The brand new space drama, THE ARK, premiered this past week on SYFY and Peacock, and we are privileged to welcome the return of Jonathan Glassner to share some of the details behind his new show! Jonathan will also take us back through Seasons One and Two of SG-1 to share some secrets you may not have heard before.

This is a pre-recorded episode.

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Timecodes
00:00 – Opening Credits
00:25 – Welcome and Episode Outline
02:17 – Welcoming Jonathan – The Ark
04:28 – Production and Cast Surprises
05:20 – The Set and Shooting in Serbia
06:24 – The Cast
07:45 – Episode One Conversation
10:39 – Writing Style for the Ark
11:28 – Press Feedback
11:54 – Timeframe for Season One and Technology
15:06 – The Pods and Ego
16:28 – Ship Software, Additional Arks, and the Show’s Premise
19:14 – Reality VS Science Fiction
20:45 – Diversity of the Cast
22:33 – Hacking, Character Development and Science
25:18 – Working with Dean Devlin adn the Writing
28:47 – Staff Writers
29:45 – Layout for Season One, Cliffhangers
32:22 – Stargate – the Beginning
36:11 – The Gate
37:20 – Shooting Children of the Gods
40:51 – Peter Williams
42:07 – Nudity in the Pilot
47:57 – The Broca Divide
50:55 – Cor-Ai
53:10 – Suanne Braun, Hathor and Wardrobe
56:01 – There But For the Grace of God
58:52 – Skaara and Klorel
1:02:08 – The Gamekeeper
1:04:48 – In The Line of Duty, the Tok’ra and Carmen Argenziano
1:08:57 – Wrapping up with Jonathan
1:10:07 – Post Interview Housekeeping
1:13:29 – End Credits

***

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TRANSCRIPT
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David Read
Hello, and welcome to Dial the Gate. The Stargate Oral History Project. My name is David Read, thank you so much for joining. This episode we have Jonathan Glassner, Co-Creator of Stargate SG-1 and Executive Producer of SG-1, as well as, Co-Creator of Syfy’s brand new television series, The Ark, along with Dean Devlin of Stargate feature film fame. We have him joining us in this episode to share details on The Ark, which is going to take up the first half of the show. And the second half we’re going to go into, way back, Stargate history, seasons one and two. But before we get into that, if you enjoy Stargate, and you want to see more content like this on YouTube, do me a favor click that Like button. It does make a difference with YouTube and will definitely help the show continue to grow its audience. Please also consider sharing this video with the 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. A lot of these shows are live so that has happened, recently happened actually last week. And clips from this live stream will be released, actually clips from this, this episode, not a live stream, will be released over the next few days on Dial the Gate and GateWorld.net’s YouTube channels. Again this is this is not a live episode. This was pre-recorded this past week just before The Ark aired. The first episode — the pilot — has now aired. So we’re going to have Jonathan on to discuss that. As this is a pre-recorded show the moderators will not be taking questions for Jonathan. Hopefully we’ll have him back later on this season. Maybe season three, possibly season four, to wrap up his SG-1 story but we really get into the middle of his SG-1 story with this episode and talk a lot about The Ark. I’m really excited about this discussion, was thrilled to have him. Let’s stop babbling. Let’s bring in Jonathan

David Read
I’m back with Executive Producer and Co-Showrunner of The Ark, Jonathan Glassner. He also created this little show called Stargate SG-1 back in the day. Welcome back, sir. It’s good to see you.

Jonathan Glassner
Thank you. Good to see you too, David.

David Read
This is a wild time for you. You’ve got a brand new show watching, congratulations by the way.

Jonathan Glassner
Thank you.

David Read
What are you most excited about? It’s airing next week on our time.

Jonathan Glassner
Um, I’m excited to see what the audience thinks of it. You know, I didn’t ever know I I do some shows that I not real proud of the turnout to be huge hits and and then I do shows that I think are are fantastic and they don’t take off. So I never know. I happen to think this show’s great. I’m loving every second of it and very proud of it. So hope, you know, hoping the audience thinks so too.

David Read
Absolutely. I want to know right off the bat because I was a huge fan of 1899. And then they kIlled it. And a lot of us were watching these these shows drop like flies. How long is your game plan for this series? What is what is your intent? Do you have a specific number of seasons of an arc? Are you kind of playing it as you go? Where are you at?

