We are truly excited to welcome the return of Stargate Writer, Producer and Director Peter DeLuise to catch us up on his recent projects, share more stories from the franchise and take your questions LIVE!

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Timecodes
0:00 – Splash Screen
0:25 – Opening Credits
1:02 – Welcome
1:08 – Guest Introduction
1:53 – Welcome, Peter!
3:10 – Recognizing Peter’s Directing (“Serpent’s Song”)
8:38 – Peter, David and David at Gatecon
10:48 – Dagwood in seaQuest
15:49 – Writing for Stargate
16:20 – Getting Invited Back
22:17 – “The First Ones”
29:47 – Surprise Guest Michael Welch
31:45 – Sequel to “Fragile Balance”
34:51 – “Fragile Balance”
35:45 – The Two-Finger Rule
39:01 – Turning Michael into Jack
41:45 – The Directing Rotation
47:28 – Michael’s Pimples
49:56 – Creative Ways to Keep Jack in the Show
51:47 – “Have at it, boys!”
53:03 – Shooting Glasses in “Enemies”
55:11 – Peter’s Favorite Film and Director
1:00:57 – The “Window of Opportunity” Montage
1:07:33 – Brad and Robert’s Storytelling
1:10:44 – “The Warrior”
1:17:05 – Obi Ndefo as Raknor
1:18:57 – Unspoken Character Beats
1:20:28 – Rick Worthy’s Charisma
1:22:00 – New Stargate Series?
1:25:28 – Independence Day / Stargate 2?
1:27:21 – Thank You!
1:31:45 – Post-Interview Housekeeping
1:33:13 – End Credits

***

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

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TRANSCRIPT
Find an error? Submit it here.

David Read:
Hello everyone. My name is David Read, welcome back to Dial the Gate: The Stargate Oral History Project. I am privileged to have writer, producer and director Peter DeLuise joining me for this episode. This is a live stream so if you have questions for him, start submitting them in our chat on youtube.com/dialthegate. Be sure to check out dialthegate.com for all of our upcoming episodes. I’ve been really thankful with the number of folks who have been interested in expressing their stories for this season. A big thank you to EagleSG, Matt Wilson, for that beautiful cargo ship pass that you guys just saw. He’s been doing some amazing work for the intros this year. There are a few more spaceships to come. Peter DeLuise, writer, producer, director, Stargate, and perhaps easily one of my favorite directors from the show. Can you hear me?

Peter DeLuise:
I can, yes.

David Read:
OK. I’ve been rewatching the show lately for, believe it or not, the first time in like five years. When your episodes come on, I get warm and fuzzy now in a way that I didn’t before. I don’t know if it’s from getting to know you better over this time. I’ve been calling it your “whimsy.” You have this, “We’re not taking this too seriously. We’re gonna have some fun.” I get that when I watch your episodes; I get that you’re playing this dance with the audience. Maybe that’s me interpreting you, maybe it’s incorrect, but I get that process going on. Is that a fair assessment when you’re filming?

Peter DeLuise:
That I’m full of whimsy?

David Read:
Yeah.

Peter DeLuise:
I’m trying to give you a warm and fuzzy feeling?

David Read:
Yeah.

Peter DeLuise:
Yes. It was just you though, but nobody else. I was like, “David had better get a warm and fuzzy from this scene.”

David Read:
God.

Peter DeLuise:
“I designed it especially for that.” I’m not exactly clear on this: is this when you know that I’ve directed the thing? Or you see it and then you go, “I wonder who directed… Ah, it’s Peter.” ‘I have heard that some people recognize my style, whatever style I’ve been able to do.

David Read:
It’s half and half. We start an episode, and it’s been long enough where, because I don’t pay attention to the titles when they fly by. I’m going in and going, “I think that this is a Peter episode based on how it’s shot.” One of my favorite shots that you pulled off is your first episode, “Serpent’s Song.” The glider comes down and you follow the camera backwards through the Stargate with Rick and you see the wormhole and then he pops through the SGC. I’m still blown away by that shot. It looks like you’ve hung the glider on like a stage wire to come down and then it blasts at him as he goes back. It’s one of the coolest shots from the show. I see you in that, I don’t know why. I think that there are certain things that are “that’s clearly Peter.”

Peter DeLuise:
That’s very generous of you to say that. I think that was described in painstaking detail in the script that we were talking about. That may be why that was shot in that way. Things coming at you are always more interesting than going across the screen or away from you. If you can ever do a stunt where it’s coming at you, I highly recommend it. Also, it gives David Read a warm and fuzzy when it’s coming at you.

David Read:
Geez. I’m interested to know, or to hear, that in some situations the script actually gives you direction with the camera.

Peter DeLuise:
Let’s break this down, David. Let’s say you’re reading a sequence where the Death Glider is coming down for a strafing run. The puddle’s active and O’Neill is the last one through. Being the colonel, he wants to make sure everyone else is safe. He turns, and he’s like, “Yeah, I might as well get a few shots off before I go through the puddle anyway. I got the puddle right here, so I’m that close to being safe technically.” The next level of intrigue is, if he had thought it through, “if any of those Death Glider shots come through, they’ll just make a big old Jackson Pollock all over the gate room. We don’t wanna do that.” That was described: that the d
Death Glider was bearing down on him and that he turned in a heroic way as you would if you’re trying to make your hero more heroic. Fire off a couple… I don’t know what he thought he was gonna do with the… Was it an MP5 back then or a P90 at that point?

David Read:
It was probably an MP5. No, P90 came two seasons later.

Peter DeLuise:
So here he is peppering off a few shots. I don’t know why. I don’t know if that was gonna be effective against the Death Glider. You never know if you get a lucky shot.

David Read:
It feels good.

Peter DeLuise:
Then he falls back through the thing, I’m sure that was Dan Shea doing the backward back plant through the thing. So, what do you do? How do you do it? Do you go, “Here comes the glider. What do we do now? Do we cut to something else?” The other thing is, once you back through the puddle, you shouldn’t be able to see the Death Glider anymore. It’s almost like you’re Patrick Swayze in Ghost and you’re backing through a wall. As soon as you go through, you’ve lost sight of the Death Glider so all the good parts have to happen before you go through the event horizon.

David Read:
Yeah, ’cause if you’re with O’Neill and he disintegrates in order to go to the other side, you wanna make sure that you get just enough. It’s a cool shot.

Peter DeLuise:
Yes, true enough.

David Read:
That’s cool.

Peter DeLuise:
I’m glad you liked it. You brought back a lot of memories for me ’cause that was very challenging; trying to get up to speed. We are towards the end of the second season and everybody else, Andy Mikita and Martin Wood, the regular rotation of directors, they all knew what they were doing. I had to come in and after watching all the episodes, hopefully hit the ground running. There’s a famous producer from Outer Limits, Brent-Karl Clackson, who used to say, “We really gotta do our best today. We really gotta hit the wall running.” He would mix his metaphors. He would hit the wall running. He was funny.

David Read:
This whole process, this whole journey that I’ve been on with so many of you over the course of the last three and a half years now has been exceptional. Not the least of which was sitting down with your brother on stage at Gatecon in 2022. That is still one of my highlights and I still can’t thank you enough for doing that segment. That whole thing was great. Even with Jeff Gulka coming up on stage, that was cool, man.

Peter DeLuise:
Did he do other stuff? He must have.

David Read:
Outside of Stargate, yeah. X-Files, a little bit. At the convention?

Peter DeLuise:
I meant at the convention.

David Read:
Yeah. He was a guest of mine partly because you were coming.

Peter DeLuise:
OK. Even better.

David Read:
We’ve stayed in close touch ever since and we’re good friends.

