Ex-billionare Alec Colson disappeared into the galaxy at the conclusion of SG-1’s “Covenant,” and we still wonder where he went! Charles Shaughnessy joins us to discuss this pivotal character on Dial the Gate!

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TRANSCRIPT
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David Read:
Welcome to Dial the Gate: The Stargate Oral History Project. I’m David Read. Thanks for being here. I am thrilled to welcome to Dial the Gate for the first time, though I had him on at GateWorld when the episode aired, Charles Shaughnessy, Alec Colson. Welcome back, sir. It is such a privilege to be with you again.

Charles Shaughnessy:
Thank you.

David Read:
I was a huge fan of this character, and I am thrilled to see you. How are things going?

Charles Shaughnessy:
Things are going great, David, thank you. And thank you for having me on. I’m very excited. As you know, we spoke years ago when I was on the show, how much I enjoyed it and loved being in the Stargate universe. It was so exciting to step through the portal into their world and, as an actor, to actually feel that you are in a whole new universe was just fantastic. So, when you got in touch with me, I was thrilled to reconnect.

David Read:
And to have a character who had vindication about everything that he thought was possibly happening. I would like to start this nugget off, or this conversation off, with this piece because you were telling me about a few things before we started and I really think that the audience will appreciate getting into it a little bit. I’m curious, from your perspective, how important is the truth and how far should we be willing to go to expose the truth? And how far is too far?

Charles Shaughnessy:
It’s a great question and under other circumstances — Going back to Covenant, it was a great dilemma and I think that yes, one has to be very careful at throwing on the population of the planet a paradigm shift that they’re not ready for, to suddenly blow all the accepted norms out of the water. But ever since COVID, funnily enough, I feel that we’re more prepared because those images of cities all around the world empty and the speed with which we normalize something that had never been seen before in the history of mankind, which is basically a worldwide pandemic that put everyone into their houses and off the streets. It somehow opened the gates to what we know as normal is no longer normal, and I think it paved the way for further paradigm shifts. And it’s interesting that between then and now, there’s been this uptick in interest in UFOs and off-world phenomena, to the point where there have been official investigations now. There are members of Congress and the Senate who are on panels investigating. Marco Rubio is leading the charge to say, “If these exist, they are a threat to national security until we know what they are.” So, it’s become very real. We’ve had the release of some of the videos that had been kept secret from Navy fighters off San Diego, the famous Tic Tac video. And there’s a new movie now on Prime Video called Age of Disclosure which kind of pulls all of those strings together. A lot of the material we’ve all seen, but this film puts it all into perspective and one of the most remarkable things is a scene where they film in Congress. They actually have the Congressional committee asking questions of these four people. Questions like, “So, you’re telling us that this project, Legacy it’s called, has been around for decades and that real vehicles, non-human vehicles have been recovered?” And they go, “Yes, that’s correct, Congressman,” and saying that they’ve recovered bodies of aliens, “We like to call them non-human biologics, but yes, we have recovered…” And this is in front of Congress, this is Gillibrand and AOC and people that we know, straight-faced, no one’s laughing, asking these questions and getting these shocking answers that, to their knowledge, this has been happening for decades, that has been covered up. The private contractors are involved because they are in a race with other countries and other corporations to reverse engineer this stuff. It’s literally the episode of Covenant of Stargate, my episode, as a documentary. So, they’re dealing with those issues, “What can we tell the public? What should be official? What should continue to be investigated behind closed doors? How much should be revealed?” So, it’s now suddenly a real question that has bandwidth, I think, since COVID, because we’re ready to accept the unacceptable.

David Read:
Why isn’t this all over the media?

Charles Shaughnessy:
I think there must be very serious conversations going on at all sorts of levels because none of the people featured in this documentary have come out and denied it and said, “This wasn’t… This is taken out of context,” or whatever.

David Read:
They can’t.

Charles Shaughnessy:
It’s letting it sit there on the table. I think it’s like… There was a line in Covenant going back to that episode where they said, “You mean we should leave it alone and see what happens?” It’s out there. Let’s see how the government, see how people in power, deal with this because there’s gonna be ongoing conversations with members of the public who are gonna want answers, and it will unfold in its time. But somehow, I feel like we’re coming to a kind of crossroads in this area, which again is why Stargate, I think, is gonna… It’s great they’re redoing it, bringing a new season series because it’s so timely. This is literally what is gonna be happening in the newspapers and online in news feeds as this series comes out.

David Read:
I have no words to follow up with that. I was looking for…

Charles Shaughnessy:
It’s crazy we’re having this conversation. That’s what blows my mind. It is crazy that human beings are actually having this conversation for real.

David Read:
They’ve all but admitted to extra-terrestrial intelligence.

Charles Shaughnessy:
They did. It’s not even all but. “Are you telling us that for decades you have had possession of off-world vehicles and life forms?” “Yes, congressman, that is true.” Now, they’re under oath in front of Congress. Either they’re all lunatics or this is real. I don’t know where else you go with it. It’s not AI. They’re not in an informal…

David Read:
It’s a part of congressional record.

Charles Shaughnessy:
…convention. This is Congress.

David Read:
And here I was getting ready to talk about Tony Stark and Elon Musk.

Charles Shaughnessy:
There you go. And there are billionaires involved. Clearly, they say there’s… It’s always been these private contractors doing it because government changes every four years. There’s a change of… And they might reverse if you had started a program, the next lot would come in and cancel funding. So, it has to be done at a level beneath the official level, the civil servant level.

David Read:
And a company with resources.

Charles Shaughnessy:
With resources coming from private corporations who have a vested interest in developing their technology. And then the government is allowed to know… The Defense Department is allowed to know what is necessary, but only what is necessary. It’s literally a need-to-know basis, keeping the government, per se, out of the picture. And then setting up these kind of counter-information projects where you ridicule the person that’s coming out and whistleblowing. There’s this guy, Luis Elizondo. If he steps too far and says, “Yes, we’ve got bodies,” they have a whole unit, the whole department, to ridicule it and make it look like it’s rubbish. And a lot of people online talking about this Age of Disclosure are saying that’s what this is, that it’s trying to make them all look like kooks.

