The legendary actor behind SG-1’s Richard Woolsey joins David Read to reminisce about being his unique brand of pain-in-the-ass to the various members of the Stargate teams — and eventually leading Atlantis himself!

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Timecodes
0:00 – Opening Credits
0:45 – Welcome and Episode Outline
01:38 – Guest Introduction
02:22 – Delta Flyers Podcast
05:38 – Alphonso
7:48 – Mobile Emitter Replica
9:40 – Richard Woolsey and Introduction in Heroes
14:50 – Continued discussion on the character and the call from Joe M. to join Atlantis
19:00 – Woolsey Was Not Corrupt
22:30 – Atlantis and the Comedic Angle
26:00 – David Hewlett’s “McKay” was Also an Antagonist
27:40 – Wonder Years, Star Trek and Stargate
29:04 – The Planetary Society
30:11 – How would the Doctor have responded to Woolsey?
33:00 – Star Trek Longevity and Development of the Doctor
35:33 – Unexplored Woolsey Stories or Character Angles
37:50 – Appearance in Star Trek Picard?
41:27 – Doctor Shoutout
42:11 – Thank you, Robert!
44:01 – Post-Interview Housekeeping
47:30 – End Credits

***

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

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TRANSCRIPT
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David Read:
Welcome to Episode 59 of Dial the Gate. My name is David Read. Thank you so much for joining us. We have Robert Picardo joining us today, waiting in the wings here. I’m going to bring him in in just a moment. Thanks so much for your patience. So, the normal run of show for this will apply. I will go ahead and invite and ask you to submit questions in the YouTube feed at youtube.com/DialtheGate. And then those will be added to the moderator queue. The moderators are fielding those questions for Bob right now. And then I will ask those in the second half of the show. He’s got about forty minutes with us today. And then we’ll show you some of the merchandise that we have for Dial the Gate, some of these t-shirts that we’ve got available, and invite you to join into the community as well. Without further ado, I’ve got Mr. Robert Picardo, Richard Woolsey himself. And some may know you as this certain being made of light… I don’t know. You may have heard of it in Voyager.

Robert Picardo:
There’s a bit of a crossover in the various fandoms, I understand. Nice to see you again, David. We’ve known each other for the least fifteen years.

David Read:
A long time now. Yeah, it goes way back. And you know, I just want to thank you so much. You’ve, you’ve always been there for me, sir. I’ve, I really appreciate every chance that you’ve given me to come on and, and celebrate the legacy of such a, such a wonderful character, characters not, not only Woolsey, but uh, The Doctor as well. So, thank you for coming.

Robert Picardo:
Thank you. Much appreciated. Thank you. I’m sorry that our communication got lost in subspace. And I apologize to your fans that I was a few minutes late through my own fault. I take it on me.

David Read:
No. So what’s going on there? I hear there was a, possible mission with the Delta Flyers that might have just happened.

Robert Picardo:
Exactly. I got a last-minute appeal from my two Voyager colleagues, Robert [Duncan] McNeill and Garrett Wong, who have very successful podcast called the Delta Flyers, which I highly recommend. I’ve been on it before, but they asked me to drop in just for five minutes today, which turned into twenty-five minutes. Because, because once I warm to my topic, which is me, I’m very much like The Doctor. And it was really just the discussion about how I came to sing opera on Voyager. That was the question that the episode they were doing is called “The Swarm”, which ostensibly was about The Doctor’s memory beginning to deteriorate. Because his file his… he was never meant to carry that much data in his matrix for other things other than medical information. So, by expanding his program with other interests, he was actually damaging it. But uh, but it’s also the one where we established The Doctor as an amateur opera singer.

David Read:
And you said that that had not been the entire, the actual intent for you to sing it, was more like listen to opera, right?

Robert Picardo:
Exactly. The gag that I pitched to one of our co-creator producers, Jeri Taylor, was simply that when the rest of the plot of that week was happening, if they ever cut to The Doctor working alone in sickbay, that he was listening to this very passionate opera aria thinking it was funny to juxtapose The Doctor’s very placid, no-affect face that he had the first couple of seasons against this enormously expressive and emotional music. That was the suggestion, that I listened to opera in sickbay. However, after months of, she said, “Well, we’re doing some Klingon Opera stuff on Deep Space Nine, but we’ll keep it in the back of our minds.” So, I’d forgotten about it. Like six, seven, eight months later, we got a script and in the beginning of Act One, I’m singing opera and I ran across the lot to her office and said, “No, no, no, no, no, you misunderstood me. I wanted to listen to opera.” And she said, “Well, can’t you? Can you sing?” I said, “Well, I can sing but I’m no opera singer.” And she said, “Well, try it. If you’re not good enough, we’ll replace your voice”. And that was the end of the discussion. He’s like, “Well, we’re doing it now, so get used to it. And even if I, even if I misunderstood you. Now you’re doing it”.

