Dial the Gate is privileged to welcome our favorite Canadian scientist to the series! David joins us LIVE to share Stargate Atlantis memories including casting, his thoughts on the inner workings of the show, reciting techno-babble and ending the series all too soon. He also takes your questions!

Share This Video ► https://youtu.be/kVcuzinjMlA

David Hewlett’s “Tech Bandits” ► https://thetechbandits.com/
Visit DialtheGate ► http://www.dialthegate.com
on Facebook ► https://www.facebook.com/dialthegate
on Instagram ► https://instagram.com/dialthegateshow
on Twitter ► https://twitter.com/dial_the_gate
on Discord ► https://discord.gg/z7xRrs4cQX
Episode Artwork ► https://www.deviantart.com/emilyparnell/art/The-Shrine-II-534927952

3DTech.pro (Sponsor) ► http://www.3dtech.pro

SUBSCRIBE!
https://youtube.com/dialthegate/

Timecodes
00:00 – Opening Credits
00:26 – Welcome and Episode Outline
01:13 – Call to Action
01:46 – Guest Introduction
14:23 – Early Life, and Doctor Who
21:18 – Tech Bandits and Cybersecurity Attack
36:27 – New Stargate
38:13 – The Original Feature Film
42:39 – Popularity of the Franchise
47:41 – Playing McKay and Memorizing Dialogue
1:00:53 – Canceling Atlantis and Criticism of SGU
1:04:08 – Tech Props on Atlantis
1:10:52 – Stargate with 2023 Technology
1:15:03 – Intelligent Life in the Cosmos
1:18:40 – McKay’s Cleverest Trick to Save the Day
1:21:06 – Diversity and Representation with McKay
1:27:33 – What would McKay be like in SG4?
1:29:33 – Who is Smarter? McKay or Carter?
1:32:42 – Calling Sheppard “Arthur” in The Shrine
1:35:21 – Evil McKay — A Missed Opportunity
1:37:42 – Would McKay have cracked Destiny’s Master Code?
1:39:27 – Working with Jason Momoa and David Nykl
1:42:03 – Stargate Extinction (Atlantis movie)
1:48:28 – Thank you, David!
1:51:38 – Post-Interview Housekeeping
1:53:26 – End Credits

***

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

#Stargate
#DialtheGate
#TurtleTimeline

 

TRANSCRIPT
Find an error? Submit it here.

David Read
Welcome everyone to Episode 32 of Dial the Gate, my name is David Read. It is such a pleasure to have you, hope you’re having a great Sunday as always. I’ve got Mr. David Hewlett waiting in the wings here, really excited about this episode. David has been a longtime friend of the show, we had him on in our first month for the Stargate SG-1 role playing game when Wyvern was doing their Kickstarter and everyone had a great time. David promised to come back and here he is. Before I bring him on, I know, it’s an eternity of anticipation. Before I bring him on, if you like Stargate and want to see more content like this on YouTube it would mean a great deal to me if you click the Like button. It really 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 a click will notify you the moment a new video drops and you’ll get my notifications of any last minute guest changes, this is key if you plan on watching live. Keep in mind that 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. You know him, you love him, let’s bring him in. Mr. David Hewlett.

David Hewlett
Or hate him.

David Read
We are not worthy sir. How are you my friend? It’s so good to see you.

David Hewlett
Very, very good. I’m, as always, jealous. Somehow you’ve managed to create the perfect backdrop of things that isn’t a total chaos like mine.

David Read
It’s a controlled chaos. If I turn the camera a little bit you’re gonna see all this stuff laying around and…

David Hewlett
See your underwear and all your old clothes and stuff. Very good, very good.

David Read
I already showed you my pants.

David Hewlett
That’s true. We started off with that.

David Read
Pants and dogs and everything else.

David Hewlett
Yeah, I was then attacked by a dog, it’s true. They missed all the good stuff.

David Read
How are you man?

David Hewlett
Very, very good. It’s a little sad that this whole lockdown bunker thing suits me and my son a little too well I think. I obviously feel for people who are going through all of this, but we’ve strangely had a kind of a lovely kind of sort of bonding time because we just get to hang out and do what we love doing together.

David Read
This year has really pushed everyone to the limits of whatever they were at before. The virus has only accelerated certain processes that were heading in certain directions before. With streaming and everything else for instance, I have a best friend who is a manager at the corporate theatre of one of the largest private family owned theater chains in the country and he doesn’t expect to have a job next year.

David Hewlett
Movie theaters?

David Read
Yeah. Like the big announcement with Warner Brothers, all 17 of their titles are gonna be released on HBO Max. What do you think of that?

David Hewlett
I think it’s inevitable. It’s so weird because my main job is working in film and television and at the same time I hate the film and television industry. I feel like it’s so archaic in the way it deals with people, the way we’ve got these windows of release. It really came to the forefront for me doing Dog’s Breakfast where I saw how it worked and it was so frustrating to me. I was like, “just release it to everyone so they could see it, I don’t care” But of course, the only way they can make money is by creating this scarcity, you know what I mean? They’re terrified. I think what’s gonna happen is that we’re gonna see, I’m hoping, a lot more films, a lot more good television that doesn’t cost as much. They can’t spend $500 million on a movie and then expect to make it back if they’re just going to streaming. Hopefully they have to be smarter, they have to be nimbler and hopefully we can make more movies that we sort of can enjoy either at home or with some kind of value added when we go to the theater. The theater experience is like Uber; it’s been a terrible experience for so long.

David Read
I think that the age of the billion dollar blockbuster maybe running its course. I can see video games doing that, but movies? I don’t know.

David Hewlett
Well that’s it. Video games are a perfect example.The other thing is that these expensive movies are becoming pale comparisons to the beautifully rendered games that you can play. Why would you go and watch a movie that forces you down one narrative when you can play it? I’m kind of excited about it. The film feel industry is not going away. People thought that theater was dead when television came out but the reality is people still go to theater. In fact, theaters doing, what was up until the pandemic, doing better than ever with these big shows and stuff.

David Read
Absolutely. I’ve always looked at it like at a certain point, “do you want to go to the theater?” will be ubiquitous with “do you want to go bowling?”

David Hewlett
Yeah.

David Read
It’s going to find its place after a while, if I want to go and rewatch the original Matrix, if there’s a run of it.

David Hewlett
Or let’s go and watch a television show together on a big theater with a bunch of people. Can you imagine if Stargate was doing that? How great would that be? Go and watch Stargate at a theater, have popcorn, talk about it, throw things at me when I show up on screen. Make a whole Rocky Horror Picture Show out of the thing, you know what I mean? I think that’s the way theater is gonna go; it’s gonna become a fan experience. When I went to movies, that’s what it felt like when I was a kid. Now it’s become this “well, I thought it was in that theater? Oh, it’s in this little one. This is a just a crappy theater.” It’s a bad experience. Like I say, with Uber, getting in a cab was horrible, was terrible. Then all of a sudden Uber came along, these people hand you a thing of water when you get in the car and they ask you about your day,

David Read
They actually give a crap.

David Hewlett
I think it’s forcing change in a way. There’s obviously some huge downsides to this stuff. I keep reminding Baz about the fact that “look, while the world is changing because of COVID, we have to realize that while we may not have been directly touched, touch wood, yet, there are many, many, many thousands, millions of people, who have been. It’s hard to keep reminding him of the fact because he would say like, “Oh, I hope he get shut down for COVID this Christmas holiday.” I’m like, “Okay, I totally get what you’re saying, but let’s just think about what that means for the people who are actually struggling with this stuff.”

David Read
Yeah, who are having trouble paying their mortgages and everything.

David Hewlett
Yeah.

David Read
It’s a brave new world in so many respects. You’re a computer geek like me, you keep an eye on the tech trends. The velocity at which our technology is growing is on one hand, super amazing, and on the other hand, super scary. I mean, Elon Musk’s Neuralink will do potentially tremendous things for people with all kinds of physical disorders. Can you imagine connecting, I’m sure Rodney would love it, but can you imagine connecting something to your brain?

David Hewlett
See, I find that stuff absolutely fascinating. In a way when we walk around with cell phones all the time, we’re walking around with personal computers that spy on us, that allow us to spy on other people, that stop us from using short term memory. There are definitely negatives to it; the whole addictive thing.

David Read
That too.

David Hewlett
The other side of it is, at our fingertips, this is what I dreamed of when I was reading Neil Stevenson or William Gibson, back in the day with the cyberpunk stuff.

David Read
Neuromancer.

David Hewlett
Neuromancer, yeah. That just that blew my mind. The only thing he missed was cell phones, the only thing he missed.

David Read
Yeah, it really is.

David Hewlett
It’s the biggest thing, but of course, why would you see that? But the idea of while I’m waiting at a bus stop, to peruse the entire knowledge of the human race. This is the future that shows like Stargate promised us and we’re sort of living it. The fact that we now have messenger RNA delivering the code for a virus cure to our bodies, instead of just injecting dead virus; that’s Beckett territory, that’s Stargate stuff.

David Read
It happened faster than I thought it would on all sorts of stratta of this. But on the other hand, I’m like, “I’ve been watching this since I was four years old. Why did I not see it coming? Of course this is the case.” This is just the result of all this movement into this continued digital space.

David Hewlett
The thing about nerds like us, sorry, I use that as a compliment, is that I think that we always saw the positive in the technology. We always saw the hope for the future with it. What I think we failed to take into account was how it could be used the other way and I think that’s what we’re beginning to see now.

David Read
The Jurassic Park argument.

David Hewlett
Yeah, but it’s not a reason not to do it and I still believe technology will save us. I still see technology as our savior, I still believe that technology will help us with the stuff that we’ve created with technology. There’s been an awful lot of straight white scientists creating technologies that they haven’t thought through entirely. I think that one of the great things about bringing in sort of a diversity of both culture and whatever, of lifestyle, whatever the terms are, that is only going to help us. Is to help us just look at things a different way, it’s not just about making a billion dollar company. It’s about what’s the billion dollar equivalent to saving the planet as opposed to just making the billion dollars. I think we live in interesting times. Was it a curse? An old Chinese curse?

David Read
Isn’t that interesting, yeah, may you live in interesting times.

David Hewlett
I think it’s also a promise, I think it’s a promise too. I think that we do live in interesting times and I think it’s up to us to sort of grab it and start controlling it as opposed to just getting towed behind this out of control vehicle.

David Read
That’s true. I don’t anticipate that one day we’re going to wake up and be the Borg Collective, or the Replicators if we want to be a little bit more specific about it. At the same time, I think that there is a fear of, especially with our younger people, of losing a little piece of our humanity and losing our social connection with one another. I always meant to ask you this, when Ba was a little bit older, did you relegate his screen consumption time when he was really little? What was your take on that as a parent?

David Read
In a different form.

David Hewlett
Looking back I would change a lot of the stuff I’ve done but I entirely embraced the iPad and stuff, I saw it as a learning tool for him. We looked for the coolest games we could find that had learning potential. Unfortunately, the coolest games were never the educational ones, or very rarely. There’s one called Dragon Box which is very cool, which taught algorithms. It basically taught algebra using images, you had to combine images to create a solution. What you didn’t realize is that you were, even me while I was playing, it was like, “this is kind of cool, I feel like maybe I’m learning something.” I looked it up and it’s like, “oh, I’m actually learning to group like things, add them together and simplify equations.”

