For more than seventeen years, publisher Fandemonium has been releasing Stargate novels to a ravenous fan community. Their bookshelf now extends to more than 50 books. Earlier this year, Dial the Gate sat down with Co-Founder Sally Malcolm to discuss this epic undertaking. Now she is back, bringing several of her fellow novelists.

For this panel discussion Sally is joined by writers Jo Graham, Amy Griswold, Laura Harper, Melissa Scott and Susannah Sinard to discuss their works set in the Stargate universe. After the panel, visit the link below for the Stargate Novels Web site and explore their offerings!

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Timecodes
0:00 – Opening Credits
0:27 – Welcome and Call to Action
1:37 – Panel Introduction
2:32 – MGM is Being Sold to Amazon
7:58 – Favorite Episodes
20:38 – “Infiltration”
23:33 – Writing Stargate: Challenges and Rewards
35:30 – Writing Characters
49:09 – Are Sam and Jack marrled in the novels?
51:27 – Any interest in characters not a part of the franchise?
53;32 – “Hall of Two Truths”
56:54 – “Stargate Atlantis: Legacy Series”
1:11:19 – “Stargate SG-1: Apocalypse Series”
1:16:19 – How much time is spent rewatching episodes while writing?
1:19:56 – “Four Dragons”
1:21:39 – “From the Depths”
1:24:12 – “Heart’s Desire”
1:27:14 – Matching the Show’s Quality and Tone
1:33:41 – SG4 and the Future
1:46:09 – Wrap-Up and Housekeeping
1:47:46 – 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
Hello everyone and welcome to a special pre-recorded episode of Dial the Gate. My name is David Read. Hope you’re having a good one today and thanks for joining us, really appreciate you being here. We had Sally Malcolm on, I think it was in April, to discuss the Stargate novels and I really wanted to have her back. But this time I wanted her to bring the cavalry, a bunch of these Stargate novels writers, and that’s exactly what we’ve done today. But before we get started, if you like Stargate, and you want to see more content like this on YouTube, it would mean a great deal if you click the Like button, it makes a difference with YouTube’s algorithm, that pernicious algorithm that’s going to continue to take over our lives bit by bit, and will definitely help the show grow its audience. And please also consider sharing this video with a Stargate friend and if you want to get notified about future episodes, click the Subscribe icon. And giving the Bell icon to click will notify you the moment a new video drops and you’ll get my notifications of any last minute guest changes. This is key if you plan on watching live and clips from this live stream will be released over the course of the next few weeks on both the Dial the Gate and GateWorld.net YouTube channels. Without further ado, I have the pleasure of introducing once again. Sally Malcolm, the founder, hello. Stargate novels, co-founder, founder?

Sally Malcolm
Co-founder, yeah.

David Read
Co-founder and a plethora of other individuals joining us here as well. Sally, who do we have here today?

Sally Malcolm
Okay, well, we have my writing partner, Laura, we have written a number of books together.

David Read
Laura Harper.

Sally Malcolm
And we have the team behind the amazing Legacy series, Melissa Scott, Jo Graham, and Amy Griswold. And we have Susannah Sinard, who’s written two is it, Susannah so far?

Susannah Sinard
Two.

Sally Malcolm
Two so far very popular fan favorite novels for us.

David Read
Wow. Well, thank you all so much for being here. This is this is fantastic to have you all all in one space. News just broke that Amazon is beginning the process of purchasing Metro Goldwyn Mayer. Does anyone have initial thoughts on this? Sally, do you want to, do you have something to say?

Sally Malcolm
I don’t know anything more than anybody else knows about it. So it was news to me like everyone else. I’m hoping it will be good news that they will want to invest some money into their existing products. I assume that’s why they bought MGM. So with a bit of luck, it might be good news for a new, some more Stargate content. Beyond that, it’s anyone’s guess. But I’m hoping it’s good news.

David Read
Absolutely. Anyone else have have other thoughts excited? Dreading this? Brad Wright universe only?

Amy Griswold
It’s exciting just because I think it does, maybe hopefully, fingers crossed mean that we might get a little bit closer to having a new series or a new movie or some more Stargate content. And that always when that happens revitalizes interest in the existing series, which is just great to see new fans coming into this universe that we all love.

David Read
Good point. Go ahead, Melissa.

Melissa Scott
Yeah, I was just gonna say much the same thing. And that Amazon has deep pockets cannot be bad for anybody and has need for more and more content. That is both good and bad, but in some ways, but I don’t think it hurts Stargate.

David Read
Exactly. Anyone else.

Laura Harper
I think that my first instinct was that it was a great thing because just for the reasons that have already been mentioned. I guess there’s a concern that Amazon is so monolithic that it becomes a little bit that perhaps they’re trying to control the content and has potential for new Stargate material that perhaps it’s too tightly controlled by Amazon. However that’s just a small concern. I think the overall the potential for new Stargate material is predominant, I think that’s what I would be looking for the most.

Amy Griswold
And I think just in terms of content, in some ways Amazon has been more willing to take risks than MGM kind of historically has been, and is more willing to go for shows that are going to kind of hit niche audiences rather than having to be massive blockbusters that everybody across the globe has to watch in order to get the ratings they need. I think Amazon targets like, this will be great if a niche audience binge watches it and loves it, a little bit more closely. So I’m hoping that’ll be good for Stargate. We’ll just have to see,

David Read
I think that a couple of things are at play here. And by the time that this comes out, my analysis will all already have been belched on to everybody. But I mean that I think that there are two things here. I think, by middle of [2023], there’s no doubt that we’re going to have some sign of something cooking in the Stargate universe, period. We’re going to have that ring on Amazon in some fashion in a new form. Whether or not it is Brad Wright, I think it’s 50/50. They may look at it and go, ‘Whew, 350 episodes of this thing. There’s a fan base for it. Oh, it’s that big. We’re not messing with that.” We are not messing with that. That could be 50/50. The other thing is, The Expanse has been immensely well received. They picked it up. They continued it. Bezos is, the rumours are he’s a fan of it himself. So the quality is there. I have not seen it, but I’m looking forward to mowing them all down when they’re all out. And so that bodes very, very, very well, for the long term success of something like Stargate, so we’ll have to see what happens. Melissa… yes.

Laura Harper
I was just gonna say that I think another interesting point to think about is that Stargate, or new Stargate material, new Stargate episodes have never existed, and the binge watching world, playing Stargate was coming out with new episodes, it was weekly, it was episodic, it was weekly. So it would be really interesting to see the impact that the binge watch culture has on a series like Stargate.

David Read
Absolutely. And not to say that Stargate hasn’t been bingeable, it absolutely has been, it was kind of built for that. But it has never, I see to your point, it’s never been out in terms of new content during this era. So this is a big deal for all of us, to see how this is going to go and what’s going to work and what isn’t going to work. And yeah, but let’s get off the future and head back into the past. How long have you been Stargate fans? What is one of your favorite episodes from the franchise? And what got you motivated into writing for Stargate novels? Susannah, if you don’t mind?

Susannah Sinard
Well, I like to tell people and it’s true that the first real episode of Stargate I ever watched was Moebius. So talk about sort of a confusing entry into a series. But even though I knew that it was an alternate timeline type of thing, because I’ve been sci fi all my life. There’s something about these characters that I find really compelling, even if I’m not completely understanding all the nuances of this episode. And it’s frankly, what kept me coming back for more and then at the time SyFy was rerunning all the Stargate episodes and they had sci fi Monday nights. And so my kids and I would sit down on Monday nights and start to watch it. And at that point, I’m like, “They’re not showing these in order, I need to buy the DVDs.” So that’s how I eventually started to watch the whole series, watching the reruns on SyFy, but mostly getting the whole story through the DVDs. And I was very disappointed I will say when I got through the whole series and found out that Sam and Jack had never officially gotten together in terms of the series because that was very much hinted at in Mobius. So that was sort of what prompted me to start writing science fiction was because it was so clear that they were together but there was no real evidence of that. So you know, shipper that I had become I decided I needed to write that so I started to write fanfiction and that was my entree into Stargate.

David Read
So fulfilled your need.

Susannah Sinard
It did.

David Read
And what did what I’m not necessarily looking for, your favorite Stargate episode. What is an episode that for you highlights the overwhelming potential that the show is for viewers.

Susannah Sinard
Um, I am ashamed to say I’m drawing a blank on the title. It was a two-part episode it was in season eight, right before Threads. It was the one…

David Read
Reckoning one and two.

Susannah Sinard
That sort of wrapped. Thank you. Yes. Because it was the epitome of SG-1 doing everything SG-1 did best.

David Read
Letting our enemies annihilate one another.

Susannah Sinard
That, but I mean, everybody played to their strengths. Everybody was working separately, but yet at the same time, so they were still a team, even though they were all off doing their various things. And for me, it was sort of an episode that told me what Stargate was about.

David Read
Exactly. That’s excellent. I agree. Melissa?

Melissa Scott
Well, it’s all Jo’s fault.

David Read
Mallozzi.

Melissa Scott
She got me hooked.