Peter DeLuise:
Thank you for saying that. Of course, my brother is always a good interview ’cause he’s full of joyful, wonderful, good cheer. I was happy to join in that situation ’cause I like spending time with David. When I saw that you had done this, I rewatched that interview and I was like, “I kind of wish I had spent a little bit more time with him.” I also realized in retrospect that you had planned for him to be the last person, but then it came to pass that he was the first person.

David Read:
He got excited.

Peter DeLuise:
Is that right?

David Read:
It worked out better that way because you had more time with him, they rushed us at the end, let me tell you. They don’t mess around at Gatecon. So, it worked.

Peter DeLuise:
Bless you. All right.

David Read:
This was great.

Peter DeLuise:
I was thrilled to see him again ’cause I had memories of him of that time ’cause that was very early on. That was only the second episode that I had done after “Serpent’s Song,” right? The Reetou was a very challenging thing.

David Read:
Yeah.

Peter DeLuise:
He was a kid and it was sci-fi and he was turning into a pumpkin. All those things just came back flooding my brain. I was like, “I remember this. I remember this.”

David Read:
You had some great episodes with some young people. Jeff Gulka, Michael Welch. I wanna get into Michael a little bit later.

Peter DeLuise:
Good. Michael Welch was a highlight for me. I loved working with him.

David Read:
Absolutely. I think my moderator skipped it, but we’re gonna go back to the beginning here because you noticed it. Non-human said “Dagwood body paint and funny airbrush.” Dagwood was Peter’s character from SeaQuest, my favorite character from one of my favorite shows. “I always wondered, Peter, if the makeup artist airbrushed a dong somewhere you couldn’t see.” I wasn’t gonna bring this up, but Peter was like, “Let’s check this out,” because he’s got the mock-up.

Peter DeLuise:
Let’s check this out. I have the mock-ups. This was a life cast. Actors will tell you that when they get this done, it’s an intense moment where you’re incredibly vulnerable. You’ve got alginate all over your head to get an imprint of all the curves and all the dimensions. They usually do a life cast because they need the inside of the application. If you were in old man makeup, you look like what you look like on this side, but then you have to look like that on the outside. They would take this, mold that, and then they would take the difference, they would create an outer mold of whatever applications they wanna put on your face. The difference between this mold and the new mold that they had would be the application that fits exactly to every contour on your face. That’s not why we did this cast. We did this life cast so every single line would be exactly the same every day, day in and day out, and nothing would happen and it would’ve been exact continuity. Non-human, to answer your question about the dong, if there was a hidden dong, this seems very suspicious.

David Read:
It’s not immensely phallic.

Peter DeLuise:
It’s not immensely phallic. We checked; everyone checked the top. We got the top. The premise of this was that all the various skin tones that you have, Caucasian, Asian, African, they were all modeled together to give what was essentially a camouflage, a natural camouflage. You didn’t have to put camouflage paint on your face to do that. That was the conceit of why they were all modeled like this. My character was bald because he was a prototype and they didn’t quite get the hair right. Interesting side note, Will DeVry, who played Aldwin, was in “Daggers.” He played a Dagger as well.

David Read:
Season Two Episode One, that’s right.

Peter DeLuise:
Incredible physique and that’s what they were looking for. He was in Florida at the time, I think. He ended up playing one of the Daggers on that show. We had a discussion about his career and what he should do I think because he was Canadian, I said, “You should definitely get yourself up to Canada because they’re doing a lot of stuff up there.” Lucky enough, years later when I became a director on Stargate, I saw his audition and I knew that he was a very talented actor. I said, “I think, if we’re all gonna get a vote, I vote for Will.”

David Read:
You know that he can do the job. It’s a question of “this is the guy who can do it.”

Peter DeLuise:
He definitely understood the mission and I always thought he was quite good. He served the show well and I think that helped give him a little bit of a boost; gave him some operating capital so he could do his thing. He was a recurring Tok’ra, right?

David Read:
Yes. We had him in, I think, what was his first episode? I think he was in Season Three because he had some stuff with Teal’c in the cargo ship. Teal’c trapped him in the back. That was “The Devil You Know.” He then broke his neck in Season Five when the Tok’ra were being attacked on Revanna.

Peter DeLuise:
He got blown up, right?

David Read:
He sure did. That was one of those springboard shots.

Peter DeLuise:
It was. I don’t think he was thrilled about that. No one’s ever thrilled about being killed off on a show, but he had a good run. If you’re in two episodes, you’re technically recurring, so that looks good on a resume, right?

David Read:
Absolutely, it does. Tell me how this works for when you’re producing and directing at this point. By Season Four you were writing as well. Is that something where they came to you and said, “Hey, we want you to write for us, we know you’re talented?” Or was it you who’d go to them and say, “I’ve got this idea”? For SG-1, what was kind of the impetus for you to start getting your hands in the writing pool?

Peter DeLuise:
Now, I’m gonna ask you a counter-question before I answer your question. Do you already know the answer to this question and you’re setting me up? Or do you honestly not know how this came to pass?

David Read:
I do not know. I know that in certain circumstances, according to what Christopher Judge has told me, for instance, if actors came on and they were like, “I’d like to come back for more, can we make this recurring?” In some circumstances, Stargate Productions would say, “No,” and “No,” and “We’re not interested in having you now.” I don’t know where the balance is.

Peter DeLuise:
I don’t wanna lose track of what the original thread is, but all actors, if they had their choice, they’d always say, “I’d like to come back for another one,” unless they’re highly in demand or they didn’t have a good experience on the show. That isn’t really the bar at which they go, “That person should come back.” It’s usually, “Hey, that character’s really good.” In the case of Claudia Black, that was the situation, where they were fighting with MGM to get both the Farscape characters of Ben and Claudia Black on the show. They said, “You can’t have both of them.” Then they saw how great she was and they said, “OK, bring her in.” That’s basically how it all goes down. Are you familiar with Falling Skies?

David Read:
Yeah, with Colin Cunningham. I saw the first episode. That’s the one with the alien invasion.

Peter DeLuise:
Yes. OK, that’s post-apocalyptic, life is cheap, a lot of characters are gonna come on and get killed. Ryan Robbins was on there as well by the way, he had a great run on that show. Hell on Wheels…there’s a ton of shows where the mandate is we’re gonna kill a lot of characters on the show. We know this in advance and some are gonna be cherished characters and some are not gonna be cherished characters. What they do is they write people to come in and it’s like an on-camera audition where they go, “Oh, that person is really good and they got great chemistry,” and maybe they last a little bit longer before you kill them. Or they come in for two episodes and they go, “It’s not really working out. I think we can do better,” and that person gets killed. Those are shows, not like Stargate, those are shows that are more hand-to-mouth. What I mean by that is they’re really only one or two scripts ahead, whereas Stargate was arguably entire half seasons, if not entire seasons, where you knew what the arc of the entire season was gonna go. When an actor says, “Hey, I’d like to be on the show again,” of course they would. Of course, they would like to be on the show again and get the regular paycheck. It isn’t until you see what they’re doing on screen that writers go, “Oh, that works for me.” Another example of that would be Brad and Robert and Paul and Joe and Damian and everybody watching the read-through to get a feel for people so they can write to that. That was a natural phenomenon. Eventually it went away by the wayside where they didn’t do script read-throughs anymore ’cause they had the voice of the characters in their head and everybody understood what was going on. With Stargate Universe – let’s get back to your other question about how I came on to be a writer – but with Stargate Universe, we had a gaggle, if that’s the correct pronunciation, for swans, a gaggle of scientists. You had a whole bunch of characters who were just scientists. They were basically interchangeable and we didn’t understand what their expertise was. While we were down doing a lighting setup, several of the actors said, “You know what? It feels weird ’cause I’m like, what science am I good at?” I said, “Make it up. Be good at something or create some chemistry with this other character so that the writers can see that. Bring something.” If the writers see this, they’ll say, “Oh, that was an interesting exchange,” because they can always cut it out. If they go, “Oh, that was interesting. Let’s go with that.” David Hewlett would bring something and they’d go, “Oh, that’s genius. Let’s include that.” When the scientists on Stargate Universe started to individualize themselves, they would be petty with each other.

