As of today the Screen Actor’s Guild has joined the Writer’s Guild of America on the picket lines, and there’s a lot at stake, including the road ahead for Stargate. We welcome back Hollywood Marketing Veteran Jenny Stiven, along with GateWorld Owner and Managing Editor Darren Sumner, to bring all of the demands in focus and discuss how it will effect the next chapter of the franchise.

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Timecodes
0:00 – Opening Credits
00:25 – Welcome and Episode Outline
01:45 – Welcoming Robert and thoughts on Alien Senate Meetings
06:19 – Visiting an Aircraft Carrier
11:41 – The Writer and Actor’s Strikes
20:40 – Working with Brad Wright
27:15 – Far-Fetched Ideas
31:42 – The Four Great Races
33:43 – Season Seven and the Return of Michael Shanks
37:12 – Chimera and Fan Reactions
41:07 – Heroes
43:14 – Inauguration
46:32 – Lost City
52:17 – Don S Davis
53:44 – Season Eight, Filming SG-1 and SGA Simultaneously, and Budgeting
58:21 – New Order
1:00:51 – Replicator Sam
1:07:01 – Zero Hour
1:12:22 – Covenant
1:15:01 – Citizen Joe
1:20:46 – Clip shows
1:22:43 – Threads
1:27:46 – Moebius
1:32:47 – Wrapping with with Robert
1:33:29 – Post-Interview Housekeeping
1:34:47 – End Credits

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

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TRANSCRIPT
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David Read
Welcome to Episode 208 of Dial the Gate, the Stargate Oral History Project. My name is David Read, thank you so much for joining me. Robert C. Cooper, Stargate SG-1 executive producer, director and writer is back for season seven and eight of SG-1. Those are going to be our main discussion points for this episode along with a few other questions that I have for him. Before we get into the thick of it, if you enjoy Stargate and you want to see more content like this on YouTube, please click that like button. It makes a difference and will continue to help the show grow. Please also consider sharing this video with a Stargate friend and if you want to get notified about future episodes, click subscribe. Giving the bell icon a click will notify you the moment a new video drops and you’ll get my notifications of any last minutes guest changes. Clips from this live stream will be released over the course of the next few days on the Dial the Gate and GateWorld.net YouTube channels. As this is a pre-recorded episode the moderators will not be taking questions for Robert but enjoy the show all the same. We’ll definitely be inviting him back soon to answer more fan questions. For this particular episode we wanted to go into detail with SG-1 seasons seven and eight specifically. Here is my interview with Robert C. Cooper. Enjoy. Robert C. Cooper, executive producer, writer and director Stargate. Sir, I’m always honored to have you. I’m glad to have you back and we have a lot more to talk about.

Robert C. Cooper
I’m excited.

David Read
The big news since we’ve last spoke is that the WGA and SAG-AFTRA are in full strike mode. You are Canada based and I wanted to know how it’s affecting the work up there and what your thoughts are on it, before we get into the Stargate stuff,

Robert C. Cooper
I’d love to talk about that but I think there’s another topic that might take some precedent over that. Are we not going to talk about the fact that there’s Aliens?

David Read
What do you think? Do you really think it’s an extra terrestrial thing? Or do you think it’s a psyop? [psychological operation]

Robert C. Cooper
I think we are in the age where you can’t believe anything anymore? I don’t know what to believe, honestly. I feel like there’s a lot of stuff that is, I’m gonna sound like a conspiracy theorist now, but it feels like there’s a bunch of distractions that are being thrown out there that are kind of taking our attention away from the more important things.

David Read
It makes you wonder how much of it is designed as a destraction? Timing is everything. You’re right, I’m with you, I don’t know what to think. Part of me is like, “well, I kind of grew up expecting at some point to have that be an actual revelation.” But even if we did, even if they presented all this evidence, short of a cloned Asgard with no mind, personality imprint, walking through a door at a press conference, even then, there’d be plenty of people who’d say it’s not real.

Robert C. Cooper
They’re saying they have one of those, so I don’t know, Let me put it this way, if it’s not true then it’s really weird that they’re spending all this congressional time and energy on it.

David Read
Do you think it’s gonna go anywhere?

Robert C. Cooper
I don’t know, I really don’t. I tend to try and listen to the people I think are smart online and reasonable. But it is drawing people’s attention quite a bit.

David Read
It sure is. It could just be the rise of technology as well. I can’t ignore the interesting phenomenon; all of this craze really began when we started nuclear testing. Based on what I’ve seen and read, I don’t know, I just don’t know what to say. At this point, I’ll settle for anything. You’re right, the truth is getting muddier and muddier.

Robert C. Cooper
I think there’s some pretty interesting, I’m gonna call them theories, but I think they’re much more than theories. I think they’re really good concepts that explain how we are actually built to invent stories and believe in fairy tales and conspiracy theories. It says we’re actually made for it and it’s part of our defense mechanism against predators. We are built to see things that aren’t there in a way that is meant to protect us and we’ve turned it into a form of storytelling. I find the whole thing kind of interesting. The thing is though, sometimes the predator is real. So what do we do in that situation? I have one other little piece of information before we get to the strike stuff and I do want to get to that. This is sort of Stargate related, so maybe relevant. I don’t think she’ll mind if I mention, I was having lunch with Alaina Huffman a couple of days ago and this is more about how my memory is starting to go. I was gonna brag to her about a trip that I recently took. I was invited to tour a working aircraft carrier by the Navy and we were chatting and I pulled up my phone to show her some pictures. I was gonna sort of talk about it and she’s like, “oh yeah, we did that already.”

David Read
The same ship?

Robert C. Cooper
The same ship! I was like, “really?” Now, in my defense, I had already left SGU you at that point and I was in Toronto working on something else. I don’t know how I couldn’t remember the story because I’m not sure if you or the people watching would know this. It was John Lenic and David Blue and a number of the other actors from the show got to do the exact distinguished visitor trip that I did. It was unfortunately the weekend that the show, the announcement came out, that the show had been canceled, SGU. One of the features of the trip is that there’s no WiFi or cell phone coverage. The announcement came out while they were there, they didn’t know and when they got off the boat their phones blew up with all the texts and notifications about the fact that the show had been canceled. Unfortunately, a sad ending to what would have been a very cool…

David Read
Yeah, bittersweet trip. The fact of the matter is I think it’s crazy that you were on the same ship. I have the picture handy, do you mind if I show that to everyone? Okay, let me just pull this up for everyone who’s watching? I mean, we’re pre-recorded, but look at that face. Have you ever seen a happier man? This is a great photo.