David Read:
And they have dirt on everybody. You know that they have to do that… Imagine if every single private thing about all of us came out. There would be embarrassment on some level. So, all you have to do is step a toe out of line, “We’ll release those embarrassing photos of you with that mistress.”

Charles Shaughnessy:
Right. But again, this is what’s so interesting about where we are because I’m not… One of my favorite phrases, E.M. Forster, “Only connect.” Because things do connect and it’s interesting that we are in an age where what used to embarrass us and politicians, revelations that would have finished a career overnight, are no longer finishing careers overnight. Since you’ve got all this stuff on social media, and you’ve got AI exaggerating things and taking things out of context, I’m not sure people are as vulnerable to embarrassment as they were. I’m not sure what you could have on a politician to embarrass them enough to give you the billion dollars or whatever or keep quiet. It seems that our level of tolerance for misbehavior has gone up, which I’ve always thought was a bad thing in terms of our society. But if it means you have no leverage over people, I don’t know. Where does that go?

David Read:
I suppose, to borrow from Covenant again, we sit back and watch.

Charles Shaughnessy:
You sit back and watch and wait. Exactly. There you go. I’m definitely watching with great interest.

David Read:
So, how are you doing?

Charles Shaughnessy:
“Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how did you enjoy the play?” I’m doing great, David. It’s been very enjoyable period of my career. I’m working a little less than I used to. I’ve been able to do a lot of theater. I just got back from doing a wonderful show at a theater I work at a lot in Maine, at the Ogunquit Playhouse. We just did Titanic. I played the captain of the Titanic. It’s an amazing piece. It’s a big musical. It’s kind of operatic. It was on…

David Read:
How do you do that live?

Charles Shaughnessy:
It’s incredible. It’s nothing to do with the Cameron movie. It’s based more on the real thing. It was unbelievable. I’ll send you a clip of it.

David Read:
I would love to see it.

Charles Shaughnessy:
Maybe I should….I could do that now.

David Read:
Would they boot me…

Charles Shaughnessy:
Yeah, it’s been all over…

David Read:
…if I shared it?

Charles Shaughnessy:
It’s all over YouTube. If you go to YouTube and you put in “Ogunquit Playhouse Titanic, The Launching.”

David Read:
Please don’t strike me, YouTube. All right, let me have a look here. And this is you in it?

Charles Shaughnessy:
If you do “Titanic the Musical, The Launching, Ogunquit Playhouse.”

David Read:
I’m not gonna do sound.

Charles Shaughnessy:
It’s pretty beautiful sound. And it’s on YouTube, so it must be…

David Read:
But they still own the rights to it. But I will display it here for just a second. This is… My goodness. This is fantastic.

Charles Shaughnessy:
And it’s amazing set. You’ll see … It’s this huge set that changes and you get levels and it’s the most beautiful piece of work.

David Read:
We are putting a link to this.

Charles Shaughnessy:
It was such fun, such talented people. It’s great that I get a chance to do things like that. There we go. My knee was giving me trouble, so I had to go up all those steps rather than down.

David Read:
Oh my gosh. The engine room. That is amazing.

Charles Shaughnessy:
The different levels. It was lit beautifully. It was staged beautifully. It was such an exciting show. So, that was my latest adventure. And my other big adventure is a three-year-old grandson who is just the light of my life and so much pleasure. I kind of don’t like going away to work because we get a chance to sort of babysit and take him every now and again, and there’s just nothing more joyful than playing around in the backyard with my three-year-old.

David Read:
It’s a paradigm shift.

Charles Shaughnessy:
And it’s a boy. We’ve got girls all over this family. My brother has three girls, I had two girls, my wife’s sister had two girls. And then suddenly there’s this little prince.

David Read:
You have a paradigm shift when you have kids, and then you have another one when they have kids. And you didn’t think that you could expand your heart with the range of positive and negative emotions like you can even more when you have grandchildren. I’ve heard. I don’t speak from experience.

Charles Shaughnessy:
It’s absolutely true.

David Read:
But it’s extraordinary.

Charles Shaughnessy:
I know, it’s strange. It’s like with your kids. You have your first kid, and you think, “I couldn’t love anything as much,” and then you have a second kid and somehow your heart literally splits in half. And then you have a grandkid and it splits again. And you’d throw yourself in front of a train for any of them. It is. It’s an extraordinary experience. My wife and I are loving it. So, that’s been fun, and we’ve been back in Europe over the summer. We went back to see my mum who turned 98 in Cornwall in the UK. So, we went down to see her and went up to Scotland for a trip. So, it’s been a great mixture of work and pleasure.

David Read:
One of my moderators, Antony, he’s from Cornwall.

Charles Shaughnessy:
Really? OK.

David Read:
It’s Cornwall. I have a hard…

Charles Shaughnessy:
I like that.

David Read:
As long as he talks slow, I can understand. I’m sorry, Antony, but it is true. Tell me about Night Comes. What is this about?

Charles Shaughnessy:
Night Comes. Interesting question. It’s a movie that myself and a friend of mine in Canada got involved… We found this script and we developed it with some other people, and we got it to a company that started shooting it, and they’ve sort of… More or less, we’re waiting for it to be completed and going into post-production. But like all movies these days, it’s so complicated, the financing. But it’s sort of three quarters shot. We’re keeping our fingers crossed. It’s a really interesting horror thriller.

David Read:
Tell me more, please.

Charles Shaughnessy:
I can’t tell you much more about it right now because it’s not done. But it’s on the way.

David Read:
The byline, or the… Not the byline. The brief piece on IMDB says, “Throughout recorded history, entire civilizations have mysteriously disappeared. And for two sisters living in the modern-day aftermath, daylight is their only refuge.”