David Read:
The banter was great.

Peter DeLuise:
There was an undeniable wealth of really, really talented actors there and they just needed permission to “giver.” I’m not saying make up a monologue or a soliloquy, I’m saying little idiosyncratic behavior that eventually the writers can pick up on and they can write to that. OK, now back to your other question about the writing thing. Hat in hand, I asked Brad. I had directed an episode called “Demons.” The premise was it was this medieval planet and this Unas with a Goa’uld in its head would come and claim host bodies, human bodies and then take them away.

David Read:
For Sokar.

Peter DeLuise:
That’s right. I had also seen another episode called “The First Ones” where the Unas was trapped in Thor’s Hammer, was that what it’s called?

David Read:
That’s correct.

Peter DeLuise:
It was Thor’s Hammer.

David Read:
By James Earl Jones.

Peter DeLuise:
I wrote “The First Ones.” He referred to himself as The First Ones, James Earl Jones voiced that character. The Unas with the Goa’uld in there was trapped in Thor’s Hammer and couldn’t get out. They had all those wonderful sound effects with those animalistic sounds; the sound design was fantastic on that. I watched that in anticipation of doing “Demons” and then I thought, “You know what’s missing? The origin story for how the Unas came to be called The First Ones.” I pitched that idea and I was incredibly enthusiastic about that to Brad. Brad, I think, picked up on my enthusiasm and he offered to mentor me, which I’m eternally grateful for. I said, “Wouldn’t it be great if we got to go to the planet where the Unas didn’t have the Goa’uld in them and we got to see what they were like without a Goa’uld in their head?” He said, “Yeah, that sounds fascinating.” I said, “What about a Robinson Crusoe episode with Daniel ’cause he understands, he’s the best linguistically with that, where he’s in trouble and he’s being championed by this Unas without a Goa’uld in his head, Robinson Crusoe style?” Then I was like, “Well, I’m gonna have to invent the Unas language and there’s gonna have to be some sort of cultural exploration about the Unas, their lifestyle and what they have.” I was very affected by, as a younger person, by a movie called Walkabout. It’s an Australian movie; I highly recommend it. Through unfortunate circumstances, I won’t go too far off, but a young lady and her little brother and her father drive out into the vast wilderness of the Australian Outback. The father is unwell, he’s suicidal, and he burns the car and he commits suicide. The woman and her little brother are suddenly trapped in the Australian Outback and lucky for them, this young teenage Aboriginal boy who’s becoming a man is on walkabout. That’s where the title is. He helps preserve their lives and keep them alive. He’s trying to become a man with his tribe but he accidentally comes upon this white girl and her little brother and he saves their lives. This very traumatic thing that I watched as a young person, I thought, “Wouldn’t it be great if Chaka…?” named for Land of the Lost… I stole that name from Land of the Lost ’cause that also affected me as a kid.

David Read:
I did not know that, love Land of the Lost.

Peter DeLuise:
Dion Johnstone came in and he was incredible; his physicality was amazing.

David Read:
God, he was good.

Peter DeLuise:
I said “We have to learn everything we know about the Unas. Here’s their language. Here’s what they do.” I told him about Walkabout, I told him about the fact that a Goa’uld against your will gets into your brain. Since they live in the water, you definitely don’t wanna stick your head in the water to get anywhere near them. That’s why you have to cup the water and keep an eye out for any, ’cause they live in the water. Being parasites, that’s how they would get into the people. When Daniel goes to drink the water and he goes, “Hey, what are you, an idiot? What are you, a barbarian?” In his own language. “You gotta cup the water.” This is how civilized people do it.

David Read:
Yes, I’ve seen the cave drawings.

Peter DeLuise:
Then we showed the Goa’uld launch in the air and do a thing. I think Brad was as excited about the premise of the origin story with the Unas, and of course, they were the first ones. The combination of Dion’s character saying, “We were the first ones. We were the first ones” and then the demon character claiming the… Do you remember this scene? “The demon comes!”

David Read:
“The demon comes!” Who was that guy?

Peter DeLuise:
That was me. I just love origin stories. Who doesn’t like a good origin story?

David Read:
Absolutely. It works. It’s the origin of the primordial Goa’uld as much as the Unas. I’ve got Chloe in my hallway downstairs.

Peter DeLuise:
Do you?

David Read:
I’ll show her to you sometime.

Peter DeLuise:
That’s the prop that they grabbed?

David Read:
We got the mold of the Goa’uld fossil. It’s cool, I’ll send you a picture.

Peter DeLuise:
Coming up with the sedimentary timeline and being all excited about what the implications of that were and the primordial Goa’uld, like you said. Isn’t that fun? So, Brad, bless him for recognizing my enthusiasm, said, “Yes, let’s do that. You should write that down.” I mistook what he meant for writing a full draft so I went right to draft and I submitted it and he went, “Oh God, this kid needs a lot of help.” He goes, “First you put a beat sheet down and then we do an outline and we undo it and then you go, after several steps, then you go to a draft,” it’s like, “I’m sorry.”

David Read:
You’re enthusiastic.

Peter DeLuise:
I was excited about it.

David Read:
So, you wrote a full first draft?

Peter DeLuise:
Yeah. It was terrible.

David Read:
Gotta start somewhere.

Peter DeLuise:
It didn’t have an outline; it was off the top of my head. It had elements of what we were talking about but it was even better when it became a two-hander between Michael Shanks and Dion Johnstone.

David Read:
Wow. One of my other favorites of yours is one where you had a “story by” credit on, and I think that I have a human aid to help me out with this one.

Peter DeLuise:
A human aid?

David Read:
A human aid, yes.

Peter DeLuise:
It’s better than the Gatorade?

David Read:
Gatorade for sure.

Peter DeLuise:
Oh my God. Do we have a surprise guest? Hey, Michael. Look at him.

David Read:
Can you hear me, Mike? We can’t hear you. There we go.

Peter DeLuise:
Touch of it there.

David Read:
One more time. Can you talk, Mike?

Michael Welch:
Hello, hello.

David Read:
There he is.

Peter DeLuise:
Success.

David Read:
Can you rotate your camera for me?

Michael Welch:
Sure. This way?

David Read:
That way? It’s not working.

Michael Welch:
Uh-oh.

David Read:
There we go.

Michael Welch:
How’s this? Is this better?

David Read:
It is Michael Welch, ladies and gentlemen, of “Fragile Balance” fame.

Peter DeLuise:
My goodness, long time no see, buddy.

Michael Welch:
How have you been the last 20 years, Peter?

Peter DeLuise:
My erectile dysfunction has been handled. Thank you for asking.

David Read:
Oh my god.

Michael Welch:
That was a big concern.

Peter DeLuise:
It was a big concern of mine as well. You look like a grownup now.

David Read:
He is a grownup!

Peter DeLuise:
Thanks for pointing that out, David.

Michael Welch:
I tried cloning myself again to keep going through high school, but I don’t have the technology that the Asgard have. I couldn’t quite pull it off.

Peter DeLuise:
Oh, man. I tell you what, that would’ve been a great spinoff, watching O’Neill go through high school again. Holy crap. It’s elements of Big and sci-fi all into one.

David Read:
This is one of my favorite episodes. Go ahead, Michael.