Robert C. Cooper
It was really cool.

David Read
Oh, man. Did you see any takeoffs and landings?

Robert C. Cooper
Oh yeah. I’ll send you some other stuff if you like.

David Read
Oh, absolutely.

Robert C. Cooper
Some videos. I was standing maybe five feet away from the cable that was catching the landing planes.

David Read
I assumed there was some kind of a Stargate connection there because it was the Carl Vinson and it was like…

Robert C. Cooper
I think that’s just the boat they use for these [events]. There’s only 11 aircraft carriers and some are stationed on the east coast and some are obviously off on tour so there’s only a certain number that rotate in and out of San Diego. So it’s not that unusual that it wouldn’t be the same one.

David Read
Was that your first time on an aircraft carrier?

Robert C. Cooper
Oh, yeah. Yeah.

David Read
What do you think? Tell us all about it.

Robert C. Cooper
It’s incredible, you really have to see it at all levels to believe what’s going on. It’s 5000 people, 4,500 enlisted, roughly 500 officers at any given time depending on how many squadrons are on board. It’s a city unto itself with its own culture and an incredibly diverse group of people drawn from all walks of life and living in some cases very stressful and difficult living conditions.

David Read
How long were you there?

Robert C. Cooper
We slept over one night so we had two days.

David Read
So you got the experience?

Robert C. Cooper
Oh yeah, we met everyone. We met the nurses, the dentist, I met the barber, the social worker, we had dinner with the senior officers, we met the captain of the boat, we spent some time up in the crow’s nest while they were doing maneuvers, rehearsals and stuff. It was pretty amazing.

David Read
How many of them were Stargate fans?

Robert C. Cooper
Um, a couple, not as many as you might hope. It’s the Navy after all. They have a bit of a thing with the Air Force?

David Read
Of course. Absolutely. Little rivalry there, never hurt anybody.

Robert C. Cooper
Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, that was a lot of fun. To go back to the strike, we’re at a turning point in history as far as the industry, as far as AI and what’s going on there. We’ve talked a lot about that; it continues to evolve at a really frightening pace. That part of it, that’s just amazing to me how much people have their heads in the sand about where it’s going, how fast it’s going and where it’s going to get to. The number of writers I’ve spoken to are like, “Oh, it’ll never write better than I can.”

David Read
Okay!

Robert C. Cooper
If that’s what gets you through the day. The industry itself is in a real transition, like in any sort of industrial revolution, which is what we’re in in terms of the studio system and television and films. You have a tremendous period of growth as people try to become the dominant player in the space. Vertical integration, it’s an oligopoly essentially and then you’ll see a bunch of oligarchs in the business that are all trying to defeat each other by growing to be the biggest as quickly as they can. Then, of course, the economics are unsustainable. I’m not sure their strategies were sound and now you have contraction and that’s happening at a point where a contract negotiation is going on. There’s a lot of misconception that “oh, these are just wealthy actors and writers who are whining and crying” and it couldn’t be further from the truth. The successful people often tend to be the face because they get the media attention, but they’re not the ones who are what the fight is about,

David Read
They’re a fraction.

Robert C. Cooper
It’s a real reflection of overall America. They’re the 1% of the actors and writers but the vast majority of working artists within that business are not able to make a living anymore. You might look at it and say, “how is that possible with all the television being made?” but the practices, the ways in which talent is being treated by the companies is becoming, frankly, just worse and worse. You can read about it in detail. For me, it’s frustrating, because I’ve done most of my work for American studios so I do look at the US system as my bread and butter for the most part. I am Canadian, I work in Canada and I can work under the Canadian guild system but the WGA is being quite forceful in trying to prevent people from breaking their picket lines and doing what would be called struck work. As I’ve explained to a number of people on the higher up levels of the WGA, there’s not really a whole lot of reciprocal support for the Canadian industry.

David Read
Last year apparently, there was a whole thing, Jenny Stiven of Cleo Consulting told us about this, the Americans gave the Canadians very little support.

Robert C. Cooper
Well, the whole Bill C-11 situation with streamers essentially, are doing to the Canadian system, what they’re doing to the American system and that’s killing the traditional broadcast networks. They traditionally have been the organizations that have been forced by the Canadian government and assisted through tax credits, to order our Canadian shows, to make Canadian television. Now the streamers come in, take away the viewership and the economics that support those networks, but don’t want to participate in that same program, essentially. When the government tried to regulate it through a bill, they essentially blackmail them and threaten them until they soften that bill to the point of it essentially being ineffective. Beyond that, I’m gonna bore people, they’re want to hear about Stargate.

David Read
No, it’s topical.

Robert C. Cooper
The truth is Canadian producers have been priced out of the game by American productions. Budgets just can’t match up. When you say, “Oh, why don’t Canadian shows, aren’t as good or look as good or whatever?” Everything across the board over the last 10 years, with much bigger budgets, streaming shows coming to shoot in Canada and taking advantage of the tax credits that the government provides here, are driving up costs. Cost of everything, cost of crews, cost of locations, cost of equipment, almost making it impossible to make Canadian television. The WGA participates in that without ever looking to hire local writers, looking to support the local unions. Directors do get a look a little bit more, there’s a recognition of the talent there. But even from the standpoint of supporting education and training, bring some interns on, put them on set, just give people opportunities and they don’t do it. They will send people up from the US before they hire somebody local. There’s absolutely no reciprocal kindness from the guilds down south yet when they’re on strike, they expect us to go on strike with them…without the benefit.

David Read
Right. Exactly. Absolutely. There has to be reciprocity or there’s no respect for the work. I’ve had the privilege of speaking with a number of the post production people who have now been available to do more work because they’re at a standstill and one of them told me he doesn’t expect work to come in until at the earliest December. That’s a person who more than likely is going to be okay, more than likely. But the number of people behind him…this is so damaging and so infuriating.

Robert C. Cooper
Yeah and it’s damaging to everybody. Up and down the line; crews who depend on these jobs, all the support companies that service production. Catering and stuff, you laugh but that’s their bread and butter, no pun intended. It’s terrible, the companies are really behaving in such a way that it’s clear they’re just happy to have a couple of quarters of lower costs for their bottom line rather than taking us seriously in anyway.

David Read
Yeah, it’s going to be interesting to see how this shakes out through the rest of the year. God help us if this continues to go on much longer.