Jonathan Glassner
We have thought ahead probably one more season just because I learned long ago that if you think too far ahead, unless you’re doing a show like Lost that has one giant secret. I’ve learned that if you think ahead it ends up going in the trash anyway because actors give you something that you hadn’t thought of, things work that you thought would work, and things don’t work that you didn’t that you also thought would work and you end up going down different paths and then it’s like, trying to get back on track is crazy. So we thought this season beginning to end before we even started writing it. And we have a pretty good idea of next season. And God willing there’s another season after that we’ll, I’m sure we’ll probably have an idea of what it is halfway through next season.

David Read
Have there have been surprises along the way that production, that casts have shown are possible, and your story has been, is going to be adjusting to correspond with that.

Jonathan Glassner
I’m not really, it’s weird. The show has gone kind of exactly as planned. The only thing I will say is is things, nuanced things. There have been things, you know, these these actors are amazing, we got so lucky with our casting. And you know, we’ll be watching dailies and they’ll do something, there’ll be some little look to the other person, some nuance, that Dean and I’ll say, “Well, what was that that kind of makes me feel like this is going to happen? Maybe we should go down that path.” But those are more for their personal stories, their individual stories. The overarching story we pretty much stuck to.

David Read
Okay. How has the set worked out for you, as in shooting in Serbia? I mean, you, I read that New York Post article with Dean who’s like, “You know the production value that we’re getting out of Serbia is just stellar.”

Jonathan Glassner
Yeah, it really is. It really is. I mean, we did The Outpost together there for four years, or three years of the four years. And we basically just when Outpost got canceled. We just said, “Let’s keep that crew and keep that the soundstages and move over to this show because they were great.” So that’s what we did. Now, it doesn’t really matter where we shoot the show, because it’s completely inside the ship.

David Read
That’s certainly true. Or exteriors, which are also the same thing, kind of.

Jonathan Glassner
We were originally in Serbia because, because of money, but also because they actually have medieval castles and things like that for The Outpost. But we don’t need [inaudible].

David Read
Well it makes sense, I mean, if you have a well oiled machine, why fix something that isn’t broken? And you know, and you have the willing talent to pull it off. So.

Jonathan Glassner
Yeah, exactly.

David Read
Who have been your surprise rising star performers out of this, this crew that you think that the audience is really going to attach themselves to or you personally are attached to?

Jonathan Glassner
I can’t, I can’t pick between my babies. It’s, I will say that, you know, every show I’ve ever done pretty much. You know, you go through the casting, and, you know, the actors nail the audition, and you feel like, you know, fingers crossed they can actually do this, but you never know if they’ve been, you know, they’ve been practicing with a with a teacher for, you know, weeks to get that one performance right. And then they show up on the se and they’re not very good, which has happened to me before. And in this case, it was an international cast, so we never met any of them in person before we started shooting. It was all done over Zoom. As soon as we started seeing dailies we were like, “Nailed it. Nailed it. Nailed it.” Every one just been great. So I’ll tell you, we don’t have any weaklings. That’s for sure. They’re all, they’re just great.

David Read
They’re delivering. So are you still in production? Are you through the 12?

Jonathan Glassner
No, we’re finished. We’re finished. We’re just doing certain, we’re still doing certain visual effects work but other than, no.

David Read
Wow. And so you’re just waiting for an order for season two then basically, is what it comes down to. All right. I gotta tell you and I’ve watched the first episode. We’re not going to get into spoilers yet, this is spoiler free so far, but Stacey Read, she’s great to watch and she’s spunky?

Jonathan Glassner
Yeah, she’s great. She’s and you know what she’s, I found out later, we didn’t notice when we cast her but she’s actually sort of a geek herself. She read science, so she actually apparently was walking around the set talking to the other cast, “You know, this is true. This is how…” So it’s very much her in a way. She’s a whole lot hipper than the character. But…

David Read
Well, isn’t that great? When you could bring something kind of real in the present into your product?

Jonathan Glassner
Yeah.

David Read
So, and I think she may, she may be distantly related to me. R E A D. My British ancestors is a Read, her dad is British too. So.

Jonathan Glassner
Wow, wouldn’t that be weird?

David Read
I know. And Ryan Adams. He’s kind of like, perhaps kind of like a counterpart to her. I enjoyed really watching these two. So Stacy, was was playing Alicia Nevins. And Ryan is the 4-H kid they called him, Angus Medford. He was cool to watch too. But you, I love how you, you have the characters. And like, if you’re in high school, you can see which tables all these people would sit at. But, and that’s really fun.

