We are thrilled to kick off 2023 with the return of Executive Producer, Writer and Director Robert C. Cooper to the show! In this pre-recorded episode we cover Season Six of SG-1, the nature of the Ark of Truth device, and answer your submitted questions!

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Timecodes
00:00 – Opening Credits
00:26 – Welcome and Episode Outline
01:39 – Season Six: Character and Writing Team Changes
07:21 – Moving from Showtime to the Sci-Fi (SyFy) Channel
09:58 – Budgets
14:08 – Clip Shows
15:27 – Corin Nemec and Backlash from Michael Shanks’s Departure
18:33 – Redemption Parts 1 and 2
22:35 – Guest Stars, McKay, Kinsey, Likeable and Unlikeable Characters
33:50 – Frozen
37:29 – Moving on Without Richard Dean Anderson in All Episodes
39:07 – Abyss
40:54 – Unnatural Selection
43:54 – Artificial Intelligence and Chat Bots
49:25 – Paradise Lost
53:56 – Ben Browder and Unending
57:08 – Disclosure
58:37 – Full Circle
1:05:00 – Looking Badk on Season Six
1:07:22 – The Ark of Truth Device
1:14:55 – Fan Questions, Season Six Changes
1:16:35 – Inspiration from Novels
1:17:22 – Guest Actors and James Spader Story
1:19:38 – Seed Ships and Gates in the Milky Way
1:21:43 – Space Force or Air Force
1:22:45 – Integrating Elements from the Movie to the Series
1:23:31 – Plan to Bring Back Rainbow Sun Francks
1:25:34 – Sunday, Carson Beckett’s Exit and Eventual Return
1:26:58 – Wrapping up with Robert
1:30:49 – Post-Interview Housekeeping
1:31:51 – End Credits

***

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TRANSCRIPT
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David Read
Welcome to 2023 and episode 159 of Dial the Gate. My name is David Read. Writer, Director and Executive Producer Robert C. Cooper is joining us in this episode. But before we get started if you like Stargate and you want to see more content like this on YouTube, it means a great deal to me if you click that Like button, which will make a difference with YouTube and awareness of the show, and will 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. And 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. And clips from this live stream are available now on GateWorld.net and will be available soon in the future on the Dial the Gate channel as well. As this is a pre-recorded episode I’ve taken questions submitted from fans on a separate YouTube video and added them to the the back third of this video. So you’re going to find a number of those questions there. Thank you to everyone who submitted, couldn’t get to everybody’s but I really appreciate you guys taking the time. So without further ado, let’s bring the gentleman in. Mr. Robert C. Cooper back again for more torture, sir. How are you?

Robert C. Cooper
Good. How are you?

David Read
I am very well. I’ve been looking forward to talking about this season with you. This is a season of big changes for the show. You had the first cast shake up, you had the first network shake up, and things started moving in some different directions for the series. Tell me about season six from your memory.

Robert C. Cooper
Biggest change was Daniel leaving and bringing Jonas, Corin Nemec, into the mix. And that, we’ve talked about before how that really energizes the chemistry I think and gives us new scenes to write, takes the familiarity away and gives you kind of that a little bit of uncomfortable, getting to know you, drama that, I think makes the writing a little more interesting for a little while.

David Read
Yes. What were you looking for in terms of what was essentially a replacement for the voice of reason, for the archaeologist, for the kind of like, the the moral center of the team? That’s a loaded question. I know. All of those things. What were you looking for Robert?

Robert C. Cooper
I think it was also the alien perspective. And I think one of the things that we tried to do to help us create story was always looking outside our own little house, our own little world. And it comes up a few times in the season where we start to maybe shift perspectives on who knows about the Stargate, what do they think about the Stargate. It just creates conflict and to a certain extent, you asked about a new network. I mean, we started essentially, writing our own experiences into the show, we had different perspectives on the show. And so it was kind of like we were the whole art imitates life thing where we were just sort of having fun with those new outsider points of view of what was going on in the Stargate program.

David Read
You also had Damien Kindler join the the writing team.

Robert C. Cooper
Damien who I met, I first met Damien on my first staff job on a show called PSI Factor: Chronicles of the Paranormal, was the first time I had gotten a writing job and we met then and got to be friends and through that experience.

David Read
He had, Joseph Mallozzi once coined, I think it was him, who coined, “A Kindler, gentler Stargate.”

Robert C. Cooper
Damien, you know, he liked to push. Actually, I feel like Damian like to push boundaries in terms of both humor and kind of all aspects, he would pitch the more violent thing, he would pitch the more sort of wacky thing, he would always try and kind of push the envelope a little bit. Maybe, again, from an outsider’s perspective and not knowing where the envelope was so he could always push the edges up. So you say, “Why aren’t you guys doing this?” And sometimes, we would react and say, “Oh, no, no, that’s not the show.” And other times, you would kind of go, “Well, wait a minute, why isn’t that the show?” You know?

David Read
Fair question.

Robert C. Cooper
Sorry, I was just the other thing I was gonna say about Jonas was you could argue well Teal’c was the alien, outside perspective, point of view, but he had already now been with the team, and the show for 100 episodes. And I felt like, we felt like he was one of us now. So even his, even Teal’c’s perspective of having an outsider coming in to the SGC was interesting. To see how far he’d come from being that guy.

David Read
I would argue some of the best scenes in, excuse me, in season six, were of Teal’c kind of, for want of a better word, educating Jonas on what it is to be on Earth, “Okay, stay in your lane. This is what is expected of you. This is what’s not,” because he had already had five years of experience. You said art kind of imitating life in terms of you putting your own experiences into the show. What was it like, moving to SyFy Channel from Showtime? Were there any changes in notes that you had to get used to? Like feeling out the rhythm of the people who you were communicating with week to week? What is that, what does that change feel? Like? Does it kind of feel like moving offices?

Robert C. Cooper
Yeah, every executive they’re making a salary, they’re doing a job, and they feel like they should do the job, they’re not just gonna twiddle their thumbs. So they will put their two cents worth in but for the large, from from the biggest sort of perspective, they bought the show because it was successful show and the last thing they wanted to do was screw it up. And they knew we knew the show better than anyone. And so they were smart enough not to sort of jump in and say, “We have this whole new idea for you. Go do that.” It was really a sort of, I think as we went along they certainly, and I think more so when we were creating Atlantis, which was more their show, right? It was the show they ordered and that they had kind of wanted. So they had a little more influence and point of view about what Atlantis should be but not that the creative side of SyFy didn’t have a say or a stake in it, but it’s complicated in terms of the way in which things happen. Stargate was brought to SyFy by their Acquisitions Division. So those guys had a perception or an understanding of the value of the show in the marketplace. And then we obviously did really well for them right out of the gate. So it wasn’t a question of them trying to fix something that was broken.

