With this episode of Dial the Gate, we are going back to where it all began. We are privileged to welcome, for the first time, Stargate SG-1 Co-Creator and Executive Producer Jonathan Glassner. This is a PRE-RECORDED interview, and includes brand new stories even yours truly has never heard!

Already waist-deep in the development of his next television series The Ark (with Stargate feature film co-writer Dean Devlin), Glassner has taken time out of his busy schedule to tell us a little bit about his new show and what is to come. He also tells us about his perspective on bringing SG-1 to life, casting the series, and some of the challenges and opportunities that emerged in his years on the show.

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Timecodes
00:00 – Opening Credits
00:26 – Welcome and Episode Outline
01:56 – Introducing Jonathan, The Ark and The Outpost
10:49 – Early Memories of SG-1
16:15 – Casting Richard Dean Anderson and Amanda Tapping
24:20 – Casting Michael Shanks and Christopher Judge
28:12 – Teal’c
30:25 – Peter Williams and Don S. Davis
32:54 – Teryl Rothery and Guest Actors
36:00 – Season One Thoughts, How the Series Took Off
39:35 – Nudity in the Pilot and Hathor
45:27 – Additional Elements to Borrow from the Feature Film
48:56 – Puddle Effects and Wardrobe
54:26 – Favorite Aliens, Jacob Carter and the Asgard
58:15 – SG-1 After His Departure, Stargate Atlantis and “Solitudes”
1:01:11 – Air Force Consultants – Sam and Jack’s Relationship
1:06:45 – The Ark, and More of what Jonathan Would Like to Do Next
1:08:35 – Dean Devlin and Stargate
1:16:20 – Language Challenges in SG-1
1:18:20 – Locations and Technology
1:22:18 – Wrapping up with Jonathan
1:24:42 – Post interview housekeeping
1:26:54 – End credits

***

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TRANSCRIPT
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David Read
Hello, and welcome to episode 119 of Dial the Gate. My name is David Read. Thank you so much for tuning in. Stargate SG-1 Co-creator Jonathan Glassner is joining us for this episode. But before we get started, if you like Stargate, and you want to see more content like this on YouTube please consider clicking that Like button, it makes a difference with YouTube’s algorithm and will definitely help the show grow its audience. Please also consider sharing this video with a Stargate friend. And if you want to get notified about future episodes, click the Subscribe icon. Giving the Bell icon to click will notify you the moment new video drops and you’ll get my notifications of any last minute guests changes and clips from this live stream will be released over the course of the next few days on the GateWorld.net YouTube channel. This episode is pre-recorded. Jonathan is in pre-production with Dean Devlin for his next television series, The Ark. They’re actually in the middle of casting right now so this was very last minutes. One of the reasons I didn’t give fans a chance to ask questions because I only found out about this interview last night and we are very grateful to have him. He has agreed to come back once The Ark is on the air so that we can have fans get into that show as well. And he will share more Stargate stories at that point. So as this is a pre-recorded interview, the moderators will not be taking questions for Jonathan this episode. Again, we will have him back in the future. But without further ado, let’s go ahead and bring in Jonathan Glassner to discuss the adaptation of Stargate the feature film into Children of the Gods and some memories from the first three seasons of SG-1 and tell us a little bit about The Ark. Jonathan Glassner Co-creator, Writer, Director Stargate SG-1. Jonathan, thank you so much for being here. This means such a great deal to me to have you and I’m glad we were able to make something work of your insane schedule.

Jonathan Glassner
Yeah, I’m pretty busy.

David Read
Tell me what’s going on. Tell me about the not, I was about to say The Outpost but we can get to The Outpost in just a moment here. Tell me about The Ark. Spoil it all for me.

Jonathan Glassner
Well, I can’t spoil much of it for you because the network would kill me. I can really only tell you what they’ve already revealed, which is that it’s about a ship that is designed to try to get humanity to another habitable planet to try to save humanity because Earth is falling apart. And it’s actually a whole series of Arks going.

David Read
Oh really? Okay.

Jonathan Glassner
We’re just focused on one Ark. Yeah. And the show starts off with while everyone is asleep in the pods, something hits us and wipes out one of the pods completely and about half the people in the other pod make it out alive. And unfortunately the pod that was taken out were all our leaders, all our experts, all our top scientists and these are sort of the lower level people that are left to try to survive on the ship and they are unqualified to really to do it but qualified enough to be able to pull it off. You know, they’re the junior people in every department.

David Read
So this is gonna be ship based. Not planet based.

Jonathan Glassner
Ship based entirely. Yeah.

David Read
Wow.

Jonathan Glassner
We are currently filling three soundstages in Belgrade, Serbia with ship sets.

David Read
Serbia. Wow, what a great location. All right.

Jonathan Glassner
Oh, well. I mean, we shot Outpost there and we fell in love with people on the crew, amazing crew. So we literally just moved our crew over and took our same stages and folded up The Outpost stages, Outposts sets. That’s because Outpost has a chance of getting picked up elsewhere.

David Read
All right.

Jonathan Glassner
Put these up, So.

David Read
That’s fantastic. Is this going to be a family show? Is this going to be targeted for teens or for adults more?

Jonathan Glassner
It’s for adults mostly, but everyone can watch it. It’s not too scary or too, it’s meant to be kind of light hearted and, if you’ve ever seen The Outpost it’s a similar tone. It’s actually similar tone to Stargate.

David Read
Okay.

Jonathan Glassner
It’s got some real danger. But everybody, it’s about the characters, and everybody has a sense of humor. And we have some fun with it.

David Read
What is your take on approaching something like this when a show like Lost in Space has just wrapped? Where it was we’re looking for a new world. The mission kind of goes sideways with an alien attack. What is your intent on approach with projects like The Ark to make it kind of new and unique and fresh? What do you want to do that hasn’t really been done?

Jonathan Glassner
You know, for me it’s not about the hardware and the plot. And it’s much more about the people, the characters, I think that your show succeeds or fails on the audience falling in love with the characters and their interactions and how that particular group of people deals with a story that you may or may not have seen before. I mean, Stargate, for me, I attribute the success of Stargate entirely to the cast and the characters.

David Read
Agreed, 100%.

Jonathan Glassner
If it had been a bunch of boring people, and we did the exact same story, it wouldn’t have worked, it wouldn’t have succeeded. But we did it with very dynamic people and fun characters who had a sense of humor, got along with each other, and so on.

David Read
This is terrific. Now, when can we hope to see a series premiere?

Jonathan Glassner
I wish I knew. They haven’t told us we start we start shooting at the end of March.

David Read
Okay.

Jonathan Glassner
We’re busily writing the episodes. And they’re busy building the sets. The sets are going up so fast it’s astounding.

David Read
This is a good thing.

Jonathan Glassner
Yeah.

David Read
Do you have your cast yet? Are you still looking?

Jonathan Glassner
We are casting now. We’re in the midst of casting now. We’re casting internationally so we’re looking at people all over the world. The crew on the ship is supposed to be international. So we actually want accents and that kind of thing.

David Read
Is the year of this announced yet? Like when it’s taking place?

Jonathan Glassner
We were never really going to say but just in my head it’s about 100 years from now. I mean, just in terms of the level of technology, it’s probably roughly where we’d be in 100, maybe 200 years, somewhere in that.

David Read
Okay, so you were mentioning like there was everyone’s gonna have one accent. So that’s either, like going to be something that no…

Jonathan Glassner
Everybody will not have one accent.

David Read
Will not have one accent.

Jonathan Glassner
People will have their own accents, that’s the idea. Yeah, that’s the idea. It’s an international crew.

David Read
All right, then very good. I can’t wait to see this thing. This looks like…

Jonathan Glassner
It looks like it’s gonna be a lot of fun. It’s looking like it’s gonna be a lot of fun. Yeah.

David Read
All right. Are you looking to attach any, are you looking for completely fresh performers across the board, or are you potentially looking for one or two people that also will have some name recognition?

Jonathan Glassner
No, it’ll all be new people. I mean, we may, you know I don’t know how big of stars you would consider them. But we may be using some of our cast from The Outpost. But only one or two of them. So

David Read
Well, when you have someone that does the job. And you know, they can do the job? Why wouldn’t you consider bringing them? I understand that.

