbledygook is all the sci-fi techie language about this and this and that that you never understand, and you’re sitting there explaining the whole episode. If you do it good, and if you do it well, they will keep giving it to you, and they will keep giving you more and more and more. And if you’re not good at it, somebody else has to do it.” Now, this was probably the best advice I got. So I was given some stuff, and I purposely sabotaged it. And I was like, “Oh, my God, I think Hewlett is probably much better-equipped to handle this type of dialogue than I am.” And I’m like, “I’m not the smart guy. I don’t wanna be the smart guy.”

David Read:
He was in Mensa, or he could’ve been in Mensa.

Joe Flanigan:
Exactly. The whole thing, I was like [inaudible].

David Read:
“That’s not cool. I fly helicopters.”

Joe Flanigan:
I’m being subterranean smart, and sure enough, Hewlett was saddled with everything, and it was hilarious. I have seen Hewlett laugh and cry and curl into fetal positions and freak out. The amount of work he had to do cracked me up. Now, it stressed him out, and I was literally laughing all the time. “I helped create these conditions for you,” and it was super fun.

David Read:
And thank you for entertainment for the rest of us.

Joe Flanigan:
Working with him was a joy. And actually, I was thinking to myself, “I have no idea how that show would be without him.” He’s just… It’s like peanut butter and jelly. Is just a jelly sandwich good? No. I can’t picture the show without those two characters doing the thing.

David Read:
He is, in many respects, the technical propulsion that moves the story along. He mentions the thing of the MacGuffin of this and that that allows you to go “That’s crazy. All right, let’s go, let’s go fight them all.”

Joe Flanigan:
Or, “What did you say?”

David Read:
Exactly. And I remember–

Joe Flanigan:
And by the way, as opposed to science fiction movies, movies are very big productions, and you can show a planet blowing up. You got the money to do it. Well, we don’t quite have that money, so we have to explain the plan that blew up for the most part. And so, science fiction television, I think, is something every actor should do, because it’s very difficult. You’re having to take a lot of material that’s really complicated and address and say it in some way you’re not gonna lose people’s attention. And David was able to do that masterfully. I knew I couldn’t.

David Read:
That’s fair.

Joe Flanigan:
So I was like, “You do it.”

David Read:
You had indicated before that you had always wanted to go to Vancouver. Tell us about being cast as Master Bra’tac.

Tony Amendola:
I always wanted to go to Vancouver because my wife and I had gone through… We took our first vacation together in 1983 and went to Banff, Jasper, Canadian Rockies, flew into Vancouver, took the train across. So we fell in love with Vancouver because it was summer. And there’s no… It’s as glorious a place as you can imagine in summer. I was always jealous of my friends who were working in Vancouver, I never got the opportunity. So I did Mask of Zorro, I was only home a week or so. Agent called, audition, Stargate. I’d seen the movie and enjoyed the movie. This 133-year-old shoots up in Vancouver and it was the 4th of July weekend. So I really– What do you do on Fourth of July weekend? I mean, after you celebrate. I had time, so I really worked on the script. And I was really prepared for the audition. And I really wanted to go to Vancouver, and sure enough, it happened. And one of the things I think made it happen, there’s a special time for an actor after they finish a big film where they’re sort of hot because the film hasn’t come out and hasn’t been a success or a flop yet, but there’s a possibility that you could get this guy and he’s just gonna– So I think it makes, those little things make a difference, I think, that having just come off the film. I also did an audition I was very pleased with, and so, that’s sort of how it all came together. And now you probably wanna hear the story about when I arrived and then realize I’m worried about the makeup.

David Read:
Jan Newman?

Tony Amendola:
Jan Newman. So probably some of the people have heard this story. I’m sorry, but…

David Read:
No, please.

Tony Amendola:
So I arrive, and I think– And my wife, if I’m working in Oklahoma or if I’m working in some other places that are not as desirable to visit, she will not come. But boy, Vancouver, New Orleans, those types of — Mexico — she’ll come. So, she was so excited to come back. But now I realize, “My god, she’s gonna be here, we wanna enjoy the town as well as do this work, and I’m playing 133-year-old guy. What are we… It’s gonna be a makeup chair, 4:30 in the morning. I’m gonna be fried.” And so, I get there, I do my wardrobe fitting, which is great, and I’m going to leave and they… the second AD say, “Hey, the makeup key, Jan wants to see you.” And I’m thinking, “Here it comes.” “Can we shave your head? Can we do something.” And I go in, and she just looks at me. Suddenly… She said, “Oh, you’re perfect as you are.” And all of a sudden, I’m like, “Wait a minute. 133, I’m perfect as I am?”

David Read:
Now you’re insulted.

Tony Amendola:
Now I’m insulted, but guess what? I have never — with Bra’tac at least — I have never met a fan who says, “Oh, you’ve gotten old.” You see, you can’t say that about Bra’tac. You start at 133, the guy’s always gonna look good. He’s always gonna be…

David Read:
Someone in chat — I was peeking in — said, “There’s no way he’s 69.” They’re, “No, it’s not possible. He looks younger than that.” So, there you go.

Tony Amendola:
I feel younger than that. When you get to be 69 you realize …

David Read:
Absolutely.

Tony Amendola:
… you’re your naughtiest 15, always. It’s always there. You may not act on it, but–

David Read:
So you spent a lot of time on location for that episode, and you really got to experience the outdoors. But tell me about the weight of that initial costume. You know, first season… they had not really tweaked the costumes yet, as they did as the story went on.