Robert C. Cooper
I think it will, I think we’re looking at early 2024, before this gets settled. I’m not an expert or a prognosticator.

David Read
Can you do me a favor and tell me what it was like working with Brad Wright all of those nearly two decades? You’re partner through much of this.

Robert C. Cooper
Yeah, there’s two things that come to mind. There’s so many stories that we could tell in terms of us going through things in the trenches together, having to have each other’s backs. There are a number of situations where Brad would just kind of leap out in front of the oncoming car in order to sort of save the day. I can tell those stories but some of them are probably not for public consumption. When I first started on the show, I’ve told this story before I think, of how I flew myself out to Vancouver to meet with the guys. I was pitching them and John had his pad of paper and pen, was sitting there and not doing anything, and I knew I was kind of bombing and then finally I said something that he wrote down. After that Brad took me on a tour of the whole studio. As we were walking around he just dropped “do you golf?” I said, “Yeah, I’ve been golfing…” and I started talking about that. I feel like, in a way, that was really, nevermind the idea that I pitched, that was really the answer that kind of got me the job. I don’t know if anyone’s talked about this in any of the interviews you’ve done but we would take golf trips with the writers and the crew, sometimes a couple of times a year. It would be kind of our way of blowing off steam but they were also just ways to kind of get together and have some fun and have some drinks. I guess the justification for it would be called team building but that was him kind of driving that bus. It really was amazing. The thing about creatively with Brad, I think you can boil it down to this sentence, “I have an image.” He would come in one day in the room and be like, “I have an image for this.” A lot of his stuff, his writingm would be around that. He would take that image or a thing he wanted to do and then build his story around it. The story was good but it always started from this one central image or idea. Whether it was a ship flying into the corona of the sun or a room that burned, 360 degrees, a set that was going to roll and people would have to walk on walls, he was thinking that way. It’s weird because he called himself a playwright, he liked to write two people in a room talking to each other all the time, but he also was very driven by whatever visual idea.

David Read
That was his hook. You’ve talked about, thematically, a lot of the times where your thoughts will come from you want to do a story about revenge or that they percolated that way. I think the two coming together is a good mix.

Robert C. Cooper
Yeah, yeah. Obviously it worked for a very long time.

David Read
Would you like to work together again one day? Or would you be open to that?

Robert C. Cooper
Sure, sure. We each have our own ideas and we’re also both kind of at the stage of our career where we are looking for things that are going to kind of be interesting as opposed to just working for work sake. There isn’t a whole lot of stuff being made in Canada.

David Read
I think that the relationship that you two had in creating one of the tentpole staples of that genre cannot be underestimated. The work that you guys put out; at one point 120 hours of television in three years. No one does that. No one will ever do that again.

Robert C. Cooper
Well, Taylor Sheridan does it?

David Read
Okay, fine.

Robert C. Cooper
Shonda Rhimes does it, there are people who do it. I don’t really recommend it to be honest with you. It’s quite demanding and maybe doesn’t always result in peak quality.

David Read
Well, how you can maintain families while doing this and certainly not everyone can.

Robert C. Cooper
I’ll speak for me, my wife deserves a ton of credit.

David Read
Absolutely. Family members who understand the sacrifices that you make because, especially as writers, Joseph Mallozzi and I have had this conversation a lot, you’re never on vacation, your brain is always churning the next story. You spent so much of your time making things believable. I’m curious, I don’t think I’ve asked you this before, what was for you one of the more far fetched plot or story elements for the franchise where you guys were like, or you yourself was like, “I think this is pushing it. We can do it but we’re really asking the audience to suspend their disbelief on this one.”

Robert C. Cooper
We’ve talked about these episodes, it’s easily going to be the 100 and 200. Those are jump the shark, come around, jump the shark again. Those were departure episodes, I think we were leaving the building as far as attempting believability there.

David Read
I can’t remember if I was discussing with you or Mallozzi, and correct me if I did, but if I look at the entire franchise the one that got to me the most was Vala disappearing through the rings in deep space and then winding up safely on an Ori planet in another galaxy. That, for me, was the hardest to wrap my brain around even at the end of Beachhead. If she made it through you can you imagine sending a more wild message to the enemy. There’s just some stuff that you have to do to make the story work.

Robert C. Cooper
I don’t know what to you because I look at all the stuff we did as stretching the truth. Time travel is not possible, faster than light travel not really possible, a Stargate not really possible. It’s really a question of does it feel earned and organic to the story or does it feel like it was a cheat that was just kind of almost lazily used to get through a plot point that wasn’t well thought out? Part of that is we always used to try our best not to have multiple new science fiction concepts introduced in the same episode or even the same sequence so that it felt like we were at least spending enough time introducing that idea in a believable way, in a respectable way, so that we talk about how it works, what the rules are, before we go breaking.

David Read
Right, exactly. You want to establish the rules and then you can play around with the flexibility of that container that you’ve created within the mind of the viewer.

Robert C. Cooper
Yeah. We had a Stargate, the movie already had introduced the concept of a wormhole and a Stargate and what that was and how it worked. You didn’t really want to do an episode that had time travel robots and body swapping, that would be just too much to try and explain. By the time you did that people would be like, “what’s going on? The body swapping feels like a cheat on top of the robot thing.”

David Read
One more before we get into season seven. In your opinion, which of the four great races is the most powerful? Or to put it another way, were they to go at each other, which fortunately for our galaxy never happened as far as we can tell, which of them would end up on top? Really interested to hear your thoughts on this? I know Brad’s.

Robert C. Cooper
Sure, the Furlings are number one. I feel like that’s obvious. The Ancients have had, at least at the time of the show, maybe not at the time when they kind of were forming the alliance of the four races, but they ascended to a point where they had pretty godlike powers. Mortal is not the right word, of this galaxy, where the Ancients or the Asgard were of this galaxy, the Nox were of this galaxy. So, of this realm of being, whereas the Ancients ascended so I would say they’re easily the most powerful.

David Read
Do you know what Brad’s answer was?

Robert C. Cooper
He doesn’t care?

David Read
He thinks the Nox.

Robert C. Cooper
He thinks the Nox?

David Read
Yeah. Because of their illusion, their ability to revive people from the dead with no apparent technology. I understand where you’re coming from when you have the power to manipulate weather and make people corporeal and incorporeal. That’s pretty up there too in the final analysis of who the Ancients became, some of them. Season seven, your second season with Syfy channel, how far into season six did you know that they wanted to bring you back for another round?