David Hewlett
Yeah.

David Hewlett
They were little dragon symbols and stuff, it was really cool. The potential for that kind of stuff was amazing but now we struggle with it. One of the big conversations I have, which I suddenly realize, I look back to my dad and my dad was very strict about television. We were never allowed to watch television. We had to come to him, it was like coming to the master and saying, “Please sir, this is a show that’s on at 7:30, it’s called Doctor Who and there’s two episodes. I would very much like to watch those tonight.” He would say “All right, have you done your homework?” You would be able to watch the show but you’d never be able to watch more than like an hour a week and I resented that so much. I always said “my son, I’m not putting any limits on my son when it comes to that stuff.” Except that now, I realize, my son watches YouTube and it just feeds him stuff. We’ve had to talk about it and I said “Look, stop just taking whatever is recommended to you.”

David Read
Wow.

David Read
That’s correct because it’s programming you and your programming it; it’s a cycle.

David Hewlett
It’s the same thing with television. My father, I think, saw that early on. Television, once you turned it on and it just started flicking, of course there’s something that’s gonna catch your attention, it’s all designed to catch your attention. That’s basically what we struggle with now and I’m sure I’ll lose miserably and my son will be in therapy, telling everybody what a terrible father I am.

David Read
I don’t know. He’s a pretty good kid from what everyone sees on Twitch.

David Hewlett
It is lovely. I gotta say one of the things I’m most proud of when I see his report card is that people like him, teachers like him. The marks aren’t bad too, I gotta say. I was a disaster in school.

David Read
Well, he does have a great mom. I don’t know about you.

David Hewlett
It’s true. Thank God he’s got that genetics, that’s true. What would we do? What would we do David without Jane.

David Read
I don’t know man. You really lucked out.

David Hewlett
I know, I won the lottery on that one. Trickery and deceit as I told Jason Momoa. “How do you get a girl like that?” “Trickery and deceit Jason.”

David Read
And help you make movies.

David Hewlett
Yeah, exactly.

David Read
I’m curious man. When you and I started talking you were already into season two of Atlantis.

David Hewlett
Was it that late?

David Read
Yeah, because Darren was season one.

David Hewlett
That’s right.

David Read
So you’re mentioning your media intake was fairly regulated when you were young. I’m curious, did that have any impact on what you wanted to be as an adult?

David Hewlett
It’s interesting. Doctor Who for me was, and I’m sorry if I’m repeating myself, I know I talked about this before. Doctor Who was the inspiration for me, both from a geek and a scientist, I like to think of myself as like a citizen scientist and a sci-fi nerd. My headphones are doing weird things, I should probably change my headphones up, hang on a sec.

David Read
Sure.

David Hewlett
I think they may be dying. They’re bored already. My headphones have got bored and given up. So Doctor Who for me was the impetus to get into science fiction, it was my impetus to get into the sciences. I never saw a difference between the two; science fiction on television and science itself were the same thing to me because they were sort of linked. Hang on a second, let me just do this. Do this, do this, I’m going to change up over here. My little nerdy setup. If I go to this, Zoom, oh damn Zoom. Zoom is a little different isn’t it? Preferences. Here I go, audio is now going to go through the built in…

David Read
Stand by everyone, McKay is McKay’ing.

David Hewlett
“Unmute your speaker.” What? Oh dear. Have I screwed it up? Oh, dear.

David Read
Can you hear me? Can you hear me Dave?

David Hewlett
Now! Talk for a second.

David Read
Testing! My Bonnie lies over the ocean.

David Hewlett
Ah, have I muted you? You’re back, there you go.

David Read
I am here.

David Hewlett
It’s just taken a while, I’m so sorry. I just realized my headphones are gonna start beeping at me about the fact that their batteries were low the entire time.

David Read
My mouse goes out like every other show so it’s all good. Every once in a while I go, “oh my god, I need my cord.”

David Hewlett
I’m a little easily distracted as it is anyways. When it starts beeping I sort of get that sort of lost look every so often. The Doctor Who thing, so I watched Doctor Who when I was a kid. my parents used to watch it. My mom, my mother specifically, she loved television. She loved all these shows and loved all these mad sort of Professor type things. She used to watch horror movies and all that kind of stuff. My father a little less so because he was as a doctor, he just honestly didn’t have time; he was just busy all the time. So they used to watch Doctor Who and I used to hide behind the sofa and watch it when I was like four, six years old, something, I can’t remember. I was like, “I want to be that guy, that’s the guy! He doesn’t have to use a gun, he doesn’t have to bully anybody.” I thought “I could be that guy. I’m not going to be incredibly strong. I’m not going to be incredibly proficient at any weaponry or anything but I feel like I could know things.” So I loved it, I absolutely loved it. It was probably a few grades on in school that I realized that you can’t actually be a Time Lord when you grow up. But even better, you could pretend to be a Time Lord and that’s really sort of where the bug for acting came from. That was it. Everyone has these stories about theatre and all this falling in love with the craft, no, no, I just wanted to be Doctor Who, that was it. I spent way too long trying to build my own sonic screwdrivers and that kind of stuff. Even today, I’m playing with things now. I’m still I don’t know if you can see this little guy here. This is a little robot head…

David Read
Oh my god! It’s got eyes.

David Hewlett
You’ve got separate monitors for each of the eyes. Can I bring him a little closer?

David Read
Please. Yes.

David Hewlett
I may break it.

David Read
What’s his name?

David Hewlett
This is the kind of thing I was doing as a kid and now because of acting, “Oh, his eyes fell out. Oh god, his eyeballs are showing.” I’m goofing around with this stuff all the time and it’s purely because of Doctor Who.

David Read
Is it watching you? Does it have cameras for each eye?

David Hewlett
I’m working on that. You can actually add a light sensor so that it’ll dilate depending on how much light comes in. You can have it follow you based on camera recognition and face recognition and stuff too. We need more privacy issues in my house, obviously. But isn’t it cool?

David Read
Yeah. On one hand it’s amazing. On the other hand, it’s not gonna like walk up and say, “by your command.” We’re a few stages from that..

David Hewlett
Yet David.

David Read
Yet! That’s the other thing. We’re not, I bet, 20, 30 years from an iRobot kind of assistant situation. I have family who could really, really benefit from technology like that so it’s always been like, “where is this going to go next?”

David Hewlett
The reality is when we get older we’re all going to need this stuff. We’re all eventually going to be in the “disability zone” because we’re all going to be older. If I can have some robot wandering around looking after me instead of my poor son, I think that’d probably be a good way to go. What I dread though is, I dread like little robots walking people’s dogs for them and things. I feel like it can make us incredibly WALL-E as well at the same time.

David Read
I forget the comedian but it was like 20 years ago and it was, I think, one of the Oscars or something like that, raving about him and his son playing a Nintendo 64 game of a father and son playing catch. So that’s the thing, are you going to substitute one for another? Is it a one-to-one transposition or are you going to use it to enhance your life and make it better?

David Hewlett
Well that’s it. One of the things I’m trying to do with Tech Bandits is to try to sort of convince parents that this is the new catch. If you want to spend quality time with your kid, the best way to do it is to hop on a Minecraft server with them. You bond in a way and they talk about stuff they wouldn’t talk about otherwise.

David Read
Embrace their interests.

David Hewlett
I’m not saying instead of that, I mean, obviously you have to do physical exercise. That’s why we send them to school because God knows I don’t.

David Read
“Go walk the dog!”

David Hewlett
Exactly. We have the COVID dog, basically, because Jane said that Bas was never leaving the house. So I was like, “Yeah, I guess all right. That’s right.” But really what she was saying was “David, you never leave the house.” It’s great, I listen to my podcast and walk around for an hour or so, it’s great.

David Read
Tell us a little bit more. You preempted it, tell us about Tech Bandits for my audience.

David Hewlett
It was so informal to start with. First off, Bas wanted to be a professional video gamer. I was like, “alright, great, but we got to build your own PC then because professional video gamers, they don’t use standard PCs.” And again, any possible science angle. My poor son, he rolls his eyes all the time, because any possible science in, I’m all over it. So I was like, “we’re going to build a computer.” So sure enough, he’d come down with a snack and go like, “is it finished yet?” and then he’d leave again.

David Read
“Carry on, carry on father.”

David Read
The apple doesn’t fall too far from the tree.

David Hewlett
Exactly, yeah, “tell me when it’s done.” Then he came down and like jiggled a fan and I was like, “stop doing that.” He actually got something working that I wasn’t able to. It was so maddening, just to frustrating.

David Hewlett
It was like a total Zelenka. But what I couldn’t get over was that neither he nor any of his friends even knew you could do that. They only knew about gaming consoles and if the gaming console stopped working, they threw it out in they bought another one. I was like, “guys, there’s so much stuff in here, look at it.” So I started bringing stuff into his school, his local school, and just letting them take it apart and they loved that. That’s what I used to do, I used to just break stuff. Unfortunately, I broke stuff that actually shouldn’t be broken. I walk around doing what I called “Geek trash.” I’ll just do like a circuit around the neighborhood and invariably there’s a couple of printers or something you can get. You just get the printers, pull out the cobwebs or the remaining cat hair or whatever there is and then bring into the classroom and they can just pull it apart and they love it. But invariably, what happens is, you pull it apart and then you want to know what everything does. What’s that? Why is this? And then you start building stuff, and that’s what happened. The other thing that I sort of stumbled upon, I wanted to get a documentary done called Upgrade Required. It is about a friend of mine, Q Dragon, he’s got a brilliant Instagram and social media stuff. He’s got SMA [Spinal muscular atrophy] type two so he’s basically, not basically, he is bedridden, he can’t he can’t move. But he does experimental cooking, so he has his caregivers and his family doing all these crazy, great, delicious culinary adventures. He just records it all and posts it daily on Instagram. You have to check him out, it’s called “Cooking with Q,” it’s amazing. Anyways, I want to do a documentary about him because he was talking about becoming a cyborg. As we talked, it became apparent that he didn’t so much want to become a cyborg, as he really needed a cyborg suite. He didn’t need a cyborg suit, he needed a cyborg suite. Then all the ability to do editing and filming and stuff would be done by robotics, was the idea, so I wanted to do a documentary about that. While I was working on it, the kids would say, “what are you working on?” and I would mention this. They were so engaged by the idea that I started bringing in little robotics things and little sort of assistive tech things. I discovered that assistive tech is this amazing sort of way to unlock their interest in some of this science, technology, engineering, arts and math stuff. They suddenly see a direct connection with what they’re doing in the club and what is going to have an impact in the world. Unfortunately, just before COVID I also teamed up with a local school that looks after kids with developmental and physical disabilities. We were going to work with them together; have my privileged little brats come and work with them and do some work with them. But of course, COVID put the kibosh on that, COVID and teacher strikes. I’ve learned to hate the whole infrastructure of the world. I want like my own separate thing now.

David Read
If ever we could be in the Pegasus Galaxy, now would be it.

David Hewlett
Yeah, exactly, but with a nice big clubhouse for everyone.