Jonathan Glassner
That’s a good way to put it.

David Read
You see where the show can potentially go from the first episode, we have to kind of in our minds, okay, this person goes in this box, this person kind of goes in this box. But as we watch, it’s gonna be like, okay, who’s gonna be stepping out of their box and giving us, you know, something that we don’t expect based on this personality trope that we see in front of us and where they’ve been placed on the ship and the hierarchy.

Jonathan Glassner
Yeah, well, I will say that out of necessity, because of the structure of the story of the pilot that starts with the disaster instead of, you know, the sort of this traditional way that a lot of these shows are done. Pretty much every show I’ve ever done also. You, you first you get to meet the characters, kind of get to know them before the shit hits the fan. In this case, the shit hits the fan and then you get to meet the characters. And out of necessity, they have to be somewhat atypical, you have to sort of be prototypes at first because you’re not gonna have time to stop and say, “Well, this is what happened in my past.” And I, you know, they’ve to fix the oxygen, or they’re going to die. So, as you watch the series, their characters blossom into full blown, really interesting characters, and most of them are not what you expect. Some of them are, but most of them are not.

David Read
I love, personally, slower sci fi. And one of the great things about SG-1 was you got both. Is every episode going to be a frenzy? We have to fix this next thing or we’re going to die? Or is there room for slow character development? Two people in a room talking, figuring things out together?

Jonathan Glassner
I tend to write and so does so does Dean in the style that Stargate was written in? Okay, it’s, you know, it’s both, there will always the shit will always be hitting the fan and so, but we really delve into these characters and get to know them well, and and relationships bloom and fall apart. And, you know, it’s a character drama, first and foremost,

David Read
What has the feedback been like for, for the show, in the press tour that you’ve done so far are people really excited about it?

Jonathan Glassner
So far, it’s been amazing. The science fiction press in particular seems to really love it. They’re, you know, they got most of the press guides, the first four episodes. And I think every single one of them said, “They can’t wait to see the fifth episode.” They’re all hooked. So you know, when you watch the show, stick with it.

David Read
What kind of time frame is the first season cover it? Are we talking a few weeks? Are we talking the full the full…

Jonathan Glassner
You know, TV time is strange. Do you know what I mean? It doesn’t follow on natural time. So we don’t really know how long it all is. We know where I get to, which I’m not going to tell you.

David Read
We don’t get to a planet, what? It’s a space station!

Jonathan Glassner
Or when we get to the planet I should say.

David Read
Yeah, exactly.

Jonathan Glassner
I would say it’s a period of months, maybe a year total.

David Read
One of the things that was, as a kind of science geek myself, was trying to figure out when I was watching the shows, like how fast is the ship going? Are they going faster than light? Are we dealing with relativistic traveling? We don’t appear to be going that fast. And if we’re going as fast as the ship appears to be going we wouldn’t have reached the Kuiper Belt in five years leaving the solar system. And then in the preview at the end, we see the ship actually moving, which suggests that it’s been, it has been traveling at a faster than lightspeed for most of that time, or jumps and is that how it works?

Jonathan Glassner
One of the things we’re trying to do, because the show is not set 1000s of years in the future, it’s set 100 years or so in the future. So we’re trying to base off of actual technology today. You’ll notice for example, the computer consoles look like today’s computers. And the propulsion method on the ship is based on, well you’re a science geek so I’ll tell you, nuclear electrical propulsion, NEP, which is a real theory that NASA is actually about to launch a test vehicle to do I think in two years. First of all, let me tell you to take a step back, when you’re writing science fiction, there’s science and there’s fiction. And in order to have an interesting storyline, you can’t stick completely to the science. In a show that’s exciting like this one, you can if it’s a show about the science, you know what I mean? But if it’s a show about people, travel, and all that. You’ve got to you got to cheat a little bit. The best example in the pilot is, you know, the antigravity thing. That doesn’t exist and probably never will exist without a giant rotating thing. But we would be shooting for, we’d still be shooting the first 15 minutes of the show now if we did the whole show in zero gravity, so you know, you have to take your hits. So in the case of NEPs, NEPs right now they think will go, I think they said it’ll go about 40% of the speed of light. We’re saying that it will go just under the speed of light. So it goes up to like 99% of the speed of light. So before we were hit, that’s how fast we were going.