Michael Welch:
Peter, hi by the way, good to see you. We spoke about a year or so later. You called me and had an idea for, not a spinoff, but an additional episode where… and forgive me, I don’t remember the details but it had to do with they needed Jack’s brain power squared for some reason because of a super complicated mission. It was actually a really cool idea. Do you remember what that idea was that you guys were working on?

David Read:
It was called “You Ain’t Jack” and I think it involved Maybourne.

Peter DeLuise:
“You Ain’t Jack,” I see. I wish I could recollect what you’re talking about. Today is 4/20. Just kidding, I don’t celebrate. I barely remember Jack, let alone that concept. You’re saying that they wanted to call about your availability, or why was I calling you?

Michael Welch:
I remember you guys were sort of ruminating about this idea, bringing the character back as a one-off for a particular mission where they needed Jack’s brain power.

Peter DeLuise:
Jack’s brain specifically.

Michael Welch:
They needed his skillset for whatever reason.

Peter DeLuise:
Let me tell you what I think happened. I think that we were in the room spinning a story and one of the ideas that came up was, there is a perfectly identical copy of Jack’s brain in the form of Jack’s clone. You were the actor who played Jack’s clone. Rather than go down the road of reinvesting in that story and then being vulnerable to the idea that maybe you weren’t available…I may be filling in the blanks retroactively. If you were not available, then we would not have investigated that option. Were you available at the time?

Michael Welch:
I was on a TV show at the time, very soon after that.

Peter DeLuise:
You inadvertently through your success and talent subverted our story by not being available, you’ve got your own talent to thank for that.

David Read:
He was on Joan of Arcadia, I believe, at the time. I was watching it with a number of other Stargate fans as well and we were loving it. It was a good show.

Peter DeLuise:
I watched that too, not realizing that you were on it, and I was like, “He’s really good and he’s not imitating anybody. He’s just being himself. That’s fantastic.”

David Read:
Peter, can you tell us about, and Michael, chime in of course, about turning Michael into Rick in terms of mannerisms? How do you dial that in? How did you guys make that happen?

Peter DeLuise:
I watched your interview, Michael, and you were very, very sweet to give me so much credit. To your credit, you were open and available and ready and you were an incredible mimic. You’re right, you were brought up early, we had you watch the tapes. We wanted you to tune into, be sensitive to his meter. Richard Dean Anderson has a very specific meter and a very wry sense of humor in the way that he tells jokes. Did I ever tell you the two-finger rule? I probably told you this, but you may have forgotten. There’s a two-finger rule where if Richard says more than two fingers of dialogue in a script, you gotta cut, you gotta break it up. He only does two fingers at a time. Those were witty couplets that he was able to get into. “Oh, let me guess, magnets.” It’s only two fingers’ worth of space on the page. Mercifully, you only had to do two fingers’ worth of stuff at a time because that’s how he speaks. I think we watched it together. I think I talked to you about what the Asgard grays were and the fact that they disguised themselves as the Norse mythology on the show. That’s why we sat so long and hung out and talked about that. I think you talk about the [hand gesture] which is something that Richard Dean Anderson would always do. If you were starting to babble scientifically, he’d be like, [hand gesture]. That’s where magnets came from too. He would just say magnets as a catchall for an explanation of anything that was scientific. Magnetic, bah, bah, bah, bah, bah. He’d just go, “Magnets?” I’d go, “No, it’s not. This time it’s not magnets, no.” When you went like this, that was exactly how he would handle, “Please stop with the babbling and just speak regular English for the rest of us philistines.” You did it perfectly when that happened. I think Richard was excited about the idea of having to deal with you. Also, you’re a very handsome man and I can say that because I’m married and nobody will suspect that there’s anything untoward of that. You kind of look like you could be Richard Dean Anderson at an earlier age. Although, honestly, you’re much more handsome than he was when he was that age. Do you know that he rode across the country on a bicycle?

Michael Welch:
No, but I would be surprised if he hadn’t done that. That sounds exactly right.

Peter DeLuise:
He was an incredible athlete, a hockey player. Not a lot of people know this, he rode all the way across the country on a bicycle. His taint started like this and then it went like that. I’m sorry, Richard. People have to know. The wardrobe had to be made aware of it because the pants didn’t fit right. I’m kidding. I take it all back. I’m trying to be silly. This is the kind of humor that I would use to try to ingratiate myself to a young Michael Welch, but he’s way beyond that. He sees through me. You came up and you said, “I’ve been given several days early.” They had to put you up, they had to put you in front of a TV with a bunch of videotapes…we were watching videotape back then?

Michael Welch:
Yup.

Peter DeLuise:
We didn’t have YouTube, as you pointed out. You were correct to keep the audience honest about what kind of research you had available to you. Honestly, you had none. You couldn’t unless you were tuning into the program when it was your regularly scheduled program. You could not have known what he was like on the show. When you came up and we started doing the gestures and the… I think even the sunglasses. We did the sunglasses. The thing with the sunglasses… Richard Dean Anderson would do this. He would come through with the sunglasses maybe not on, because he was in the gate room – this was just a production-friendly thing – he would put them on and go like this. Once he went through the gate and he was in the inevitable obligatory forest and the sun was shining, he would put the glasses on and he’d look around like this. That was Richard Dean Anderson: he didn’t have glasses on in the last scene, but now he did have glasses on in this scene. It wasn’t like he just went like that in the wide shot. It was guaranteeing a close-up, not that he needed a close-up, but he was saying, “Now I have my glasses on for those of you who aren’t paying attention.” I think I said to you, “When you put the glasses on, you just do that a little bit.” Do you remember that little dumb thing? It wasn’t a character thing; it was just something that he did to help the audience transition the fact that he was wearing glasses and they didn’t just magically appear on his face from shot to shot.

Michael Welch:
I do. This is why I believe you ultimately deserve more credit than I do. Not that this has to be a credit-off, but those moments, those details that were planted and infused by you; that’s what made that what it was. It’s the level of detail that only an audience of Stargate would really understand and appreciate. I think that’s what made it special and why people connected to it. While I have you here, Peter, I’m personally curious about something. I don’t know if this is interesting to anyone else but me. Generally, with TV, I believe how it works is, you sort of figure out, “OK, these are gonna be our next five or six directors for these next episodes.” I don’t know that it’s necessarily, “We need specifically this guy for this episode because his skillset matches what we need, blah, blah, blah.” I don’t think TV generally works like that. I’m curious, when you guys were developing “Fragile Balance,” did you specifically say, “No, I would like to take this one”? Again, you’re right, as a resource, all I had available to me was those tapes and you, frankly. Or did it just happen to sort of align that way and you happened to fall on the schedule that week?

Peter DeLuise:
If there was a discussion about who was gonna take which episode, that was lost on me. I’d like to say that that was the case, that I said I’d like to do that one. David, you can check here: the time when Michael came on, I probably was doing six, seven, eight episodes that whole season. It was whatever was in the rotation; we had no say. I did overhear discussions where Brad would say, “Oh, that’s good that this director’s doing that episode.” Maybe that did work in our favor and I’m so grateful that I did get to work on that show. Because I’m an actor myself and because that’s where I was coming from, I definitely had a sensitivity for that process and what was required there. I was thrilled that I got to direct that. I didn’t ask for it, there was no asking. It was whatever was next, is how it worked. There was always a gigantic plan. Every set was built in mind for a particular episode and then whether it was gonna be amortized or refurbished to fit the next episode. Those were planned months and months ahead of time back then. I didn’t have the luxury of being able to request that episode, but I was so grateful that I got to work on that particular episode. I got to work with you!