Robert C. Cooper
At that point I feel like there was a decent assumption of inevitability. We always were waiting for the actual official pickup, but we were doing so well for them at that point I don’t think there was any doubt in that pickup that year.

David Read
Jonas had been brought in for season six. Corin was asked to play a part, that I would argue, was one of the tougher roles on television at the time, in terms of standing in for a remarkable character and Michael Shanks. I think you’ve spoken that, was it you who approached Michael for season seven?

Robert C. Cooper
Yeah, I definitely was the one who was point on the negotiations to bring him back. I believe I had floated the idea, we had stayed in touch to some extent. He had been back for an episode in season six and that had gone well. The kind of relationship between Michael and RDA had seemed solid during that episode and the rest of the cast. The opening was there. I honestly don’t remember the whole back and forth about trying to essentially negotiate him back to the show. I think there was like a check in where it was like, “how’s it going? Do you want to do that or not?” The fans, obviously, were very vocal. It was a conversation that was constantly happening. That’s not a knock against Corin at all by the way. He was doing a great job and we were certainly focused on trying to make Jonas part of the team and part of the show and had every intention of continuing with him. It wasn’t like, in any way, there was a sense that he was just sort of temporarily pinch hitting or anything.

David Read
And he came back for season seven, Corin had his own story idea. The door was kept open for sure. Anubis was the big bad for this season following through, we’ll get to him a little bit more in just a second. Chimera was one of my favorites because it resolved the Osiris arc, I was a huge fan of Anna-Louise Plowman. It also was an expansion for Sam. We had this mandate from the Air Force that as long as Sam was under Jack’s command, there can’t be anything going on there. I think you guys wisely took a direction that was to expand her out of work persona a little bit more.

Robert C. Cooper
Oh did we underestimate the power of that firecracker!

David Read
Thoughts? Reactions to that?

Robert C. Cooper
I’m not saying we didn’t have some idea that there would be some fan reaction, let’s say. I always felt that that level of reaction was indicative of how much people love the show. I didn’t ever really take it as a negative and we certainly weren’t trying to upset people but it was interesting to watch just how much people, I mean, poor David.

David Read
I asked him, “how much heads up did your brother give you about what to expect in this regard considering that you were coming in and essentially going inbetween that Shipper group and those two characters?” He said, “David, I had no idea.” Like “Really? Oh my god.” Wow, talk about being placed in front of a train.

Robert C. Cooper
He’s such a likable charming guy. We thought, “well, nobody’s gonna dislike him.” Maybe the fans will get mad at me for saying this but it was kind of fun to mix that up a little bit and get people going. Sometimes you don’t know how much something means to you until you see it threatened. That’s part of the whole thing about villains; the more the villain threatens your hero, the more you love them and want them to win. It was also nice to humanize Sam and a bit overdue that we had done storylines where there were kind of romantic interests for other characters.

David Read
Yeah at that point she had gotten the nickname Black Widow because of what had happened with Martouf, what had happened with Narim, what had happened with Joseph Faxon. I think the working title for Chimera was Black Widow Carter, if I’m not mistaken.

Robert C. Cooper
There were jokes thrown around for sure.

David Read
We’ve talked about Heroes, we’ve covered it pretty thoroughly. I am going to reference that people view some of our earlier conversations for that. I will not minimize the significance to the season seven story other than to say that had you known in advance that the show was going to continue for 10 years would you have changed anything about that particular episode? Or would you in hindsight have left it as it is?

Robert C. Cooper
No, I can’t think of anything. In any given moment you’re making the best episode you can possibly make. You’re not saving stuff for later, you’re just really trying to do your best with that episode. Like we discussed when we dug into that a little deeper, a lot of what I think became so great about that episode was that kind of on the fly science experiment where you’re mixing a bunch of stuff together and essentially reacting to circumstance. The episode coming in too long and having to invent new characters and sequences and reshoots over months. You never know what you’re gonna get and you’re putting a bunch of ingredients in a blender and hoping it comes out delicious.

David Read
It could have been a nothing burger. You could have stretched this so thin that you could have been like Saul’s character Emmett Bregman. He’s looking at this and he’s going “this is terrible, I’ve got nothing. Where’s the equivalent of Neil Armstrong golfing on the moon?”

Robert C. Cooper
You’re never holding anything back.

David Read
Inauguration. Was the White House set, was that from X2, is that the same set?

Robert C. Cooper
Yeah, I don’t remember if it was X2 or one or which one. It was an X-Men set we took advantage of.

David Read
Wow, what a great utilization of really breaking into another world; really getting into Washington with that. At that point, we could have always assumed loosely. Secretaries of Defense and everything had appeared on the show, but this was really the one where we were establishing SG-1 is in its own reality. This could be happening in ours but the one that we’re watching is in its own reality. What was it like getting to watch the show go in that direction. amazing performance by William Devane and bringing the Kinsey character kind of into a closure in Inauguration and Lost City. That’s a character that had been percolating for years and you really drive that one home.

Robert C. Cooper
We love Ronnie, we would have him back anytime we could. He made a great foil and villain. I think villain, I feel like in many cases he was right. He wasn’t written arch necessarily, he was on one side of the argument. Obviously William Devane was was pretty cool, we were all very excited when we landed that and having the White House set and finally going there. Saying “okay, we’re gonna show you the scale of what the impact of Stargate is.” You can’t have had all of this going on without the President of the United States being materially involved so it was time to go there.

David Read
And see that, yeah. He was always at the other end of the red phone, he, the president. Now it’s like “okay, let’s see what this looks like in Washington.”

Robert C. Cooper
The thing about that was we never wanted to do the lame version. We never wanted to do the shot of the guy from behind and just a phone and you don’t see who it is and it’s “where is it?” and all that sort of stuff. We wanted to do it right; we wanted to actually do it the way you would in a Jack Ryan movie or an X-men movie.

David Read
Would you have done Washington if the White House set hadn’t been available? Would you have found another way to do it or just create the oval?

Robert C. Cooper
That’s a tough set, round isn’t easy, oval in this case. I would have figured something out. Maybe ask to use the real one, I don’t know.

David Read
Absolutely. Lost city with Brad Wright. We say goodbye to Don in this one as a regular, Jessica Steen comes in as Weir, we spend some money in this episode. Darren with GateWorld, I told him what we were going to be discussing, he wanted to ask about, we’ve discussed this a little but I wanted to take one final pass as we move through this season. He says “Lost City ended up one of the best stories the show ever told and we know it was originally slated for a movie after season six, you guys had been percolating the movie idea.”