Jonathan Glassner
Exactly. So yeah.

David Read
As to The Outpost. So there is a possibility that it will potentially be moved over to another network? You’re still exploring that option?

Jonathan Glassner
Yeah, I can’t really say who or where, but there is somebody who’s interested in it. And you never know if these things, this business is nuts. They wouldn’t commit fast enough for us to keep shooting. So we’ll see. They want to see how it does in reruns first, I think.

David Read
Understood. All right. I only learned in the last few recent years that Apple wanted to pick up Stargate SG-1 for a season 11 and SyFy Channel had a clause preventing them from going to another network so it sounds like you’re good in that area, on that last bit.

Jonathan Glassner
Yeah, yeah. I can’t believe that clause existed but you know…

David Read
I know but what can you do? So you had one more season for The Outpost planned? Am I understanding right?

Jonathan Glassner
No, Outpost, if we do get a new season, it’s gonna be really hard to write because we concluded that show I mean, we actually wrote to an ending and it ended.

David Read
Yeah, nothing lasts forever.

Jonathan Glassner
Yeah. So we had the final episode was a finale. It was written as a finale and ended as a finale in the last episode of season four. So if season five happens we’re gonna have to come up with a new villain or something that steps in and screws everything up again.

David Read
Have you seen the the new Matrix?

Jonathan Glassner
I have not, I haven’t had time. I hear mixed things.

David Read
I loved it. It was a perfect epilogue whereby there’s a little bit of a time difference. And it gives an excuse to put a button on a story that you thought was finished. But it was like, “You know what? This doesn’t feel like extra.” So if you do it, right, if you play your cards right.

Jonathan Glassner
Yeah, yeah, yeah, from what I’ve read that they have the same issue that kind of had felt like, they ended it with the last Matrix, and then they did this movie, and they had to come up with a way to restart it. Right?

David Read
Absolutely. I wanted to ask you, for a long time about taking us back down this road of Stargate SG-1. It’s 1996, I believe. The film has come out, you and a couple of others are working on, independently of each other, an idea for a series. Where were you in your head at that time, you were working on Outer Limits and…

Jonathan Glassner
I think Brad remembers us a little bit differently than I do but roughly the same. He and I were doing The Outer Limits. I was the American up there doing it and he was the local doing it. And I had been up there for like five years at this point. And my wife was ready to kill me because she didn’t want to be up there anymore. And so I told him MGM I wasn’t going to come back and do any more Outer Limits. And this was season three. And the president of MGM, actually flew up to Vancouver, and sat down with me and basically said, in so many words, “What would it take to get you to come back, to stay?” And I said…

David Read
For a season four?

Jonathan Glassner
Yeah. Yeah. And I said, “There’s nothing you could do that would make me stay becuase it would be like a divorce.” Right? And then he said, “Well, we have a commitment from Showtime for a 22 episode order of a new series. It’s yours if you want it, but you have to stay up here. And if you have an idea that Showtime would want.” and I left and thought about and then I came back and I said, “Well, you have this movie in your library called Stargate, that in my opinion, should have been a series not a movie. And it would make a great series.” And apparently, Brad did the exact same thing. Brad had a meeting with them, and also pitched Stargate. And I’m sure Brad and I had talked about it at some point, which is why it was in both of our heads.

David Read
Because you were both on Outer Limits.

Jonathan Glassner
Yeah, we were both doing Outer Limits. Yeah. But Brad lived up there he wasn’t threatening to leave or anything, but they wanted him to stay. And John Symes, the president of MGM, who was a brilliant guy said, “We can’t do that. We can’t do Stargate because we have a deal with Roland Emmerich and Dean Devlin, so we can’t do that. Anything else you wanted to?” And I couldn’t think of anything else in their library that I wanted to do. And I was too busy to come up with a new thing. And then two weeks later he called back and said,”That other deal fell through. It’s yours. You can do it. And how do you feel about being…” I was Brad’s boss at the time, but we were really at this point we had been doing it for three years and we were basically partners.

David Read
Yeah, you’re in the trenches.

Jonathan Glassner
Yeah, exactly. And so John came back and said, “How do you feel about doing it with Brad as equal partners co-create it?” And I said, “Great.” And I guess Brad said great, too. And the rest was history. That’s what we did. So we went off and wrote the pilot and co-wrote the pilot, and then it went from there, we had to go pitch it to the network, to Showtime what we were gonna do. They were happy with what we were talking about. They were happy with the pilot script. So we went to production. And it was a we were so fortunate that they had that commitment from Showtime because we went straight into full production for the series, not just the pilot. Which enabled us to amortize those massive sets and the visual effects and all that stuff across 22 episodes instead of just one pilot. A pilot would have been a 30 million dollar pilot or something if we did it.

David Read
Ridiculous, almost as bad as the movie.

Jonathan Glassner
Yeah. So that’s what enabled us to do it was that brilliant deal that John Symes had made with Showtime at the time. And then after we made, I think, six episodes, or maybe then eight episodes after we turn those in to the network, but they were so happy with it that they committed to 48 more. And that gave us such creative freedom I can’t even tell you.

David Read
So this is the, I imagined so. This is the first time hearing that Showtime and MGM had come to a 22 episode agreement of something else. But that something had not been decided they just wanted another product.

Jonathan Glassner
Exactly, we had been doing The Outer Limits. The Outer Limits had been a huge success for them. It had done very good numbers, they were very happy. So John Symes was able to spin that off and say, “Okay, if you want more of these, then you got to give us this.” And he made this great deal. And he and the MGM business people and stuff and and we were the beneficiaries of it.

David Read
And I as an audience member absolutely. I gotta tell you as a fanboy here, I found a place at the television set Saturday nights, late night on syndicated programming, Poltergeist the Legacy and The Outer Limits. And let me tell you something, I was more than a little bit pissed when one of those didn’t come on. And instead, this big ring is appearing, and this girl gets taken by the snake guys. It’s like, “What the hell is this?” And Jonathan, after the first hour, I had not seen the movie. And after the first hour had ended, I’m sitting there going, “It’s still running. “Why is it still running? I’ve got to go to church in the morning.” So I taped the VCR to get the last hour. And I watched it the next day. And from that point, I was hooked. I had missed it on Showtime but I had seen it on syndication. I immediately bought Showtime the next weekend and caught myself up.

Jonathan Glassner
And are you in the States or are you in Canada?

David Read
I am in the States. And it was just one of those shows where the casts were kinetic. And they were the reason that you tuned in, not just for that, which is very important, mind you. It is a character in and of itself. But you guys cast so well. So tell, can you tell me a little bit about making an offer for Richard Dean Anderson?

Jonathan Glassner
Well, I got to give credit where credit is due. That was John Symes also. John Symes had been the executive at Paramount when MacGyver was done, and was friends with Rick. And John came to Brad and I and he said, and he thought we were gonna hate the idea. I don’t know why he thought that. But he came to Brad and I and he said, “How would you feel about Richard Dean Anderson playing Jack?” And both of us immediately said, “Yeah, will he do it? Can we afford him?” And he said, “Well, let me see if I can set a meeting.” And we sat down with with Rick. And Rick’s main thing was he said, “The way it was in the movie, the way Jack was in the movie was he was basically suicidal. And he was this dour, sad guy. And so I don’t want to play that for umpteen episodes. You know, this guy’s got to have a sense of humor. ”

David Read
He’d be miserable to watch otherwise,

Jonathan Glassner
Yeah. And we said, “We’re with you 100%. That’s what we’re planning. That’s what we want to do.” And we shook hands on it. And there he was, he was attached. And he was great. It was just, I mean, just as an actor, but as a person who’s just fun to work with.

David Read
There is something about Jack really fundamentally, what happened with Kurt Russell’s character in the feature film is of no part to Richard Dean Anderson’s portrayal of the character except when you get him into a corner in certain scenes. And you understand that through line of the child suicide is always going to be there. He’s just…

Jonathan Glassner
Oh, yeah, we kept it in we just didn’t make him look like he was going kill himself all the time.

David Read
Right, exactly. And the humor, his outlook on life is kind of in a place now where it’s this has happened to me, this is always going to be a part of me, but how I make fun of life is how I get through it. And we as an audience buy that because many of the characters or anyone else around him gets close to what happened with him as a father. He snaps and it’s one of those amazing performances that in terms of like the breadth of an actor, that Rick can pull that off. Yeah, it was just a reward to watch. And then when he’s funny he’s, I mean, we’re on the ground laughing our asses off.

