If you ask David a single episode which could define all of Stargate, one was written by Heather E. Ash. We are privileged to welcome the writer and story editor from SG-1 Season Three to discuss her career, her episodes, and take your questions LIVE.

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Timecodes
0:00 – Splash Screen
1:05 – Opening Credits
1:36 – Welcome and Episode Outline
2:45 – Welcoming Heather
3:20 – Match Coaching
6:16 – Writing Professionally
8:00 – Breaking into the Industry
14:50 – “Learning Curve”
19:13 – Relocating to Canada
20:24 – Stargate’s Production Team
23:08 – Devices in Storytelling (“Foothold”)
24:00 – “Learning Curve” from Draft to Screen
25:25 – Sincere Acting and Writing
29:05 – Happy, Cheerful Endings
32:45 – Darker VS Happier Programming
34:40 – “Foothold”
42:15 – Richard Dean Anderson’s Ad-Libs
47:14 – A Hard Time with Dialogue
48:50 – Speaking Dialogue Out Loud
51:40 – Carter Should Have Walked Away
53:17 – “Foothold” was Andy Mikita’s First Episode
55:40 – The Airplane and Sound Frequencies
58:22 – “Really Jam it In There”
1:03:30 – Story Editor
1:05:43 – Tweaks and Rewrites
1:08:33 – Positive Outcomes from Stargate
1:10:28 – Meeting Peter DeLuise
1:13:50 – Favorite Genres to Write
1:17:06 – Writing Sam and Janet
1:20:28 – Female Heroines
1:22:40 – Merrin’s Mind at the End of “Learning Curve”
1:24:42 – Shock Entertainment
1:28:21 – Line Readings to Actors
1:31:08 – Stargate Universe
1:33:15 – Rediscovering Her Stargate Journey
1:36:37 – Thank You, Heather!
1:37:41 – Post-Interview Housekeeping
1:38:39 – Splash Screen

***

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

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TRANSCRIPT
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David Read
Hello, welcome to episode 236 of Dial the Gate the Stargate Oral History Project, my name is David Read. This is the penultimate episode of season three and we have Heather E. Ash, writer and story editor for Stargate SG-1, really excited about this one. Before we bring Heather in, if you enjoy Stargate and you want to see more content like this on YouTube, click the Like button. It makes a difference with YouTube and will continue to help the show grow its audience. Please also consider sharing this video with a Stargate friend and if you want to get notified about future episodes, click the Subscribe icon. Giving the bell icon a click will notify you the moment a new video drops and you’ll get my notifications of any last minute guest changes. Clips from this live stream will be released over the course of the next few weeks on both the Dial the Gate and GateWorld.net YouTube channels. As this is a live show my moderators are standing by in the YouTube Live Chat to take questions for Heather. They will get them over to me and I will get them over to her so if you have questions about her episodes or her career, or just her as a person, go ahead and submit those questions and I will review them. In the meantime, Heather E. Ash, writer and story editor for Stargate SG-1 is with me. Heather, this has been a long time coming, I have been looking forward to this and I am privileged to have you.

Heather E. Ash
You are so sweet. Thanks David, I’m thrilled to be here.

David Read
How are you doing? How are things going?

Heather E. Ash
Things are good. It turned winter all of a sudden here in the Midwest.

David Read
So you’re in Chicago?

Heather E. Ash
Chicago area.

David Read
Oh man. I love Chicago winters and people think that I’m crazy.

Heather E. Ash
Nope. I love them too.

David Read
See there you go. So what’s going on these days? What are you working on?

Heather E. Ash
A lot of different things I think. I’ve always been someone with multiple interests all at the same time; blessing and a curse. Actually, right now, my paid job is being a maths coach. Similar to a maths tutor but it’s more getting into the mindset of what keeps us from maths. That came about when I was going back to be a teacher, discovering that math was actually understandable and cool.

David Read
What keeps us from maths? I’m curious. If you could delineate that into one idea, what keeps us from maths? I would love to know because I hated doing maths but once I got it, I got it.

Heather E. Ash
So the biggest obstacle I think, and I used to be this person because I never took maths after high school. I was going to be a screenwriter, who cares? I don’t need the maths. I think the thing that keeps us from it is just thinking we’re bad at it, Society, or at least American society, accepting that that’s okay. to say. It’s okay to be bad at math but no one says “I’m bad at reading” or “I’m bad at walking.” That always inspires “we should fix that” but bad maths is fine.

David Read
Okay, so you cracked the code is what you’re saying?

Heather E. Ash
Part of it I think.

David Read
Okay, so it’s just a matter of pep talks?

Heather E. Ash
I think it’s more a matter of psychology and just kind of identifying your panic, identifying the reasons that you’re fearing pursuing this thing and letting yourself fail and being comfortable with failure because that’s okay. That was the lesson long time coming, stems out of writing I think, going back to being a writer. I use a lot of those narrative skills too that I developed as a writer and as an artist. I’m still writing, I just don’t do it for money or for television at this point. But getting back to the reason why I loved writing, which is telling a story and making something makes sense for myself or for someone else. I’m going to do a lot of my maths explanations within a greater narrative because I think you learn it easier if it’s not just step by step but like the Superman method of solving an algebraic equation.

David Read
Okay. that makes a lot of sense. I think that a lot of our fears are allowed…we kind of let them pull us down and just make us these people that we don’t necessarily want to be. We just let them keep us where where we are. It’s interesting, I had that problem with math myself but in collegeI finally realized that I could do it with the right guide. Wow, okay, that’s interesting.

Heather E. Ash
It’s fun. Yeah.

David Read
Can you tell me when you really realized that this is what you wanted to do, was to write professionally?

Heather E. Ash
I was like “maths?” No. This is about Stargate, let’s get back to that.

David Read
When did you realize you wanted to write professionally?

Heather E. Ash
I think since at least first grade. My teacher, Mrs. Pecola, had me writing Raggedy Ann novels, short stories, so I guess my first fanfiction was Raggedy Ann. I just remember being completely bored in first grade and sitting there and imagining Wonder Woman was gonna walk in the door and we would go off and have adventures.

David Read
How old are you?

Heather E. Ash
In first grade, I was six. That just kind of continued. Ironically, during maths class in high school I was not actually paying attention to the maths. I was writing 21 Jump Street fanfiction but it looked like I was taking notes so no one bugged me about it.

David Read
Interesting Peter DeLuise connection there. All right.

Heather E. Ash
Isn’t it?

David Read
Yes, absolutely. I’m getting it. I think that our strongest, at least for me, my strongest imagination, thoughts would kick in around first or second grade and be playing with the Power Rangers or whatever. I think that that’s cool that you were really starting to get into that even that early in your life. Which writers did you lean on in terms of wanting to emulate? So obviously there’s a 21 Jump Street background there a little bit. Who else?

Heather E. Ash
I think Madeline L’Engle was my first, I didn’t really have a concept of writers. I grew up in the Midwest so this wasn’t a career path, certainly not TV writing. Not until I got to the middle of high school did I realize that you could write for TV and movies. Madeline L’Engle, A Wrinkle in Time, I think was the first time I thought, “oh, this is a person who wrote a book.” I didn’t understand she had written sequels so I was going to write her sequel for her.

David Read
Well, that’s something where a lot of us start. It’s like, “I want to continue what I love. What’s copyright? I don’t know copyright is.”

Heather E. Ash
Yeah, we have fanfiction now, online. Before the internet I would trade it with friends. The things that were interesting are the pen pal lists in the back of comic books. It was definitely there pre-internet, I remember that time. Some writers that I admire now who are science fiction writers, someone I know told me that he had been a huge Sam and Jack shipper when I was writing on Stargate and really had hopes for Beneath the Surface. I sent her the writers draft that had the kissing part in the writers draft as a little thank you. We’re all inspired by each other’s work, I think. Certainly I love the Twilight Zone, Buck Rogers in the 25th Century, just all of the possibility. Ironically I was not allowed to watch a lot of TV when I was younger. That’s one good way to make sure your kid becomes a TV writer, is restrict it.

David Read
That’s exact right, boy do I agree with that.

Heather E. Ash
Yeah, that’s how it happened, but mostly TV. People are surprised that my sci-fi, my literary background, is not that expansive. A lot of my influence in sci-fi came from TV and movies.

David Read
Okay, how did you break into the industry? As a woman I’d love to hear your perspective in terms of some of the trials and tribulations and successes that were yours.