David Read:
You are, and you did ninety-five percent of that singing except for a few pieces.

Robert Picardo:
I did uh, you’re actually right. And of the, of the five episodes I sang in, I did all of my singing in four of them. And then the episode “Virtuoso”, it was just too much and way too high. They had the real opera singer August, Augustino Castagnola, who taught me the opera in all the other shows, taught me to sing it. Um, he was the one who did the real the heavy-lifting singing in “Virtuoso”. But yes, I ended up acquitting myself for a non, for an untrained singer, and certainly a non-opera singer, I did remarkably well. So, it was a, it was a, but I was terrified the first time. Terrified. Well, we pre-recorded that.

David Read:
“The Swarm” is one of my favorite shows. So it’s true.

Robert Picardo:
Thank you. Now, let’s move on to The Gate. Let’s change franchise.

David Read:
Before we do that… Actually, I’d like to bring up what’s behind you here. This suave sophisticated person in the picture.

Robert Picardo:
Oh, Suave’ Alphonso. (singing) “Oh, Suave Alphonso.” You know, that it’s funny that we just talked about “The Swarm” in, this is me as a character that I do on my YouTube channel called Alfonso. He’s the world’s oldest gigolo and the world’s most self-absorbed man. And he gives you romantic advice that is totally useless and that you should not listen to it at all. It’s just a send-up of an of…. If Hugh Hefner, and the publisher of Hustler [Penthouse] Bob Guccione had had a love child, it would have been him.

David Read:
Alphonso.

Robert Picardo:
But per our recent conversation, this is the same hairpiece that… first of all, I wore this hairpiece in Gremlins 2, thirty years ago. But it’s the same hairpiece I wear as, um in, as Rodolfo in “O Soave Fanciulla” on Voyager.

David Read:
Oh!

Robert Picardo:
So this hair has every time I play an Italian character now. And all they did on Voyager, they just gave me these big long sideburns.

David Read:
Right!

Robert Picardo:
With this wig. Um hum.

David Read:
Well, there you go. I’ve always loved Alfonso. He was absolutely outrageous. You know, sometimes, ya just got to go there.

Robert Picardo:
Thank you. I have two new characters now. I just debuted the telepathic composer who looks you in the eye and creates music in your head, whether you want it or not. And I have a new you, I’m breaking the news on your show that I have a new female character coming up called Eva The Diva, who is a former opera singer herself. So uh, so I play multiple characters, I dress up and wear wigs and whatever. And it’s mostly, it started out as just amusement during the pandemic to keep myself performing and give me something to do. And now it’s just completely taken over.

David Read:
Well…

Robert Picardo:
Cause I get a kick out of doing it.

David Read:
Well, that’s the thing if you’re enjoying yourself, then why the heck not, you know? We’ve, we all have to find an outlet somewhere. And before we do move, move too far away from Voyager, I uh, was given this as a birthday gift a few years ago. And you may, you may recognize it, this is actually, this is a replica. Uh, my friend Jared gifted this to me for my birthday a few years ago. I always wanted to know, did you, did you get to keep one of your emitters?

Robert Picardo:
Uh, no, no, they were very careful about the Star Trek props, they like lifted them off our body or took them away right away. I, I got some souvenirs from the set back in the day, most of which went to charity auction years and years ago,

David Read:
You got your chair, I was there for that.

Robert Picardo:
I got my chair. I also got, I did get my communicator from my last day’s work, but, but it’s, that got lost in the shuffle. So I don’t really have any I know I don’t have any souvenirs anymore. Um, from I don’t have I mean, other than all of the all of the licensed products that I have many, many of way in storage. I don’t have anything that I walked off the set with uh, anymore.

David Read:
Do you still have your complete script collection? I know you, we were talking about that about ten years ago.

Robert Picardo:
Yes, I do. I do have every one of my Voyager scripts. I thought I would find a collector someday who loved The Doctor so much and love the character that, that I would sell them the entire collection because it, it appeals to me to keep them together. So they’ve been kept together. They’re all just kept together with me right now.

David Read:
I’ve, I’ve given it serious thought. If I ever get rich in Bitcoin, I may hit you up again.

Robert Picardo:
All right, we hear that? For all of you people trying to get rich in Bitcoin, um, you can, you can get the entire collection of my set-used scripts, including the two that I directed from, because yes, I am dying to downsize and get rid of them. But I want them to stay together for some strange reason.

David Read:
Absolutely. No, they’re a set. What an arc you have had on Stargate from a character that was written as, well, we have to add.

Robert Picardo:
A douchebag. A douchebag.

David Read:
Well, yes that’s not what I meant, though. A character.

Robert Picardo:
But he was a complete douchebag. How about that?

David Read:
I mean, a character that was created because time was added to a terrific episode and they needed another plot to add.  And then…

Robert Picardo:
That’s right.