Robert C. Cooper
We pitched it to MGM as a movie, yeah.

David Read
“What do you remember about these original plans to make a feature film that bridged full circle with an Atlantis show that was going to be set on Earth? There were script pages that had the ending with Atlantis launching into space from millions…”

Robert C. Cooper
By the way, that was the image that Brad walked in with? “What if the lost city of Atlantis was a alien spaceship that then rose up out of the ocean as our big set piece?” Originally, like Darren mentioned, it was on Earth, not in the Pegasus Galaxy. The story goes, I may have told this before, I don’t quite remember, Brad and I were told that Syfy had wanted to order a spin off show. We conceived of Atlantis, we had sort of roughly filled in that thing. An executive who was sort of at the top of the NBC Universal television channels at the time, she’s now actually much more important, her name is Bonnie Hammer. She flew up to Vancouver and came and sat in our offices for a change so that we could pitch her the concept for Atlantis. We pitched out the Lost City story because originally it was going to be a movie, we kind of pitched the whole thing out to her. We kind of had some inkling that it was probably going to happen no matter what we said, that this was maybe a bit of a formality. She’s like, “oh yeah, that’s great.” We said, “then Lost City would be the transition from SG-1 to Atlantis” and she was like, “oh, no, no, no, no, we’re going to do both.” That was the first time we heard that. We were both like “what?” We had talked all about essentially ending SG-1 at the end of season seven. Rick had been talking about the time to move on, enough of O’Neill, that type of thing. All that just threw us all for a loop. We had to figure out how do we do two shows at one time, the conversations with RDA opened about him coming back in some more limited capacity. We realized that we couldn’t do the show properly with him part time and still the leader of SG-1 so we figured out he would now become the leader the base. Then the economics of how do we make two shows at one time and how that was gonna all work. That all came out of that one pitch meeting with Bonnie Hammer when she said, “oh no, we’re gonna do both” and we realized our idea was out the window.

David Read
But the idea became the Lost City.

Robert C. Cooper
Yeah, became Lost City. The switch from Atlantis being on Earth and flying away versus being in the Pegasus Galaxy was all about the fact that Atlantis needed to stand alone from SG-1. Frankly, my problem with all the MCU/DCU stuff, you have two superheroes on the same planet, or in their case, 20 superheroes on the same planet. How do you do a story about one without acknowledging the other one exists? Or even getting involved. How do you do a Batman without Superman coming in and saving the day? It’s like, “where is the guy?” We really wanted Atlantis to be a fresh new adventure without the baggage of SG-1, without going where are the goa’uld and the replicators, all that stuff. We wanted to start with a clean slate and the best way to do that was to kind of start fresh in a new galaxy.

David Read
Had Don already had conversations with you about his health at this point? Or was it more of a situation where it was going to be a promotion for Jack so Hammond was going to phase out? Do you recall the sequence of that?

Robert C. Cooper
Don was a gentleman, he was just the loveliest guy. I think he had felt quite lucky to have had the opportunity that he did. He took it amazingly and wasn’t resentful at all, he was grateful for having had the chance.

David Read
Absolutely. He returned for Atlantis and he returned for SG-1 and Continuum. He was always in the family, and [episode] 200.

Robert C. Cooper
Just to button your question, he really didn’t make a whole deal out of his health issues.

David Read
Okay, so he was a trooper.

Robert C. Cooper
Yeah. He was never a guy looking for sympathy about things like that sort of thing.

David Read
Oh, no. I wouldn’t want to infer that he was. I would assume that he would want to keep you apprised of what was going on in his life just as much as any of the actors are.

Robert C. Cooper
Yes, we were aware.

David Read
Season eight, 40 episodes a year. Obviously all department heads were aware of the situation that we’re going to be doubling our workload. There was a new opportunity here to start amortizing some of these resources across two shows which I’m sure presented its own issues and challenges.

Robert C. Cooper
There was no choice, Atlantis was woefully under budgeted in the first season. Obviously we wanted to Atlantis to be as good, we saw that show as the future. We wanted it to be great but it would have suffered tremendously if it frankly stood alone with a budget of half.

David Read
Was the expectation from NBC Universal that you were going to have the two shows running so make it work with this budget? Was there more finagling this season over budget in terms of balancing the resources of each show and how did that change as Atlantis grew?

Robert C. Cooper
MGM was also a part of that mix of deciding on the budget because Syfy was just the US commissioner. They were the license fee for the US and the rest was international. MGM was not deficiting very much on Atlantis and were kind of waiting to see how did once it got made. We were always resourceful, I guess is the way to put it, as producers, looking for opportunities like the X-Men set, the submarine that we used in the replicator episodes, stuff would come along. We’d be like, “hey, how do we use that?” We would do that with sets that we were building, we’d be like, “here’s a set we can build, spend a lot of money for episode one and two, our expensive shows, but how do we turn that set around or reuse it in a different way in other episodes down the line?” Our production designer would always know those were the intentions and all of them that we worked with over the years were incredibly accommodating and resourceful that way. We had actually started to build our own visual effects company for or Atlantis, in house, that was owning a lot of the IP that we were creating. So yeah, there were a lot of ways in which we shared stuff. The biggest one was really crew because in a way we were not just shooting two shows, we were shooting three units. We had multiple stages, people were running around from one to the other, a lot of golf carts zipping around the stages. I remember times when we were shooting scenes not just from two episodes, but from six episodes because we had that stage or that set. We would cycle in different directors, different cast, just to try and make the schedule work. John Smith and John Lenic were working miracles.

David Read
They had Excel open every day, I bet.

Robert C. Cooper
It would have made my brains explode.

David Read
Right, exactly. The production team, was it identical for the two shows put together or were there some people siloed into each show?

Robert C. Cooper
You’d have your different department heads for the two shows. There was only one wardrobe department in terms of the physical space but you definitely had people who are assigned to a particular show.

David Read
New Order. I love this episode. At this point in the show you had already done a pretty good job, a very good job, of our characters make a decision, that decision has consequences for that episode, for that season, for the rest of the series in some cases. For me, this one, and for many fans, this was the hardest pill to swallow. We took advantage of a sentient being. We knew that that story thread was dangling out there and in this episode Sam really has to deal emotionally and physically with the consequences of that decision. Tell us about New Order.