Tony Amendola:
Oh, man. No, it was very heavy. But first let me say, working outdoors, everyone… I got such a welcome from people when I went back. From the crew and everything, they could not have been nicer. And then I always realized the other shoe would fall, because they realized if Bra’tac was back, we were going to a gravel pit. There was gonna be some… So they were gonna have to spend some time–

David Read:
There were a few pits in Vancouver that did just that.

Tony Amendola:
My God. I spent so much time there. But yeah, the wardrobe… As an actor, what I hate is if you have very uncomfortable things that add nothing to the depiction of the character. There’s nothing– There’s someone else’s idea of something, you have no connection to them, you just have to wear a funny hat that goes… It has to go to the left, has nothing to do with the character. It’s because the other one is going to the right. So you’re trying to juggle it, but with… I never resented the clothes for Bra’tac, which were very heavy. There was chain mail, there were plastic pieces, there were robes, there were capes. I mean, it was probably, I’d say 50, 60 pounds. And the boots.

David Read:
Like this guy right here next to me.

Tony Amendola:
Oh my god. And then you’re talking about that guy?

David Read:
With the helmet.

Tony Amendola:
Pneumatic head.

Tony Amendola:
But it looked so good. And one thing about carrying a lot of weight all day is that when you take it off at the end of the day, you feel like if… for the people that have played basketball or wore ankle weights, it’s that light feeling you feel. So I always enjoyed it. Enjoy is not the right word. I was always very tolerant of it. Although sometimes — this is Jan — they would– With the heat in that first episode, man, it was hot. Quite hot with my… they’d lift my little cap, and literally water would pour out. And Jan–

David Read:
Yeah, ’cause you’re… it all goes out of the top of your head.

Tony Amendola:
Yes. 30% of your heat. Believe me, I know. So Jan — still to this day — she’d have a little thing with ice, and she’d have face cloths in it with Sea Breeze. And she’d put ’em on the back of your neck and on your wrists and everything. But there was a funny thing that happened once that I’ll never forget. They put your makeup on, and they have to put sunscreen. Again, you’re out in the sun. And I have my little, my little …

David Read:
Tattoo.

Tony Amendola:
… tattoo. My little golden guy. And I guess they would get it sometimes, the time went by and they didn’t do it, and when they took it off, I sort of had a tan. I got [inaudible] …

David Read:
Oh, you’re kidding me.

Tony Amendola:
… on my face. Very, very faint. She said, “Well, yeah, I guess we’ll be more careful with the sunscreen tomorrow.” But I said, “Oh hey, we know what the positioning is now.”

David Read:
You can line it right back up.

Tony Amendola:
You know what I mean?

David Read:
Forget the Polaroids.

Tony Amendola:
It’s so funny, and there’s always the joke, people are fascinated when you go to a con, they’re saying, “How did they attach that?” And particularly with, if it’s a young boy or girl, I’ll look at them very seriously and say, “Oh, my tattoo? They used a nail gun.” And I can always see them, their eyes going like that.

David Read:
You’re bad, Tony.

Tony Amendola:
I am bad. But I love that. But that’s the great thing with– And every so often, because we’ve been around so long, the parent will say, “Yeah, he told me that joke too.”

David Read:
Do you know the in-canon story of how it’s done?

Tony Amendola:
No. What’s that?

David Read:
So a certain Goa’uld knife is used to cut the flesh. And then pure molten gold is poured in.

Tony Amendola:
Pure molten gold.

David Read:
So, it’s pretty intense.

Tony Amendola:
If you’re lucky it’s gold. If you’re a peon, it’s not.

David Read:
It’s some kinda silver or something, absolutely.

Tony Amendola:
Silver.

Paul McGillion:
I will tell you one really funny thing that I had to do. It wasn’t on the show, on camera. But Rachael was gonna have her first child, right?

David Read:
Yeah.

Paul McGillion:
And she was pregnant in the show, and she was playing the Wraith queen, right?

David Read:
When she was in the makeup?

Paul McGillion:
Yeah.

David Read:
Yeah, “The Queen,” Season Five.

Paul McGillion:
So she was really pregnant at the time, and she was gonna have the baby imminently, and all the girls in the makeup trailer were making this beautiful book for her, and everyone’s writing stuff in the book, and really lovely stuff. And they kept on saying, “Paul, what are you gonna do? You gotta…” I’m going, “I gotta think of something good, I gotta think of something good.” And so, Rachel had shorter hours at the time ’cause she was… they were working her hard.

David Read:
They were work–

Paul McGillion:
So, she left and said, “I got it, I got it.” So Jason Momoa’s there. I go, “You gotta help me do this.” And he’s like, “Great.” Rachel had an amazing stunt double who looked just like her, right? Amazing. So, what happened is, when Rachel left, I got all of the stunt double’s wig and everything, Rachael’s outfit, the pregnant belly, I put it all on, the girls did my makeup like Rachael, OK? Did you know this?

David Read:
I don’t remember.

