Alison Matthews joins Dial the Gate LIVE to explore her role as Brenna in SG-1’s “Beneath the Surface,” which adapts one of the oldest morality plays in science fiction.

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TRANSCRIPT
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David Read:
Welcome to Dial the Gate: The Stargate Oral History Project. My name is David Read. I really appreciate you being here for Episode 363. I have Alison Matthews, who played Brenna in Stargate SG-1 Season Four’s “Beneath the Surface,” one of my favorite episodes from the show. If you are in the audience right now on the live stream, you can go ahead and submit your questions over to the moderators, and they will get them to me for later on in this episode. In the meantime, if I can get my buttons figured out here, Alison Matthews, welcome to Dial the Gate.

Alison Matthews:
Hi, David. I’m so glad to be here. Thanks for having me.

David Read:
It’s a privilege to have you. How are things going? What’s going on in your world? Are you instructing? What’s going on?

Alison Matthews:
I’m actually on the faculty in the Department of Drama at the University of Alberta, which is in Edmonton, Alberta.

David Read:
OK. How long have you been involved with that school?

Alison Matthews:
I have been in the drama department since just coming out of COVID, fall of 2021.

David Read:
Had you taught before?

Alison Matthews:
I’ve had teaching acting and voice, primarily voice, as part of my roster of stuff that I love to do for a number of years, but before this job, it was a bit an occasional visitor to universities, so it’s quite a mindset shift for me to work in university structure. Very different from our TV and film world, so it’s been an education.

David Read:
Do you find the process of sharing knowledge, especially it’s something on such an artistic level, to be more efficient in that environment, or is it just different? I’m curious. And are the ages different compared to whom you’ve worked with previously?

Alison Matthews:
It is different in a lot of ways. The work is always the same. My focus is voice and performance, so however that manifests for different actors at different stages. But I’m also the head of a voice and text coaching program at the Bard on the Beach Shakespeare Festival in Vancouver. And that’s what I’ve done for a much longer time. That’s what I’m more used to, which is working with professional actors, many of whom are younger than me, but many of whom are kind of close to my age. So, that’s the big mindshift, is working with younger students, and it’s a different population of artists. Our students in the department here tend to be at the beginning of their training. So, it’s kind of a nice thing to support them as they learn the basics, the fundamental skills. I’ll talk for an hour about how brilliant I think our program is, so you’ll have to interrupt me, but it is different.

David Read:
We’ve got you for an hour, so that’s part of actually what I wanted to jump into here, because I am fascinated by this branch of acting. And some people might ask, “You need a specialized niche for that?” And it’s like, you do. Because there are actors who do some voice work, and then there are voice actors. And they aren’t all in the same circles. And I have watched enough special features and YouTube to know just how much harder voice acting is than it looks, because you’re not being seen, and you have to find a way to express yourself physically through a microphone. And so, it’s a lot of physicality. Or am I dead wrong?

Alison Matthews:
No, you’re 100% right, and you probably know that the big area of development and growth in voiceover is really in gaming. And that particular kind of voice work is incredibly rigorous and physically challenging, and there are a lot of interesting conversations right now about how actors can meet the demands, the kind of vocal extension you might call it, that they’re working with their voices in quite a lot of extremity, and then they have to repeat it. You get a four-hour session for a game, and it’s like, “We’re gonna have you do three yells across a battlefield.” You do that three times, and then instantly go into, “You’ve just been hit across the kneecaps with a baseball bat. Do that three times.” And on and on and on. So, yeah, it’s like the Olympics of the voice world, really.

David Read:
Do you prepare them for mocap as well, or is this strictly vocal roles?

Alison Matthews:
Our department is interesting. It actually has been a kind of traditional theater training program for many decades. It was started by a wonderful actor named Tom Peacock back in the mid-60s. He was a Genie Award-winning TV and film actor who also loved the stage, so he actually developed a four-year conservatory-style training program. The idea at that time was very much to prepare actors for the theater and stage work, and the Stratford Festival and the Shaw Festivals, these big kind of regional companies and festivals across Canada, were hiring actors from this program. But it was a four-year university program, so universities tend to have the infrastructure to allow four years of training in a conservatory style. But it was really much more stage oriented, so even back in the ’60s and ’70s, they were doing stage fighting so they would learn sword play and stuff like that. And I think that’s the genesis now for us developing, now in a very different kind of actor training world, looking at how we train them for voiceover. We do want them to use their interpretive skills to be able to do commercials and animation and things like that. But we’re trying to branch into mocap more and more, and the gaming side of the voiceover course that they take. I like to try to encourage them to think of it as all being connected. Just before I logged on with you now, I was up at the school working with the third year class. They were doing these stage fight sequences. They call it found weapon scenes where it’s like some sort of fight that breaks out where people have to search for something that they can use as a weapon.

David Read:
Jerry-rig something.

Alison Matthews:
Yeah. And then I’m looking at how they’re telling that story with their voice.

David Read:
That’s an interesting approach ’cause you can’t– I suppose you could do things like mask work, like being concealed behind something where your voice is altered. How your presence and your voice is altered by the things that you hold. Things that give you more power or make you more timid. You can go on and on about this. This is fascinating to me. But I’d like to know if you would level with me for a minute. How do you feel about the future? With the technology that’s coming down the pike?

Alison Matthews:
Yeah, I guess it was inevitable that we’d have to talk about this. Every time I listen to the news sources that feel reliable to me, the picture that’s being painted is, let’s be honest, not positive. And some of the ways that the industry is grappling with this, I think it’s a really, really difficult time.

