Dial the Gate is privileged to welcome actor John de Lancie to our channel! Though many in our circle know him first and foremost as Q, he played a critical role in Stargate SG-1 Seasons Five and Six as Colonel Frank Simmons of the NID, a great foil for the SG-1 team. He joins us LIVE to discuss his experience on Stargate, the impact sci-fi has had on his career, and will take your questions!

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Timecodes
00:00 – Live Stream Commences
00:16 – Opening Credits
00:42 – Welcome and Episode Outline
01:04 – Welcoming John, Stargate, and Frank Simmons
04:17 – Villains
05:10 – Working with Richard Dean Anderson
06:07 – Stargate VS Star Trek
11:05 – Q’s Return in Star Trek Picard
12:48 – Audiobooks and Leonard Nimoy
18:01 – Fan Questions: Working with his son on Star Trek Voyager
19:46 – Star Trek Continues Role
23:04 – Space Tourism – Would He Go?
26:03 – John’s Web Site
28:02 – Wrapping up with John
28:44 – Post interview housekeeping and John de Lancie’s Web site
30:31 – End Credits

***

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TRANSCRIPT
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David Read
Welcome to Dial the Gate, episode 171. The Stargate Oral History Project. My name is David Read. We have John de Lancie joining us in this episode, I really appreciate you tuning in. If you enjoy Stargate and you want to see more content like this on YouTube, please hit that Like button. It helps promote the channel. We’re gonna dive right in here. John de Lancie, Colonel Frank Simmons on Stargate SG-1. Although I personally know him as Q growing up on Star Trek: The Next Generation. John, thank you so much for joining me.

John de Lancie
You’re welcome. Thank you.

David Read
This is a real treat. I want to jump right into Stargate and we’ll get to some other things here. Did you get involved with Stargate SG-1 through Rick? Was that a connection through him? How did you get involved with Stargate?

John de Lancie
Well, just that I had done a show with Rick and Mike Greenburg, the producer, his producer, called Legend, and then Stargate happened for him. And so I got called. It was really more of a friendly thing rather than, perhaps, a character that they just had to find somebody to perform. So it was mostly through that.

David Read
And what did you What did you make of this guy, this this, this politician, “government bureaucrat slash military?” Who was who was Frank Simmons on the page?

John de Lancie
Frank Simmons was sort of a jerk! I have less connection with that character simply because, you know, I think I only played it once or twice, two or three times. My connection was really my friendship with with Mike Greenburg and Rick. I didn’t really do much with the character — my fault — or the character didn’t have a lot going on, so that there wasn’t a lot for me to jump in on with. So it’s not really something that I have spent much time thinking about over the years. I mean, I probably would not be thinking very much about Star Trek if it weren’t for the fact that that people keep on asking about it over and over again, which I’m happy to answer them. And obviously, that performance in that show has become, dare I use the word, let’s just say “iconic” or legendary. At least it’s something that a lot of people ask me about. Colonel Simmons is not.

David Read
That’s fair. I can tell you though, from the Stargate circles, though, it was it was a big deal to have you on the show. And this is certainly true with with Star Trek and and pretty much any kind of form of entertainment. Your good guys are only as good as your villains are vile.

John de Lancie
Absolutely. And that’s one of the things that makes playing villains fun, and that is especially if you consider that they are not villains, but that they are heroes, at least in their own mind they are heroes. Even the most villainous of people don’t start the morning with looking in the mirror and saying, “How horrible can I be today?” They always have a point of view and something that they want to achieve where we as reasonable people might consider that to be not worthy, but they don’t start out by wanting to be villainous.

David Read
What was it like working with Rick, from Legend to SG-1?

John de Lancie
Rick is a wonderful actor and he is a he’s, he’s a consummate… He really understands the camera. So he understands what’s being shot and stuff like that, because he and Mike would spend countless hours in the editing room, and that’s something that you just don’t get until you have that opportunity. He got that opportunity because of MacGyver, and then was able to take that and begin to apply it. So when I met him with Legend, it became apparent really early on, I mean, almost immediately, that he really knew his business.

David Read
Did you notice any similarities between how Stargate was done compared to your to your work on Star Trek? Heavy on the visual effects? We’re talking at the time that you entered a series that was in its like fifth season, were there any similarities between the two in terms of production value or the the way things ran?

John de Lancie
When you say I entered a series in the fifth season, which which series is that?

David Read
Stargate SG-1.