Paul McGillion:
And so, I got Jason Momoa, and I got Rachel’s fighting sticks, and we did a photo shoot. I can’t remember who took the pictures. That’s so funny, I can’t remember who did the pictures. Anyway, we went out there, and I’m fighting Jason as Rachel in this makeup, and I had the sticks and everything. And then I go into her trailer and I said, “Mama’s tough,” and I took a picture of her fighting with Jason. And then, “Mama sexy,” and then we’re on… I’m in Rachel’s trailer lying on her bed with my hand like this, and Jason’s there beside me. And then, “Mama’s drunk.” And I took a bunch of stuff from craft services and got some empty beer bottles and stuff and I poured chips all over my pregnant belly… and all these different pictures of me. Mummy sensitive, I’m crying. And so, I took all the pictures and put it in the very last page of her book, right, and all these captions in it. And so, the next day, Rachel comes in. And Rachael’s very sweet, and she’s hyper-pregnant, so she’s really sensitive. So she’s going through the book. And I make sure I’m scheduled at the same time as her, and I’m two chairs down. And I could hear her and she’s going through the book. And she’s like, “Oh my God, oh my God,” she has Kleenex. “Oh my God, you guys, that’s so sweet,” saying, “You’re gonna be the best mom ever.” And I’m like, “Oh, Rachel.” She goes, “Shut up, Pauly.” And she’s making fun of me. And she’s going through, and she’s reading all those different things from people. She keeps on reading, she keeps on reading. And I’m waiting for it, waiting for it, waiting for it. And she gets to mine and she’s like…And it was the best reaction. So good. So good. And I’m like, “Yes, I got you.” And she was dying. It was so funny. And I still have those pictures somewhere, which I–

David Read:
You do?

Paul McGillion:
Yeah, I will have to …

David Read:
She tore ’em out and gave ’em back to you?

Paul McGillion:
… I will have to get them back to you.

David Read:
I was so surprised years later in finding out that there was going to be, that there were two more films in the original trilogy planned, because there are so few movies these days that end with “The End,” and Stargate does. And I was like, “That was good.” And then I found out that you wanted to do two more. For the original trilogy, is there anything that you can say about what you wanted to do with it? I’d love to hear whatever you’re willing to say. You just told earlier… that there were two other locations that were planned. So a location for each additional movie.

Dean Devlin:
I’ll say this, just’ cause I don’t think we’re ever gonna get to do it. So there are two different places on Earth that are famous for pyramids, and one was an Egyptian, and our second was gonna be a Mayan culture.

David Read:
OK. So not necessarily Ra’s race again? He was the last of his race for good.

Dean Devlin:
Yeah, and then the third was gonna tie in almost every mystery that we’ve ever had on Earth. Whether it was Bigfoot or the Yeti or… we were gonna tie everything into a larger mythology.

David Read:
Tapestry.

Dean Devlin:
And it was gonna be so much fun, it was gonna be so wild. But we never got to go there. We never got to explore it.

David Read:
Was it the TV franchise, the success of the TV franchise, where MGM was like, “No, we’re just not interested in doing it this direction?” Was it money? What was the biggest factor in not pursuing that?

Dean Devlin:
It was the television show. What had happened was, again, the film was made entirely independently. There was no studio involved. So MGM agreed to release the film when no one else would release it, ’cause no one believed in the movie. And the week before the movie opened, the people who had financed the movie, which was a group out of France, they were so sure that they had a bomb, they sold the movie to MGM for $5 million. So then MGM owned the movie.

David Read:
And I’m guessing, even in that money, that was a steal at that time?

Dean Devlin:
Yeah, it’s a movie that cost $50 million.

David Read:
50 million.

Dean Devlin:
And it made over 200 million at that time. It was the largest October opening in history at that time. And so, MGM now owned it, and they decided they wanted to do a TV series. Roland and I went in to meet with them to talk about the series, and they said, “Oh, well, we, we don’t really want you guys involved.” And we were like, “Really?” “OK.” And they went on their own. So it was a very painful thing for a long time, ’cause you’re watching …

David Read:
Something that you gave birth to–

Dean Devlin:
… somebody else raise your children. You know what I mean? So it was very hard. And that’s why it was so interesting because I was very hostile to the series, especially ’cause I don’t–

David Read:
I don’t blame you.

Dean Devlin:
But the first couple episodes of the series had full frontal nudity. And I was like, “That’s not Stargate. Do you guys have any idea what show we’re doing?” So I called–

David Read:
Even Brad Wright had a problem with that. That was Showtime. Showtime said, “If you want this, it has to have that.” And then they never did it again, and the final cut of “Children of the Gods,” they took it out, so.

Dean Devlin:
So I had kind of rebelled again. I was angry that the studio had cut us out of it, that they didn’t wanna do the movies. But what was interesting is that many years later, it was obvious to me that even though I had not been watching the show, that they must have been doing something right, because you don’t get to live that long, you don’t get to have that many fans, you don’t get that kind of passion unless you’ve done a really good show.

David Read:
17 seasons. 350 episodes. Something’s working. And the passion of the fan base has only grown.

Gary Jones:
One time I had to do walk and talk with Richard Dean Anderson, and I had looked at the script, and I had missed this part. I would always flip through it. They get the script, I go, “OK, blah, blah, blah, Walter, Walter, Walter. OK.” And then I go through, “What is–”

David Read:
It’s gotta be “Zero Hour.”

Gary Jones:
I missed this one little scene where O’Neill gets off the elevator. And I meet him, and I walk with him down the thing, and I’m basically bringing him up to speed on the other SG teams, and what planet they’re on. I look at this thing before we shoot it, and I go “What scene is this?” And they go “Oh. Well, it’s this scene.” And I go “Oh, I didn’t realize that I was in that scene. I hadn’t read it. I hadn’t read it.” And they give it to me, and I go “Oh my God,” and it was like a block of dialogue that I was just talking. It was just totally expositional, and it had about six planets in there. Like PX9-742.

David Read:
The planets would have to be a bear to get them all straight.