David Read:
Let me ask this. Have you had to talk students out of quitting for this? And what advice would you have?

Alison Matthews:
I have to say this is probably why I don’t lose heart. For all of the forces of AI that are clearly gathering and gaining momentum, the unbelievable life force of our students is a pretty good antidote. They are really passionate about what they do, and there’s just no parent in the world who’s going to insist that their child take a degree in acting. You’re only doing it because you love it. Nobody’s there because mom and dad said, “I have to be an actor.” We’re always dealing with volunteers, not hostages, and that helps a lot. It really does. They love it.

David Read:
If only Administrator Caulder coulda heard that. That would’ve been helpful for those people in that planet. It makes a lot of sense.

Alison Matthews:
They do it for the love, and I do wanna train them to work in the profession, and I do wanna prepare them for the challenges. Part of that is helping them develop flexibility and adaptability, and I want them to be able to get cast in a play or on a TV show or in a film or in voiceover. I think having a multitude of skillsets is part of how we kind of AI-proof ourselves, and the flexibility to do more than one thing is essential.

David Read:
Which we do now. I’ve had a number of actors on here. I think they call it their joe job up in Canada. So, they have their vocation, which they do when they have the opportunity presents itself, and Zooming now presents, it’s a double-edged sword, but a couple of them would argue more opportunities for auditioning, a lot more. But also, then when they’re not doing that, they have their joe job, and they go and they do a normal average Joe thing, ’cause you gotta pay the bills and bring up– I do believe that even in this age, you can have your cake and eat it too. What are you willing to sacrifice in order to make it happen? Because if that’s something that you love to do, don’t give it up. But you just can’t– You may not be able to make a career out of it right now. But that doesn’t mean to throw it away.

Alison Matthews:
No, exactly. And there are all these dystopian novels about what happens when it all breaks down, and many of them have little roving bands of actors putting on plays still in that post-apocalyptic world. I’m thinking of Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel. But there are a number of them where we see that, to put on a play in really dire circumstances, doesn’t really require anything more than a group of actors telling a story. Another thing I could talk to you about for hours is the whole human history of storytelling, which of course goes back–

David Read:
The fires.

Alison Matthews:
Our oral …

David Read:
Traditions.

Alison Matthews:
… heritage and traditions. Exactly.

David Read:
100%. You can be standing around a flaming barrel burning whatever to keep you all warm, and you can still tell stories. I think that that is the enduring quality of our species, is our indomitable spirit. And it is fueled by the fact that we share tales with one another that remind us that we can be better than we are, and that’s never going to go away. No matter what happens to us, we’re all going to be in this together with stories.

Alison Matthews:
That’s so beautifully said. I would love for you to tape that and send it out …

David Read:
Share this.

Alison Matthews:
… to some decision makers.

David Read:
It’s funny. Before I get to “Beneath the Surface,” is there a role that you’ve had–I try and ask this to as many of my guests as I can as long as time permits–that affected you in a way that you didn’t anticipate or has stayed with you and surprised you at how it’s just clung to you? Stage, screen, voice work. Is there something that you’ve done that impacted you and became a part of you that you’d be willing to share?

Alison Matthews:
That’s a great question. I was surprised by how it affected me to play, I guess it’s two mothers. One was a TV series, it was an NBC series called Just Deal. It was a youth series, and I was playing the mother of one of the three leads. And at the time, I did not have a child, and I now do. And it’s interesting, the character was a single mom, parenting a young girl. And I now have a daughter, and that’s my only child. So, a parallel that I didn’t even know would unfold in my own life. And I also was in a stage production playing Lady Capulet in Romeo and Juliet, who’s another mother of a daughter. Very different. But this, it was actually a kind of a reinterpretation of the Romeo and Juliet story in which you see Lady Capulet after losing her child, in grief. And both of those projects ha– I have a thing where because I’m tall and I guess I have a low voice, I was often cast older than I was. So, both of those parts I played before I had my daughter. And so, it stayed with me, I guess, as I was parenting myself, it was an interesting frame of reference. And it was interesting to revisit with the lived experience as opposed to when I actually filmed it and I just sort of thought, “Oh, I guess I’ll kind of pretend to be a parent now.”

David Read:
I’m curious to know how much of what you intuited when you were taking on the role of the parent in these productions that you realized later that was pretty close to the mark. I’m going to the same places emotionally that I did. There was something true about that. Or were you really in uncharted waters with yourself in, around 2000 when you were doing that?

Alison Matthews:
I think I judged my character, saying this character on the TV series, I judged her harshly. There was an episode, there was a bit of a running theme of what I saw as my character being a bit controlling or a bit brittle. I think I was allowing myself to be a bit brittle in the performing of it. And if I were to go back, if I could turn back time and do it now, I’d say, “Boy, that’s the way this parent is showing her love.” And it actually, if I looked at just the lines that are being said, it is a mother, expressing worry for her child’s safety. And I think if I were to play the part again, I would probably be able to have less brittleness. I would be able to bring a bit more heart to that.

David Read:
It’s interesting, the revelations that we have when life events alter us and we go back and it’s like, “I would have done that differently.” Because arguably the choices that you made for that person work for that character, but with your own lived experience, you see her differently and it’s been, “She cold.”

Alison Matthews:
It’s interesting, because I think for the sake of the show, it was important for the actor who played my daughter to have that conflict. There had to be–

David Read:
You’re playing tennis.