Charles Shaughnessy:
It’s a play on the zombie apocalypse idea. But because it’s about these two girls who have been surviving in that world on their own since they were eight years old, and having to survive from childhood into young adulthood, they’re semi-feral, and had to learn survival techniques, but they have vestiges of civilization that was left with them by their parents. You don’t know too much about the backstory, but it’s a great setup to have this sibling… What goes on between two siblings when the slightest mistake can cost them their lives.

David Read:
I’m loving this cast. Alexander Ludwig, Dafne Keen.

Charles Shaughnessy:
It’s a great cast.

David Read:
This is a strong cast.

Charles Shaughnessy:
It’s a great story, it’s a great script. We’re hoping that we can raise the last little bit of funding to cross the T’s and dot the I’s because it’s a terrific piece, and as you say, a wonderful cast. So, like a lot of these movies, you look at when they were first starting, it’s like, “Wow, it’s been in production a long time.” But it’s not that it’s taken that long. It’s just there are long gaps and putting things together and post-production and all that stuff. But we’re optimistic that we’ll get it done. I think it’s very exciting.

David Read:
Was Colson an offer? Do you recall or is that something you auditioned for?

Charles Shaughnessy:
I was trying to think… I don’t think so. I think I went and met with someone on that, I believe. It’s a little hazy.

David Read:
It’s been a long time.

Charles Shaughnessy:
I’ve been in this place in my career since The Nanny where strange things get straight offers and then some things I go in and audition for a certain way, or have to send a tape in, where I feel like it should be an offer, and then things where I feel like I should be auditioning, I get offered. It’s too hard to separate which is which. But personally, I love going in. I’m not so keen on sending in tapes. I know you can…

David Read:
It’s all it is now.

Charles Shaughnessy:
…do it many times and you can set it up the way you want it. But I like the energy in the room. I like to go in and have an audience. I guess it’s coming from stage. I like them to feel my energy and me to feel what’s in the space. And it also gives the people that are casting it a chance to ask for adjustments, then the opportunity to see how good you are at making adjustments, which, if I was a director, I would wanna know, “Is this an actor who can come in with what their idea of a performance is, but if it’s not quite squared with mine, I can ask… We can find a way to adjust it,” which you can’t do when you send a tape in. And I like them to know. I get a little anxious when I get offered something, especially if it’s a complex character because there’s nothing worse than showing up for the first day and you get this, “Yeah. Hmm. OK. That was fine.” And your heart sinks and you go, “This is not what they thought they were getting.” So, I like for them to know what they’re getting so we all start at the same place and are excited to work together. I don’t want anyone getting any surprises.

David Read:
That’s it. It’s unrealistic to be able to take five, six hours getting a piece exactly right. And I’ve had conversations with actors who have come on and worked with newbies who all they knew was the Zoom audition and they come onto a set with 100 people and they freeze and it’s like, “Oh, boy.”

Charles Shaughnessy:
Right, “This isn’t my bedroom, and when I can do it five times before anyone sees it –” That’s where I think all my years on the soaps were incredibly important. People talk about how you can pick up bad habits, and you can if you get lazy, but the facility for making decisions, creative decisions on the fly and being so inhabited in a character that when the change is asked for, the actor gets out of the way and the character does it, because it’s a change that’s within the character that you’ve developed yourself that when they need a change, it’s sort of automatic. You don’t even have to think about it. That comes from working on the soaps, which nowadays, because of financial and economic factors, you really don’t have a lot of time. You want an actor who’s ready to go when the gun goes off, you’re racing. So, I think that training was incredibly useful and has stood me in very good stead since.

David Read:
You re-watched the episode. Who was this guy before we saw him and who do you think he became after we left him?

Charles Shaughnessy:
I think there are a couple of people out there that we are familiar with now. Again, another reason it’s so relevant. These bazillionaire genius technology whizzes who are incredibly focused to the detriment of everything else sometimes, and therefore vulnerable to either manipulation or some slightly dodgy decisions. Because they’re going for the goal. And I think Alec Coulson was one of those people who had a goal. I think the tragedy that happened to his family isolated… It narrowed that focus even more so that all he had was his work. And with it came a moral superiority, this sense of, “I’m a champion for the truth,” and no compromise. I think that can happen when you become tunnel visioned. Everything becomes a little black and white and the gray areas seem to be a compromise rather than something pragmatic. So, I think that’s who he was. Who he has become since he’s been able to open the Pandora’s box and look into the future, if you like, I don’t think it’s gonna change his character but it’s gonna… I think it gives him a maturity that he didn’t otherwise have. I think he thought he knew everything. And when someone who thinks they know everything is shown just how little they know, there is a little humbling that happens. It doesn’t dent the genius, it doesn’t dent the focus, but it probably does give him some more perspective on things. I’m guessing he’s a more mature person who, instead of being tunnel-visioned, has opened up to bigger questions. It would be fascinating to see where he’s got to given time. Aging does that to an extent, a you simply… The years humble you a bit and give you a perspective. There’s a little less hot energy. The energy is still there but it’s not quite as heated. It’s not quite as obsessive, and that gives you a chance to look at the bigger picture. So, he’s obviously from his location, let alone psychological perspective, has a bigger vision right now, sees more of the whole than just a tunnel vision of where we are as a species.

David Read:
I see it unrealistic that you would find that man a pleasure planet to settle down on, and unrealistic that, A, you would allow that level of brain power to lie inert and B, he would allow that level of brain power to lie — That kind of person doesn’t just stop.

Charles Shaughnessy:
No.

David Read:
They keep on going.

Charles Shaughnessy:
They go on, and they said in the show, “Wouldn’t it… Just think what this could mean if we had him on our side.” If he was the guy reverse engineering some of the technologies that were coming our way, that would increase the speed with which we would be able to utilize them. So, you want the very best in the field to look outside the box. It’s when you get something that you don’t understand, you want someone who’s ahead of the game to deconstruct and then reconstruct it for you. So, they were very aware that he was gonna be useful. I don’t think they ever thought, “Oh, he’s just gonna go out to pasture,” like WALL-E and sit in.