David Read:
…you come in and perform this hatchet performance of this guy who’s absolutely going to just come in and and, I mean, cut the SGC asunder from all of its bull that he expects is going on here because they’ve just lost their… it’s funny. We lose Teryl and we bring in Picardo. It’s, it’s seamless from the same episode. And it’s… if you look back on the show on the franchise as a whole, there is, there is kind of a symmetry there of going from one great character to another burgeoning great character.

Robert Picardo:
Right. And also went from one doctor character to one former doctor character or an actor who once played a doctor character. So that’s an odd confluence as well. The character, as you said, was designed to be filler material. They wanted to turn the extra eight or ten minutes of “Heroes” into a two-parter. And they decided to turn it into their clip show because they did about a clip show season where they mined all of the previous episodes for their their, their best scenes and their best visual effects and whatnot. So I was brought in to do, I think twelve pages of dialogue, difficult dialogue in one day that would tie all the pieces together of these clips and then make another episode.

David Read:
Actually, this, that was at the end of Season Seven. So for “Heroes Part 2” you’re interrogating the members of SG1 for what went wrong on the planet. And that was also done in one day of shooting.

David Read:
So for the clip show, the clip show came in late that season.

Robert Picardo:
Oh, it did. So it didn’t follow on the heels of “Heroes, Part One”?

David Read:
No, the clip show came in later on in the season. It was called “Inauguration”. So, but for “Heroes, Part Two”, you’re in the, in the interrogation room with members of the SGC.

Robert Picardo:
Oh, that’s right. So I ended up doing… so that was the second episode. “Inauguration” was the second episode.

David Read:
That was your second episode. That’s right.

Robert Picardo:
I’m sorry, folks.

David Read:
No, you’re good!

Robert Picardo:
Memory fails me slightly. I get it. I get it now. I had conflated those two. First of all, I never expected to come back when I did “Heroes”, part-two,” came in and met the whole SG1 cast there. Everybody across the board were so nice to me, but especially Don Davis, God rest him. And but the whole cast was so welcoming and so sweet, because it was a huge amount to do. It was a very complicated shot where I’m interrogating all of them and the cameras going around and around. And this is that would be a much easier thing to do now with motion control photography. But to do it practically, without any cuts, each of the cast members had to slip out of that chair quietly and slip back in when the camera was just at the right angle so you didn’t see it. However, I’m supposed to be engaging someone sitting in that chair. And on the other side of the camera, as it’s coming around, people are going like this, right? In and out of chairs, and I have to be very focused and look like I’m constantly talking to one person. It was really hard to do. And, and one little line muff or whatever would have ruined it. So we got through that whole day, I was flying to England the next day for a, for a personal appearance that I was already contracted for. So I had to get it one day, Andy Makita directed it, he was great. And it all just went seamlessly. And then the Joe Mallozzi and Paul Mullie took me out to dinner that night and they decided that they liked me and they thought I guess they must have thought they didn’t share this with me, but they thought, “Oh, what do we do? We painted ourselves in the corner by making this guy such a complete jerk. But we like this actor and we like to have him back.” So that every time they had me back, this completely unredeemable, hatchet-man douchebag that I had introduced in the first episode had this glimmer of a positive quality each returning time. So the way I have described in the past is, he’s a complete douchebag, but then he comes back and he’s like, Oh, he’s a douchebag who really believes in civilian oversight of secret military operations. So he has one little quality. This is one good thing about him. And then he was a complete douchebag who really believed in civilian oversight of secret military operations, who really didn’t want to be a douchebag anymore. And then the next time he was a complete douchebag who didn’t really want to be a douchebag anymore, but he didn’t really know how to not be a douchebag anymore. You know, every, every time I had this glimmer of a positive quality, then I started having comic, slight comic potential, right? When they did the crossover show the, I think it was also called “The Swarm”. Interesting. We talked about Voyagers, “The Swarm”.

David Read:
Oh, yeah. With the R75. The bugs. Oh my gosh.

Robert Picardo:
And that was the first time that uh, Richard Woolsey had like, a little comic… he ran away from danger faster than anyone else. He was outrunning, he was outrunning people half his age to get away from danger. So he was a douchebag. He was a coward. Nobody liked him. He had no people skills. He had no leadership skills of his own. He simply could criticize yours. And then after a few years, I got a phone call from Joe Mallozzi saying, “We’d like you to be the new leader of the Atlantis expedition.” I said, “Wait a minute, Joe.” I said, “I’m very flattered. First of all, I love doing your show. I love working with you guys, but I’m an asshole. I’m a coward. Nobody likes me. Nobody would follow me. Uh I run away from danger. I can’t I, no, I have no skills at all to be a leader.” He said, “Don’t worry, that’s our problem.” I said, “Great, I’ll do it.”

David Read:
Yeah. And you had just set up in the Season Four finale that Richard Woolsey had taken over Atlantis in the future. And in the future that, that Shepard was told by a hologram McKay, he had actually gone in and taken it over. And there you are the next season. Well, we’re not, we’re going to make it happen.