Michael Welch:
It’s impossible for me to imagine having done that with anyone else, to be honest. I followed your lead, I trusted you completely and I think we put together something pretty cool, man. I’ve done one or two guest spots over the years and I can’t say that anyone has quite elicited the reaction that I’ve gotten from this one, all these years later to this day.

Peter DeLuise:
You’re still doing conventions then?

Michael Welch:
Yeah, less so than I used to. I’ll show up if I’m asked but it’s not a regular thing. When I do, there’s always a Stargate presence there, for sure.

Peter DeLuise:
Neat. You did an awesome job. The other thing that we’re not talking about is you had a maturity beyond your years. You call it trust. When a person’s body betrays their wisdom, that’s always very interesting. When Drew Barrymore was in E.T. and she went “Please” and she was just this tiny kid, everyone went, “Oh my God, that’s hilarious.” It’s this tiny person with an adult brain trapped in their body, which is what you were doing. Your wisdom, your attitude, your boredom with the other grownups in the room, was all part of the allure of why people, I think, liked that show ultimately. To have a teenager with pimples… That was good that you talked about that episode. You’re like, “I got pimples!” “That’s great. Let’s embrace it.” Your experience was coming out from behind that youthful face. I think that was a huge part of the fun part. You don’t have to trust me on this. Freaky Friday and the movie Big and there’s a ton of movies… Switch. There’s a whole bunch of movies where an adult brain is in a young person’s body and you go, “Oh, that’s fantastic.” Even The Butterfly Effect. Remember that? That was a crazy movie where he jumped into his younger body. I loved that, I thought that was very clever. It’s cool and it takes a unique talent to pull that off. I appreciate the gratitude and the validation that you’re giving me, of course I need it. As I get older and more gray I need all the validation I can get. Your contribution is not to be undersold. You were an amazing person in the right place at the right time and we were so lucky to have you.

Michael Welch:
Thank you, sir. David, thank you for bringing me on. The one thing I will say, my only concern about the pimples at the time was continuity. That’s all. In retrospect, you know what we should have done? Every time there was a new scene with a new pimple, I should have shown it to the camera, to indicate to the audience that I know there’s a new pimple. I don’t know if this was the This Is Your Life surprise guest you were expecting, but I am thrilled to see you again, man.

Peter DeLuise:
Dude, you made my day. I’m loving it.

David Read:
We were up on stage in Vancouver, a year and a half ago and we brought you up, Michael, after I had brought out another surprise guest. We brought you up in the conversation and Peter turned to me and he said, “He’s not here, is he?” I was thinking to myself, “I bet I could make that happen next time.” So, thank you for helping me surprise him.

Peter DeLuise:
Thank you too. That was very sweet. Thank you for putting this time aside on your Saturday to surprise me. I appreciate that.

Michael Welch:
Any time, guys. Thank you, I appreciate it. I don’t wanna eat up more of your time.

David Read:
You’re good.

Michael Welch:
You got a whole other series to talk about beyond my little episode, but thank you again. It’s wonderful to see you.

David Read:
Thank you, Mike. You’re the best, man. Be well.

Michael Welch:
All right, thanks. Appreciate ya.

Peter DeLuise:
Cheers.

David Read:
Bye-bye now. He is so cool. He is absolutely one of my favorites from this entire show.

Peter DeLuise:
He’s all right.

David Read:
He’s still listening to us talk about this! Later, buddy.

Peter DeLuise:
Hey, all right.

Michael Welch:
Bye. I’m leaving.

David Read:
But no, seriously, the talent that you cultivate on this show is amazing.

Peter DeLuise:
I didn’t cultivate it. Wife says I just have to take compliments appropriately. I did have an opportunity, it was a great challenge and it definitely was one of the highlights of being on that show. That quirky moment in the show where that really needed to work, otherwise the whole episode was gonna fall on its face.

David Read:
Rick is pulling back in terms of his availability so you have to come up with creative ways to pull that off. Rick is not there to guide him around in the mannerisms that we need.

Peter DeLuise:
That was a great way of getting around his availability. I think you did a whole episode, a whole thing about him not always being available to us.

David Read:
Yeah, “200.” That’s a part of the theme from “200.” It’s like, “how do we organize him disappearing all the time?” That was funny, man.

Peter DeLuise:
There was another way, which was to naturally split the team. I heard Brad Wright say that more than a few times, “How do we split the team?” Rob as well. When you were spinning the episode you would say, invariably, SG-1, the foursome, would come through and then they’d split off and then maybe O’Neill goes this way, or two of them would go this way and two of them would go that way. That would be half as many scenes on the other planet that required Richard Dean Anderson to be in there.

David Read:
I remember “Orpheus,” you had him on the hill in a sniper position for the episode. Teal’c could go in and do the business with getting his son and Bra’tac back. You make it work.

Peter DeLuise:
That was exactly one of the reasons why we did that. I think my cameo in that one was when I had him scream, “Hanson, Penhall! Open fire.” He didn’t question it at all. He was like, “Yeah, OK.” Sorry, hold on. Wait, I just had a memory. The line was, “Fire at will.” It was time to start shooting for all the people up there and the line said, “Fire at will.” He goes, “I don’t wanna say, ‘Fire at will.'” I think he said, “Have at her, boys,” or something like that. I was like, “You don’t wanna say, ‘Fire at will'”? He said, “No.” One day we’ll find out why. Maybe he thought it meant, “Don’t fire at Will Waring.” Will Waring’s an excellent director. We won’t be able to hide any more pineapples on the show if Will Waring’s shot.” He said, “I don’t wanna say, ‘Fire at will,'” and I was like, “OK, I wonder what that’s about.” I didn’t question that either. I didn’t question why he didn’t want to say… Maybe it’s a clunky line. That’s a clunky thing to say in the heat of battle. “Fire at will.”

David Read:
You have your lead actor, who’s also an executive producer on the show. I would imagine he had a little bit more flexibility with the script.

Peter DeLuise:
He had an innate sense of what was cool and what wasn’t cool. Quick sideline story – Invariably, they would watch dailies during lunch. I was prepping my own episode and I walked into the writer’s room, and they were, over sandwiches, watching the dailies. All of the SG-1 team had shooting glasses on. Do you remember that, when they were wearing the yellow shooting glasses to protect their eyes?

David Read:
Yeah, that’s “Enemies” Season Five Episode One. They’re running down the hall from the Replicators, ’cause it’s closed quarters. They’re shooting bullets everywhere.

Peter DeLuise:
They were shooting bullets everywhere and it was for the safety of the actors; I’m pretty sure that was the primary force behind that. My immediate reaction was, “That looks silly. Looks ridiculous.” They said, “It’s not silly.” Everyone in the room said it’s not silly, ’cause it was a decision that I wasn’t part of at all because I had been shooting. By the time I came down to prep and I started watching the show, suddenly I saw these shooting glasses that had never been on the show before. I said, “They look silly. They don’t look cool.” They said, “That’s what they wear in real life. They don’t look cool. That’s real.” I said, “You know how I know it’s not cool? Richard Dean Anderson isn’t wearing them. That’s how I know they’re not cool.” Then you cut to Richard Dean Anderson, he’s the only one not wearing those silly glasses.

David Read:
He’s the man.

Peter DeLuise:
I’m not saying that it’s silly to protect your actor’s eyes. What I’m saying is it wasn’t a good reason to suddenly put glasses on, but they were going to be shooting an enormous amount of ammunition in close quarters, which is exactly why you should protect the actor’s eyes.

David Read:
Viz Vizing wanted to know, what is your favorite film and who is your favorite director? Someone wants to know a little bit more about your influence. Could you narrow that down?

Peter DeLuise:
What is my favorite film?

David Read:
It’s a tall order for some.