David Read
That’s fair. Did you have any budget changes for this particular season? Did you have a greater budget, was the budget cut in some way, when you went over to SyFy Channel? You still had 22 episodes for the first two years.

Robert C. Cooper
The budget is complicated because again nowadays it’s a little simpler, where you have streamers paying for the whole show, or in the case of network, they pay for the whole show, whereas with Stargate, it was still SyFy was paying for the US acquisition. That’s it, and MGM was then deficit financing International and selling the show internationally. And again, it was doing very well internationally. So the budget, frankly the budget was far more effected on a day to day basis by the dollar and tax credits, because we used to get a whole bunch of benefit from from the swing in the dollar. And there’s one point, I frankly can’t remember where it was, the Canadian dollar got really strong at one point and that really hurt budgeting the show. But I can’t remember what season that was. I’d say the biggest budgetary challenge we had was, again, with season one of Atlantis, that was where everybody wanted to make a new show. But they had different ideas about how to go about it. Starting the show is very expensive and we were, I think we were pretty good at maximizing the resources we had already put in place for for SG-1 sets and an infrastructure but the money they gave us for Atlantis was nowhere near enough to really make that show. Had we not been able to, had not been doing SG-1 and kind of almost marrying the two shows together and sharing resources. We couldn’t have pulled it off.

David Read
I remember, I don’t know if it was Brad or you saying, for Atlantis, “For some of these shots, I wish we could just put a window here but we can’t we’re out of budget.”

Robert C. Cooper
Well, it was, no it was really I mean even extras, I wish we could have some extra people walking around in this shot. So season one of Atlantis was really tight. I don’t remember season six really having too much. I mean look, we always we had a sort of pattern that we followed, which was we would spend quite a bit at the very beginning of the season because we wanted people to get excited about the show coming back and feel like it was gonna be a really big deal. And then we had a few smaller shows but we always sort of built up again by midseason and usually by the time we got to about 10, 11, 12 we were over budget and some of that was the battle between us, the sort of creative heads of the show, and our line producers who kind of always made it look like we were more over budget so that we would be more spendthrift and economical and then some how that money would then fall out and be like, “Wait a minute, we’re not nearly as over budget as we thought.” And we’d be like the sky is falling was constantly in mid-season, “The sky is falling you have to do some cheaper shows.” And then we’d be like but we need the last episodes to be huge because we want people to [watch] and come back and then somehow miraculously when all is said and done we would be slightly under budget.

David Read
Phew! Thank god for for Ronnie Cox. Call in Ronnie Cox. I think we need, we have another clip show Ronnie

Robert C. Cooper
Well and I mean look we definitely tried to avoid those, nobody loved it but I also think some of my favorite stories came out of clips shows. I wish they didn’t have to be clip shows like we could have done those stories without the clips. But I still love some of those clip episodes.

David Read
Well as long as they’re advancing the story. And you guys effectively did that there’s a major arc involved in each one of those episodes. Season one the SGC is effectively shut down, season six, we’re sharing this thing internationally, season seven we’re setting up the table, we’re setting up the chessboard for Full Circle, and Ronnie Cox participated in each of those.

Robert C. Cooper
Citizen Joe which is like my favorite.

David Read
Citizen Joe is another great one, that’s fantastic. That doesn’t even feel like a clip show at all. It feels like a fan valentine. At least that’s what I felt about that episode. Corin was going to be, I think it’s pretty obvious he had it, he was going to have an upward battle, uphill battle to fight, no matter what he did. And I think that he pulled off what he was given pretty admirably. I imagine you anticipated some form of backlash with Daniel being absent. Did you anticipate the backlash that you guys actually received?

Robert C. Cooper
I’m not saying that we were happy about it in terms of the, from the fan perspective, obviously they were upset about Daniel being gone. But we were kind of happy they were sad he was gone. Like if nobody had cared that would have been a problem. So the more the more angry they were, in a way, the more we felt like, “Hey, we had created something that people loved. And now they’re upset about it. And we understand that and it’s not a bad thing.” I mean, it’s not like we willfully chose to kill off Daniel. It was Michael Shanks decided to leave the show for a little while. And so, we knew would be fans would be upset. And on some level, it was kind of gratifying that they were upset and…

David Read
Something’s working.

Robert C. Cooper
Yeah.

David Read
Or at least something had worked. Moving forward maybe another story.

Robert C. Cooper
Yeah. And I think by the way that that Corin did a brilliant job of, other actors might have come in and been like,” I have to steal the scenes and own this place and be larger than life in order to fill the shoes of Daniel Jackson.” And I think what he did well, was say, “I’m going to tread lightly, and try and be as likable as I can be. But let let the audience come to me instead of me trying to force myself on them.”

David Read
And I know for a fact several Jonas fans out there who had preference to him over over Daniel, so it’s interesting kind of the back and forth. You get people on both sides at the end of the day. So yeah, the savedanieljackson.com is archived at Stargate SG-1 Solutions, that still exists. As a domain at least, it’s interesting how these things continue to perpetuate forward. So, Redemption one and two, you wrote this one. This is the introduction to season six. We’ve introduced a Anubis in our season five finale. And you have a lot of things going on in this episode. I love the episodes that are named in such a way as to reflect one or two or sometimes even three different things within that show. Because this episode is that.These pair of episodes are definitely about redemption on all different sides. You have the story of of Rya’c coming to terms with who his father is, you have Jonas getting used to his place in the world of Stargate Command, and in some respects for McKay as well, frankly, getting back in the good graces of Stargate Command with helping out the problem. We are under a direct attack from Anubis in this one, tell us what you remember about Redemption.

Robert C. Cooper
I mean, as a young, young film goer, before I even ever thought about being able to be in this business, really more of a dream. I was heavily influenced by certain films and I I think it’s sort of trendy when you talk about the original three Star Wars movies to say Empire is your favorite or is the best one. And certainly the Ewoks are very polarizing in terms of Return the Jedi. And we certainly were making our shots out a few times in Stargate, with the Furlings. But, I mean, as a young sort of impressionable mind, The Return of the Jedi was very informative, and formative for me in terms of you know seeing disparate, separate storylines, converging. Like different missions, all for the same purpose, working from different points of view. So you had everybody working together, but apart. And the way in which that all created being able to cut from one of those to the other, to see the progress, created just created so much dramatic tension. As opposed to having one storyline or even two. So that definitely, kind of heavily influenced my approach to doing those types of stories where you would have these people off on different aspects of the mission separated, in our case, by planets, while working together from different sides of it. So someone’s trying to deal with the Gate problem going to blow up while someone else is trying to stop the weapon from causing the problem. And at the same time, I actually don’t remember where I learned this, but somewhere along the line I learned that it’s always good to have more than one thing going on in the scene. So yeah, we got to stop this weapon from blowing up. But also, are you my father? You know?

David Read
No, absolutely.