David Read
Oh, Jo. Jo Graham. I apologize.

Melissa Scott
Jo Graham here. She got me hooked on Stargate Atlantis. She said, “You want to see this. This is really good.” I said, “Sure. Yeah.” And watch the first episode, and got to the moments where John walks into the Athosian camp and introduces himself by saying, “Well, I like tea, I’ll have a cup of tea. I like Ferris wheels. I like things that go very fast.” And suddenly this is a very different, this is not SG-1 this is a different Stargate. And I said, “This is interesting. I want more.” And promptly proceeded to buy all the DVDs, watch all of them. And then went back and watched all of SG-1 because that’s what you do, right? As far as favorite episodes, among the Atlantis episodes, of course, I’m going to cite Common Ground, because I was immediately drawn, among other things, to the villainous species, who are in fact, obligate omnivores, they can’t not eat people. There’s nothing else they can do. And what an interesting set of villains they are, and what an interesting culture is hinted at in the visuals. And I thought that was fascinating and feverishly worked out a great deal of that. And, therefore I got involved in the writing that way. Really.

David Read
Yeah. Not only is the only thing that they can do, they are purpose personified, built for this by the Ancients. It was an accident, they didn’t ask to exist. Those darn Ancients, man. Very, very good. That’s legitimate. Amy?

Amy Griswold
It’s also Jo’s fault, blaming her for a lot today.

David Read
Well, don’t worry, she’s gonna have her say next.

Amy Griswold
Yes, I’m sure. Yes, she got me into watching Stargate Atlantis. We watched all of the episodes on DVD together. And then I went back and watched SG-1, because that’s what you do. And I love both shows. I’m a fan of both. I think if I had to pinpoint an episode that to me really kind of captures some of what Stargate is it would be Letters from Pegasus. Because I loved that, at this action packed moment when the Atlantis team was facing the possibility of total annihilation and no one necessarily even ever knowing what had happened to them. That we got to take this break, to see this through a number of different characters eyes and to see what this experience of waiting for the big test that hadn’t yet come was like for everybody. And that focus on emotion and the experience of being in this dramatic story for these very particular characters. I thought really captured some of Stargate strengths and making its characters feel real for the viewers.

David Read
That’s a very insightful answer. Yeah, that I think that one of the advantages, the continuing advantages of the show is that it’s set in the here and now. And so when they use turns of phrase like, “I get the picture,” and little things like that we don’t have to excuse it because it’s us. And when we’re watching these characters we can relate to them realistically far more than we can someone on a bridge in a perfect society, wearing a spacesuit. And there is a realism to them that is a kind of shorthand that you don’t have to compute, okay? I don’t have to get over this. I can just buy it as it is, and accept that these are people that at the end of the day, when they come back through that Gate, I could bump into them at the grocery store and never know that this is their world. Jo, I’m gonna skip over Laura, for just a moment. Come back to you, Jo. What’s happened here with Amy and Melissa, what did you do?

Jo Graham
Actually, it’s Sally’s fault. Sally got me into it. As I recall, Sally said, “Watch this one episode, which was Solitudes in season one of SG-1.” And she said, “I know you from fandom. If you don’t come out of this episode shipping, I will eat my hat because this will punch every single one of your buttons.” So I watched it. And I also started watching Atlantis. And I watched the first couple of episodes. I was like, “Okay, this is pretty good.” And then I watched 38 Minutes and 38 Minutes was so tight and so well written and so suspenseful, that I was like, “Okay, I’m hooked on the show.” So I think the episodes that hooked me respectively were Solitudes and 38 Minutes. My very favorite episode is SG-1 episode Death Knell. I am a Sam Carter fan and that one is just, it’s an amazing character piece and it’s also just amazing science fiction.

David Read
Absolutely. Isn’t it interesting how a lot of these smaller shows, pull us in, in different ways from more of the big like Reckoning type shows do? Someone once said that, and it was not me, that Rob Cooper can go and blow stuff up so much because Brad Wright has, as a playwright mainly, he has sat two people in a room together and just let them talk. And by nature of the how well written the characters are and their backgrounds and what they have to say and who the actors are portraying them. It just comes right off the page.

Jo Graham
I think that’s one of the things about both Solitudes and 38 Minutes is that they’re really tight character pieces. And it sells the characters. It’s not just shipping, but it also it sells the characters and their relationships with each other.

David Read
Yeah, absolutely.

Amy Griswold
I’m all for blowing stuff up. I mean, I like books. I like to watch stuff blow up. But the reason it’s exciting is because you care what happens to the characters.

David Read
That’s exactly right. Laura.

Laura Harper
So I have no one to blame but myself that my obsession was Stargate. And I’m kind of scared to see how long ago, probably it must be about 19, 20 years that ago to Stargate, possibly a bit 19 years. And it was on Sky One over here, the satelitte channel. And I just kept seeing the trailer for it and I was like that just looked right up my street, that looks like something that I would really enjoy. Then I saw the clip for Solitudes and I’m like,

Laura Harper
And my shipper heart went, “Yes, that’s the one.” And then Sally and I were in the same Yahoo fan group, which was email, It wasn’t even like a forum it was exchanged emails. And then we went to, I went to my first convention in Blackpool, which is where I met Sally and a few of our other friends for the first time. So that was like 18 years ago when I sort of fully committed. And there was no going back at that point. So here we are, well, my favorite episode and it just speaks to what you were saying about the character sitting in a room and talking, is Entity. And actually Susannah thought you were gonna say that before [inaudible] were based around Entity. But yeah, so Entity, I think just shows how good Stargate can be and the quiet moments as much as it was a very dramatic episode. But it was a very still episode as well, if that makes sense. And I just think that everyone had their moment and the performances in that kind of past moments were phenomenal. And yeah, I think it’s not just one of my favorite Stargate episodes or science fiction episodes, I think is one of my favorite pieces of television. And in the shows that I’ve watched…

David Read
Wow.

David Read
You’re kidding me.

Laura Harper
…outside of sci fi.

David Read
That’s fair. Yeah, Entity was, I think it could have done a two-part episode with that one. And Susannah, you’ve done a one of your novels ties to Entity?

Susannah Sinard
It does, yes. Infiltration.

David Read
Infiltration, okay, can you give us a teaser, since it’s on the floor right now.

Susannah Sinard
Well, it takes place both right before Entity and also within Entity. It is sort of the Entity as it’s going through the SG-1 computer, trying to understand who these people are, and how it ultimately comes to the choice that Sam is the best person to be infiltrated. And so it refers back to a previous mission, in which SG-1 has an encounter with some interesting Goa’ulds that have sort of, in a way, sort of almost a parallel relationship to kind of perhaps what Sam and Jack have going on, but it’s very kind of beneath the surface, to coin a phrase. And sort of the outcome of that is what leads the entity to decide to choose Sam ultimately, knowing how Jack reacted in the previous situation.

David Read
Is there some sympathy for this noncorporeal being?

Susannah Sinard
Um, well, in the book, the entity is just sort of there going through the mission reports and plucking out pertinent points about it. But it’s decision ultimately based on its own conclusions of what it understands has happened in this mission and Jack and Sam’s professional and sort of underneath personal relationship. So, we don’t really get much inside the entity’s head other than it’s doing its best to survive and protect its own civilization.

David Read
That’s fair and we can certainly, as humans, understand kind of where that comes from. We’re very key as much as we tried to think that we’re all modern, and oh, I’ll stick up for anyone else to the bitter end. At the end of the day, we’re still very self-preservation oriented creatures, so that speaks to that. Very cool. I want to get to some of the fan questions here. Gap Stargate wanted to know and, Sally, I’m going to start with you, and work my way around the circle. “What is one of the more challenging elements, and one of the more rewarding elements about writing the Stargate novels.”

Sally Malcolm
I guess the challenging and rewarding element is trying to make it feel like an episode of the show. So trying to capture the characters’ voices and the tone of the show is a challenge but it’s also rewarding when you do it. So and it’s also one of my favorite things about writing sort of tie-in novels like this or fanfiction, which I write as well. So I guess that is, I’d say that was one of the challenges keeping it within the, uh…

David Read
The canon?

Sally Malcolm
Show, the canon yeah, and not changing things too much. And the challenges, well, for me this is just a general writing challenges, plot, plotting things out. I think that’s one of the things that I find the most challenging but yeah, it’s keeping it, making it feel like the show for the readers

David Read
And something rewarding about it?

Sally Malcolm
The rewarding, yes or well, that probably is when you meet people who’ve read your books, or when they contact you in some way, but especially at conventions, when people come up to you and say, “I love this book, I’m really excited about something you’ve written.” And feel like it contributes to the show or in some way, is part of that universe, that’s really rewarding for me.

David Read
Susannah.

Susannah Sinard
I probably have to kind of mirror what Sally said about that, just trying to make sure that you are being true to the characters themselves and getting the right voice for them. And not letting your own interpretations of things kind of just detract from who you know the characters to be from the show. Because sometimes you want to run away with them and give them head conversations that, maybe you think they ought to have, but when you think about who the characters are you’ve got to back away and say, “No, no, they really wouldn’t be thinking that at this point.” And as far as the rewards, I think, very much like Sally said, the feedback you get from people who’ve read it, especially if they said, “Oh, it felt like I was reading an episode.” And that is probably the best reward that you can get from it is, if you’ve managed to pull that off and make it come across as something that they would have watched on TV that makes you feel like, okay, maybe I did something right this time.