Robert Picardo:
I hadn’t even thought of that as well. I probably… the problem with a show that you don’t often deeply grasp what your character is doing as much as the regular fans do, is that sometimes it’s news to you when people pull stuff out. Because I probably, I didn’t even realize that. I do know that I had more fun. You know, people say, what do you, you know… I can’t compare my Star Trek experience to Stargate. It’s not fair because Star Trek went on for so many years. I got to do so many cool things with that character and to grow so much. But I can say that just the experience of working on Stargate was so much easier and freer in a way. You know, Star Trek, they protect the franchise very carefully because it’s all said in this imaginary future. They’re really careful about anything, any slight… they don’t like to change a comma without permission because they don’t, they really don’t want anything that smacks of the present day in this three hundred year in the future.

David Read:
It was Roddenberry’s vision!

Robert Picardo:
And that’s, and I understand and I respect that, which is why they have kind of mid-Atlantic speech for most of the actors and they don’t use contemporary, obviously contemporary references from the twentieth century and now twenty-first century would mean nothing in the twenty-fourth century. So they’re careful with the dialogue. Because Stargate is a science fiction show that was set in this sort of secret present, they can make contemporary references. In any case, it had a much looser feeling. The producers welcomed me ad-libbing. If I said, “Can I try something different in the next take?” They went, “Oh, go ahead.” You know, whereas on Voyager, that would have been a phone call three days before we shot it.

David Read:
Right!

Robert Picardo:
in order to get permission to do an alternate line. So, all I’m saying is that it was just a very liberating kind of a feeling on that set versus my previous experience, as much as I loved my previous experience. And also, Joe and Paul were just great producers as Brad Wright, Robert Cooper, they were all so positive toward me. They just treated me like gold. I’ve never been taken out to more incredible dinners than I have by Joe Mallozzi.

David Read:
Joe, Joe’s a foodie!

Robert Picardo:
I recommend any actor, any actor work with him. Yeah. You get more, there are more perks to, to working with Joe Mallozzi than any other producer ever, um, for which I’m very grateful. He’s been a great friend to me over the years.

David Read:
Well you had really earned your stripes. The fact of the matter is, I mean, like, I remember you telling me like in a “Message In A Bottle”, one of my favorite episodes you had to fight for the line after Andy Dick says “My breathing is merely a simulation.” You say, “So is my neck.” Stop it, stop breathing down my neck.” And uh I mean, you, you had really pushed that hard. And by the time that Atlantis had come around, by the time that Richard Woolsey’s character had come around they were able to see, this guy can do it, just give him a shot! You know, absolutely. And I will say one thing for Richard Woolsey, as far as we could tell, despite all of his issues, he was not corrupt and he was, he was a man of principle. And if he didn’t have that at the beginning, it wouldn’t have worked.

Robert Picardo:
That’s an excellent observation because that is true. He was there even though he was ruthless.

David Read:
Yes.

Robert Picardo:
in his style, he was there to find the truth. Now it is suggested that, that someone’s head had to roll. So the, if you turn around, what you just said, if no one was in fact responsible for this tragedy, he still was going to find someone who was as responsible as possible.

David Read:
That is true, that’s quite possible.

Robert Picardo:
That’s not corruption, but that’s like closure for him. I need, I need to assign blame to one of you people. And by God, I’m going to do it.

David Read:
Yeah.

Robert Picardo:
Or all of you. But you’re right. He was, he, well, that’s sort of what I meant when I said he really believed in, in oversight, civilian oversight of the military. That is a positive thing. You don’t, nobody wants especially with… you know, look at Myanmar, right? I mean, nobody wants a military coup taking over a democracy. So, he believes that the, that, that the military has to be, has to have civilian oversight in all of, especially in a secret and dangerous program, potentially dangerous program for the entire planet. But um, the other… if I have a particular skill as an actor or a stock in trade, as you would, I have uh, it’s playing characters that you initially don’t like, but you grow to like, in spite of their bad impressions, so to speak. And it goes even to my character, the gym coach on the Wonder Years, Mr. Cutlip, who was a very… except for the fact that he had seventy IQ points less than Richard Woolsey. He was also an officious, by-the-book, kind of a character. Um, and even The Doctor when he’s first introduced, because he was a new technology and he did not, and he had these special algorithms that were supposed to interface with patients so he could develop and learn a bedside manner, it didn’t quite work at first. So all of these characters, they’re not um, they’re not empathetic. And they’re not, they’re not really likable at first. But I think the key is always to let the audience, to give the audience glimpses of what’s underneath, why they are the way they are. And, and then the audience starts to root for them to loosen up and to be redeemed, so to speak. And, and that’s what they did with Woolsey eventually. You don’t see that in the first episode, which you start to see him wishing he had better people skills, and wishing he had some community or friends with somebody. And what they did so brilliantly, really in the first episode of Season Five on Atlantis, when they made Woolsey the Commander, was they had three little vignette scenes that really made the audience root for him. The first one was when he couldn’t get out of the briefing room at the end, he literally couldn’t get the doors to open. That was just so funny and so kind of pathetic.

