We’ve been anticipating the release of this book for a very long time, and now the wait is finally over! Chevrons Locked: The Unofficial, Unauthorized Oral History of Stargate SG-1, is chock full of stories from people who made this beloved series, and its author, Edward Gross, joins us LIVE to discuss bringing the book together.

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Timecodes
0:00 – Splash Screen
00:35 – Opening Credits
01:01 – Welcome and Episode Outline
02:18 – Ed’s Love for Comics and Superman
06:15 – The Oral History Projects
13:14 – Science Fiction
19:30 – Stargate Movie and and the Series
23:04 – Stargate Mythology
24:46 – Chevrons Locked
32:21 – Brad Wright and Robert C. Cooper
35:05 – David Read and Darren Sumner’s Involvement
38:52 – Cast and Crew Interviews
41:30 – How Interviews Can Spark New Perspectives
43:13 – Stargate’s Evolving Mythology and Stories
47:41 – Future Stargate Books and a Preview of Chevrons Locked
53:22 – Fan Questions: Ed On Being Interviewed
55:28 – Book Availability and Cover Art
57:34 – Favorite SG-1 Episode
58:40 – Other Sci Fi, Including The Expanse
1:00:06 – Interviewing Stargate Captains, from Kirk to Picard and Janeway
1:05:05 – Wrapping up with Edward
1:06:58 – Post-Interview housekeeping
1:09:09 – End Credits

***

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TRANSCRIPT
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David Read
Hello, everyone, I’m David Read. Welcome back to Dial the Gate episode 187. The Stargate Oral History Project. Thank you so much for tuning in. Edward Gross, who is a writer of much of the work that I have read, including The 50 Year Mission of Star Trek, he is joining us for this episode because he has completed Chevrons Locked: The Unauthorized, Unofficial Oral History of Stargate SG-1. And he is joining us for this hour. But 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 helps make a difference with YouTube and will continue to help the show grow its audience and our reach. Please also consider sharing this video with a Stargate friend, and if you want to get notified about future episodes, click on the subscribe icon. And giving the bell icon to 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 will be released over the course of the next several days on both the Dial the Gate and GateWorld.net YouTube channels. As this is a live stream, we’ve got moderators in the YouTube chat who are going to take your questions for Ed. I’ll be giving them to him at the second half of the show. And until then, he and I are going to catch up. Edward Gross, author, Chevron’s Locked: the Unauthorized, Unofficial SG-1 oral history. How are you sir?

Edward Gross
I am good. David. I’m really good. I’m Thank you for having me here.

David Read
Thank you for being here!

David Read
It’s a new experience doing a live broadcast. Oh, we’re gonna have fun. So who is this Kryptonian behind you? And why is this Kryptonian behind you?

Edward Gross
One would call it an obsession. It is Superman, of course, and my comic rack. My family indulges me — my kids and my wife. I’ve been a lifelong Superman fan. And it felt right since in June I have my next book coming out called Voices from Krypton, which is an oral history of Superman. So gotta self-plug wherever I can so there you go.

David Read
Absolutely. Why Superman? What do you relate to about him? Or what is it about him that makes him exceptional for you?

Edward Gross
I fly, so I identify — no. When I was a little kid, I think I discovered The Adventures of Superman reruns when I was, like, five years old in the 60s — in 65 — and fell in love with the character. And then my father had one comic book he ever had. In fact, I have it here. It’s called The Illustrated Story of Dogs. So I fell in love with the comic book medium with that. And then I discovered that there were Superman comic books. I did not know. So that started that obsession and I started watching every version, reading every comic I can get my hands on that had the S in it. And as a [inaudible] of course, you know, I went from actor to actor playing the character and have loved it straight ’till today. You know, some are better than others. But the point is, what it really is for me is I’ve always tried — “tried” is the qualitative word here — to live a good life and to do the right thing and to pass that on to my children. And the thing about Superman as he’s evolved, it’s been about hope. It’s been about… Like Mark Waid, the writer of Kingdom Come and Superman Birthright, he put it to me best. He said, “This is a guy who has the power to do anything in the world he wants and he chooses to do what’s right.” I try to do what’s right as best I can. I’m no Superman. So there’s something about that, though. In the darkness, you want to cling to a little bit of hope. And that’s what that character — as cliched as that sounds — that’s what the character is for me.

David Read
Well, I mean, I think for me as a very casual fan, he represents the essence of taking action on what’s right, and calling out what is unjust.

Edward Gross
Absolutely.

David Read
Truth and justice, you know?

Edward Gross
And a better tomorrow!

David Read
Yeah, yeah. Used to be the American way! You know, it’s interesting watching the character evolve. We could go an hour on this, but I’ve been impressed with some live action adaptations, not so impressed with others. But I think at the end of the day, it’s one of those — he’s one of those American icons that are just going to continue to persist. And every new generation is going to explore him a little differently based on frankly, its own values and standards. So it’s a wild, absolutely wild property.

Edward Gross
It is. And it’s been in production since 1940 in some form or other. I mean the radio show debuted in 1940. The Stargate people out there are like, “Shut up about Superman!”

David Read
No! No, you’re fine.

Edward Gross
But the radio show debuted in 1940. There has been a version through every decade since and we’re getting ready. You know, Henry Cavill is finished now. And now we’re moving on to whoever it’s going to be in Superman Legacy in 2025. It just keeps going. It’s really amazing.

David Read
Yeah, Stargate has some similar threads that way, in terms of its longevity, and in terms of its, its capturing the imagination of people. But before we get into it, I first discovered you through The Fifty Year Mission, which is the oral history of Star Trek that you did with Mark Altman, if I’m not mistaken. And I have read that thing through three times. And both editions. And it’s just one of those things that are… I refer to it as the quintessential, thorough, document of the Roddenberry and Berman eras, and a little bit of the JJ, of Star Trek, I can’t imagine anything that is more properly concise, in its documentation and exploration of that franchise through those eras. So I want again to thank you for that. It’s a great, great read for any Star Trek fan. It’s two volumes. I cannot recommend it enough. How long did it take you to create those?

Edward Gross
The thing about a lot of these oral histories… With Star Trek, though, all the books have mostly new interviews, right? They’re mostly original interviews conducted by us. But in the case of Star Trek, Mark Altman and I have been covering the franchise for 40 years. So we have an archive, already, of interviews, right? In terms of sitting down in writing, it was probably about a year or so, maybe a year and a half, and was supposed to be one book. And we went to the editor at St. Martin’s Press and said, “Look, this needs to be two books.” And he goes, “I’ll be the judge of that.” And he looked at the manuscript. He goes, “Yeah, it needs to be two books.” Because if you cut anything out of it, it would have cut the heart out of it. But it really was a mission to sort of be the definitive book about Star Trek. And I hope that that’s , for that 50 year period, I’m hoping that that’s what this book is because we put our heart and soul into that book.

David Read
I can certainly tell that as a Star Trek fan, because you can’t talk about Star Trek without covering the merchandise, without covering the fandom, without covering the aborted eras between the animated series and The Motion Picture. And it covers all of that in such ridiculous detail. I think that the the most daunting thing for me, if I was told to do this, regardless of whether or not I had most of the material from years recorded, is organizing it. I mean, you have to organize the content into a narrative.