Jonathan Glassner
Yeah. And then we did a big search for the rest of the cast in Canada and the US. And that took a while. That was harder.

David Read
But it’s about finding Amanda, Carter, Samantha Carter.

Jonathan Glassner
Amanda. We had read, God it felt like 1000 women for the part. We had gotten auditions submitted from all over the world, because we’d given up on finding somebody in Canada and the US. She was a really hard part to cast because Showtime wanted her to be an attractive woman.

David Read
Yeah, they wanted to sexify it a little bit.

Jonathan Glassner
Yeah.

David Read
Based on what I heard.

Jonathan Glassner
Yeah. But you also have to believe that she’s an astrophysicist, that she’s really smart. She’s got to have that sense of humor, we wanted. And that’s why she has to have comic timing. And she’s got to have the physical presence to believe that she was trained as a soldier. Right? Those four qualities together, and being a good actor, of course, is really hard to find. You can find any few of them, but the combination of all are really hard.

David Read
Yeah, you have to believe it.

Jonathan Glassner
Yeah. Yeah. As soon as you have this pretty spokesmodel playing soldier who’s an astrophysicist it’s not going to work. They’ve got to be a real actor. And they’ve got to have an intelligence to them. And then we got a tape of Amanda doing this comedy show that she was doing in Toronto. And we said, “Oh, let’s get this woman in.” And she came in and read for us, and completely nailed the part. Then we brought her in for a chemistry read with Rick. Because at the time, the thought was there would be a will they or won’t they romance.

David Read
Right. The Air Force isn’t, I’m guessing the Air Force isn’t extremely involved yet.

Jonathan Glassner
And right. And, and she was just great. She was Amanda Carter. She was just, I mean Samantha Carter.

David Read
You got it.

Jonathan Glassner
Yeah. And I’ll tell you a funny story about that name. I had named the lead female character in two shows before Stargate, Samantha. Samantha was my favorite name. But always said I was going to name my first daughter, Samantha and did. My first daughter’s name is Samantha. And then my second child was born and my wife and I were trying to come up with a name. And we came up with Amanda without realizing what we were doing. And it also nice to “Oh, it can’t be Amanda, we’ll look like a weirdo. Like I’m obsessed with Amanda Tapping or Samantha Carter.” So we didn’t name her, Amanda. And it was really totally we weren’t thinking of Amanda at that point, it was beyond that. But anyway.

David Read
She is a huge director up in Canada.

Jonathan Glassner
I know and I’ve just kept in touch with her. My Samantha is now in Canada trying to be an actor. And Amanda has been very sweet to her. And Amanda’s given her good advice and stuff.

David Read
Well and we’ve been trying to get Amanda on the show here. And it’s just one of those where it’s like she’s so busy. I can’t feel bad, because we’ll get her on eventually. All the more power to her she’s doing exactly what she wants to do. And what she’s did…

Jonathan Glassner
She’s such a great woman. She’s just very, very smart woman.

David Read
She’s wonderful. And what she did with Carter over all these years was just an extraordinary arc.

Jonathan Glassner
Well, I’ll tell you, she would take when we would give her all the science babble. She would take it and study it and look up what it actually meant. And when it came out of her mouth, it sounded like she actually knew what it was.

David Read
She had to believe it as much as she could.

Jonathan Glassner
Yeah. Which was just great. Yeah.

David Read
You have this performance in the feature film of a 25-year-old geek, who is not all there, somewhere on the spectrum, but absolutely in touch with his humanity, enough to bring Jack back from the brink and kind of restores Jack through the battle that they go through and the friendship that ensues. Finding a replacement for James Spader could not have been an easy task and when I put in the feature film the next night after finishing Children of the Gods, because I want to see what this is all about. I thought it was the same actor for a little while. It was that specific that not only the appearance, but the choices that Shanks made. Tell me about finding Michael.

Jonathan Glassner
Which evolved as the show went on, but he started out at that point and evolved. Yeah. You know, it was interesting. We had several other actors that we were thinking we were going to go with for that part. And the problem I kept having, and I think Brad kept having to was, I just don’t like this guy. I’m not sure I want to invite them into my home every week.

David Read
Daniel?

Jonathan Glassner
No, not Daniel, the actor, the other actors. So we’d be looking at this actor who would nail the nerd and the science and all that, but just didn’t like the guy. You didn’t want to invite him into your living room, right? He was more of a bad guy. We had several that were like that. And we kept saying, “We’ve got to find somebody who pulls that off, and is also just really likable.” And then we saw, again we saw a film on Shanks before we met him, or before he read for us. And we were like, “If he can do the nerd thing, because most of the parts he had done prior to that were the handsome leading man type. And he came in and nailed it, so it was interesting with all the parts is that as soon as we saw them, we knew they were it, it just took us a while to find them. Same thing happened with Chris.

David Read
Yeah. Brad’s old quote. “All right Teal’c, moving on.” He was just there on the screen.

Jonathan Glassner
Yeah, I mean, Chris, I don’t know if Brad remembers this. But we had seen Chris on tape. We’d never met him or seen him in person. And then we had screen tests in in LA, in the theater at MGM, and we had them all come in and read with Rick and Chris walked in the room. And Brad and I looked at him, saw first of all how big he was and how interesting looking he was and how, because I mean, he’s just this buff, really good looking, interesting looking kind of combination of ethnicities, and we looked at each other and said, “Please, God, let this guy be able to act.” Because we had not found anybody we have looked at. We were at our wits end. So Chris was, he and one other guy, and the other guy we didn’t really like, were the only ones who came in to read for the screen test. And as soon as he opened his mouth, we were both like, “Okay, there he is. That’s him. He can talk. He’s a good actor. He is Teal’c.” Moving on.

David Read
And that voice is making him a lot of money now with T’Challa and with Kratos God of War. So, you guys picked well.

Jonathan Glassner
Yeah, he was a gift from God because that character was hard to cast.

David Read
And it’s one of those that I was so surprised that in watching the pilot, you pick someone who is on the inside, who is like, you know what, I can’t do this anymore. I’m done with it, and takes up his sword, so to speak, and joins our cause. Was that the intent from the original draft of the pilot to have someone on the inside who who became a traitor? And…

Jonathan Glassner
Yeah, that was always our plan. One of the things that helps Brad and I a great deal with coming up with the pilot, was we really studied the movie. And the movie had quite a following. And so we wanted to be true to it as best as we could. And so what we did was we looked at the movie and we looked at all the holes in the movie, and I don’t mean holes in a negative way. I mean, things that they would have answered if they had gone on, right? Things that were left open, and said so explain how do we explain that? Who are these guards that worked for Ra with the helmets, the clothes, and what is Ra he looks like a human but his eyes glow. And it was never really explained what it was. And so we came up with the whole Jaffa and Goa’uld thing. And then we say, “Well, if this is the case, if we have these Jaffa one of them has to be one of our regular characters. So how do we get there?” And that’s how we got.

David Read
Yeah, he’s he’s almost Stargate’s Spock equivalent. It’s good to have an alien or a presence among the group that can shine a mirror back on us and ask us ask those questions. Have us ask those questions because it’s a sci fi show. It’s about the deeper meaning of humanity at the end of it. Well, at the end of the day it’s about good old fashioned entertainment. But you know if you can ask yourself questions of humanity, you’re doing something more, you’re bringing the audience some some higher level entertainment.

Jonathan Glassner
Yeah, yeah, definitely. What’s best science fiction asks questions. Or makes the audience ask questions.

David Read
Peter Williams as Apophis, over the top but you completely believe in this guy in this role. Was it tough to find Apophis as well? Or was it…

Jonathan Glassner
We wrote the part for Peter practically. Peter had been in at least three Outer Limits playing different kinds of different people. And so we knew him, we knew what he could do. We knew his look was interesting for that kind of character. And so, I don’t know if that we literally wrote it for him, but we immediately had him in mind for it. So that one was easy.

David Read
What about Don S. Davis as General Hammond? Dana Elcar’s stunt double on MacGyver.