Robert C. Cooper
And who are you and where have you been? You kind of know, you have to tick those boxes when you’re coming up with a story. And yeah, and then we often would bring an actor in for what seemed to be a guest starring role and they pop so much and are so amazing we are just kind of compelled to want to bring them back. We talked about this in a previous conversation about Maybourne and his evolution throughout the series. But McKay, obviously, was probably I would say the pinnacle example.

David Read
Absolutely, he’s absolutely up there. If you can think of someone that you that you’d want to return, I remember the announcement for Atlantis and being like, “Wow,” on one hand, and on the other hand, “Is this going to work?” And we’ll we’ll obviously get into that discussion when we come to Atlantis. But, yeah.

Robert C. Cooper
I don’t know if we ever talked about this, or if anyone else ever mentioned it, but he wasn’t originally the guy.

David Read
Yeah, Benjamin Ingram.

Robert C. Cooper
We had gone through a long casting process. And as I said, I’ve said before, casting a show, particularly like this, where there’s four or five leads, it’s about finding the right chemistry. And so you know, and you never know what you’re going to get like, you can have an idea and try and force it and say, “This is the character we’ve created for this show.” But sometimes you just don’t find the actor that suits that role. And so at that point in the process, we kind of looked at each other and we’re like, “We kind of had the guy we just have to change the character a little bit.” So yeah, we always did. It’s something I, I learned and gotta give a lot of credit to Jonathan and Brad for is take the best actor that comes in for an audition regardless of whether they’re perfect for the role you created. Change the script to suit the actor, because that’s more valuable than you trying to, essentially execute your vision with inferior tools.

David Read
If you got something popping right in front of you. I mean, suppose you’d be crazy not to try and make it work.

Robert C. Cooper
Exactly.

David Read
So, yeah, I don’t know. Go ahead.

Robert C. Cooper
No, David’s incredible, a force force to be reckoned with.

David Read
And I think that it would have been, it would have been awkward for him to make the transition to Atlantis had he only appeared in 48 Hours. I think Redemption really facilitates the likeability of his character, especially once Sam accepts him. That’s the key because once Sam accepts him then we are given permission as an audience to accept him as well. Because Sam is on our side. We’re with Sam.

Robert C. Cooper
Because he’s a class of character that is what I like to call unlikable-likable. He’s unlikable when you don’t like him initially and it’s only after you kind of get to know him. He’s a villain in his exteriors. And then the more you get to know him the more you kind of appreciate him, and then you kind of get to like him. So it takes a little while – he’s an acquired taste.

David Read
But also, I enjoyed disliking him at the same time. When he would mistreat underlings, you know?

Robert C. Cooper
I’ve always said that about with other writers in discussion about pitches and creating shows that you often use the word likable in terms of evaluating your lead character, but the truth is a better word is watchable. Like, you don’t have to create the old school way of writing television was that your lead character had to be the hero, and had to be likable. And a lot of actors would look at their part and give notes related to well this makes me unlikable. And it’s like, maybe that’s just making you more three dimensional and more relatable because you’re not perfect. But I think there’s, and then we sort of fell into that long, long, dark hole of antihero heroes, people horribly flawed but at the same time compellingly watchable. And I think the reason is, more than likability, we are attracted to competence. And that competence can happen in one particular arena. While the rest of the character is incredibly flawed, and so we admire that competence in that one arena, at the same time, enjoy seeing them trip and fall and do bad things in other ways, because it’s much more relatable to our own lives, you know?

David Read
Yeah, Breaking Bad when you look at that one. If Walter White is really good at doing something illegal, does it kind of make you feel bad that you’re enjoying watching him do it or at least I would enjoy watching him get out of the situation that he put himself in?

Robert C. Cooper
We all want to do dangerous bad things with safety guardrails on. There’s something kind of fun about living in that world. It’s like, why gangsters are so appealing in the same respect. Tony Soprano was, he was a murderous gangster. But he was also the best at it within the show, he was the smartest guy, and he also didn’t want to be doing it. Like there was an aspect to him that was like he just wanted to be a good dad and he wanted to get out. But he was also really good at what he did. He was much better at that than anything else he could find to do in life or that he could figure out to do in life and so that created a push pull that I think everybody is interested in and attracted to is that sort of struggle. And at the same time kind of like I said, “There’s occasionally people I wish I could strangle.”

David Read
Yeah, Kinsey is so polarizing on the online forums, even to this day. It’s interesting he’ll come up in some, I’ll bring up Kinsey, someone will bring up Kinsey like, “Oh, I hate him. I hate that character so much, he just just makes my blood boil. I wish he would just die. I can’t stand him.” And I have to ask, and I often will ask this like,”Isn’t that because the writer and the actor are doing their job? Or do you hate the character because he’s not written well?” It’s never that. It’s because he is a proper realized opposition to your hero, to the people that…

Robert C. Cooper
Called an antagonist or you wouldn’t love your hero. I mean, maybe there are people or fans out there who would just like everybody to be shiny and happy and holding hands and skipping through the Stargate every week. But you need antagonists, your hero is only ever as good as your bad guy is bad. And I think inevitably, the more you love your hero, the more you’re going to hate the person standing in their way. So it’s a testament once again, to being successful at creating that dramatic opposition. I don’t take that as a negative at all. In fact, I think Ronnie Cox would agree that it means the more people hate me, the more I’m doing my job well.

David Read
You know, they hate him more than they hate world dominating oppressive Goa’uld and I was fascinated by that, it’s like, okay, you hate the politician more than you hate this guy who’s wiped out millions of people.

David Read
But he’s closer to reality, transferring some…

David Read
That’s correct. They’re projecting.

Robert C. Cooper
…hate they have for something they feel onto him. And whereas, and the alien on some level, you know that your heroes are going to defeat the alien. And the problem is, too often, politicians win.

David Read
Yeah, that’s true, too.

Robert C. Cooper
And I think we feel this frustration around that type of it’s hard to fight bureaucracy. And it’s, again, one of the reasons I liked those elements of the show was because it kind of, you know people often ask, “Well, what are the reasons, like why did Stargate work? What are the sort of tentpole reasons why Stargate was successful?” And I think, one, the one we talked about a lot is the sense of humor, which a lot of sci fi shows don’t have. And two, was that it was taking place now. It was us and, and we were not afraid to bring, like other shows dealt with those things through similarity and allegory. And that type of bringing the world into their world, but in Stargate, it was our world. So we could have those discussions and those characters like politicians and presidents and real life generals come into the show and play themselves.

David Read
And just the other side of the galaxy, someone in the earth, we’re in another galaxy, and you’re struggling to survive, and then someone comes in and usurps your command. Like it happens to Weir more than once, you know? Yeah, it’s a fascinating, fascinating dynamic. Frozen, which is kind of a pseudo part two to Solitudes, and really putting pieces into place for what could potentially be another series or another something for Stargate. We have this woman frozen beneath the ice of Antarctica, in the form of Ona Grauer is Ayiana. And I’m assuming at this point you have completely decided that the Ancients are our ancestors and you’re moving those pieces into place. Am I right?