David Read
Jacuzzis and everything else, not just a place to golf.

David Hewlett
We just need a good lab. I want my Stargate lab here.

David Read
That’s right

David Hewlett
Basically that’s what I’ve been doing. I’ve been gathering up all these different technologies and things which I have some time to play with, but I also have long periods of time when I can’t play with it. I want to set them up so that local kids can come in and use them as needed. Also, because of the streaming technologies available now, I want to stream these discussions. I want parents and teachers and educators and other kids to go “Oh, that’s cool. I want to talk about that,” maybe not with me, but with each other or whatever. So I started this thing called the Tech Bandits and it’s slowly become more and more official. I now host two sessions a week on Twitch. There’s my pitch, Tech banditry on Twitch, go check it out. We basically just talk about science, technology, engineering, arts and math stuff on Mondays or Tuesdays and then, either Wednesdays or Thursdays, we discuss game related technology. The only way to get any kids attention is to talk about video games. There’s a lot of amazing sort of little connections there that you can make, assistive technology being a great one with gaming or programming, obviously. Programming is the obvious one but it’s a little more difficult for some of the kids to get into. But even just becoming like a savvy cyber citizen and stuff, I just absolutely love it. I think I love it because I learn more from them than they do for me. I don’t profess to teach anybody anything because I know nothing. It’s that sort of Socratic, Plato type, “I know nothing, so tell me.” You learn so much that way.

David Read
The more that you you engage this new generation and get them interested in this type of thing, the more they’re going to want to pursue those industries and make them better. This cybersecurity attack is a big deal.

David Hewlett
Oh my god, Russia! We got poned.

David Read
We just got totally poned and no one is really talking about it.

David Hewlett
I know.

David Read
I don’t think anyone understands the weight of this at all.

David Hewlett
No, the SolarWinds breach is absolutely huge, absolutely huge.

David Read
We need these kids to get some programming chops going. We need a whole team, a whole group of people, to properly defend us against these kinds of things. The only way to do is to keep these kids interested in this anti-surveillance programming.

David Hewlett
Things that I came across with that though is that I found this huge push for programming. “You got to get girls into programming, we’ve got to get minorities into programming.” I think that’s great, I don’t think it hurts, but at the same time not all kids are interested in that. What we need to do is explore what they are interested in in the way of programming. There’s this sort of tendency to go like, “well, Scratch programming, when you drag and drop it’s not really programming.” I’m like, “No, that absolutely is programming.” Why should we learn some archaic language that’s not going to be useful to kids in 10 years time when they can drag and drop and get the results faster? We are gonna get way better programmers out of kids who go “Oh my God, I built a game!” than a bunch of kids going like, “what number am I supposed to put in here?” I feel like the coding thing is important. I say to the kids all the time, “if I were you right now, I would go into either biotech or into into computer security right now, network security or whatever.” Eventually we’re going to want to biotech security as well.

David Read
It’s not so much a pipe dream anymore.

David Read
I think that the frontier is wide open as long as we continue to engage them on their level. The expansion of, especially the gaming tech, we’re now using Unreal in The Mandalorian, shows like this.

David Hewlett
There’s an organization I work with here called “Let’s Talk Science.” Amazing woman, Bonnie Schmidt, started this thing. The idea was originally to kind of just to get women into the sciences because it’s been such white male dominated for a long time. She started this “Let’s Talk Science Program” which is just amazing. It’s creating fun curriculum for kids, not specifically for girls, but for everybody. I’m just so taken with what they were doing and she sort of inspired me to actually go out and start doing my own outreach with this Tech Bandits stuff. I said “what do I know, I didn’t even finish high school.” She said “that’s the value because you don’t know what you’re supposed to teach or not supposed to teach, you just know what’s interesting and you operate at the level of about a 10 year old kid anyways.” I find that the things that I am interested in are generally the things that the kids I’m dealing with are interested in too because I’m basically those kids.

David Hewlett
The Unreal Engine is amazing isn’t it, what they’re doing with that. Unity is going to be into that, if not already.

David Read
It’s wide open and there’s so many exciting trends out there. I’ve just been getting exposure into the, I don’t know if you’ve noticed my Atlantis here. I’ve been getting some exposure into the 3d printing space and making some friends in that industry.

David Hewlett
They are very friendly bunch too, I love them.

David Read
It’s brilliant. This was created by a friend of mine and he’s running his own website, 3dtech.pro, it’s our first sponsor. It’s so cool the stuff that you can make now. It’s artistry plus technology, just combining in some incredible ways.

David Hewlett
That’s what that is behind me, that’s the Prusa Mk3, five filaments. I build them all from kits because I want to torture myself. But again, 3d printing, great thing for kids. But slow, takes a long time, so the kids get bored very quickly.I’ve now got a CNC machine, two of them in fact. I’ve been very lucky. People say “how can I help?” I’m like, “help out Tech Bandits. Don’t pay me, but by all means give some donations to Tech Bandits. All that money, I just pool it, and whenever we need something…The kids are asking about editing, I set up an Adobe account for the kids so they can just go in and start doing some editing and some visual effects and stuff. 3d printing, I got filaments, I got printers. Again, we’ve had to do it all virtually, recently.

David Read
At this point there’s very little that you can’t do like that.

David Hewlett
I was saying to the kids, if I set up a couple of Raspberry Pi’s on that thing, they could log into my 3d printer and just start printing their own stuff. How great is that? Also the Prusa guy, Joseph Prusa, is a Stargate fan. Amazing guy, did this incredible work with COVID out in Czech Republic. He was one of the first people to jump on the whole face mask thing, building the shields. He converted his chemistry department, which was figuring out filaments and coatings for his printers, and converted it all to hand sanitizer and cleaning stuff. He’s like a true tech hero that guy. Yeah, lovely, lovely guy. And, of course, because he’s in the know, he’s a Stargate guy too, likes his Stargate.

David Read
Those are the right kinds of people to get involved with. I think so much of where we’re heading is going to be so dependent on our ability to pivot with our technology; to be able to repurpose what something is designed to do and put it into use for something that is much more needed at the present point in time.

David Hewlett
We need more hackers. We need people who are going to take things that are designed…

David Read
Hacking for good, yeah.

David Hewlett
…for one thing and change them. Hackers were only bad when the press got them, right, hacking was about exploration, it’s a joy in exploration. It wasn’t about damaging systems, it was just about figuring out how to get into them. I love that stuff, I was never any good at it, I was never a patient enough. The tools that are out there, just amazing, and what you can learn online now. That’s the other thing is, if you want to learn anything now you’ve got no excuses, no excuses. You just have to have enough interest to go and look it up. I think if you can convince kids of that, they’re unstoppable. You could have doctors at age 14 because they’ve just been on the internet watching YouTube videos. We’re gonna have a million Doogie Howsers out there.

David Read
I think one of the most exciting things about what’s coming is that, even in so many of the poorest countries now, the smartphone is so cheap. As long as you have access to electricity, and certainly not everyone does, but if you can have access to electricity…

David Hewlett
Solar cell.

David Read
…and any kind of a network then you have access to the world and that is the first critical step.

David Hewlett
Yeah, and the best hackers are going to come out of there because they’ve got nothing to lose.

David Read
That’s exactly right.

David Hewlett
They get a cell phone, they break into a banking account and all of a sudden they’ve made more money than they ever have. I’m not saying that there are bad people out there, I’m just saying that they’re gonna have a whole different perspective on this world than we do.

David Read
We need that. That’s where ideas come from.

David Hewlett
I can’t wait to see what happens with that too. They’ve leaped over the whole idea of cabled internet and gone straight to wireless. Then with Elon Musk’s Skynet or whatever it’s called.

David Read
Skylink, I think.

David Hewlett
I always get it wrong, maybe on purpose. It may be Freudian, I don’t know. The idea of low latency Internet access all over the world, I mean, holy cow. That is gonna change the lives for billions of people, hopefully for the better.

David Read
I was in southern Utah a couple of weeks ago, just hiking, and there was no data.

David Hewlett
Oh my God, are you okay?

David Read
All I could think of was, “this is soon going to be a thing of the past. I won’t be able to be anywhere where I’m unplugged.” You need to be unplugged every now and then.

David Hewlett
And within an hour of discovering it you’ll be complaining about how slow it is. When you finally get it you’re gonna be standing on a rock in Utah going like, “Oh for God’s sake, how long does it take to download…okay it’s done.”

David Read
That’s exactly right. Back in the day when we had like the 28k connection. “Oh the picture’s downloading, lets go to dinnner, we’ll come back and it will be done.”

David Hewlett
Oh my God, watching files appear.

David Read
Yeah, drawing themselves on the screen.

David Hewlett
Half dressed women, as a 20 year old watching these images slowly draw themselves online.

David Read
Dave, let’s talk about this little show called Stargate.

David Hewlett
Oh, that old thing. When are they bringing it back? I keep hearing news.

David Read
I know, I know. I’ve been calling it SG-4. It’s like we really, really, really need this thing in our lives right now, frankly.

David Hewlett
I’ve been calling it Stargate: McKay, but that’s just me.

David Read
I don’t know, we’ll see. Hopefully Brad’s gonna pull something off.

David Hewlett
I feel like it’s so ready for that.

David Read
Obviously, we need to do this.

David Hewlett
On my little twitch channel chats, I keep pitching a Stargate Academy. I’m like you do Stargate Academy of all the kids in there. You have all your young sexy young folks that they want on their network television shows and then you have us old people get wheeled in to sort of teach classes or to go on the odd adventure. I’ll be like Snape. Amanda Tapping can be this beautiful Dumbledore type and I’ll be the Snape of the Stargate Academy. There’s no shortage of great ideas for Stargate.

David Read
It’s true.

David Hewlett
Is it just a matter of the rights? I feel like it must just be “who gets what to do what.” I feel like it must be business.

David Read
Yeah, I suspect business has a lot to do with it. The excuse right now, obviously, is that we can’t proceed forward until we get out of the situation, so that’s fine.

David Hewlett
We’re filming here now.

David Read
Yeah, that’s the other thing too.

David Hewlett
I think Vancouver is filming as well, that’s where we shot Stargate.

David Read
Exactly.

David Hewlett
Anyway, sorry, I completely jumped your question.

David Read
No, you’re good.

David Hewlett
My apologies, I’ll go back to being a good guest.

David Read
No, you’re fine man, this is fascinating. Did you see the feature film in the theater?

David Hewlett
Stargate, yeah. The original Stargate?

David Read
Yeah.

David Hewlett
Yeah.

David Read
What did you think of it?

David Hewlett
Oh my god I loved it.

David Read
Did you think it would turn into 400 episodes? When you were watching it, did you see the potential for that storytelling device?

David Hewlett
That era of films, there was a snobbery about television, right? If a show went to television, it’s like, “oh god, it’s failed into television,” you know what I mean? There was such an incredible snobbery about television. To be fair, television was pretty trite was pretty; there was definitely many standards and sort of generic approaches to television back then. I remember just seeing the film and just the whole concept of tying a history that I was aware of, listening a little bit in school, and then tying that into the science fiction side of stuff that I loved. Of course it appealed to me, it’s just another TARDIS for me, right? It was just another Doctor Who, it was a means of traveling through time and space. I know it was basically space but that concept, that idea, that somehow we’re going to find this thing. The idea of making it so tangible and so sort of Indiana Jones, I thought was brilliant, it’s brilliant. One of my greatest honors, actually, was to work with Roland Emmerich on Midway. That guy has created some seriously silly movies, like seriously suspect storylines and stuff, but boy, he just enjoys making a blockbuster. I was just so impressed with him. I’d read that he’d not been happy about Stargate going to television which I understand now.