Alison Matthews:
You have to provide some resistance that that character has to bump up against. So, it wasn’t wrong. But I also think I could have found– This is total nerdy actor speak, but–

David Read:
Nerd out.

Alison Matthews:
Is that OK?

David Read:
Please do. We are a safe space for actors.

Alison Matthews:
OK, thank you. That’s so great. I could have played the same action, same intention, whatever vocabulary you like, but maybe there would have been more depth knowing that it’s coming from love as opposed to– It’s one of the things that I talk to my students about all the time, is you can’t judge your characters. You just can’t judge them. You have to try to find that perspective and that point of view. And embody it, and that’s actually the joy of it, is we get to live under someone else’s skin for a while, and I probably could do that better now. I have a colleague who I’ve worked with in some other actor training programs who always says, “One of the best ways to become a better actor is to live and have life experiences.” It’s really true.

David Read:
Acting can be such a misnomer sometimes because there’s always a piece of you that is in there, ’cause it’s you giving the performance, but you only have your own frame of reference, which is the accumulation of your knowledge up until that point, and that includes your instructors and everyone who have helped you out along the way. I’ve always found it really interesting. I go and watch interviews with actors who have played particularly reprehensible people. There’s one movie that I have seen with my best friend. It’s called Happiness, and I don’t even have it in my own collection. Go and find the film, folks. It came out in like 1999, and there is a brilliant performance. I forget the actor’s name in there, but he goes into the fact that this dude was reprehensible, and even the most reprehensible character, the actor, if they’re truly being honest, they have to work to find something about them that’s human. Because, again, if we’re truly being honest, all of us have to face points in our lives where we may turn down the wrong road and become something that we didn’t know or realize we’d become. And if we’re not considering those possibilities, I think we’re not actually preparing ourselves for the worst of what can happen to us, because there’s all kinds of things that can happen to us that would change us irreparably, that would make us do things that we never thought we would do. You guys explore that day in and day out with taking on roles or saying, “No, I won’t. That’s too dark. I will not take that role. I can’t physically do that and mentally do that.”

Alison Matthews:
Which is totally fair, and some people really need to shore up those boundaries, which I think is absolutely right and as it should be. But you obviously know a lot about acting, and I’m so curious about your background and training from this because–

David Read:
Just high school and college plays but talking to you guys for years and years. That’s interesting, Alison. Do you discuss that with your pupils in terms of setting emotional boundaries for yourself in terms of roles that you go after so you don’t, well frankly, turn out in a Heath Ledger kind of situation, or do you have those conversations? What do you say when you have someone who is so gung-ho and you’re like, “You can go out for that. I think that you could do that,” but inside your head you’re thinking, “OK. You will sink if you go out for that right now in your present state of development as a performer.” How far do you allow yourself as an instructor to go with them, or does it depend on your trust and that particular student’s mutual trust of you to have those kinds of conversations where it’s like, “You can play whatever you want, but I know how you like to internalize things, and you would go out on such a limb there that you may not be able to come back in. It might break with you on it.”

Alison Matthews:
I think, first off, I should say, we’re pretty fortunate in the department because we have a wonderful team of faculty who work very, very hard on our pedagogy and our curriculum. So, we have a degree of agency over the material that the students are engaging with, so we really are looking at how that material serves them at this point in their development. We don’t so much have our students going off and auditioning for big projects because frankly our program is too demanding. They’re in school with us from 9:00 AM until about 7:00 or 8:00 PM from Monday through to Friday, and then they work, they have classes on Saturday as well. Usually, they have a class on Sunday, but they did–

David Read:
What a program.

Alison Matthews:
It’s really intensive; we’re all in the–

David Read:
The trenches.

Alison Matthews:
We’re in the trenches together, and I don’t even think I consciously edit the material, but I’m not gonna give material that is in danger of derailing a student actor’s development.

David Read:
Not at the school, but in terms of when they go out for roles.

Alison Matthews:
We hope that by the time they’re graduating, they have developed those techniques, and there’s a lot of, certainly it’s a big part of a voice practice, is how do you warm up and prepare to move into the work, and how do you cool down and reset and move back from the work into your daily life? So, we definitely have those conversations in that sense, that you can’t blur those lines because it’s not good for your mind and your psychology, it’s not …

David Read:
Your spirit.

Alison Matthews:
… good for your spirit.

David Read:
I guess the thing that I’m dancing around is: How do you communicate difficult parts to them? And I guess, know thyself. Know who you are and you can handle pretty much anything that life throws at ya. But knowing who you are is not as easy as just saying “know thyself.” There’s a lot of subtext to that. We are complicated.

Alison Matthews:
Especially now, especially in 2025. It is really true that there are ways that I think a person who’s university age now has had to grow up really fast, and some other ways that maybe my generation was more grown up. It’s always a mix. I try to keep a very open-door communication policy with them so that I do feel confident that when concerns come up for a student working on some material, historically, they will tend to come to me and ask about that and, “What should I do?” But I also know that trying to stimulate their imagination is part of what they’re with us to get. And looking at material like Shakespeare, you have some pretty dark stuff in some of those plays. And for sure, there are plays that I would just say, “You know what? We’re not gonna work on that play.” I’m not gonna do Titus Andronicus with first-year acting students. But there is a lot of material in that play which is, as you say, about knowing yourself, and it’s so deeply human. And the students seem to dive into that and be filled by it, be actually lifted by it, as opposed to being dragged down by it.