Gary Jones:
David. So I see it. So we have to rehearse it a bunch of times. Because it was a walk and talk, they wanted to know where we were going to end up. So they said “Let’s just rehearse it a bunch of times.” So instead of using that time to memorize all the planets, I just think to myself “Well, I’m just giving them the update on whatever,” so I just made them up. I just made up the planets. And I go like “PX3-742, they’re back,” you know, “SG-2 is back from that. And then SG-3 is heading out to PX9-712,” and I was just pulling numbers out of my ass.

David Read:
I never noticed!

Gary Jones:
Yeah, but hang on. Just before we shoot, and I’m not kidding you, this is not a word of a lie, the script supervisor comes up to me and he goes “Gary, are you aware that you’ve been saying different planets every time?” And I go “Yeah. Yeah. I am. I know.” And she goes “No, you have to say the planets. You have to say it as written.” And I go “Yeah, but I’m just talking about the planets. Why do I have to memorize them?” And she goes “Because we go there.” And I look at her and I go “Oh, my God.” And I have to look at my sides again, and I have to memorize them in about 30 seconds. And I managed to pull it off. David, don’t ask me how I did it. I did it. But I was just dying. I’d wasted all this time. I could have been like memorizing as we were talking. Because when you’re rehearsing just for blocking, I could be looking at my script like this and just you know, whatever, “Jack, Jack Jack, PX3-912,” whatever. No. I knew the words around them, but I just made up the planets.

David Read:
You forced them in and they came back out. You just had to do it.

Gary Jones:
I had to do it. And that’s what happens when you’re doing technical jargon like that on a show like that.

Tom McBeath:
And once in a while get pushed back by a few things, but it was… and I think I talked about this particular scene. There was a scene in Foothold that was cut out of the production, probably because of length, I’m not sure why, but it was with me and Amanda, and it started out with me screwing up Amanda’s warning about foothold, and her famous “Maybourne, you can be an idiot every day of the week, why couldn’t you just take a day off!” Then we work through it all and we save her, and then at the end there’s a scene in the office with the General and with RDA, and we’re clearing stuff up, and they say, “Good job, Maybourne.” And I say something like, “I’d like to give credit to…” was she a Colonel then? Carter?

David Read:
It was Major Carter.

Tom McBeath:
“…Major Carter.” And they all sort of look at me like… and it takes me a while to try to say it, and she says something, and I say something back, and then I said something like, “Perhaps we’ll see each other again.” And I give her this little look, a kind of embarrassed look, and, “I hope, well, maybe, we’ll see each other again.” And O’Neill says, “Yeah, that would be nice.” And it’s like, for me, it’s the shock thing. Well, it was that missing scene that made me do that scene that way, because it was in that scene where I had said something to her, and she looked at me like, “He’s human!” And I think Maybourne had, at some level, fallen slightly in love with Carter.

David Read:
Who can blame him? We were all in love with Carter!

Tom McBeath:
Oh, I know! [inaudible] his little heart, he’s gone, “My God, what’s happening to me?” And I can’t remember exactly what the scene looked like, I can’t remember the dialogue, I don’t have any scripts and stuff, so I’ve no idea what it looked like on the page, or what it looked like when they filmed it, but it was that little look back to her when I said, “Well, perhaps we’ll get a chance to see each other again.” And it was just this little…

David Read:
Glance.

Tom McBeath:
This little kinda half embarrassed, half excited glance that maybe it’ll happen again.

Martin Wood:
Same thing when we went to NORAD the first time. We sort of called the production office, which is in its infancy at that point, you know, saying, “This is what we’re going to need.” And they said, “OK, we can probably swing that. We can probably get that.” So, we went and I shot for 24 hours and we were exhausted at the end of it. We got the film back, and like two weeks later, the pilot was on the air. And then and around year seven or eight, we thought we’re getting really tired of seeing the same establishing shots. How about we go back and shoot another one another day? And I said, “I’ll do it.” And they’re, “Yeah you can. You’ve got the clearances. Now you do this kind of stuff.”

David Read:
You know what you’d like to see different now.

Martin Wood:
Yeah, yeah. And the fact is I knew how to get into things and what I could see and things.

David Read:
You shot there.

Martin Wood:
Yeah. So, I landed and I get off the plane and there’s a car waiting there for me, and the woman that was driving me was so exuberant. She says, “Oh, my God, we’re so happy to have you here.” First time around, nobody knew who we were because nobody had ever seen the show. That, and I remember that day, the head of their security came up to me and said, “You know, yeah, I answer all these questions about, you know, about nukes in the middle of the mountain and stuff this all the time. Now you’re doing a show about something there’s 28 floors beneath.”

David Read:
There’s no missile silo there.