Edward Gross
Oral histories are a jigsaw puzzle, basically, you know, it is taking disparate views of something, whatever the subject is, through literally hundreds of people’s points of view, and laying out those transcripts around you and somehow taking a quote from this guy here, this woman here, and start molding it into the narrative that you’re telling a linear, for the most part, story from pre-Star Trek through the release of Star Trek: Beyond, basically, over the course of these two books. But, you know, there have been people have criticized it and said things — and all the books get this criticism — that it’s a bunch of random quotes thrown together. And nothing could be further from the truth because… I’m so disorganized in my life, but I’m an idiot savant when it comes to oral histories. For some reason, I’ve discovered my calling, and I’m able to sort of — and Mark does the same thing. He’s able to see how All the proper pieces go together to tell that story. I love it. I mean the process, I love doing it, but it is very challenging to get it right.

David Read
I don’t think it’s a fair criticism because so often, in so many of the cases, you’ve found quotations that one leads into the other based on what the person is saying. And sometimes it’s like, “OK, we’re done with this section, we’re moving on.” And then a narrator comes in — the narration comes in and takes over.

Edward Gross
A little paragraph and then you jumped as a bridge.

David Read
Right, but the quotation — for the Star Trek one, at least, I don’t think that’s a fair criticism because the quotations tell the story. Now, whether or not you believe all the quotations are fact, that’s a separate conversation.

Edward Gross
Well that’s the oral history.

David Read
Because there’s there’s going to be differing points of view based on when the interview was taken, you know, what someone remembers, and you and I have talked about… that can get muddy, but you present the muddiness for what it is, this is their quote, take it or leave it.

Edward Gross
The best example of that, I think, is is in the book we did on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, an Angel which is Slayers and Vampires. There’s a bit about David Boreanaz in which these two actors, a female and a male, played the Oracles on that show. And we’re talking about David Boreanaz and the woman — the quote is literally the woman saying, “He couldn’t be nicer. It was so wonderful the way he took us under his wing and helped us through this what is the short part and it was amazing to us.” Cut to the guy whose immediate next comment is, “David Boreanaz was a dick. He treated us like garbage He treated us like…” So you got two people [who] literally worked together in the same scene with the same guy and came away with [a] completely different perspective.

David Read
Absolutely, that’s true. That’s like a perspective approach also, you know, someone may remember the the tree had blue plants on it, or blue flowers on it, and someone else remembered that it had red. There’s certain pieces of information that… And I’ve done this with Dial the Gate, I’ve gone back and I’ve referenced it. It’s it’s a part of the transcripts now, but they’re transposing one memory onto another. And if you’re there to catch it, that’s one thing. And if not, you just have to infer it with narrative and everything else. It can be tricky.

Edward Gross
It can be. And then the copy editor is constantly. This happened on Chevrons Locked as well. It’s like, “Oh, this one contradicts what this one says.” I have to keep saying, “It’s an oral history. It’s OK. They can contradict each other.”

David Read
Yeah. You just to make sure that you have you have the transcript correct. And then the rest is left for history. You know, you have to make sure that you’re copying them correctly, and their intent. But other than that, some of the details, they just get lost over time.

Edward Gross
Absolutely. People forget. I mean, I could have done an interview with somebody in 1987… I’m so old… I may have gone back to them in 2015 and gotten a completely different answer than I had got in 1987. So it’s very interesting.

David Read
Ed, before we dive into Chevrons Locked, and we talked a little bit about this with Superman, I’m sure this will dovetail. What is it about sci fi that captivates you as a fan?

Edward Gross
Boy, I mean, I wish I could put that into concrete terms. I mean, I fell in love with Star Trek when it debuted in 66. But it wasn’t because of the allegorical nature of the storytelling or anything like that. It was cool aliens, it was cool ships. It was exciting, you know, action adventure. Lost in Space was around the same time, which I quickly dismissed. But for a while was into at the time. Planet of the Apes came along. And then of course Star Wars and Close Encounters and we just go on through the decades. And it’s just a genre that, to this day, continues to just capture my imagination by the possibilities it offers. Some of them exciting some of them stupid, frankly, you don’t know what you’re gonna get. But I look at something like Planet of the Apes and that could be the goofiest thing on the planet. My kids can’t look at the early films and do anything but like be derisive about it.

David Read
Yeah, they can’t take it seriously.

Edward Gross
They don’t at all. I treasure those movies. Those were my Star Wars. And I’m currently doing a book on Planet of the Apes. Self plug! One of many.

David Read
Absolutely.

Edward Gross
But but as an eight year old when I saw Planet of the Apes, it just blew me away with the gorillas on horseback and then even the Statue of Liberty at the end of that, right? But it’s gone on for all these decades. I never get tired of it. You know, the other night I saw Guardians of the Galaxy Volume Three.

David Read
What do you think? I haven’t seen it.

Edward Gross
I loved it. I think it did a great job of finishing this thing off and, you know, I really don’t have any complaints about. I go to these movies and, you know, the cliche is “I flt like a kid on Christmas.” But I do. I get so wrapped up. And I’m watching, you know I’ll count this in sci fi. I watched Avengers Endgame. And my whole time I my youngest son who’s 28. But I’m like, the whole time through the movie we’re, like, elbowing each other, like, “Check that out! That’s so cool what they’re doing here!” That joy never went away. And it’s, you know, I’m ready to kill the next film, whatever it may be. I just loved it.

David Read
I went to Arrival a few years ago. And I have a very similar thing with Annihilation, which came out a little bit later, with a friend of mine who didn’t like it. Didn’t get it. And when I walked away, I realized that we go to the cinema for two very different things. He goes to have fun, and to turn his brain off. I go to have fun, and to turn my brain on. And I think it was that that realization for me because he didn’t care that there was a deeper meaning. You know, it’s my problem with all of these Star Wars fans who have decided to do Star Trek. Star Wars — according to George Lucas — is a fairy tale. It’s about good versus evil. It’s not necessarily science fiction. You can tell science fiction with it. But science fiction has to say something. It can’t just be the note of good versus evil because that’s fantasy. Right. And then TNG Season Three came out and it was like, “That’s what I’m talking about,”

Edward Gross
Picard, you mean?

David Read
What now? With Picard. Oh, sorry. Yes, TNG Season Eight, basically.

Edward Gross
I just want to be clear.

David Read
You’re absolutely right. Thank you for clarifying me. I appreciate that. And you we can… It’s if it’s saying something about us, if it’s stopping and making us think, that’s something that 20 year old me can enjoy watching The Motion Picture that 10 year old me enjoyed watching the special effects and watching V’Ger. I treat it differently as I age. And, “David stopped talking, let him talk.” As as so much of the Star Trek gets rewatched by me as I get older, it becomes relevant now in some cases, more than ever, depending on the episode.

Edward Gross
Absolutely. No, my kids really got into the Kelvin movies, the JJ movies, right? But my son Dennis and I — he’s my middle son — I think I’ve referenced all three now. When when we were watching an episode, he had just seen, like, I think it was Star Trek: Into Darkness or something., right? And I had Deep Space Nine on, and he watched the episode. And he looked at me and he wasn’t a little kid at this point. But he looked at me and goes, “Star Trek’s supposed to be about something, right?” And it’s like, he got it. watching DS9 he got that it was about something. And I love most of the JJ movies, so I’m not putting them down at all because they’re a good fun adventure that capture the essence of Star Trek enough for me that I’m happy with it for the most part. But they’re just big adventures and the fact that he latched on to the fact that it’s supposed to be more about ideas

David Read
At 10.