Robert C. Cooper
Well, yeah, more than that. I feel like that was a that was something that we were pretty confident in what Frozen did was introduce the idea that we human beings were the second evolution of humanity and that the first evolution had ascended. That was sort of the building, the first real big clue about the Ancient mythology. Who built the Stargates? Why are they around? Where did the people go who built them? This was the first time we were going to really let the audience know what we thought was going on.

David Read
Yeah, where do we come from as a species? That’s a big question that’s tackled in this episode and ultimately we move forward with that in Full Circle. Ona Grauer, I loved her performance in this and it was, I was hopeful that she would return for the Atlantis pilot in some small way. And I got on the phone with her after you guys, this episode had aired and I said, and Atlantis was beginning to be in production, and I said, “Have they called you?” and she’s like, “No, they haven’t called me.” And then, lo and behold, there she is in the beginning of this, and I haven’t decided to say if she fibbed to me or if she actually hadn’t gotten the call yet.

Robert C. Cooper
Probably not. Probably not.

David Read
Exactly.

Robert C. Cooper
I don’t think she would have lied about that.

David Read
And the relationship between her and Jonas is great in this episode. I think it’s a, pardon the pun, I think helps people warm up to the character a lot, because we see how sensitive he is. And how Corin is able to pull this off as an actor. I think he played it really well.

Robert C. Cooper
Yeah, that episode was sort of, I constantly go back to the movies that sort of I was, you know, inspired.

David Read
Of course.

Robert C. Cooper
Obviously, this one, you know, I’ve always loved The Thing, the Carpenter movie. And I was like how do we, I want to do one where we’re in a an ice, a base, in a frozen world. And then there was a movie, not pretty well known, and I probably, I don’t know, haven’t seen it in a very long time. But it’s called Iceman about thawing out a Neanderthal. And yeah, I just remember the process in the movie of thawing him out, and then bringing him back to life. And I was like that’s kind of cool.

David Read
This was the first opportunity to, or first situation where you had to exit, I guess the second because when his daughter was born, so the second situation where you had to exit RDA from the series for an episode because he was allotted for a certain number of episodes in season six. Tell us about moving forward with not having your lead on a, for every episode. Because with this next episode you had Nightwalkers absent Jack and you had to write in a reason into the script.

Robert C. Cooper
Yeah, um, I don’t know. I mean, it was just, you do have to do I mean, we didn’t, it wasn’t, we didn’t think that it was a big deal. I’m sure the RDA fans were like, “Where’s Jack and why are you writing him out?” But it happens all the time in television, particularly in long running shows. Hopefully about at the point we were at everybody was, the other characters were strong enough to carry an episode for sure. So wouldn’t have felt like too big a deal.

David Read
That’s perfectly fair. And I think the results is one of his, one of Jack’s better episodes, Abyss. What did you think of Abyss? Brad Wright’s, man.

Robert C. Cooper
Well, Brad’s kind of a playwright at heart. And he used to love writing two-handers and things that are more about the characters than about the whiz bang but at the same time, you can’t help themselves and he’s like, “I’m gonna make this up.” The thing about a play is it’s hard to do a play in a 3D rotating set. So I mean, he would often sort of take his playwright notions and sort of add some, some sci fi element to them that allowed him to play with it. And you know, it’s funny because that episode was, again, supposed to be kind of a timed money saver to a certain extent. So we would shoot, we would get two characters who were not in the other story, so he could shoot a lot of stuff second unit, thus saving a bunch of money. And yet, he would then add this really expensive element.

David Read
Like the gravity prison?

Robert C. Cooper
A gimballed set, but you know, look that, I think, if it had just been Daniel and Jack talking to each other in a room, it wouldn’t have been an episode Stargate.

David Read
I agree. Yeah. Unnatural Selection, you co-wrote with with Brad, this is a continuation.

Robert C. Cooper
That’s really much more Brad’s episode. He, we often would, the way the writers room works is somebody would come in with an idea or notion or have something that they brought to the table. And really, I mean, even in the episodes that I wrote, a ton of credit goes to the room for having constructed that story, we break the stories together and then someone got to go off, but then you get notes. And on your pass, you definitely take it down the road as the producer of that episode going forward. But the writing is really a group effort, to some extent, and the credits don’t often, in many cases reflect whose idea was what within the grand scope of the series. I think Brad in that particular case, I don’t remember honestly, the real genesis of that story, but it may have been that I pitched a significant element of that story in the room and Brad felt like he wanted to share a story credit. Well, I don’t, I can’t, I honestly don’t remember that particular incidence, but those sorts of things happened where, look there’s episodes where Brad and myself and Paul and Joe all got story credit because we felt like we actually came up with that episode together and then someone went away and wrote it. So why things are credited the way they are, is very complicated and in some respects but also not really. Pretty sure it’s pretty simple too.

David Read
This episode has one of the more heavy endings to really any Stargate episode, where Jack used the trust of a burgeoning human consciousness, human-like consciousness, against him. And it has consequences later on, as we see with Samantha getting tortured as a result of this which all of us were like, “Well, I kind of saw that one coming.” We betray what could arguably have been a pretty interesting ally so that we can get out of the situation which arguably we probably wouldn’t have otherwise. Because…

Robert C. Cooper
I am, I mean, I don’t know if you or your audience, is following the sort of extent of the progression of AI right now. But I’m always super nice to the AI chatbots. I mean, I’m very respectful and polite for those reasons.

David Read
Don’t want to get on their bad side?

Robert C. Cooper
No, no, I’m afraid for the future. Yeah, no, listen, just treat your AI, treat your AI well.

David Read
I got to share this with you. This is timely because I just started using ChatGPT two days ago and I was talking with one of the my Wormhole X-Tremists pals on the other channel. And I said we were talking about Kurzweil’s Singularity. And I said, “You know by 2050 there will be as many lawyers fighting for the rights of synthetics as there will be for organics.” I said that’s a quote that I read for about 14 years ago. And she said, “If I dwell on,” Yvie said, “If I dwell on this too long, I’d probably have an existential crisis but it’s fascinating and scary.” I said, “It’s okay. I posed the notion to ChatGPT and it told me I shouldn’t worry.” So that makes it all better. She said, “Phew! That’s a load off.”

Robert C. Cooper
Yeah. Yeah.

David Read
Just crazy. Have you played with this thing?

Robert C. Cooper
Oh, yeah.

David Read
It’s a wonder.

Robert C. Cooper
I asked him what the top 25 science fiction shows of all time where. Have you tried that one yet?

David Read
No, what did it say?

Robert C. Cooper
Ah, SG-1 was number 11 or 12.

David Read
All right. Did either of the other Stargates make it?