David Read
Yeah, that’s, that’s definitely an honor to hear, I would think.

Susannah Sinard
It is, it really is.

Melissa Scott
In terms of challenges, I want to highlight a couple of actual technical writing challenges that are the things that are difficult for me. You’re capturing a lot of unstated world building, and somehow you have to put it onto the page, specifically with the Wraith, you know what they look like and that implies an enormous amount of information about their society, about what they are, it’s clearly a well worked out world and culture and so on. And none of it is stated. We don’t even have names for them. And one of the early technical issues with Legacy was deciding how to talk about Wraith characters without using the names that the Atlanteans gave them. And figuring out how the race would name themselves if in fact they did. And this is just a technical issue if you have…

David Read
You have to name the Wraith. Yeah. When Andee Frizzell said, “They don’t have names. We don’t need them. We don’t talk, no one talks to us.” But if you’re gonna do the books, you have to differentiate them.

Melissa Scott
Yeah. The big Wraith, the little Wraith, you can only go so far with that. I have tried that. The other piece is capturing the actors voices. They are also distinct, and figuring out how to put words on paper that make you think you’re listening to Radek Zelenka. And yet, there’s a bunch of little tricks you can do. But it’s hard and it’s fun and it’s a challenge. And I have to say a cool thing that happened to the Creation Con in Chicago. David Nykl, read a section in Zelenka’s voice for me out of one of the books and it was like the best thing that ever happened because I felt like I’d got it right.

David Read
You brought Radek to life right in front of you.

Melissa Scott
Yes, it was fabulous. Meanwhile David Hewlett was looking for Rodney and because it was a book where the spoilery thing had happened to Rodney. He couldn’t find himself.

David Read
The one time where Rodney actually shut up.

Melissa Scott
So those are some of the challenges, very specific technical challenges, you get that with any tie-in work, trying to create, recreate the experience of the show. But these were the two specific things that I found most challenging. The other thing that as far as rewards go, I get to play in a universe that I just have so enjoyed as a fan. I mean, you don’t get to do that in public and you don’t get to share it as widely as the tie-ins very often. And that’s just been a privilege and a pleasure.

David Read
Amy, your your thoughts on this?

Amy Griswold
Well, one of the things that has been challenging, doable but challenging, is because the show handles certain situations in a way that’s consistent from episode to episode, we must have written 20 briefing scenes over the course of Legacy. Basically, every book has at least one scene that would be introduced, on the show with interior Atlantis Briefing Room. And then they sit around a table and talk about what’s happening. And I had new respect for the ability of the show writers to keep these scenes interesting. As you know, once again, here we were with a conference table and a brief discussion of what they were going to do before they went to do it, but you can’t skip it, because that’s how the characters on the show would handle approaching this problem is they’d hash out their plan for a few minutes in a briefing. And so just to handle those set elements in a way that is true to the show, but that keeps it fresh and fun and moves through them briskly is the technical challenge that I think was the most interesting as we went through writing several books in this universe.

David Read
Yeah, not only are you the writers, but you’re the directors, you’re framing the shot in the audience’s minds. And when we say Atlantis Briefing Room, we see those dang chairs and that single space and the tables that shoot, that look like they shoot missiles at one another, and there’s only so much going on there. That’s fascinating.

Amy Griswold
Yeah, there’s the chair, there’s a table, and we’re probably going to do a couple of jokes, because that helps move everybody through this. But at the same time, we need to introduce to the audience okay, what’s the problem? What are our options for doing something about it? And what’s the conflict? Because usually different people have different ideas. And one of the questions is, which plan are we going to run with, that’s why we’re doing the scene to figure that out. And so those repeated plot elements are really interesting to handle.

David Read
Laura.

Laura Harper
So I think the most challenging thing, again, apologies if this has been mentioned already, but you are operating in someone else’s universe. You’re constrained by character choices by the creators, by MGM, so that you perhaps don’t have as much freedom as you would if you’ve written your original work for example. But that is also kind of a lead into the most rewarding part of it. And that, I think we’re all fan fiction writers, we all love to take a universe that is already in existence and our own stories with it. So the most rewarding thing is being able to do that, having that empowerment and having that gift handed to you. You love these characters that you’ve watched, and being able to shape a story and take them on a journey and have people read that is one of the most rewarding things for me.

David Read
Hello, Jo and cat. Who’s this?

Laura Harper
This is Tully he’s joining this call.

David Read
Black cat.

Jo Graham
Yeah. I think one of the things that I found most challenging is because this is not a fictional universe, this is the real world. The things which are in the real world have to be right. And it’s not like Colorado Springs, it isn’t a real town where real readers live, or things like that. And so I was so careful in the Legacy series to make everything exactly right in the real world. For example, in the series, there’s a scene where Jack and Daniel were talking while Daniel is driving out of the parking lot at Cheyenne Mountain and getting on the interstate. And this is literally, you can follow every turn they’re making out of the parking lot and onto the highway just as in real life. And for example, when Jack is in his office at the Department of Homeland Security on Massachusetts Avenue. I used to work in DC, this bus stop, the circulator bus, all of these things are exactly the way they really are. So um, yeah, that’s one of the biggest challenges.

David Read
So bringing it to life.

Jo Graham
Were actually there.

Sally Malcolm
Jo, I remember you saying once the writing some of the Legacy stuff from the perspective of the year in which you were writing was almost like writing historical fiction because technology had changed and so you had to be careful not to talk about smartphones because they didn’t have then. And so that’s how, so kind of a similar element of keeping it accurate.

David Read
We’ve really moved on in the last like 10 years, a lot of the sort of Bluetooth and things like that we’re only beginning to come into their own.

Jo Graham
It’s very much like historical fiction.

David Read
Yeah. Sally, and every one, a character who, and Sally I did ask you this a little bit, I believe, in our interview before. I want to briefly retread that with you and then go around the circle with this question. The character who just comes out of your fingers, the easiest, when you’re writing them, and you’re hearing their voices. And the one that you just, spend your time, just everything comes to a grinding halt. Okay, how would they say this?

Sally Malcolm
Um, well, the one that comes easiest to me is probably Jack. The thing is that they’re all good in different scenes or in different times you need a different character. So they’re not always, there’s no one that is difficult to write it’s just you need to choose the right moment for that character’s voice to be the most relevant. But if I was pushed, I’d probably say Teal’c simply because he doesn’t say that much but his internal dialogue is sometimes the perfect one for a particular scene.

David Read
Susannah.

Susannah Sinard
I’m gonna have to agree with Sally again, that Jack just kind of flows. I think it’s just because the character that the writers and Richard Dean Anderson created is just so dynamic and so there that, I mean, you can’t think Jack without hearing the cadence of his voice and his sort of snarky attitude and everything, just is sort of right there as soon as you picture him. As far as difficult, I’m not sure if she’s difficult, but the one I have a real challenge with sometimes is Sam, simply because we see scientist Sam, and we see soldier Sam a lot, but we’ve never had a whole lot of opportunities to see Sam who’s not either of those two. And as a result, trying to figure out what her internal monologue is, when she’s not dealing with a science issue or a sort of a strategic issue, I find kind of challenging. And so trying to strike the right tone based on what little evidence we have of Sam the person is sometimes you want to get it just right and it can really make me do a lot of rewrites, just to make sure I’m getting it.

David Read
I think it’s fair when you look at an episode like Ascension, or in some cases, you look at an episode like Chimera. Off duty Sam is kind of an awkward Sam. This is not where she’s comfortable. She’s [inaudible], engaging and being on and solving each beat, as she goes through the world, like an equation. You work a problem, get an answer, the answer is either right or wrong. And then when you get her outside of that, when she’s with her people, it’s one thing. When she’s outside of that situation, when she’s kind of at home on her own doing her own thing or with Pete, it’s not the the Carter that we’re accustomed to. Maybe that’s it too, maybe we’re just not accustomed to seeing that side of her. But I also think that they deliberately wrote in a bit of awkwardness to her where this is a working woman, and this is just who she is. So I think that’s interesting, where you get caught on that too, because I think I’ll bet they did as well.

I think so. And I mean, it sometimes, not to criticize, but sometimes there’s inconsistencies too. And off work Carter that we see sometimes she’s like really confident and sometimes, like you said, in other situations she is awkward. And I think if you want to see sort of the awkward take to the max, you look at alternate universe Carter in Moebius. So, but she is and she just really is more comfortable behind those shields of scientist and the shield of soldier and to get behind that and give her an internal monologue that has to do with things that aren’t related to either of those, kind of sets me back on my heels sometimes to make sure I’ve got it the right way.

David Read
Fascinating. Thank you. Melissa.