Heather E. Ash
I think I was a 10 year overnight success. I moved there right after college and I had gone to Northwestern to study Radio, TV and film so I ended up getting to use my degree and that’s pretty cool. There is something called the “NU Mafia” in Los Angeles, still going on today, so if you’re from Chicago or from Northwestern you kind of have an inn in a lot of places with fellow alumni. That really did open a lot of doors for me in terms of jobs. I got my first job two days after I landed working in an accounting firm, as an assistant, because I went to a “Chicagoans in L.A” breakfast. Networking definitely helped. I turned down a full time gig there so I could go work in a former agents of production office, compliments of another Chicagoan who had met me. Then it was writing specs. I had a writer’s group and that was fantastic. The five of us met every week, we were kind of like a writers room. I was working for other TV shows, I actually got to work for Bill Nuss, who was one of the executive producers of 21 Jump Street. It’s really kind of funny how all that fanfiction, 21 Jump Street kind of keeps coming back to it which is very odd, but kind of funny. I had gone to work as a writer’s assistant for Pacific Blue which is a show that was on USA Network back in the day. You can see me as a chicken in one of the episodes. I lost a bet so they made me a chicken on screen.

David Read
I will seek this out.

Heather E. Ash
I’m terrible on screen, don’t ever put me in acting. I think I cost them a lot of money that day because I didn’t know how to be on camera and I kept wandering out of frame.

Heather E. Ash
There’s a reason I lost this bet.

David Read
“I am a writer.”

David Read
That’s funny.

Heather E. Ash
Just writing, I was working for John Sacret Young who created China Beach and other shows, he was working as an independent writer, producer. That was when I had won a contest with two of my specs on Outer Limits and Party of Five. As a result of the contest, the prize was you got to be read or meet all these different writers and agents and producers. I was going around and having lunch with people and, I believe it was Kathy White possibly, who introduced me to Tony Optican at MGM and he read my stuff and he said, “would you like to pitch to Stargate?”

David Read
Wow. So was Stargate in season two, season three at this point?

Heather E. Ash
Let’s see. I started there in March so it was probably fall of season two I think. There abouts, it was over the course of several months. It certainly wasn’t an overnight thing. It was meeting with Tony and giving him some pitches and then it was meeting with the guys and pitching some things and then it was going to outline I think. By that time I had got an agent because no one would sign me until I started to get the calls from “hey, I’ve got this job coming up.” Then everyone wants to meet with you.

David Read
Of course, it’s the chicken and the egg. Until you’re in and then it’s like “oh, okay, well thanks guys.”

Heather E. Ash
You’re real!

David Read
Exactly, right.

Heather E. Ash
By the time I got to meeting with them and “maybe they’ll hire me for something” I pitched what was Learning Curve and they bought the idea.

David Read
Got it. So Learning Curve was the start.

Heather E. Ash
Learning Curve was the start.

David Read
Learning Curve is what I would say is one of the quintessential Stargate episodes.

Heather E. Ash
I was wondering which one it was.

David Read
Ah yes, because I mentioned this. If I was to sit down with someone and show them what a typical Stargate episode is, of course I’d show them Window of Opportunity somewhere in there because it’s the most fun and hits all the notes. It’s poignant, it’s funny, it’s deep. But in terms of a sci-fi morality play, Learning Curve is in my top three maybe, or four, of the show. It is a simple story about protecting what is the most innocent and us wanting to do something to protect people. We think “they’re doing what!” She’s going back to get her brain sucked out and I dare anyone to say it more lightly. That’s always stuck with me because I just love this story, I loved the acting in it and I loved the ending. You came to the production office and that was your first. Can you tell me about that process and that story, I’ve been waiting to hear this.

Heather E. Ash
I pitched that story and then they wanted an outline. By guild rules, it was the WGC, it’s now WGA, they’re not going to violate guild rules. They had asked me to go to outline and I’d sent them an outline, I think it was three weeks maybe, of my proposal for what the scenes would be. My agent called me that night. Production hours are long in Hollywood, it was nighttime in L.A, I was still at work. I got a call from my agent that said, “they’re gonna pay you for an outline.” Then he said, “Hold on…” and then he came back on the line a couple minutes later and said, “you know what, they’re actually going to send you to script, just off the bat and here’s how much they’re going to pay. Here’s what guild minimum is.” Guild minimum is very nice, that’s a huge chunk of change. One of my favorite memories is calling my mom directly after that and saying, “hey, guess how much I’m gonna get paid for this script” and she started hyperventilating from joy. Just like, “hey, I did this thing.” I wrote the script on my way to work because it was like an hour and a half to work every day in L.A. traffic. I wrote a lot of it with a notepad on my lap.

David Read
While you’re stuck in parking lot traffic.

Heather E. Ash
I am driving in Laurel Canyon but I wasn’t going very fast.

David Read
No, you don’t know.

Heather E. Ash
In film school you learnt to write without looking because you’re in the dark so that helps. I wrote the script, my writers group did kind of give me notes on it. I did give it to them, they didn’t really watch the show, they gave me some notes but it wasn’t really intense, they didn’t know the show. I sent it in to the guys and I got a call back, they had some questions and I addressed the notes. Then I was told, “hey, they want to bring you on staff.” I said, “cool” and then I did some research. You’ve all heard about Hollywood being full of egocentric and troublesome people and I had worked for several of them by that time. I really didn’t want to fly up to Vancouver because it meant I would have to leave L.A. and move to Vancouver to be on staff. I asked that they fly me up so we could all meet each other and make sure we liked each other and they did and it was really nice. I was on a plane two weeks later.

David Read
Wow.

Heather E. Ash
Yeah. It’s a little nuts.

David Read
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, you’re moving to another country for work now.

Heather E. Ash
I had not been overseas before so Canada, like Vancouver, yes. They speak English. This isn’t a total different culture but still, it was a bit of a culture shock.

David Read
So you hadn’t been to Canada yet?

Heather E. Ash
I hadn’t been out of the US. I’d been to Canada once. We got over the border when I was a kid and come right back.That was foreign country to me. It was great; I had a car to rent, I had temporary housing, they had me in the hotel until I could find an apartment. This was nice, I was treated first class all the way and I do appreciate that. Since I was single there was less of a, “you gotta bring your family up.” All the other guys, the four other writers there, one other one was from the US tour and his wife had come with him. As I was single I think it was a little bit easier.

David Read
Can you tell me about that group at that time? Jon Glassner, Brad Wright, Tor Valenza.

David Read
Robert Cooper, god I am sorry. Can you tell me about that team at that point and what it was like meshing with them and being in the writers room and sharing ideas and thoughts? Who did you relate to more and who were you more like? “ah I don’t know. That’s too wild, I can’t do that.”

Heather E. Ash
Oh my gosh. So being a different person back then, because when you’re young you’re slightly different. I was certainly the youngest one on the team. I was the only woman, I don’t think I addressed the being the only woman part.

Heather E. Ash
Robert Cooper.

David Read
So Katharyn Powers wasn’t in the room?

Heather E. Ash
Katharyn Powers I think had left the year before. They had brought me on to, the timing was such that when I arrived it was right when Learning Curve was going to start film. That’s why it was two weeks, they wanted to make sure I could be on set, have that experience.

Heather E. Ash
Yeah, it was fantastic. I don’t think it was anything, except they wouldn’t cuss in front of me. I don’t know if it’s because Brad’s Canadian and Jon Glansner, also American. His wife and daughter were up there with him. Jon Glassner went to Northwestern as well so we bonded over that. I will tell you that a good way to impress your boss is to quote the first thing he wrote for television, from 21 Jump Street ironically, without even knowing it was his, because that’s very impressive. I guess I was impressive to him. Brad is very much the “it’ll be fine”. We still quote him to this day, my mom and I, like “it’ll be fine. Don’t worry, it’ll be fine.” Jon Glassner was more of a introverted like, “don’t bother him when he’s writing” kinda guy. Robert was somewhere in between. Tor, I think had only been there for about a year or so, he was very sweet. I think if you wanted to get something approved it felt safer to go to Brad because he would be very encouraging. Jon was always very much the whole pick the idea apart, and that’s good, you need that, but I played it safe. I’m a coward when it comes to story ideas, I was then.

David Read
Perfect.

David Read
You have to make sure that there are no holes in the whole of your ship.

Heather E. Ash
That was a big thing for Foothold, was getting the device. I realized going through my episodes again, “boy, do I like the device.” I’m always looking for a way to just devise something. The Foothold device was definitely something that we had to work through a few times before we made it two different devices. The one device did not work plot wise. You could not end the story like “and then we figure out the reason.” Jonathan was always like, “if the reason isn’t here, you’re not going to figure it out magically on script. We need to figure it out in the outline if it’s going to work.”

David Read
Right, exactly, find the issues as quickly as possible. I imagine for time travel it’s even worse. How different was your original Learning Curve draft to what ended up on the screen?