Peter DeLuise:
What is with this show, everybody? “What’s your favorite, what’s the most, what’s the least?” Everybody’s with the favorite all the time. I’ll tell you what, nobody ever remembers this movie. It was based on a play; it’s called Inherit the Wind. It’s an amazing play/movie. Spencer Tracy’s in it and it’s about the Scopes Monkey Trial, when Scopes, a teacher, dared to teach Darwinism. It was the turn of the century. Clarence Darrow was, I believe, the lawyer. What was under discussion, or the law that had been broken, was that there was a school that was teaching evolution. That was a problem in the Bible Belt of, I believe, Mississippi.

David Read:
Tennessee.

Peter DeLuise:
Was it Tennessee?

David Read:
Tennessee. In violation of the Butler Act.

Peter DeLuise:
You know it better than I do?

David Read:
No, Google does. But thank you.

Peter DeLuise:
For real?

David Read:
Yeah.

Peter DeLuise:
Thank you for helping me out with that. It’s just a really, really powerful drama about a real-life thing that actually happened. Because it was a play, they had worked a lot of the kinks out. I think an excellent way to polish off a story is by seeing its effect. Neil Simon used to do that. He would take a play and they’d go very far away from New York and they’d slowly do the play more. Neil Simon would watch and see which jokes landed and which jokes didn’t. Eventually they’d make it to Broadway. By that time, he had revisited all the laughs and all the things so that every syllable, within an inch of its life, was perfect, then it was ready to be put on Broadway. A play is a natural for a movie because it’s been done over and over, and back in the old days, you could see if it worked. Nowadays, movies are written by people who watched other movies; they didn’t read a bunch of classic books. I really love that movie. Almost nobody really knows about it. Visually, I’ll give you a handful of favorite movies. There was Saving Private Ryan, Shawshank Redemption. Blade Runner is a visual extravaganza. I love that movie. Thelma & Louise is a tour de force, an amazing, socially relevant movie. I know not a lot of men say Thelma & Louise is one of their favorite movies, but it’s a very powerful, very important movie that got made at a time where a lot of movies didn’t have female leads, female heroines. It was a really well-done movie and I remember watching it thinking, “That guy is a cliché and that male character is a cliché and that male character is a cliché.” Then I realized, “Oh my god, almost every movie I watch, the female character is a cliché of a female character.” You’ve got the whiny wife or the doubting mother and the tiny wedges that we allot for the female characters back then. Now, you’ve got whole movies being made about the female experience in present day society and I’m like, “Bring it on. I can’t wait to see that.” I love that stuff.

David Read:
There’s some good stuff coming out all the time.

Peter DeLuise:
It changes based on my needs and how I feel emotionally. Recently, not that you asked, I binge-watched the series Fallout. I highly recommend it. It’s awesome.

David Read:
I’ve seen the first episode. I was very impressed.

Peter DeLuise:
It’s great.

David Read:
Video game adaptations are tricky and lately we’ve been getting a couple of really good ones.

Peter DeLuise:
The production design alone is amazing and the execution, the acting, the directing, it’s beautiful.

David Read:
Can I ask a quick question about “Window of Opportunity?”

Peter DeLuise:
Sure. Didn’t we cover that last time?

David Read:
I know we’ve covered it, but…

Peter DeLuise:
Sure. OK.

David Read:
When the episode came up short, how much was involved in getting all of those individual shots of the collage at the end, the montage? My understanding was that takes up a lot of time to do each of those individual shots. What kind of creative freedom did you have on that?

Peter DeLuise:
It was an all-hands-on-deck situation once it became clear. What we talked about last time was, my recollection was, and I hadn’t revisited this in a while. My recollection was “do not do a time loop or a Groundhog Day thing without a montage.” You shouldn’t even attempt to do a time loop episode without a montage, because people getting better at stuff is always gonna be cool. I told you too, in Part One, when you asked me this before, the fact that Chris Judge and Richard Dean Anderson could both juggle was invented out of whole cloth right there. I asked them, “Can you juggle? Can you juggle?” “Yes.” “OK. Pretend that both your characters don’t know how to juggle and then we’ll just go one after another. Practice, getting better.” That was absolutely right in the moment; me trying to fill some space and going, “Why wouldn’t you learn how to juggle if you had all the time in the world?” There were other things. I think I told you about Brad Wright doing the golf swing thing. They were all golfers; they loved golf back then. In fact, I was one of the only writers who didn’t do golf. I would’ve been more excited about golf if it was full-contact speed golf. I would’ve been excited about that. I don’t care for golf very much. If we had played pickup football or something like that, I would’ve been totally into it. Robert and Paul were inevitably practicing their putt while we were spinning stories, I think it helped them concentrate. Once it became obvious that we were gonna be short, everyone took an interest in, “Wouldn’t it be funny if this happened?” I can’t remember if throwing a pot of clay for Richard Dean Anderson was originally in the script or if that was invented afterward to fill time. I know the Vern one with riding the bicycle? That felt like that was invented out of whole cloth. I know the golf one was invented after the fact. I know that the juggling was invented after the fact. Getting hit in the door, that was the deal that Joe and Paul cleverly put in. How do you come back every time, back from the loop? How do you start every episode? We had already shown the Froot Loops, which Joe cleverly pointed out, ’cause it loops, it’s got the word “loops” in it. Then they wanted to swap out Cheerios and they said, “It doesn’t work. Cheerios, there’s nothing, it’s a circle but it’s not the word “loops.””

David Read:
Froot Loops is perfect.

Peter DeLuise:
The fact that Chris Judge, or Teal’c, was being bonked in the head at the beginning, every time, and he goes, “Oh, I’m sorry” and “so you have said” every single time. He slammed the door back on them. To their credit, they wrote that beautiful joke of the reveal of how Teal’c’s character has to endure this bonk every time at the beginning of his redo. There’s a milestone for that: the Sonny & Cher music from Groundhog Day, where Bill Murray has to hear that.

David Read:
At the beginning, every time it resets. “I’ve got you, babe.”

Peter DeLuise:
The Sonny & Cher music and he’s like, “Ah, again!” I think I told you this before, the reason we were so under time was most of the time when you start a scene people come in the door, they knock on the door, they say, “Hey, can I talk to you for a second?” The slang for that is the gazinta and the gazada. You come in, you gazinta the room and then you gazada the room when you’re done talking. None of that had any use in the show anymore ’cause we would just cut to the next time. Nobody had to come in the room again. In the first act everybody came in the room and said their thing.

David Read:
So, your setups were far fewer?

Peter DeLuise:
Right. In the first act they had to say, “And now we’re putting the light in your eye.” “What could possibly be in my eye that would justify all this?” Then the next scene was cut to the light POV shining in the guy’s face again. You didn’t need the picking it up and putting it in or tell me more. All that caused the scene to get cut down; it cut the episode down and down and down and down. We were like, “Oh, what do we do?” To answer your question, I don’t know exactly how much. I know there was some montage because it’s unthinkable that you would do a time loop episode without a montage, but we had to fill in way more montage. It was a fun thing that everybody got super excited about, “how do we fill this time? What other silly hijinks would they get up to if they had all the time in the world?”

David Read:
Just crazy people in a crazy situation, man. I think I remember someone saying, it may have been you, it was an out week or whatever it is that you say; you’re not feeling completely into it, like everything is firing on all cylinders. But sometimes you don’t know what’s gonna grab a fandom years later.