Martin Wood:
And he goes, “Oh, great.” So anyway, the second time I came in this woman is so happy, this corporal that was driving. We get there and, no, it was the captain that was driving me. It was an officer who was driving me, this captain gets and says, “I’d like to introduce us to these people,” and she opens the door, and we go into this room, and there’s 200 people sitting there, and they cheer. “Hi, how are you?” And they said, “We want to be in the movies.” And I was like– So I had 200 people now that wanted to be background people on the new establishing shots. And they said they won the lottery to be able to do it, you know, so it’s like, “We want this, and we’re taking two days off and we’re going to help you.” “OK, terrific.” So there’s so many people who are fans of the show that came up and talked to me about it, too. We’re starting to shoot, and, I’m getting some stuff, and this car drives up, one of the security Hummers drives up, and out steps this man, brush cut, flat top. “Oh, no.” And I went “What do you mean “Oh no? What is “Oh no?” And they said, “He looks like he’s coming for you.” And it was the head of security now comes walking over to me goes, “Son, come with me.” I said, “OK, we’re just…” He goes, “I know what you’re doing. I knew the second you stepped off the plane.” I’m like, “Oh man. OK.” So, I get in with them and we’re driving into the base. Now the base, it’s more than a kilometer long, the drive. And I’m trying to talk to him, and he’s not talking to me. I said, “Have you seen the show?” And he’s, like, straight ahead, not talking to me. And I said something, and at one point he went (head gesture) and I went, “OK, I guess we’re not talking.” And so we get there and he goes “Come with me!” And we start up into the control area, which, when I first walked through it, a lot of the doors had been shuttered in space command and wasn’t allowed to look into and things. And now the doors are more open and I can sort of look in. And so I’m rubbernecking as we’re going. And he goes “Eyes ahead!” And I went, oh, man, I am going to the principal’s office in a big way here. And I’m thinking, what did I do that got us? We walked down this corridor and we stop and he goes, “Look!” And I look to the right and there’s this door, this white door with a window in it, and it says, “Stargate Command” has an arrow down like this. And I went, “What?” He goes, “It’s a broom closet. I finally had to make it so that there’s some place here that, people, because they all ask where’s Stargate Command, how they get down to it?” He goes, “I got you, didn’t I?” He’s laughing. He’s a huge fan of the show. “I got you. You should have seen…I was expecting to see a wet spot on that passenger seat, when you got out of that seat!” And I went, “Oh, man.” He goes, “I’m a huge fan. Can I be in it?” I went, “Sure.” So there is a door there that says “Stargate Command.”

David Read:
And it’s a broom closet.

Martin Wood:
It’s a broom closet.

David Read:
Fantastic.

Andee Frizzell:
So, we get in, and I’ve read the script, I know where we’re going, it’s super exciting. So, we do all of our regular stuff, we get the face on, and then, of course, every time I died and came back as a new Queen they gave me a new hairdo. So, they got this huge…

David Read:
They’re all different personality-wise.

Andee Frizzell:
Exactly. And different… where they were. So, with “Submersion,” she’s kind of murky and green and she’s been living in the dark. ‘Living’… sleeping in the dark, so she had a different hue. Anyway, they had this black hair, really, really long – gorgeous – and they wanted to prop it up, so it looked like a… not so stuck on my head, so they put a circle of foam thing, to give it a bump. So, I had this beautiful mane of hair, and then this gorgeous neck piece, and just a stunning outfit, again, such talented people in Wardrobe. Anyway, we go into set, and they’re like, “OK, here’s the plan. We’re going to have you… because we want to do this insane crane shot, right, and we got one shot at it. It’s going to start from the top, and you’re going to show the pool, and it’s going to come around, and what we need you to do is go under the water, and hold your breath, and count, so that you have a count to 10 as the crane is coming around, coming around, coming around, and then when it stops, we want you to creepily come out of the water. It’s gonna be amazing.” And I’m like, “This sounds awesome!” So, of course, it has to look like I’m not in the pool, so they took this gorgeous long hair, they tied it to my belt so that it didn’t float up when I was in the water. So, the pool itself, even though it looks really, really deep, was only about maybe up to my waist. And so, I get into the water, they’re describing it all to me, I can feel my mark, which happened to be a… I wanna say like a curling rock, but it was like a big rock with handles on it.

David Read:
So you could grab on to it.

Andee Frizzell:
Because I’m full of air, right? So, they didn’t want me to float, my butt go up in the air, and it also told me where my mark was, where I was in focus. So, I took a big, beautiful, deep breath, and I went under and I grabbed hold of this boulder, basically. And right away, I knew, “Uh-oh. This was a mistake.” So, I’m not a science expert, but foam floats. And we had completely forgot, no one had said to me, “Hey.” So, the second I got under the water, all this on my face wanted to shoot straight out of the pool, and I’m like, “Oh my God, we have one shot at this crane shot, I have to keep this face.” And at the same simultaneous moment, my hair also decides it wants to take off, and it’s tied to my pants! So, I’m holding on to a boulder under the water, full of breath, and all of a sudden, my pants, my hair and my face are trying to launch off, and I’m gripping this thing for all its life. I just have to count to 10. And the boulder is starting to bounce on the bottom of the pool. The foam wants to be free. And, I also, in the same moment I’m thinking to myself, “The second I let go of this thing, I’m going to shoot out of the water, and that’s the complete opposite of what they want.” So, I basically had to hold on to my pants, and slowly, slowly allow myself. But every single thing was trying to get out of the water. It was hilarious.

David Read:
Is that the shot that they used?

Andee Frizzell:
Yeah, it’s in there.

David Read:
That’s the one? It worked!

Andee Frizzell:
Yeah, it totally worked.

David Read:
So, the foam didn’t disintegrate?

Andee Frizzell:
No. ‘Cause it was just trying to… I was in there 10 [seconds]. I just had to hold on 10 seconds. But here’s the thing, so when I finally come out, they’re like, “Amazing, amazing, let’s reset and we’ll go one more,” and I’m like, “No. We can’t go again, my face will come straight off.”

David Read:
One of the other people that I got to spend a lot of time with, and I’m very thankful, is Don S. Davis. He called you his daughter. He has a son, and you were his daughter. What an amazing human being. Just a giant. And another just absolute lover of life. Do you have a story of Don that you can share?