David Read
And then the ship returned to normal space.

Jonathan Glassner
Once we took the hit. We were in normal space the whole time because we’re not going faster than speed of light. So there’s no…

David Read
I see.

Jonathan Glassner
But once we took the hit and we’re on what Star Trek would have called impulse power. We’re moving a little slowly until we fix everything.

David Read
So I want to move into spoiler territory now a little bit. We have my understanding is two pod bays and in the pilot we find out that the other one decompressed or was sheared off. I think that may have been the part that was stuck in the in the revolving section of the ship. That’s a fun image to think of. And that had all the commissioned staff. Were there anyone else key that were in that that pod or…

Jonathan Glassner
All the chief scientists who teach. It’s basically like first class versus steerage. And so the whole first class section got sheared off.

David Read
Well notes on on travel, interplanetary travel to anyone watching — don’t do that. I know, kind of distribute your ranks a little bit just in case something like that happens.

Jonathan Glassner
Yeah. You know, one of the things we’re trying to explore is human foibles and ego, in that case it’s ego. You know, people, we talked about it in the fourth episode of why it was like that, vaguely, a little bit. And it’s, you know, it was more, you were more prominent if you got to be in the right officers wing, so people fought to get in it.

David Read
One of the things that I hope you guys leaned into a little bit more, maybe not, maybe it was just a storytelling component for this one episode, is the software is not the best out there that’s running the ship. It’s caught the Read’s characters, she’s like, you know, it’s this software is caugh in a such and such it’s a common problem because it’s older. It’s like, oh, man, this ship isn’t even running on the best technology that Earth has, you know. Why is that?

Jonathan Glassner
These ships were slapped together because there was a rush. They had to get off planet so they’re slapped together.

David Read
Wow. Okay. And apparently Earth has the technology to send people after them as well, if this one target proves to be viable?

Jonathan Glassner
Well, no, there’s, we know of 16 Arks that were being built when we launched. We don’t know how many were being built after that. And we were just the first to go, each one is targeted at a different exoplanet.

David Read
So they’re all unique planets?

Jonathan Glassner
Yeah, just to see where they can, well, it’s more complicated than that. But basically, yeah, the first group is going to different exoplanets. And then the groups following are families and things going to the same, each of the of the same exoplanets. And that’s the plan, but we don’t know what happened because we were the first ones to go and we’ve lost touch.

David Read
Earth has gone dark.

Jonathan Glassner
Well, as far as we know it has. Yeah

David Read
And the first one that’s, that’s scary in and of itself, because we see a scene with a family member and this is the last message that they received, and it’s been four or so years since they they communicated with them. So something’s up. You know, I love that you’re planting the seed that, yes, there’s a lot of stuff that’s that’s happening on board the ship. But I mean, the word alien is bantered about in the teaser as well, for the rest of the season. Things are going to be happening outside of the ship that are going to, you know, put the people on board in their own situation as well, in a couple of different directions.

Jonathan Glassner
This show is so full of twists and turns, you won’t see any of it coming hopefully. It’s a journey.

David Read
Based on the information that we have right now. There’s not supposed to be any other given ships following them for the foreseeable future.

Jonathan Glassner
Right, well, maybe in you know, 10 years where their families will be coming, think we say,

David Read
So otherwise, they are out there alone.

Jonathan Glassner
Yeah.

David Read
All right. Would you potentially continue the show on a planet surface?

Jonathan Glassner
Potentially.

David Read
Okay. One of the things that’s continually scary is how quickly reality is catching up to science fiction. Or what we have in our minds, and I’m interested to see what kinds of stories you’re going to tell that kind of leverage a lot of the modern issues that we’re dealing with tech, sociological issues into the show. Can you tease us a little bit about that?

Jonathan Glassner
Well, today there was sort of two issues. The first issue is science is moving so fast issue has already bitten us in the butt It happens all the time so we just have to let it slide off our backs. But when we started shooting, as far as people knew Proxima b was the closest exoplanet And so that’s where we’re headed is Proxima b.

David Read
So it’s a real world?

Jonathan Glassner
Yeah, it’s a real planet. And it’s four point, it’s like four light years away, I think. Since then we’ve discovered others that are closer. And we’ve also discovered more about Proxima b, then make it less likely to be habitable in real life. So we’re just forgetting about, we can’t, you know, what can we do?