David Read:
That’s the thing. What lenses are you going to put on when you’re reading that script and playing that part and articulating the limbs and the voice work of those characters? It has so much to do with what your outcome is going to be with it. If you’re looking at this as an opportunity to grow yourself and really mine those wells of process and thought and your own memories and everything else, you can probably have a positive experience in terms of playing just about anything. Everyone loves to play a good villain. At least in terms of what I’ve heard sitting in this chair. At a certain point, you just have to allow yourself to be swept away with it.

Alison Matthews:
And, as you say, it can be quite– I think it can be incredibly encouraging for someone if they allow themselves to be swept away, if they allow themselves to go on that rollercoaster and come through the other side, then that’s an opportunity to say, “Wow, I did it. I can do that. And it’s enriching me and I’m ready to take on a bigger challenge.” And there are certainly times when it’s pretty easy to feel fearful about things and we might have good reason to say, “You know what? I don’t wanna deal with that material.” But I would say, overwhelmingly, the students at the school say, “I really am interested in this challenge, and I can set some boundaries for myself, and if something starts to feel not good, I’ll pause and ask some questions.”

David Read:
You’ve got a net. That’s why you’re here. You’re here to work with one another and figure yourself out as well.

Alison Matthews:
And they work with each other. I mean, what’s also fascinating and makes me feel hopeful is I see– We only have 12 students in each year.

David Read:
How many students?

Alison Matthews:
There are small– 12.

David Read:
12. OK.

Alison Matthews:
It’s a small cohort, and they work– As I said, they’re with each other all day, every day. They support each other quite beautifully. It’s surprising.

David Read:
They’re thankful to be there.

Alison Matthews:
I think so. And they all want– It’s that rising tide floats all boats mentality a lot of the time. It’s great.

David Read:
Beautiful. “Beneath the Surface.”

Alison Matthews:
Yes.

David Read:
Fourth season of SG-1. This is one of my favorite episodes. It was– Let me pull this up here real quick. Was written by Heather E. Ash, whom I’ve had on the show. She’s wonderful. And directed by Peter DeLuise. When you auditioned this, did you see Metropolis right away? Did that come later? “Oh, yeah, there’s a lot of parallels here.” And who was Brenna to you on the page before you performed that character?

Alison Matthews:
Great questions. OK. I’ll start by saying, at the time– I have to say, this is going back 25 years, so …

David Read:
Yes.

Alison Matthews:
… my fading old memory.

David Read:
Old, please.

Alison Matthews:
At the time, I don’t recall connecting it to Metropolis. I had seen Metropolis when I was in acting school and I loved it, and I used to love all those old– there’s so many things to love about that film, obviously.

David Read:
It’s a brilliant movie.

Alison Matthews:
It’s an important film. And I think when I first saw it, I was really struck by a lot of the things about the acting style that is what I was studying at the time. And really looking at what it was to work in silent film. And so, what those actors were sort of trying to embody because it wasn’t anything like the film that we knew. So, I was looking at it through a different lens, and then it honestly didn’t occur to me. I thought when I auditioned for Brenna, I thought, “Oh, yeah, this is the kinda part–” I was very egotistical. I thought, “This is the kind of part I can do really well. I can see this is a very calm leader who’s then having to have her ethics and morals challenged, and how cool that she makes a good choice at the end.” Stands up against this bad boss. But I was looking at it in those terms. I wasn’t seeing those other layers and all that resonance. It was 2000, right? It was before September 11th. It was before a lot of things really changed in our collective psyche. I feel now looking back on it like I was a pretty ideali– idealistic isn’t the right word, a lighter, more easygoing person who just thought, “Oh, this is a cool part. What an interesting story.” And not necessarily grasping the very, very deep warnings that were placed in that story.

David Read:
It’s so easy to passively recognize a circumstance that you’re in, just like kids who watch sci-fi and get an entertainment from it, and then they grow up and they’re, “Whoa, there be layers here. This is not at all what I thought it was. There’s so much more going on and happening here.” “Beneath the Surface” works on all kinds of levels in that regard. Folks, if you have not gone and seen Metropolis, drop everything after we’re done with this. It’s on YouTube in the restored HD version. Most of the film has been recovered. There’s a version of it, the original version was lost, but in 2007 or ‘8 they found it in the middle of nowhere. And you have an above-ground society subjugating a below-ground society. And it’s very much like this. And it’s a silent film, it’s nearly three hours long, and it is captivatingly perfect. Those hours fly by. And I don’t know how they didn’t kill a bunch of kids near the end in that flooding. I don’t know how they did it. It’s an extraordinary piece of cinema, and this episode encapsulates that so much. You have to, at the end of the day, stand up for what the character Brenna knows is right and wrong, even if she’s using little Nintendo light guns, which is really what they only were. What do you remember about that shoot?

Alison Matthews:
Oh, it was so much fun. I’m sure all of the guests would say this, but that cast was so lovely. So, warm, so welcoming, so supportive, all of them. I mean, all the ones that I met. And Peter DeLuise is just a treasure and just a joy to work with, just such a joker, makes everything so fun and light. So, the time flies by. You just feel like, “Oh, I wish I could just be here all the time. I wish I could keep coming back.” We had a lot of fun joking around about those costumes, you know, these brown burlap sacks we were wearing. And that was especially funny to me, because I had friends working in film and TV in Vancouver at that time who would get parts on Stargate and they would have these glorious costumes, you know, with lots of sparkle and very sort of what we think of as the really sexy, great sci-fi kind of world, and I was–

David Read:
You get placed in a burlap bag.