Teryl Rothery:
Oh God, so many. Are you kidding? He was a dad. He absolutely was… He was a dad for sure. I have so many stories. I was just sharing one of them the other day that I cannot repeat. But it was so funny. I really wish I could. And I had to do Tony Amendola [who] is in it as well. And it was a taxi ride for a mile and I’m, “Where the heck…” But we were somewhere I think in Paris and we were going, I don’t know, going somewhere else. But I can’t share it. But suffice it to say, it still makes me cry from laughter. He makes me cry from sadness, he makes me cry from joy, he makes me cry from laughing. And I was thinking of another story. Again, we were in Paris and Carmen, bless his soul…

David Read:
God bless him.

Teryl Rothery:
Oh my gosh. We were at the Moulin Rouge, and this is back in the heyday of Stargate, so we were treated very, very well.

David Read:
It’s big in France.

Teryl Rothery:
Oh my gosh, it was so amazing. Yes. And just to have that time, the romance of sitting and having dinner and then the show and then live music and getting up to dance. I kind of felt… I always felt I was born too late because I loved that whole era of the 40s and the glam and the dinner and dancing where you could just in the middle of the meal go and dance. So, this song came on, and Carmen brought me up and we had this amazing dance and that became our little thing. I’d bump into him, or we’d chat and he’d go, “We’ll always have Paris.” And we did. We always did have Paris. So, we were all… And then we all went back to the hotel and stuff, and we had seen some show. I guess it was part of the Moulin Rouge show where there’s acrobatics. And all I remember Christopher, Donnie, me, and Carmen, when of course we’re imbibing and we’re sitting in Donnie’s room and all of a sudden Carmen’s on his back on the bed with his feet going like this. He’s going, “Come on, Don, hop on.” Because there was this act where the guy’s like this and the other guy’s doing somersaults on the feet. He’s like, “Hop on.” And we’re just doubled over, and the phone would keep ringing from the front desk with complaints of too much noise in the room. And so, then we’re like, “Well, we might as well go.” “Are you guys hungry?” I don’t know what time it was. “Yeah, we’re hungry, let’s go.” And all of us arm in arm walking down the Champs-Élysées trying to look for something to get food. Those are memories. Those are the things that I will treasure. Those are phenomenal memories. Wherever we went it was just always an experience. And I was thinking of another story. I can’t remember if we were in Australia or England, but they had these magnificent bathtubs in the hotels. They were so long. I literally could stretch out. I know that’s not saying much because I’m so short. So, I could literally stretch out in the bathtub, but they were quite narrow. So, I just loved it. And the next thing I know, we’re waiting for Don and finally we get this call. He’s like, “Hi, hon, I’m sorry I’m late.” Because he was so late. He said, “I’ll be on my way, but I got stuck in my bathtub.” “What do you mean you got stuck in your bathtub?” “Well, it’s so goddamn narrow I couldn’t move! I’ve got a 52-inch chest. I couldn’t get out!” Anyway, again, it was constant doubling over with the things that Don would do. The things that Don would say. And pure innocence. He was just this big teddy bear of life and love, and he is so missed.

Suanne Braun:
Well, I auditioned in LA because, obviously, I was living there, and it was still the days of good old-fashioned VHS videotapes. So you would go in and be put on tape, and then the tape would get sent to Rick and the producers. But… it must have started airing already because I think I was… it was a guest-starring role. I just remember… I told the story before, so apologies if you’ve heard it before, but I had broken my… I auditioned in July or August; it was very hot, and I had broken my toe, so I couldn’t wear closed shoes. Stupid – I literally slipped on a carpet and my foot went boink into [the wall]. My toes split into the [corner of the] wall. So, I had broken… or I think I broke my toe – who knows? It was really sore [and] I couldn’t wear closed shoes. It had swollen up quite badly. So I was like, “I’m going to have to wear flip-flops,” and flip-flops sort of reduces what you can wear with them. Like, you can’t go in a power suit and flip-flops. They had been quite vague about the dress; they didn’t really say anything, and you only get sides as an actor. For anyone watching who doesn’t know what sides are, it’s a portion of the script, and very often they change… especially nowadays. If you’re auditioning for a massive franchise like Stargate, Star Wars, or anything like that, they change the names or they put your name, they brandish your name across the sides so that if there is a leak on the internet, they just have to go “Hm! … Suanne!” But in those days, everyone was a little more Harry Casual about everything, I think. So, I remember getting the sides and thinking, “why does she…” because there was no indication that she was royal or a goddess, and the audition scene was the first scene where the men come to her and she talks like she’s asking, “Where’s Ra?”

David Read:
Oh, when she wakes up?

Suanne Braun:
No.

David Read:
She’s already at the base.

Suanne Braun:
Yeah, and just before she says to lovely Don S. Davis, “You with a crown of marble,” and stuff. I remember thinking,” that’s a cool line,” and there was something about the way it was structured and written that it felt quite formal. The only people I knew who used “we” are royalty, so I was like, “oh, maybe she’s a queen.” I was like, “well, I’m just going to play it like that.” However, I had trousers on, slacks, pants, and flip-flops and a nice top. When I got there, everyone was in sexy, tight dresses, and I remember thinking, “oh God, I have misjudged this one terribly.” Then I went in, and again they were like, “this is a new sci-fi show…” and all I was told was that Richard Dean Anderson was the lead. They didn’t say anything about who the scene would be with, and he was like, “OK, go.” He said to me, “Oh, can you do it in an American accent?” I said, “Yes, sure,” because the casting director I’d read for on numerous occasions, and I knew that I worked in both. Then he was like, “Great, thanks very much, that’s all we need.” Then he said: “is there was anything you’d like to ask?” and I said, “Well, yeah, I’m just curious – is she a queen or royalty or is she mad?” He’s like, “If you were to play her mad, she’s not mad, but they all think she’s mad.” I asked that in my own accent, and he said, “Actually, let’s do another one but use your own accent and really play up the regal thing, and that you know they think you’re mad but you’re not.” So I was like, “OK,” and all I remember is; I sat back in my chair and was very much like, “You come. Come to me,” you know, like that. And, yeah, it obviously worked. So that was that.