David Read:
It’s like the city, it’s like the city didn’t even want him there.

Robert Picardo:
Exactly. And, and, and there were little, there was that when they give him his, when Teyla gives him her baby to hold, and he literally has no idea what to do with the baby. And then when he complains that he lost his dog in his divorce to his wife, I mean, there were little things that showed that he’d oh my god, this guy’s, has it isn’t all easy for this guy, or he’s trying to make an adjustment. I think that the audience began to start to root for him. And the other great thing about playing that character is, here I was an actor in my middle fifties. At a time… when I took that job, it was just after the huge financial downturn in 2007. And a lot of people that are retired had to go back into the workplace because they’d lost their retirement money or whatever. So you saw a lot of people in their fifties and into their sixties going back into the workforce, trying to redefine themselves. So that was the other thing that was cool about playing that character someone in their middle fifties going from being doing one job, hey, I’m brought in to evaluate your leadership, whoops, now suddenly, I have the tables have turned and I have to become a leader myself. Someone trying to redefine themselves, and in a brand-new work situation was something I think that was really in it was in the ether at that time because of the big financial downturn.

David Read:
And we can, those of us who have worked in offices have that, do have that feeling of what it’s like, you know… Tamlyn Tomita as Shen, she comes in and she’s taken his job now. And he’s sitting where Weir and Carter were sitting before. And so yeah, the tables have literally turned and we’re talking about a fairly eccentric person here as well. You know, this is a guy who brings his boardroom table to another galaxy because he’s more comfortable with it.  You know, when he’s dressing down.

Robert Picardo:
And now she’s working on Star Trek. She’s taken it full circle.

David Read:
Yes, absolutely! As a Romulan! That’s right!

Robert Picardo:
And, and she’s a terrific actress and a lovely person, loved working with her.

David Read:
Absolutely. And we’re talking about a guy here when he wants to unwind, he puts on his business suit, so…

Robert Picardo:
That was that was another suggestion of mine.

David Read:
That’s terrific!

Robert Picardo:
Joe is so open. I said, “Wouldn’t it be funny if someone at the end of a long day, working in a jumpsuit in an ostensibly a comfortable outfit, but then goes home to relax and puts on a suit and tie…

David Read:
For himself!

Robert Picardo:
…because, simply because that was the uniform of his prior life?” You know, it was so, I thought it was a sweet, and Joe was like, he was so open, he was like, “Great idea”, we’ll do it.” And, and that, that was, I really do. I remember that moment. I like that. It just made… it showed that he was just cutting his teeth in his new job, but he still missed the sort of, the comfort of his former identity. You know, the guy he used to be.

David Read:
I think that that’s just one of the things that worked about Stargate so well is, I mean, it’s particularly with David Hewlett’s character, McKay. You know, he also came in as an antagonist. And through the end of that show, in many respects, he still was a closeted antagonist. His edge never went away. But he adapted to situations and grew as a character. And as an actor, I’m sure you can’t appreciate anything more.

Robert Picardo:
No, and I agree with you. And David also he did never lose his edge. He’s a he had the most wonderful way of kind of whining, both in character and out of character. And he had this amazing ability to crack me up. I don’t usually work with other actors that can really break me up constantly between takes or even on camera, rarely. That’s not something that’s easy to do with me. He was really good at.

David Read:
Did you find him a kindred spirit in terms of all the techno-babble that you had to ingest and then [bleh] back out?

Robert Picardo:
You know, he was he was great at and he was very he, he was he could speak as quickly as I spoke on Voyager. I think by the time I got to start, well, first of all, was a different character. I didn’t have to speak that quickly, but I, I was in awe of how, how he could chew the words out. Yeah. Yeah.

David Read:
That’s quite an experience. I mean, to be able to, to care with… well, Cutlip is another fine example. But with The Doctor and with Woolsey, what a satisfying experience those to look back on and say, “You know what, I was given a fair bit to chew on there and it came out pretty good.”

Robert Picardo:
No, I am happy. It’s, it’s great to be just even on one television show that sort of stands the test of time. But I feel lucky to have been on three of them with people in different ways because the Wonder Years is always on somewhere…

David Read:
Always.

Robert Picardo:
you know, platform. And same thing, of course, with Star Trek and Stargate as well, although I wish even more Stargate, but people constantly revisit the work if they if they get to know a new version of the show, as they certainly have with Star Trek, and next season, I don’t think it’s a surprise they’re planning an all African-American version reboot of the Wonder Years. So that will send people back to the original one as well if they love that show. And of course, with Stargate, there are constant rumors of a new Stargate in some form, which I’m sure there will be some time because it’s..