David Read
You know, what we got more, we got better information, Proxima b, turns out that it’s the best candidate after all, you know, I’m young,

Jonathan Glassner
This is a thing that happens, because science is moving so fast. The Webb telescope, you know, every day is finding more exoplanets. Webb wasn’t even launched, when we started writing this show.

David Read
That’s true. That’s true. We’ve already established in the pilot that we got characters from a number of different countries, they have different not just because they’re from different countries, but you know, they have different personal objectives as well. How are you guys leveraging the diversity of the cast, and you know, the diversity of the audience that’s gonna be watching them in turn.

Jonathan Glassner
We don’t get into the diversity of the cast that much in terms of you know, it’s not like, you know, the Russians are trying to stop the Americans or any of that we’re, we’re leaving all that behind. It’s more interpersonal phase. So really, we don’t really leverage the ethnicity or the nationality of anybody at all. That’s not part of our story. But there are people you know, there are people who think they know better and have better ideas. There are people that are scared of things that everyone else is not scared of. And so they want to avoid any of this. There’s constant clashing about what should we be doing? Because none of these people are in command, really, and none of them are really experts. There’s that, that kind of clashing?

David Read
Yeah, I think that the one of the one of the draws of of the show is going to be that these people are not the ones who are supposed to be the ones in charge. And yet, they’re going to have to figure out a way to make it happen. Otherwise, they all die. And they’re going to have, what do you do in this situation? You do the best you can. And you see how things shake up?

Jonathan Glassner
Yeah, that’s exactly what the show is about. Basically, it’s you know, people rising to their best selves to survive. Above their best selves, really, because they weren’t prepared for this. They were supposed to be trained once they got the planet to do things on the planet not to do things on the ship.

David Read
One of the things that I expected the show to tackle at some point, but didn’t expect it in the pilot, was the people who are on, there are people who are on the ship who hacked themselves on.

Jonathan Glassner
Yes.

David Read
And they, you know, that’s a very, with everything that we see today with systems that are just not as safeguarded as they should be. Any digital file can be changed. Anyone can be manipulated into thinking that they’re supposed to be on another Ark, so that someone else can take their place, you know. The human brain is the most hackable thing, and it’s happening in real time on this ship. There are forces at work aboard, that are doing things solely for their own self preservation, and not at all for the greater good of the group. As evidenced by the murder at the end of episode one. Can you talk a little bit about that?

Jonathan Glassner
Which part of that? The stowaway?

David Read
Yes, the stowaway.

Jonathan Glassner
He is a smart guy, but he’s not smart at Life Support, which is what he’s supposed to be doing. So he hacked his way onto the ship. And it’s unfortunate that the person he replaced was the Head of Life Support and almost killed everybody as a result of it.

David Read
Right. But he said, “I know people on this ship who have secrets,” and I’m guessing that knowledge is what killed him. So there’s going to be…

Jonathan Glassner
There’s lots of secrets. There lots of people with lots of secrets. I mean, on this show.

David Read
Opportunities for character growth are just ripe here. They’re as fertile as that dang soil that got snuck aboard. And I’m interested to see what kind of science we’re going to see on screen that’s going to kind of mirror you know, what NASA, and what a lot of these other companies would like to achieve on other planets here. We’re gonna see…

Jonathan Glassner
Whenever we can we base it on real technology. We can’t always do that. But whenever we can, we do. And there’s, you know, I’m a science geek., for fun I read science magazines. So it’s a little bit, I do a little bit of banging my own head against the wall because I want to make it real, but I can’t because it just would screw up the story too bad and want this to be entertaining first and foremost. And scientifically accurate secondarily so.

David Read
Is working with Dean still as much fun as it was working on The Outpost?

Jonathan Glassner
Yeah, he’s, you know, he and I are, in terms of our taste, are the same person. You know, we’re both science fiction geeks, we both love the same kind of storytelling. Neither of us can write without having a wink and a nod and a little sense of humor to it. So this show is not the heavy, dark sci fi that is very popular now, sort of the opposite. And I love that stuff. I love watching it, but it’s just not what I write. It’s much, it’s meant to be fun and entertaining. It’s meant to be, you know, escapism not deep dark, you know…

David Read
That’s interesting,

Jonathan Glassner
…analyzed for a year, you know?

David Read
Well, I mean, that doesn’t mean that it can’t have substance.