David Read:
WALL-E put in his time. He cleaned up the Earth.

Charles Shaughnessy:
He’s not gonna be one of those guys sitting on those cruise ships. They’re gonna put him to work. And he would insist on going to work. He’d say, “Look, you’ve got me here. You’ve shown me all this stuff, this Pandora’s box of where we are. Let me get to work with it.”

David Read:
There is, in science fiction, this nugget of an idea where… And Westworld executed this a little bit in one of its season finales, where you can have the truth. Everyone can have the truth. Are you willing to have the truth if it ultimately results in the destruction of your civilization and your way of life? And I think for Alec’s world, the closest thing that he has to a brother, he loses. And one of the greatest scenes in the show is you sitting there in your office with that gun. And I’m being sincere about this. When Amanda, Sam, comes in and assesses this scene, that’s a real character moment and that’s great TV.

Charles Shaughnessy:
It’s the moment that I think, even [though] she’s obviously had permission… But even up to that moment, I don’t think the decision’s been made to offer him this alternative. But when she sees that he’s come to the end of the road and the life that he’s living and the life that he thinks is all there is, she opens the door to this alternative. And that little piece of him that where — I always make a joke with my wife that for me the order of priority is Chelsea Football Club, her, and the children.

David Read:
At least he’s honest.

Charles Shaughnessy:
In that order. And I think that Alec Colson, his work, despite all his relationships, despite all that he loved, even his wife and daughter and everyone in his life, they’re all terribly important. But his work, it’s the explorer. The essence of his being is discovering new stuff. He’s endlessly curious and endlessly interested in what is next and what — When you say the truth, it’s the next revelation, is incredibly important. So, when he gets that offer, he puts down the gun and goes, “There is something to live for.”

David Read:
No, that makes a lot of sense. Those of us who are lucky enough to know in life what it is that we want, ’cause I know so many people, and I’m sure you do as well, who have no idea, really are blessed.

Charles Shaughnessy:
And cursed. There’s a…

David Read:
You can follow it off a cliff. You can follow it…

Charles Shaughnessy:
You can follow it to death.

David Read:
… to your own destruction.

Charles Shaughnessy:
And also, you can fall off a cliff and if it’s denied you, you’ve got nothing.

David Read:
That’s right.

Charles Shaughnessy:
I am happy being in a space where what I want is what’s next, and I don’t know what that is. People say, “Is there a role you’ve always wanted to play? What role would you as an actor wanna play?” And it’s a cliché but I do mean it, the next one. Because if there’s a goal and you don’t reach it, then everything that you’ve done in the meantime is a waste of time. So, for me, all of this, every second that we’re on this Earth is not a waste of time. It’s valuable. So, live in the moment. People who know exactly what they want and have a goal, it’s difficult for them to live in the moment, because they’re living in that future. They live for that.

David Read:
I think that there’s also a piece that comes with the fact that “I found serenity in the now and I’m not existing up ahead.” Because when it happens, you’re satiated for moments. And then it’s the next thing.

Charles Shaughnessy:
Which is all there is. That’s all there is, moment by moment by moment. There is nothing else. There is only moment by moment in life. There’s no past, there’s no future. There’s only moments. So, people say, “Are you happy?” I would say, “Yeah. Right this second, yeah. Am I gonna be happy in 10 minutes? I have no idea.” But right now, and all that matters is, I’m happy. And if I’m not happy, that’s gonna change too. I know that being happy is gonna change. And as much as I know that being unhappy is gonna change, being desperate and desolate is gonna change. It’s all gonna change. So, you can only make that qualification at that precise moment. Because the minute you experience it, it’s done, and you don’t, you’re not experiencing the future. So, there are only moments. There’s no such thing as a state of happiness or a state of misery. It doesn’t exist. It’s impossible to exist. It’s moment by moment by moment by moment.

David Read:
I think it’s really interesting that a character that is hellbent on such clarity can be so blinded even to his best friend’s needs, that he can’t…

Charles Shaughnessy:
That’s the fact for both of them.

David Read:
…communicate. Brian can’t communicate what it is that’s happening to him. His family’s being threatened, for heaven’s sake. And he can’t make his own best friend, who happens to be his boss, slow down, to the point where he ends his own life. And Coulson is so hellbent on discovering what it is that he feels the public deserves to know, that it blinds, like you said, to everything else. And there is, in pursuit of a greater good, a public good perhaps, the public trust, a selfishness that encompasses him in that.

Charles Shaughnessy:
But we know… We’ve seen them. We’ve seen those people, we know them, who have… And I think in Colson’s case, there’s a need to, A, have something to focus on to keep the noise out, to keep his grief out…

David Read:
That’s right.

Charles Shaughnessy:
…and distract him from his grief. But also, he’s someone who needs to justify that focus, that selfish focus, with a sense of moral superiority, which is this obsession with bringing the truth out, “The public, the humanity deserves the truth.” The truth is what’s important. And it’s a moral superiority or moral perspective where he sees himself as this kind of King Arthur in search of the Holy Grail. It’s like, “The Holy Grail is the truth, and nothing will compromise it.” And it comes from a bit of a moral superiority which then can excuse everything he does in pursuit of the truth. “Yes, I’m losing friends and not listening…

David Read:
Too bad.

Charles Shaughnessy:
…to what he needs. Too bad. The truth is all that’s important and that’s what I’m about. I’m a warrior for truth so I get to do these things that you disapprove of.” And it’s hollow. And he realizes at the end it’s hollow.

David Read:
It’s a great moral tale, and I think that we can apply it to all kinds of things in our own lives. At the end of the day, that’s what good story does. And sci-fi does that particularly well. Because it disguises itself in all kinds of things in order to be accessible to us in ways that we don’t necessarily expect, and at different points in our life as we hit different milestones on our own road. But there are some characters and stories that are just perpetually relevant.