Jonathan Glassner
Again, he had been in so many shows I had done up there. I did a show called 21 Jump Street up there. He was a regular on that. He was a regular on a show called Street Justice that I had done up there. And he had done several Outer Limits. And Rick knew him and loved him from MacGyver. And Rick’s partner Michael Greenburg was friends with him. So it was kind of a no brainer. He was a perfect choice for it.

David Read
I remember watching the pilot, and there isn’t much to Hammond in the pilot, there isn’t a lot of time. I remember thinking, man because my family’s military all except for me pretty much, thinking “If this character can be played right this is going to be a great part.” I’m not seeing it in the pilot, but in the future episodes here. And Don in chatting with him over the years felt the same way. He had issues with Mario Azzopardi’s take on the character in the pilot.

Jonathan Glassner
Oh, really? I never heard that.

David Read
Yes, he called Mario “a man of limited imagination.” And I’m quoting Don here.

Jonathan Glassner
Interesting, he never told me that.

Jonathan Glassner
I don’t remember. I can’t remember any of the names of the episodes.

David Read
He was just, he felt that the character had places to go. And over the course of the series that was shown pretty obvious as someone who, along with Walter and some of the others, when those guys were out there had the light burning for them at home and those were his kids. That was his team. And Don conveyed that beautifully. Teryl Rothery, she had played, if I’m not mistaken, in an episode that you had filmed. I believe that you directed of Outer Limits. One of my favorites episodes were well, like many of Brad’s, the world goes to hell. Is it Feel the Fire? If I’m not mistaken? Let me have a look here.

David Read
This is one of my favorites of Outer Limits, Trial by Tire. Robert Foxworth and I believe she played the character named Janet on top of it. Dr. Fraser doesn’t appear until Broca Divide but once you guys found the doctor for that facility, she stuck.

Jonathan Glassner
Yeah, she was supposed to be a one or two episode character but she was great. We loved her. So we just kept writing her. And she became a regular.

David Read
What is it about finding? One of the things that SG-1 did so well was, I think, when you brought guests performers on that worked, the writers and everyone involved, I don’t know if it was let’s have them back. Or we have this story upcoming here. This kind of works. Where is the line between this is a great performer I want to have them back again and it just happens more naturally in the script. The script kind of, the direction of the story kind of calls for them to return.

Jonathan Glassner
Yeah, I’ll tell you, it’s sort of the inverse of that in a way. If the script calls for a doctor, we’re going to bring her back, unless we didn’t like her. If we didn’t like her, or we either wouldn’t write the script or it would be a new doc, a different doctor that came in. So it’s sort of the inverse side. We don’t generally write a part for somebody just because we liked them in the thing, that’s got to come out of story. But we would not reuse them if we had not liked them. You know what I mean?

David Read
Christopher Judge and I had a conversation once about talent who would sometimes their management would approach and say, “We’d want to have a multi-episode deal.” And you guys would like, as far as Chris was understood, saying “No, that’s not what this is about, we want them for this. If they’re successful, then we’ll see about the future.” But a lot of those, a lot of opportunities just went by the wayside from agents trying to secure multi-episode arcs and force your guys hand in the story.

Jonathan Glassner
Yeah, we would never sign multi-episode or multi-year deals with anybody until we loved them. And then we would usually have our arms twisted by their agents or their managers that you want them back for this one, they’ve got to come back for these three, but they had to earn that.

David Read
Absolutely. I am looking back at the first season of that show. And it’s so clear how quickly, and there are a couple of episodes in the beginning that are not indicative of the quality of the series moving forward, but you’re finding your your footing. And it is so impressive to me how quickly compared to a show like Star Trek: The Next Generation, which really took like two and a half seasons to really take off. How quickly these these characters and the story direction finds its footing. What do you think was the real factor to that? Was it just the cast was gelling? Or was it that you had such a good story to go with from the get go in terms of where you wanted to take the show? Or was it that you had four seasons pretty quickly out of the gate. I’m always impressed by the velocity at which the cast and the story and everything comes together. How the SG-1 really finds its footing, I think, by Torment of Tantalus, if not sooner, that everything is just clicking with this show.

Jonathan Glassner
Yeah, I think it’s a certain degree of luck. I think it’s a certain degree of, not tooting my own horn, but talent between me and Brad and Robert Cooper. We had a shorthand among ourselves that was, mostly because in Brad and I’s case, because of Outer Limits, because we were cranking those out so fast. That we, I think we kind of thought the same and we went down the same path. And when we agreed on a character’s character, we stuck with it and we had the great fortune of having this multi-episode order. So we knew we could take our time with character development. You know on a regular series, especially these days, you have to somehow shorthand the character’s character in five sentences in the first episode, so that the audience immediately knows who that person is. And you can’t do a lot of development because it’s going to get cancelled in six episodes, and you didn’t get there. It’s crazy. So now, we had the luxury of being able to say, “This is where we’re going with this. But we don’t have to do it yet for this character, for this relationship, for this mythology of the show.” But it took some time. I mean, I think our first few episodes were not very good, frankly. But that was because we were figuring it out. We were figuring out how to do it. We were figuring out what we could afford to do and couldn’t afford to do. We were figuring out what our actors could do and not do and wouldn’t do. And we were getting pressure from the network to sex it up, and we didn’t want to and that was an issue. And so like that early episode, Emancipation, was embarrassment, because it was all about trying to get Amanda in a sexy position to satisfy that note, and it’s not good. And actually, we just kind of said, “Let’s just do what we do well and stop trying to do that.” And our audience seems to be mostly family audience anyway, we shouldn’t be doing that anyway.

David Read
What were your feelings on? The nudity in the pilot Showtime required this for the series to go to air.

David Read
They didn’t require it.

David Read
They didn’t require it?

Jonathan Glassner
They requested it.

David Read
They requested it?

Jonathan Glassner
They requested it. They had this thing and it’s really interesting how this has evolved actually. At the time it was all about getting subscribers, much like streamers are now, and so their attitude, and I think rightfully so at the time, it’s totally different now, was we have to provide something that the network TV, networks can’t provide or who’s going to pay for us. So that means at the time in their minds meant language, nudity, graphic violence, you could take everything further than you could on a network. Then with the invention of The Sopranos, they realized it could become it could be controversial topics. It could be anti-heroes, it could be stuff that is not commercial but is artistic and everything changed. Sopranos really in my mind changed a lot of television. But when we were doing it, it was what can you give us that we can’t put on the network? And ultimately that’s why Showtime cancelled us, was that you could get a show like this on network TV. It wasn’t cable. And so that’s why we did the nudity in that episode. And Brad and I both just cringed when we saw it on the show. And in fact, we cut it out of the rerun. And Brad cut it out of the reboot.

David Read
Yeah, the final cut.

Jonathan Glassner
And we never did it again. In fact, there was another nude scene in the pilot that we cut.

David Read
Really?

Jonathan Glassner
Yeah, the girl who got taken at the beginning she had a nude scene in it.

David Read
Oh, okay, so that wasn’t originally shot tighter that was originally she had it in her contract to go for it. Okay,

Jonathan Glassner
And we tightened it up. Yeah, we tightened it up and did without.

David Read
Well, I think it’s also more of a shock too, when Vi gets exposed because we’re attached to Daniel and so seeing her like this, I think in my opinion provides more of a punch because it…

Jonathan Glassner
It was was integral to the story, it wasn’t gratuitous in that way. But we could have done it without it. You know what I mean? We could have done without showing anything and still had her be as if she’s naked, simulated nudity. But it was Showtime and we needed to give them what they were asking for but we never again. You know one of the reasons that Outer Limits was such a success is it had a lot of nudity and it was completely a show that you could only do on cable because had some really graphic violence and disgusting sci fi stuff, monsters and guts and gore. But that was not this show. You know?

David Read
It took me a while to get used to it once I had bought the Showtime subscription for SG-1 seeing that Outer Limits was on that I would play Outer Limits on Showtime as well and it took me a few episodes to realize that the syndicated show that I was watching in many respects was not the show that was airing on Showtime. So it was it took me aback honestly as a viewer that I didn’t realize how much it was being transformed for syndication market.

Jonathan Glassner
Yeah. But it worked for that show because that show was not a family show.

David Read
Right. And it was an anthology.