Edward Gross
Yeah, I mean, it’s just, it’s like, amazing to me that he got it. And, you know, most people don’t and, you know, understand that they’re like, “Oh, give me wham bam, you know, action adventure.” And I do prefer, like you, I prefer the allegories. You know when Captain Kirk is tearing down disintegrating chambers because people are walking through to their death as an analogy of Vietnam. That to me is a heck of a lot more interesting than even on TNG where their promos would be, “Can Worf be a single father on Star Trek The Next Generation?” Well, that’s kind of interesting, but it’s not quite the weight of…

David Read
Yeah, “Look at me, Mr. Spock, I am Black on the right side. Lokai is white on the right, all of his people are white on the right side.

Edward Gross
That one’s a little over the top but it was ahead.

David Read
Well, I mean, but still, the fact that they couldn’t, for the Federation people it was like, “You’re the same species. What are you talking about?” And for that culture, it was as important as anything, you know, and it’s just, you’re right. It’s a little bit obvious, but that’s what sci fi does, I think. And 95% of that with Star Trek you can transfer right into Stargate in terms of what it does. The same kind of content.

Edward Gross
That was back in in 97. I thought the movie was a near miss. I thought it was good. It didn’t blow me away, the original theatrical movie. I had the opinion that those guys, Emmerich and Devlin, made movies that were “Almost great,” just a little short of being great movies, you know? But the show captured my imagination pretty quickly on. When it did, although there were a couple episodes, like, “Oh my god, you ripped off the worst episode of The Next Generation. Why would you do that?”

David Read
They have to find their footing! They have to figure out what they are.

Edward Gross
Of course. All shows have to do that. Yeah.

David Read
Of course! Yeah. “Give me a little bit more.” I agree with you about about Stargate, the feature film, it’s a fine film. And it plants the seeds that Brad and Jonathan and Robert watered and gave sunlight.

Edward Gross
Oh, there’s no question. That is the beauty of it. You know, look at some — they saw it too, I think, in the beginning When you look at the concept of the Stargate, and especially when you expand it beyond like, two channels, and you know, you want to be one place on the earth and the other place. And that’s it. And it’s done. They saw the possibilities of the Stargate and the comparison kept even. I mean, I know everybody knows this now. But the comparison that I kept getting from interviewing for this book was, “It’s the Enterprise. “t’s their version of the Enterprise getting them, or the transporter, getting them instantly to where they have to be, basically. So yeah. First of all, it had that extraordinary life of 10 years. And 214 episodes, not counting…

David Read
SG-1.

Edward Gross
Right? SG-1. I’m referring to SG-1. To me, that’s astounding. For a sci fi show, first of all, to have lasted 10 years, blows my mind. And it was still at the top of its game when it ended. Now, I probably just went off on a weird tangent there.

David Read
It didn’t jump the shark. Now some people left when Rick left. They weren’t interested in a Stargate that didn’t include Rick. And I remember watching this in the forums, just a number of people just said, “It’s been great. Best of luck, truly, but we’re done.” But it had to transform. It had to do what MASH did.

Edward Gross
Well MASH and Cheers of the two best examples of shows that would lose primary players and still pick up the pieces so to speak, there weren’t even pieces, and keep going because the writing staff was talented enough to breathe new life into the show because they had new actors, rather than have somebody come in and just fill the role of that same actor who just left playing basically the same kind of character. Though Ben Browder coming in, I think, was a godsend to the show. It just gave it this humongous breath of fresh air, creatively.

David Read
This setting and the circumstances were, in and of themselves, strong enough that a player could put down the ball and someone else — or toss the ball to another player — and they can continue to move it down the field and provide a satisfying story. Now, people are going to have their favorite seasons, people are going to have their least favorite seasons. But it’s still I mean, you compare it to basically any other modern work of television, and it’s up there.

Edward Gross
Absolutely. And what helps it… Like, I remember when the X-Files started, I used to be a big fan of the Night Stalker, and I still am. Kolchak: The Night Stalker. The X-Files was so influenced by The Night Stalker early on, you could tell. And it was so innovative at the beginning. And they would have these mythology episodes dealing with the UFO and the abduction of Mulder’s sister and all this stuff. But the mythology episodes were never that good, because they wouldn’t answer questions. They would just pose questions, and pose new questions on top of the old questions. They never really do any resolution. Stargate had, SG-1, had this incredible mythology and in the process of writing a book like Chevron Locked, where I really had to throw myself into it, not watching week to week, but watching it in a much more “binge” manner, watching that mythology evolve, was probably one of the most exciting things about the show, to go from. “cave men,” and I put quotes around that, to guiding starships through space by the end of the show. That’s incredible. I mean, that is… And it all was earned. You know what I mean? You could say the accelerated the pace for certain things, like getting the chips up and running. Who cares? I mean, that’s — you have to get into the space. We gonna wait three seasons while you build the…?

David Read
It’s television. Right, exactly.

Edward Gross
Exactly. That being said, you never felt that they were cheating to get where they were going or that the mythology felt like BS. It all felt organic. That is so hard to pull off, especially for show that goes that long without the writers running dry.

David Read
So tell me about Chevrons Locked itself. Now. Is this the first book that you wrote without Mark Altman?

Edward Gross
No, I’ve written a lot of books over the years without Mark.

David Read
No, in terms of the oral histories.

Edward Gross
Yeah, Chevrons Locked is the first one without Mark. Voices from Krypton was the second. I co-wrote one on Indiana Jones. After I finished Superman, I’m on to that. But Chevrons Locked, yeah, that was the first one of the oral histories. Mark introduced me to the oral history format. When he first mentioned it to me, I didn’t even know what he was talking about. That we looked at the one, “Live from New York,” the Saturday Night Live oral history. There’s another one, too, oh, the MTV. “I want my MTV.”

David Read
Oh of course!

Edward Gross
But they’re brilliantly done. And that’s the beauty of an oral history. If you do it right, and not saying I have, even if you’re not a fan of that subject, it should suck you in and be an interesting story of how something was created. I hope.

David Read
So how did you… What were your… What was your intent in creating this? And who were the first people you reached out to? Tell tell me about the process.