Melissa Scott
That’s actually, that’s a hard one because as Sally says, a lot of times you can finesse a scene by the choice of character you use for the point of view. But characters who flow for me certainly, Daniel Jackson just flows. I think it’s because he talks all the time. That’s easy. He has so much to say and always has it and the connections are just piled upon piled, and he’s fun. I enjoy him that way. I also find, surprisingly, the exact opposite, Ronan very easy to write, again possible because he doesn’t say so much but what he does say is inevitably to the point, maybe not the way that the characters from Earth expect it to be, but it usually is. And of course, I find the writing easy but that’s just me. As for who’s hard, Rodney is actually really hard for me. And, yeah, in many ways he ought to be easy but for some reason he’s difficult for me to get right. I have to work really hard to get into his voice and his head. And Teal’c is difficult, although less so than Rodney. Rodney is the one who just is always hard.

David Read
I would think with Rodney, and with Sam, I would get hung up on the technical stuff. Because if someone can look that up and say, “No, she wouldn’t say that.” For me, that would be my worst fear where it’s like, I can’t BS with this character, if given the topic and the situation, what they’re saying is very much similar to an equation. And I have to really be on minding my P’s and Q’s when I’m putting dialogue into their mouth regarding a specific situation. That would be my fear.

Melissa Scott
And certainly that is, that’s the thing. And mind you, I have been writing science fiction for a very, very long time. So I’ve gotten pretty good about finessing that, he scrawled the equation on the board and everyone looked at it in horror.

David Read
There you go.

Melissa Scott
But you’re right, it’s getting that habit of thought that can be difficult. And Rodney combines that with an absolute self confidence that is hard to write and make it come off as less arrogant than confident. Especially as you get later in this in the Atlantis seasons, as he becomes a much more rounded character as his story develops, it becomes much more important that you really have to catch that line, because he never stops being so sure of himself. But he also becomes a much more, I hesitate to say that Rodney McKay becomes a perceptive human being but there are ways that he does.

David Read
Yeah, he’s grown, he grows over those five years.

Melissa Scott
Oh, he really grows.

David Read
He has an edge to him. And it’s interesting that you characterize him as confident because I have always characterized, he’s confident in what he says but personality wise I’ve always found him to be very insecure.

Melissa Scott
Yeah, Amy go ahead.

Amy Griswold
Yeah, I actually liked writing Rodney, but it is…

David Read
There you go.

Melissa Scott
So you wrote him.

Amy Griswold
And that’s why I did write him a lot. Yeah. It is challenging, especially as you get later because he’s a complicated character. And he can shift very quickly through absolute confidence about a scientific situation and when he’s talking about physics, and I don’t really know what’s going on, there are a lot of insert scientific explanation here, technobabble goes here, kinds of things so that it doesn’t break the flow. But at the same time, this can really flip into this kind of anxiety spiral talking faster and faster around the fact that we’re probably all gonna die at this point. Does anybody but Rodney care that we’re going to die. No, probably nobody but Rodney does care, kind of spinning wheels. And then at the same time, you can get from that into a much calmer, really kind of almost cold, “Okay, these are the facts. We have to fix this, or we are really going to die.”

David Read
Yeah. When the rubber hits the road.

Amy Griswold
But not essential, you’re going to fix the real problem right now. And it’s the shifts and going back and forth that’s really so interesting about the character is capturing where his head is at a particular moment.

Melissa Scott
Yeah, and I think you’ve just put your finger on exactly what the part that I find hardest is to make those shifts plausible, to make those shifts happen when when Rodney would have them.

Amy Griswold
Yeah Rodney is fun to write for me, Ronon is fun to write for me, I think Ronon has this really deadpan outsider’s view of the Atlantis expedition that sort of cuts through some of the slight ridiculousness of the Earth characters sometimes when they’re going on about things that are not really essential to what the real problem is. So he’s just a lot of fun. I actually found Daniel Jackson kind of hard to write because I get sort of caught up in the convolutions of how he says and thinks about things. And then I find that I’ve written a sentence that has gone on for an entire page and it has to stop.

David Read
Where’s Jack to go? “Ah!”

Amy Griswold
But when I’m trying to write Daniel is Jack, says like, “No stop, put a period, start a new sentence now,”

David Read
But that’s also the character to, the character does that. So if it’s appropriate, given the situation, as long as the reader has something to hold on to while he’s being dragged through this Indiana Jones, Raiders the Lost Ark kind of situation for them.

Amy Griswold
You want to capture the character’s voice, and that’s great, but no one wants to read a novel written by Daniel Jackson.

David Read
I don’t know. I don’t know. I bet there are a bunch of people who are going to put into the chat, “Oh, I would in a heartbeat.” But to your point, I hear what you’re saying because his analytical side is like, “Whoo!” Yeah, exactly. Jo, easier characters to write for, harder characters to write for?

Actually, I’m the one who finds Sam very easy. Sam is my age and I think we share a lot of common experiences. And so I find Sam actually really easy to do. Hardest is definitely Rodney. That’s why usually in the Legacy series I bumped Rodney off on Amy. So I think that’s my hardest and easiest.

Okay, that’s fair. All right. Everyone’s kind of…

Jo Graham
I also find Teyla easy.

David Read
Teyla’s easier. Okay. All right. And Laura.

Laura Harper
So probably the hardest character, Sally, I know you mentioned that and Melissa I think you mentioned that as well. Teal’c has been difficult because as a writer your instinct is to try and reach in to your character’s head and so draw their thoughts, whereas it’s hard to draw the balance and be respectful to the character. I still find that a fine line to kind of demonstrate Teal’c as a rounded character without going too far. But when you get it right it’s very rewarding. My favorite character, and this is one that I didn’t think this would be a favorite character but when I was writing her for the Apocalypse series, I just fell in love and that’s Janet. And I think writing her really came about because I had to really think about who she is a person, who would she be in this situation, and I just had a ball writing Janet for the Apocalypse books.

David Read
That just warms my heart to hear that. Teryl Rothery and Janet Fraiser, I mean they are one in the same in so many ways and personality and everything else. For Sally I’ve got a couple of questions here. Vannenanne, “Sally, at any point in the novels, because you have them all more or less in your head, at any point in the novels are Sam and Jack married?

Sally Malcolm
Umm, I don’t think that actually married in any of the novels that they are…

David Read
There’s alternate realitys in there, too.

Sally Malcolm
Yeah, yeah, but they are together in a couple of the novels but I don’t think we’ve said that they’re actually married.

David Read
Okay. Good distinction.

Sally Malcolm
Yeah. They make a sort of a few cameos in the Legacy series, which is set beyond the end of Stargate SG-1.

I think the closest you let us get Sally was in the conversation between Teyla and Sam. Teyla asked Sam how many times she’s been engaged and she says three times. Well, if you’re shippy and you count, that’s Jonas, Pete and so who’s number three?

David Read
That’s great. That’s a great nod. I like that. And that’s in the Legacy books.

Sally Malcolm
Yeah.

David Read
All right.

Jo Graham
That is.

Amy Griswold
In Moebius Squared, AU Jack and Sam are coupled but it’s unclear, I mean this is an Ancient Egypt and it’s unclear whether they’re formally married in some way.

David Read
Okay. My apologies, I think that’s what’s really grinding Vannenanne’s gears, is whether or not they’re together, so that’s good.

Amy Griswold
I didn’t write Moebius Squared.

David Read
If there’s a priest that would marry them that’s one thing.

Jo Graham
[inaudible] So I think it’s safe to say, yeah.

David Read
There you go. Desertpuma, Sally…,

Given that Jack and Sam are both Catholic and you’re now 3000 years before there is such a thing as the Catholic Church, they can’t really get a priest to marry them.

David Read
Desertpuma, “Sally, has there ever been any interest in doing novels centered on characters that were not part of the franchise?”

Sally Malcolm
No, not really. I mean, that isn’t something that we have a license to do anyway. So original, an original like sort of spin off that Star Trek do is not something that we have really considered and it’s not something that MGM would want us to do. Part of our license is to write them based on the TV shows as they are.

David Read
So Diana Botsford, and I came to you with an approach, what, 10, 11 years ago now? To do just that with a project called Stargate Oblivion. And we went round and round for what, two years, 18 months? It was a while. And we kept refining and refining and refining until I forget what happened. There was definitely interest in terms of writers. We wanted to do a kind of Starfleet Corps of Engineers. And you kept on coming back with, it needs to be about the established characters, because the established characters are what people, frankly, pay money for. So I mean, and you had to look at it from that perspective and that made perfect sense.

Sally Malcolm
I think the difference between Stargate and Star Trek perhaps is, and I’m a fan of Star Trek, but is that the characters are really what people love most about Stargate. And so Stargate without the central characters would, it’s not impossible, but I think that’s really what draws a lot of fans into the show. And so it would be very difficult to go off in a completely original direction.

David Read
Yeah, look at Atlantis. I mean, Weir is established in SG-1 first and Jack and Daniel are the ones who send Sheppard and team on their journey.

Sally Malcolm
And Rodney of course.

David Read
And Rodney, that’s true too. Poor Rodney. Susannah.

Susannah Sinard
Yes.