Jonathan Glassner
It was a dark show. Yeah, it was a dark, dark show but Stargate was not, Stargate was a light-hearted show and it did not belong in that show. The violence in Stargate was also very sanitized, by choice. You didn’t see a bunch of blood, when somebody got shot you didn’t see bunch of blood go.

David Read
Yeah, it’s not Saving Private Ryan. But it still gets the point across for sure. And there is some sexual aliens kind of aspect to the symbiote and the pouch and what’s going on there and everything else.

Jonathan Glassner
Well, Hathor was an attempt to satisfy Showtime also. And a very poor attempt. That’s one of my, the ones I’m most embarrassed by. I wrote it, but it was…

David Read
In fact, well Suanne, we regularly have her on this show. And she has, there are those who stick by her to this, [day] regardless of how it came off that character is remembered by a huge swath of fans.

Jonathan Glassner
No I know she has a huge fan following. It’s interesting. So I guess it wasn’t as awful as I thought it, I was embarrassed by it because I knew why it was created was for Showtime. And just have the little sex in the show, little sexiness.

David Read
Sexy it up. Yeah, absolutely. Well, I mean, if the concession was not going to be made with Carter, I can understand them wanting to say, “Well can you at least give us an episode with a with a queen, Egyptian queen, and goddess of sex, drugs and rock’n’roll that’s the way to go.” I can see the position you were in.

Jonathan Glassner
Yeah, no, they didn’t say that, it was my idea I have to take full blame for it. I mean, they were saying, “We need, can we get a little sexier on the show?” And I went and looked at all the Egyptian gods and said, “Well, that’s what Hathor is all about. So let’s do a story with her.” And came up with it.

David Read
What elements aside from the suicidal Jack O’Neill? Were you interested in taking from the feature film or modifying from the feature from that perhaps you didn’t get to? We take the staff weapons, we literally take the molds for the stargates in the feature film are the ones that John Smith and, forgetting the name of your production designer originally, Richard Hudolin.

Jonathan Glassner
Richard Hudolin, yeah.

David Read
Richard Hudolin took for the the series. Were there any, the death gliders even were taken from that. Were there any elements, additional elements from the feature film that you were one of [inaudible]

Jonathan Glassner
The big helmets that closed?

David Read
Yeah.

Jonathan Glassner
We used those in the pilot and then we dumped them because they just were so cumbersome and so hard to do. And it was before visual effects could do them completely digitally. So we have to literally do them mechanically. And we’d lose hours in the day trying to get those damn things to operate properly. So and they were really heavy so you mostly had to put them on stunt people, because if you put them on actors that, they collapse after a while. Yeah, we really wanted to be true to the movie. So we really tried to take as much from the movie as we can take from the movie and then add to it. I mean, the first the first thing I said to John Symes in that meeting was, “This is a show, this is a movie that had a big Gate that had, I don’t remember how many numbers there are, how many symbols there are on it, but 48 symbols or something. And you dial a combination of eight of them. Why does it only go to one planet?” This should be some, this should be a series, it should go to a million planets. And that’s the kind of thing we did was we looked at things that were in the movie and we said how can we take this further. Robert in Torment of Tantalus took us back to, I can’t remember the lady’s character name, the woman…

David Read
Catherine Langford.

Jonathan Glassner
Catherine Langford, yeah.

David Read
And she had a fiance who got lost on the other side. I love this episode. Keene Curtis. And we have, it was a wonderful, wonderful directing. Elizabeth Hoffman, I believe she’s 95 now she’s still hanging in there.

Jonathan Glassner
Is she really, oh that’s good. Because we tried to get her to come back to play the role another time. And she was very sick. And we couldn’t. So obviously she got well from that. I’ve lost track of her. That makes me happy.

David Read
Absolutely. I talked with her a couple of years ago. I’ve been meaning to write her since but yeah, she’s as far as I’m aware doing still doing well.

Jonathan Glassner
Wow. Good for her. She was so wonderful.

David Read
So this warms my heart You were going to have Catherine back. This is before you left at the end of season three?

Jonathan Glassner
Yeah. She couldn’t come back because she was very sick. I think she had cancer although they wouldn’t tell us. And she couldn’t come back and so we didn’t do it because we didn’t want to recast it yet again.

David Read
Oh, this is yeah, I know this is true. And for all the different time periods you had different actors playing her anyway. Do what do you recall what kind of story that would have been?

Jonathan Glassner
I don’t remember. So long ago.

David Read
Okay. That’s fair.

Jonathan Glassner
So long ago. Yeah.

David Read
It’s one of those situations going back to the helmets where you have the budget limitations, you have time limitations with how long these things are taking on a show. In game adaptations of the game, Stargate as short lived as they were, those situations really allowed for a variety of helmets for the different Egyptian gods to be released. This is one of those things that you couldn’t afford to do on a television series. And there’s a lot I think that you guys did manage to get on the screen, regardless, going to a new world every single week. The production schedule just must have been a frenzy. I don’t know how Richard Hudolin stayed on his feet.

Jonathan Glassner
He was amazing. And Bridget was amazing.

David Read
Bridget McGuire, is that right?

Jonathan Glassner
Yeah, yeah, she was his art director and then I think became after I was gone became the production designer. The stuff they pulled off still amazes me. I’ll tell you an interesting story about visual effects. We had more visual effects on that show than I think any show had ever had on television prior to that. It had a huge visual effects budget. And even then, we could only do a few an episode because it was so expensive. And in the years that we made this show, and starting with the first season of Outer Limits, and then going to the third season of Stargate, the technology moved so fast, that by the time I was leaving the show, we had moved from Silicon Graphics workstations to Max. And we couldn’t spend all the money we had in the effects budget. Because the technology had moved so fast. And…

David Read
You had a surplus?

Jonathan Glassner
Yeah. So that well, no, we moved it to other things.

David Read
Oh, okay.

Jonathan Glassner
But that enabled us to have the little Asgard alien walking around. In the beginning of the series in the first season, he was just a rubber puppet. You could never see him below the waist, and the second…

David Read
And second season he appeared. And then third, he was digital for a couple shots.

Jonathan Glassner
Yeah. And he got more and more digital. But it was just amazing how fast technology moves. And now I’m doing this space show where we wouldn’t even consider doing all the stuff we’re doing back then, because one shot would cost our whole budget, and now we’re gonna be cranking out all these visual effects. I mean, Outpost had sometimes as many as 500 effects shots in an episode, which is crazy.

David Read
That’s feature film, you know?

Jonathan Glassner
Yeah. It’s just gotten so easy to do or inexpensive to do in terms of the equipment. The artists still costs money. But.

David Read
Of course, there was a set amount. Bruce Woloshyn had mentioned this when Rainmaker was involved in Stargate. You had, I think, three or four different puddles for the pilot episode, Children of the Gods and the puddle effect in the Stargate, that real is like the effect of that episode because you’re bringing that to life. And then you settled kind of on the look for it. But the puddle path according to the people who were were digitally composing it, always cost the same amount from the first episode to the last of Stargate, regardless of the technology that came about. And I was told that it was just because the amount of time that goes into creating it, regardless of how good it looks. So even though some technologies do evolve, there are certain price points that do stick.

Jonathan Glassner
Yeah, yeah. I don’t know about that in the first three seasons that I was there, that was true. I’m not sure why it would continue to be true after that. But if he says so, I mean, I always I take credit for, probably wrongly so, but in my own mind I take credit for creating the visual effects business in Vancouver, because when we started there were like two houses and now it’s like a visual effects hub. Because we needed so many effects that all these companies started up to feed us and grew and grew and grew and got bought out. And you know, it’s funny that all these companies are still there. And they started mostly for Outer Limits, and then Stargate.

David Read
It’s just crazy. The fabricators that you guys had, Stargate productions had, I mean, the machined metal. Some of these pieces that are behind me here are at the end of 17 television seasons, and are a product of you guys building year over year. This isn’t cheap stuff. I mean, I have a suit downstairs that was $100,000 for development costs for Atlantis. So how much it’s worth, that’s how much it costs them to make. And it’s beautiful. The stuff that you guys produced over the course of [inaudible]

Jonathan Glassner
Our wardrobe department was another amazing department. I mean, it was a factory. Because every time we went to a new planet, we had to have people dressed in alien clothing, and it had to be cranked out every episode.