Heather E. Ash
So this was, I am shocked to say, it went to screen virtually untouched. Yeah, I know right, try to follow that up.

David Read
Your first script.

Heather E. Ash
My first script, they sent it into production pretty much as is., so I was told. I have the writers draft. It was remarkable. I look back, I still love it, it has a place in my heart. There’s places where it’s slow. TV was much slower back then so there’s things I would nitpick about it. But at the same time, that ending with with Rick and the actress. A little bit of that was ad lib; “dogs are some of my favorite people.”

David Read
Purple dogs.

Heather E. Ash
Purple dogs. I remember watching a cut of that. Brad had given me a cut to take home so I was watching that in my apartment and at the end I just burst into tears. I went in the next day, I said, “I cried”. Brad was so afraid that I hated it. I said, “no, you don’t understand. This was something I wrote and now it’s in front of me.” Someone else put it in front of me and that was an amazing experience.

David Read
When the acting is sincere and the writing is solid; anyone making a sincere effort, you’ve got a winner. I love that performance, I loved the actress as Merrin, we’ve had her on. It shows that some of the more simpler stories can be, in my opinion, the most successful. It doesn’t have to be complicated, there doesn’t have to be a lot of explosions. As a result of that, the naquadah reactor came to be! [David holds up reactor]

Heather E. Ash
Hey, mine was square I thought?

David Read
Yes, it was. That was the Orbanian one, this is the Earth retro engineered version.

Heather E. Ash
Very cool.

David Read
I love the episode and it’s one of the ones that I always go back to in terms of saying “this is exemplary, not just Stargate, but sci-fi.” There are certain things that are right and wrong but then we’re faced with a civilization that just doesn’t think like we do. At what point is that okay? We have to find that in our hearts, which is I think is still wild about the story, because they don’t see things that way.

Heather E. Ash
Right and it’s like the greater good question. I really liked that story. Before I forget, I want to say something about, it was Brittney who played Merrin in that.

David Read
He’s still capable of being a dad.

David Read
Brittney Irvin.

Heather E. Ash
I do remember that I was there for casting, we were seeing the casting tapes come in. Of all the actresses who had submitted, we were clearly looking for someone who was younger. Because of work rules you really want to have someone who’s over I think the age of 12 or 13 so that they can work longer hours. What we were seeing was a lot of younger girls who were projecting far, far older. It was tape after tape of a 13 year old coming in and having a much older presents to them. Brittney was, I think, one of the only ones who came in and not only really was fantastic at the performance, but was very much able to play that younger aspect of it. That more innocent aspect of it that the role needed. Then having Rick who’s always fantastic at selling the emotion, he’s a snarky guy. But what I really loved about this performance was playing into the “he’s lost his son.” How do we plug into that and make it more personal for him?

Heather E. Ash
I think that once you cross that rubicon, I guess, of parenthood and having done it now, you always kind of have that element of thinking about someone else and their benefit first.

David Read
Especially if you think that they’re being taken advantage of, or could be.

Heather E. Ash
Absolutely. But then again, the whole knowledge of a planet, because your kid got chosen. There’s something to that.

David Read
Absolutely, just the luck of it. Joseph Mallozzi and I had this conversation a lot, we’re it written today, we’re a story written today, a lot of the early Stargate episodes would not necessarily have ended so sweetly. I do think that that’s a product of the late 90s and early 2000s where there was a little bit, not an eagerness per se or a desire per se, but it was okay with tying things up in a nice bow. A series like Black Mirror or something, god forbid you do that on one or two of them. It’s okay to do that every now and then; to actually find a peaceful compromise. What if the Orbanians, what if their brains were broken? What if they just didn’t just return to a childlike state, what if they couldn’t be taught? I don’t think that we would have had the continuing relationship with them that we clearly did through out the show and getting devices like that one [naquadah reactor]. That would have been an interesting approach. Did you consider hitting it that way or was it always “they just get reduced to a childlike state and can now be taught the old fashioned way?”

Heather E. Ash
It’s so funny that you say that. She couldn’t be taught the old fashioned way, they were lobotomised by this process.

David Read
Okay, so they can’t learn?

Heather E. Ash
No.

David Read
Okay.

Heather E. Ash
Where we see them is where they are; it was only one scene and production is expensive. Perhaps we should have seen the adults. It’s interesting because it’s been so clear in my mind for so long and never occurred to me that it wouldn’t be clear to everyone else. Another Brad-ism is if the audience’s understand it you have to make sure that the audience, not for this, but if we’re talking tech, you have to make sure your audience can follow along or else you’re not doing your job. If I might go TV/film history for a second because I’ve taught that and I love that. The 90s were very nihilistic in terms of film at the time. Seven was coming out then, a lot of snarkiness, a lot of darkness. It’s depressing, I watch the 90s films now and I feel like I have to take a shower because it’s just so dark. TV then, and it was weird too because it was Showtime so we were cable, right? When this was on it was Showtime so we were supposed to go R rated and right now it’s very PG, except for that first episode which I don’t think you can find the original one that has all the nudity that Showtime used to have.

David Read
Yeah, DVDs had them but mostly the syndicated broadcast versions are intact.

Heather E. Ash
When they went to Fox, I think, there was a broadcast version. But TV then was still in the episodic phase. It hadn’t yet moved to “we’re going to be able to see these past episodes.” It was all in reruns so if you miss something no one could guarantee that you would know what the backstory was when you dipped into this episode. Your episodes had to appeal to everyone from the longterm viewer to the first time viewer. I think that the happy version was kind of an aspect of that, if that makes sense. There must have been something in the water because that was Blue Sky Television. on USA Network, was very much like “let’s be happy” in the 90s. I don’t remember my history so well but it just seems that TV was the happier place compared to the movies. As the movie people moved into TV and TV became more of an artist’s platform and reality set in, you could do more in television, maybe it started to change at that point.

David Read
That’s a really reasonable analysis I think, that makes a lot of sense to me. As Stargate went along, everyone hates this story, you want to tell grittier stuff.

Heather E. Ash
It’s funny you say brain sucking because The Outer limits, everyone said would never…I couldn’t use it as a spec because no one watched Outer Limits and no one wants to see that as a spec. That spec got me all of my jobs. It had lobotomisation in it, it was very gritty, it was very dark, to the point where I would have meetings based on that spec. I would walk in the room and people would just do a double take. I have not changed much, I’m probably a little more edgy looking now, urban me. I grew up in the Midwest, I’m very Midwestern. I would walk in and they’d be like, “you are not what we expected.”

David Read
Good.

Heather E. Ash
Well, yeah, but it was like “we expected goth, we expected Doc Martens and all black and black lipstick.” It’s fun. People worry about me, I guess like, “oh, what’s she thinking? She looks so nice.” The joke, still, among everyone who knows me and my work is like, “oh, but there’s brain sucking! Is that going to be a feature in all of your episodes?”

David Read
For sure. What a great story to start with. Absolutely. Foothold! Oh my gosh, costumes and you shellfish aliens that do this [mouth opening gesture].

Heather E. Ash
Weren’t those great?

David Read
I look at that episode and I see these costumes and these creatures. When you create stuff for television you almost hope to be able to use some of this stuff in future episodes; you’re creating assets for the show. To just go out there for one episode where we see all this stuff, aside from a little device that you can attach to your chest, we don’t see any of that again. I’m curious before we get into the nitty gritty, was it ever an issue of “oh, this is going to hit the budget? We’re going to create a lot of stuff even though we’re not really going off world for this episode.” I’m curious to know, were there any conversations over that?

Heather E. Ash
Not ones I was privy to, I was story editor level. It was the plane, I think you’ve heard the plane story?

David Read
I have not heard the plane story from this episode.

Heather E. Ash
There’s so many stories. Foothold is my favorite episode. Of all the ones that were written, that was my absolute favorite, still my favorite. I’ll come back to that one. Learning Curve for me is a little slow. I love it but it’s slow to me, it’s just like I want it to go a little bit more.

David Read
It’s not actiony.

Heather E. Ash
It’s not actiony. I am a fan of action, not action devoid of character and this I think really hit what my strengths are which is some humor, some action, but yet the character is in there. Like I said before, that the device aspect of it, we wrestled with a lot. It began with the Body Snatchers kind of concept…I feel like I’m very derivative. Much of all of my episodes, like “we’ve got Body Snatchers, we’ve got metropolis, we’ve got all this stuff.” I really liked the idea of “who can you trust within the SGC?” Our people come back and something’s not right and how do we handle that? Sending Sam Carter off the base is not who she is. To divide up our people and make them not trust each other, what does that look like? She originally didn’t go to Maybourne, she originally went to the guy who was flying the plane whose name escapes me.