David Read
Hall of Two Truths. Is this another Asgard hall?

Susannah Sinard
No.

David Read
It is not?

Susannah Sinard
It is not. No.

David Read
Okay. Can you spoil us a little bit or tease us a little bit on this?

Susannah Sinard
The Hall of Two Truths comes from the Egyptian Book of the Dead. And it is the final place in the person’s journey through the underworld, where their heart is weighed against the feather to see if they are deemed worthy to enter the afterlife. So the team first separately, and then as a group, get taken on a journey through the underworld.

David Read
What’s the inciting impetus for this? Well, what’s the impetus story?

Susannah Sinard
Well, the impetus is a story is that there is as yet an unheard of group of spin offs of the Goa’uld called the Djedu, who, at about the time that the Tok’ra broke from the Goa’uld, the Djedu also broke. They were different from the Goa’uld and the Tok’ra in that while they were a complete blending of the symbiote and the host, the resulting entity was almost a new person. It was neither one nor the other, but a complete coalescing of the two personalities. So.

David Read
Was this achieved through technology?

Susannah Sinard
No, not quite sure how…

David Read
The symbiote absorbs into the human, like one of Egeria’s contemporaries, I guess it would have been.

Susannah Sinard
Yeah, they’re there. But through, it’s almost more of a spiritual process, because they are kind of the spiritual arm of the Goa’uld, if you will and they have spent their existence trying to achieve ascension, which neither Goa’uld nor Tok’ra can achieve according to the monk at Keb. But the Djedu who have been seeking this and when they finally determined that it’s something that they cannot achieve, naturally through their own efforts, they started to look for Ancient technology that could perhaps help them in this. And they went around the universe, or the galaxy, gathering up bits of Ancient technology and had this sort of vast storehouse of gadgets that they hoped might help them ascend, but yet none of them have. So they look for another route and they have an idea that perhaps SG-1 can assist them with this.

David Read
See that’s the kind of pitch that makes me want to drop everything and just go and pick up the book right now, Sally take notice, I really would love when a new book comes out get the novelist out there in front of everyone and say, “Okay, so here’s what’s coming next time on Stargate SG-1.” I love that, put it to some music, maybe some imagery from the show. I think that that would be a great way to help increase sales.

Sally Malcolm
I like it.

David Read
I’m offering my services.

Sally Malcolm
I’ll take you up on that.

David Read
That’s great. All right. The Legacy series. Everyone’s like when you gonna get to the Legacy series now. I’m sure the viewers are like, because so we’re eight books now. Is that right?

Melissa Scott
Yeah, it’s eight books. It was supposed, it’s a six book eight book series.

David Read
Okay. All right. You three lay it on me, whose brainchild was this or multiple people? What the heck spawned this? It’s like, “Okay, we cannot leave it in the Golden Bay.” What’s it called?

Jo Graham
San Francisco Bay.

David Read
That’s it. Thank you.

Jo Graham
I was working on Death Game for Sally and I was also frustrated with the way Atlantis ended, like a lot of viewers were. And so I said, “Okay, I’m gonna write a big fanfic fix-it epic, right?” And roped Melissa and Amy into it and then we started working on it. And I said, “You know what? Let’s pitch this to Sally. I mean, what’s the worst thing she’ll say, right?” She’ll say, ‘We can’t do that, we have to stop at the end of the show.” And Sally loved the idea. And she said, “Well, I don’t know. I don’t know if MGM will go for it. But let’s try.”

David Read
There you go. No, I mean, that’s absolutely right. The worst that’s gonna happen is they’re gonna say no. So I mean, you got to give it a shot. And what do you think is, Amy, what is one of the more radical elements that you wanted to explore or one of the more exciting things that came out of it that you weren’t expecting, looking back on this oct-trilogy, or whatever you want to call it? Oh, octology.

Amy Griswold
I think we knew going into it that we were going to have to explore the point of view of the Wraith. But I don’t think we knew going into it quite how much we were going to have to explore the point of view of the Wraith. One of the things that we knew very early was that we wanted to arrive at some kind of solution to the Wraith problem that didn’t involve either a) killing all the Wraith, or b) forcibly turning the Wraith into humans. We felt like the series had kind of looked pretty extensively down both of those paths. None of us were really happy about going down either of those paths. It might be personally satisfying for some of the characters, but it wasn’t really very satisfying for us as how to resolve this problem with a complete different intelligent species. And so we were looking for door number three and door number three involves digging pretty deeply into who are the Wraith and how are they kind of conceptualizing the problem of we have to eat other intelligent species how do we maybe feel about this? How do we feel about being at war with other intelligent species perpetually because we’re a perpetual threat to them, in order to kind of even envision an ending, that was not somebody’s species gets wiped out for good.

David Read
One of the conversations that Andee Frizzell and I have always had is, she’s always like, “You know I’m not evil, I’m just hungry.” And I’m like, “Well, I mean, you’re kind of going in there.” It’s not like you go in after Marshall Sumner or Colonel Sumner and going, “You know what, I’m really sorry about this, but I kind of like need your life essence. So it’s nothing personal. I’m really sorry.” No, she is playing with her food before she eats it. She is enjoying and doing what she’s doing. And maybe this has just evolved out of her nature. But I never like got the impression that they really are introspective on what they do to us. Is that something that Legacy attempts to do?

Amy Griswold
Yep. Melissa go ahead.

Melissa Scott
So I think that that playing with your food is a cultural response to eating other intelligent people. That’s one way of coping as a society, as a culture, that it’s perfectly okay to do this because that proves they’re not really people, therefore, it’s okay to do it.

David Read
Okay, now, that is brilliant. And so is that is, are those kinds of elements addressed in Legacy?

Melissa Scott
Yes. Oh, yeah. Some and this is how some Wraith go for that. Some Wraith they’re more ambivalent. Some Wraith just don’t think about it at all if they can possibly avoid it.

David Read
I can’t think of any other species that might do things like that. All right, Jo, what is the inciting incident for Legacy? Why do I need to run out and buy book one? What happens?

If you did not like the ending of season five with Atlantis stuck on Earth and the team disbanding and you say, “I want them back in Pegasus. I want the team together.” Go by the first book and see how this winds up being solved by a variety of clever stratagems, including Jack being a sneaky, sneaky man.

David Read
A sneaky, sneaky man you say?

He is a sneaky sneaky man. Jack is manipulative and sneaky and he manages to get Atlantis going back where it’s supposed to be.

David Read
If only to get Rodney in another galaxy again. Amy, your your pitch for Legacy.

Amy Griswold
Yeah, we get Atlantis back to Pegasus where they have to face all of the conflicts between the different species of the Pegasus Galaxy, the different cultures of the Pegasus Galaxy, the Wraith, the Genii, the Satedans, who are beginning to start rebuilding Sateda that have just been simmering under the surface all this time, and come up with some way to play peacemaker while facing a new and even more dangerous threat from the Wraith.

David Read
Wow. And how do the Vanir work into this? I’m very curious, because I’ve been always a very big Vanir proponent, even down to their name. So tell us how you’re going to pick up the pieces in the stories with the Asgard distant cousins.

Melissa Scott
They kind of come in, we know that they’re there. We know that they have been a problem shall we say, in the past. We know that they’ve very nearly electrocuted Daniel Jackson. But they also are in a difficult situation, like so many of the peoples of the Pegasus Galaxy. And their solution is potentially damaging and dangerous to everyone else. And once again, just as Atlantis thinks it’s resolving some of its problems that the Wraith, here there’s a new conflict and a new set of issues to try to broker a peace among multiple cultures.

David Read
What’s scene in that entire eight book series, at least in terms of what’s out right now, is the most special for you. Try to make it one that you wrote. Or maybe one that you wrote and one that one of your peers wrote, in the Legacy series itself that you think that people would be really, really interested to know a little bit more about and to tease them to go out and get the book.

I think the final confrontation with Queen Death on the hive ship and the last book is one of my favorites. And it is really touch and go, it is really exciting. I just love that whole sequence in Inheritors with the space battle, with Sam and the Hammond with the hive ship, with the boarding party, it’s just exciting, and it’s tight, and it’s fun. Our only little wiffle was we wrote the section and we were all following different sets of characters and I was doing the boarding party and someone else was doing the space battle at the same time and all of this part and we got to the end. And then we realized that major Lorne was in three places at the same time. We had to go straighten out poor Lorne so that he was only in one place. But it’s a really fun, epic ending.

David Read
Wow. So you get kind of a Lost City vibe out of this here. The Wraith call her Queen Death?

The Queen Death is the big baddie. The Wraith [inaudible]

David Read
She sounds like a badass.

Jo Graham
She’s a badass.

David Read
All right, Amy, a standout scene for you.

Amy Griswold
Well, I love the action sequence earlier in the books in which the Wraith make a fairly successful attack on Atlantis. And I don’t think it’s too spoilery to say that at that point, Rodney McKay goes missing and things begin to fall apart a little bit. It’s a really exciting action sequence. It’s a really exciting series of escalating things going wrong. And it was tremendous fun to work on, I think at a smaller moment and again, hopefully not too spoilery. Toward the end of the series the Atlantis team has gotten their hands on a weapon that could conceivably destroy all of the Wraith. But at a tremendous price of also killing other people in the Pegasus Galaxy who have some of the Wraith genetics for a variety of reasons.