Alison Matthews:
In a big brown bag, but my God, was it comfortable and so easy to get mic’d up. And even the gunshot to the shoulder was easy, because it’s all this thick padding. So, it made the tech side of things very– I mean, I’m assuming. I don’t know what sound was dealing with in terms of noise, but there was no danger of a mic pack ever showing or anything. It was quite easy. And then I love– Watching it back later I thought, “Isn’t it nice that they made that choice to have Brenna have this very nice tidy hairdo?” She’s gotta wear the–

David Read:
Wouldn’t wanna get it stuck in the machinery.

Alison Matthews:
Exactly, but it is quite middle management. They captured that quite beautifully. She’s gotta wear the same uniform as the people. It’s gotta be, “I’m one of you,” but she does have a slightly more cleaned up kind of look, and so it was– There were some nice ways that they struck the balance where I always felt like she was slightly defined, or I don’t wanna say out of place, but she was slightly different in the world underground, and then, of course, slightly different when she went upstairs to report, you know, in that very beautiful glass open office. There’s this brown blob that doesn’t fit in. Kind of moving between the two worlds I thought was visually quite well captured.

David Read:
It was an interesting choice that they wanted to keep you in your underground uniform when you were above the surface when arguably they could have had you in a uniform when you go to address your boss. There would be some bosses who would be like, “When you come up here, you’re in a uniform. You’re not gonna walk in here with that. God knows what you have on you.” And that kind of a guy I would have expected from that. But then, on the other hand, this is a guy who’s enjoying watching her pretend to be one of them, and she really is in the prison with the rest of the prisoners. We just let her up here now and then to report.

Alison Matthews:
And when you look at the angles, the way it’s shot, those scenes with Laurie, he’s always higher up and all of those little, tiny ways that that character was reinforcing dominance all the time.

David Read:
What do you think of sci-fi in terms of telling these morality plays? Is it not one of the most effective genres?

Alison Matthews:
Absolutely. When I was a teenager, I was a huge fan of Star Trek: The Next Generation, and you think about all of the morality tales that are built into that series as well. Stargate captured it so beautifully. Do you know what it is? Why is it that it works so well? Is it just that we set it in a world in another galaxy far, far away that somehow lets us run parallel?

David Read:
The fact of the matter is that– Let me pull up the quote here. Where is it? Isaac Asimov’s quote. We were supposed to have Herbert Duncanson on earlier, and he has the last line in “200,” which is a quote from Asimov. “Individual science fiction stories may seem as trivial as ever to the blinded critics and philosophers of today, but the core of science fiction–its essence–has become crucial to our salvation if we are to be saved at all.” It speaks to the human spirit as entertainment, sure, but as warning in its purest form, and we can take pieces of it away that nourish us differently at different points in our lives because we are always on that continuum. We’re never off of it. We’re at a different point in our lives all the time. And so, we resonate with it, we vibrate with it differently over the course of our existence as a finite species. And I think the really good writers, including Peter DeLuise, including Brad Wright, who was a huge Next Generation fan, they get it, and they understand the story that’s being told. Because the Star Trek writers would very much be like, “It’s about the message first.” Brad would be like, “The message is second or third. We’re here to entertain first.” But you go and watch an episode like “Beneath the Surface” and it is right there, and in an episode like this where it’s not beating you over the head, I don’t think, so people could probably argue that now, but when it came out then, it certainly wasn’t, and I treat it as that, as when it came out. And it’s a story, this particular story of people having the glass shattered before their eyes, and people recognizing that they have to do what’s right, especially when they’ve finally been presented with the opportunity to do what’s right. Brenna is very much an analog for Teal’c from the pilot episode when he sees a chance for setting the ship on its right course again, and she does that. And we appreciate those underdogs in our society who do the right thing, even though it’s going to potentially cost them everything. That’s kind of an answer.

Alison Matthews:
That’s a pretty great answer.

David Read:
I don’t think so but thank you. Sci-fi encourages us all to be better. And it’s also damn good entertainment. If you can see past the two-headed aliens and some of the funnier stuff that’s along the way. If you’re going to approach it with intellectual honesty, what is the story trying to tell you? And is it trying to tell you because it believes that you are smart enough to figure it out for yourself? Or is it trying to tell you something because it believes that you really don’t know any better and so it needs to tell you for your own good? Because as audience members, we detect that.

Alison Matthews:
And I imagine that a really great sci-fi fan who really follows those series develops that kind of Spidey sense to detect it even more finely. It must get more, your ability to take in these subtle kind of cues from the show.

David Read:
Potentially. You were bringing up something earlier that struck me, that you mentioned in terms of finding– You were the first to bring up finding the honesty in a performance. You know, there are times when I watch a performance and I feel that the actor really resents the person who, in real life, if they were to come across one of these people, would just really hate them with every fiber of their being, and I’m feeling that a lot of that is coming out in their performance, and then I later go saying to myself, “What if I’m projecting? What if I’m applying that to them and that’s not really happening? Or it’s a really bad actor and it’s pretty clear that it is, but what if it’s not? Maybe I need to do more introspection and thought into my–” That’s one of the other things that I think sci-fi teaches us to do well, is to know thyself even better, you know? ‘Cause you ain’t much better than an ape, so… You know, it’s those tools that our stories give us that make us stronger.