David Read
Is it Paul Davis? Major Davis?

Heather E. Ash
Yeah, Major Davis.

David Read
Yeah because he comes out and does that [alien growl].

Heather E. Ash
He was supposed to be the one she goes to first. So here’s the thing, let’s talk about the fear that keeps you from doing the thing. So for me, first job, you want to do the right thing. I got really caught up in “let’s make this right. I want to make sure that everyone loves it. I want to make sure that I’m not embarrassing my boss, I want to do a good job.” That is kind of paralyzing in the same way that math can be paralyzing. Let’s just draw that back.

David Read
In terms of it keeps you from action?

Heather E. Ash
It keeps me from taking the swing at the fence, you know what I mean? You play it a little too safe, you played a little too nice. Instead of going “let’s make everything really uncomfortable. What is the kind of decision you can make here that’s really going to be ‘how are you going to write your way out of it’?” So originally I thought, “well, she goes to Maybourne” and I second guessed myself. I was talking it over with Brad and Brad was like, “this is not quite working for me” and I said, “well, I had this thought that she’d go to Maybourne” and he’s like, “yes, why didn’t you just go there?” So she goes to Maybourne and that really opened it up a lot. The plane, thank god, they were filming…I forgot what they were filming on the lot. It had been a feature film featuring a 747 and our UPM [Unit Production Manager], John Smith, called me and said, “hey, could you put a plane in your script?”

David Read
Could I?

Heather E. Ash
Could I? It was great because otherwise they’d have to come in a van and then you’re not going to see them. It really was a problem in the script so the timing was fantastic, which is “how do we get them from out there, back here, Sam and O’Neill and everybody.” The plane was really a gift. It was an expensive gift but like you said, it’s an asset that they can use over and over for the rest of the show’s run and they can write it off in that budget rather than just have it sitting there. That’s where the plane came in. I think that’s why Davis was there because we wanted to use him and I know that they really liked the actor too so we got to keep him. It was just so much fun. One of the lines where Carter comes in and is saying, I forgot what the line is and I should know it, but she’s just rattling off technobabble. She could not get through it.

David Read
You mean Amanda?

Heather E. Ash
Amanda could not get through it. I felt bad but she’s absolutely right, what I had written was a mouthful but god bless her she tried. That was also the first script I turned it in. You always turn in your writers draft to the bossesl Brad and Jonathan. They might hand back notes to your writers draft and then you’ll revise, it depends on where you are in the production calendar. Then it goes out to the crew because they need to start working. I remember that when that script went out to crew it was the first time I was on staff when that had happened. I’m getting feedback in the moment, not a few weeks later like with Learning Curve. I remember one of my friends in the art department saying “everyone loved this part.” Like when O’Neill is going to unbutton Janet’s top and it’s like, “she’s just an alien.” That was one of mine [lines] and that was having fun with it, “just an alien.” That was one of my favorite parts and that’s one of a lot of other people. They just liked that aspect of it and that’s when I realized I’m not just writing for out there, I’m writing to entertain the crew. These are the first people who are going to read this, they’re the biggest fans of the show, you want them to respond and be surprised to.

David Read
My favorite line, and Tom McBeath is a friend, I will use this on him when I meet him. “Maybourne, you are an idiot every day of the week. Why couldn’t you have taken one day off?”

Heather E. Ash
That might have been a Brad line actually. I don’t know. I could not always put in the snarky, again, playing it a little safe. Rick would always ad lib something just to his to make it funny and very O’Neilly. But yes, I think that was definitely very in character.

David Read
Absolutely.

Heather E. Ash
That was perfect. Yeah,

David Read
About Rick, I had a conversation with a writer about the fact that you guys slave over these things for weeks or months beforehand. You want to get a line, of course, that Rick’s gonna go, “that’s great” and often he would come in and just ad lib. The writer said, “if you want to make it better, great. If you’re changing it just to change it, that pisses me off.” Can you speak to that? Or was it like he’s the lead of the show and he’s an executive producer, he gets carte blanche?

Heather E. Ash
That’s interesting. I was in a unique position where I hadn’t yet…again, young person, hadn’t really had the hierarchy of being on set and TV. A big part of the Writers Guild strike was we’re not able to have writers who are coming up, have the set experience that they need to be able to work their way up to be producers and to be showrunners. That’s really valuable. I remember being on the set, I want to say it was for Foothold, it might have been Learning Curve. Sorry, I can’t remember. Maybe it was Urgo, no, it was Foothold. Michael Greenburg had a question about changing a line. I didn’t necessarily want to change it but I didn’t feel like I had permission to…He’s executive producer and it was first thing in the morning so I wanted Brad’s permission to change it. I remember there being like, “I’m not sure what I’m allowed to do. I don’t want to step on toes so…”

David Read
Michael Greenburg, Rick would use him as like a go between to get certain things done.

Heather E. Ash
I think that can be common, it’s a show built around your lead. I know he had a whole thing with MacGyver. I think he was surprised when I met him that I’d never seen MacGyver. I was just like, “oh okay, that guy. I don’t know who this guy is” and that was okay. He looked at me when he first met me and said “you’re a young one aren’t you?” You’re working hard, this is your creation as well. I think once actors come in, if it’s going well, there is a symbiosis that takes place. They’re creating a character and then that helps the writer bring more into that character. You do want to know their thoughts and actors will provide perspective to things, in a way, because they’re living in these bodies and they’re thinking through the whole backstory in a way that we’re not always doing it. At the same time, we have a long arc to put in there so I think it should be more of a dialogue. Should it always be like, “hey, you can change whatever?” I think that’s disrespectful. I don’t remember Rick just ad libbing everything when I was there, it was early in the show. I do remember he would ad lib reaction lines and what am I gonna do? I’m the baby writer so I’m not gonna say anything. In TV writing you don’t get to get too attached. The one time I do remember it being really, really annoying was when one of the guest actors came over to tell me that he changed some of my lines because they were hard to say and I wasn’t using contractions. I was kind of going, “well, you know, aliens don’t use contractions in our world. It’s just kind of how it works.”

David Read
That’s how you set them apart, like the Tollan, they just don’t use them.

Heather E. Ash
Yeah and that was irksome. Like, “you’re in our house, please respect our house and you’re just a dude, like dude number five. Yes, you have your name on a roll but please don’t do that because our work is important too.”

David Read
Wow.

Heather E. Ash
I didn’t see that happening a lot. Rick was very Rick; he’s the lead of the show. Most of them would ask before they change something. Amanda, to her credit, did not ask me to change that line. We probably should have changed that line but she tried to make it work and I remember that she did. I just felt bad after the fact.

David Read
Yeah, that’s a complicated situation. I have been there on set so I can definitely relate when one of the actors is going through a hard time with the dialogue. The whole cast in the set is just kind of, there’s a quiet. The publicist came over to us and they’re saying, “yep, so and so’s having trouble getting through this scene.” It’s like [awkward], you feel bad for them but at the same time, that’s why they’re there, to execute something that can be complicated. You guys pull together and you get them through it.

Heather E. Ash
To be fair, we’re not going to swing it out of the park. When we’re writing things we’re in charge of the story. We have a vision of how the story’s working and the longer that you’ve been on the show the more you can channel certain people. The best TV writers are able to kind of just channel that voice, that’s like the quintessential TV writer skill. Part of the reason I did well was because I was able to channel voices really well and perspectives. Just because it works on the page doesn’t always mean it’s going to work on its feet so there should sometimes be an exploration. “Okay, why is this not working?” Sometimes it’s a simple process or we need to change something here. That’s why you put writers on your set. Hopefully you’re not rewriting whole entire things though.

David Read
I’ve never asked this to a writer. Do you speak the dialogue out loud to make sure that it’s going to work?

Heather E. Ash
Clearly I did not when Amanda was doing it.

David Read
That’s not what I meant.

Heather E. Ash
Um, sometimes, I think it depends on the writer. Basically what I’m doing when I’m doing it is I’m listening to the voices in my head. That’s why TV writing, to me, is so much easier than film writing or original writing; it’s trying to get that voice to talk to me. Amanda’s is very specific. That’s also the great thing about TV and good shows; the characters will start off and theye’ll be kind of stereotypical seeming. You have Daniel the scientist and you have O’Neill the brash guy…

David Read
They’re in their lanes.

Heather E. Ash
They’re in their lanes and that can be stereotypical but the good shows will add shading on top of that where they become more than that and more dimensional. But they should be talking very distinctly with a very distinct point of view.