Edward Gross
Well, the process was, originally I was during the book for Eaglemoss, you know, which went under of course, and so they set up the deal. And the idea was we were going to do two books, one on SG-1 and then a combination book on Atlantis and Universe. But then Eaglemoss went under. Nacelle was interested in the book and it ended up there. But as far as the process is concerned, all things start with Brad Wright as far as I’m concerned. If you get Brad on board, and I was able to do that right away, forgetting almost that during Universe and before that, I forget, in Cinescape Magazine, and Sci Fi Now magazine, I have all these interviews with him and Robert, I totally forgot about! We were talking about Universe going on every episode and all that stuff back then@ But Brad and I — and he writes the foreword to the book, and kind of recounts this in the foreword — I reached out to him, he said, Yes, for one interview, basically, we kind of sparked off each other talking about different things about writing about, you know, our histories with our, me as a journalist, him as a producer. And said, “OK, let’s do another one.” And then that became a third one and a fourth one. And we just kept going. You know, Brad refers to me as a friend in the foreword, and I certainly feel that way about him. You know, when Eaglemoss went under he was the first person I contacted again and said, “Listen, I’m just letting you know, these are the facts. Are you still OK with this?” And he absolutely was. And then Brad started hooking me up with — he gave me a contacts for Jonathan Glasner, for Robert C. Cooper, Peter DeLuise, everybody. I mean, everybody that I spoke to for the book, biggest problem in the book was the time. The schedule was very tight to turn this book around. And originally, I had a very strict word count. There was no episode guide. Now we have an episode guide to every episode, thank you, to you, and Darren both who helped me with that tremendously. So it’s just the process, then, of starting to do the interviews, and everybody kind of took the attitude of, and I’ve had this so many times, I’m so grateful for it on Battlestar, we did “So Say We All” about Battlestar, the Star Trek books… You find the people who are really passionate about the subject you’re talking about, will give you as much time as you need. “You need four sessions? We’ll do four sessions.” You know, whatever it is, they’ll do it till I have what I want. And that’s a very unexpected, and a wonderful gift they give me by not making me feel like I have 40 minutes to talk to them for a book on the subject. And that truly is a gift that they give to me. So I’m very, very grateful for that. So that was the start of the process. And then it was during the interviews, transcribing the interviews and starting to piece things together. I didn’t want originally, like I say, go down the episode guide path, because that had been done to some degree before [with] separate volumes while the show was on. But then when it presented itself, I dove into it, and then it took forever for me to pull it together. Because I wanted to make sure that every episode had a quote from somebody, at least one quote from somebody. And it was like the other ones, just piecing it together to tell the story as best I could.

David Read
Did Brad help you determine the shape of how it was going to go in terms of the content? Or did you already have that pretty much locked? Pardon the pun.

Edward Gross
I knew that I wanted to do an introductory section of what Stargate was, where it came from, and how it became a TV show. I want to do a thing on the cast. And rather than do the cast from, like, “Alright, we’re introducing the cast and then we’ll keep telling their history, when they joined the show, and all that stuff.” No, I wanted to give each cast member their section of the book, and then interweave additional quotes from them throughout, basically. But I made a point of that. But as far as Brad… No, Brad had absolutely, nor did he try. I didn’t ask, he didn’t try. For me it all forms as the interviews are happening. [I was] not quite sure what it was. I knew I was gonna do something on the mythology, originally, I was planning on doing something on the effects, but that didn’t work out. So that’s not really in the book that much. So the idea is, it’s kind of hard to do an interview. People sometimes will say to me, “Can you send me a list of questions,” and I have to say to them, “I don’t write questions because I want it to be conversational.” My philosophy is you have a conversation with somebody and carve the interview out of the conversation. That’s the way I’ve always done it. And with Brad, it was like that, too. We just kept talking about different things like, “Alright, today, let’s talk about the mythology. Let’s talk about this. Let’s talk about that.” And again, when I did that with everybody, I spoke to Brad probably more than anybody although Peter DeLuise made himself extremely available to me, which was really great. That’s how it forms, and that’s how it comes together, based on the actual conversations, more than any kind of detailed outline or anything like that.

David Read
Well, you also have the benefit of not doing it live. You know, it’s it’s not going to be available to consumers immediately. So with your subjects, they have the ability to, as I did with you, when I was doing some of the quotes for this thing. “Let me take a step back. Don’t print that. Let me go at it again.” You know?

Edward Gross
Well it’s the joy of the perspective of today rather than when it’s happening? That’s what’s exciting about it is having, for all these books, it’s when you get them talking, looking back from today, because it’s just a perspective they can’t possibly have when they’re in the middle of it. I mean, I did an interview with Terry… Terry. God

David Read
Star Trek?

Edward Gross
From DS9.

David Read
Terry Farrell.

Edward Gross
Terry Farrell thank you. Wow, sorry. Been at this for a long time. Terry Farrell and I were on the phone for probably three hours, four hours. In the middle of it I said, “Terry,” I said, “this is so embarrassing but I have to go to the bathroom,” and her response was, “Oh, thank God, I do too. I didn’t want to stop the flow of the conversation.”

David Read
Oh, that’s funny.

Edward Gross
So that’s the beauty of having those long conversations. You can be that candid with each other and just go off. And now Terry Farrell, she ever sees this is gonna be like, “First he can’t remember my name and then he talks about me having to go to the bathroom?”

David Read
That’s funny! And so you also got to know just Brad on a personal level as well. I think you you talked about how you shared your love of sci fi with one another, and, of space. Would you say that your friendship with him is one of the bigger takeaways from this journey?

Edward Gross
Oh, absolutely. I mean, the fact is, I may not speak to him that often. But I know if I wrote him tomorrow and said, “Brad, can we jump on? I just want to talk to you about something,” he’ll jump on. He’ll set it up and we’ll jump on it. Yeah, I mean, we disagreed about certain things. Like he doesn’t like this guy. He just can’t get his head behind him. He cannot rationalize it. Just like he told me he would die in a zombie apocalypse because he to argue with the logic of them being around. The zombies.

David Read
Right, exactly. Yeah, it goes against the laws of thermodynamics?

Edward Gross
There you go. Exactly. I’m not saying it’s the first time he’d ever said it, but it was very funny hearing that.

David Read
It’s funny, I have had a very similar journey with Cooper on this show. I’d love to get Brad on, But Rob Cooper has been extraordinary going through the material with me for like, three seasons, and he was someone whom I was never very comfortable with. Because Rob is very dry.

Edward Gross
Yes, he is.

David Read
I couldn’t read him. And I met them when I was 18 years old, going up to Vancouver and doing GateWorld. But in doing this show, I count him as someone that I care about. And for any takeaway for Dial the Gate he’s in the top three. Like if I go back, if I step back, and I look at the work, and I think in terms of the things that are important to me about what I’ve done, it’s my relationship with Robert Cooper that I will come away with being so thankful for being able to sit with him and share these stories with him with the public, these extraordinary stories about this important period of of these folks lives. It’s just a rich history.

Edward Gross
Yeah, no, it absolutely is. And that’s one thing I want to point out too, is I’m carrying on about Brad, Brad, Brad, Brad, Brad. But the truth of the matter is Jonathan made himself, whenever I needed him, and Robert was great in making himself available. Even if I wrote him and said, “I need a quote for this episode. Could you just tell me something about it?” And he would send it back. You know, he would do it! And they would do it for me because again, they were just supportive of this project, of this happening. That a wonderful feeling when you have that and you don’t get the sense of, “Oh, God, will this guy stop asking me minutia?”

David Read
Exactly. But the minutia is where it’s at. You know, when you first reached out to us saying that you were going to do this, I knew exactly who you were. And it was, for me, it was very important that you got it right. So I wanted to make myself available to you as well.

Edward Gross
Yeah, no, and I knew that honestly, and it’s gonna sound like ass-kissing right now. But I knew that when I started this, once I got Brad on board, you and Darren Sumner were going to be the two guys that I really needed, from the fan point of view, and fan’s not even a fair word. It’s the chroniclers of the journey that Stargate has been on. I knew I needed both of you on my side, so to speak, and I got you. And both of you were great to me. I mean, you were really helpful.