Charles Shaughnessy:
And in science fiction, you can, as you say, blend mythology as well. It’s everyday stuff with a sprinkling of mythology. Situations and characters echo the great stories of literature, the stories that have been told since we sat around a fire in front of a cave, through the Greeks, through the ancient civilizations, through all the centuries that we’ve known. They’re the same stories. There’s usually hubris. There’s man’s arrogance. There’s usually some sort of jealousy. There’s all those things. The great adventure. And so, with science fiction, you can tell them. And if the playing field gets too constrictive, then you take it into outer space.

David Read:
That’s exactly right, up in an F-302 that he helped build. We opened the show with the darn thing, for crying out loud. Elliw wants to know, “What part of filming that was your favorite?” If you recall.

Charles Shaughnessy:
I think flying the plane. I love planes. I love flying.

David Read:
Do you fly?

Charles Shaughnessy:
I don’t, but my wife wouldn’t let me. There was a time when I was thinking about it. I went up with a friend in a plane. We did aerobatics over Santa Monica Airport, which I loved. And I also got the chance to fly in an F-18 with the Blue Angels.

David Read:
Nice. You strike me as being a pilot. My dad’s a pilot.

Charles Shaughnessy:
It was unbelievable.

David Read:
I was this close to being one, so.

Charles Shaughnessy:
Absolutely. It was so fantastic. So, climbing into that and they do it so well that you can suspend your own disbelief.

David Read:
“This is easy.”

Charles Shaughnessy:
That excitement you saw on Alec Colson’s face was mine. I was a kid in a candy store. So, all of it, I loved it, and it was such a great experience. I remember it clearly how thrilled I was. The people were so nice. Amanda was just the funnest [sic!] person to work with. I loved working in Vancouver. The crew and everyone in the creative team were just top of the game, so professional, so efficient. It was working like clockwork. It was fun, every bit of it.

David Read:
emmabentley7945, this may be hitting it too square on the head, but Emma says, “Watching Covenant a few days ago, I can’t help but notice a commonality to Elon. What is your view on Alec’s similarity to Elon?” He always struck me more as a Howard Hughes type. Father was a reporter, but definitely self-made.

Charles Shaughnessy:
Self-made and an entrepreneur. We never really… In the show, it was talked about, but he was personally a genius. But it’s possible with Alec Colson, and my take on him was he was as much an entrepreneur, rather like Howard Hughes. He knew the basics really well. And he would recognize talent. But I think he hired Elon Musk to work for him. He didn’t have the same… I think at the level that Elon… And Elon’s talked about it a lot, and certainly Isaacson in his book. He’s on the spectrum. He’s that sort of genius that finds it hard to feel certain emotions that are normal to the rest of us.

David Read:
He can’t quiet the noise, that’s for sure.

Charles Shaughnessy:
Can’t quiet the noise, doesn’t have a lot of bandwidth for people that can’t keep up with him. If you don’t understand what he’s saying, then just leaves the room. He’s not gonna sit and explain it at great length. A little lack of compassion in that way. But focused the same way, and a vision of what he wants to do that Colson has. Definitely, if you take that sort of group of billionaire, entrepreneurial, innovative scientist types like Howard Hughes, Elon, who else? Steve Jobs. That sort of group. Then I think that Alec Colson certainly fits into them.

David Read:
I was trying to think about the episode. I don’t think he ever indicates that those designs, the engineering designs, were his. But I think you’re right…

Charles Shaughnessy:
[inaudible]

David Read:
…that he does know how to cultivate the right talent, and that’s just as key as anything if we’re talking about what comes out of the box at the other end.

Charles Shaughnessy:
I get the sense that that’s who he is. There was a show I loved on AMC called For All Mankind.

David Read:
Ron Moore.

Charles Shaughnessy:
Did you see it? I thought it was one-of-a-kind show.

David Read:
It’s on my list, we’re waiting for it to finish.

Charles Shaughnessy:
It is so great. You’ll absolutely love it. I was so committed to that show. But there’s a character there who’s clearly the same sort of thing. He has this company, he’s a brilliant engineer, but he’s more of an entrepreneur. He’s hired and recognizes talent. He knows almost as much as the people he’s hired, but his real genius is knowing who to hire and being the kind of conductor. And I think Colson is that. He’s a bit more of the conductor of the orchestra than the lead violinist.

David Read:
Exactly. Lockwatcher wants to know, “You’ve performed in over 13,000 episodes of daytime dramas. How does the work on a day-to-day series like this compare to a visit to Stargate or another series?” What’s the level of intensity there? What does the prep entail? What kind of an experience is it like in comparison?

Charles Shaughnessy:
It’s very different. Daytime… First of all, it depends if you’re… At the beginning when I was not used to the speed of it and the amount of work, and my character had a lot to do, it was pretty overwhelming. You’d get 30 pages of dialog and these complex scenes that you had to do incredibly fast. But as I said earlier, once you’ve got a character created, then it’s like you leave… The actor leaves himself behind and the character learns the lines and does the scenes, so that they can throw a curveball at you, and you know exactly how to do it because your body is now no longer yours. So, if they say, “Don’t come in the door. Come in the window,” you don’t have to think about it, “Well, how would I come in the window?” The character does it in character. So, because it’s so fast and you’re doing it on a daily basis, that character stays with you a little more. You’re inhabiting it for that period of your life, almost. Whereas when you go and do a show like that, you have more time to prepare. It’s a bigger production. There’s a certain kind of… You can sit back a little into the performance. You can actually play around a little more. There’s more time and space to find little details in the moment and with the other actor. As a stage actor, I love the rehearsal process. I love working with other actors and finding moments. And so, on a show like that, and on daytime, we would work things off camera. We would rush into each other’s dressing rooms and run scenes and find those moments. But it was always under terrific time pressure, whereas on a show like Stargate or a one-hour drama, you do have that luxury of a little more time to work with each other and find those moments. But the bones of it are the same. It’s the same. The acting is the same job.