David Read
I have this conversation with Harley Jane Kozak, she’s done pretty good for herself as a novelist. When I’m writing fiction as well, I’ll have these characters in a situation and I’ll want to go a certain way with them and it’s almost like the character says, “no.” The character from this perspective, from this situation – it’s almost like they’re a little self contained personality in there – basically says to me, “I wouldn’t do that this way. I would do it this way and this is how I would deliver it” and then I write it out. It’s like, “okay, that fits better.” It’s kind of a wild situation to be in because it’s like, “who am I communicating with?” I’m communicating with an aspect of myself that’s self contained in that situation but if you trust the characters they will guide you.

Heather E. Ash
Absolutely. The problem with TV, or the good part of TV, is that you’re on such a clock and time is money that you don’t always have the liberty to kind of sit with this and let it talk to you. Sometimes you need to get it to there. After a certain point you can’t rewrite anything, or anything substantial, because you’re locked in on your costumes and your settings. You’ve done this so either it’s editing, which they call the second revision, writing is also in the editing room. Sometimes you don’t do well and there’s definitely things on episodes we would have changed. I do know, going back to Foothold, where Carter is in the plaza and Maybourne and O’Neill and Daniel are there. Brad said, after we’d filmed it, he’s like “she should have walked away. She should have just walked away and then changed her mind. That would have been more powerful.” It’s like, “oh, yeah, that would have worked too.” But alas.

David Read
I always tried to figure out how they got there so fast. I guess they took their own plane as well.

Heather E. Ash
No, they took the plane that came out because they went back.

David Read
Okay, so that wasn’t Maybourne’s plane? That was Major Davis’s because Maybourne had the same plane later on in the season so I always associated that as Maybourne plane. It had to have been Major Davis’s plane because he was already at Stargate command and was flying.

Heather E. Ash
The minute she calls Maybourne and that’s Colorado. They’re probably already looking for her so they’re going to also be on a plane out when they hear that Maybourne’s got her.

David Read
That’s true. She probably took public transit to get to DC.

Heather E. Ash
Yeah, she can’t take military stuff.

David Read
No, that’s true.

Heather E. Ash
She’s flying commercial.

David Read
This is the stuff that you got to work through.

Heather E. Ash
You don’t got it. It’s called refrigerator logic up to a certain point and then you’re like, “they’re aliens.”

David Read
That’s true. What did you think of the costumes, the props, the assets that were created for this story?

Heather E. Ash
Oh my gosh.

David Read
Right.

Heather E. Ash
Oh my god and you know what was so amazing? This was Andy Makita’s first episode that he ever directed.

David Read
Wow, is that right, because he was an AD?

Heather E. Ash
He was. This was the first one. For me to know that now, looking back, and to have seen his work in so many other incarnations. To have this as your first episode and knock it out of the park, especially with all the technical stuff we threw at him; the special effects with the blurring. I remember standing in the kitchen and him telling me, “when the aliens, when they’re shifting from the alien to the person, it’s gonna be this blur. What do you think?” He was really hoping for my approval and I’m kind of like, “sure, whatever you want to do.” I didn’t know. Again, I’m staying in my lane. This is also the thing with working in TV outside of plays or novels, is just the teamwork that goes into all of those episodes and how deeply every department thinks about what they are doing and their craft. I mean costumes, that long braid that Merrin had in Learning Curve. Jan, I think it was Jan.

David Read
Jan Newman?

Heather E. Ash
She was makeup.

David Read
Okay.

Heather E. Ash
She was makeup.

David Read
Christina McQuarrie? Costuming.

Heather E. Ash
Yes. I remember there being a rationale behind this, that they had a narrative for why the clothes looked like that.

David Read
Yeah, the Urrones had their student-like look, it was almost like their uniforms.

Heather E. Ash
Yeah. But they think about that, that’s not something I gave them. This is my difficulty in going from script to prose. Suddenly you kind of have to explain some of that and for someone who was trained – my first writing, training, was screenwriting. 43 pages, one hour long story, this is what you can do, four lines of explanation, maybe, per scene. You don’t have to think about all that, that’s for the other departments to come up with so that makes prose writing very intimidating and a lot of words. It just feels like I’m overwriting constantly.

David Read
I wanted to bring back up the plane. Was the plane introduced to you in the first draft phase so that you could solve the issue of revealing how to cut through their defense systems by the change of pitch with the plane leveling off?

David Read
Wow, that’s cool.

Heather E. Ash
Yes.

Heather E. Ash
That was definitely in outline. Yeah, so helpful, thank you. I think we had the idea of “how are we going to overcome this?” Again, the two devices, “how do we interrupt it?” The thinking, because they also have to mind read. “What do we need the device to accomplish then how are we going to be able to explain that to an audience and have our characters figure it out without an exposition though?” The most boring thing is someone coming out and saying, “this is how it works.”

David Read
Yeah, show, don’t tell.

Heather E. Ash
Right. So that was the way to do it in that story. It was really a great opportunity to have it come about organically although shooting a gun in a plane, bad idea.

David Read
Yeah, I would say so. At least Maybourne’s a good shot.

Heather E. Ash
Thank goodness, yeah. Wait, didn’t Carter shoot?

David Read
She could have. I’m not sure.

Heather E. Ash
I thought she shot him the first time because that was also…

David Read
Maybourne shot too, when one of them tried to get up he’s like, “sit down!” That’s the one that I was thinking of.

Heather E. Ash
I think Carter because Carter grabs the sidearm and…

David Read
Kills I think Major Davis.

Heather E. Ash
Kills O’Neill.

David Read
O’Neill, okay.

Heather E. Ash
No, she kills O’Neill. I want to say that now. I’m going to say that my thought process, I remember it being “how can we get Carter to shoot him?” Again, you want to see your characters being in situations that we haven’t seen them in before because that is the joy of hanging out with these characters. “What new things are they going to do today?” This is why I watch TV every week; is to see how the characters are going to stick to their type and how we’re going to try to shove them off balance and what they’re gonna do. What we think they’re going to do, and the anticipation of that is joyful, and then sometimes being a little surprised. I don’t think anyone would say, “well Sam Carter is gonna shoot Jack O’Neill in this episode, going to shoot him dead.”

David Read
Not knowing what he is really yet.

Heather E. Ash
But taking the chance, she’s trusting herself, this guy is not the Jack O’Neill that she knows.

David Read
Yeah, I never thought of it that way before. My other favorite line from this, and I’m curious if it was an ad lib or if you put this one in there.

Heather E. Ash
It was me.

David Read
Every time I go to the doctor’s office now and I’m about to get the jab, for whatever reason, I tell them, “really jam it in there hard.”

Heather E. Ash
That was Rick.

David Read
That is so good, but you know, you can take credit for these things. That’s the other side of it, if they ad lib something good…

Heather E. Ash
“I have some moss growing in some very dark places,” I do believe that was mine. Let me say, the hypercane scenario, like unfortunately the one that just hit Acapulco last week. I remember reading that in Discovery magazine I think at the time. Again, huge science geek, “how can we bring in these science concepts?” That was what started Learning Curve, was the nanites. I remember telling Brad about the hyperplane and he said, “well I kind of want to keep that as a possible setting for later” and there was probably also budget. We don’t want to do all that and aliens in the same thing. But now we got it in our world so I think about that every single time.

David Read
I can imagine not wanting to overload on your concepts. You want to make sure that everything has room to breathe.

Heather E. Ash
Simple is better. Hanging up those actors, that was when Don Davis…I love that man. I remember having a conversation with him early on. He was describing getting a script and he had this slight southern drawl. The way he described things, I looked at him and said “Don, where did you grow up? Where are you from originally?” He was from southern Missouri. I said, “you talk like my dad” who had also grown up in a similar region. That was kind of neat, he was he was very much that understated kind of guy. He turned to me on the Foothold set, in between being strung up on wires, and said, “sometimes I just don’t know what goes through these writers minds of yours. Sorry.”

David Read
Rick accidentally bumps him, like “sorry General.” So funny.

Heather E. Ash
It was really an opportunity to just kind of be a little bit silly. It was really serious but there were those moments that were really fun too.

David Read
And the way that Andy shot that – it looks like that they’re two or three stories off the ground. They’re still dangling but they’re not that high.

Heather E. Ash
They were up.

David Read
They were that high? I thought that they were pretty close, like six or seven or eight feet from the ground.

Heather E. Ash
No, they were not. No, they were not. Maybe they got lowered at some point to make it more…

David Read
Yeah. That’s probably the photos that I’ve seen.

Heather E. Ash
Yeah because when I walked in there I remember them being up.

David Read
Wow.

Heather E. Ash
So maybe it was a cover shot. Yeah. They did a phenomenal job, set dec did, oh my goodness. Then costume, KY jelly,. just rip it all over. “Let’s make them a little bit more miserable.”