David Read
The Teylas among them.

Amy Griswold
The Teylas among them, yes, this would kill all the Wraith, but also everybody who has any of the Wraith genes.

David Read
So this will kill Teyla if it’s deployed?

Amy Griswold
Yeah. And there is a extremely tense standoff between Ronon and John Sheppard about what they ought to do or not do with this object. And just writing through everyone’s extremely strong, extremely difficult feelings in that scene was a really exhilarating and really hard scene to write. And I think it will be a really fascinating scene for readers to read.

David Read
I don’t know how Ronon would respond in that situation because no one hates the Wraith more than him. But next to Sheppard, no one loves Teyla more than Ronon does.

Amy Griswold
Yeah. So it’s very hard for the characters and I think it was very interesting to write.

David Read
Melissa.

Melissa Scott
I think I’m gonna pick two relatively small scenes. One is from Homecoming, the very first book. And sadly, it’s not one of mine, I only wish it was. A Washington DC party scene where Teyla is working the room, trying to get people to agree to going back, to let Atlantis go back to Pegasus. And it’s full of, Jack O’Neill is there, John Sheppard is there, various characters that we’ve heard mentioned and it’s this very small scene of politics as they are in the real world, experienced by Teyla from Pegasus whose frame of reference for this as being a traitor for her people. And it’s not all that different. And it’s just it’s beautifully done. It’s absolutely beautifully done. I am personally really loved the first meeting with Queen Death between Todd and Queen Death. He’s been trying to avoid and evade dealing with her, staying out of her reach, because she is uniting the Wraith under her willy nilly. And when he confronts her on her ship, he must go formally with all of his officers and scientists and she invokes an old rite, the old Wraith rite of feeding on one of them to ensure their loyalty.

David Read
Wow. Wow, that’s intense.

Melissa Scott
I love the Wraith.

David Read
They’re very punk rock Wow, that’s great. No, um, thank you for sharing those those details about Legacy and filling that world out a little bit more for me. Sally or any of you, have any of you written Henry Hayes? Stayed away from the President? Okay. It’s like if there was any chance for him to be anywhere it would have been in that scene with Teyla rubbing elbows with all the military people. Interesting. All right.

Laura Harper
Wait, I think we did.

Sally Malcolm
I think we did.

David Read
What! You forgot the president.

Laura Harper
We have that long?

Sally Malcolm
Yes. I was just thinking that, wait a minute.

David Read
So is this in the Apocalypse series?

Laura Harper
Yeah.

David Read
So tell us about the Apocalypse series. Laura.

Laura Harper
Okay. So this idea that we had was in a sense SG-1 went to sort of an apocalyptic world. But that you can see the remnants of a civilization and it was kind of an, Sally keep me right if I get any of these points wrong, but it was we had envisioned the gate malfunctioning, and they get sent to a world where the DHD on the other side is non-functioning and they might get back in the radiation around the gate, and Daniel, of course, is injured, more than injured. And so it’s the kind of the journey of them trying to get back and what they find on this world, not only of the Wraith on this world, but the Goa’uld are also on this world as well, as well as a civilization that sort of lives underground. So without giving too much away, it’s kind of like that journey of standard SG-1 survival in the worst circumstances but not all is as it seems.

Sally Malcolm
It’s a big twist, and that we can’t, if we give it away, gives away a big bit of it. That’s kind of the first book and then the second book, and the third book…

David Read
fall out from that?

Sally Malcolm
Yes. And then we go. I don’t think, I don’t know how much to say. A lot of people would have read it by now. Let’s just say there’s lots of different versions of reality, of time.

David Read
So there’s a fracturing?

Sally Malcolm
Yes, that’s a good way of putting it. Yeah, there’s a fracturing and so we get to write some quite fun stuff with Janet and Dave Dixon. We have a whole thread, whole plotline with those two going on. And then we have another whole plotline with Maybourne which is where the President comes in. We honestly, our heads nearly exploded trying to plot all of this out.

Laura Harper
So many threads, pages of, yeah.

David Read
Did you have to have like a workflow or like a bubble sheet just to keep everything straight?

Sally Malcolm
Actually we went away, didn’t we, to a cottage. Yeah, we had Post-it Notes.

David Read
I see.

Sally Malcolm
All the way along the wall.

Laura Harper
I’ve still got the photographs of the Post-its, along with a full wall.

David Read
Okay, please send them so I can insert them here. Wow, that’s crazy. Well, any way to get the story out and to make sure that okay, that person is over there in that timeline so that’s going to affect that timeline. And here’s the red string in the pushpins.

Laura Harper
Yeah, and we knew the repeat details, if we miss details, they would not go unnoticed, so we had to be really thorough and make sure that everything tied together and that there weren’t any major holes in the timelines we were working with.

Sally Malcolm
One of the things that kind of made us want to write it, or one of the ideas we had before we started writing was, what if if a Wraith had a Goa’uld symbiote? How would that work? Because we’d never seen them together, the Goa’uld and the Wraith never met. So we like…

David Read
There’s no reason that they wouldn’t. I mean, I think they’re human enough that that could probably be pulled off.

Sally Malcolm
Yeah. So that was where we kind of were, that was one of the things we thought we want to create a reality in which the Wraith and the Goa’uld are both in existence at the same time. And what would happen if a crazy Wraith scientist got hold of a Goa’uld symbiote and started breeding them to create a sort of super race of [Wraith.]

David Read
So practically indestructible. That’s a little scary. Yeah.

Sally Malcolm
Yeah, so that was one of the sort of jumping off point. So then we had to create a reality in which that might happen. Yeah.

David Read
It’s one of the cool things about alternate realities is you can do anything with it. The reset button is there and time travel to for that matter, as long as you put all the pieces back together in the right order minus a fish or two? So yeah, Susannah. Goran Andonovski, “Wondering how much time do you spend, if any, rewatching episodes of Stargate while you’re writing, to keep the voices fresh?” Or are they are they programmed in your head and you never have to turn the show on? What is your secret ingredient when you’re cooking?”

Susannah Sinard
Well, certainly when I wrote Hall of Two Truths, which actually I wrote the first draft of about 10 years ago. Stargate was still on TV and it was part of my daily watching routine anyway. So the voices were very, very fresh at that point. Infiltration I wrote a few years later, and in preparation for it I went back and started to rewatch the whole series again, just to make sure that I had the voices and I wasn’t missing key points. And then of course, when you’re dealing with specific episodes and events in the show, like Infiltration circling around Entity, you gotta make sure you’ve got every little nuance and plot point and you don’t make up something that contradicts something that happened in the episode.

David Read
You have no excuse not to nail it. Yeah, it’s sitting there on a shelf on a DVD.

Susannah Sinard
Yep. So yeah, I think I probably rewatched Entity at least six times while I was writing Infiltration. And probably that Hall of the Two Truths the episode that takes place right before it is Red Sky. And I know I rewatched that maybe three or four times again just because it was sort of a jumping off point for where the characters were in season five.

David Read
The events were fresh.

Susannah Sinard
Yes, yes. And also I wanted to address some season five issues in Hall of the Two Truths that I think kind of get overlooked when people talk about that season, because there’s sort of a progression of what I see as sort of Jack pulling back from the rest of his team, Sam, specifically in the wake of Entity, I think he pulled back from her. But I think also he recognizing how close he was to his team he kind of pulled back from them initially in that season. And you sort of see it in some of the interactions he has with each member of SG-1 and so I wanted to just go back through the first part of that season to make sure I was interpreting things properly is and getting the touchstones of the character points right at that point in the series. So lots of rewatching.

David Read
Diana Botsford and I have spent a lot of time talking over the years, she and I became really close. And one of the things that are cool about the books is that you can look at the season that they’re in, like much of what you’ve done Suzannah and say okay, “What’s going on with them right now?” What are the surrounding issues with them particularly what’s been happening with them recently. What are the, if any, allusions that you can give to coming events. What what are the tremors that are happening right now that are going to lead to some of the larger quakes in the story. If there are threads in the franchise that point to those markers later on that aren’t just completely out of the blue. And one of the things that Diana had said was really interesting and I believe it was with her first book, Four Dragons, is right after Daniel comes back, there are some of these asides that we can kind of see playing out in the show that in the books you can, you can illustrate further. And what she does is she explores Jack’s issues with Daniel once he’s back. And that there’s something not completely correct about Daniel, he’s like, “You came back wrong. You’re not the person you were when you left.” And it’s really grinding his gears. And then Daniel gets taken by Yu and there’s a whole thing that ensues there. But I love reading these books and watching you guys play around with the season that you’re in, the mythology that you’re in, that’s happening at that time. And I think, Sally, I think that’s one of the things that you guys just really managed to pull off very well. You put at the beginning of the book this is when this is. So you can go beforehand and read it and catch yourself up. If you haven’t seen it in a while, and then put yourself right back into it.