David Read
What were some of your favorites aliens over the course of your time on the series? You guys introduced the Unas in season one. The Asgard, obviously, we finally began to get a look at them in season two. The Goa’uld were obviously a big part of the canon of the show, Peter Williams as Apophis, Sokar, David Palfrey came in season three and did a great job. The Tok’ra were all cool. Who were some of your your favorites, mythologically and just to see on screen.

Jonathan Glassner
Well mythologically it was the Asgard. Because in my mind the Asgard were the greys that have visited Earth supposedly. And to me that’s just kind of cool when it touches other parts of the real world. And they were cool little puppets and eventually CG guys. My favorite alien character, I think, was the Tok’ra who was Carter’s dad.

David Read
Ah, yes. Yeah. So that was Jacob Carter, played by the great Carmen Argenziano. He had Selmak in him.

Jonathan Glassner
Yes. Wow. You really remember all this? Yeah, he was my favorite character just because it had such great drama to it. Here’s this man who’s going to die of cancer and if he takes this alien into him he’ll survive, and his estranged relationship with his daughter, and Carmine was just such an amazing actor.

David Read
He was a wonderful guy.

Jonathan Glassner
Yeah, he really was.

David Read
And one of the things that we haven’t talked about is the fact that this is sci fi that is deliberately set in the here and now and you didn’t see a ton of that then. It was spaceships and planets and space stations and a lot of that. And he had lymphoma and how often do you encounter something like that in a sci fi show that we as audience can go and members can go and say, “I knew someone who dealt with that.” We see a portion of ourselves more on screen more earnestly than we would a Starfleet insignia in the 24th century.

Jonathan Glassner
Yeah, yeah. That’s, that’s a big reason that I wanted to make Stargate in the first place was, I always said it’s a way to do Star Trek in the present. You visiting alien planets and alien cultures and so on but with today’s technology instead of with, advanced magic technology.

David Read
Absolutely. So the Asgard in your mind did you from the word “go” did you want them to be the Roswell greys or did that kind of evolve as you went along?

Jonathan Glassner
No, that was always in my mind. Yeah. Yeah. And first, it came out of Norse mythology. And I don’t know if we even knew that there was the little guys at first, but once we knew that there were I said, “Hey, wouldn’t it be cool if they were the greys?” And we actually had that puppet from an episode of the Outer Limits that we altered to be…

David Read
I didn’t know that.

Jonathan Glassner
Yeah.

David Read
So he appeared in Outer Limits first?

Jonathan Glassner
Yeah. In a little bit. He was a little different. We changed him a little bit, but yeah.

David Read
Okay. Wow, There’s some episodes that I’ve missed. Absolutely. Whose idea was it to bring in Michael as the voice of Thor?

Jonathan Glassner
You know, I don’t remember whose idea that was. It wasn’t my idea. I can’t take credit for that. I don’t remember.

David Read
That was a successful character.

Jonathan Glassner
Yeah.

David Read
Did you see the rest of the show? Did you watch it to its conclusion?

Jonathan Glassner
I’ve seen some of them. I haven’t seen all of them. I was just too busy and I was running two other shows. And also it went in a different direction than I would have gone with the show, which was certainly Brad and Robert’s prerogative, but that made it hard for me to watch. Do you know what I mean?

David Read
I think that you and Dean Devlin can appreciate that from that perspective. Once it moves on without you. It’s like, “Well, I’m glad that it’s successful. But it’s not mine so much anymore.”

Jonathan Glassner
Right. At first, I was watching it and saying, “Well, that’s interesting what they’re doing.” And then I was saying, “Well, I wouldn’t have done that.” And after a while I just kind of lost interest a little bit, even though my friends were all making the show and I wanted to watch it, because they were doing it. But other than that, I wouldn’t have watched it. So.

David Read
I understand. The development with Atlantis. Brad was laying that groundwork in season one. I’m curious to see did you watch that pilot? What did you think of it? And what would you have done differently knowing that was seeds that were planted when you were still working with them?

Jonathan Glassner
It really wasn’t planted when I was there. So if it was he never told me about it.

David Read
That the one?

David Read
Yeah, in season one there’s an episode called Solitudes where a second Stargate is found in the Arctic. And that is…

David Read
Right.

Jonathan Glassner
I don’t think Brad knew tha that was going to lead to Atlantis though.

David Read
Okay.

Jonathan Glassner
Maybe he did and never told me that but I think he went back to that and said, “Oh, that would be cool if that was you know…”

David Read
Okay, so I’m connecting those two together.

Jonathan Glassner
Yeah. By the way that was such a wild episode when we shot that.

David Read
How so?

Jonathan Glassner
We shot it in a refrigerated soundstage. So we have the breath.

David Read
Martin Wood’s first episode as full director.

Jonathan Glassner
Yep. And which is something you just don’t do, it’s insane. When we told the studio we were going to bring in giant air conditioning units and refrigerate the set to the point where you can see people’s breaths. They said, “You’re out of your mind.” But we did it.

David Read
You wanted to make it real.

Jonathan Glassner
The whole soundstage.

David Read
You wanted to make it real?

Jonathan Glassner
Yeah.

David Read
And it’s one of the best episodes in season one because it addresses, not only is it just like a good bottle episode in itself, these two people trapped in a cave together. It addresses that tension between the two characters, and they grow closer as result, despite the fact that there are certain bridges that they can’t cross.

Jonathan Glassner
Did you ever see the outtake of Amanda and…

David Read
“Stuck on a glacier with MacGyver?” Fantastic. Absolutely. What was it bringing, the Air Force were consultants on the show. Whose idea was this to get the Air Force or was it something that was if you’re going to do the US Air Force, you have to have involvement from them. Was that some kind of of mandate as close as they were?

Jonathan Glassner
I’m not sure how it came about. I think it came about, but I’m not positive, that our wardrobe people contacted the US Air Force to find out how they could get wardrobe that was really uniforms. And the Air Force then contacted us and said, “We would like to support this show and be consultants on it and in return we will give you uniforms and soldiers and weapons and airplanes down the line.” And so we were, “Yes, yes, please.” And it was a challenge sometimes. And there were a few episodes that they took their name off of but still let us do. I remember a few arguments I had with them that were in retrospect hysterical. There’s an episode where O’Neil and Teal’c and I think a couple other characters go to area 51.

David Read
Correct.

Jonathan Glassner
And there was a line in it where Rick says, “Is this where you keep all the little green men?” And I got a call from the network that, I mean from the Air Force that said, “There are no little green men at Area 51.” And I said, “It’s a joke.”

David Read
You give that line go Reynolds in Touchstone.

Jonathan Glassner
And he said, “I don’t care, there are no aliens at area 51 And you cannot imply it in any way, shape or form.” And I said, “All right, well let me think about it. And I’ll get back to you and see if we can come up with a compromise.” And I called him back and I said, “How about this? How about Rick says, “Is this where you keep the little green men?” And the soldier that he’s talking to says, “There are no aliens at area 51.” And then Rick looks at Teal’c and says, “Present company excluded.” And the guy cracked up so hard that he said, “All right. You can do that as long as the soldier says our line which is there are no aliens at Area 51.”

David Read
That is so good. Have have you and Dean had the conversation about the Air Force pulling their support for Independence Day because of showing area 51?

Jonathan Glassner
No, I’ve never asked him about that.

David Read
They did. They sure did. They would not support the film. It’s in one of the special features for one of the DVDs. They would not support Independence Day because Independence Day showed aliens at area 51. So this is right in line with that. Something’s going on man, if it wasn’t who would care? Wow, yeah, that’s crazy.

Jonathan Glassner
So then the other good story was the time we had a parallel universe and Amanda is a civilian and she and O’Neill kiss.

David Read
Kowolsky. Oh yes, Point of View.

Jonathan Glassner
And they said, “That the subordinate officer and the superior officer cannot have a relationship.” And we said, “Even in a parallel universe?” And they said, We don’t want to go there it’s too much of a can of worms for us.” And they took their name off that one.