John de Lancie
Stargate SG-1. It was much looser. The shooting environment was much looser in SG-1. And I think that that’s very much a reflection of who Rick is and who Mike Greenburg is. [On] Star Trek, we could not improvise at all at all, we just we just couldn’t. For Picard, it’s yet again a different thing, Star Trek Picard, because there they are using legacy actors now who we know. We know these characters pretty well. And they’ve been very, very nice. And being able to say, “Well, what do you think?” And “Could I add a word here?” And you know, “Might I, improvise a phrase here,” And they go “Yes, of course,” and stuff like that. That was not the case in Star Trek, but it was the case in Stargate. So that was certainly a huge difference in shooting styles.

David Read
I would imagine. The Star Trek sets … those stories are notorious. If you wanted to change a word, it had to run up the flagpole…

John de Lancie
It had to run up the flagpole. And you might have, as I did, long complicated speeches, and then, you’d finish and you thought that you had done a good job. And they would turn to the script supervisor and simply say, “Well, did he say all the words?” And then the script supervisor would say, in extreme cases, “Well, he said was not as opposed to wasn’t,” and then they’d have to decide whether they were going to shoot it again, and you’re going, “Guys, this really turns the turns the exercise into recitation, and not acting.” You know, we have very little time with the material. It isn’t as if we have done this as a play where this is the third week of saying the same stuff. So people who are particularly advantaged by that type of environment… Kate Mulgrew has almost a photographic memory. Patrick [Stewart is] very good with memorizing. I was just the opposite. I’m very dyslexic. And so I would take… take me a week to learn my stuff. Yeah.

David Read
I can understand. My mother is dyslexic as well. And you know, there’s things that you can’t see on the surface that people have to deal with. It’s sure not easy to sit with your mother in a in a restaurant and help her read the menu sometimes.

John de Lancie
Sure, because if you don’t have any phonetic… if you weren’t taught… In my case, not only was I dyslexic but I was taught — I mean this is all before they knew what dyslexia was. Nobody said the word “dyslexia,” they would say, you know, “You’re slow” or “stupid” or “lazy.” But if me, certainly, and maybe your mother, was then not taught to read phonetically, then you are completely at sea.

David Read
Yeah. I’m thankful for smartphones, now that you can press the audio button and tell it what you want. It’s made her life so much easier!

John de Lancie
Yes. Right. I mean, I write quite a bit and there’s nothing better than to have spell check and all that other stuff.

David Read
That’s exactly right. I want to take — you know, before I do that. What was it like getting called back for Star Trek: Picard? Did Patrick reach out to you?

John de Lancie
No, the producers did. Terry [Matalas] in particular did, and it was fun. I went to Paramount and talked to him, ahe said, “Well I’m sure you expected this call,” and I said, “Well, actually, I didn’t, Terry. You have to understand, Star Trek has done a bunch of movies since then. And I wasn’t involved in those.” So no, I wasn’t expecting them. Then he said, “Do you have any questions?” And I said, “Yes, my first big concern is, are you putting me back in those tights? Because it would be really unseemly.” And he said, “No, no, no.” And then my serious question was, “Are we recreating or are we creating?” So you said, “We’re creating,” which, you know, in the acting creative world, lexicon, that’s good.

David Read
Absolutely. Explore new territory.

John de Lancie
Right.

David Read
Do you think he’s really dead? Or should I say like, he’s ceased to exist?

John de Lancie
Well, I think you’re gonna have to find out.

David Read
Yeah. Okay. That’s all right. There we go. Quinn said, in Voyager, “We may appear omnipotent, but we’re not.” And you know, people were like, “How can he die? He’s [omnipotent].” “No, they’re actually not he just says that he is because he’s full of himself.” What a great role, and I have to take a moment personally to thank you for my love of audiobooks. Your work with Leonard Nimoy in creating Alien Voices — it’s just something that’s lasted with me since I was was young. I can’t go to bed now without listening to a book. What was that project like to work with him to create those masterpieces?

John de Lancie
Oh, they were great. I directed Leonard in I think it’s it called Invasion From Mars. It was the the HG Wells War of the Worlds. But Howard Koch had written it as Invasion from Mars, which was the Orson Welles script. Or the Howard Koch script. That was done for the Mercury Theatre. And when we finished that I said to Leonard, “Did you have a good time?” And he said, “I had a great time.” I said, “Well, Leonard, I have an idea that’s been percolating for a while.” And then he said, “Well come to my office, and let’s talk about it.” So when I explained to him what I had in mind, it’s very funny because I’m — I mean, funny is [not] funny — but it’s, it’s apropos that you should ask me that question, because I’m writing an article right now about a book that meant a great deal to me, which was Mysterious Island by Jules Verne. I explained to him that I wanted to do adaptations of classic works. I wanted to do them in a way that the author would actually recognize the work. And there’s a story behind that. And that I thought we’d start with The Time Machine and then Journey the Center of the Earth and, you know, on and on. So he said, “This is a great idea.” And he said, “I can be in touch with Simon and Schuster,” and I said, “That’s terrific, because if we can create audio scripts,” which they wanted to be about two hours long.