David Read:
At some point.

Robert Picardo:
…It’s, it’s studio gold for MGM television. So at some point, they will want to mine it again. So it’ll be… and then at that point, the fans of watching the new show or the new movies or whatever will go back and revisit, you know the other one. So it’s all, it all helps the respective brand names, and that’s what a successful franchise is. People, the fans want more of it. And until they get more of it, they keep watching the old stuff and, and hoping for more new stuff.

David Read:
Absolutely.  How… before I bring in fan questions, how are things with the Planetary Society?

Robert Picardo:
Thank you for asking. I should have my pin on, I do in most interviews, my little planetary pin. We recently had a very successful online planet-fest to celebrate the most the “Perseverance” rover landing. Big success.  We announced that we have an anonymous donor who is now no longer anonymous, who has made a huge pledge to us. So we have a big, that’s part of a big new fund drive that will ensure our future for years to come. The Planetary Society, for those of you don’t know, it’s a nonprofit space advocacy group presently run by Bill Nye the Science Guy, originally co-founded by Carl Sagan forty years ago, we’re now forty-one years ago. And it’s a, I encourage your listeners to go to www.planetary.org and check it out. If you are a space fan, then you must be a Planetary Society member by definition.

David Read:
Absolutely. Thank you for sharing that. I’ve got some fan questions for you here. Um, Jeremy Heiner wants to know, ”Bob, how do you think The Doctor would have responded to Woolsey and vice versa? Do you think they would have gotten along or been mortal enemies?”

Robert Picardo:
I think they would have thought, each would have thought the other was an asshole. That’s a funny question. I’ve never really thought of it that way. But it would be it would be a delightful challenge to have tried to play a scene between the two of them. I suspect that The Doctor would have found the old Woolsey a terrible you know, just what’s the word a functionary, an unctuous, an unctuous toady of sorts. But the more enlightened Woolsey uh, facing the more enlightened doctor would have been interesting, because I suspect that early on in the encounter, perhaps their worst qualities would come out with each other, because they would see it in some level, they might see a little bit of their former selves in each other to an extent. So, but maybe they would have reached an agreement by then, simply because they both, they both grew so much as characters. I mean, arguably, the Woolsey grew not quite as much as the Doctor, but grew a great deal, considering it happened in a very compressed time. He really had quite an arc.

David Read:
He really did and I mean, they, it was one of those where with The Doctor was like, okay, hopefully we’ll have seven years on television, we’re going to go through with this. And we’re going to make a meal out of this character, and the situations that he’s in. And then with Woolsey it kind of wasn’t necessarily planned that way. But when you, when you have the right creative team that, that that goes out and creates an honest portrayal with, with the actor, an honest portrayal of a character as long as those, those pieces are in place, there’s no reason it can’t grow into anything.

Robert Picardo:
And really great writers in television, write to the strength of the actor they have cast. So even if they had an initial vision, and the actor presents that, then they start looking… and I think what happened with when Joe and Paul, Joe Mallozzi, Paul Mullie took me out to dinner that night, they saw… first of all, they talked about my work on Voyager and all that. But they saw something in me some colors that they went, “Oh, I’d like to see some of those colors show up in this character we’ve created, I think it’s possible to use little bits of that, whatever.” In other words, they saw something in me, or maybe it was simply that they liked me enough that they wanted to have me around again. But they, they had the idea of how to redeem the character. And in perhaps the thing, I, I knew that Voyager was going to be a good job longevity-wise when I took it, but I didn’t see when I took that job, I had no idea that I was in for the ride of my life that the character was going to develop like that. I didn’t understand…

David Read:
Well, life..

Robert Picardo:
…Star Trek well enough.

David Read:
Just watch “Life Signs”. And you know, that’s, that’s where it all happens. So…

Robert Picardo:
But I didn’t, at the beginning, I didn’t understand that I had gotten the great role of the show, I assumed that the, the Vul… I didn’t know enough about Star Trek, that the artificial intelligence character was going to be potentially was a breakout character, I thought, well Spock was a Vulcan, we have a Vulcan character, actually, Spock was half Vulcan, we had a full Vulcan character. And as wonderful an actor as Tim Russ was, that, that sort of constrained his character development more, he either had to play the Vulcan all the time, or have the three or four episodes over the seven years where it’s like Tuvok goes crazy…

David Read:
Yeah, whatever happens to him.

Robert Picardo:
…for whatever reason

David Read:
but you’re the lens through which stories of humanity can be told, because you’re a mirror up,
holding the mirror up to the audience, to us.