David Read:
Absolutely.

Rainbow Sun Francks:
I keep looking through this box, and I see all these binders, and they all have my name, and I remembered that I used to keep all of my scripts in binders. But I did find this: it’s probably going to be reversed because of the camera, but…

David Read:
No, it’s correct!

Rainbow Sun Francks:
So this is my binder that they gave me when I arrived in Vancouver, so on this first page, it says, “Hello, and welcome to Vancouver. Enclosed, you’ll find a package of information to help familiarize yourself with this city,” and this is the Stargate Atlantis…

David Read:
The original production logo.

Rainbow Sun Francks:
This is the very first package that I got. And it’s got all my little – it’s got tabs, contacts of all the actors, it’s my – the cast list, and this is the “Rising” script. This is the very first pilot script. And so it’s really cool, and it’s like, perfect, because it’s been in this binder.

David Read:
Were you someone who notated your scripts?

Rainbow Sun Francks:
Oh yeah. Hold on – I am pretty crazy, so I kept going deeper and then I just found that I have all my scripts from season one! I literally have – yeah, they’re all marked up with crap and destroyed, but I know that people like these things, so – I’m not going to keep them, so I guess maybe I’ll find a way to get everyone to sign them and see if I can get rid of them for charity or something.

David Read:
Absolutely, yeah. I would be very strategic about that.

Rainbow Sun Francks:
I’m going to keep this one.

David Read:
I would keep that.

Rainbow Sun Francks:
I’m going to keep this one. Because I just want one. I’m going to keep the “Rising” script with the Vancouver package. Yeah, and all these notes of like, how to get to the studio from my house that production hand-wrote me so I would know how to get there.

David Read:
Had you lived in Vancouver before?

Rainbow Sun Francks:
No, I – oh, and the first photo gallery shoot. Oh man!

David Read:
Let’s see ‘em!

Rainbow Sun Francks:
Oh no, no, it’s just a page. I haven’t looked through these. It’s just like, so… yeah, it’s nothing. It’s just all the schedule sheets and stuff.

David Read:
Oh got it, OK. For promotional…

Rainbow Sun Francks:
I’m just flooded with memories of being a 24-year old – oh man, it’s me talking, me writing notes about all the weapons that Ford carries.

David Read:
Tactical switchblade… Because he was going to be the weapons expert on the show.

Rainbow Sun Francks:
Yeah, that was originally – I mean, he was, but they didn’t really…

David Read:
Enhance that aspect of it.

Rainbow Sun Francks:
Eh, they didn’t really enhance many aspects until they were kicking me out. Then they were, like, “Give him acting stuff now, he’s on his way out. Let him act!”

Joseph Mallozzi:
“Window of Opportunity”, originally, the pitch I came up with was very dark, and I think I might have mentioned this in a previous discussion, the fact that it was really about SG-1 encountering a civilization that was facing an apocalyptic event and were using a device to re-loop time in order to give them time to avert the catastrophe that never could be averted. And I remember Rob reading it and he was like, “You know, why don’t we do this…?” And he was offering me… he was like, “Do this, and change this and that,” and suddenly I realized, and I was like, “We’re just doing Groundhog Day,” and he was like, “Yeah. Do Groundhog Day.”

David Read:
And you gave that line to Rick.

Joseph Mallozzi:
Yeah. And at the time I was like, “We can’t just do Groundhog Day!” And I realized… I think it was Hemmingway that said, “Every story has already been told.” Ultimately, some variation of the story has already been told, but what makes it special is that it’s your characters who are living, experiencing. And especially the fact that it’s O’Neill and Teal’c, the two guys who know nothing about science, who know nothing really, little about the Ancient language, who are the ones who have to figure it out. And one of the things I always loved about Stargate was the sense of humor. I remember Brad telling me one day, he was like, “This series is just a comedy now. We’re just doing a comedy.”

David Read:
In many respects.

Joseph Mallozzi:
He was exaggerating, but I always found humor goes a long way toward allowing audiences to connect with the characters, but they also bring those moments of levity that, by contrast, make the darker moments that much darker, or more poignant. Like that, the scene you mentioned, with O’Neill appealing to Malikai.

David Read:
It’s beautiful. And it’s one of the most natural scenes of the show. If you really take a moment to understand where Malikai’s pain is coming from and force that character to think about what’s going to happen next and then what’s going to happen after that. Unless he’s just so love-stricken over the loss of his wife that he’ll be willing to sit through her death again and again, what else can you do but shut it off? This is such an important episode of the franchise. I’m very curious as to what that original draft looked like. Did SG-1 come upon the planet and the time-loop happened in front of them and because they were out of that planet’s loop they just watched everything restart?

Joseph Mallozzi:
No, to be fair, it wasn’t a draft.

David Read:
Just an outline.