David Read:
The thing that stuck out to me what you said is that it sounds to me like you’re letting the character take over in certain cases. You know this individual inside and out so much that you literally are not making the same choices in your active mind with this role as you would with yourself. And I have done so in writing, in creating a character, where there’s ultimately a multiple personalities thing happening for me, where I write an action and it’s almost like the character turns to me and says, “I’m not doing that. No, that’s not…”

Charles Shaughnessy:
“I wouldn’t do that.”

David Read:
“This, that’s not what I am.”

Charles Shaughnessy:
Exactly. I think that’s a great point. As a writer, absolutely. My dad was a writer and he… The same thing. His characters could not say a line, and as you say, the character would almost get off the page and say, “Fred, what are you doing? This is not… I would never say this. I’d never do it like this,” or “I’d never be in this position.” And he’d have to rethink it. And you just instinctively know that that’s not right, and go back and do it well, because once you’ve got that character, they sort of write themselves. Their dialog is kind of… They do it for you. It’s hard to explain. But I think a writer probably even more than an actor knows what I’m talking about, that these characters will tell you what they’re gonna do.

David Read:
Wow. How do you reach that? How do you reach that as a performer and just allow that to happen? Do you just trust at a certain point that it’s gonna be there?

Charles Shaughnessy:
You trust the process. It’s that old cliche. I’m sure it’s the same as a writer. You trust the process. It’s why I love doing this. Interestingly enough, I recently was… Just because I’m tiddling around writing a memoir, of sorts, a book, so I’ve been thinking a lot about things and about why I became an actor and what it is I do, and is it a thirst for appreciation and the applause and the attention? And I honestly don’t think it is. I honestly believe that it’s just that, what we’ve talked about. It’s a Zen… It’s almost like a Zen process. One meditates in order to leave your chattering, conscious, self-conscious mind away, put it away, and be in a state of meditation, which is living in the moment, just like we talked about. It’s all full circle, moment by moment by moment. And acting does that. You put Charles Shaughnessy away, you inhabit this completely other person who’s existing in this sort of make-believe realm, and you have to… If you’re successful, you’re in flow. You are speaking and reacting and living in a state of flow, which has nothing to do with the chattering self-consciousness of Charles Shaughnessy. It’s in action. It’s in that character’s action. That’s all that happens there. When I say action, their emotions, their reactions, their thought processes, but it’s always manifested in action. You don’t watch a movie of a character sitting in a chair just being anxious for two hours. As a human being, one can easily lie in bed staring at the ceiling, chattering away and being anxious. That doesn’t make great TV. What makes great TV is if you do 10 seconds of that and then suddenly the intruder comes through the door, or whatever. But in performance there’s always action. So, it’s a privilege to be an actor and to be paid to live in that realm of meditation, that is acting. Same as writing. I’m sure you find as a writer that when you’re in flow, when you’re in that process and it’s going really well, the chatter up here, there’s no room for it. It’s left aside. You don’t realize how hungry you are. You don’t realize how tired you are.

David Read:
Doesn’t matter.

Charles Shaughnessy:
It doesn’t matter. You’ve forgotten all about it. You’re just in flow. And it’s deeply satisfying. It can be exhausting. You can come out of it and be, “Wow, I need to go to bed for a day.” But it’s deeply satisfying to be in that state of flow.

David Read:
It’s wild. I even forget to use the bathroom in certain cases. I’m hammering away at the keyboard trying to get this thing out to scratch that itch.

Charles Shaughnessy:
Right, it’s true, and it’s the same…

David Read:
Because something needs to be said.

Charles Shaughnessy:
It’s exactly the same. It’s the same process with acting. And you trust the process, and your whatever you wanna call it, talent, experience, know how, to get there. And if you don’t get there, you gotta look at what’s not working. Something’s not working. It’s like with writing. If this isn’t working, this scene, this chapter isn’t working, I’ve gotta go back and see what’s wrong. Because something’s not right. There’s a piece of the machinery that is out of whack. And if I can find that and polish it and put it in the right place, back to flow.

David Read:
Wow. Lilly[Lcpez] wanted to know… She’s a newer fan. She’s wanting to know if we can expect to see you at any conventions in the future.

Charles Shaughnessy:
It’s something that I’d love to do. A specific convention. I’ve not really done any. No one has suggested it. I’ve never had a role that’s been an arc that sort of merited it, I guess. But I think it would be fantastic to meet the fans and to both represent the characters, what we’ve been… This is a theme of the conversation. Represent Alec Colson as Charles Shaughnessy, almost be at a convention as two people. You’re Charles Shaughnessy, but paying homage to and representing Alec Colson, who I’m very aware is a character enjoyed by the audience, by the fans. So, there’s a kind of interesting level at which there’s a suspension of disbelief.

David Read:
That’s right.

Charles Shaughnessy:
They know that I’m an actor, but they also love the character. So, to play with that in a convention setting rather than on a set where you’re just presenting Alec Colson. But to be Charles Shaughnessy going and answering questions, for Charles Shaughnessy, and for Alec Colson, would be fascinating.

David Read:
Ronnie Cox was really good about that as he played Robert Kinsey in Stargate, whom he called… I forget the name of the guy from Dr. Strangelove, and Orrin Hatch, put together. Not so much Orrin Hatch, but just the character… I forget the name of the character who’s … It’s kind of a wild… When I would sit…

Charles Shaughnessy:
Which one in Strangelove? The Colonel or…?

David Read:
I think possibly, yes. And every time I would sit down and talk with him, Ronnie would go into this riff of, “Well, the Stargate program should be shut down.” And it’s like, “Dude!” He slips into him so easily and gives me the heebie-jeebies.

Charles Shaughnessy:
That was Colonel Jack Ripper.

David Read:
That’s it. That’s exactly it. My gosh. The bodily fluids.