Robert C. Cooper
We talked all the time on the show, in the writers room, about ethical and moral dilemmas and that those were the greatest moments of heightened drama. Hearkening all the way back to Carter deciding whether she was going to take that elevator down to be with a little girl while she exploded. We looked for those opportunities, we looked for those things that could really get people thinking about or talking about or even maybe arguing about on different sides. That was a good one but I do feel like those were the things we looked for. That’s a bit of a chestnut, it’s a bit of a thing that gets done a lot, it’s always effective. The age old question of do you sacrifice the few, or the one, to save many and what’s the number that throws that into balance for you as the decision maker?.

David Read
It’s the trolley problem.

Robert C. Cooper
The trolley argument.

David Read
If I remember correctly, the decision to make a replicator version of Sam came very late. Can you tell us about that?

Robert C. Cooper
I don’t remember exactly when or how that came about to be honest with you. There was probably some hesitation at some point along the way to kind of repeat ourselves and was like, “how’s this going to be different?” Sam had already been a Tok’ra and it’s like, “we’re going to have the enemy become Sam again? What’s different about this this time round?” I’m sure there was probably a, “we’re not even gonna go there” thought as we went through the process. I know I was excited about the image, the visuals, the idea of just having a human replicator, one of our leads, with replicator blocks on.

David Read
Yeah, a clone basically. It was a great idea and I love that he makes her so perfect that she leaves him too. I’m sorry but the irony there is he made her just a little too well. You create the same being for all intents and purposes and expect a different result. Not only does she walk away from you but she also takes everything you got at the end of the day and absolutely incinerates you.

Robert C. Cooper
We talked a little bit at the beginning and we’ve obviously done a whole interview with Laurence about AI. I guess it’s really hard for me sometimes because I’m not an expert. I’m not a tech guy, not a computer programmer, I’m just a writer who reads a lot of stuff and immerses themselves and talks to a lot of people.

David Read
You’re a student of humanity.

Robert C. Cooper
I also write stuff about this world and I’ve written all of the cautionary tales I can think of about these things. When I see us going down these roads and then people being skeptical and they’re like, “oh, what do you know?” I’m like, “well, I don’t, but I have written about it extensively.” We were certainly not the only science fiction show that’s predicted future outcomes but I hope that’s not one of them.

David Read
Science fiction is going to continue to do that, be it you or someone else. David Hewlett reminded me of this phrase when he was last on the show and we were also talking about AI in that episode; [science fiction] it is our dream phase. Science fiction anticipates but at a certain point it also can be responsible for bringing a lot about in the process as well just by it existing. It’s now in people’s consciousness in people who invent and people who create. Some of it’s a chicken and egg problem.

Robert C. Cooper
You are talking about dream state, the phrase I like to bring up is “cautionary tale”. Why do we seem to collectively have “touch the hot stove syndrome?” Why is it that people say “don’t touch that” and everybody wants to go and touch it?

David Read
How do I want to put this? I think there’s a certain part of us that if we’re too comfortable in our own circumstances, there are many examples of this, we’re going to topple things over just to see what happens. I think it’s an intrinsic part of our nature that we as we are, would not exist in a utopia for very long before going absolutely crazy. We thrive on conflict.

Robert C. Cooper
I think nothing fascinates us more than the things we create. We are amazingly like, “our kids are the greatest things ever and we created them.” We love our art, we love what we do; we think that’s what makes us special and unique. Creating something extraordinary, like artificial general intelligence, is, I think, something we couldn’t resist doing. We’re just so fascinated by our own ability to do that, Oppenheimer is probably a good a good example of that. He supposedly walked the line of the moral implications and the potential negative uses of the technology, but nobody could resist “look at what we can do.”

David Read
Absolutely. Zero Hour was a whole new perspective for O’Neill. There’s an SG-1 dynamic change in season eight. Was it ever considered potentially having a fourth team member rotate in and out of SG-1 throughout the season or was it always just going to be the three and O’Neill keeping the light on?

Robert C. Cooper
You mean bringing someone new in?

David Read
As a guest, yeah.

Robert C. Cooper
There had been some talk, I think. Some names and some people who had been around in previous episodes were kicked around. But, again, I don’t mean to reduce this all to money.

David Read
Okay, fair point.

Robert C. Cooper
Budget wise it was an issue. What I loved about Zero Hour, why I wanted to do that, this is my own sort of fetishistic obsession with the mundane. I love the things that keep an office ticking. I loved Radar O’Reilly in M.A.S.H, he’s the guy who was the backbone of everything on that base. His job, while seemingly mundane, was what made all the other exceptional things that those people did possible. I wanted to sort of explore that in a world in which the absolutele extreme incredible stuff was happening. Stargates and world saving, what about the guy who was just the executive assistant to the guy who’s running it and putting that in perspective with a guy who hated all that. O’Neill is the guy who wants to be out carrying the gun and being the hero and saving the day. He’s absolutely not at all interested in being in the office. So it’s like, “how do we address the fact that O’Neill is the anti bureaucrat, becoming the bureaucrat and who is going to put up with his shenanigans and frankly errors? How do you get O’Neill just to show up to a meeting on time or even look at his schedule?” That seemed so absurd to me having worked on a show with both Richard Dean Anderson and Jack O’Neill for seven years. I thought it would be incredibly entertaining just to figure out how O’Neill lives in that box.

David Read
Well, I love David Kaufman as Gilmour in that episode. Part of me would have really enjoyed it being just, speaking of Radar, just a Jack and Walter Harriman episode, I think that it could have been really effective that way. If you take a step back and look at it, Walter kind of is the through line for the administration of the SGC. Even Landry says in the next season, “I like yelling at people and I can’t here, it’s such a well oiled machine.” That’s Walter, that’s the enlisted guys, true enough.

Robert C. Cooper
Two things: a) I thought it was interesting to have it be someone new because that would also introduce a level of discomfort for O’Neill.

David Read
Right, he’s comfortable with Walter, that’s true.

Robert C. Cooper
Right. Two: I got the note when I was talking about the idea that there had to be more going on. It couldn’t be just O’Neil sharpening pencils and so forth, as much as I would have thought that would have been really fascinating.

David Read
That would have been a great scene.

Robert C. Cooper
We had to sort of invent the under tone story of the kind of espionagey kind of stuff going on, the ulterior motive for that character who was in the episode.

David Read
And the through line of Jack writing a letter to Hammond. And just finishing it with “Yeah, nevermind.”