David Read
Oh, absolutely. It’s nice and gooey; gooey is always alien.

Heather E. Ash
And then just stand there or just hang there with these harnesses that are very uncomfortable for half an hour!

David Read
Oh man.

Heather E. Ash
No one likes my tyres. Now I’m starting to wonder why. They were very nice people.

David Read
Yeah, absolutely. They’re getting paid to do that now. Come on.

Heather E. Ash
Was it enough though? Was it enough? Those poor people.

David Read
I think that had you had more time…I mean, this is Showtime. No Limits, right. You could have gone in some interesting directions with that. But it’s a family show.

Heather E. Ash
Family Show.

David Read
Any other notes on Foothold before we move on?

Heather E. Ash
Oh my gosh, so many. There was supposed to be alien language, I wrote a whole alien language. That was like a day of work and then Brad was like, “No. We’re not going to write alien language, it’s gonna sound silly.” He was right, they kind of just did sound effects.

David Read
[speaks aliens sounds]

Heather E. Ash
Yeah, that was a much better choice.

David Read
Well, not everyone has to talk like we do. Not everyone has to have normal moving mouths. It was such a departure.

Heather E. Ash
Yeah, they are evil aliens and they come back and we don’t know. Maybe they’re still here somewhere. It was definitely open ended at the end for a reason.

David Read
Absolutely. I want to jump into some fan questions and then we’ll come back to some more.

Heather E. Ash
Ooo, fan questions!

David Read
We’re getting quite a list here and I’m like, “I’m not going to meet these.” If you and I have to break until season four next year, come back and talk some more, I hope you’re cool with that.

Heather E. Ash
I’m totally cool.

David Read
I want to get the fans questions in. Lockwatcher – during, and I have not read these, during your time as a story editor in season three, were there any interesting storylines that you had to fix; plotholes, changes, any challenging episodes? First of all, before you answer that, can you give me a rundown of the role of Story Editor?

Heather E. Ash
Yes, I can. It’s not editing, it has nothing to do with editing. It’s a title that you get when you’re on a show. These were set by the guild long before my time. Staff Writer is the base [entry level] so if you’re hired as staff writer, and it also determines salary levels according to the guild. So staff writer, you’re hired and your paid a weekly salary for all of these staff level positions. But it also depends on how you’re compensated for scripts so you get a certain minimum level of weekly salary and then you get a certain script fee. So there’s staff writer. They brought me on as Story Editor because I was moving to Vancouver after two weeks so this was kind of a “sweeten the pot” kind of deal because it’s hard to get someone to up and move out of the country, even though it’s next door, to take a job. That was why I came on at that level, but it was seriously baby writer. Most of the of the revisions were Brad and Jonathan and Robert as the senior level writers. The showrunners on most shows, it’s either going to be the executive producer or the supervising producer, who is going to handle all of that on the day to day.

David Read
Okay.

Heather E. Ash
Were there anything that we did? I don’t think there was. We would meet in a room to discuss stories and breaking down stories. We were not necessarily privy to the whole behind the scenes; like the budget and script fixes and things like that.

David Read
We had Brad on The Companion in a 90 minute episode a few weeks ago and he was saying one of the jobs of being up the top is doing the tweaks and rewrites to bring the character’s tones into focus. You don’t share the byline for that, that’s your job. Unless there was a serious, severe, rewrite then that’s something else.

Heather E. Ash
I know that there was one script that came in from a freelancer. At that time we were still bringing on freelancers. You have 22 episodes a year, now it’s more like 10 or 13 episodes so they don’t do this. But 22 episodes, you would bring in freelancers a couple times and the scripts were not always up to the level of the show. Also things change on the fly so I could have been in the middle of the scripts, and I’m sure I was a couple of times, and then Brad would come in and say, “Hey, in two episodes we’re going to be doing this thing so you need to change your thing.” That’s very common, that’s why in TV you don’t get too attached. But one thing I really loved about Brad and I appreciated and put him and Jonathan above a lot of other exec producers; they never took credit. Partially because your credit is what determines how much you get paid. If you’re going to share credit on an episode you’re getting half your your paycheck and half your residuals. He said to me, because I asked him, “are you going to take half the credit on the script that you basically had to rewrite from page one?” He said, “No, I’m not going to. I wouldn’t want someone to do that to me and I’m not going to do that to someone else.” They were really fantastic people in charge of a show and they were great to learn from I think. It was the most anti psychotic, that’s not the word I’m looking for, it was the most non-toxic environment in terms of writing, in terms of Hollywood, that I could possibly have been working in. We were going home every night at five or six, that’s nuts. We had regular working hours, no one has regular working hours in Hollywood but we did. That was a testament to how well run the show was behind the scenes. I’m sure Brad and Jonathan were working after hours, but still, they made sure that we had time.

David Read
They made it look much easier.

Heather E. Ash
Yeah, they took on a lot of the tasks. They were very good at time management and making sure the trains are running on time and getting crew that was also up to the task of making sure it ran well. That takes a lot of effort and it’s not just those two guys and I don’t think they would tell you it was just them. It’s an entire crew that works together really well and is really respectful of each other.

David Read
Absolutely. Emily cheetham – Heather, what did you enjoy most about your involvement in Stargate when looking back? If you could delineate that.

Heather E. Ash
There’s so much.

David Read
Yeah.

Heather E. Ash
It led to some amazing things in life. I got one of my teaching jobs from Stargate. I went to be a community college teacher and I keep writer on my resume because there’s a skill set there.

David Read
Of course.

Heather E. Ash
He said, “Oh, like a novel or something?” and I just said “Stargate SG-1, I don’t know if you’ve heard of it? because it’s been a while now. That got me the job, well I had the job, but that Associate Dean I didn’t know was the biggest Stargate SG-1 fan in the world. From then on like, “oh my gosh.” The occasional fangirling, fanboying, that still comes up, it’s fun. I enjoy that and being able to meet a lot of different people because of it. Dude, I got to write TV that is out there. I’m more in the mystery, like the book world now, just in terms of my involvement with writers and this is what a lot of people aspire to. They’re still working to do this and I had it happen, if that makes sense.

David Read
Early on in your career.

Heather E. Ash
Early on, so that was a blessing and a curse. I’m finally in a place where I can recognize it as like it happened and it was fantastic. That doesn’t mean it has to be the rest of my life; I can go do other things. But what a great opportunity, plus the things like meeting Peter DeLuise, which you should ask me about because that was fun time.

David Read
Heather, what was it like meeting Peter DeLuise?

Heather E. Ash
You want to do more fan questions or do you wanna…?

David Read
I do want to get to this because I don’t want to lose track of it. I will come back around to those fans down the mountain, they’ll get theirs.

Heather E. Ash
We can talk to them later.

David Read
I did want to know this.

Heather E. Ash
Peter was directing on the show when I was there. I think later he became a writer/producer on the show. I met him for the first time, and this is not too far out from 21 Jump Street, I think we’re talking like a decade.

David Read
Yep.

Heather E. Ash
I met him on set and I said, “you know, I was a huge fan of 21 Jump Street. This is how I got started in TV etc etc. I worked for Bill Nuss…” A little bit of fangirling there. I had my mom go through my stuff back at home and she sent me the postcard that he’d signed and sent to me when I was a teenager and had written him fan mail. I bought this to set, I said “here look, I found this, you sent this to me 10 years ago. He said, “Oh yeah, I didn’t sign that.” His fan club had sent this out, he had people to do that. I just looked at him, I’m like, “screw you.” I was 14 years old, come on, you just crushed my dreams.” I was being silly. I went to my mailbox the next day and he had an 8×10 headshot “with love and wet kisses, Peter DeLuise,” in my mailbox made out to me. It was hysterical and funny and if teenager me had known that two of my episodes were going to be directed by Peter DeLuise, I mean, oh my god! I think that was really cool. What was also really cool is he is a really nice guy. They say “don’t meet your heroes” but really generous, really a stand up guy. If you had family visiting while he was directing an episode he would invite them to be in shots. That’s how my mother ended up in Urgo, as a tech, because she was visiting Vancouver the week that Dom DeLuise was on, playing Urgo. That was really cool because my mom is a Gene Wilder fan. She has seen all the Mel Brooks movies, all of them, and was a big fan of Dom DeLuise, so we both got to meet him.

David Read
Ah, that’s wonderful.

Heather E. Ash
Yeah, really sweet guy. Really fantastic. That was, hanging out with really creative interesting people, who we’re also good people, I think that was one of the great things about Stargate as well.

David Read
Peter is very special, he always surprises you. I completely get that, that’s a great story.