Charles Shaughnessy:
“The precious bodily fluids.” Mandrake. He’s talking to Mandrake, “You understand, Mandrake? They’re after our precious bodily fluids, huh.”

David Read:
Something tells me there’s gonna be more Stargate conventions in the future. And I would love to see you at one because I think that you would have a great time and have a lot to say.

Charles Shaughnessy:
Great. I would love it. I’m ready, willing and able.

David Read:
There we go.

Charles Shaughnessy:
As they say, tanned, rested and ready.

David Read:
A couple more and then I’m gonna let you go here. TumwaterTroy, “Any news in reprising Shane Donovan on Days of our Lives?”

Charles Shaughnessy:
He comes back every now and again. I was back… It’s very difficult to know because they write these things six months ahead and then they tape them a year ahead. So, I did go back when we lost Drake Hogestyn, which was such a tragedy. So, the show lost John Black, the character he was playing. So, we had this really tragic, sad, but also very wonderful, memorial service for John Black. Which was kind of a memorial for Drake, and I was back for a few days then. And then Shane always goes, “Sayonara,” and leaves. And I’m always like, “Well, can’t he sort of hang around for a little?” Because I’d love to do that. I think I made no secret that I loved my time on daytime. I enjoy the process, I enjoy the fact you do something new every day. It’s in town so you don’t have to travel. So, yeah, I would be very… Shane is also packed and ready whenever they choose.

David Read:
Is Days of Our… Is it the last standing soap? There’s not that many of them.

Charles Shaughnessy:
No, there’s four.

David Read:
There’s four of them.

Charles Shaughnessy:
They’re all LA shows now. There’s Days, General Hospital, and then the two CBS, Young & Restless…

David Read:
Still around.

Charles Shaughnessy:
… and Bold & Beautiful. But all the others have gone. Those are the only four standing.

David Read:
Wow. I went through a couple of years on All My Children with my mother over a couple of summers, and then at a certain point I was like, “Oh, this never ends. I can’t keep up with this.”

Charles Shaughnessy:
I know. You get sucked into it. When I first came out here in ’83, I had a job working in a fabric store or something and myself and my colleague would have lunch between 12:00 and 1:00 or 1:00 and 2:00 so it was always One Life to Live or General Hospital. And I got completely caught up into them.

David Read:
You do.

Charles Shaughnessy:
To the point where, when I then was on Days, and Robert Woods, who played Bo Buchanan on One Life to Live, he came and did a character on Days for a couple of years, and I found it very difficult doing scenes with him. I said, “Sorry about this, Bob, but you’re Bo Buchanan. I don’t know who else to call you.” So, that was fun. But you get hooked on those things very quickly.

David Read:
A quick comment before I get to my last question. ellenboucher771, “Hi Charles, I did in-home community support work a few years ago and one gentleman had suffered a stroke and didn’t understand English but would rewatch reruns of The Nanny and he smiled constantly through that.”

Charles Shaughnessy:
That’s nice.

David Read:
To be remembered for such a great show… It’ll be on your epitaph. That’s really special.

Charles Shaughnessy:
It is special. I realized that quite early on when I’ve heard those comments that whoever will write and say, “My grandmother was in hospital and she was dying of cancer, but she’d look forward to the days that I’d come over, and we’d watch The Nanny together and it made our time together…” And so happy. And it’s like, “Wow, I thought I was just doing a job.” I thought I was just showing up and being very well paid to do a sitcom. And then you realize that you’ve actually touched people’s lives in a much more profound and important way than you realized. And that’s incredibly humbling and wonderful, and I appreciate it so much that that’s how it works. And it wasn’t me, it was all of us. It was the writers, the director… But that thing that we created touched people’s lives that deeply, is incredibly satisfying and fulfilling.

David Read:
You must be really proud of Fran.

Charles Shaughnessy:
Yeah, she’s a force of nature, I always say that. I don’t know anyone like her. She’s got a heart as big as Montana. She’ll take anything on and when she became president of SAG-AFTRA and she was like, “I’m gonna unite this union.” There were two sides and I was on the other side, I thought. And I said, “I’m really on the other side of you.” And she said, “Well, I’m just gonna put this together.” And I thought, “No one in decades has been able to unite this union. There are so many different feelings,” especially since it became SAG-AFTRA. It merged. I said, “No one’s gonna be able to put this together,” and she did. She got the union all on one page and negotiated a very tough period for the union. She’s amazing. She’ll just do whatever she sets her mind to. I’m keeping an eye on her ’cause I have a feeling she’ll be on the ballot for something higher, higher office than just the president of a union, soon.

David Read:
One of my Hollywood friends was like, “Never underestimate the people whose most well-known credit is a more ditsy role.”

Charles Shaughnessy:
Exactly.

David Read:
“You underestimate them to your peril.”

Charles Shaughnessy:
I would never underestimate that.

David Read:
Exactly right. Last question for you. Raj wanted to know, “With the news of a new Stargate continuation series, would you be game for coming back for this character?” And what do you think that he would do if he did?

Charles Shaughnessy:
Ever since I did that episode and he went off world and that was it, I’ve thought, “This is really interesting to have a character almost do a character development, evolve as a character off screen.” We’ve seen him get to that moment where he puts the gun down and Sam offers him a new life to reevaluate everything that he’s been about, and then we don’t get to see it. And I’ve always thought, “Wow, wouldn’t it be interesting to drop back in years later, given where he is and given the technology he’s been exposed to and the opportunities he’s had and the perspective he has, wouldn’t it be interesting to see where he is and what he’s doing now?” So, when I saw that this was happening, my first thought was, “Hmm, I wonder what Alec did.” So, I think it’d be fascinating. I’ve made no secret of how I enjoyed it. I enjoyed my episode, just loved being in that universe and with those people, and those ideas. So, I’m tanned, rested, and ready. Packed and ready to go.

David Read:
They just stuffed him between the sofa cushions. You can’t keep a person like that down for long.

Charles Shaughnessy:
No.

David Read:
You can’t.