David Read
Oh, wow.

John de Lancie
Which is beefy, frankly, a little too much. But if you cracked it, the story, and wrote a script, then that script — that was golden because then that script bit could become a movie or a television show or a theater piece and stuff like that. So that’s how we proceeded. So a writer and I, Nat Segaloff, wrote the scripts. And then we did them as plays. We did them for the Sci Fi Channel, talking to the Sci Fi Channel people, and bless them, because you know, they’re television people, So we went to them, and we said, “Leonard, and I would like to do First Men in the Moon.” “Oh, oh jeez, both of you are in it?” “Yes.” Mostly meaning, ‘Is Leonard going to be in it?’ “Yes, yes. But let me explain to you how this goes. We want to do it on a stage.” They’re like “What?” “And it’s in front of microphones. And the actors are holding their scripts. And there will be foley artists and musicians on stage with them. And their eyes are rolling to the back of their heads, they’re going “Well, this is not…” But to their credit they said, “Okay, well, we’ll try it.” So we rented a theater here in Los Angeles, and we did the show, and we had 1500 people in the audience. And all sorts of cameras flying around. And it was really successful. So we ended up doing, I don’t know, four or five shows for Sci Fi Channel. So So in any case, that was all part of Alien Voices. Alien Voices came to an end, when Leonard and I looked at each other one day. It was about four years in and we went, “You know, it’s been great fun doing the shows, writing them, getting the actors together, post-production,” all that stuff, all the stuff that we enjoy doing as artists was great fun. “What has not been fun is selling the shows. That’s not what we do.” There are people who are very good at that, and you have a whole, you know, ‘the marketing team’ and all that. So we just said, “You know what, we’ve done enough.” It was a labor of love. It was certainly not a, you know, a money making venture.

David Read
No, it’s the art for the art sake, but thank you for it, because they’re great. I got a few fan questions here. Jeremy Heiner, “What was it like acting with with Keegan in Voyager?” Is that kind of full circle for you bringing your own son in?

John de Lancie
Yes, Keegan is my son and, you know, it was fine. I thought that it would be kind of a cherished experience. But what I found is that as an actor, you’re really going out — An example would like going out to play a tennis match. It’s a competitive match. And if you are concerned, as I was about the other person, and “How are you doing? Are you feeling okay? Is this working out? Are you too nervous?” All that type of stuff. It takes away from what it is that you’re supposed to be doing. And certainly is very different than the character I was playing who couldn’t care less about any of those things. Keegan did a wonderful job. And I’m really really delighted that he did it and that we got to, quote, act together. But it was not that kind of, you know, gooey, sentimental sort of experience. It was me mostly being concerned about the person on the other side of the mat. And that’s not a way to play tennis.

David Read
Lockwasher wanted to know, what was it like doing the Star Trek fan series Continues and playing Galisti, the monochromatic world. It was a remarkable script. It’s just a it’s just great episode of TV.

John de Lancie
What show is that?

David Read
Star Trek Continues was the the fan production? Where you went in and you played.

John de Lancie
Oh, yes, yes. Oh, I thought that that was very interesting. I mean, normally one doesn’t do those type of things, but they sent me the script and I immediately recognized it as being what made a script whose content was sort of what I consider the best of Star Trek. Star Trek, we were really tele plays. And when they were the most successful, they were about something. That’s why I’ve sort of become less interested in the movies of late because how many times do you blow up the Enterprise? How many chases, you know, chasing, chasing,

David Read
It’s very action-oriented.

John de Lancie
It’s very action-oriented, but the thing is, this. There are franchises that are better at it. What Star Trek, at least I think in the minds of the fans, the ones who liked Star Trek, it is they’re oftentimes cautionary tales. They’re certainly socially relevant tales. And they’re something to talk about afterwards. So when I saw that script, I went, “Oh my god, well, this is classic Star Trek. This is Star Trek. And so I want to do it.” You know, the, the mechanics of doing it. Vic [Mignogna] had created this whole set in Georgia and all this work was being done and so many people were there as a labor of love and all of the sets and on and on and on, which was very impressive. But it’s shoestring. And I remember myself being like, really sick with one of those colds, this is pre COVID stuff, but one of those colds where you kind of go, “Oh my god, I’m so underwater.” But still, the show was a good show, because it was about something.