David Read
Very thankful to be a part of the process. Yeah, I am quoted nearly 50 times in this book! Like, my gosh, I don’t feel, you know, worthy of that, I just just wanted to make, I was so thrilled that this product was coming out. It’s not even really a product, it’s a product, but you know, that this piece was coming out, and wanted to be a part of it in any way that I could, because it’s it’s going to be remembered as one of one of the go-tos for this franchise,

Edward Gross
That was certainly the hope. But that’s the thing. It’s like knowledge, people who have knowledge, to me, even a passion, or an awareness of a property, they are just as important to me as the people who made the thing, which is why I insist, like on the Planet of the Apes book now, we interviewed everybody in the original films. But I’m going back now to film historians, to different authors, about people who are involved with Planet of the Apes, biographers, because I wanted to flesh it out, because I feel you have to give equal weight to the people who know of the subject or have chronicled it in some way, or just have thoughts on it, and interweave those with the filmmakers. And that was, with Stargate, I did not except for you and Darren, I didn’t do it that much, because I didn’t have the time, frankly, and the space. But I make a point of that, of making sure, and then what happens is, I think, when you bring those historians in, they start ending up carrying the same kind of import as the people making it, because it’s all interwoven into the tapestry of whatever that subject is.

David Read
Well, I remember in the book, specifically, I make note of the story of the fire alarm going off during the pitch meeting with Brad — was it John Symes? Anyway. And because he had told me that story, and what then happens is that you switch to Brad, and he tells the story. So it’s a lot of that in the book, of people mentioning one thing, and then you go to the source, you go to the horse’s mouth on it and say, “Now let’s hear from the person who actually experienced it.” So you’re using us to kind of pitch for each other. It’s a very, it’s this a lot.

Edward Gross
Telling the story, again, putting that story out there in the multiple points of view, and telling the story. And what did Brad said, he’s looking up the guy’s nose, and he’s doing a pitch in an elevator?

David Read
Yeah and the guy’s, “So, keep going.”

Edward Gross
Yeah, right, exactly. I’m telling you, I love doing these. I really, really do. This is my passion now, I hope I never have to write a book non-oral-history.

David Read
Well, it’s a pure form. And it’s one of my frustrations, because all of my interviews are very, like, transcribe-based, you know, if you’re going to read them… I don’t like the idea of someone going off and cutting out dialogue to put in time for them to interpret the essence of what that person said. Give me the quote, let me read the quote. Who among the cast did you enjoy speaking with

Edward Gross
Cast was a challenge, I have to tell you. Ben was great. I mean, Ben, to me was the real standout because his passion for it, again, that passion thing was very important. Cast members were difficult, though. ichard Dean Anderson said he would talk me. He told Brad he would talk to me a few times, and he ultimately didn’t. Nothing personal Rick. So that’s in a situation where you have to depend on either people who I’ve done interviews with, or convention appearances and sort of that kind of thing. And in fact, I found some convention appearances with Rick that he just told these amazing stories about being a teenager and bicycling and stuff like that that are just incredible stories. And then you have other people then, who I did interview, commenting on those on top of that, so it just fleshes it all out, But I’d say of cast Ben is the standout for me, though, because I just love that story which everybody knows of his first episode where he didn’t want the camera on him. He wanted his looking at the Stargate and the camera moving to the Stargate. And when he told me that, I was like, “Wow, that is an actor without an ego.” I mean, that is a guy who just cares about the show, trying to convey that.

David Read
He had also inhaled the franchise before he went and [did] it. And they kind of incorporated that into his character, like he was an SG-1 historian, Mitchell was. And so when he’s on that set with that character, with that gate, he knew what the show was about. And it makes a lot of sense.

Edward Gross
So yeah, so but the majority of my interviews were behind the scenes, people, that was the majority of original interviews that I conducted. And really, they do take up the lion’s share of space in the book, because they’re the ones who were behind the scenes crafting it, you know what I mean?

David Read
And they haven’t given so many interviews over the years, either. If you go and look, you can find reams of interviews with Amanda and Michael. But that’s, again, to go back to Dial the Gate for a moment, that’s really what I’ve enjoyed as well, because there are some of the stories that will just pop into their head, as we’re talking, you know, about X, Y, or Z. It’s like, “Oh, I’ve got to tell you this,” and I’m sitting here — I’ve covered this most of my life, and it’s like, “I never knew that” or, “that feeds into that thing that I knew about that.” And it’s just wild. Something just will just pop into their fron, if I can use the show’s mythology a little bit, and, and we get a treat of something that we didn’t expect to hear necessarily, that they didn’t even expect to occur to them.

Edward Gross
It’s always the joy, especially when you have… I had that Superman. Mark Waid did a conversation about one of the editors of DC in the 60s, he had horrible reputation, the editor, and he came away with this psychological looking at this guy and offered up what his comics — he tried to put in his comic — were part of the man’s own psychosis basically, or psychological underpinnings. And Mark said to me, he goes, “I didn’t even ever think about that before. And it just occurred to me now when we’re talking about the editor, and I thought that was very cool that it opened up, even him, giving him thoughts that he didn’t even know he had about Superman, about the history of Superman. And that happens all the time.

David Read
Well you’re helping people put pieces together in a perspective that didn’t occur to them, because it’s not necessarily the direction that they were coming at it. That’s just how it is. And that’s, that’s a rewarding process, because to not even intentionally help an artist approach a piece of material in a way that they that didn’t occur to them, you know, even years later, is still a wild experience.

Edward Gross
Yeah! That’s great. And that’s part of the joy of this, is getting those stories out there that people may not have heard. I mean, Trek, as you know, there were a lot of stories that came out in that book that…

David Read
…Oh, that’s generations and generations of stories there, though. With a lot of a lot of conflicting reinterpretations over time. Roddenberry was the worst. He loved to adjust his mythology.

Edward Gross
Oh constantly. And the views of him and all that changed, but obviously, this is not a Star Trek show, so I probably shouldn’t go into any detail.

David Read
No, absolutely. Yeah. For sure. Were there any specific revelations in the book that surprised you as a Stargate SG-1 fan? Or was it just all a part of the process for you?

Edward Gross
It’s part of the process, but it’s also you’ve got to understand, when Stargate ended, I kind of moved away from it and went on to other things, and all that. So I hadn’t really given Stargate too much thought until this book came up again. And then suddenly, it was like… I mean, this book came up, and then suddenly, it was like, “Alright, let me dive into this again.” I think the thing that, I kind of said it earlier anyway, for some reason, my favorite section book is about the evolving mythology of the show. In talking to [them] in how these things came about, and how one element would spin off into another element, which is spin off to another element, and create what is ultimately the mythology of Stargate SG-1. That, to me was fascinating to hear from talking from different people who kept giving Robert the lion’s share of credit for being the mythology guy. I mean, they all contributed, but Robert, they kept saying, was the guy who really honed in on the mythology of the show. And that, to me, was fascinating. And also the discussion of, and I’m not saying it’s unique to Stargate, but it’s evolution from episodic to more serialized, in a lot of ways.

David Read
Stories have evolved in their telling.