Peter DeLuise:
Brad is such a tactician in the way that he would tell stories. If you look at all the ways Rob and Brad and Joe and Paul and Damian, everybody, every single scene has a point. Every single scene exists for a reason. I have a theory, I’m gonna pitch it to you, you tell me what you think. I think, if each scene has a story point, it wasn’t that, “Oh, we’ll just have a scene to develop character and that’ll be fine.” It wouldn’t forward the story so it would get cut. It was unnecessary; we need to forward the story all the time. Even if it was a huge action sequence, Brad would say, “It’s just moves. They’re just moving from this place to the…” It just moves; it doesn’t count as a story point. You get to the point in a show where every single scene is a story point, is a line on an outline that says, “Then this happens because we need to feed this and then this happens because of that.” They’re all laddered onto each other, but now you’re suddenly in an episode where the story point is they investigate what it is to have all the time in the world. Now you’ve got multiple scenes that still feed into one story point, “What would you do if you had all the time in the world?” so that felt different. It inherently felt different because now you’ve got not one scene, one story point, you’ve got many scenes and still the one story point. It did serve a purpose. They learned Latin and they educated themselves in the sciences, which I guess they promptly forgot after the episode.

David Read:
According to the first Stargate SG-1 novel, Trial by Fire, O’Neill remembered it years later and was able to speak it fluently, so some fans interpreted it differently.

Peter DeLuise:
That worked out well but he didn’t use it on the show.

David Read:
No, absolutely not.

Peter DeLuise:
That’s my theory: when you had multiple scenes that were seemingly frivolous and all playing to the point of what would you do if you had all the time in the world, I think that’s why it stuck out. Each individual scene wasn’t in fact forwarding the story or following the one-to-one ratio of forwarding the story.

David Read:
Can I ask you about one more episode before I let you go?

Peter DeLuise:
You’re gonna let me go?

David Read:
I just wanna be conscious of your time, I don’t wanna put you in a situation.

Peter DeLuise:
I live for this, David. I was gonna say, whoever has to pee first loses.

David Read:
I don’t wanna put you in a situation where it’s like, “Uh, hello?” “The Warrior.” I love this episode.

Peter DeLuise:
You have a question about “The Warrior?” Cool.

David Read:
I wanna know your process for this episode. This was a story by… Let me double check and make sure that I have my Ps and Qs correct. This was a teleplay with Christopher Judge and an amazing guest performance in terms of Rick Worthy. The episode would live or die by this actor. Tell me about casting K’tano, Imhotep.

Peter DeLuise:
He was so handsome and so present and he had that speaking voice like melted buttered toast. It was K’tano and Imhotep. K’tano was his false identity, that’s what he was putting forward. It’s not a mistake that Katana is the word for sword. I often borrowed old words that I knew were historically very old. I think Mastaba means house in Egyptian, that was the martial arts. I was like, “Oh, that sounds good.” Maybe that’s why over a millennium, the word Mastaba went from being special martial arts to it’s a house, it’s the foundation of our lives really. I thought, “Wouldn’t that be interesting if you used the word and its meaning slowly shifted into house?” That’s why I used the word Mastaba, ’cause I thought it sounded good, I knew it was Egyptian. Rick Worthy, he’s an American. I think he put himself on tape back in the old days when that was a little bit more rare. Now it’s the standard, putting yourself on tape. He was an amazing actor.

David Read:
He’s done everything.

Peter DeLuise:
It would take too long. He was super right for it. He was physical, he needed to be super physical. This was the other thing; he had to be incredibly charismatic. Without even thinking about it, you had to go, “Oh, of course, they’re all drawn to him. He’s amazing. What an amazing leader. What a charismatic leader.” He got it; he understood.

David Read:
To be able to have the martial arts expertise as well. He could do a lot of those moves himself.

Peter DeLuise:
Yes. The other thing is, Capoeira I adopted, that was something that I recruited. There were Capoeira martial artists practicing near where I live and I would see them playing. They call it playing, doing their Capoeira, and I stopped them near my gym where I used to work out. I said, “I wanna talk to you guys about Capoeira and your class and all your guys.” One of the fellas who I talked to ended up becoming a stuntman. Actually, they were both in “Orpheus.” They were the two guys in “Orpheus” who were doing the amazing martial arts stuff during the melee, they were those two fellas. I think one of them ended up dating and marrying Rachel Luttrell. Isn’t that a weird connection?

David Read:
Everyone connects. Loyd Bateman.

Peter DeLuise:
Thank you. Loyd Bateman was one of the fellas in there and they were doing Capoeira. Loyd became a very prolific stunt guy. He did motorcycle, not just martial arts but motorcycles and all sorts of wonderful stuff. I said, “I wanna adapt this, I think stylistically it’s very unique and I’m excited about it.” Also, I had this camera rig called the Revolvershot that I wanted to use on the show as well. I pitched Ray Douglas the idea of this camera apparatus that would create bullet time from the Matrix, but in the camera. Spinning the camera around really, really fast and shooting slow motion so that we could do these really sort of majestic fight scenes with the Capoeira. I needed a unique, really sexy martial art and a unique way of showing that martial art. It was a fun little marriage there that came together.

David Read:
It’s wild how you guys were able to pull that off and the reveal at the end. It’s like, “Oh, this is another Goa’uld playing another form of game with us.”

Peter DeLuise:
Playing another game! I think that was the one where we had the… What was the Jaffa’s name with the scarred…

David Read:
Rak’nor. It’s Obi.

Peter DeLuise:
Yes, Obi. He was an amazing talent. I think I made that up that they cut his [forehead tattoo] off and it was all scarred.

David Read:
Yes. That was for “Serpent’s Venom.”

Peter DeLuise:
You should see that scene. I thought that was a fun way to deal with that character. Wouldn’t that be cool if it was all cut off ’cause he didn’t wanna be identified as one or another.

David Read:
In the story that you wrote for “Serpent’s Venom,” his father had gone to him and told him, because of what Teal’c had done, that they were free and then his father ended up dead. He decided to join Heru’ur’s forces in capturing Teal’c, which is one of my favorite episodes of the show, “Serpent’s Venom.” The actor who was torturing him has recently passed; he’s no longer with us. That was Terok, Paul Koslo.

Peter DeLuise:
Terok’s named because he creates terror, it’s that simple. His name came from “He’s terrifying. He’s terrorizing all these people.”

David Read:
I love that episode, not just for those scenes with Rak’nor and Teal’c and the grueling experience that Christopher Judge must have gone through being tortured, but the cleverness of disarming the explosive. Probably one of my single favorite scenes from the entire show is when Jack makes a comment about all of Daniel’s luggage and Daniel says, “Well, I couldn’t find this particular language in archeology.com.” Jack takes his fingers and pokes his glasses back on his nose. That is what makes Stargate; the relationship between the characters that is unspoken.

Peter DeLuise:
I love that stuff too. I’m glad you’re pointing that out; all that stuff that you’d never expect to see in an ultra-serious situation. I think human beings invariably look for the fun part, or to relieve stress. People laugh at funerals. That’s not uncommon to hear people laughing about a fond memory they had of the deceased. Also, because it’s forbidden, you’re not supposed to laugh. It makes it even more funny because you’re not supposed to laugh. There’s that Mary Tyler Moore thing where they’re talking about the clown that has died and she can’t stop laughing. It’s one of the most funny episodes ever. They’re eulogizing a clown and she just loses her mind ’cause she can’t stop laughing. Why did I say all that? Why did you ask me about Rick Worthy? Did you want me to come up with a better story than what I just said, even though I thought he was great?

David Read:
Rick, I have gotten to know him since that episode and you’re right, that booming voice, “I cannot say that this will be easy.” As an orator, so powerful; the whole episode hangs on his every ounce of charisma. It’s brilliant. He’s brilliant in that show.