David Hewlett
“It was my thing and now it’s a TV show and you haven’t talked to me about it.” It was really badly managed and stuff and I think it spoke to the way execs, maybe used to, maybe still do, feel about the sort of creative side of this stuff. But working with him was amazing, I was just so impressed with this guy. It’s just like clockwork, he’s just amazing, amazing.

David Read
It was his thing. It was his and Dean’s.

David Read
So did you watch SG-1 when it was first airing?

David Hewlett
I didn’t. It was one of those things that I would sort of like, as Rob Cooper would always joke about, he’s like, “when’s it on? Turn on the television?” It’s one of the things that would crop up every so often. I was sort of aware of Amanda from Toronto days. The weird thing with a show like that was that unless you got the right episode, you didn’t know what’s going on. I found I didn’t sort of like click with it unless I got an episode that was sort of more of a bottle show and then I would watch the whole episode. When into the politics of the world of Stargate or too much of the different races, I found it was harder for me to sort engage in it. I’m used to the traditional Star Trek, science fiction or the Doctor Who stuff where it’s designed for people to drop in whenever. I think Stargate, while SG-1 definitely did that in, I would say almost a majority of their episodes, if you did get one that was a couple of episodes or whatever, it’s very hard when you’re flicking channels to do that. Nowadays it’s different because you can go like, “what’s going on? Oh, I’m gonna go back and I’m gonna watch all those episodes.”

David Read
You almost have to watch anything nowadays from beginning to end. I was always a huge fan of the Stephen King mini series from the 90s. These four and five part epics, like The Stand, which is actually being re-released now.

David Hewlett
As an ongoing series I think.

David Read
10 episodes, so it’s not gonna be ongoing.

David Hewlett
That’s it?

David Read
Yeah. It’s a single self contained story. If they do a season two that would be fascinating.

David Hewlett
They did It. They did Salem’s Lot, scared the crap out of me.

David Read
Oh my gosh.

David Hewlett
They did a bunch of those.

David Read
Storm of the Century was excellent. They re-did The Shining.

David Hewlett
My ex-wife was in Storm of the Century.

David Read
Really?

David Hewlett
Yeah, I can’t remember what she played in it.

David Read
Okay, yeah. But my point is we’ve finally caught on to this longer form entertainment that’s basically able to take works like novels and put them into mini series or longer, where seasons are basically chapters like in Game of Thrones.

David Hewlett
Which England has been doing since the beginning of television.

David Read
Yeah, we finally caught on.

David Hewlett
Everyone used to laugh at England like, “oh, the longest running show on television with seven episodes.”

David Read
Seven episodes a season or things like that, but they’re seven good episodes. You’re not doing 20 episodes or 22 episodes a year, you’re telling the best of the best of the stories that you have for that season. Poor Brad and Rob and Joe and Paul and all those guys kicking out 40 stories a year, your first three seasons, I don’t know how they did it.

David Hewlett
You have to have filler episodes, just from a budget standpoint you have to have filler episodes.

David Read
You have no choice, that’s exactly right.

David Hewlett
I really feel like Stargate was a part of so many different changes. I firmly believe that the internet is a big reason for Stargate’s popularity because the fans were early adopters. They got onto these online platforms to talk about the show at a time when most people weren’t. But it’s still a very, almost 80s, 90s style television show, to start. I think they struggled when it came to Atlantis because Atlantis was, again, was a very similar type style show. Which I, personally, I think we need more of; I think we need more positive science fiction. I think the nihilistic thing is fantastic, I love it. I love shooting that stuff.

David Read
It has its place.

David Hewlett
It has it’s place, absolutely.

David Read
It can’t take over.

David Hewlett
Battlestar was frickin brilliant but I want a show that I can sit down and watch with my kid and my grandparents. I think that was the big advantage of Stargate but it’s not sexy to writers and to producers. They want the latest edgy show that’s winning all the awards. People want characters that they love and adventurous situations, I think they struggled with that a lot. Brad was the master of that stuff, Brad could walk that line between science fiction and comedy and character in a way that I don’t think anyone can; very few people are able to do.

David Read
The man is a playwright; he can stick to people in a room in pretty much any situation and make it as interesting, or more interesting, than any special effects that you could throw on the screen.

David Hewlett
Game of Thrones is a perfect example of that, right? Game of Thrones was a show that, sure, it was all Dungeons and Dragons and all the rest of that stuff, bt that was not the appeal of the show. The appeal of the show was those characters. I don’t know if this is true or not, but I heard on a podcast that apparently they almost finished their first season and they sort of delivered it to HBO and HBO goes, “that’s great, what are you gonna do for the next 15 minutes on each episode?” They’re like, “What do you mean?” That was when they realized that they were doing a one hour show; not a traditional television, 45 minutes, that would become an hour with commercials. So they flipped out, cancelled the battle sequence for their last couple of episodes and just thought, “who are the most interesting characters we could throw together into a conversation to make up that extra time throughout the series?”

David Read
That’s largely true and those became a lot of the best scenes in that first season too.

David Hewlett
I would argue they were the best scenes. Again, the effects were great, it was like lightning in a bottle that show; so many things came together on that show,

David Read
But it’s like Atlantis, you tune in for the characters.

David Hewlett
Yeah, that’s it, that’s it. Comedy as well, because the other problem is if science fiction takes itself too seriously, you lose people. If it gets too geeky all about the tech stuff…My joke with McKay was “speak quickly because the people who care about it will go back and listen to it again, the people who don’t just want to laugh at the punch line.”

David Read
That’s true.

David Hewlett
Plus I talk fast. That’s my excuse for talking fast.

David Hewlett
Oh my God, some of the funnest times…funnest? I just made up a word. Some of the best times I had, honestly, were working with him. Just absolutely lovely, lovely time on those episodes. Was it Contact?

David Read
Martin Gero and I once talked when he was creating First Contact and Lost Tribe. With you and Michael on, you have to keep in mind that the script pages, they’re going to eat up the dialogue very quickly.

David Read
First Contact and Lost Tribe, last season.

David Hewlett
Just absolutely lovely. I just remember just that kind of laughing, when you’re laughing like there’s nobody watching, you know what I mean? Just an absolutely lovely actor. Also Martin Gero as a writer, again, fantastic at writing comedy, writing characters that are funny because of who they are, not because they’re trying to get funny lines. You know what I mean?

David Read
I remember visiting you guys on the set. A lot of people will ask, “what was the biggest practical joke or prank?” which is fine, but I would go on that set and I would watch you and I would watch Amanda on the other stage. It was so apparent that you’re obsessing over getting the dialogue right in your head and in the right order and sequence and getting it to come out at the right time. That’s an intense process and I don’t know how you did it man.

David Hewlett
It’s still to this day, the same thing. I feel like it’s almost like solving a puzzle or doing exercise, I just would obsess on getting things right. I just did a show recently and had a huge scene and was really struggling; kept losing the thread on stuff. I realized how much of a muscle this is, the less of it you do, the harder it is to do. Also, there’s just a sort of a sense of pride in it, I don’t want it to be split up, I want to get a run out. Amanda is the same way, Amanda goes back to the days of theater as well. We just want to get a run at it, you want to do the whole thing. I loved it. Unfortunately, because of that, I feel like I didn’t have the time to talk with people as much as a lot of the other cast did. You had a lot of lines, you’d go home and learn the lines, fall asleep, get up early in the morning and go back to work again. I loved it. Looking back, I feel like you become a little bit more of an outcast within the group because you can’t do the dinners every night, you just have too much to do.

David Read
You have to learn the lines, they have to get in there and at some point or another you have to have a life as well.

David Hewlett
Well, that was the RDA thing. So on a plane with RDA, flying in for the first episode of Stargate Atlantis, the pilot. He’s there and I’m there, we’re sitting literally in business class. I’m all excited because I had 60 bucks in the bank when this started and there’s frickin MacGyver beside me. I was wading through this massive script and highlighting stuff and circling things and jotting things down. He sort of looks over and sort of pulls out two little fact sheets and sort of waves them and settles them down onto the little lunch tray and then scratches out the first one, circles the second one, scratches out the third one, turns to me and says “get them wrong, they stopped giving them to you.” I was just like “oh my god, if only I had taken his advice” because invariably the more you can get done, the more they give you. But I just loved it, to me it’s almost like running a 5k or something, which I haven’t.

David Read
And the technobabble itself, we had Nykl on a couple of weeks ago…

David Hewlett
Oh yeah.

David Read
Yeah, that guy, right? It’s a language in and of itself. There is a rhythm to it and you have to sometimes decode it to really get, specifically, the science that Mika created behind a lot of it. But at the same time, you’re trying to get to a point. You are explaining the MacGuffin, or whatever the circumstance is, in order to move the plot along. You are servicing the plot as much as you are servicing the character.

David Hewlett
And trying to marry the two. Sometimes you see a lot of actors who go like, “Oh god, it’s just like exposition. I just got to get through it.” I think it’s such a mistake because that’s where you lose people, right? To be fair, credit where credit’s due, the writers mixed in the comedy, they mixed to the character stuff in a great way. I’m actually like this with the kids with Tech Bandits; if you’re excited about something, they get excited, the curiosity is contagious. I think that if you can somehow get that across in what you have to say…The other thing that really helps is you love what you’re doing, right? I mean, I love it. Every time I launched into one of those speeches I just kept thinking of Tom Baker. I just kept thinking of Tom Baker, Doctor Who, talking all that stuff. I remember as a kid going like, “what is that? I want to write that down. What does that mean?” I would study that, not as an actor, but as a nerd, I want to know everything about this stuff. I bailed on your trivia today because I feel bad. The reality is you and the people who watch this know more about the show than I do now, honestly. We don’t have the same insight into a lot of this stuff than the people do. I feel bad that I don’t know as much about it.

David Read
I think that you know more than you would give yourself credit for. I mean, it’s not like I would throw you “in episode four of season five, Rodney…”

David Hewlett
I’d be like, “we did five episodes?”

David Read
I think you would have more of a better time than you’re giving yourself credit for, but it’s okay. The fact that you had done 100 hours of television and I’ve always wanted to sit down and count the words that every character had because I would argue that you probably had 50% of all the spoken dialogue.

David Hewlett
It was a lot of dialogue, yeah. But again, I always just took it as a compliment. There was always a little bit of like, “oh boy” but the reality is you want that. At the end of the day, watching the shows with my kid now, one of things we started doing was, and it was sort of just to say thanks to people who were supporting Tech Bandits, I thought it would be kind of fun to do screenings of the show. I obviously can’t show it but I would just watch it, it would be like a fake commentary but with my son. Of course, my son is more brutal than McKay about most of it. Thinking back you go “I’m glad I learned those lines. I’m glad I enjoyed that scene. I’m glad I got that right.” My son’s looking at it now and going like, “God, my dad’s not an idiot. I mean, he’s an idiot, but he doesn’t have to be.” It’s just kind of neat to have that. This stuffs stays now in a way that it didn’t used to. You used to do an episode of a show and if you miss it that day you probably won’t see it.