Alison Matthews:
Absolutely. God, I love that. One of the shows we did, this is a huge jump to Bard on the Beach and Shakespeare, but one of the shows we had last summer had a character whose actions are not noble. And the audience would really vocally, viscerally respond to him. He had some beautiful Shakespeare text, but he was sort of saying, “I’m gonna throw my friend under the bus ’cause I want this thing.” And the audience–

David Read:
Hopefully not literally.

Alison Matthews:
No, no, no. It was, this play is Two Gentlemen of Verona. And it’s two young friends who are going out into the world, and they fall in love with the same girl. And so, the one is sort of saying, “I’m gonna ditch my girlfriend for my best friend’s girlfriend.” And the audience would kind of go, “Oh.” And it was an interesting moment for an actor then, when you feel the audience– First of all, I think it’s wonderful, ’cause you’re really getting feedback from the audience, that they’re listening to the story. But then you have a chance to play, “Hey, what are you judging me for?” And we had a really great actor who had a lot of fun with how he responded to the audience responding to him.

David Read:
There’s so much of that happening. I think it’s Henry IV, Shakespeare’s Henry IV, where you have a character who the audience– Shakespeare is challenging his audience. And if it’s the wrong play, correct me. Makes him really reprehensible in the first half. You just don’t like this guy. And things happen to him over the course of the play, where at the end of it, you are challenged to recognize him as a human being, despite everything that came before. And I think that it’s those kinds of stories that remind us of our humanity when the chips are really down, and we want to get revenge on someone who has done something to us, or make sure, “You know what? I’m gonna make sure that they get theirs.” At the end of the day, we are all human beings. And maybe, you know, would it be so bad of an idea if grace stayed your hand? You know, you look at this administrator, Caulder, pretty reprehensible guy. You have a Gate that can take your people to another world and free all of them. It’s not like he’s in a situation where, “Look, there’s no Stargate. If we don’t do this, we die. If they all come up here, everything ends.” Now, there are people who would be like, “Yeah, let’s all burn it to the ground. If everyone can’t have everything equally, let’s raze it to the ground.” I have a problem with that. But this is not that situation. He can get them out of there, and he won’t do it because he wants to play despot.

Alison Matthews:
Yeah.

David Read:
What happened to that guy, you know, when he was a kid, to turn him into that? Those are the character studies that I, as an audience member, love to find interesting. Because if your character is a flat villain, I’m talking way too much here, Alison, it’s not interesting. Something made him that way. And that is great to watch students explore.

Alison Matthews:
Yeah, absolutely. And do we believe that redemption is always possible? And where’s the limit? Who is the person who you just say, “This person is unredeemable?”

David Read:
Where do you draw the line? ‘Cause there is a line. A friend of mine was once asked, what is the core takeaway of Stargate for her. Her name is Lisa Ide. And she said that everyone, on some level, is redeemable. Not void of having to pay back consequence, but at the same time, you know, everyone, at the end of the day, has a shot, should have an opportunity to redeem themselves. And I think that that’s true for Stargate, and I think that that’s a great message. I’ve got some fan questions for you.

Alison Matthews:
Oh, great. Yay.

David Read:
Jakub says, “How was your experience on Battlestar Galactica?” And so, one of my favorite lines, I don’t know why this sticks with me, but one of my favorite lines from the entire show is, “Madam President, how long do you have to live? How long do you have to live, Karen?” I mean, it’s like, she doesn’t know, you know? But as a reporter, you had to ask that question. How was Mary McDonnell?

Alison Matthews:
Oh my God. What a total gift to work on that show and to get to watch her work. I talk about this in my classes sometimes, because she’s a genius. I watched her do– In that scene, she had a long speech with all of the press gallery listening. And when they were on her coverage, I had the sides in my hands, and I was watching, and we were all there in the background reacting. And take one, I was thinking, “Wow, this is interesting. She’s improvising a lot of her lines.” And the general feel of it was right. She was capturing the idea of it all the way from start to finish, but it was quite ad libbed. Take two, she’s closer to the text, but still 50% ad libbing. Take three, word perfect. So, I don’t wanna presume to know what her technique is or what her work is. But what I saw, what I received, was that she did this thing of circling around her lines and dropping them in. And the skill and artistry involved in that is staggering to me. And just the confidence, I think, to know that she’s got, that she can roll out her process, ’cause she knows, she has to know they’re gonna give her three takes. But also, that way of connecting, the actor connecting with the character, you know, these might be my words for this thought, and then I’m gonna move towards my character’s words for that thought. And then bam, it was all there, perfect, word perfect.

David Read:
And the fact that she would go in an order reverse to what I would think you would do because wouldn’t you lose the words the more you went into the weeds? And she went the other way. She knew that text.

Alison Matthews:
She was going deeper and deeper into it. It was like a master class.

David Read:
What was being a spectator in that courtroom like? Was it as extraordinary as it looked onscreen for us? I rewatch those scenes on a semi-regular basis. Or was it, “David, it took a week. When we were out of that, out of that launch bay, we were glad?”

Alison Matthews:
Yeah. It was very long. The scope was so huge that, in practical terms, it takes a long time to get all the coverage, to figure it all out, to get the angles. And then you think of the pressure on the actors knowing that there are so many different kinds of pieces at play. And we would go outside and get fresh air and sunlight.

David Read:
Get outta the Battlestar.

Alison Matthews:
Nice break. But, again, what a happy crew and very professional crew. I think it’s–

David Read:
Amazing team of actors you got to watch right there one after the other on that stand, and then the repartee back and forth.