Peter DeLuise:
I felt excited about that. Of course, you have to use that special flowery language that Jaffa definitely would be talking to each other in. During his opening speech, I remember trying to come up with, “What would you say if you’re trying to get a bunch of Jaffa on board with you?” That makes sense ’cause Jaffa are pretty smart. Most of them are over 100 years old so they’ve been around for a long time. They’re not easily fooled by empty rhetoric so you would have to say something that actually makes sense to them. You would have to be empathetic to their plight to get them to come on board with what you’re saying.

David Read:
They’re not stupid. They’ve been tossed around an awful lot by all of these false gods. Before I let you go, Tubbyguts wanted to know, “Peter, have you heard anything about a new Stargate series?” I wanted to check in and to ask about that.

Peter DeLuise:
I know that there’s quite a frenzy about what’s gonna happen with the show. I know that there is definitely an audience for it. The shorter answer is, I don’t know. The only people that do know are probably not at liberty to say. Brad Wright, Robert Cooper, Joe Mallozzi, they would have way better insight than I would. Brad Wright, of course, being at the top of the pyramid in that regard. That’s my factual answer. My emotional answer is, I know that there’s a market for it, I know that there’s an audience for it, so that gives me hope. If you can’t trust the creative aspects of why you should make a show, there’s always the financial; there’s money to be made. MGM, now that they’ve been bought by Amazon, I know that if there’s money to be made, there will be some iteration of Stargate eventually. You just have to trust the almighty dollar in this regard. If there’s enough of an audience, we will see another version of Stargate. I take great hope in that; I give a lot of clout to that. I know that Brad has come incredibly close. I’m just like you; I wanna know if that’s gonna happen too ’cause I know that there’s an audience for it. How many YouTube episodes have you seen about why superhero…

David Read:
The fatigue?

Peter DeLuise:
The fatigue of superhero stuff is palatable. How many 100-million-dollar-plus movies can you make that people are not excited about anymore before you go, “Oh, maybe another genre? Maybe we should investigate another genre.” I don’t think it’s an accident that there are so many post-apocalyptic movies coming out right now, series and so forth. I don’t think it’s an accident that when the vampire genre came out, everybody had to have a vampire movie. These things ebb and flow. When you get superhero fatigue, how about something else for a while? When there’s sitcom fatigue, let’s do our drama. When everybody went on strike, they said, “Now let’s do unscripted. Let’s do reality television.” There’s an ebb and flow to everything. By the way, the sequel that you get might not even be called Stargate. This might blow your mind, or you might know this already. Remember Independence Day 4? Independence Day?

David Read:
Independence Day?

Peter DeLuise:
You remember the movie?

David Read:
The movie? Of course, absolutely.

Peter DeLuise:
It was called ID4 – Independence Day. That script was meant to be the sequel to the original movie, Stargate. Did you know that?

David Read:
I didn’t know that the script was supposed to be, but I knew that they wanted to do another Stargate.

Peter DeLuise:
This is what happened. You take all the names of all the different things and erase them. Independence Day was the aliens’ reaction to what happened in Stargate.

David Read:
They come to get us, just like Apophis does at the end of Season One.

Peter DeLuise:
They come to get us. All the various countries of the world band together to fight. Instead of pointing their guns at each other, they point them at where? At the aliens. We all come together to fight our common enemy. It’s a great theme. It’s a fantastic theme. Imagine how mad Roland Emmerich and Dean Devlin were when they gave their franchise away and said, “We’re gonna make this into…” and they say, “We’ve still got this great idea for a movie.”

David Read:
They had a trilogy.

Peter DeLuise:
“We’ll just call it something else. We’ll call it Independence Day instead of Stargate.”

David Read:
Makes a lot of sense, I never thought of it that way. One way or another, the good ideas have a way of coming through to the top. Peter, thank you. This was really cool.

Peter DeLuise:
David, wait, before we sign off, I wanna thank you too, for being the person who has created the historical document that is Dial the Gate. Do you know what I borrowed that from, the historical document?

David Read:
Historical documents?

Peter DeLuise:
Galaxy Quest. Historical documents, yes. You have created Dial the Gate, the historical document documenting the journey that is Stargate. I think all the people that love Stargate have come to understand your passion and not just your passion, but your stamina to do this on a never-ending basis, until every single detail is eked out. I admire that, I think that’s amazing. If I didn’t say it before, I’m eternally grateful. When I watch this, when I watch you talk to people, I go, “I didn’t know that. I was there and I didn’t know that.” I’m constantly finding out stuff about the show that I didn’t know.

David Read:
It’s a testament to the work that all of you made that there is an audience for this. We have got 160 people watching. There’s something that continues to click after all these years. I told this to Dean Devlin, who had reason to be frustrated with Stargate SG-1 going in its own direction. I told him, “Something is working.” You can’t do 350-some-odd hours of a show without saying to yourself, “Something is going right.” The people that you guys all brought together, that started at the top with Brad and Jonathan and Rick and Michael Greenburg and all the way down. Making it a place where everyone wanted to be every single day and not a place where it was like, “Ugh, gosh, I can’t stand to be here one more second.” ‘Cause it’s not worth it. If that’s the case, then it’s no good. Something was done right, it came through the storytelling, it came through what was filmed and the editing and the fans have continued to suck it up. I am eternally grateful to all of you for continuing to share so much of your time with us, to continue to preserve these memories for all fans, whether they found the show or have yet to find the show. Thank you.

Peter DeLuise:
I hear you, man.

David Read:
All righty, sir. I appreciate your time, all the best and look forward to talking with you again one day.

Peter DeLuise:
OK, David. Appreciate your time. Here’s a big kiss for ya.

David Read:
Thanks, brother. You take care of yourself.

Peter DeLuise:
You too.

David Read:
Bye-bye.

Peter DeLuise:
You too. Bye.

David Read:
That is Peter DeLuise, writer, producer and director, Stargate. I’ve been privileged to watch the show with Nicole and Yvie on Wormhole X-Tremists, Dial the Gate’s sister channel, and it’s amazing. You can rewatch a series that you saw when you were 14 years old and just a little kid and you continue to see new things that you never saw before. It’s one of the advantages of watching it with friends who also love the work because they could say, “Oh, look at that, there’s a van driving by on this moon.” It’s continually rewarding to go back and watch. My tremendous thanks to Peter and to Michael Welch for coming on and surprising him. I reached out to Michael about two or three weeks ago and I said, “I’m getting Peter DeLuise. Would you like to be on?” He says, “Yes! Yes, absolutely.” That’s awesome. If you enjoy Stargate and you wanna see more content like this on YouTube, please click that Like button. It really makes a difference with YouTube and will continue to help the show grow its audience. Please also consider sharing this video with a Stargate friend. If you wanna get notified about future episodes, click the Subscribe icon. Giving the Bell icon a click will notify you the moment a new video drops and you’ll get my notifications of any last-minute guest changes. Clips from this live stream will be released over the course of the next few days on both the Dial the Gate and GateWorld.net YouTube channels. My tremendous thanks to my moderators, Sommer, Tracy, Antony, Jeremy. Marcia Middleton, welcome to the moderator club. I really appreciate you sticking around. A lot of the questions that were submitted for this episode were answered in the first episode from Peter. Go into our catalog and look for the first hour with Peter and a lot of those questions will be answered. My tremendous thanks to Frederick Marcoux at ConceptsWeb. He makes DialtheGate.com continue to purr like a kitten. Matt Wilson, EagleSG, for the amazing title sequences that he’s creating for us with some of the classic ships. That’s all I’ve got for you. We have Corin Nemec tomorrow at 10:00 AM Pacific Time. He’s gonna be here to share more memories of Jonas Quinn and Stargate and to talk about his new book, which is out now. My name is David Read for Dial the Gate. I appreciate you tuning in and I’ll see you on the other side.