David Read
Yeah, but now it’s ubiquitous, now it’s everywhere. Netflix has just picked up SG-1 again. It’s filed under mature so we’ve got hurdles…

David Hewlett
Is it?

David Read
Because of the nudity in the pilot. They didn’t put up the final cut, they just kind of threw it up there. That’s always my issue with Stargate, it’s like “Stargate, ah, you know. 10 seasons of SG-1, we’ll put Jonas on the cover because he was in one of them.”

David Hewlett
It’s a product, yeah. It’s definitely a product.

David Read
It doesn’t have the care that it should from from the people who are…

David Hewlett
I think it’d be bigger if there had been more impetus put on outreach and stuff. Near the end there I loved it, you had the podcast guys coming in to talk to you about the show. That’s when they finally sort of embraced that or realized that might have something to do with it. But they always brought in these marketing people and you’d be like, “what do you..?” You take an ad out in Variety, I’m like, “no one in Variety gives a crap about this. We should be going to Nature magazine, go to like National Geographic. We’ve got a smarter audience than a bunch of frickin Hollywood people.” I always felt like they got it wrong and they’re like, “it’s entirely a male audience.” I’m like “it’s not a frickin male audience, stop saying that. Of course the guys like it but I got news for you, so do the girls who are dating them or the ones that are married to them.” It was so frustrating to listen to these marketing people try to tell you how the show was going to be marketed. I remember one season we did a whole, I’m sorry, I sound like I’m complaining, I’m not really complaining.

David Read
I think you’re providing context to the situation. Why don’t we have an SG-4? Its for reasons like this.

David Hewlett
Yeah, that’s it and I think that’s the reason why it’s not going. I don’t think that the writers and producers got the support that they needed from the people who are making the show. I guess part of the job is convincing people that that’s the way it should be done.

David Read
It’s not cool like Star Wars is, it’s not a fairy tale.

David Hewlett
The funny about Star Wars is Star Wars sucks when it tries to become science fiction. Star Wars was never science fiction.

David Read
No, it’s a fairy tale.

David Hewlett
It was science fantasy and I loved it for that. That’s why I love the Mandalorian because I feel like it’s returned to this kind of…

David Read
That’s a Western, exactly.

David Hewlett
It’s a Western, exactly. Actually, you’re right David, that’s probably a better description. It really is a science Western and that’s what it originally started off with and then they tried to explore the science. It’s like, “Oh, give it up.” Whereas Star Trek, if you take that science out, then you don’t have Star Trek anymore. Star Trek was for people who wanted to delve deeper into these concepts. I think Stargate was like a nice mix of the two. You had very smart people with some really interesting perspectives on society, on interactions between people and also on technology. I think we always had the advantage of being able to have a contemporary sense of humor and a contemporary perspective on the science fiction that we’re dealing with, right? There was always someone to step back and go “that alien’s not wearing any pants.”

David Read
Well, you know, pants are optional for some aliens. I think it comes down to “what do you want out of your entertainment?” I have friends who just exclusively go and turn on whatever program to turn their brain off. Well I want to turn my brain on? It’s just a different core motivation.

David Hewlett
I think I would argue in a way though, certainly Atlantis, I felt was, not turn your brain off, but I felt like you could just kick back and enjoy it in a way that you can’t sometimes with other science fiction.

David Read
Undisputable, absolutely.

David Hewlett
And SG-1 certainly as well. It’s so funny looking back on it, I’ve probably forgotten more than I remember. I remember every year there being these network meetings and the wonderful pilgrimages to Comic Con and stuff. Comic Con is where you go like, “look, it’s 5000 people in a room and you’re talking to them about ‘don’t record it’.” “Don’t record it because if you record it then we don’t get the ratings.” I’m like, “if you have to beg people not to record your show, if you have to beg 5000 of probably the more technically advanced people on the planet to not record, to not use the technology that we’re preaching in the show…” You know what I mean? It just seemed crazy to me. That’s why I love the internet, I love Twitch, I love YouTube, I love all this stuff. It’s bringing it back to the people. The fact that you could do a show like this, I mean, there’s a good chance, I don’t know where you are with it, but there’s a very good chance that this becomes a living. I mean, who ever thought that was possible, like even 10 years ago?

David Read
That’s why I’m saying all this is accelerating very quickly. We all just have to hang on and be there for each other and be supportive of one another through this whole thing.

David Hewlett
The other thing that I love about the internet side of this stuff is you’re not competing. Just because there’s 50,000 podcasts out there, yes, obviously there’s a limited amount of time to listen to things. But just because I’m not watching this live, I can still watch it later. Or I watch you live and I watch someone else later. There’s no…

David Hewlett
Yeah, there’s no scarcity fact. I think that’s what terrifies traditional television and film, is there’s no scarcity so there’s no value.

David Read
Scarcity.

David Read
The writing’s on the wall; they are either going to transform with the rest of it or go extinct. It’s so exciting.

David Hewlett
I’m all for it. My wife is producing films, that’s what she does. She’s in traditional television and film and what’s weird is I started thinking that I would be doing that with her and I have completely changed. I’m only interested in online stuff now. I’m only interested in Twitch and YouTube and whatever other platforms show up. I feel that’s where my audience is in my mind, that’s where I want to be, I love this stuff. It’s hard to get the kid to watch an entire film, you know what I mean?

David Read
Yeah, that’s got its own issues. Another concern is just the lack of attention, the lack of the ability to focus. That’s separate of the content being interesting or not because there can be a situation where “well, this is actually not really that good at all.”

David Hewlett
Yeah, it’s a weird thing. It’s the slow build, right? It’s like Hollywood’s got to this point, not even Hollywood, I think just media entirely, has got to this point where we skip the setup, we just dive straight into it now. There used to be a setup and then you would build this suspense and then you would get your first reveal and then the movie would really kick in.

David Read
That was the criticism of season one of SGU.

David Hewlett
Oh, really?

David Read
Yeah, that it was a slow build and then by the time you got to season two, those who were sticking around for it, like “this is good.” Then you had so many of the audience “Oh, I was already gone at that point.”

David Hewlett
There was nothing wrong with the quality of SGU, again, it came down to the marketing of it. The advantage that Atlantis always had was that I never felt like we were replacing SG-1, we were augmenting it. We were like an added bonus at that point. I think if they canceled SG-1 and put Atlantis on the air, I don’t think Atlantis would have gone more than a couple of seasons either. There was no crossover. I was stunned that we didn’t do a season six, absolutely stunned. I don’t think it was just an arrogance thing, it just made sense to me. What a great way to promote a new show by having it come in right after the show that you know people are already watching, admittedly a very different show. They did it with SG-1 as well, right? When they started SG-1 they tried to be all edgy and sexy and naked and they quickly realized that wasn’t their audience.

David Read
The naked thing was not Brad or Jonathan’s decision, that was a network decision.

David Hewlett
Basically I mean the collective. What got to air was “this” because that’s what they thought the audience was that they were appealing to. Then they realized over the years that this is a very different audience than that, they didn’t need this edgy stuff. I understand edgy if you need things to be edgy, you want there to be a sense of peril to things for sure. Doctor Who, for all of its silliness, there was always an element of, “maybe he won’t get out of this.” You know what I mean? I think it was so important to do that and I was always sort of stressing that to people on set, you want to make sure that people feel the peril. If you don’t feel that your characters are in peril, or they don’t feel in peril, then the audience isn’t with you either. McKay needs to feel like he’s screwed every time.

David Read
Exactly. Explosive tumors.

David Hewlett
Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Don’t even start me on that one.

David Read
What? My favorite episode, we can’t talk about it? Or the explosive tumor thing?

David Hewlett
Just the explosive tumor thing, yeah.

David Read
Before we get into fan questions, we’ve got a number of them here. Because you’re such a data head, or Tech head rather, there was so many tablets and devices on set, did you ever get to have any input into making any of the tech looking more credible? Were your comments ever welcome?

David Hewlett
The only thing I insisted on, and I don’t think I even asked anybody, I just did it, I was not going to walk around with those stupid pencils. I was like “this is not how we’re going to interact with these tablets. There’s no frickin way, in an emergency, I’m gonna go and pull out a pen. I need to be able to hit this tablet with my fingers.” Which is funny, it is a little thing, but the iPad wasn’t out yet. Yeah, so basically I’m claiming I invented the iPad, just the idea that it needed to be more tactile for me. When guests would come on I’d say, “actually, don’t bother using the pencil, just use your [finger]” and they’re like, “Oh thank God” because it’s fiddly and all this stuff.

David Read
That’s right, you were several years before that. Look at you!

David Hewlett
It was partially just acting as well. I hate props, hate props. I love props in that I love them, but I hate having to use them because I’m just so badly coordinated, I’m such a klutz. I’m dropping stuff all the time. If there’s a foam set, you know I’m going to lean on it, I’m just like the worst at that stuff. It was just the logistics; I felt that if I was playing around with a pencil the whole time I was going to be screwed. So that was the only real impact I made on the technology side of stuff. I kept bugging them about sponsorship. I kept saying “come on, we can have the coolest things.” These big giant Dells would show up, which were at the time were quite high end, but I was always like [wincing]. You look back at it, Baz is like “oh my god, what are you carrying? You got a Gameboy.”

David Read
It is US government here we’re talking, I don’t necessarily think that they would all have Macs.

David Hewlett
That is true. That is true.

David Read
And would you really want a Mac to interface with Atlantian tech?

David Hewlett
Well everything was USB, I also used to joke about that too. Luckily, the universal standard was USB, even the Wraith. All their ooey gooey technology stuff, there was still a little [USB port].

David Read
When I was at Propworx we had these little devices that had little red lights on it and at one end it was Wraith teeth and at the other end was a USB adapter.

David Hewlett
That’s the one, that’s the one that got me joking about it.

David Read
And I’ve got your little Gameboy right over here [lifesigns detector].

David Hewlett
Oh you got it? Oh great.

David Read
Yeah. It’s little things like that sold what the overall idea was; is that we are evolving this technology with our own tech and making it work just to get the story across.

David Hewlett
It’s funny talking about the props thing, props is kind of one of my favorite things to talk about. I think it was Coppola who said the person who he was most worried about is some kid in the basement making the next movie basically, or the next Star Wars or something. The reality is now that cosplay is so far ahead of the stuff that we were having. The props on Stargate were amazing but they would spend $10,000 on a little piece of plastic that had been molded to look like whatever with a couple of lights in it and stuff. The fact of the matter is that this technology now, with 3d printing and stuff, the props that I’m seeing built by fans are better than the ones that we were using on set in some cases.

David Read
I’m sure you’ve seen your Stargate being built in Europe. The Atlantis Stargate that’s been duplicated?