Edward Gross
Yeah, and that’s the thing and there are elements that would be picked up. To me it was like DS9 in that sense, in that, you know, you’d introduce these characters in episode two and then in episode 16, they’d be back for some reason and SG-1 excelled that that, of planting the seeds with these different characters that they’d never expected to go back to again, and then did again and again when they really worked.

David Read
Well, these characters were each such unique tools in terms of their utilization for stories, that when they went along, and they had an issue, it’s like, “This tool on this lower shelf here will be perfect to pull this out,” and that character would fit right in or would would launch the franchise in a different vector than it had been before.

Edward Gross
Absolutely. And that feeds into, even if the show wasn’t serialized, it felt serialized because you were revisiting the storylines and these people. And that adds a realism to the show that a lot of shows don’t do, because at that time they were so hell bent on resetting everything at the end of the episode, that you never got a chance to get that depth, to explore these different things. Stargate SG-1, in my mind is one of those shows that first chose to do that. And that was, that was a thrill talking to them about that evolution.

David Read
It’s crazy. I was talking with Paul Mullie a couple of weeks ago, executive producer of SG-1. And we were having conversations about whether or not to continue the canon in a new in a new iteration that Amazon and MGM are going to eventually do. And his answer is beside the point on that, but he kept on saying, “We did not set out to create a cannon,” aka a mythology. “We were doing episode by episode, season by season.” The mythology came out of that as a result, but it’s not, like, the reason that they did it, which is many reasons, the reasons that fans continue to watch!

Edward Gross
Right. well, that’s what gives it life. I mean, seriously, that organic feeling that you’re watching something that is changing and evolving. Believe it or not, the TV show Angel was like that of all things. Right? They would allow those characters to do horrible things, but then slowly redeem themselves, or not, and that’s always fascinating to, when characters can go off in sort of very interesting directions when people aren’t afraid to do that. I thought SG-1, again, did a lot of that. Not in horrible directions. But you know what I mean.

David Read
It always [puts] me back to the Irvin Kershner quote about no putting Han in carbonite. “It says this is a continuing story.” It doesn’t have to be episode by episode, some things can overlap and you can continue to enjoy each of them in a bubble. As long as there’s enough information for that bubble. And you don’t have to watch it that way. You can you can enjoy them sequentially. It’s so cool. Atlantis? Universe? What are the odds?

Edward Gross
I think it all depends on how this one sells, be honest with you. I hate to be crass and commercial about it, but if Chevrons Locked sells, I’m on Atlantis and Universe to do either one book for two or a book on each, I’m not sure how that would fall out.

David Read
Have you had any information on pre-orders? It’s out of stock on Nacelle Books.

Edward Gross
Well, that’s good. I don’t know yet, the numbers, I think when the book comes out, we’ll get a better feel for how… you got to remember everybody may order them, but the booksellers can return them. So that’s where you got to wait and see what those final sales are. But I can say that if Chevrons Locked sells, there will be follow ups, at least one follow up if not two, on Atlantis and Universe.

David Read
So the curious thing for me is that I bought the book, it showed up at my house, I’m now in LA working on a project, so it’s back home nice and cozy in my garage, so I don’t have it here. And then it said on Amazon that the date’s been moved, the release dates been moved to May the 16th. Do you have any idea what happened there?

Edward Gross
I think it had something to do with distribution. I think that’s really what it comes down to. You got to realize Nacelle is doing an amazing job. Publishing is something is relatively new for them. So they’re learning a little bit, too, as they’re going on, on how to get the books out there, how to put the books together, how to get the books out there, that sort of thing. I think that’s part of it. It’s part of the curve, like anything else. But the fact is, I have never seen a publisher so enthusiastic about what they’re doing. Yeah, but I think I think it’s a distribution issue.

David Read
OK. Understood. Yeah. Because I know a lot of people who are really wanting to get their hands on this thing. And I think it’s going to do pretty darn well. I’m very hopeful that that people are going to fall in love with — table of chevrons. I’m just now noticing that. I’m searching inside the book on Amazon. Table of chevrons! I’m like, “Hold on, what’s…”

Edward Gross
I got a little cutesy. You actually suggested, “Don’t want to come up with a title like “Fifty Year Mission” that’ll really, you know, grab people, and I wrote you back or called you back and said, “Chevrons Locked! That’s it.”

David Read
OK so you have to provide this with proper context. So all of your books have these amazing titles. And this one at this point was like, I forget what it was, but it was like “The complete Stargate…”

Edward Gross
It was boring.

David Read
Yeah, it was what would come after a colon and it was like, “You’ve got to give this thing a name,” and so I’m thrilled that you ran with that, because I was I was like, “You know, he’s gonna be like, ‘David, it’s fine.’ No, it’s got to have some pizzazz!”

Edward Gross
Oh, please. I’m never “It’s fine.” I’m always like, to the last till they know pull… Voices from Krypton they had to pull out of my hands to get moving into production because I would have kept going if they let me. So I’m never “Well that’s good enough. I’m out of here.” You know what I mean? That’s one of my biggest problems, that can’t let these things go until I can’t, you know, I have no choice

David Read
Art’s never done. It’s just it’s just set aside. Is that what they say?

Edward Gross
I don’t know if that’s what they say.

David Read
Or left abandoned?

Edward Gross
Yeah, there you go. And yeah, it’s like I’m always working… I remember I was writing the Galactica book, Thanksgiving weekend of whatever year that was. I was writing, writing and writing and writing and writing and like the Saturday happened, the Sunday happened. The book had to go out Monday. Monday at like, 3:45 in the afternoon, we sent the draft to the publisher. It was like, right to the last minute, there’s no breathing. Same thing with Chevrons Locked “I have to finish the episode guide@ Wait, I gotta finish it!” And it was like that. It’s this. You want it to be… Look, people are going to criticize it no matter what you do, you’re gonna get criticism. I expect that. I guarantee you, Superman is 720 pages long. And somebody’s gonna say “Yeah, but you didn’t cover this. He didn’t cover that.” I know it’s gonna happen. People are gonna bitch or complain that I didn’t cover this or that. And the truth is you can’t cover everything!

David Read
You can’t cover everything.

Edward Gross
No. In this I had a very tight schedule. But I tried my damnedest to make sure that it covered all the bases of the show. And most importantly, it told the story through the words of those people. And I hope that they’re happy with it. And I hope the fans are happy reading about it, hope there’s some new stories in there that maybe they don’t know. I don’t know if that’s the case.

David Read
As a contributor I’m thrilled with it. And I really hope that people get their hands on it as fast as they can, because you poured out your heart and soul into this thing. And it’s a product that will be on many Stargate fans shelf so that they can reference as they move forward. That episode guide is a stroke of genius, because, now you can have it next to you while you watch and take away various quotes.

Edward Gross
Yeah, I wished it was more quotes. But again, I had to stop.

David Read
That’s the thing. Absolutely. And hopefully, we’ll have the same for Atlantis and Universe.

Edward Gross
I mean, that is really the hope, so we’ll see. But you know, the funny thing about me is for 15 years, I was the editor of Life Story, actually, yeah, 15 years, of Life Story magazine, which was a magazine devoted mostly to teen subjects, Justin Bieber, NSYNC, Britney Spears, who cares, you know, that sort of thing. But every time an issue came in, I cradled that thing like a baby. I mean, I would look at it turn to page by page and go through it. And that’s my am with these books. You know, my heart is so into this stuff. All these years, I’ve been a journalist for over 40 years, and I love what I do. And so this is an honor for me to be able to do these books, the magazines, whatever it may be.