Charles Shaughnessy:
And you establish so… There was so much sort of… It’s one of those things where as he left the scene, there were echoes. There were little echoes of his presence, his character, and what he did that was sort of out there. Usually a character leaves, and there’s… A door shuts, and complete. This was so incomplete. And almost the opposite. It was launching off camera into something really interesting. So, I think it would be fascinating to go back and see where that’s gone.

David Read:
That’s the thing with Stargate, now more than ever, it is a continuing story. And people weave in and out in the most unexpected ways, and that’s the thing that I’m looking forward to with Martin Gero’s next series. Not the stuff that I would love to see, but the stuff that I’m not expecting to see. And maybe people in places that, in some cases, we have seen before, but in new ways.

Charles Shaughnessy:
New ways. It won’t be linear.

David Read:
No.

Charles Shaughnessy:
Nothing in life…

David Read:
It’s not life.

Charles Shaughnessy:
…and certainly in fiction, but certainly not in life, is linear. He’s not gonna be… Just speaking of Alec Coulson, he’s not gonna now just be grayer and older and wiser, and still doing what he did. He’s gonna have had epiphanies. He’s gonna have had different circumstances mold and change him. And then a character that has that sort of energy, that kind of drive, that kind of aliveness is a sponge for new opportunities and new directions. For good or for bad, for positive, for negative. Who knows? But put into that universe, there’s a lot of potential, I think. So, it would be fascinating to see and certainly a lot of fun to play around with that. Be back in that sandbox.

David Read:
And from a narrative perspective, he’s a wild card. So, he can go any way.

Charles Shaughnessy:
It’s a bit of a blank piece of paper. It’s like there’s nothing nicer than something that’s been sketched in one place and then off camera has been wiped clean other than certain aspects. But there’s a blank piece of paper now to be written on, which is, as a creative, as an actor, I think that’s exciting.

David Read:
Charlie, thank you.

Charles Shaughnessy:
David, it’s been such a pleasure. Where did the time go?

David Read:
I know. There’s so much I need to look up now. I think I’m gonna have my evening viewing for me. I will let you know what I think about this. You’ll be getting an email from me.

Charles Shaughnessy:
Please do. Let me know because it was shocking to see this episode again having just seen that thing. You’ll see what I mean. It’s the documentary version of Covenant.

David Read:
Just no Asgard walking out from behind a door.

Charles Shaughnessy:
Almost. It was like, if that had happened, it would not have been surprising. That’s [inaudible] talking about it.

David Read:
I appreciate your time, sir.

Charles Shaughnessy:
All right, David. You take care. Have a good rest of the day.

David Read:
Thank you.

Charles Shaughnessy:
Bye now.

David Read:
That is Charles Shaughnessy, Alec Colson in Stargate SG-1. What a privilege to have that gentleman on. My name is David Read. You’re watching the Stargate Oral History Project. A couple of questions for me real quick. RiversDiary, “Was Colson’s office the top part of the Atlantis set before it became Atlantis?” Yes and no. It had already become Atlantis. The pilot had featured elements of the Blade set. Supposedly it was transferred over to Stargate Productions for one Canadian dollar, but that was… They didn’t tear it down after the Blade film had completed at Bridge Studios, and so it was used for everything. I think Heightmeyer ‘s office. It goes in and out, and actually the railing on the balcony of Atlantis, outside of the main gate room, they reflected that design because all of the balconies were from the Blade set, so they incorporated it into actually the new build of the Atlantis set. Second question, “Latest item you’ve added to your Stargate collection?” This was purchased a while ago, but I’m waiting for it to come in, the Hero newspaper of the Volian newspaper that indicates the rioting after the Aschen have begun to sterilize the population, and that was really cool. What episode was that? That was 2001. That’s the new one. We have Kelly Vent joining us in about 47 minutes to talk about the return of Stargate, the return of Dean Devlin and Roland Emmerich to the franchise as executive producers and what that could mean. I’m certainly hoping she’s in for a cameo in the new franchise because she certainly had one in Origins and it would be… Not the new franchise, the new series. And it would only be appropriate to have her back. But what else do we have coming up here? There’s a number of different shows coming down the channel. Stargate Fan Creations 2025. So, it’s gonna be our year-end review of different things that we found online that we would like to share with you. Stargate Trivia with Kevin Ohtsji, live on December the 7th at 2:00 PM Pacific. That is gonna be a bit of a rematch between three of us: myself, Jakub, and Kevin. There was a scoring error, and so this is an emergency trivia to settle it. And these are gonna be fast. There was a short that I put out, a vertical short, a couple of weeks ago, and this thing is gonna match that intensity. So, I hope Kevin knows what he signed up for. And then Amaterasu herself, Kira Clavell, she’s gonna be joining us December the 9th at 11:30 in the morning. December the 9th, that’s gonna be next Tuesday. And then I wrap for a few weeks. So, a number of these episodes are gonna be in Season Six, and a couple are gonna be slotted in before the end of the year as time permits with everything else going on. This is an exciting time for Stargate fans, and I really appreciate you all tuning in. It means a lot to have you. My tremendous thanks to my moderating team. You guys pull this off week in and week out, Antony, Jeremy, Kevin, Lockwatcher, Marcia, Raj, and Jakub. My producers, Antony Rawling, Kevin Weaver, Summer Roy, Brice Oars. I keep forgetting to add Enigma and Stephen. You know what, let me do that right now while I’m on air. Control S. Perfect. And thanks to Matt Eagle SG Wilson for his beautiful opening sequences. We’ve got a couple more heading your way before the season winds down, a certain Goa’uld ship and perhaps an Asgard ship as well. And to Frederick Marcoux at Concepts Web, keeping dialthegate.com up and running, and hopefully new paint job very soon in a couple of features. Thanks for tuning in. My tremendous thanks to Charles Shaughnessy once again. My name is David Read for Dial the Gate. I appreciate you tuning in, and I’ll see you on the other side.