Robert Picardo:
And I didn’t I didn’t get that until about halfway into the first season that, that, oh, I was I have a much better role than I thought I did. And really, when the producer put his arm around me after shooting five episodes and said you are going to be the most popular character on the show, and I looked at him like he was crazy, I was flattered, but I totally didn’t believe it. And I thought, I don’t get it, I don’t see it. But he, he already got it. He already saw the potential there or, or knew from creating it that I didn’t. So, the funny thing about it is that if you look, if I had known the character was going to be that great, I would have just psyched me out for my audition, and I probably wouldn’t have done as well. And even, and also respect with respect to Atlantis, that was just to get a one-shot guest star that they just handed me, I had no expectation of it going anywhere. So I guess the kind of lesson as an actor is like it’s better not to know upfront, that this is going to be a great role, because you’ll simply, you won’t psych yourself out of doing your best work at the audition, and you’ll simply treat it like anything else. And then once you have it, it grows, it just exceeds your expectations by far.

David Read:
It’s a fair point. Carlos: “Was there a storyline or, or an angle of Woolsey that you wish you had gotten a chance to explore?”

Robert Picardo:
Oh, I’m sorry, you’re.. I thought you’re asking Carlos a question. How stupid I am. You are relating. I, I was waiting…

David Read:
Right, Carlos wants to know.

Robert Picardo:
I was waiting for Carlos’s answer to that very interesting question. You know, I was secretly shown the TV movie that was that, that we understood we were going to get to make after Atlantis, that never happened. And I, I’m not going to say, first of all, I only read it once, I don’t remember, but it was really great. And I was very hopeful uh, that we would, you know uh, that we would get to do, to, to go beyond where the end of the fifth episode sitting in San Francisco Bay. I was really hoping that we would go farther. As far as specific things, I don’t know. I mean, he just proved he, he really becomes a leader in the finale. I mean, he really, you see it, you see him as kind of a fully formed leader. So of course, I would love to have taken that to the next level rather than have to… because I spent the whole season kind of brick by brick, getting built into that leader, it would have been nice to see the kind of, of leader he became on an ongoing basis, having had the path that he had, being the age I was he’s never going to be the rough and ready guy, because he’s a guy in his late fifties at that time. So it would have been fun to get… once he really, really clicked as a leader, to have done anything else to have done any other stories would have been fun. I can’t give you a specific story I would love to have done simply to just continue having, having really mastered leadership skills, which I only did in that last episode.

David Read:
Absolutely. Let me see here. Ah, Scotty0709: “If you were asked, would you say yes to appearing on Star Trek Picard?”

Robert Picardo:
You know, we get asked this question an awful lot. I really enjoyed the first season of Star Trek Picard. It’s wonderful to see Patrick doing that character again. I loved all of the, certainly Jeri Ryan, and Seven Of Nine, and Jonathan Del Arco. And of course, seeing Frakes and Marina Sirtis and Brent Spiner, to see all of these actors that I adore as people, first of all, and colleagues and, and, but to see them again, bring their characters back to life with so much history that added weight to their performances was just great. It was great fun. So of course it would be fun to revisit the character. The Doctor, of course, theoretically should not age in the same way that Data shouldn’t age. So there’d be a certain amount of digital correction. But of course, I also played uh, the character’s programmer who would age in real-time. So, um, I think it would, it’s, it’s, I’m, having watched how exciting it was to see those guys get to revisit their iconic characters makes you of course think about, yeah, that would be fun. And I also every time I hear about the possibility of something happening in the Stargate world again, it would be fun to revisit, to revisit that character as well. It, it, it always, you want to get away from it for a while. You want to put a few years behind you…

David Read:
Of course!

Robert Picardo:
…and do other things because it doesn’t make sense to revisit something. But there’s a, when, when the audience has a passion for, um, not only a particular um, saga of entertainment, a science fiction franchise, if you will, but just the character, they love seeing an actor. I mean, everybody loves to see Kelsey Grammer in Frasier. And if he plays Frasier again, who’s not going to want to see that, you know? So…

David Read:
That’s absolutely true.

Robert Picardo:
I get it that it’s funny when they were talking about a reboot of the Wonder Years, it’ll never happen now because the reboot is an African American family, which I think is a great idea, but there was some talk. I had little feelers put out about, Hey, if it were to come back, and I started thinking, what would Mr. Cutlip be doing now? And I decided that it would be great because Mr. Cutlip was an unmarried man. If Mr. Cutlip had come out, and now had a, it was in a gay marriage, had a partner.

David Read:
It’s not impossible.

Robert Picardo:
And owned a little restaurant or a pizza parlor where all the kids of the present generation hung out. So Mr. Cutlip had gone from being a very carefully guarded and hidden closeted homosexual in, in the late sixties and was now a sort of freewheeling life is…a very happy man because he was so profoundly unhappy back then. That’s what I thought would have been, would have been a great move for that character.

David Read:
I loved The Wonder Years growing up and that, that character was always terrific. So there’s, there are certain hallmarks of television and, um, you were very lucky to be in three of them. So, um…

Robert Picardo:
I, I agree. I feel blessed.