David Read
Wow, okay. Yeah, I remember in season one, you did the ultimate reality with There For the Grace of God, which is one of the greatest episodes there is because it’s like all the chickens come home to roost. And that’s the one where Carter was made a civilian, she was still an astrophysicist. But I thought that it works. Because you have to have some kind of tension between the male and the female lead, you have to, there is eros there. This is a television show. And I think that that dance, even though it played out over eight seasons, as long as Rick was on that show, I think it was successful, but would you have had, all things being equal, Jonathan, would you have had them end up together if you could have?

Jonathan Glassner
You know, that’s too much of a hypothetical because it would have depended on everything that happened between episode three and when they got together. But I always hoped that at some point, one of them would leave the military and then they would admit their love for each other. But I’m not sure we would have ever been able to get there. Because so much happened between them. And then you know.

David Read
This is true. In Atlantis season four Carter took over the base and there is a deleted scene, where she is asked if she is seeing anyone. And she says yes, but he’s in Washington, DC. And I don’t get back very often. At that point, O’Neill was reassigned to the Pentagon. So even though it’s a deleted scene, there’s a lot of shippers out there who still hope.

Jonathan Glassner
Yeah, nice little hint.

David Read
What do you look to do with The Ark in terms of how many seasons are you looking at? What do you want to bring to the screen through all of your body of work that you’ve not really had a chance to do yet?

Jonathan Glassner
You know, I’m just not that intellectual. And by that, I mean, to me I look at my job as being to entertain people. And so what I want to do more than anything, is make a show that, like I thought Stargate was, that’s just fun, a fun romp that people want to tune into every day and to escape all the crap that’s going on in the real world. And just have fun and hang out with this group of people we create that they want to hang out with. And if along the way, we deliver a few little subtle metaphors, a few little lessons, I think that’s what science fiction is best at. But that’s not the primary goal ever. The primary goal is have fun. SyFy heads probably hate me for this but I’ve spoken at some of the conventions, and people will ask me a question like, “So when you made that, Apophis do this, do this, were you trying to say that the meaning of life in the world is…” And my response is always, “No, I thought it was cool. It was fun. It made me smile.” That’s just how I write, how I run shows. So that’s why that question is a hard question for me to answer because the answer is just I want to make a show that entertains people and people want to come back to and then is successful.

David Read
We had Dean on when we launched, and he told us about how much he loves working with you. What was it like working with Devlin?

Jonathan Glassner
Well, I’ll tell you the story of our meeting. I hope it doesn’t rub him the wrong way because he’ll hear it. But I had written a pilot that he read. So I get a call from my agents that said, “Dean Devlin wants to meet with you and hear if you have any ideas.” And I said, “You’re punking me, he’s punking me because he did not like Stargate the series.” And had both been pretty vocal about that.

Jonathan Glassner
And the commentary, he says that we have no relationship with the series.

Jonathan Glassner
Yeah. And I said, “Does he know who I am? Does he know that I’m the guy who did the series?” And they said, “Yeah, he knows who you are. He wants to meet with you.” So I went in and I met with him and I pitched to him. And Dean has this habit, he still does to me today, where you’re pitching this great idea that has all these places where he should laugh and where he should go, “Oh, cool.” And he listens like this. And you’re sure while you’re pitching it he just hates it. Right? And when I finished the pitch, he said, “I love that. Let’s do it.” And then he went on and on about what he loved about it. And we went out with this series and we became fast friends pitching this series.

David Read
This is Outpost?

Jonathan Glassner
No, it’s another show.

David Read
Oh, before?

Jonathan Glassner
And we’re still trying to sell. We haven’t sold it yet. And when that seemed to have been dead on the vine, he said, “I have this show called Outpost that needs a showrunner. Would you take a look at it?” And I did and I came in with all kinds of demands to the guys who created it, who are these new young, talented guys who’d never really done television. And they agreed to all of it. And Dean agreed to all of it. So I did it. Dean and I have been hitting it off ever since. We did four years of that and when that ended, he said, “Hey, I’ve got this other thing you want to come do this ?” Still going with him. So he and I we think the same creatively. I mean we both, you know that answer I gave you a minute ago about just entertaining? That’s Dean’s thing, that’s how he believes in doing TV and movies. And so that’s how we both think. Turned out to be great. So I can’t think of another guy I’d rather work with.

David Read
The idea of the circle transcends all kinds of mediums and storytelling, one of the oldest symbols in the world, but the idea of the Gate, and working with Roland to create that. They created something that they only lightly scratched the surface of in a feature film, and you guys recognize that and took it in a different direction than he would have taken it. But you still recognize the creative impulse there of what could have been, could be achieved with that idea.

Jonathan Glassner
Yeah, well, I’ll tell you, we’ve talked about it since then. And he and and Roland wanted to make a series of movies. And they kind of had that ripped out from under them by MGM who wanted it to be series. And wouldn’t let them do the series because of they wanted to do this big series that MGM would not be able to afford to do and they felt like it would bankrupt them. So they didn’t agree to do it. And so they were bitter about it, rightfully, I don’t blame them, it was their baby that they had already planned on making these movies out of. And then Dean said, “Then the final nail in the coffin was when he saw the nudity in the pilot. He said that doesn’t belong in this universe.” And that kind of pissed him off and he never watched it again. So I’ve said, “Dean, you really should go watch SG-1. I think we stuck pretty close to what you wanted to be doing. And I think you might actually like the show, might actually enjoy it now.”

David Read
And I don’t blame him. And that was the conversation that I had, once the child has been taken out of your hands it’s going to be attended to by someone else. But having said all that, 17 seasons of television and the fandom, myself included, that exists to this day, something’s working.

Jonathan Glassner
And he planted the seed.

David Read
And he planted a beautiful seed indeed and I am so grateful, that we’ve been able to have him on. I think it’s so cool that the two of you have found common ground and are continuing to create together. It’s just shows you, you can never be surprised.

Jonathan Glassner
It’s so full circle. It really is amazing.

David Read
I cannot wait to see what you guys have.

Jonathan Glassner
I think it’s gonna be a great show. I think it’s gonna be a great show where everything we’re coming up with so far is exciting. The sets are exciting, seeing actors reading the parts. It’s gonna be a fun show. In fact, I just got another stack of tapes.

David Read
Auditions? Oh, terrific. Fun times.

Jonathan Glassner
Yeah, it’s fun. It’s fun and it’s depressing at the same time. Because for every great person you see, there’s 15 that you just, you almost want to call their agent and say, “Tell this guy to get another job because…”

David Read
Absolutely.

Jonathan Glassner
This poor guy.

David Read
Wasting his time. Is this going to be a strictly human show? Or is there a possibility of alien life in one form or another?

Jonathan Glassner
I’m not telling.

David Read
Okay. I thought okay. You’ll have to tune in.

Jonathan Glassner
Yes.

David Read
All right. That’s legit. We can count on humans. We can count on spaceship. Spaceship, do you have the look, look of the ship figured out yet? Do you know what you wanted to look like?

Jonathan Glassner
We’ve already got the digital model built and doing the interior now. Yeah. I wish I could show it to you. But I think SyFy would kill me.

David Read
No, no.

Jonathan Glassner
We have we have like blueprints of it as if it were a real ship, where each room is and the hallways look like to get between them. It’s a big ship.

David Read
Did you want more real? Or are you going for more abstract? Do you want the ship to look good? Or do you want the ship to look, okay, that in a 100 years could exist.

Jonathan Glassner
Yeah, that, real. It’s actually based, a lot of the look is based on the SpaceX projections of what some of their ships are going to look like, combined with a lot of NASA stuff. So it’s, we’ve got to invent some technologies just to be able to tell stories like gravity. That’s a challenging one. For a while we were having people climbing ladders and being anti-gravity and floating around, and we just realized we can’t tell all these stories that way. It’s just gonna kill us so. So there’s an there’s a gravity device that’s creating artificial gravity that we won’t ever really explain.. We have to do stuff like that, on the most part, it’s very real. It’s kind of like on Stargate everybody speaks English we have to just accept that.

David Read
How was this one of those things? One of the last things that I was always kind of surprised at was because the language barrier was such a key aspect of the feature film. I always assumed that had I been in your guys’s shoes I would have introduced a device that would like fit in the palm of the hand very quickly in one of the first couple of episodes, so that they would have an excuse, rather than, well they all speak English. Some kind of technological component to explain that because it is a big plot hole.