David Hewlett
Stunning, absolutely stunning. I mean, look, I 3d print them myself. I’ve got some little, what are they called? The Adafruit little pixel ring that I’m going to embed in…I have a little Stargate cam, my Stargate squirrel cam that I use on Tech Bandits. It’s basically just a little Stargate 3d print and it looks out over the backyard where there’s an awful lot of squirrels. It just keeps reminding the kids that I’m never on topic for long. Unfortunately, my wife was watching one episode, she never watches, and during the episode a giant rat waddled by. She was like “that’s it, no more feeding the birds. We’re done.” The squirrel cam has become a little less popular of late.

David Read
Legends Memorabilia, they put this out [model of Stargate], I think…

David Hewlett
Wow.

David Read
It’s been probably 15, 16 years now and this was revolutionary at the time. Now you can just 3d print these things and as long as you put it on a setting where you have a higher fidelity, they’re just as good.

David Hewlett
Let me grab one. So squirrel cam here, let me see if I have got this.

David Read
The Master’s laboratory.

David Hewlett
So this is squirrel cam. You don’t see this side of it but you’d see this side. The detail, I don’t know how much of it you can get, but the detail is just stunning. I want to get some lights in on there, then of course you got a nice wide angle lens, you get this giant Stargate in the foreground and then squirrels. How could you lose? People were saying, “how do I get into science fiction right now?” I said honestly, “I don’t know if I’d be writing it because the reality is everyone’s been at home for eight months, the writing’s been done. If you want to get into it and have some fun, start doing some cosplay stuff, start building some props because they’re going to need them.” There’s going to be so much work for people building stuff for these things. Also, student films, any of that kind of stuff, we’ve got technologies now that can make them not only, in many cases, work, you know, you put a little raspberry pi or a little portable computer IoT, Internet of Things, stuff in there. All of these things can be beautifully functioning winky blinky lights and all that sort of stuff, but not only that, you’ve got the VFX tools that are cheap enough now that you can make them look completely legit. You can do all of Star Trek or Stargates effects now and probably, well not even probably, definitely better than we did in the day. Not because they were bad back then but because the technology wasn’t there; the computers weren’t fast enough, the software wasn’t there for it. I can’t wait to see what happens with that stuff.

David Read
It’s gonna be great. Martin Wood and I were talking a few episodes ago about the shots that he can achieve with drones now are just unimaginable. Before it was like, “okay, line producer says if we don’t get to the crane shot in five minutes they’re gonna have to send the crane guy home. Oh, lights gone, crane guy’s gone.” Now we just fly this thing and you can program it for all these courses. It goes between the actors and everything else, between wiring and everything, the shots that we can achieve are just amazing.

David Hewlett
Yeah, they’re stunning. I would argue though that in the same way that they overdid visual effects at the beginning, I think the drone stuff gets overused as well. The other thing you have to do when you’ve got a drone shot is, they’re noisy, so you have to loop everything that everyone’s saying. All of a sudden, the acting takes a hit, right? I don’t care how fancy your shot is, if I don’t believe what the people are saying..! I feel like it’s definitely walking a line with that stuff. I remember having a discussion with Guillermo on Shape of Water and he was saying that he doesn’t like CG. I was like, “okay, but here’s the deal, it’s because you haven’t seen…” He’s like “CG movies don’t generally work.” I said, “I think you need to go on the internet and you need to look at a few of these different things. There’s technology and effects out there that I think are as good, if not better, than anything that can be done physically.” Although obviously the physicality of stuff, being able to touch things, being able to actually interact with things. Again, you can 3d print some simple objects that can be then augmented with visual effects. It’s spectacular, spectacular. Again, the drone stuff is interesting. What I’m waiting for now is more automation in the film industry. We’re seeing this because of COVID protocols; you can’t have as many people on set, you can’t have close proximity on…well the actors basically have close proximity to each other anyway.

David Read
Unless you’re with Tom Cruise’s crew, yeah.

David Hewlett
It’s funny, I actually tweeted in support of him. He’s absolutely right, if he gets sick there are thousands of people out of work.

David Read
Oh yeah, undisputed, yeah.

David Hewlett
I would have have gone full McKay easily. I’m looking forward to seeing what’s gonna happen with these cranes that used to cost $100,000 to have motion control cameras. I could do that with you know, Obot can do that. I can have Obot do exactly the same moves over and over again, I stick a GoPro on it and I’ve got motion control cameras. I’m talking to a company called Haddington Robotics next week that have this 3d printable giant arm that is so precise you can actually do 3d printing with it. It’s under $1,000 and you put a camera on that and you’ve got a motion controlled arm. It’s brilliant, I cannot wait to see what’s gonna happen with this stuff. Even in live stuff, you wait. So you start now, you’ve got a few props in the background. You’re playing with stuff, I’ve seen some really cool opening title sequences and stuff. What do you use for your stuff?

David Read
Well, OBS is what I use but for my title sequences and everything else, I have a friend of mine, Brice Ors, he’s French, and he built all of our content, all the interfaces and everything else. They’re just as good as anything that was used on Atlantis as far as I’m concerned.

David Hewlett
Absolutely beautiful. You’ll have to put me in touch because I absolutely love it.

David Read
I can put you in touch with him, absolutely.

David Hewlett
Looks gorgeous. What is it with the French and their damn VFX; they’re amazing at this stuff.

David Read
I don’t know, there’s something going on there for sure.

David Hewlett
I’ve been looking at, what is it called? The Stargate Network, The Stargate Network, the game.

David Read
Brice.

David Hewlett
Is that Brice? Of course it is, of course it is. I only know them as their code names on Discord. IBREC and all these different folks.

David Read
It just goes to show, if you want something done right, go to the French.

David Hewlett
Mais oui. C’est vrai, c’est tres vrai.

David Read
Yeah, he’s a genius. I love him for it.

David Hewlett
It’s gorgeous, absolutely gorgeous stuff.

David Read
Jonas wants to know – do you think that there is intelligent life?

David Hewlett
Yes, maybe not on this planet but certainly somewhere else. You’d have to have a definitely McKay-like ego to believe that intelligence is only available on this planet. We’re dealing with such unimaginably huge numbers of planets and stars, a few of which will, I’m sure, fall into the Goldilocks zone that allows life. I also wonder if there isn’t stuff out there that doesn’t conform to what we consider life. People ask if I believe in aliens, I’m like, “yeah, they’re around us all over.” Go look at the depths of the ocean, go look at the microscopic world; we are surrounded by the most alien, bizarre creatures. I absolutely believe there is intelligent life and I hope that one day we will become one of those intelligent life forms.

David Read
Also, you’re right, I don’t know how much it would resemble us. The majority of the universe is dark matter so who knows if we’d be able to even communicate with some of this stuff.

David Hewlett
I sort of make this joke that the first aliens we meet are going to be Transformers because the only thing that’s going to be able to get to us is something that is not living, it’s going to be so far. The first interactions with us are going to be these drones and rovers and stuff that are out there. So I feel like, in a way, that’s my excuse for watching and enjoying all of the Transformer movies.

David Read
So you don’t believe we’ve been visited?

David Hewlett
Do I believe we’ve been visited yet? That’s an interesting question. I don’t think so. I don’t think so. I don’t believe that any sufficiently intelligent race is going to sneak onto our planet. They’ve goto to have the technology to not only get here, they’ve got to have the technology and the understanding to not terrify us in some way, shape or form. I imagine it would probably be a small mission, I suppose. You’re not gonna send a giant ship of people right away. I feel like we would know. I wish we had but I don’t know.

David Read
I think there’s a reasonable chance that it’s us visiting from the future.

David Hewlett
Well, there’s that, yes. Well that’s true, yeah. The whole time travel thing is a whole other kettle of worms that’s fun to think about.

David Read
If you had the tech, at a certain point down the road, you would send historians back to observe, if they could observe without interfering. Unless you have no problem with making new timelines, so if we’re going to go down that road..

David Hewlett
That’s the other thing. Are there parallel universes where that’s happened? Of course. I’m sure that if that is the way that the universe works, I’m sure it’s happened. I don’t believe that something as monumental as that can be hidden. I just don’t believe it at this point. If it happened like last year, if it happened in 2020, then maybe. But I just don’t believe it’s happened yet.

David Read
That’s fair. Mercurian – David, the role you embodied inspired many young people like myself to pursue a career in science. Before I ask the question…

David Hewlett
My work is done.

David Read
That has to be one of the most rewarding aspects of…

David Hewlett
It is, absolutely, absolutely. It’s the best compliment you can give me.

David Read
You can never get over that, you helped to shape people for the better.

David Hewlett
The irony being that I’m a high school dropout who couldn’t bear the thought of sitting in a classroom any longer, could do that. Yeah, honestly, that’s the best gift you could get from this honestly.

David Read
Mercurian wanted to know – from your point of view, what’s the most clever trick or ingenious idea Rodney ever came up with to save the day?

David Hewlett
Well, that’s a good one. God! I think coming up with the idea that Amanda Tapping was in the ship with him, that was probably the most brilliant thing

David Read
That he would conjure her?

David Hewlett
That he would conjure her and use her to bounce the ideas off. I think that was probably his most brilliant way out of something, I would say.

David Read
David Nykl was saying that he came up with wormhole drive for the last episode. I went back and checked and his line is actually “it’s something that Rodney has been working on.”

David Hewlett
The wonderful thing about Rodney is he’ll take credit for anything. I loved the interaction between Zelenka and McKay. It was very hard not to mistreat Nykl on set as well. Once you get into character you start like, “Oh shut up, my line” or whatever. But yeah, I love that interaction because I’ve seen it, I’ve been a part of it. As a computer nerd I took a bit of time off and worked in I.T and you meet these people who were just impossible to talk to, impossible to work with, but they were so good at what they did. I think they just encapsulated that in such a great way. I think one of the reasons why they gave McKay so much to do, I think, is because the writers are very McKay I think. There’s definitely McKay-isms to a lot of the writers. I don’t mean that in a bad way, I mean in both. They’re both brilliant and curmudgeon in their own ways.

David Read
I wasn’t planning on asking you this but I can’t resist. In the #MeToo era, were Atlantis done today, do you think Rodney would have been written more differently?

David Hewlett
Such a tough one? Yes. I think honestly, I think nowadays, if it was done right now I think Rainbow Sun Francks would be a great McKay. Originally he was supposed to be a brilliant black astrophysicist. Rainbow has matured into an amazing actor who does a lot of this exposition stuff now. I don’t mean that in a bad way, I’m sorry, I make it sound like I’m lamenting. I think that’s the way it should be, frankly. I was very, very fortunate that at the time they were still very clunky in how they were going to try to cover diversity on television. It was about sort of like “how many of those do you have? How many of those do you have?” It’s a horrible system. The number of times I would get called about an audition, not on this show but on other other shows, they’d say, “No, we’ve gone black with that role.” You’re like, Oh god, listen to yourselves.” A) I didn’t get the role, but B) What are you saying? I think that it would be very, very different, very, very different. One of the things I’d love to see the show come back, I’d love to do it again. If somebody’s gonna get called out for #MeToo it would be McKay. McKay said and did all of the these terrible things. I mean, the way he talked to Amanda.

David Read
He grabs her butt in Mobius. That just wouldn’t happen now, it wouldn’t be portrayed on television.

David Hewlett
It’s not that it shouldn’t be portrayed on TV, I think it should be portrayed on television.