Joseph Mallozzi:
It was just a one page pitch.

David Read:
I see.

Joseph Mallozzi:
And from that, we ended up with the outline for “Window of Opportunity”. So, it was very different, but it wasn’t really fully fleshed out, it was just an idea at that point.

David Read:
And in that original idea, SG-1 watched the civilization just go ahead and die?

Joseph Mallozzi:
No, but they… well, at the end, yes. Now that I think of it, just back-to-back, the story of the civilization is what I pitched and neither of them were destroyed in the end.

David Read:
Joseph Mallozzi, PhD, provides Latin for the Novice in this.

Joseph Mallozzi:
Yes, that was Peter DeLuise. We were in the concept meeting, and, of course, the Props department, “What kind of shoelaces? What color shoelaces do you want? What kind of shoes do you want? What kind of a book do you want?” Peter was like, “Latin for the Novice, author Joseph Mallozzi.” And they were like, “OK.”

David Read:
Who chose Fruit Loops?

Joseph Mallozzi:
We wrote Fruit Loops into the script. And we were having trouble, actually, getting the rights to Fruit Loops.

David Read:
I was going to ask!

Joseph Mallozzi:
I remember, they came back and they were like, “How about Cheerios?” and we’re like, “No! It doesn’t make any sense!”

David Read:
It’s Jack! He’s a kid!

Joseph Mallozzi:
And also, Fruit Loops. Anyways.

David Read:
Exactly!

Joseph Mallozzi:
We ended up getting the Fruit Loops.

David Read:
And they had to be glued to the spoon.

Joseph Mallozzi:
I don’t recall. I wasn’t on the set for that.

David Read:
Oh, my God. So, it ran short.

Joseph Mallozzi:
Yep.

David Read:
I would think that – an aside – I would think that Daniel-heavy episodes would typically move through the dialogue faster. One of the things that Martin Gero told us about is when he was writing for “First Contact,” he had to keep in mind that Rodney and Daniel both spoke very fast, and that has to come into play when you’re timing episodes. The velocity at which the actors will move through the content.

Joseph Mallozzi:
Yeah, I mean, I think back to SG-1, and those scripts would average 52, 53 pages, whereas the Atlantis scripts would average closer to 57, 58, sometimes 59 pages.

David Read:
Yeah. Well, the fact of the matter was that McKay had to move along a lot of the plot.

Joseph Mallozzi:
Yep.

David Read:
That poor guy, that was his primary role.

Joseph Mallozzi:
Yep.

David Read:
In addition to just being Rodney.

Joseph Mallozzi:
Yep.

David Read:
Wow. Any fan reactions that you’ve gotten to “Window of Opportunity” over the years that stand out in your mind? People bring it back again and again, in terms of Heroes and The Fifth Race and this episode as to… I showed this to my little cousins. I showed “Window of Opportunity” to them and I showed Urgo to them as hooks to get them invested in the show. Are you surprised that it continually comes up?

Joseph Mallozzi:
I am kind of surprised, to be honest with you. Just because there were 300 episodes, and it was last year, or maybe earlier this year, I did the Stargate Greatest Episode Challenge, where I had all of the fans vote on episodes, and then we did the head-to-head, and “Window of Opportunity” ended up coming out on top, which was… I mean, I’m glad fans love the show so much. But I think the funnier episodes tend to do well, but it was also a funny episode with heart. Heart and humor.

David Read:
Exactly. It has a balance.

Joseph Mallozzi:
If you can get a combination of that then you have a winner, so, I’m just glad it worked out and the fans enjoyed it.

David Read:
Exactly right. And with Dark Matter, All the Time in the World.

Joseph Mallozzi:
Yeah, it was kind of funny, I was saying I book in my career with time loop episodes.

David Read:
Was there a subconscious hope that it would be along the levels of success, that individual episode?

Joseph Mallozzi:
Oh, yeah. Absolutely. That one was, actually, in many ways, a very difficult episode to write, but also a very fast write as well. It was weird in that, I knew I wanted to do a time loop episode, and I ended up watching two dozen time loop episodes of every genre show that has ever done a time loop episode, because they’ve all done them, right, so you want to do something different. So, I synthesized the formula and I tried to find a way to subvert it. And we were in the room… so this is an example of when you’re in the room and you’re trying to spin the idea and it’s not going anywhere. One of the things my former writing partner, Paul, was very good at was flagging issues, which he would do, but sometimes when he would do them in the room he would not offer up a solution and so we would kind of hit a wall. And we spent two days in the writer’s room and we got nothing done on “Window of Opportunity” — sorry, not “Window of Opportunity” on All the Time in the World. And then I remember it came time for me to write it, and I just started writing and I pretty much wrote the entire script in a day, which I’ve never done before. But it was a funny episode and I tend to write the funnier ones faster. And so everything just kind of came together in a scary way. And I don’t really know how to explain it, and I’m sure other writers have experienced it as well, where you’re getting nowhere with the script, you’re getting nowhere with the script, you think you’re never going to get it done, and then somehow, magically, the narrative falls into place, all the pieces fall into place and you come up with a script. Not only a script that is serviceable, but a script that turned out to be a fan favorite, a Dark Matter fan favorite.

David Read:
My thanks to WonderCon for giving us this opportunity to showcase Dial the Gate to an audience outside of YouTube. My great thanks to Jenny Stiven for making this opportunity possible as well. Hope you had a great weekend at our online convention. Hope next year we’ll be able to do it in person. My name is David Read. See you on the other side.