Robert C. Cooper
No.

David Read
Isn’t that interesting? And they say, it says that it’s unbiased. It can’t create a top 25 list.

Robert C. Cooper
Oh, no. What it said was it had drawn this from certain opinions. And that those opinions are somewhat limited because of its access to information, blah, blah, blah.

David Read
But it didn’t cut and paste from a top 25 list somewhere.

Robert C. Cooper
It seems to have sort of amalgamated from.

David Read
That’s the scary thing. Up until 2021 it has the wealth of human knowledge.

Robert C. Cooper
A limited human knowledge. I don’t think it’s access to everything.

David Read
Arguably. Yeah.

Robert C. Cooper
I mean, like, I honestly feel like

David Read
Watson.

Robert C. Cooper
The whole other conversation, but yeah, it feels like someone threw out a hand grenade and everyone else is holding back on their cruise missiles. They’re out there. Like people are like, “Oh, this is going to be a Google search killer.” And it’s like, Google has an AI that they just haven’t released. And who knows how powerful that is? And apparently they’ve, they say they firewalled that from the internet, but, you know.

David Read
Oversight. Where’s the Kinsey on that one when you need one? Anyway?

Robert C. Cooper
Well, I don’t know how you regulate it. I don’t know how you regulate. Because once the cat’s out of the bag…

David Read
I think that the scary thing for me is not that these things exist, but the velocity of the change. It’s, and I said this to Yvie, “It’s too fast for our ape brains to keep up with evolutionarily.”

Robert C. Cooper
I was having dinner with some folks last night and I got in the car with my family afterwards and I said, not that these people are arrogant or anything by any means, it’s more like arrogant by actual pure dictionary definition. We are too arrogant as as a species to fully accept or comprehend how much smarter than us these things are, and are going to be and how exponentially quick they’re going to learn like people are like, “Oh, you know, but ChatGPT keeps making mistakes or saying wrong things.” And I’m like, “Great, now, today but next week it won’t, a month from now it won’t, you know?” And or, yes, there’s a certain influence that certain people have over it, which is the determination of the facts on which it bases itself, but which is scary in and of itself when you want to spread misinformation. But the actual brain behind it is not flawed and it’s going to continue to get smarter and smarter and more capable beyond our ability to understand it, nevermind control it.

David Read
If it hurts us does it matter if it’s reasoning is malice, malicious intent, or if it just, or some other reasons, the end result is the same. So it’s yeah, it’s extraordinary. Paradise Lost, this is one of my favorite episodes because it’s an O’Neill-Maybourne story and it’s kind of the culminate, well it is the culmination of of their contest with each other. And it pushes their friendship, if you will, to to the edge. This is a great start. Did you just start off wanting to do a Maybourne O’Neill story? Do you recall the nugget of the genesis of this?

Robert C. Cooper
Jonathan and Brad were the ones who, who kind of forged a relationship with Richard Dean Anderson at the very beginning. They created the show, SG-1. They, there’s a sort of, whenever you have a star and some creators get together there’s a sort of agreement of trust that that is made off the top. And there’s always issues and back and forth on that but nevertheless he made that commitment to them. And then I sort of come in and Jonathan leaves, and I’m kind of the new guy. And it took a while for me to develop this relationship, a relationship with Rick to the point where he kind of trusted me and it’s like when you say trust is what does that mean? It’s that you kind of have this lens with which you might read something and say, “Oh, this is good, or bad.” Actors, often, they’re like, “I don’t know. But if I believe in the writer, he’s the one who’s kind of protecting me and knows the audience and how they’re going to respond to this particular piece.” So and I think I mentioned that Fifth Race was like the first time that I really engaged in trying to write a O’Neill-heavy based episode, and that really, kind of helped my relationship with Rick solidify. And so yeah, I wanted to write an O’Neill heavy episode. And I felt at that point that I had a better handle on the sort of things that Rick liked to do. So I kind of went into Paradise Lost with that mindset. And then I thought, “Well, who’s the guy who’s been the biggest thorn in O’Neill’s side?” And also, I knew that Rick liked Tom, that there, if Rick hadn’t, well, we wouldn’t, frankly if Rick hadn’t like Tom we wouldn’t have him back as often as we did. But I knew that there was that sort of, there was an edge between them as characters, but that they did actually really liked playing off each other. So and that kind of made sense.

David Read
Was the dark, gritty Apocalypse Now kind of texture to it on purpose?

Robert C. Cooper
Um, yeah, of course, I mean, like, I don’t think we use Apocalypse Now as a reference. There’s more what happens to you when you’re stranded. And for a long period of time. How does survival, never quite got around to the conversation about who was going to eat who.

David Read
Right, eventually it goes that way.

Robert C. Cooper
But, yeah, being stranded with somebody kind of takes you down to your very raw bare core and you get a chance to kind of see characters, say and do things that they wouldn’t normally do.

David Read
Absolutely. Yeah. Jumping ahead a little bit. I remember you having this, I think it was you had this conversation with Ben Browder about tearing up the bedroom in Unending and it’s like he’s trapped in here at this point for probably 10 years. Let him go a little nuts. Be free with your hero. You know, it’s okay. You know?

Robert C. Cooper
Yeah. Well, Ben is a guy who came from the world of that classic hero. In which, he was always very concerned, because it was his bread and butter to be likable. And in control, like he was in control. And, yeah, it was difficult for him to wrestle with the idea of being out of control, and his other argument was control of oneself is the primary, the Prime Directive of being in the military, and he didn’t want to disrespect that either. And I was like, “You’re so far outside the realm of that responsibility in this particular moment, that I think it’s okay.” And in fact, it to me would have been almost weirdly insane for him not to be a little more emotionally unhinged.

David Read
Well, with that, if I’m gonna go down this for a minute, with that particular episode, if you don’t have the someone experiencing a crisis like that, in an episode where they pass 50 years together and alone, it wouldn’t have really made sense as an episode as much as it did. You have to see someone snap, and it would have made sense for it to be Vala. But at that point Vala really had Daniel, so you had to go with someone, and I think it works.

Robert C. Cooper
You know, part of the beauty of science fiction, which you don’t have in drama, is you can create scenarios that allow you to take your characters to total extremes, and then bring them back and not have everybody say, “But wait a minute, aren’t they dramatically changed in some way from that experience?” And yes, you want them changed somewhat and to evolve, whatever. But it’s like, it’s a window into what they might be to happen to them. And drama doesn’t allow for that because if you have a character who goes off to war and comes back, they’ve always had that experience. And they have, their character has to be informed by that or you’re not being true to their character.

David Read
Yeah, moving forward, right. Disclosure, we’ve discussed Stargate Disclosure to a degree you did excerpts of this episode. But as a group, did you approach season six, like, “Okay, we have to, we want to let a few governments in on this.” When did that conversation come into place? Let’s let a few more governments in on this secret. If and when we do an international expedition at some point to another galaxy, it might behoove us to let some of those governments know.