Alison Matthews:
Yup. And they are so good at what they do by that point in the series. They really had it down. I had a friend who was one of the other reporters. He and I would just sort of have little side chats like, “Look at that. What’s going on there? Wow.” So, it was an interesting fly-on-the-wall experience. Really, we had all of our, I think all of our lines were already done in other scenes. In a lot of those big courtroom scenes, we were needing to be visible somewhere in the room. That’s always a weird thing. And I’m sure lots of actors on this show have talked about this when you just feel like, I’m a glorified set piece right now. But–

David Read:
I’m a meat bag right now. Yup.

Alison Matthews:
But it’s like you’re getting paid to learn the craft from these incredible people.

David Read:
That’s right. You got Eddie Olmos over there. It’s my understanding, ’cause Tahmoh has come on this show, he talked about how Jamie had, with Ron Moore’s permission, written a lot of his own speech. And it’s just extraordinary to listen to that speech. That’s really cool.

Alison Matthews:
God.

David Read:
Do you have a few more minutes?

Alison Matthews:
I do, yes.

David Read:
OK. Lockwatcher says, “You’ve done some interesting voiceovers in various animated series. How hard is it for you to develop a voice for an animated character? Do you come into the studio by yourself?” Where do you find that? When you’re given a two-dimensional character, how do you bring that to life? Where does it begin?

Alison Matthews:
It’s a great question. Full disclosure, in animation I get cast a lot. You would not believe the number of times I’ve been cast as the computer voice, or the narrator. And I always have these friends who get to do, “Oh, I’m the voice of the parrot, but I’m also the voice of the evil witch on the same show.” And I’m the computer voice.

David Read:
You feel like a text generator.

Alison Matthews:
I think that. And so, I think that I give that energy somehow. People are, “Yup, that sounds official. That sounds informational.” But it’s still a lot of fun. I think because so much of my voiceover work has been narration, announcers, and things like that, that whenever I’m on an animation series, it’s like, “Ooh, I get to play with the cool kids today, and I’m sort of nerding out in their presence.” And a lot of those animation series were back in the days when you would actually go to a studio. And so, it’s a lot of soaking up the energy of the other folks who are working on it. But it is a great question. How do you develop this character when you might have been given a sketch, or you might have been told the scenario and given some qualities of that character? I have a weird, mild form of synesthesia, which is a kind of a blending of the senses. So, for me, certain sonic things have color for me.

David Read:
I have twin friends who are a synesthesia dyad.

Alison Matthews:
So, I think that’s part of what I love about voiceover is that sometimes translating a visual into a sound feels quite natural to me and feels actually good if I get to do it. So, we have this kind of thing in the acting school as well. There’s a technique by this European theater maker named Laban, if you’ve ever heard people talk about Laban efforts, and it’s qualities of movement. And so, stuff like that always helps me with figuring out characters. Is this a character who speaks with a lot of glide? Or are they more of a slash? Are they more of a dab or a flick? If that makes sense.

David Read:
Right there, that’s a visual language that you can apply to speech.

Alison Matthews:
For me, it’s sound. And I would use that. I do some coaching for actors who are doing dialects or something. And often that’s quite helpful to say, “Right now you’re in press. What if you were more in flick?”

David Read:
Wow. And pray …

Alison Matthews:
It’s hard.

David Read:
… that you’re not disembodied like a machine. But there’s always Majel Roddenberry to lean on.

Alison Matthews:
Yeah. My God.

David Read:
She was so good. I will one day, whenever they license her voice for whatever we have next, Season Three, Season Four, TNG computer voice, it’s gonna be in my house.

Alison Matthews:
I love it.

David Read:
bbbo68.

Alison Matthews:
You know how you get to change the voice for your Speechify?

David Read:
100%, ’cause it’s so many of us kids always wanted our own computer. bbbo68: “Alison named several First Nations, including the Salish on the about page of her website. Is there a special connection there?”

Alison Matthews:
I grew up in the territories that are the traditional and unceded lands of the Snuneymuxw First Nation, which is on the west coast of Canada, on Vancouver Island. I went to high school with a lot of members of that nation. So, for me, it’s a form of respect. I’m of settler descent myself. I have friends who are members of those nations. Where I work here in Edmonton, which is Treaty 6 territory, there’s a lot of incredible work being done by some Indigenous leaders here to decolonize our theater spaces and our education spaces. And they are brilliant, brilliant artists themselves. So, for me, that’s becoming more and more embedded in the work. That’s a huge area of work that this part of the world needs to do much better with. So, I wanna say I’m absolutely a beginner, but it feels to me one thing I can do is make that acknowledgement on my website. And we try to make that acknowledgement in our work in the theater department here, and we try to do it in a thoughtful way. One of the many really critical conversations happening is about whether land acknowledgements have meaning or whether they become performative.

David Read:
Token.

Alison Matthews:
How do we not make that token? How do we give it some purpose and some focus and some intention? And that’s a big conversation that I don’t profess to have any expertise in at all.

David Read:
But the conversation needs to happen. That makes sense.

Alison Matthews:
It does. And there’s interesting points of light where there’s some theater makers who are telling stories in different ways, maybe nonlinear narratives that are more from their own practices and their own heritage. And I think that’s part of the future: finding new ways into those stories. Because honestly, we’re gonna have different audiences. I think that the audiences that we used to have for our theater and our TV and film are changing, and they want different things. They want different perspectives. They want to see themselves reflected. So, this is all connected.

David Read:
Discovering one another, I think is one of the core elements of what story is all about.