Jonathan Glassner
Well, of course, it has substance that has plenty of substance, in the same way that the, you know, the early Star Trek’s did the Original and the Next Generation did, there’s a lot of metaphor in there and there’s a lot of studying out of the human condition and how we’re our own worst enemy and that kind of thing. Right? But it’s not, you know, it’s just not dark, it’s not a real deep and dark, you know, full of almost pseudo-religious meaning underneath. And there’s none of that, you know?

David Read
Okay. It’s, as you said, it, you know, there’s, there are different kinds of science fiction because they can be, it can flex itself into almost every other genre that exists. But if you’re not escaping from the real world, into another space, that allows you to appreciate the time that you’ve that you’ve been away from your normal world. You really have to be in a specific mindset to enjoy it. And with this, just you don’t have to, like, place yourself there. It looks like you can just turn it on and have a good time and have frankly, have a good time with your whole family. You don’t have to you know, wait until the younger ones are in bed.

Jonathan Glassner
Right. That’s the idea.

David Read
Yeah, that’s good stuff.

Jonathan Glassner
Like one of my favorite science fiction properties I guess because it’s been every, it’s been a book a movie and series and everything is Dune. But Dune is, it’s almost like a religious experience. You know, it’s so far until what we actually know the setting is that, you know, it’s like “Could I write that?” is what goes through my head. I love watching it. But that’s just, that’s not [inaudible].

David Read
It’s intense.

Jonathan Glassner
Yeah.

David Read
What do you think of the film? The new one.

Jonathan Glassner
I liked it. I liked it. I wish they had taken the first film and split it into two films. I thought they compressed the first act of it too much. I missed things that I knew were there from the book and fates, that bugged me.

David Read
Yeah, they’re in charge, they’re in charge of Arrakeen for like a blink and then you know, it gets taken over and Leto is dead. And it’s like, wow, it moves even faster than the 2000s miniseries did and I thought that I was saying something.

Jonathan Glassner
Yeah, I think they wanted to get to Zendaya as soon as they could.

David Read
Exactly. But she’s great, you know.

Jonathan Glassner
She’s great and they wanted to get, you know, she was, you know, they figured she was box office.

David Read
Exactly.

Jonathan Glassner
So that’s what I think happened.

David Read
Right, now I’m interested this, I’m interested to see the second one for sure.

Jonathan Glassner
It certainly was stunning. It was a beautiful film.

David Read
Tell us about, a little bit about, your staff writers. You’ve got Kendall Lampkin, John-Paul Nickel, I believe. Who are you looking forward to cultivating as writers, you know, moving forward into this new space.

Jonathan Glassner
There’s also Rebecca Rosenberg, who, she’s the one I guess, if I’m cultivating anybody, she’s cultivating herself as far as I’m concerne. But she, we gave her her first writing job on The Outpost and we were so thrilled with her that we brought her on to this one also. And she’s just she’s amazing she’s doing great. And JP came from Warehouse 13.

David Read
Okay

Jonathan Glassner
He ran it towards the end of the ride. And so he, you know, he’s very experienced and he’s great. He brings a lot of the humor to the scripts. He’s a very funny guy.

David Read
Okay, this is a pretty well rounded group. I’m excited for what you guys have got going. Are we going to get straight 12 episodes? Are there going to be any breaks in the middle? What do you know of Syfy’s release strategy?

Jonathan Glassner
I don’t know what their release strategy is. As they came out I hope they’re going to air them straight through.

David Read
Okay.

Jonathan Glassner
But you know, there may be some special event or something stuck in. I mean, we are going to deliver the episodes in time for them to, we’ve already delivered them the first six.

David Read
Okay? So are there any cliffhangers?

Jonathan Glassner
Oh, yeah. Every one of them ends with it.

David Read
Oh, okay.

Jonathan Glassner
Pretty much. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, the show keeps moving and moves, it moves very quickly.

David Read
I think in some respects modern audiences have come to expect that it’s the juxtaposition against the, you know, the slow moving character piece to get get back to the story. And know, what’s what’s gonna happen next.