David Read
This is perfect. It feeds into what I have to talk about here. I’ve got some fan questions and GateWorld asks, “What was it like being interviewed by someone else for a change?”

Edward Gross
That is a really good question. Because it’s really weird for me. I’m very comfortable in the interview process. I think I do a decent interview. So I’m very comfortable doing it. When the when it’s turned though, and suddenly I have to ask the question, “Am I going to be a moron?” It’s easy to ask questions, how easy is it to answer the questions when you have to go more… That’s a lot harder when you’re thinking on your feet saying, “OK, I feel this way.” You don’t even know how you feel at the time until you start expressing it.

David Read
That’s exactly right.

Edward Gross
Yeah. So I’ve done a few interviews, a few podcast interviews, few print, online interviews, and now this as my first video interview that I’m doing. And it’s nice because again, I enjoy the conversing. And that’s what this feels like, is a conversation. So it’s good. So there’s really not a problem switching gears.

David Read
Yeah, absolutely! And you know, it’s it’s Turnabout is fair play, every once in a while it’s nice to be placed… It’s something that you do yourself as an exercise to get work done. And now you have to be the one to promote the content as well. I think I think it says something about you that you’re able to go off the cuff now and turn things around with me, live on on YouTube.

Edward Gross
This is live? I’m just kidding. I mean, it helps me too, because honestly speaking about this speaking about Voices of Krypton, I’m coming up with things talking about my feelings about these subjects that I never really had thought about before. So it’s fun. It’s a good opportunity for me to really dig deeper into my own feelings about Stargate, about Superman, about Star Trek, whatever it may be. And someday when I write my memoir, just kidding. I’ll now have this stuff.

David Read
The Book About Writing the Books. I think there could be a title in there somewhere!

Edward Gross
It could be. We’ll see.

David Read
Jonas wants to know, “Will this book be available as an e book in the EU?” I think it’s already available as an ebook.

Edward Gross
Yeah, it is. Certainly I think it’s available on Kindle right now.

David Read
Yeah. Should be able to grab it.

Edward Gross
Yeah, in fact, I would go for the ebook, because it’s got all the nice formatting and everything. The text-book doesn’t have some of the formatting that I put in.

David Read
Do you want to tell that story? I guess you kind of just did. It doesn’t have the formatting that you wanted

Edward Gross
That’s really it in a nutshell. I mean, that’s formatting, but they couldn’t have been greater about making sure the eBook out all the formatting. So I have no complaints. It looks great. The cover illustration is wonderful, I think.

David Read
It’s really cool. Did you pick that artist or did they come up with someone?

Edward Gross
I’m trying to remember. I came up with the artist in the sense of, I think I saw him do a caricature somewhere. And it’s like DC Stolkner. And he’s gonna hit me because I probably didn’t pronounce his name right. But I found his art online. And this is before I had the deal for Superman at Nacelle. And I just hired him to do a cover for me, if in case I had to do it myself. Because my agent was having a hard time selling The Voices from Krypton, and Nacelle jumped on it. So I had a cover already done. And then I went to them and said, “I really love this artist that did the one. Why don’t we make my oral histories?” I’m doing like a dozen books to these guys. And it’s like, “Why don’t we make all the covers these caricature images, and that’ll be sort of our calling card for the books?” So they agreed. The Chevrons Locked one is great. The next one on Indiana Jones is amazing. So it’s exciting. It’s fun also presenting an original piece of art that we can get away with, because it’s not copyright, because it’s character, so yeah. So that’s where the artist came from. I found him and now we’re using him for each one of these.

David Read
Well there you go. Yeah, I love the one for Superman, because it looks like, like, comic cells. And I’m hoping that your Indiana Jones one will be like a movie poster.

Edward Gross
To some degree it is. I mean, it is it. Like I said it’s I think it’s really good. I think you’d be really happy with it.

David Read
OK, that’s legit. Lockwatcher wants to know, “Is there any particular episode that you consider your favorite? Of SG-1?”

Edward Gross
Wow, that actually is very tough.

David Read
Yeah. 214. Narrow that down, Ed!

Edward Gross
Especially when I had to revisit them and the speed that I had to revisit them. I mean, I enjoy the fun ones, you know, the goofy ones, like 100 and 200. Honestly, I can’t even tell you. And people are gonna say, “Well, he doesn’t know the show.” It’s not that it’s just for me to pick one. The things that I like mostly are, like, a lot of the character moments, those quiet moments where you get those little revelations from them about each other, and that sort of thing. Those are the moments that I treasure on the show is because there’s a lot of really good ones. Love that.

David Read
Absolutely. Yeah, I think that’s what most of us tune in for, those characters, ynd how they play off of each other is what makes it gold. I mean, just watching Jack and Daniel just spar.

Edward Gross
Yeah! And you can mix any one of them up and it works. Different sports in different ways. And that’s the beauty of it.

David Read
Absolutely. Jeremy Heiner, “What did you think of The Expanse? We’re assuming that you’ve seen it.”

Edward Gross
To be honest with you I haven’t seen much of The Expanse and not because I’m not interested. It’s because there are 2 million streaming shows. And I my problem is when I’m writing these books, and I like to have the TV on, I need something I’ve seen already, because if I don’t, I’m constantly going… or go I’m doing this and I go, “Shit. What did he just say?” Sorry, folks. And I have to hit the rewind button and start doing that. So again, I’m not working because I’m watching this. But normally I could have like, Avengers on, or Superman on or Star Trek on, or whatever and not care because I’m just listening to it as background noise.

David Read
Yeah, The Expanse is, even Darren at GateWorld says it’s great. It was one of those where it was like, “I’ll watch it when it’s over.” And now it’s over. And now I have to find time to watch it. Because I’ve heard, like for certain things. You want to give it your full attention. You don’t want to just have it on while you’re doing the dishes.

Edward Gross
I’m still waiting to watch Breaking Bad and Mad Men. I mean, I haven’t been able to watch either one of them. And those are years old now and it’s like, “They’re on my list” but…

David Read
Breaking Bad’s brilliant. Mad Men, I finally started like a few weeks ago. I’m not crazy about it. Like I love John Hamm. There’s so much womanizing in it. It’s just uncomfortable to watch. But they’re also pouring it on. So it’s just uncomfortable to watch. Mack Bolan’s Conscience, “Did you interview the different Star Trek captains? Do you have any stories that you can share about them?”

Edward Gross
I mean, yeah, I mean, I can. You may not want to go down this path because it’ll take too long. But every one of them… I didn’t interview Avery Brooks. He’s a tough one to get. I interviwed all the other captains, yeah. I was on the set of Voyager. And then he took me to the set of DS9. And he was walking down towards me in the publicists and when he saw us, he turned around and went the other way. Yeah, so he definitely didn’t want to take a chance of talking to us. But like, Shatner, I’ve spoken to Shatner a number of times now. And I’ve told you some of the stories of interacting with him. And he’s a guy who, if you get them on a good day, he’s great. You get him on a bad day. You’re getting one word answers. I mean, when Generations was happening, I spoke to him on the phone. I have to use something. We’re gonna have to take a sip. I’m sorry.