Robert C. Cooper
Yeah, I mean, again, I’d like to draw the analogy to the moving to a different network and having different people’s points of view suddenly influence the show. But I also, it was just, we had done so much with the Russians. It was like, “How is it possible no one else is hearing about this?” You know, and…

David Read
They were on the dark web, according to Martin Lloyd. Yeah, that’s probably Kinsey though.

Robert C. Cooper
There’s not too many things are actual secrets. So, yeah, I just thought we kind of figured we had to go there eventually. And maybe it was even past the point where it was cheap and realistic.

David Read
That’s a fair point. Full Circle, I love this episode, Rob. This is a real love letter to fans of the show, who have been watching it all along. You bring back more than one or two actors from Children of the Gods into this episode to give it more weight and meaning. And we lose Abydos in a way. The Abydosians still exist in one form or another, which I think some fans could argue almost as a cheat. It was an interesting approach to take. What do you feel about Full Circle in in hindsight and how it achieved what it achieved?

Robert C. Cooper
It’s funny, I was reading about that episode a little bit for our conversation and I think I had maybe forgotten that was what happened at the end of that episode. And I was like, “Huh I don’t know if I would have done that today.” Like I don’t know if that’s the ending I would have chosen because it also seemed slightly inconsistent with the Ancients mottos, you know, like their way of going about things.

David Read
So it was Oma, it was Oma who did it.

Robert C. Cooper
I know, and yeah, and so she’s acting outside and she was the sort of the independent agent. She suffers the consequences, but in a way, even her choice was interesting. And I, it’s one of those beats where I went back and thought about it. And I was like, “I don’t know, if I would have done that the same way.”

David Read
It what it does do is lend to her conversation with Daniel in Threads, I keep making the same mistake again and again, and that’s why they punish me by allowing Anubis to run free. So we see that it’s not just Daniel, and it’s not just the monk at Keb, she’s monkeying around with rescuing people whom she feels are undeserving of the fates that they receive. And I think that that’s a fascinating take on why the other hand, the Ancients see Anubis is kind of balancing the scales, because of what she’s perpetually doing.

Robert C. Cooper
Yeah, yeah. And that the Ancients are looking down at us and going, “Everything we’re going through, all the good, and the bad is all part of us growing up.” So don’t interfere with that, don’t help out and solve problems that are there for the sake of your own, of our education, essentially, our evolution. And in order, in order to evolve and ascend, you have to go through this, you have to have these good and bad moments, and challenges. If no one ever challenged you the way Anubis is challenging humanity, then humanity doesn’t grow.

David Read
And look at Anubis, someone, a being, who did not deserve the place that he has found himself in, and is now stuck because they couldn’t push him back and that in itself is kind of terrifying. So don’t ever tell the Jaffa that Anubis can’t be killed, otherwise, we’d have a real problem.

Robert C. Cooper
Daniel coming back, obviously, a big, big deal. It was a big, big deal behind the scenes as well. You know, probably one of the more difficult, ah, situations that I found myself in as a producer-slash-showrunner.

David Read
How so?

Robert C. Cooper
Um, well, I mean, look, we had made a commitment to Corin. And Michael had made his choice, but then sort of expressed some interest or I had gone back to him, and we had had some conversations and the deal negotiating, I mean, honestly, the worst part of my job ever has always been, deal negotiations, because it kind of takes all this what on the surface, everybody talks about being this group, artistic endeavor and a family situation and you’re always, then you start putting dollar figures attached to it, and here’s what you’re worth, and that becomes a very cold and unfortunate part of the process.

David Read
Now, to be clear, this happens with the agents, is that correct?

Robert C. Cooper
Agents, lawyers, studio, like, look at some point, I have been in many situations where I would love to pay the person, not my money, to pay them whatever they want. But I gotta go back to the studio, and I’m seeing the creative value of the situation and studio’s saying, “This is the most we’re willing to pay.” And then you get feelings wrapped up in it, right? Like people get…

David Read
You know these people.

Robert C. Cooper
Personally, well, they come to me, they’re like, “They don’t like me or want me enough because they’re not willing to pay me enough.” And then it becomes personal and it’s not really ever that personal.

David Read
You only have so much money.

Robert C. Cooper
Yeah, yeah. So anyway, that was a tough one. And obviously, we were glad to have Michael back but…

David Read
We had had him back in various forms throughout the season as Thor and as ascended Daniel. It was a nice, looking back on season six, it was nice intermittent blips, and in The Changeling as well. This episode is extraordinary with Teal’c. He functions very much as guardian angel throughout the season and ultimately with the people of Abydos as well. And I think that Michael’s continued contribution really helped button up that year, because Daniel was never really gone. He was there with the people that he loved. He was there with Rya’c, when him and Bra’tac were stuck. It’s a very unique year, because it was transitory for the characters, it was transitory for the show as a whole and I think it’s one of the more unique seasons of that series.

Robert C. Cooper
I also really liked, I kind of loved the idea that Daniel thought he had the power but then it wasn’t him. Yeah, you know, “I got the magic. I got the power. I’m going to stop you.”

David Read
Well, it’s one of the better lines in Full Circle, Daniel thinks he’s going to have to do something with Anubis and Jack goes, “Can you kick his ass?” And Daniel says, “If I have to.” But he’s tapping into an external power that the Ancients have control of the tap and they yank him away. And part of me is like, “What would Daniel’s wrath have really looked like if the Ancients had let him tear into Anubis?” It probably would have been something like we saw in the Ark of Truth. It’s good stuff, man. How do you feel about season six as a whole? Did it accomplish what you wanted to accomplish?

Robert C. Cooper
You know five and six was really where SG-1 hit its full stride. And the show was really working. And I think we knew what the show was, and were able to kind of build on it.

David Read
Absolutely. I have a question that I have been meaning to ask you. I’m sure one of them, many dozens that come in and out of my mind. But it’s really relevant to a piece that you did later. And then I’m going to get to the fan questions. In the Ark of Truth we have probably the MacGuffin to end all Macguffins we’re gonna go go through the Supergate, we’re going to go into the Ori galaxy. And we’re going to find this thing that’s been buried for millions of years that Daniel read about that should help us win the war. Was it your intention, there’s a little bit of talk about this between Daniel and Vala, maybe the Ark of Truth is capable of making you believe other things that are true as well, maybe we’re supposed to believe certain things. And I have always wanted to know, and was it your intent then and is it is it your intent looking back that the technology explained why something was true to someone? Or could the programmer just make the person believe whatever they wanted to believe they essentially brainwashing this.