Alison Matthews:
Absolutely. As well.

David Read:
So, long as I’m being invited in to see, and to share, and to learn, and to be a better version of myself tomorrow, you can’t lose.

Alison Matthews:
I have a friend who just said, “What if we just made the room bigger?” Instead of saying, “Who’s invited and who’s not allowed?” we could just ask, “What if we just made the room bigger?”

David Read:
And with a true spirit of including people, 100%, and not to manipulate them. Last question for you, and then I have one, and then that’s it. Thank you so much for joining me for this long. This has been a real treat. Raj wanted to know, would you be interested in coming back to Stargate if and when Amazon and MGM decide to boot it up again?

Alison Matthews:
Oh my gosh, yes. Is that a thing? Is that–

David Read:
It is, and then it isn’t. It is, and then COVID, and then it is, and then writers’ strike, and then it is, and then actors’ strike. Literally, all of the big roadblocks have supposedly slowed their pursuit of it down. At least that’s what we’ve been told. I don’t know what to believe at this point. All I know is that sooner or later there will be another Stargate. And I hope it’s done in Vancouver again.

Alison Matthews:
Me too. And I will be auditioning like crazy. I’ll be pressuring my agent to get me in there, for sure. In a heartbeat.

David Read:
You are one of the last guests to appear in the SG-1 canon in Continuum as an interviewer/interrogator. What was that like to be there for Continuum?

Alison Matthews:
I didn’t realize it was that close to the end.

David Read:
Yeah. For SG-1 it was. That was the last thing that SG-1 did.

Alison Matthews:
I think I feel like those series were so vibrant and so alive that it just– I didn’t have a sense of anything wrapping up or coming to an end. I did have that sense more strongly with this youth series that I worked on. But all of the– I guess it’s because in Vancouver, through that whole era, it was so vibrant, the sci-fi series, the sci-fi world, for actors to be auditioning and working on, and all of the great people who I worked with on a few different shows in that genre. I just had the feeling, like, “Oh, here we are.” And it continues. I did not have any sense of things having any finality to them. I guess that was just me being a little bit naive. But honestly, it didn’t feel like any ending.

David Read:
When you’re among the trees, it’s not always easy to see the forest. But you got to experience that moment, and Stargate will be back sooner or later. But you are …

Alison Matthews:
I hope so.

David Read:
… always going to be in parts of it that meant a lot to so many people. And it has been a privilege to explore some of these ideas with you for this hour. Thank you so much for coming on with me and spending some time. Where can we follow your work or learn more about you as an instructor or your programs for anyone who’s looking into getting into this field? What do you recommend?

Alison Matthews:
You can find me in the drama department. If anybody looks up University of Alberta Drama Department, you can find out about our acting program there. And you’ll always find me down at the beach in Kitsilano in Vancouver in the summer with the Shakespeare Festival. And my voice is kind of out there in the ether in a few different places, with different projects. Some of them are narration projects. Again, I’m still hoping for those great animation character roles, ’cause these days it’s a lot of me sounding like myself. And I might be doing something like telling you how to manage your money or telling you to visit different government agencies. I’m probably advising you in a very middle-management style.

David Read:
“Commander LaForge, warp core overload in five minutes.”

Alison Matthews:
Yes. Pretty much, pretty much.

David Read:
That’s what happens.

Alison Matthews:
But I just have to thank you so much. It really is quite an honor to feel like you’re part of something that means so much to so many people. And that collective energy, I think, has gotta take us somewhere good. And your work is certainly a huge part of that. So, thank you for what you’re doing.

David Read:
Absolutely. There’s no “feel like” about it. It is, “Feel that you are and know that you are a part of something that is important to so many of us after 25 years later.” Whole generations have been born who are now having kids of their own who are now watching this show. It perpetuates itself for all time. The good stories always do. Thank you, Alison.

Alison Matthews:
Thank you very much.

David Read:
I’m gonna wrap up the show on this side, but it’s been great to have you.

Alison Matthews:
It’s been great to be here. Thanks very much.

David Read:
Thank you. Everyone, if you go and look at the link below after I’m closing out on this, you can refresh this and check out the University of Alberta Faculty of Arts Department of Drama website and take a look at some of the programs that they offer. That’s going to be available right there. My name is David Read. You’re watching The Stargate Oral History Project. My profound thanks to my moderators who have hung in with me for the entire weekend. You guys have done yeoman’s work. Lockwatcher, Jakub, you guys did an amazing job, truly. And the entire team, Antony, Jeremy, Kevin, Marcia, and Raj. I can’t do this show alone. No one rows in their own boat. Thank you guys very much. My tremendous thanks to my producers, Antony, Kevin, Sommer, and Brice, Matt “Eagle SG” Wilson for his amazing opening sequences, and to Frederick Marcoux at ConceptsWeb who keeps DialtheGate.com up and running. If you wanna see more content like this on YouTube and you like what we do, click that Like button. It does make a difference with the show and will continue to help us grow our audience. Please also consider sharing this video, this episode with a Stargate friend. And if you wanna get notified about future episodes, click Subscribe. We have Robert Cooper next weekend as well as I think we’re gonna try and reschedule Herbert Duncanson then. A couple more weeks left and then Dial the Gate Season Five draws to a close, and I’m gonna be out until March or April. But it’s meant the world to me to have you on this journey with me for the past five and a half years now. My name is David Read for Dial the Gate. I appreciate you tuning in, and I’ll see you on the other side.