Jonathan Glassner
Exactly. And I, you know, I think with our TicTok days, I think people want things to move a little faster, I think, you know, people who are not die hard, you know, science fiction fans who read every piece of every book that ever comes out, would rather see it move a little faster, I think. And we’re hoping to get a broad audience of science fiction fans and not science fiction. I mean, I’ll give you an example. My, this is, this is a horrible thing to say but it’s true. My wife doesn’t like anything, any show I work on because she’s doesn’t like science fiction. She’s not a sci fi fan. So she doesn’t watch, she’s seen maybe three Stargates.

David Read
Just not interested.

Jonathan Glassner
So not interested.

David Read
Okay. That’s a shame.

Jonathan Glassner
She started seeing me working on this show. And I get, because I, I get cuts and things sent to me that I watch at home. And she got hooked. And she’s now our biggest fan. She loves all the characters, she wants to know what we’re going to do with them.

David Read
That’s great.

Jonathan Glassner
That’s hopefully that is the pattern here that the sci fi guys, or women, can sit down and watch the show and their spouse or their significant other who doesn’t usually can watch it with them, you know, laugh.

David Read
It says something about the accessibility of the product.

Jonathan Glassner
That’s where we’re goning, that’s what we’re shooting for. Absolutely.

David Read
Well, congratulations again. And, you know, let’s see this thing just get out of the gate running. So it’s gonna be interesting to watch it. I want to go to the other big Stargate series that you’re known for, or big Sci Fi series you’re known for, not the Outer Limits. When you guys were shooting SG-1 you were also shooting Outer Limits?

Jonathan Glassner
The first season, yeah.

David Read
The first season.

Jonathan Glassner
The first season of Stargate, Brad and I were still doing Outer Limits, and then we walked away from Outer LImits after that.

David Read
Okay. And I think you indicated the last time that we spoke that each of you kind of divvied up your own episodes and like did, not like completely independently of one another, but you were in charge of yours and he was in charge of his, right?

Jonathan Glassner
Yeah. Now, yeah. And eventually, Robert Cooper was in charge of his own also. And the reason for that was not, that show was a huge show because we had three sound stages and two on set construction places, and basically a clothing factory working for us all at once. Because we were going to different planets. And so we needed, every week we needed some massive set, or some creature, or some culture that we had to build wardrobe for 20 extras for, 40 extras for. So it was a big, it was a big lift. And if we had to be overlooking all of them all at once, it would probably would have killed us. So that’s why we divided it up that way. So I could go to this set where they were building this. And we were also usually shooting more than one at a time. So each one of us could be at one set, and the other one could be at the second unit or the other set. It was a big undertaking that show.

David Read
How much extra runway were you given with the fact that you knew that you were going to have four seasons and then five, pretty quickly from the start? How much did that free you up as opposed to other projects where it’s like, “Well, we’re gonna give you another six.”

Jonathan Glassner
Hugely, hugely freed us up. It freed us up in in multiple ways. It frees up story-wise, because we knew we had time to have the story arcs go slowly and not, you know, just throw them out. It worked in terms of making the show bigger because we could amortize the giant sets over more episodes. So it enabled us to build a much bigger Stargate headquarters. It, and it enabled us to think ahead the way I was just saying. So we would, one of the things that Brad and I did that, that I’m very proud of, because it never happens on most shows, is we were always six scripts ahead of production.

David Read
You say six?

Jonathan Glassner
Yeah.

David Read
Wow.

Jonathan Glassner
And the reason for that was because the art director had to start drawing the sets for the civilization, the wardrobe, people had to start drawing pictures of the wardrobe, visual effects people, in some cases had to start figuring out what a ship was going to look like, or of a, you know, a cityscape or something that they were going to have to do in visual effects. Because back then, the render time could be a month, you know, for a shot. And so we were always ahead. And that enabled us to do it. We couldn’t have done that if we didn’t know if we have any more episodes coming. You know, so that was very beneficial.

David Read
Richard Hudolin is a genius. I mean, the set that he was able to pull off there.

Jonathan Glassner
And Bridget who took over for him.

David Read
McGuire.

Jonathan Glassner
As she was his Art Director when he was the Designer. Yeah.

David Read
Can you tell us anything about the Gate itself? Because you guys were missing pieces of that thing. And it was a technological marvel, the fact that in as in 10 years, as far as I know, of it never missed a glyph. Can you can you tell us about what what you went through to bring that thing to life,

Jonathan Glassner
You know, the the Art Department and the Mechanical people that we hired on the crew they built a new one from scratch. And they, and one of the things that I said to them when we were setting the show up was, “This thing has to work every time because we can’t shut down shooting, because “Oh, shoot, they have to fix the gate again. You know, it’s got to work every time.” And, you know, cut to a month later, they say “Come in and see,” and we went in and they demonstrated it for us. And they had it set up so they could literally dial on what glyph it was gonna stop on and the thing was gonna “click, clunk.” It was they were amazing, you know.