Robert C. Cooper
Ask Mark Zuckerberg. I mean, it’s so much kind of related to that. Now, I mean, I saw it as a, it was not a repository of true facts. It was a device that gave you the ability to see the truth. So if you had a multiple choice test, and there were five answers, and four of them were lies, and one of them was the truth, you would know which one wasn’t true. And I know that sounds like magic, but that’s what essentially what it was was a way of convincing you that what you were believing in was a lie. So in other words, if there was some magic button you could push on social media and have everybody, I mean, they wouldn’t want to. The problem is people don’t want to believe the truth sometimes, right?

David Read
They want what they believe to be true.

Robert C. Cooper
They want what they believe to be true. And whatever has gone on in their lives. They are so, I mean, again I’m not taking sides on any facts, I’m just saying that in many cases what you have are people who are brainwashed. And what the Ark of Truth was, was an un-brainwashing device that would relieve you of that condition under which you were convinced to, and to a certain extent, we had sort of explored it a little bit in the past with the Jaffa, and Goa’uld brainwashing, where we had to somehow break that, and it was a much more arduous process, particularly in the case of Teal’c where we had to break the brainwashing the second time around, but the Ark of Truth was essentially a device that would reset you to the ability to see the truth.

David Read
Okay. So it parted clouds by removing your own stigmas and foibles from it.

Robert C. Cooper
Yeah, whatever it is in the brain that sort of caused you to believe the wrong thing. Now, again, how does that, how do you determine what is right and what is wrong? What is the fact database on which it’s, you know…

David Read
On [which] it built?

Robert C. Cooper
But I think to some extent, what it’s doing, and again, this is total magic so I don’t know how — don’t get me into the mechanisms of it. But rather than telling you what the truth is, it’s allowing you to see it better, right? It’s so maybe on some level, you see two facts, and you know one to be true, to some extent, but you choose to believe the other one because it helps you more. And so you become ingrained. Like it’s making you rich, or it’s getting you something that you want to believe in this fact to say you believe in this fact. And then the more you say it the more you start to believe it. But deep down, you kind of know this other thing to be true. If somehow it was to your great advantage to say the sky is purple and you walked around saying the sky is purple. Deep down, you’re looking up and going, “I know that sky is blue,” you’re just choosing to say the sky is purple for all these other reasons. And I guess, in some magical world the Ark of Truth would be like, “Oh, come on the sky is blue.”

David Read
The emperor has no clothes. And I think it’s also telling that when you open it up, it emits nothing but light. Where you’re shining…

Robert C. Cooper
Shining a light on..

David Read
You’re shining a light.

Robert C. Cooper
It’s bit of a, I mean, it’s kind of a visual cliche. But yeah, you’re shining a light on something where darkness is the friend of untruths.

David Read
Yeah, absolutely. And we better be very careful as to where we store that thing. Because if someone figured out how to reprogram it, to make someone believe something else, you could you could have quite a hellish device on your hands.

Robert C. Cooper
Right. But again, that would be, back to our ChatGPT conversation where if you were feeding, if it were a fact spitting machine, and you were able to feed the facts into it, that’s different than a device that resets your brain to understand what is true and what is not. Now, obviously, if we were all told something from the moment we were born, we all believe it, it’s not within our control to see those lies. I don’t know how to construct that type of machine. But it was interesting to think, wish that if something like that existed, it would be an easy way to undo people who believed in something that was so harmful.

David Read
Obviously detrimental. But then again, it goes back to the larger existential question, who’s truth? And that’s what I love about science fiction. A few questions for you from fans. Season six is the first season, on the new network, that really feels like a whole new level compared to the progressions in the first five years, with the first real Earthship, Anubis’ first real attack on Earth, a whole new kind of Replicators, first hints of the Lost City. I’m curious if that was the new network pushing to raise the stakes significantly, or just organically what you guys came up within the writers room during that year?”

Robert C. Cooper
To be honest with you, we’ve kind of answered that question during the course of this discussion. I mean, all due respect to the person who asked that question. I think particularly Daniel, was the biggest change. But in every season, particularly from, I think, four on we had come to a point where we felt like, “Geez, maybe we’ve told all the stories there are to tell.” And it became harder in the writers room to sort of say, “Well, how are we going to keep this show fresh and new?” And I think you had to come up with ways to alter the internal chemistry, changing leads or characters, but then also changing the outside perspective. So what are the pressures that are focused on our characters so that they have challenges to face, different new, interesting challenges to face. Opening the world up, is the way to do that.

David Read
The way to do it. That question was The One with the Many Zs submitted that. Kareem Elashmawy, “There was a Dean Devlin interview, a while back, where Devlin mentioned how the artists sourced the Stargate idea from sci fi novels. Did you ever draw inspiration for episodes from any novellas or novels? We know a lot about movies that you pulled from. Was there any particular novels or novellas that that you took inspiration from?”

Robert C. Cooper
Not that I can think of. I mean, I actually didn’t read that much sci fi when I was younger and had time to read. But I read a lot more fantasy than sci fi.

David Read
I think that’s a fair answer. Jack wanted to know, “Are there any Trek actors you thought would be perfect for a role, but you could never secure?”

Robert C. Cooper
I mean, I could go on forever. But I’d also have to go back and kind of look at it. I mean, there were all kinds of people that we would loved to have had. Yeah, I remember at one point, maybe not quite the question that’s being asked, but someone at the studio wanted us to try and get James Spader on the show. And we were like, “First of all he’s gonna cost more than you’re willing to spend.” But also Michael Shanks is playing a character that James Spader played in the movie. I mean, who is James Spader going to play? What do you want him to do? Do you want us to not acknowledge that he played him in the movie? And then, where does the benefit come from? Right? You know, it would have been like having Kurt Russell come in the show and play another O’Neill with one “L.” Yeah, it was a weird suggestion. I mean, we were very, very fortunate. Over the years, we had a lot of people actually come to us and say, “Can I be on the show. And we had some truly incredible actors over the years. But I’m sure there were many situations where we would go out to people and didn’t get them.

David Read
Having watched Spider-Man: No Way Home, in some kind of a situation like that you may have been able to pull it off, where if you were doing like a multiverse kind of story. That may have been interesting for James, but you’re right, it would have been very expensive.

Robert C. Cooper
Well, and also at that point Michael had inhabited the role in such a different way and made it into something different.

David Read
He sure did. So, Purple Hannah, “In SGU you introduced the concept of seed ships, but in the Milky Way and the Pegasus galaxies where were those gates manufactured? And how did they get deposited on other worlds? Does it make sense that each of these galaxies had seed ships of their own?”

Robert C. Cooper
In some level, this feels like a question like, “How did how did Walmart become Walmart?” I mean, clearly we felt that the Ancients had evolved in the Milky Way galaxy, had built the Stargates there, eventually ascended. Prior to their ascension, they in a quest to understand the universe sent out at least one, that we know of, exploration ship that was meant to place Stargates on planets where they could then go and explore. It was our Hubble, it was their Hubble telescope going out there to check things out. So, I don’t know if we ever really answered the question of how they put Stargates on other planets from where they started. They had ships, I mean, they could, the Stargate I think it was a secondary mode of travel for them.