David Read
It’s played as a joke. He would still do it if you wanted the audience to go, “that’s an ass.” Not what he’s grabbing but who he is.

David Hewlett
He was an ass.

David Read
Yeah, he was an ass.

David Hewlett
He’s everything that’s wrong with science, I would say almost society at this point.

David Read
Arrogance, demeaning.

David Hewlett
There’s the selfishness. I don’t think that we even use the term anymore, but Aspergers. He’s terrible socially, terrible socially.

David Read
I don’t think he cares because he knows what he’s right.

David Hewlett
I think he does care, I don’t think he understands it. I think he doesn’t understand social cues. It’s classic on the spectrum behavior because I don’t think he picks up the social cues right, I don’t think he understands it. At that time, that era, those were the people who ran these corporations. People were put on pedestals for being smart and ruthless and not saying no, not taking no for an answer, then suddenly we realize that basically we’re rewarding psychopaths. I think there was a pressure for men to behave that way to some extent; that that’s how you prove you were a man; you didn’t admit defeat, you didn’t show emotion, women were beneath you. It’s all wrong now, obviously. Not even now, it was wrong then, but I feel like it was a culture that would be interesting to explore now. I would love to see McKay show up with a younger generation and see and understand what he’s allowed to and not allowed to say and stuff. Every every show you do now, if you’re in for more than a couple of episodes you do different types of training, whether it’s COVID training or in this case, it was, I want to say assault training. It’s not assault training; the worst of training to get. Sexual assault and abuse, like a lecture that talks to you about all the different potential ways that this could be construed and stuff. There are things that as an older, straight white guy, I didn’t get, I just didn’t get it. One of the classic jokes that people used to make on set would be like, “well I can’t say that anymore.” What they’re saying in these conversations now is that you can’t say that. That’s like saying you want to say that but you can’t. There’s just so many things that were sort of like simple, easy ways to get a laugh on set you cannot do anymore. I feel horrible about it because I realized that there’s stuff that’s happened over the years that I should have said things about that I didn’t.

David Read
Being aware is the first step.

David Hewlett
What was that?

David Read
Being aware is the first step.

David Hewlett
Yeah, it is. But again, I think there’s only so much patting on my own back I could do on that stuff. The Black Lives Matter stuff that has come up recently has been sort of startling to me because I realized that 30 years ago I watched a video of Rodney King getting the crap beaten out of him and thought, “Oh my God, what a terrible situation. Well, that’s blown the lid on that. Done, off we go.” 30 years later I see a video of the poor man being killed. I go, “Oh my god, because of where I am in the world and the color of my skin, I’ve been able to not even realize that this was still an issue.” Literally, I was shocked. I’m talking to friends of ours who are like, “I have to explain to my kid that he’s black and even though he’s 13 years old, he’s not that cute, silly kid anymore to a cop with a gun right now.” I’m like, “what, really? In this neighborhood?” She’s like, “this neighborhood, this country.” I’m like, “Oh my god, I literally had no idea.” Not that that’s an excuse, but I literally had no idea. I thought these were incidents, I didn’t realize this was systemic. It’s shocking to me. Anyway, totally off topic. It’s a fascinating thing though.

David Read
Absolutely. I do hope that McKay comes back in SG-4 and it would be interesting to see his new directions in this new day and age.

David Hewlett
Yeah and just see where he’s gone with this stuff. I don’t think he still would have picked up on a lot of this stuff, I think he’d be very resentful about this stuff. In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if his career has been marred by a few incidents, which could be interesting as well. There’s a lot of interesting stuff there I think.

David Read
Well I would hope that Jennifer would have helped tame a lot of that.

David Hewlett
If she stuck with them.

David Read
Do you think she would have?

David Hewlett
I wouldn’t have. Jane gave me 15 minutes when I got home to lose McKay or lose her.

David Read
That’s right, snapping your fingers and pointing. That’s right.

David Hewlett
That was it, I had to stop the snaping. That relationship was so funny because I, of course, loved it. Jewel Staite, I mean, talk about a science fiction…

David Read
Icon.

David Hewlett
Just oh my god. I mean, Firefly was, still to this day, no offense to Stargate, still, I think, one of the most effective modern science fiction’s I’ve ever seen. I couldn’t get over it, the character development and everything, it was gorgeous, and of course, so is she. But I definitely struggled with the romance stuff. Again, it sort of harkens back to the 80s, 90s television doesn’t it? People have to partner up. I feel like the wonderful nature of what could happen is always marred by what does happen, if that makes sense. So I feel that the sexual tension is much more fun in a way than the actual getting together things.

David Read
Speaking of sexual attention, kind of tangentially related, Marina wanted to know – who was the smartest? McKay or Carter?

David Hewlett
Well, I know what I would say but I also know what McKay would say as well. I think McKay felt threatened by Carter.

David Read
Oh, unquestionably.

David Hewlett
I don’t know. I think, definitely McKay. I can’t bring myself to actually say it.

David Read
The argument that I always make is that we, as humans, we only have so much bandwidth. Sam had a lot of focuses in a lot of other areas too and was arguably much more human in terms of like human. I think McKay was just a lot more raw data and had more raw data to just mine from and that’s what his focus was. All things being equal, I would probably think that McKay is smarter but not like a better human, that’s the difference.

David Hewlett
Certainly not. The other thing is I would talk for three pages about stuff that Sheppard could reduce to a couple of sentences or a grunt. So I feel like “who’s smarter at what?” you know what I mean? The beauty of Stargate, both SG-1 and Atlantis, I can’t speak too much to Universe because I didn’t watch as much of it, but I felt like we each had our niche. That was the beauty of it; everyone had their areas of expertise, yeah, they crossed over in places. I felt the competition between I think, “who’s smarter?,” I think we pushed each other to be smarter.

David Read
That’s true.

David Hewlett
The beauty of the competition I think, that element. It’s so true because that’s such a nerdy thing to do. No one wants to be wrong, everyone wants to be the smartest kid in the class.

David Read
At least respected.

David Hewlett
Yeah. That was the wonderful thing about McKay’s travels through Stargate, he came in as a guest star who was just odious, to some extent.

David Read
“This really sucks.”

David Hewlett
Basically. Then we sort of got to explain why he was like that and I loved that, I thought that was just so clever the way they did it. Then showing up on SGU, I was worried about how I was going to work in that world because it’s such a serious science fiction world. Again, I thought Brad just did a beautiful job of managing to keep McKay but just maybe harden the edges a bit again so he would fit in this world. He didn’t just show up and start looking like a clown.

David Read
Yeah, it has to fit. Claire wanted to know, The Shrine scene with Sheppard and McKay on the pier was heartwarming, lovely, one of my favorite scenes from the show as well.

David Hewlett
Yeah it’s great isn’t it. I loved our stuff.

David Read
It’s terrific. I know Joe was really chugging ’em down. The last line, “you’re a good friend Arthur,” was that improv or was that written by Brad?

David Hewlett
We did a bunch of different ones. If it wasn’t Arthur, it was a different name, it was definitely scripted. Every time we did it we would try to come up with different names, basically to get each other to laugh. There were a number of ones that were a little less user friendly than Arthur that came up. Every time we did scenes together Joe would sort of turn to me and go “they should do more of these.” I’m like, “yeah, totally, because what I need is more frickin talking.” I loved that interaction because McKay had such a man crush on Sheppard, he so wanted to be that guy in his head.

David Read
He idolized him.

David Hewlett
He absolutely idolized him. In his head I think McKay saw himself with that hair and the guns. I think he thought that eventually he was going to get there

David Read
The comparison is often made that Carson and Rodney were probably the best of friends. I would argue that Rodney and Sheppard were best friends, they were pretty tight.

David Hewlett
I think I would go Rodney and Sheppard too, only because McKay had this wonderful sort of dismissiveness of sort of biology and medicine. I feel like Beckett was probably his best friend but in a weird way; in that way that friendship is, you don’t sort of realize that. I think McKay would still consider Sheppard his best friend because that’s where he saw himself.

David Read
Right, in terms of where you’re striving for, absolutely.

David Hewlett
You basically take your best friend for granted anyways because he’s your best friend, so I feel like there was definitely that there. Also, I think Beckett showed weakness and McKay never understood that, never understood that. There was a lack of respect, I think, of that aspect of Beckett, you know what I mean?

David Read
A vulnerability that McKay was like, “yeah, come on man.”

David Hewlett
And McKay had the same vulnerability, he just was never going to admit it.

David Read
That’s the distinction. Chris wanted to know – is there anything you would change or add from your time on the show? You’ve been rewatching these episodes with the family, anything you look back like, “you know what? I wish I could have done that differently.” Or, “knowing what I know now with how we’ve gone forward in time, this would have been cool.”

David Hewlett
The one that I really feel I missed out on was the evil McKay. I just assumed that at some point an evil McKay was going to show up, it just seems like this perfect nemesis sort of thing. I’d love to have seen something like that.

David Read
To have played him funny evil or serious evil?

David Hewlett
Serious evil. A truly evil McKay would be like The Master. Basically that’s what I think of him as, I just want to play The Master from Doctor Who. The idea that someone in an alternative universe who has all of those skills and disregard and misunderstanding of social cues and stuff, could very well become a psychopath. I think there’s a lot of fun stuff there to work with. There’s a neat dynamic there because if he shows up and the psycho McKay is more successful and more attractive. It’s like the Rod and Rodney if Rod wasn’t such a fantastic guy. There’s so much interesting stuff there. I also wish there was more Kate, honestly. I wish there was more more Jeannie stuff.

David Read
She exposed his soft spots.

David Hewlett
My soft bits. I don’t know where you’re going with that.

David Read
I was like, “how do I want to say this?”

David Hewlett
I agree.

David Read
Not like she plumped him up or anything like that but she showed him to be vulnerable and The Shrine shows that.

David Hewlett
That’s sort of what I liked about it. I also really like the exploring of a family dynamic like that. I think that’s always kind of fun because it’s something that a lot of people can understand. I get a lot of people coming up and going like, “hey, you and your sister, that’s what we’re like. My brother’s a jerk too.” I’m like, “what?”

David Read
[Ken Tugonly], I believe I’m mispronouncing that, I apologize.

David Hewlett
That’s what I do, I butcher all the names.

David Read
“I am a physicist because of Rodney McKay.”

David Hewlett
Sweet.

David Read
“I wanted to know, do you think that McKay could have solved the master code on Destiny?”

David Hewlett
Ha ha, yes.

David Read
I would think so.

David Hewlett
Of course. You give him an episode, I’m sure he would have worked it out. Again, it’s so weird, I feel like because Universe was such a different sort of tone, I feel like there’s more weight to those kinds of questions on Universe than there were on Atlantis. There were elements of it. It’s funny watching some of the stuff with Baz again now. Some of the Wraith stuff was really interesting, it’s almost a sort of eugenics kind of stuff and this biotech side of things. That was completely before CRISPR and all this kind of genetic stuff, well not before the genetic stuff but it before was sort of more mainstream. You could see them sort of dipping their foot in the giant ocean of creepy science stuff. The morality of what do you do with it; we’ve got a captive Wraith and we experimented on him. we starved him. There’s so many things there that I think…there’s an edge to that.

David Read
Yeah, intense.