Jonathan Glassner
We did toy with that. And the problem with that was, first of all it would have felt like we were stealing it from Star Trek,

David Read
That’s fair. Universal translator.

David Read
Yeah, no, that makes sense. And the Goa’uld, by their nature wouldn’t have bothered with some kind of translator device. They wouldn’t have cared, if you don’t speak their language too bad we’re gonna enslave you. You’ll learn that way. That makes sense.

Jonathan Glassner
And the second thing is that technology just did not exist at that time and we were setting it at a real time. And so we were trying to use all real technology and you know, right down to the drone, the bomb robot that we used as a drone to go through the gate. It was all real technology. We didn’t want to use any any made up technology. And so we hypothesize that the Ancients, and maybe the Goa’uld had spread humanity all over the universe and our language with it. A little bit of a cheat, but that was kind of our explain it away thing.

Jonathan Glassner
Right? But it’s still a little bit of a cheat. I mean, I’ll readily admit it, but sometimes you have to do that to make the drama work. You can’t have subtitles on every culture you come to. You just can’t do it.

David Read
You can’t give Daniel a week to figure out what everyone’s saying. And then cut back to the episode, you’ve got to move the story along. So at some point, you have to just buy that there are there are Vancouvers throughout the galaxy. That would have been the one thing that I’m glad that you were able to do desert locations with that continually reduced patch of land that was up there. But…

Jonathan Glassner
You know what that was right?

David Read
I don’t.

Jonathan Glassner
It was either a sand quarry or gravel quarry, was literally just big piles of sand that had been put there artificially. I mean, that’s how they supplied sand, for sand boxes and construction sites and stuff. And that’s where it was stored. And we would go there and shoot and they allowed us to bulldoze it into dunes and whatever we needed. And the rest of I mean, the problem with Vancouver is that it’s all, it’s not a problem if you live there it’s gorgeous. It’s all green and lush. But when you’re trying to do different planets, they’re all green and lush.

David Read
It works as Colorado Springs and green and lush planets but beyond that you’re right. You got a lot of mileage out of that area. Let me tell you, so both on set and outside, so it worked.

Jonathan Glassner
Yeah, we used a lot of visual effects to to augment locations. But that’s why we took Outpost to Stargate, I mean to Serbia, was we started the show in Utah. If you ever watch the first season it’s embarrassing because it’s so low budget. And so we moved it to Belgrade, where there are real castles and real medieval places that we could shoot. And the production value quadrupled, quintupled, whatever, at that point. And so I wish we could have done that with Stargate is traveled with it. But it’s just too much, too big a unit to move around like that. We could just couldn’t do it.

David Read
And the big Gate to boot. My understanding was John Smith had told me it would take a day to put up and a day to take down.

Jonathan Glassner
We had two Gates. We had the one, but actually three I think. We had one in the standing set that was permanent and worked, worked in terms of turning…

David Read
Yeah, the gear.

Jonathan Glassner
Not another planet. And then we had the road Gates, variations on the road Gates that could be put up and torn down. Yeah.

David Read
It’s when you see everything that goes into it, it’s amazing for what got done back in 1997. When now it’s just like, we’ll just do an insert here and spaceship will be here in just a few days. Got an animatics this afternoon. Like you said, “It’s extraordinary how fast technology has moved.” It’s frankly, scary in some ways. So it’s like, almost like we can’t keep ahead of it.

Jonathan Glassner
Yeah, I mean, I think it’s actually hurting a lot of a lot of movies and TV, because they’re too reliant on it.

David Read
Or they’re leaning on it too much.

Jonathan Glassner
You know what I mean, when I watch a James Bond now, I used to watch a James Bond movie and go, “I can’t believe they did that.” Now I’d look at it and go, “Yeah, that was CG.” You didn’t really jump from the helicopter onto the train. You know?

David Read
Yeah. it’s frustrating when I go and watch a special feature or an extra or something. Like The Matrix, there’s a scene where Neo and Trinity actually in the film they jumped off a high rise. So one of the actors told me they actually pulled this off but as an audience member, you just assume at this point that it’s done digitally. And they actually went and did it. And that’s too bad.

Jonathan Glassner
Yeah, I heard that too. And then you look at it as a producer I look at it as, what a what a waste why did they make that? Why did they put those two actors at risk, when they could have just done it digitally? Because the audience is going to think it’s digital anyway.

David Read
They don’t know any better at this point. We’ve trained them to behave that way. So well, it’s just the future is not going to be boring in terms of visual effects and storytelling and everything. That the number of things that you can achieve now, in camera, and within a TV budget is just extraordinary. And I can’t wait to see what you guys do.

Jonathan Glassner
Well, thank you. I’ll stay in touch and let you know, once we have stuff that I’m allowed to show you.

David Read
Yeah, once we get a I’d love to see the pilot, and have that aired to everyone and then have you back so that we can have fans discuss that. And your ideas for that and get a few more Stargate stories, particularly the episodes that you wrote, back under our belts here. So it has been wonderful to have you.

Jonathan Glassner
Dean Devlin wrote the pilot and he is directing the pilot, so it should be pretty spectacular.

David Read
Oh, all right. Okay.

Jonathan Glassner
I’m writing the second one and will not be directing that one because I’ve got to keep the writers going. I’ll probably direct some later.

David Read
That’s about my next question. Okay. So it’s in the plans at some point down the line?

Jonathan Glassner
Yeah, I mean, the problem with the fact that it shoots in Belgrade and the writing is here. It’s not like I can just run down to the set and direct and then run up to the writers room and talk to the writers. So.

David Read
Where are you?

Jonathan Glassner
We have to finish the scripts. I’m in LA,

David Read
You’re in LA. What’s the time difference there to Belgrade?

Jonathan Glassner
Nine hours.

David Read
That’s a day.

Jonathan Glassner
Yeah.

David Read
Yeah.

Jonathan Glassner
I mean, it takes about 16 hours to get there.

David Read
Oh, my gosh. Thank God for fiber, internet. So yeah, at least get some dailies or…

Jonathan Glassner
Thank God for Zoom.

David Read
Yes.

Jonathan Glassner
We have production meetings every day now. And it’s half of us are in Belgrade, half of us or third of us are in London and the rest of us are here.

David Read
Remarkable technology. Jonathan, again, thank you so much and best of fortune on this next endeavor. I know it’s going to be something that I’m going to want to watch. And we will have you back when there’s something to see and talk about.

Jonathan Glassner
Okay, great. Thanks. Nice talking to you David.

David Read
Very nice talking to you. Jonathan Glassner, Stargate SG-1. Co-creator. It was wonderful to have him on. I haven’t spoken with him in a number of years and he’s someone I’ve been trying to get on board for Dial the Gate for a long time now and have just not found the right contact information. And it’s one of the those things where you know once you do make contact with someone, and they understand what it is that we’re trying to do, it’s magic and it was terrific to have him on for this episode. Dial the Gate is brought to you every week for free, and we do appreciate you tuning in. If you want to support the show further, buy yourself some of our themed swag. We’re now offering T-shirts, tank tops, sweatshirts and hoodies for all ages, as well as cups and other accessories in a variety of sizes and colors at dialthegate.com. You can click on the merchandise tab, click on tab, click on a specific design to see what items are being offered. Checkout is fast and easy. You can use a credit card or PayPal, just visit dialthegate.com or go straight there at dialthegate.com/merch. And thanks so much for your support. I appreciate you so much for tuning in. Thanks to my team for making this happen. My Producer, Linda “GateGabber” Furey, thank you so much, as well as my moderating staff Sommer, Tracy, Keith, Jeremy, Rhys, and Antony, you guys make the show possible. Big thanks to Frederick Marcoux at Concepts Web. He’s our web developer on Dial the Gate. And also a big thanks to Jeremy, our webmaster who keeps dialthegate.com up to date. I appreciate you tuning in. I appreciate the continued growth of this show and that we’re just continuing to reach the 20,000 subscriber, push towards the 20,000 subscriber number. We’re at a really great position for whenever MGM and Amazon decide that they’re going to launch the next big Stargate thing, whatever that’s going to be, whenever that’s going to be and can’t wait to see what happens next. So I appreciate you tuning in. We’ll see you next week for Joseph Mallozzi on the other side.