Heather E. Ash
Yeah, that never happens, right? The connections that you make early on and you never know where life is gonna lead. You couldn’t write it any better than that.

David Read
Kapa1611 – is sci-fi your favorite genre to write in or do you prefer to be flexible in terms of more fantasy or more hard grounded fiction? What’s your poison?

Heather E. Ash
Brain sucking.

David Read
Brain sucking? Good old brain sucking.

Heather E. Ash
That’s usually sci-fi right? I think it is sci-fi. Going back to your original question about being a woman in television at the time, I took several meetings where they would say “wow, you’re the only woman writing sci-fi.” I would say “oh, okay, well I must know the other eight because there’s more than me.” We’d still talk about that during the writers strike. A friend of mine was on a strike line that was the sci-fi writers, I think it was actually the women’s sci-fi writers for now. It was over 100, it was like a couple of hundred women. Someone had posted the first strike in 2007 that had about eight people and I knew six of them personally, were my friends, and saying look at how much we’ve grown. It’s true but that eight was not necessarily representative at the time either, it was probably a couple of dozen. It’s certainly a myth that is pervasive to this day. I met a grad student at a talk I gave at a film school who said she was getting into television writing because there weren’t any women. I went, “I’m sorry, what?” There’s tons of women out there. Are they all getting hired? Not necessarily? Is there still like the boys club mentality? Some places, yeah, I do like seeing that the Directors Guild has made an overt effort into making sure that a certain amount of episodes are directed by women and not limiting it to “Oh, you can only write children, you can only write family, you can only write the gooey, mushy stuff.” That doesn’t interest me.

David Read
No, go nuts.

Heather E. Ash
No. The Night Manager with Tom Hiddleston and Olivia Coleman, I was just rewatching that. That’s Susanne Bier who directed those episodes and that is as kick ass and action oriented as you can get and I just love it. That’s definitely what I gravitate toward, is very character oriented stories; normal people in extraordinary circumstances. How do they act and maybe how would they act differently than we might expect?

David Read
Absolutely. I think that’s what Stephen King does so well. It’s like, “okay, here’s a person and here’s this extraordinary situation and go.” It’s like, “Wow, wow. You can really turn ugly if you need to or whatever the situation may be.”

Heather E. Ash
He talks about, it’s not the thing that’s out there that scares, it’s the thing that’s in your house that’s not right. I don’t think I’m Stephen King in any way, shape, or form but definitely always the question of what are the motivations of this person and how can we bring that out in a different way?

David Read
For sure. Pamela Tarajcak – as a woman, do you think the guys in the writing room wrote Sam and Janet well? In retrospect, was there anything that you might have tweaked or changed, and if so, what? I wouldn’t have thought to ask this one so thank you Pamela.

Heather E. Ash
I love these questions because it’s always like people who’ve been wondering for a long time and we don’t know to wonder this or not. I don’t recall there being any…I mean, they created these characters, right? They were good writers so I don’t think that there was…I do believe that Brad and Jonathan have kind of walked back that whole, “I’m just as good as you are from the pilot.”

David Read
Yes, for sure. “Just because my reproductive organs are on the inside instead of the outside doesn’t mean I can’t handle whatever you can handle.”

Heather E. Ash
On the other hand, this is not the cop out it sounds like, the 90s were different. We were in a different era, however many years ago that was, so we can’t really be held to the standards of today. The fact that we had women in action roles was kind of different at the time. We might have done more casting of women and thinking back, we did have a lot of secondary characters who were cast as women. In New Ground, the second in command of the aliens was male in the first version that I wrote and she was cast as female. Actually a couple of them were. I think that that was starting and I know that they were always very aware of that. I never ran into sexism on that show in the way that I know a lot of other people were experiencing it at that time.

David Read
Awesome to hear. For so long it was a male dominant industry and there just wasn’t for whatever…

Heather E. Ash
It still is unfortunately. It’s better. Is it completely better? No. I think, even in society, we still have this tendency toward the “great man” syndrome that we see in business or anything. Like, “oh, they’re brilliant” because they’re in charge of things. No. They’re in charge because they had a whole lot of money and they take credit for other people’s work. We still need to see a lot more advancement and people of color being involved and people who are not the gender binary being involved and seeing those stories being represented in our science fiction and in our arts, or even women’s stories. What’s interesting to me is to see more voices coming in and watching things that I may not understand. But then again, it’s like, I’m not the target audience for this. They’re not talking to me and that’s totally fine. I don’t need to understand every reference that’s in here and that doesn’t lessen the experience for me at all.

David Read
No, but you know, I can watch a show like Hunger Games or Alien and I can follow a female heroine and still feel perfectly compatible with the story. That’s maybe just me but I can still connect on a human level to a character, regardless of their gender. Having said that, you I love episodes where Sam and Janet get to kick ass like in Hathor. The second half of that episode is solid and it’s all the women on the base.

Heather E. Ash
I think it even comes out better, to bring this back to Rite of Passage, which I know we’re going to talk about later, but I really recognized, seeing episode, I emailed you last night to say, “oh my gosh, I did not realize how true to the writers draft the final product was.” So that was nice. What the rewrite really did was it was very O’Neill centered, initially. It was almost retreading a lot of Learning Curve I think in terms of this is a child that is in danger and O’Neill-the-dad is going to be invested. When Brad rewrote that, I’m assuming Brad re-wrote that, when he did his revision he really made it more centered on Janet and Sam and the daughter. I think that that was really great in terms of the relationship.

David Read
These are her surrogate parents.

Heather E. Ash
Exactly, and Jack was in there too.

David Read
Of course.

Heather E. Ash
It makes sense that Sam would be more at the forefront and I don’t remember if we’d established that initially. This was season five so they definitely have places where they’re going to take the story that I was not privy to because I had left the show at the end of three. I really liked seeing that and looking back I totally get why you would do that; make that creative decision. It really deepened it in a way.

David Read
Absolutely. There is a quibble over a story element that I was running into earlier where we talking about Learning Curve because you said that they were lobotomized now and I’m curious as to your take on this. Peace Rider says “so was the line ‘they will now be taught the old fashioned way’ not in your original script? Because Kalan says “Colonel O’Neill, this is my son Tomin and I am teaching him. All of the past Urrone children will now learn in the old fashioned way, as you might say. He will know all that you have done for Orban.” So in this version it does suggest that their brains aren’t permanently broken.

Heather E. Ash
Okay. They were lobotomised in my version.

David Read
I would have preferred that, I think a modern version of that, I would prefer that.

Heather E. Ash
That might have been a studio note. That might have been like, “We cannot as a studio advocate lobotomizing small children.”

David Read
Ah, yeah, that makes a lot of sense.

Heather E. Ash
It would make sense like, they were a lot different back then.

David Read
This was the 90s.

Heather E. Ash
I remember when you were not allowed to put a gun anywhere near someone’s head, at all. You could not do this much less everything we see now. That was a line you did not cross and now it’s everywhere. Also barfing, can we talk about barfing on television and film. I would like that to be a red line again, I don’t want to see that anymore.

David Read
Man. There are certain things that are like “really? Do we have to go there? Is that necessary?”

Heather E. Ash
It seems that we go there gratuitously a lot. There are certain places, like if you’re watching the Americans, going there makes sense. But in other places, I think you don’t need that. You don’t need it to be so in your face and concrete.

David Read
As a writer, do you think that a lot of where we have gone now is just over the hill in terms of shock value? “Let’s do this” because it will get clicks and people will be talking about it and it will trend?

Heather E. Ash
Yes. Personally I don’t like gore, never been my thing. I was not allowed to watch horror movies growing up.

David Read
No torture porn.

Heather E. Ash
I draw the line at torture porn. I cannot do True Detective, gratuitous violence against women. I can’t do it anymore. The whole fridging women thing or another woman is dead and this is what launches our story. I would like to see different things. I think a lot of it is the people who are in charge of the entertainment and the distributors, the studios, the network’s. It’s not always up to the creator. There are some creators who that’s kind of their go to and that’s their story and that’s kind of I think, encouraged in a way as well. People think edgy is gross and people think that if we don’t explain things, or we don’t show the audience exactly what’s going on, they’re not going to be able to follow it. “Your subtext has to be text” and I don’t think that that’s true, I think our audiences are much smarter than that. You know what? A little bit of suggestion and questions and quibbles is part of what makes it fun. You don’t need to have every thing stalled or answered.

David Read
I think that gratuitous violence, I think that gratuitous sex, I think it’s like, “okay, we get it. Where does the story go from here?”

Heather E. Ash
There was just an article out. I have just read the headline, probably because it was clickbaity, saying that young people today are tired of seeing sex in their media in terms of just showing sex is not something they want to see but they do want to see the whole spectrum of relationships.