David Hewlett
I think solving the Destiny problems would be such a different thing than it would have been on on Atlantis I think. On Atlantis I feel like it would have “Yeah, it’d be like maybe a two, maybe a three parter, then I think we could have sorted that out.”

David Read
Kyle wanted to know – what was it like filming the scenes with Jason where Ronon would keep trying to beef up McKay’s confidence, whacking him with a stick.

David Hewlett
I used to joke, he’s like a giant Marmaduke dog. He’s like a giant Great Dane puppy who hasn’t grown into his paws yet. We were absolute opposites, like absolute opposites, I mean as people. Forget even as characters, as people he was like this weird hippie freak as far as I was concerned. But I just loved him; we just got along in this very odd way, just an absolutely lovely guy. And strangely, an artist, like truly an artist. in a way that I don’t think I even really understood back then because I had no time for it. Whereas now I’m a little older and I find myself sitting down with a guitar with my son and stuff…

David Read
Appreciating.

David Hewlett
I should have frickin learned guitar with Jason. Instead of just going, “shut up, I’m learning lines.” I could have been…god, that frickin guitar all the time, Jesus!

David Read
Sommer – what was it like bantering with David Nykl…

David Hewlett
Oh it’s great.

David Read
…and any ad libbing with him?

David Hewlett
Well, no, because I couldn’t understand a word he was saying. I think it was almost competitive. It got to the point where it’s like, “Haha, you screwed up!” I think there’s a horrible tendency as well to start treating…If you’re doing a scene where you’re just being so horrible to people over and over and over again, I think you tend to get snappy with them onset too. Poor David, he did all right for himself I suppose. It was one of those roles that could have shown up once and if it wasn’t done well no one would have noticed he never came back.

David Read
He did it.

David Hewlett
He did a great job. I think Martin Wood should get a lot of credit for that too because Martin Wood kept saying “go work lines together, go work the lines together, go work the lines together.” Nykl was pretty relentless on that too. Normally I’m like, “Oh shut up, I’m learning my lines.” I like to do it by myself, I don’t work well with others so it was good that he sort of forced the issue on that. Again, it became an amazing dynamic. I would not want to work for McKay.

David Read
Redux wanted to know – what were your thoughts on Stargate Extinction? Did you read the script that they had written? Did you take a look at it?

David Hewlett
I can’t remember, was that the last Atlantis one?

David Read
So yeah, that was going to be the movie.

David Hewlett
I don’t remember, I was in such a bad state of mind, we had just been cancelled and stuff and I don’t even know if I got through the whole script. I was sort of like angry about it all. We didn’t even say goodbye to each other because we thought we’re gonna be doing a movie. I’m not blaming them for it, they didn’t know either, but we really thought we were going to go and do a movie in a few months time. To this day, I’ve never really said goodbye to a bunch of those people.

David Read
That’s sad.

David Hewlett
Yeah. I honestly don’t remember. I remember getting a copy of it and I can’t remember whether I actually read it or not. I truly don’t remember.

David Read
Understood. If we can get this fourth one off the ground, I think it’s just a matter of time before you’ll make an appearance, if we can get it off the ground. You have to rally the fans!

David Hewlett
I’d love to but I understand either way. I also feel like it’s been a long time; it may be time to reinvent. I feel like If we look at what Star Trek has been doing and the way they’ve approached it and stuff, I think there’s some really fun ways in there. But again, I think the biggest issue is they can’t treat it like a product, I think that’s a holdover to the old days of television. There needs to be a reason why they’re doing this now, it’s not just to pad bank accounts and stuff. It needs to be because they’ve got an interesting story and a perspective to take on this stuff because there’s so many options out there. Honestly, as much as I would love to see a new series, I’d love to see a proper game. Playing that RPG game the other day, the other day? I guess that was a while ago now, isn’t it? What a great experience, you know what I mean? There was a community to it, the way Wyvern’s created this kind of episodic approach to the fifth edition D&D stuff. I make nothing out of saying that, I’m entirely there because I wanted to get back into D&D, I hadn’t done it for years. I hadn’t done it since I had my Commodore 64 be my dungeon master so it’s been a long, long time. But since then, I’ve started playing D&D with the Tech Bandits. This fabulous guy called James Guerty who’s a virus scientist by day and by night, a dungeon master, and all around amazing nerd. I think we’ll do one tomorrow, we’ll probably stream it tomorrow, Dungeons and Dragons. Is it Monday? Yeah, Monday tomorrow.

David Read
Monday is tomorrow.

David Hewlett
What’s great about Dungeon and Dragons, whether it’s a Stargate one or just regular old Dungeons and Dragons, is that it’s the art and imagination side of the science technology stuff. You get kids imagining stuff and problem solving and working together, or not as the case may be. I think it’s a great learning tool, something like that. Why the heck don’t we have a massively multiplayer online version of Stargate?

David Read
It was called Stargate Worlds and it got cancelled. You and I can talk privately about that.

David Hewlett
It’s so frustrating.

David Read
Boy was it.

David Hewlett
Is it even available anymore, any of it?

David Read
There was a piece of it that was available online as a third person shooter but it’s gone now. So it’s just a shame.

David Hewlett
In a way, you want to bring in a new generation of Stargate fans and if you can do it through a game, that would be amazing.

David Read
Completely.

David Hewlett
I’d love to see them develop different sort of venues for this kind of stuff. Doing Dial the Gate and stuff, I think is a great sort of way into another Stargate as well. We talked about, for a while there, I guess when they were originally doing the Stargate channel, when they were going to do more of that stuff, talking about doing an edu-gate. You can take Stargate episodes and mine them for science, for STEM stuff for kids. I wanted to do that. Doctor Who aired on PBS here, so in order to be allowed to show the show on television, because they had an educational mandate, they had to add a chunk at the end that was either a scientist or a sci-fi writer talking about the science of Doctor Who. What that did for me as a kid was it bound science and science fiction together in a way that was never broken for me. Anything that we had on Stargate or that I saw on Doctor Who, I felt you could make, you could create yourself, and the tools and technologies around today allow for that. I’d love to see them maybe repurpose some of the stuff that way.

David Read
I do want to expand this show going forward. If we can get a big enough audience, I really do want to do a “Science of Stargate” kind of segment with Mika and with you and a couple of the others.

David Hewlett
Oh my god, that’d be great. Mika is fantastic.

David Read
She is amazing.

David Hewlett
For those of you who don’t know, Mika was the one who did all the equations that I then pretended to fix on the chalkboards and stuff.

David Read
It’s my intent for 2021 so if you want to be involved in that component of it, I would love it.

David Hewlett
Let me know, I am there. The Tech Bandits thing is my world when I’m not acting now. I mean, there’s a family and a dog as well.

David Read
But still, that’s your release.

David Hewlett
I love it, I absolutely love it, it’s like science fiction to me. I got robots. We live in a world where I can have robots in my basement.

David Read
It’s still blinking at me, man. It’s so so trippy. It’s so weird. That’s cool. The future is limitless.

David Hewlett
Thank you for doing this. I think it’s a great idea and also I think it’s just really fun to just be able to sort of kick back and talk about it.

David Read
Absolutely my friend, it has been too long. You created a role that has inspired so many people and you are continuing to pursue content that continues to inspire young minds, old minds, white minds, black minds; the whole kaleidoscope of humanity. Anyone who’s interested, that’s so cool. I really appreciate you taking the time.

David Hewlett
Oh man, no, I wouldn’t miss it. I’m sorry it takes so long to schedule anything with me these days.

David Read
No, you’re good, we made it happen.

David Hewlett
We should do another one, we’ll do like a recap. I feel like I took us off topic so badly off the top.

David Read
I think it was an excellent hour and a half. I do think we scratched the surface on some things but I think that there’s more to come.

David Hewlett
Yeah, let me know because I’d love to do it. I always come back to the fact, when I was like, “how do I know more about Stargate?” They pointed me straight at Gateworld, that was my database of information.

David Read
It is such a privileged to know that we were playing a role.

David Hewlett
That I butchered your knowledge!

David Read
My friend, you have a great holiday and a great New Year.

David Hewlett
You too man, stay safe.

David Read
Take care of yourself. Be well.

David Hewlett
Everybody, enjoy, and as I end my stream “Hazzaa!” Oh, I didn’t show you something, wait a sec, check this out. I salvaged a few things from SGU when they pulled it down. One of them was this chair, this ridiculously massive chair, which I’ve struggled with ever since to sort of move it from room to room and stuff. The other day I pulled it apart to play with it to try to fix some of the electronics and stuff in it and realized when I leaned on it that the foam had disintegrated. Basically, it just felt apart. I thought, “that’s not going to stop me, I’m going to salvage some of the parts.” Is it plugged in? So check this out…so I have the back piece, I attached it to my own chair, including, I’m not sure if you can see this [arm rest]. I have an air compressor but I’m not going to do it because my fear right now is it will remove parts of my anatomy that I’d like to keep right now. This sucker is actually pressure controlled and lights up.

David Read
Look at this!

David Hewlett
This is my office chair now. My wife was like, “what did you do to your chair?” I said “I made it better!”

David Read
That’s exactly right.

David Hewlett
I thought “what am I going to do?” I keep this chair sitting in my basement doing nothing, it’s just going to gather dust and stuff. It was cracked up anyway so I thought “I’ll save the pieces and maybe I can build some more.” I’m just gonnaa keep adding to this chair and see what I can get out of it.

David Read
Thank you for sharing. My friend, it’s such a pleasure to have you.

David Hewlett
Oh god, anytime.

David Read
We will be in touch in the New Year and you take care of that family of yours and take care of yourself okay.

David Hewlett
You too, man. Look after yourself.

David Read
Thanks buddy.

David Hewlett
Love to all, cheers.

David Read
Bye.

David Hewlett
Bye.

David Read
David Hewlett everyone, what a great human being. Thank you so much for tuning in for our show. Dial the Gate has sponsored with 3dtechPro for the month of December, to give you a chance to get your very own desktop Stargate and customized Ancient keychain. To enter to win these items, you need to use a desktop or laptop computer and visit dialthegate.com, scroll down to “submit trivia questions.” Your trivia may be used in a future episode of Dial the Gate, either for our monthly trivia night or for a special guest to ask me in a round of trivia. There are three slots for trivia; one easy, one medium and one hard. Only one needs to be filled in and you are more than welcome to submit up to three. The submission form does not currently work on mobile devices, keep in mind. Your trivia must be submitted on or before January 1st. If you’re the lucky winner I’ll be notifying you via your email right after the start of the New Year to get your address and what word you want for your Ancient keychain. Be sure to check out our partners website for more Stargate related merchandise at 3dtech.pro. We have Stargate art real quick, before I bring Jacqueline in for our next episode. Of course it is going to be themed from Mackay. This is The Shrine by Emily Parnell. “Two watercolor studies I did for a season five episode of Stargate Atlantis, The Shrine, a great show. Watercolor, micron pins, poster, paint, Sharpie, gel pen.” At the end of the next episode I’ll be announcing the guests but we’re going to go ahead and bring Jacqueline Samuda in in just a minute so be sure to check us out on that live stream. I’m David Read, thanks so much for tuning in and we’ll see you on the other side.