Sally Malcolm
Yeah, I think the fact that then people, our writers are, as you can tell, genuine fans of the show, they pick up on those little nuances, which you wouldn’t necessarily know if you weren’t really intimately familiar with the show. So it’s one of the things I’m really keen on when we pick writers is people who just know the show inside out because you can see it in the writing and it makes all the difference.

David Read
Amy Griswold, tell us a little bit about Stargate Atlantis, From the Depths.

Amy Griswold
So it was really entertaining in From the Depths to explore the oceans of some of the worlds of Pegasus, we’ve seen that a little bit on the show, we’ve seen that the puddle jumper’s could be submerged, which opened up some additional vistas for the team. But there’s a limit to how often you can do that on the show because the special effects budget limits you. And so getting to explore interaction with an intelligent race of, they’re basically giant squid, but they’re sentient giant squid.

David Read
Oh, my God.

Amy Griswold
Yes, was really a lot of fun. And I think it’s one of the things that the books give us the opportunity to do, which is tell stories that would require a special effects budget that would have made someone on the show say, “No, go back to the drawing board and rewrite the script so that we don’t have to do an ocean and a bunch of color changing tentacle sea creatures that your team is going to be interacting with while in diving suits. No, no, that’s too expensive unless this is a final climactic season battle, we’re not gonna spend that kind of money.” The great thing with books is that we’re not limited by what would it actually be practical or cost effective to film. And so we can do some more of these fun, alien worlds and interactions and opportunities without hitting the point that the show occasionally hid in some episodes where you can see that maybe the original scripts said they’re pursued through the Stargate by a swarm of giant bugs. And by the time it reaches filming, it’s they’re pursued through the Stargate by one fairly large bug. They talk about the swarm of giant bugs that might have pursued them that we might have seen if they’d had more money. Yeah, it’s fun to evade those constraints.

David Read
Or the T-Rex near the end of Atlantis season one. That was a T Rex wasn’t it? Yeah, that’s correct.

Amy Griswold
Yep. And in the books we can show the T Rex.

David Read
That’s solid. And real quick SG-1 Heart’s Desire, pitch that to us.

Amy Griswold
So that was a great, I think, example of what Susannah was talking about, about really focusing in on the aftermath of canon events. This was after the episodes in which in season three, I believe, and the team had this one where they went to go rescue Jacob.

David Read
Okay. Yeah. So that would be Jolinar’s Memories and The Devil You Know.

Amy Griswold
Yes, absolutely. And so coming out of that Sam is dealing with some really difficult things. She’s had a really hard time. Her father has been n jeopardy, she’s thought he was dying, she’s had to deal with having Jolinar’s memories in her head, which is new to her and some of them are upsetting and strange. And this has really pushed Sam in a way that I don’t think she’s been really pushed before. And so while on a planet where they’re having to deal with airship pirates, which is its own challenge. A big part of the book is Sam having to deal with having really faced some fears about the bad things that could happen in this kind of life and the bad things that could happen to her and to her friends and to her family, and having to really overcome that as she moves forward. I think early season Sam is really confident, bordering on overconfident in some ways, science will fix everything. And Jack knows everything. And as long as she follows the rules, and they use science and teamwork, everything’s gonna be okay. And I think this is the beginning of her coming to understand that everything’s not always going to be okay. You can’t win all of them. And yet, they’re strong, and she’s strong. And she can overcome that and carry on.

David Read
Or like it. Yeah, absolutely. Now there’s, and Daniel too, 22, 23 different languages. Come on! That’s as many years old as he is at the start of this thing. They are experts in their field, I get that. But that’s one of the nice things about the books, you can get into their heads and we can hear what they’re thinking, and what their inner monologues are. We can hear Jack beat himself up about Charlie, and about his life and his choices and everything else. And so much of what is on the outside is a facade. It’s what he puts on to get through the day to keep from shooting himself, particularly in episodes like around like Cold Lazarus and everything else. And I think SG-1 gives him his, I think you’ll probably all agree, gives him his purpose back. Daniel gives him his purpose back in the feature film. I mean, Sally, you having to go to bat, time and again for these people is, thank you. Thank you for all the times where you had to, I can’t imagine the 1000s of emails that are out there saying, “Okay, let’s, let’s see if we can massage this and let’s approach MGM. Oh, they went for that one or no, they didn’t go for that one.”

Amy Griswold
Yeah, the other thing that came up a lot, and I think this was across all the Stargate books, and again, Sally ran tons of interference, is just MGM is rightly concerned that the characters’ friendship stays front and center and that we see that these characters love each other. But at the same time, sometimes we had to put them into conflict, because that’s where the interesting scenes come from is when they’re really torn, because they have strongly different opinions. And so getting that balance where MGM was okay with it coming through enough that these are friends and they care about each other.

David Read
Friends fight.

Amy Griswold
We were also getting they can fight with each other because that’s what they would do.

David Read
Yeah. Especially that close proximity for that period of time.

Amy Griswold
Yeah, absolutely.

David Read
Makes a lot of sense.

Melissa Scott
Yeah, and I think that some things that are, specifically you mentioned too grizzly, some things that are are a PG-13 if you just see them are R-rated if you are in the character’s head watching it happen. And that was a bit of calibration that I had to make sure I was doing all the time. Not to do quite so heavy,

Sally Malcolm
Yeah, there’s sometimes some concern about whether the character in the show would do this or say this particular thing or act in this particular way. And I think that, although, of course, we try to make the books as much like the television show as possible, to a certain extent. But when you’re writing a book, you’re going much deeper into the characters, because that’s the benefit of the book. And so I think there’s a bit of a tension there between what maybe you wouldn’t see this in a 45-minute TV show, but because we’re going into the book, we can go into the characters heads and develop those emotional scenes more deeply. And I think sometimes the books, we did get some pushback on some books, not necessarily written by anyone here, but that they were too dark. Some scenes, were too a bit grisly or a bit too heavy, because the show in tone is quite light. It has its dark moments, but overall, it’s upbeat and it’s fun. And obviously, that’s what people like about you don’t want to go too dark, but I like to think we layer in some slightly darker elements and layers and stronger flavors in some of the books. And that’s primarily, I think where some of the friction with MGM comes because we’re seeing things in a slightly more multi level way.

David Read
I would think that dialogue, that tone would be just as critical as characterization and dialogue and all the other pieces that make the product that you’re putting out feel like the show, it has to match, it has to come from that same universe, but the fact of the matter is that you’re taking a can opener to their skulls, and we’re looking inside their souls. And we’re in many cases seeing an interior monologue for someone that, we thought we knew and we didn’t. And I’m sure you all go into each novel, saying, “I want to explore this facet of this character that we haven’t seen, or that we haven’t had a chance to see enough.”

Sally Malcolm
The show hints at a lot of things in the same way with the Wraith that Melissa was talking about visually you see a whole culture, and then in the book, in the Legacy series, amazingly, brilliantly. If that culture is explained in detail, and you get to see it and understand it from their point of view. So in a similar way to that the characters present themselves on screen. But when you’re writing the book, so you can go behind that facade. And so they their dialogue may be the same as what they might say on television. But when you’re seeing what they’re thinking behind it, there’s different layers to you can give it different meanings. So Jack, sort of easy, sort of sarcastic humor is obviously we know that he’s hiding a certain darkness of his past in the show that is canon. But in the books, you can see that darkness. And that, for me is what makes it interesting.

Laura Harper
But I think it’s also important to remember that we are writing as fans of the show, in the first instance, and we have watched these episodes five million times. And I think that we do have a really good understanding and knowledge of the tone of the show and also who the characters are, I think we do. We do appreciate it. It’s why we love it. It’s why we love it. And we always try to be respectful of the characters that we are working with because that’s who we love. But, it’s easy when you’re going into character traits to perhaps put too much of yourself into that. And so a lot of the time we’ll hear that there’s times when the pushback from MGM as perhaps sometimes it’s hard to understand, on other occasions, that as a good sort of guidance here to keep you on track and not stray too far away.

David Read
You can always go back to the story.

Sally Malcolm
A little bit self indulgent sometimes..

David Read
Yeah, absolutely. You’re in charge of these characters for 300 pages, take advantage of that. Guys, thank you so much for joining me with this. I have one final question for all of you. And this is whoever wants to jump in first is fine, but I’d like all of you to speak on it. SG four is basically a foregone conclusion at this point with now Amazon purchasing MGM they have brought up Stargate and a lot of the the press information that has gone out so they are definitely aware that this is quote unquote, “A jewel in MGM’s crown.” I did not coin that. Someone else did. What would you most be interested in seeing next in an SG four?

Amy Griswold
Okay, I’ll go first because someone asked me this on Twitter, and so I already know.

David Read
Perfect, Amy, thank you. I wanted to give you, that’s not an easy, I don’t just want to surface question or a surface answer. I’d really like a thought out one. So please go ahead.