David Read
Right, don’t just plug that.

Heather E. Ash
It’s not about the sex, it is about the connection. They want to see it in all its forms, all its genders, all its expressions. I think that that is true of most people, it’s not just the young ones. I think the young people are definitely leading the charge on “it doesn’t have to be binary” and studios following that.

David Read
No, I think that that’s a that’s a legitimate point for sure.

Heather E. Ash
Yeah. It’s not something we could have done in the 90s I don’t think. I think that the explosion of streaming allowed that to happen where we had a whole lot more voices because you needed to fill this, what was it, 500 something shows? You have to find a lot of different writers so that gave a platform to a lot of different voices that we hadn’t heard from before. At the same time, those were the first ones that were cut when the strike came through. The studio’s used that as a reason to say “oh, sorry. Your ratings! Out of here.”

David Read
GateGab, my producer, Linda “GateGabber” Furey wants to know – were you ever asked to give an actor a line reading of a difficult line? Line reading equals just say this.

Heather E. Ash
Not my job, that’s the director’s job.

David Read
Oh, okay. She said “when I took directing in college, my professor said to never give a line reading unless asked. Is that as true in TV as it seems to be in theater?”

Heather E. Ash
I am not allowed to do that, I am the writer, not the director. The director is the boss on the set, the writer is the boss of the story. There is a hierarchy for a reason just like you have your lead grips and your 1st AD. Everyone has a job and any TV writer you ask, there are certain rules when you’re on set and one of them, even other actors, you do not give notes to anyone without going through the director first.

David Read
Okay, absolutely.

Heather E. Ash
Do I wish that they’d run it a different way sometimes? Sure.

David Read
Yeah. But stay in your lane.

Heather E. Ash
My lane is over here.

David Read
That’s fair.

Heather E. Ash
I ended up marrying a director so that in particular was a lesson learned. If we work together on a set, and we have, I am not in charge because he is the director, full stop. It makes things so much easier in the world when you have that through line. It’s necessary for production.

David Read
Of course. As long as there are doors that are open in appropriate times and places to be able to take that person and say, “this is rattling around in my head, what do you think?”

Heather E. Ash
Well, ideally it should be a collaboration.

David Read
Yeah.

Heather E. Ash
That was part of Greenberg’s job too. Television is a rotating door of directors who are coming in. Not everyone has been with the show or has seen the show. They may not know the voice of the show. That is really the job of the onset producer, is to say, “hey, that’s not something they would do.” The actor also, it’s not necessarily their job to say “that’s not something I would do.” You know what I mean?

David Read
Okay. So they’re also there to defend the characters as well as the actors are? Okay.

Heather E. Ash
At that time, we had, I think, eight days to shoot. Again, not a lot of time. It really goes quickly so you want to smooth that process as much as possible. There are endless meetings before you get to shooting any episode, like tone meetings, and you’ve made all these decisions ahead of time. If anything is going to get changed on set, that’s going to take up time, you want to reduce that as much as possible.

David Read
Makes a lot of sense.

Heather E. Ash
That is the purpose of everybody being there.

David Read
Okay. Philippe Canat – Did you see Stargate Universe and would you have liked to have written for it?

Heather E. Ash
I watched Stargate Universe, I think, with my kids one night, the pilot, because it’s back on streaming. I said, “hey, this is pretty good.” Have I continued watching Stargate? I have not. Part of that was because we were in the time of the VCR back then. We were indirec and then it was DirecTV and TiVo, I was one of the first TiVo people. But still, there was a limit to how much you could record and I was still a working TV writer and I had to watch a whole bunch of TV. I wasn’t going to be writing for Stargate again but I felt like I had a good handle on Stargate where if I needed some episodes, they’d send them to me, but I had to keep up with other TV. There’s so much TV out there.

David Read
You can’t see it all, you got to be selective.

Heather E. Ash
I’ve tried, it doesn’t work.

David Read
I know. I have a specific room in my house that I do my dedicated, scripted TV viewing. But then when I’m on my phone and I’m just having lunch, I want to watch Below Deck Med[iterranean]. I want to watch something stupid. That is my dirty little secret, Below Deck Mediterranean, I’m a huge Captain Sandy fan.

Heather E. Ash
I do not critique. I’ve taught TV writing, I’ve taught TV history and I always ask “what’s your guilty pleasure show?” We do not judge what people do in their downtime, you watch whatever makes you happy. If it’s gotta be stupid! It’s like me reading Cosmopolitan magazine, that’s what I used to do after I finished a script. I needed to empty my brain as quickly as possible, I went out and bought the newest edition.

David Read
You have to have a palate cleanser so that you can come back and be like, okay. “I’m resetting now back to baseline.” I didn’t nearly get to everything that I wanted to with you Heather. I thought it was important to get the fan questions in. We have New Ground, Beneath the Surface and Rite of Passage still to discuss. I know you’ve been doing your research for these episodes. In the last like five minutes that I have with you is there anything that you want to bring up that you’ve discovered in going through the content fresh before we call it a day? I do want to bring you back next season, next year, to discuss those episodes in detail. This has been fantastic. I don’t know about you but I have loved this.

Heather E. Ash
Oh, thank you. I’m so glad, it’s always fun to revisit something because it was a long time ago. It was such a positive experience, no matter how much anxiety I brought to it. Again, it’s a big job and it was important and you want to do well.

Heather E. Ash
And just to be on something that was so well run with people who were really committed to being true to the science. Brad and Jonathan, the science that we did on that show was as correct as it could be. Tetrachloroethylene is a real substance. I did not make that up, yes I can pronounce it. I was not as good at the mythology aspect but Chalchiuhtlicue [chal-choo-wheat-lee-kay] was a real goddess and I had to call a university to get the pronunciation of that, that we put in the script. I did get a phone call from set saying, “how do you know that’s how you pronounce it?” I said “because I talked to this person who has researched it and they said it was this way.”

David Read
It’s your first big show.

David Read
There you go.

Heather E. Ash
They were always on point with the research. The Air Force, we had a technical adviser. One of the biggest compliments I got from him was that I had depicted something very accurately, which I appreciated. You don’t want any of your fans in the know to get turned off and taken out of the story because they’re fans too and you want to make them have a good time.

David Read
Of course, this is your first audience.

Heather E. Ash
Right. It was great and it’s always fun to revisit that period of my life which was really tremendous. Vancouver is still one of my favorite places in the world to be. Ask Michael Shanks, he’s not going to remember but I had strep throat real bad when I was working there. I was out for a week alone in Vancouver with strep throat, we can talk about that later. I remember seeing Mike Shanks on the set. He and his his girlfriend at the time lived next door to my building, they were in the building next door. He’d asked where I’d been and I told him. He’s like, “Oh, why didn’t you call us? We could have brought you something.” He’s like, “Oh wait, you did.” Because I would say “I couldn’t talk,” he was like “you were the one who called and hung up.” So like, “thanks Michael.” Damn funny if I remember this many years later!

David Read
Yeah, absolutely. He’s something. This has been really cool Heather. Thank you for sharing all of these stories. I’m no longer surprised when I sit down with people and they get to talking about a subject and it’s like it unlocks these other doors to other memories. It’s like, “oh yeah, this happened too” and as fans we eat it up.

Heather E. Ash
Oh, absolutely. I eat up on other shows, I also want to know behind the scenes. This is a ton of fun, thanks for having me today.

David Read
Thank you for being here. I will be emailing you to figure things out for when we come back, probably around March. We’ll get you back in the seat and we’ll talk some more.

Heather E. Ash
All right, I’ll do some more research so I will be prepared.

David Read
You are great, thank you Heather.

Heather E. Ash
Thank you.

David Read
Be well.

Heather E. Ash
See you next time.

David Read
Bye bye.

Heather E. Ash
Bye.

David Read
Heather Ash, Story Editor for Stargate SG-1. I am privileged to have so many of these amazing people in to do this Oral History Project and this episode did not disappoint. Michael Shanks is going to be joining us in 20 minutes for the season finale of Dial the Gate. We started off at Gatecon last August/September in 2022 and finally I get a break. I love y’all but you know what? Me need some rest so I’m going to Panama. I really hope you enjoyed this episode and I think Michael is going to be pretty amazing as well. My thanks to my moderating team, Tracy, Antony, Sommer, Jeremy; you guys have been tremendous this entire season. My producer, Linda “GateGabber” Furey, and Frederick Marcoux at ConceptsWeb, he keeps dialthegate.com up and running. We will be seeing you momentarily for Michael and the finale of the show. My name is David Read for Dial the Gate and I will see you on the other side.