David Read
Exactly. And Raj Luthra wanted to know with space tourism on the rise, would you consider going into space?

John de Lancie
You know, again, I’m referring back to this story, the mysterious island, the Jules Verne, which was my introduction to science fiction, my introduction to a particular way of thinking, a scientific way of thinking, the type of people who exhibit that and why I admire them so much. I then expanded my reading because I had difficulty reading to stories about the the explorers of the 14th, 15th, 16th century. So, for me, everything is about the ocean. So I don’t have a yearning to go into space, the space that I go into… I sailed to Tahiti and back in the same waters that Captain Cook sailed on, if you want to think of it that way. That’s where my kind of imagination and my sense of exploration goes.

David Read
That’s awesome. I always feel like I’ve missed — being from Southern Illinois — I’ve always felt that I’ve missed my sea calling. I love spending time on — there’s something about spending time on the water that’s primordial in terms of like our connection to it. It’s like there’s no there’s something like on a species level.

John de Lancie
Totally, and you know what? The way in which I explain it is that if if I’m in a car driving through the mountains, and I look into the forest, I’m happy that I’m in the car on the road, because I have no interest in being inside in the forest. I just did a job, and they put put me up in a beautiful area — it was beautiful — in Colorado, and I would look at the mountains, [and] I go, “Yeah, okay.” But when I’m on the beach, I want to be in the water.

David Read
Absolutely.

John de Lancie
Not in the water but on the water. I want to be on the water. And then people often say to me, “Well, so swimming?” I said, “No, no, no, no, no, you don’t understand, and I’m on the water, not in the water.” Yeah, but for me, though, it’s the water. I don’t know. It’s just the water.

David Read
I completely get it. I have been poking around on on your web site and exploring your different passions. And I’m going to be spending more time here in the next little bit. But these autographs, whoever designed this art, maybe you had a bunch of different people do it, is so cool.

John de Lancie
Oh well my son did.

David Read
Really?

John de Lancie
Yeah.

David Read
That’s amazing.

John de Lancie
My son started out… I have two sons. One is a diplomat, he’s in the state department, the one who played my son on The Next Gener– or whatever it was, Voyager. And the other son started out as an architect, and as a designer, and then moved from that into, as a sideline, designing maps, very interesting maps, kind of, you know, very designer oriented kind of maps that ended up being in hotels, in lobbies, you know, 60 foot long and 20 feet high.

David Read
Fire escape stuff.

John de Lancie
And and then during COVID, the beginning of COVID said, “You know, Dad, you’re not going to be able to go to the conventions, you want me to come up with something?” I said, “Oh, you know, nobody’s gonna be interested.” And he said, “Well, let me let me prove you wrong.” So he did that. Yeah. And he does it for a bunch of other people. Star Trek people. My friends, you know, Bob Ricardo. He also does it for Bill Nye.

David Read
Ah, there you go. Well, they’re, they’re really impressive. After I hang up from you, we’re gonna go through some of this art. And I’m gonna order one. John, this has been extremely cool. To be able to talk with someone who is who has helped shape your sci fi world — I’m sure you’ve heard that a million times. But it’s very special for me. And it’s been great to have you sir.

John de Lancie
Well, thank you. And thank you for persevering in terms of — said it was impossible to get anyone to contact me. But even so, thank you. Yeah.

David Read
I appreciate your time. You. We’re gonna go ahead and wrap up the show on this side and you, you take care of yourself.

John de Lancie
You too. Bye bye.

David Read
Thank you, John. John de Lancie, everyone. Colonel Frank Simmons on Stargate SG-1, Q in Star Trek. You know, every once in a while there are people who come across you in your life that make an impact on who you are, and just help, you know, to shape your world and Q really did that for me in and Next Generation. I grew up on that show. And it’s really cool to have him. Check out some of this this art here real quick. This is johndelancie.com. And you can get signed custom prints from John. So I’m guessing Owen made these, but I love this one. This is exceptionally cool. And so we’re going to — I’m gonna get myself one of these. I appreciate you tuning in. If you enjoyed this episode, click that Like button. And we’ll continue to create more content like this. My thanks and my appreciation to my moderating team, Sommer, Tracy, Jeremy, Rhys, and Anthony, for continuing to make this show possible. My Producer Linda “GateGabber” Furey. Big thanks to Frederick Marcoux at ConceptsWeb [who] keeps dialthegate.com going and to all of you for tuning in. It means a lot for me, too, to have you out there and to continue to be able to do the show and share stories about Stargate and the things that fundamentally make up the show, are very important. My thanks again to John de Lancie for joining me for this episode. My name is David Read for Dial the Gate, and I’ll see you on the other side.