Robert C. Cooper
We didn’t want to impose that on Walter. We didn’t want Walter to be sort of spying on O’Neill.

David Read
That’s true. You want the threat to be exterior and I love in the end he knew all along what the nature of that character was. “Well he wasn’t supposed to tell you.” “Yeah, well don’t tell anyone that.” Oh, gosh. Covenant…

Robert C. Cooper
Speaking of prescient!

David Read
Right, exactly. Charles Shaughnessy, what an unexpected…a great addition. You named another character in the episode Captain Shefield as a nod. The guy does a great job of playing this kind of Elon Musk esque figure who’s just had enough. He’s just going to expose aliens, you create a character that just believes that the truth is more important than anything. He goes on his journey of maybe not?

Robert C. Cooper
Having people who oppose the position of your heroes, but who are also right. Like Emmett Bregman and like I said, Kinsey to some extent, although he kind of was a bit of a jerk at times. These people aren’t necessarily wrong. The dilemma of whether to keep the Stargate program a secret or not is an interesting one. It’s one of those ones where you can argue both sides and so I think it was high time we kind of really put that to the test.

David Read
Yeah, and not only is it just Stargate Command but you’ve also got The Trust. We’ve named them down, they’re not just the rogue NID, they’re separate. They’re not going to let him expose what is their considerable fortune building behind the scenes here.

Robert C. Cooper
It is literally the conspiracies that everybody is throwing around now.

David Read
Right now. Exactly right. I love that character and I love that you guys got him. I always wondered what happened to him and I always thought he would have been great on Destiny. It would have required bringing in Charles Shaughnessy for that show. I think he would have been a great asset on Icarus Base. He would have had to have been out there doing something, you’re not just going to get this guy to hide under a rock. It’s just the constraints of a show. Citizen Joe, talk about great guest stars!

Robert C. Cooper
We’ve talked about this a little bit before, but yeah, one of my favorite episodes, even being a clip show. We were at the point where it’s like, “oh my god, we cannot possibly do another clip show. How do we do that?” Yet, when that idea presented itself it just seemed brilliant. How do you you not do that?

David Read
Is it John Lenic who comes up to you and says, “based on everything that we’re looking at here we’re going to have to do an episode that pulls…”

Robert C. Cooper
It wasn’t like one episode, you have to understand these conversations are happening all the time, 24/7. We’re looking at the ticking clock of our budget and going, “okay, at what point is the studio gonna give us a call and how bad is it?” A lot of the time you also aren’t 100% sure. There’s a bit of a smoke and mirrors game that goes on with budgets so you’re kind of guessing at what the actual number is. We had been doing it long enough that we knew we had overspent at the beginning and we needed to kind of show some savings on an episode. Then it’s kind of like, “well, what’s the draw of that episode?” For us, it was like, “Oh my god, we’re gonna get Dan Castellaneta? There had been already a whole backstory, obviously, forever with O’Neill and Rick saying,”doh!” and being a Homer Simpson fan.

David Read
I forgot to tape The Simpsons. Was Dan aware at all or was anyone at Matt Groening’s office aware of Stargate’s love for The Simpsons or was it just a coincidence?

Robert C. Cooper
Well Rick bought an access to a table read of The Simpsons as a charity thing. I think he met Dan before he came on the show because of that so that was part of the reason we felt like there was a an opening there to approach him. Obviously after that Dan wrote the episode where O’Neill is at the convention in The Simpsons, so it kind of became a whole thing. Dan was really super pumped about not being Homer Simpson. He would not do the voice, he was, “I’m Dan Castellaneta and I’m playing this part, I’m not Homer Simpson.” I remember sitting at lunch with him and Michael and Rick one day and he just kind of slipped into it without knowing, or maybe he did, I don’t know. It was just like, “oh my god, I’m sitting here with Homer Simpson.”

David Read
And we get that when he’s fold over crying outside of the, I think his residence. It was great. It’s like “aah, he’s there.”

Robert C. Cooper
I just also love the idea of kind of making fun of ourselves a little bit with this guy who is literally writing our episodes and having them trashed and rejected by low level sci-fi magazines. “It’s not good enough!”

David Read
I think Joe Spencer is a valentine to fans because he is us in terms of getting a front row seat to the escapades of this team. He feels for them like we do and I don’t look at him as anything other than a fan just like us, never have. I think it really was well achieved.

Robert C. Cooper
It’s also like the old “it’s a cliche because it’s true.” As a writer, the first question you always get asked is, “where do you get your ideas?” and I love the idea of being able to have fun answering that question. They think they just pop into your head as a dream, but actually, it was a magic rock you touched at a yard sale.

David Read
Man, that magic rock became had such a foothold on the rest of the franchise. I bet you didn’t have any idea?

Robert C. Cooper
No.

David Read
Using it for the rest of the show.

Robert C. Cooper
We did that all the time, you’ve talked a lot about that. We were kind of opportunists that way, once we created something, a piece of technology, we would often really take advantage of it.

David Read
Absolutely, it’s now been established. I don’t want to belabor it but I’m curious, you alluded to the studio’s calling. Where typically is the line drawn for when a clip show is going to be created in a season? Is it the studio’s calling saying that they need one based on this? Is it…?

Robert C. Cooper
Like I said, there are always going to be layers of conversations going on between us, between the the line producers on the show, the production executives at the studio and then the head of the studio. When it gets to we’re having a conversation with the head of the studio and he’s like, “yeah, so I noticed you’re a million dollars over this season” we’re like, “don’t worry, we’ll get it back. We always do.”

David Read
So you never set out to do one? Or do you?

Robert C. Cooper
Um, sometimes. Sometimes at the beginning when you’re actually going to spend a whack of dough, you’re like, “we’re going to have to do one at some point” so it kind of hangs over you. On Lost City I think we did get a little bit of extra money, like a little bit of a bonus bump for Lost City. We typically would earmark the first two episodes, the mid-season two parter and the last episodes of the season as being our bigger shows, more expensive ones, and then find ways to economically make that up in other episodes.

David Read
Yeah, “we’ve got money for Praclarush Taonas, we’re gonna have to figure out how to do Antarctica. Okay, we got it.” It’s a big jigsaw puzzle. Threads. We’ve talked about Threads, bringing back Oma Desala, tying her to Anubis. I thought that was great and that made a lot of sense. We knew that she was doing stuff that she shouldn’t be doing and we tied her to Daniel as well, obviously he’s important to her story. Was it finally time for the Jaffa to win their freedom?