David Read
Please take a sip. You’re perfectly fine.

Edward Gross
I don’t want to interrupt the flow of the show.

David Read
What you go there?

Edward Gross
Sparkling Ice pink grapefruit. Quite good. So there you are. So when I interviewed him for Generations, he just didn’t want to do the phone interview I was on. And the conversation. I mean, this encapsulates it. I said to him, “This is the first Star Trek movie on the bridge without Spock, without McCoy. I would imagine that was very odd.” And his response exactly, his whole entire response was, “It was odd. It got odder as time went on.” And that was it. I mean, that’s all he would give me for that conversation. And every answer was like that. But then I have other ones where, you know, he just talks in depth about it. I had a two-minute interview with him literally, about the steam punk engines of OZ or something. He played the voice of the Wizard. And he said to me, “What do you think of the film?” And I said, “Well, I thought the story was good. The characters are good. The animation was eh.” And he says to me, “How do you spell ‘eh’?” And I said, “Eh,” and then at the end of the conversation, I said, “So for you what was the strongest part of this film?” And he goes, “I thought it was the animation.” So there you got a guy who’s playing with me. And I burst out and he burst out laughing. So you had that wonderful thing. Patrick Stewart, very fun to talk to. I met him at the Generations junket. I was in the set of First Contact, they opened his trailer door, he looked at me and he goes, “I know you.” And he recognized me from the Gener — I said, “The Generations junket?” He goes, “That’s it.” And then I went in and talked to him. And he told a wonderful story about his first day on the set of that, of Next Gen, where everyone’s laughing between scenes and stuff. And he’s basically having a fit about it.

David Read
Yeah, as a Shakespearean actor he couldn’t do it.

Edward Gross
He couldn’t do it. And Jonathan Frakes said “Patrick, we’re just having fun.” And this is how he tells me the story. He goes, “and I looked at him and I said, ‘We are not here to have fun!’ Then he looks at me and in a soft voice, he goes, “Can you believe I was such a pompous ass? “You know, so that was his thing. And I have to say this, and then I’ll shut up after this, is Kate Mulgrew. I couldn’t get it for the longest time. Unfortunately, there was conflict on set between her and Jeri Ryan and a number of people were commenting on it. So right before the end, I contacted her publicist and said, “Listen,” I said, “I just want you to know, I really would love to talk to her.” I said, “I’ve spoken to Jeri Ryan.” And I named the different people that I’d spoken to. Suddenly, I was told, “Yeah, she’ll meet you for lunch in Manhattan.” And that woman, whatever the tensions were on the set of Voyager, took full responsibility. I brought it up. It was awkward bringing it up. She said, “Go ahead, ask your question.” So I did. She took such full responsibility for saying that she thought she was enough for the show. They didn’t need to bring in this sexpot, basically, in the form of Jeri Ryan is Seven of Nine. And all this stuff. Jeri did a great job. She just couldn’t handle the fact that they needed to bring somebody else in. Well, doesn’t that change the temperature of that section of the book? Of course it does. Because suddenly Kate’s the hero, right? So I admired that so much in her that she did that. And it wasn’t bull. It was like, this is her honest feeling about how it went down.

David Read
She was the star of that show. And then, Jeri came in and, don’t get me wrong. I mean, some of my favorite scenes, and Kate acknowledges this, are between Kate and Jeri.

Edward Gross
Absolutely. But she got all the publicity.

David Read
But it changed all the temperature. Right, exactly. And that’s hard for an actor.

Edward Gross
It is! Absolutely. And Scott Bakula is just — everyone always says he’s the nicest guy. Any conversation I’ve had with Scott, and I’ve had several of them. Wonderful. I mean, the man is just, you know, what’s the expression, a mench? He’s a mench. And that’s as far as it goes. And once we get to the new stuff, you know, the environment changed. I wasn’t covering it as much as earlier.

David Read
Yeah, that was the absolutely a pivot. So Superman is coming out. June the sixth, then Indiana Jones.

Edward Gross
Well, Indiana Jones, we’re not sure when that’s going to be. That could be towards the end of the year actually. So we’re not gonna make it for the movie, but we’ll have a very in-depth chapter on Dial of Destiny when it does come out. So it’s Voices From Krypton June 6. And then Indiana Jones later in the year, I believe towards the end of the year, and then we go on from there. Apes be out in time for the new movie. That’s a good one. That’s, that’s a rewrite and expansion and rewrite of a book called Planet of the Apes revisited. And that’s being turned into an oral history because lord knows I can’t do anything but oral histories now.

David Read
There’s such fun once you get into ’em. And GateWorld is saying here, “The Expanse– Best show of the past decade.” So think you and I have our television watching cut out for us. Absolutely. Ed, I have been so pleased to get to know you over the past couple of years working on this, I am privileged to call you a friend. And I am thrilled that this product is now making its way into people’s hands. And I think they’re gonna have a few treats in store.

Edward Gross
I hope so. I really hope that everyone knows that this was really designed to give them the best look at the show possible.

David Read
Absolutely. Well, I appreciate you coming on and best of luck with sales and hopefully we’ll be talking to you not too far in the future for for Atlantis and Universe.

Edward Gross
That would be wonderful. I’d be very happy to do so.

David Read
I appreciate you coming on. Thank you, sir. You take care. All right.

Edward Gross
OK. You want to do the Star Trek thing?

David Read
Live long and prosper@ Be well.

Edward Gross
See you later. Thank you

David Read
Edward Gross, author of Chevrons Locked: the Unauthorized Oral History, unofficial oral history of Stargate SG-1. Thank you all for tuning in. And thanks so much to Ed for making this episode possible. Ferdinand Thomas says, “I just rediscovered Stargate due to your interviews Thank you. You’re great, engaging and gracious interviewer.” Well, thank you very much for tuning in, Ferdinand. Fenton Read Smith, spelled the exact same way mine is. “David needs to hunt down the on the ground production staff with a vengeance VFX, SFX decorations, hell, PAs, accounts.” OK. I have made those calls. I’m still working my way through them. But behind the cameras people like to stay behind cameras. And this show is a video show. So that’s tricky. I’ve managed to a couple, James Titchener, plenty of the writers, but I’ve lost track of the number of people who have said, “You know what, your show is great. All the best, but I’m just not interested.” One of one of the producers basically told me that he couldn’t come on because there’s legal stuff, and it’s like, well, that’s all I can do. You know, that’s the nice thing about this, we can pick it up or we can drop it and when people become available, some people their their tunes change as they get older and everything else, so we’ll just see what happens. I think that’s all that I’ve got for you here. My thanks to Jeremy and Tracy, my moderating team for making this show possible. Thanks to Linda “GateGabber” Furey, my producer, Frederick Marcoux at ConceptsWeb who keeps dialthegate.com up and running. Wormhole X-Tremists is going to be on a pause until I get back to middle America. Right now I’m in LA working on a project. It’s not Stargate related. But keep it on dialthegate.com for all the upcoming interviews and everything that’s going on there because that’s where you’ll get the most up to date information. My name is David Read for Dial the Gate. I appreciate you tuning in. And I’ll see you on the other side.