David Read
But probably an easier one once they were established in different regions of space.

Robert C. Cooper
Sure. I mean, who knows? Maybe it was more ecological.

David Read
That’s a fair point. Three more for you. Big Preston, “With the Cheyenne Mountain complex now a Space Force Base do you think the Stargate program, and future shows, should be under the control of the Space Force or still with the Air Force?”

Robert C. Cooper
Wow, well, Space Force is definitely funnier than the Air Force. I don’t know. I mean, I guess it would be Space Force? I don’t know too much about other than the Steve Carell show.

David Read
Oh, I’ve not seen it. Okay, I know that it’s out there.

Robert C. Cooper
I don’t know. I feel like Space Force is still the butt of jokes. And one day, maybe sooner than later, people will start taking it seriously when we have an actual fleet of intergalactic ships, but…

David Read
We don’t Rob? ZubiForce, “Was there anything from the Stargate movie you wanted to find a way to integrate in this series but never really made it work?”

Robert C. Cooper
Not really, we pretty much stole anything and everything we could.

David Read
I really wish we had brought back more of the talent from the movie particularly on the base side of things. Barbara Shore, Gary Michaels [Meyers], whoever Richard Kind had played. I figured at some point sooner or later…

Robert C. Cooper
We got Richard Kind on the show.

David Read
You sure did. Yeah.

Robert C. Cooper
I mean, we used him. Not in the same role.

David Read
And French Stewart, but his part had already been adapted.

Robert C. Cooper
So yeah, no, I don’t feel like we did.

David Read
And finally, djohn, “Was there ever a plan to bring back Rainbow Sun Francks after season two, or is your belief he blew up on the ship?” And of course in sci fi no one has ever truly dead.

Robert C. Cooper
I know, everyone wanted to sort of give the character a proper send off. And I mean, my attitude was always to make every effort when you actually kill the character to keep them dead. I know no one’s ever dead in sci fi and bringing characters back is dramatic. And fans respond well to it. But it also in my mind always undermined the jeopardy in the show. So despite the fact that Daniel died 87 times or whatever it was. I always sort of objected to the idea of making a big deal about killing a character and then bringing them back and we’ve obviously just had a long conversation about doing it with Daniel. But Daniel was not actually killed in Meridian, he was sent away in a way that left the door clearly open to have him continue to participate in the franchise whether he was a regular or not.

David Read
There was no body to bury even.

Robert C. Cooper
Well no, I mean, I think when we did Abyss he had not expressed or agreed to come back yet. Like that was, Abyss was more how we had intended to keep Daniel alive in the show, going forward. So I don’t think Daniel is a good example of killing a character and then bringing them back.

David Read
I had always, I have loved Sunday. I had loved Carson’s exit in Sunday. And when he was brought back, I felt that the episode lost a lot of its edge in rewatches for me personally. I know Paul McGillion, I have raised this with him, he was understandably like, “Well, I wanted to come back.” And the other aspect of it is a paycheck and everything else. And he’s a great guy and I do love his performances in later seasons. But Sunday is my favorite episode from Atlantis partly because of the weight of the death. And the scenes that our characters have to work themselves through because of that experience. And I agree with you, I think when when you deal with alternate realities, and knows whose reality is of more importance, and bringing characters back, I think you cheapen that original loss.

Robert C. Cooper
Yeah. The stakes are just not there, you get lost in, there’s no weight to it. And this is the way you put it and you’re totally right.

David Read
Well, I appreciate you coming back. For for another round with me.

Robert C. Cooper
I appreciste anybody wanting to hear me talk.

David Read
Absolutely. Hopefully, this year we’re going to hear some kind of news from Amazon on something moving forward. And I’d love to hear your comments on that as the news evolves. But it means a lot to me that you’re taking time to spend with us moving down through these stories, and we never take it for granted, Robert, so thank you so much for your time.

Robert C. Cooper
Thank you. Yeah, look, I am shocked that the powers that be at Amazon are not in any way kind of reaching out to the people who made that franchise as successful as it was. I don’t really get that at all. I don’t know whether what’s true or what the rumors, like what’s actually behind some of the rumors that are out there.

David Read
There’s a lot floating around. I just turn it off.

Robert C. Cooper
I don’t think, I mean, I think the reality is that they actually haven’t made decisions. They’re just not, they’re very early on in having acquired all of the IP they did from MGM. I don’t expect it to go as quickly as maybe fans would like,

David Read
it’s gonna take a while to move through all the IPs and figure out what they’re gonna do with it. I mean, they’re just getting cracking with the film ones. So it’s gonna take a while for them to move forward with it. Stargate still comes up in the news stories about the acquisition. So it’s certainly not going to be first, but it’s not going to be by any means the last either. So it’s gonna be interesting to see.

Robert C. Cooper
It would be madness if they didn’t somehow capitalize on that piece of IP. But yeah, I mean, look all of the streamers are going through a lot of change right now. One of the problems we’re having, as a company, as someone who develops projects is the people we’re pitching to are changing so so dramatically. You know, honestly I’ll have meetings with people and the next day find out they were fired.

David Read
Wow.

Robert C. Cooper
It’s really, it’s a tough time in the business and there was a lot of growth and expansion and buying for a long time. And now that is really hitting hard and you’re seeing a big contraction. And so, these places are just really trying to get their houses in order. Much more so than coming up with masterplans.

David Read
Yeah, I read a headline a few days ago the streaming salad days are over. So for sure, whatever happens next it’s not gonna be boring.

Robert C. Cooper
But, you know, as someone trying to sell stuff out there, it’s a little frustrating when people you’re selling to don’t really know what they’re doing.

David Read
For sure. Well, best of luck on that end. And I look forward to when you do get situated with someone because you will discussing those projects with you.

Robert C. Cooper
Yeah, for sure. Thank you very much, David. It’s always a pleasure.

David Read
Absolutely. My continued thanks to Writer, Director, Executive Producer Robert C. Cooper for continuing to take this journey with me through the Stargate content and I hope that you enjoyed that episode as well. If you enjoy what you’ve seen in this episode, and you want to see more content like this, I appreciate it if you click that Like button, and Dial the Gate is brought to you every week for free and we do appreciate you watching but if you want to support the show further by yourself some of our theme swag over at dialthegate.com/merch and thanks so much for your support. My production team is headed by Producer Linda “GateGabber” Furey. Thank you Linda for all your help as well as our moderators, Sommer, Tracy, Keith, Jeremy, Rhys, and Antony, and a big thanks to Frederick Marcoux, our webmaster over at Dial the Gate. He’s with ConceptsWeb. And my thanks once again to Robert C. Cooper. We have more episodes heading your way so stay tuned. My name is David Read for Dial the Gate. And I’ll see you on the other side.