David Read:
Last question or rather a comment really. Kyle says “My girlfriend is actually sick right now and can’t watch live. Could you give her a short, a Doctor shout-out to Cleo? She loved meeting you in 2015 in Vegas.

Robert Picardo:
Yes. All right. Um, “Cleo, it’s your doctor and thank you for showing up today in sick bay for your, um, your annual physical. I understand you’re not feeling very well. Here, let me scan you. Oh, I see. Yes, Cleo, yes. I completely understand. Well, here is my, um, prescription for you. I want you to binge-watch all of your favorite Doctor episodes of Voyager, back, back-to-back. There should be at least fifteen and at the end of those fifteen hours, there are actually fifteen times forty-three minutes, you will feel better”. How about that?

David Read:
Bob, wonderful as always, sir. I would love to have you back on at some point here in the future.

Robert Picardo:
Oh, sure!

David Read:
It’s always a pleasure to catch up with you. Continued great success. I know you were working on a long, lot of pages of script last week and I’m glad we were making able to make it work this week, sir.

Robert Picardo:
Thank you. I want to talk about, let me, thank you for that. Uh, I’m doing the show that I love being cast on. It’s on the, Black Entertainment Network Plus platform called The Family Business with Ernie Hudson of Ghostbusters. I’m having a ball playing an elderly jeweler who runs a drug-dealing family. It’s such a strange role for me, Bernie, but I love doing this and I highly recommend if you’re a fan of mine and you want to see something completely different than this is, as if the rabbi in “Hail Caesar” that I played became a drug dealer. So I’m having a ball doing that. And I also wish you would remind your fans about my YouTube channel. If you can’t find the link or if you guys don’t put it up on the screen, then you can go to my Instagram_Robert Picardo, and the link is in my bio. So I am, I’m working like crazy with all these new characters. So if you like my work, I promise I will make you smile.

David Read:
That’s great. Are Buddy and Lola, they doing okay?

Robert Picardo:
Oh too old. I’m sorry. Right now. Yeah. No, we lost one, but we’ll talk about it privately.

David Read:
Absolutely. All right.

Robert Picardo:
Age, age catches up with all Chihuahuas.

David Read:
Hey, I hear that. Absolutely. My doggy played with Bob’s doggies back in the day. So, some of my favorite memories. So it’s a pleasure, my friend. You take care of yourself. Okay. Be well.

Robert Picardo:
Thank you David. You too. All right. Cheers to everyone.

David Read:
Thank you. Robert Picardo, everybody. Richard Woolsey on Stargate SG1, Atlantis, and Universe. It’s so exciting to get to meet your heroes. And I grew up watching Wonder Years and Voyager, and so it was always spectacular to have him on. So, and to be able to, to know him and share memories with him now. So thank you so much to everyone for tuning in. Uh, appreciate your patience. I know it was a little bit late and we will have him back for more shows here in the future. We have Stargate swag. Well, Stargate-themed swag, I should say. Dial the Gate is brought to you every week for free, and we do appreciate you watching, but if you want to support the show further, buy yourself some of our themed swag. We’re now offering t-shirts, tank tops, sweatshirts, and hoodies for all ages and a variety of sizes and colors at Red Bubble. We currently offer four themed designs and hope to add more in the future. The word-cloud designs have both a solid background or transparent background option, so you can have some flexibility between choosing a light or dark color. Do keep that in mind when you’re making your selection. Checkout is fast and easy, and you can even use your Amazon or PayPal account. Just visit dialthegate.redbubble.com. And thanks for your support. And, Dial the Gate is partnered with 3dtech.pro for the month of December to give you a chance to get your very own Atlantis Puddle Jumper and BC-303. 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, but you’re more than welcome to submit up to three. Please note submission form does not currently work for mobile devices. The trivia must be in before April the first. If you’re the lucky winner, I’ll be notifying you via your email to get your address and be sure to click out our, checkout our partner’s website for more Stargate-related merchandise at 3dtech.pro. And if you like what you’ve seen in this episode, I would appreciate it if you’d 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. If you plan to watch live, I recommend giving the “bell” icon a click so you’ll be the first to know of any schedule changes, which will probably happen all the time. And bear in mind clips from this livestream will be released over the course of the next several days on the Gateworld.net YouTube channel. Thanks to my production assistants, Linda “GateGabber” Furey and Jennifer Kirby, Summer, Keith, Tracy, Jeremy Reise, Anthony, my moderating team. You guys make this show possible. I wouldn’t be able to do it without you as well as our viewers. Thank you so much for tuning in. We do the show for you. Hope you’re enjoying it. Click the “like” button. If you do, it does make a difference. We’ll be seeing you tomorrow with Saul Rubinek and Vaitiare Hirshon, Emmet Bregman, and Sha’re/Amaunet from Stargate SG1. They’ll be heading your way live tomorrow. Tune in to ask them questions at youtube.com/dialthegate. My name is David Read for Dial the Gate. See you on the other side.