Robert C. Cooper
You talked about this, I think we mentioned it before, this was one of the biggest, most painful arguments I’ve had with the studio. One of my failures in some respects is the shorter version doesn’t have all that in it. We had to figure out how to cut, what to cut, it was a big problem. Then the issue with the studio releasing the short version on the DVDs when it was always supposed to be just for the broadcast version. It was just really annoying. Just for people who don’t know, we cut a long version. I had conversations with Syfy about airing that 90 minute version, but syndication, it becomes too complicated the way they sell the show around the world. They wanted a 44 minute version which was our standard show length. We cut a version but I did not ever want anyone to really see that episode that way or have it be the legacy of that episode. I was assured that the version that would go on the DVDs and that would end up on streaming eventually would be the 90 minute version. Somebody, not really paying attention or caring, was taking that short version off the shelf. We gave MGM such shit about it they ended up refunding people money for the DVD or if they ordered the DVD, they would send them the 90 minute version.

David Read
Absolutely. I did the same thing, absolutely. For streaming, it’s great because there’s no compression of time. Broadcast versions for international, the show is airing all the time. Is the longer version of Threads intact for those?

Robert C. Cooper
I don’t think so. I don’t know. It’s difficult to check to each region.

David Read
Yeah, that’s true.

Robert C. Cooper
I’ve heard and again, I haven’t validated this, but I’d be curious to know if you know. I’ve heard that they’re actually in some cases not even showing the 16 by 9 versions of the show, they are still 4 by 3.

David Read
Yes, in many cases. I don’t understand why this is so hard where they can’t get the 16 by nine cuts available, For the time that Stargate Command was operating online at Stargate command.com. season by season, it was a different cut. Some seasons would be widescreen, some seasons would be 4 by 3, there was a connection that was not being made. I haven’t checked in a while, but I think most of it has smoothed out, even on streaming sites like Amazon, this has been a while, there were 4 by 3 versions instead of 6 by 9. It’s got to be someone at MGM pulling X, Y or Z off the shelf and handing it over. It’s such malpractice as far as I’m concerned. This is not that hard, it just requires someone to be paying attention. What are you going to do? Like you said, “give them shit.”

Robert C. Cooper
The first several seasons of SG-1 were shot on 35 millimeter film.

David Read
Yep. Exactly right. And super 16 which I didn’t know about until recently having the conversations with the guys about having to add grain to visual effects in order to make the make the scenes flow consistently. There’s a lot of behind the scenes trickery that occurred throughout that show which is the process of making TV. Mobius. I was expecting at the end of season eight, was not expecting Mobius, because the end of season seven had been Lost City; it was this big thing. In season eight, really the Lost City is Reckoning and Threads and Mobius was an opportunity to do something a little bit lighter. As I’ve gone down the timeline here, in seeing it, I’ve appreciated it more. I wasn’t expecting it then to have kind of a coda after the team has all gone fishing, to take it back to SGC and do this. It was also a great way to tie SG-1 and Atlantis together by getting Atlantis what it needed most, which was power. Plugging that in so to speak with this two part story of making SG-1 a part of the uprising in Egypt, that was cool.

Robert C. Cooper
I’m sure you’ve talked to Joe and Paul about this too. We had just long a long meeting at one point about “are we really going to do another time travel story?” Paul would be like this [head in hands], just not wanting to engage.

David Read
We had a conversation, he and I, and it was very much back to continuity. He said that he was the time travel stickler in the room for internal consistency. It would get to the point where you guys would be writing these things out and would turn to Paul and go, “are you okay with that? Is that acceptable to you?”

Robert C. Cooper
Well, it was not really verbal. It would be like “is Paul still in the room? Has he walked out?” If he had walked out we were in trouble. Nobody really wanted to do time travel and the things that that entice you or convince you to do it is the fun you get out of alternate reality situations. I say alternate reality, it’s obviously time travel, but time travel gives you alternate reality.

David Read
The results. It’s your characters, it’s not another universe where we don’t potentially care about these characters as much, we’ve had that talk.

Robert C. Cooper
Right. So seeing the team having gone different ways and having to get the band back together and all that sort of stuff, that was the fun that makes it worth it.

David Read
Absolutely. I love the ending nod to the Treehouse of Horror. “Close enough.” That caused such a debate in fandom because fans are like, “if that’s changed, what else of the continuity has changed?” Joe was very vocal at the time, saying “everything’s the same. It’s fine. It’s a gag, go watch The Simpsons Treehouse of Horror with the lizard tongues. At least we didn’t give that to SG-1.” That would have been a little too on the nose.

Robert C. Cooper
Too expensive. We couldn’t really have afforded to do that.

David Read
You can ask Darren this, I always felt that SG-1 should end with the team fishing. It’s kind of like that through line that started with season three with O’Neill trying to get Sam to go fishing. In many respects, that is the case. In season nine Stargate Command had its own identity and there was something very poignant about buttoning up the show with this family just going and being with each other. When they’re not running and gunning down goa’uld halls escaping replicators they choose to be with one another. Yeah, that was super fun, I loved it. Robert, this has been fantastic, as always.

Robert C. Cooper
Always a pleasure.

David Read
I really appreciate you taking the time and thank you for the insight into the strike and what’s going on up there. We’re gonna get through this.

Robert C. Cooper
Yeah. Well, hopefully.

David Read
It’s just a question of when. Thank you for taking this journey with me, sir.

Robert C. Cooper
Thanks to everyone out there still interested in following Stargate and watching the show, you guys have made our lives great.

David Read
Absolutely. Executive producer, writer, director, Robert C. Cooper. Always a wonderful treat to have him on. We get to go into detail about the facets of a lot of these particular stories that have been written and discussing situations where they’re more relevant than ever. For instance, Covenant with aliens and everything else that’s going on. Always a pleasure to have him on. Much thanks to my moderating team for making the show continually possible. Tracy, Sommer, Jeremy, Antony and Rhys, you make the show continue to happen behind the scenes, I could not do it without your help. Linda “GateGabber” Furey, my producer, for helping me bring these shows together week after week with new guests, she’s just an asset. Big thanks to Frederick Marcoux at ConceptsWeb for keeping dialthegate.com up and running. We’ve got a number of new interviews heading your way. Keep it on dialthegate.com for the latest details on scheduling and who you’re going to be seeing and what topics we’re going to have. My name is David Read for Dial the Gate and we’ll see you on the other side.