Amy Griswold
What I would love to see is a disclosure scenario where the rest of the world actually becomes aware of the existence of the Stargate. I think we’ve done secrecy and secrecy and how do we keep working to keep the secrecy and maybe kind of improbable ways up to the end of universe. And to me, it would just be really fun to play with, okay, what is the impact on the rest of the world if suddenly they learn about the existence of aliens and the entire rest of the galaxy that’s out there. And it would give you the chance to tell some different kinds of stories involving commercial interests or scientific interests. Going through the Stargate along with these kinds of military exploration stories we’ve been telling. So that would be my pitch. That’s what I think would be fun.

David Read
You don’t unring that bell once it happens, I mean in sci fi, of course, I guess you could unring it. But I mean, can you imagine the microscope that whole program would be under once that was revealed?

Amy Griswold
Yeah. I mean, it puts it in a very different place. And there’s been the reluctance, because it can’t be unrung, to take that step. But I think it would be fun to finally take it.

David Read
It’s fair. Thank you, Amy.

Laura Harper
I think I would like to see, we’re living in a very different world than we lived in when SG-1 was created and I think that I would like to see it, and actually, I think that would fit in quite nicely with the idea of disclosure, of social commentary, and which, I think was a bit of more removed in some of the original episodes, but I think right now in this climate I think it needs to be very on point and that’s what I would like to see something quite insightful, some insightful social commentary within the episodes.

David Read
It’s what sci fi does when it’s at its best. So it tells us, it paints white on one side of one guy’s face and black on the other side of his face, and we have a conversation, and go straight over the network’s heads, at least it did in the 60s. So thank you, Laura, Sally, or excuse me, Susannah.

Susannah Sinard
I have mixed feelings about the disclosure aspect of it. On the one hand, absolutely, I think it would open up a whole new range of storytelling. But I think the one thing that I always appreciated about Stargate was that I could kind of believe it was real. And as soon as the story takes it into the wider world, then we know we’re entering a universe that’s not our current reality. And so as long as the program is the secret, you can say “Yeah, well, that’s what’s really going on under Cheyenne Mountain in Colorado.” So I have sort of mixed feelings. But I understand certainly it would broaden the range of storytelling and be able to bring in a lot of new opportunities, maybe for teams and exploration and things like that. I actually, when they started to make rumblings about the possible revival of it, I wrote a fan fiction story where Sam was now head of the SGC. And so part of me would certainly like to see that happening. But I think further in thought that she’d probably be more like the Homeland Security Level at this point, I think. But I definitely like to see familiar faces reappearing in the show, I think it would really continue to sort of tie it to the fans hearts, and maybe make that bridge that’s going to be necessary to get us from what everybody has loved for so many years to something that’s going to be new and different. But hopefully, don’t get me wrong, I loved Stargate Universe but I think it was just too different at the time for the fans to sort of make that transition. And I think we need a nice bridge of continuity in some familiar faces, to see SG four, whatever it’s called going forward.

Melissa Scott
Yeah. Yeah, I agree with you on using familiar faces as a bridge. But the thing that I would really like to see is also bring in the new team, bring in some new faces.

Susannah Sinard
Oh, absolutely.

Melissa Scott
Give us a chance at some more characters just as memorable as the ones we’ve had before. Because I think we’ve got the writers are out there that there’s no reason that we can’t do that. And moving that step forward. I think using some of the familiar faces as a bridge is a good idea and matching the tone of the series is also really important to carry it forward into this is Stargate that people loved. But yeah, new faces new chances, some new ships.

David Read
Absolutely. And shippers as well as the ships.

I agree with Susannah about the secret history aspect. I love that SG-1 and Atlantis are secret histories. You can believe that these people really do live in Colorado Springs. That Daniel Jackson is ahead of you in the checkout line at the supermarket and yesterday he was on a different planet, and now he’s going to the salad bar, and it feels real. And so I guess I want it to remain a secret history, I’m in favor of the pure reboot. Because I feel like that it is a historical period, it’s very much a part of its time, and that a bunch of things wouldn’t work the same way and the characters wouldn’t work the same way unless you make the story reflect the experiences of people who are at a different point in their lives. For example, Sam has to be the age that Sam is to have had the experiences of being a woman in the military that she’s had, if Sam were 20 years younger, if Sam were born in 1990, her experiences in her life would be completely different. And so I feel like in a reboot, you have to look at the characters and envision them in a new way, almost update them. Because if Sam is a late millennial rather than mid Gen X, it’s a different life experience. So I feel like a pure reboot does have some potential, it’s not just retreading the same ground again, it’s not just doing exactly the same thing only with a different actor, or doing as Cam says, and in 300. “Just hire some other guy.”

David Read
I want to I want to clarify what many in the room are thinking, are we talking a complete blank slate start over from scratch in the show? Or are you talking continuing the Brad Wright, Jonathan Glassner, Rob Cooper continuity with a new group of people?

Jo Graham
What I would do is say, okay, let’s say this Stargate is brought out of storage for the first time since the 1920s only instead of it happening in 1994 it happens in 2022.

David Read
Okay, so a new continuity.

Jo Graham
Yeah, a new continuity like the Star Trek reboot in 2009. You know, that’s a different timeline entirely, isn’t it?

David Read
If we are left with that, it personally would not be my first choice. But if we were left with that, I would certainly watch. Yeah, because…

Jo Graham
My dream cast is Will Smith is Jack O’Neill

David Read
He would be a general at this point more than likely so. Yeah. I mean, why I guess he can still be a bird Colonel. Sorry, Laura.

Laura Harper
Well, it’s just like I cannot picture Will Smith as Jack O’Neill. That’s certainly interesting, was something new to work with. Yeah, I would watch it.

David Read
I would watch Will Smith going through the Stargate for sure. So, if he can make a scene of standing in a desolate New York Blockbuster Video talking to a mannequin fascinating, I think that he can pull pretty much anything off. So, Sally, I’ll leave the last word to you. What do you want out of SG four?

Sally Malcolm
it’s interesting listening to everyone’s ideas. And I’m torn between, I like elements of all of them. And something that I’ve been thinking about recently, during the lockdown, I’ve been watching Star Trek: The Next Generation with my son who’s just turned 18. I thought he’d think it was really boring, because it’s old and very episode of the week and television these days is so much more immersive and all these intricate plotlines but he absolutely loved it. And it made me think at the time before we knew nothing about Amazon, that maybe there is an opportunity or a market for some more of that sort of fun, you don’t have to have watched three prior seasons to understand what’s going on. So maybe there is room for a more of a, like Jo said, a more of a direct reboot of planet of the week, episode of the week, that kind of light fun tone that SG-1 has had without making it too much heavy bit, a lot more heavier and intricate. But then on the other hand the way modern television is made is, it’s just completely different, isn’t it? So? Yeah, I don’t know what I’m saying.

David Read
SG-1 was a hybrid, it’s not purely standalone and it’s not purely serialized. It’s one…

Sally Malcolm
By the end of it they had longer arcs and so on. So, yeah, and again I’ve always liked the idea of disclosure as well. And maybe you could create a series where that was the end goal and you are going to move towards that and I’d quite like some international teams, some other countries apart from Russia, getting involved, some mixed teams from other parts of the world going through the Gate. So that would be kind of fun if it was more widely known, even if it wasn’t completely disclosed, maybe other countries have been made aware of it and are contributing to the teams going through the Gate that will be quite fun.

David Read
Sally Malcolm, Laura Harper, Melissa Scott, Amy Griswold, Jo Graham, Susannah Parker Sinard, thank you so much for your contributions to Stargate lore, to the world of reading, and to fanfiction. Thank you for coming on my show. This has been fascinating and I just cannot thank you enough for opening your hearts up and sharing your feelings about the characters and about these stories and these threads that we care about so much. It really means a lot to me to have you on.

Sally Malcolm
Thank you. [All others say thank you.]

David Read
My thanks to Sally Malcolm and her group of Stargate novelists for coming on the show, a very special episode. That was very insightful. I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did. If you’re enjoying this content, it does make a big difference if you like or share it or consider writing a comment, YouTube considers all of this engagements. And it makes a difference with the algorithm and putting in front of the faces of Stargate fans who just don’t know that it exists yet. I get comments all the time saying I haven’t seen this website. Maybe it’s something I’m doing wrong. It’s entirely possible. But these things take time to grow and I am appreciative of every single step. If you like what you’ve seen, and you want to support us in other ways, not just by watching you can consider buying yourself some of our themed swag we’re now offering T-shirts, tank tops, sweatshirts and hoodies for all ages. And in a variety of sizes and colors at Red Bubble, checkout is fast and easy and you can use your Amazon or PayPal account just visit DialtheGate.RedBubble.com and thanks so much for your support. It is really appreciated. As is my appreciation for my moderating team Sommer, Tracy Keith, Jeremy, Rhys, Antony, Linda “GateGabber” Furey, Jennifer Kirby, these people are responsible for making the show happen. No man goes it alone. This takes a whole village and these first 99 episodes have been a treat to produce. And I am so thankful to my team. So thankful to you for watching. My name is David Read for Dial the Gate. I appreciate your time. Thanks for spending your weekends with us. We’ll see you on the other side.