David Read
Extraordinary piece of machinery. And…

Jonathan Glassner
And it was a big, heavy sucker. I mean, it took a lot for them to make that thing work.

David Read
Were you on set for when they were filming Children of the Gods? Were you on?

Jonathan Glassner
Yeah, oh yeah.

David Read
Okay, I remember the first day the dailies came back and there was there was a crack down the middle of the footage. Like though the weather was beating you guys up.

Jonathan Glassner
It was worse than that, it was, we had to shut down the first day. It was raining so hard and the wind was so strong that the rain was going horizontally. And it blew over our set. That big prison set that Teal’c saves us from.

David Read
Yeah, Chulak.

Jonathan Glassner
The exterior of that was actually built up on the mountain. And it blew over, we had to shut down and go back the next day. Which is a really scary thing to do. The first day of production out of each series is where I’m thinking, “God are we cursed with this? This has to happen first day come on.”

David Read
Wow. The location though, especially you know with the rocks going out from the Stargate. It’s one of the one of the coolest from the entire show you really got to take advantage of the mountains in the back, or which, don’t get me wrong, there were mountains in most of, in many of the episodes. But…

Jonathan Glassner
Welcome to Vancouver.

David Read
Right? Exactly. What else do you remember with Mario Azzopardi and filming that pilot? I know it takes you back.

Jonathan Glassner
Yeah, I don’t remember a lot I remember that that’s, it’s one time — I don’t know if I should tell you the story. I’m not sure I remember it exactly but it’s one time that Richard Dean Anderson, I think, started to trust me even more was because Mario was shooting the shot, you remember the shot where the camera comes up and over and finds him looking up in through the telescope?

David Read
Yeah, at the beginning of the show.

Jonathan Glassner
Yeah. He was shooting it, you know, the way you see it on the show is the camera goes like this, right? But the first way he shot him was like this and I called “cut” and said, “You know that’s not flattering, first shot of our lead is not going to be looking up his nose.” And so he had to reconfigure the shot. And afterwards Rick said, “Thanks for that.” So that’s a story I remember. I think the only reason I remembered is because that’s sort of the moment when I knew — okay, Rick and I are gonna get along fine.

David Read
Your talents gotta know, you know, that producers have got his back and as well as his nostrils. Maybe, I mean god, this is our lead here. It’s the opening shot.

Jonathan Glassner
Yeah. Nobody looks good from here. I don’t care how good looking you are.

David Read
That’s great. Don, the head, had told me that there were certain people that were suggesting kind of a limitation of his performance. This is the general this is what he does. And he was like, “You know, I was in the Army. This doesn’t feel right”. And as the show progressed, he was able to loosen the guy up a little bit, you know, and become the Teddy Bear that we all seem to love.

Jonathan Glassner
What he really became more of was himself. He was the sweetest guy. He was just a great guy.

David Read
The entrance of Apophis at the top of this episode, Peter Williams, carried so much of that episode, if you did not believe him as the villain, if you did not believe that he was legitimate, if you’re like, “Oh my god, this is this guy is hamming it up, I can’t watch it.” You know, he was so authentic in taking the best of what Jay Davidson had in the movie, and adapting that species into his own. He was Apophis, putting on airs and everything. You believe that that guy commanded that room.

Jonathan Glassner
We had had Peter play two different parts in The Outer Limits, prior to this. So we knew him well, and we knew what he could do. And so the part was practically written for him. We, all along we knew it was probably going to be him. So it worked out well that way. Because he was. When you interview Dean as ask him about, Jay. He’s got good stories that I I’m not at liberty to tell you but see if he’ll tell you.

David Read
Absolutely. No, we had and we also had Dr. Stewart Tyson Smith on the Egyptologist from from the film as well, there was a there was a discovery process for sure. So, absolutely. In the pilot, there is a controversial scene that has continued to come up because it’s always interfering every time the show gets published in a new, in a new area. There is a scene of nudity in the pilot. And we had Vaitiare Hirshon on to discuss that.

Jonathan Glassner
Recently?

David Read
In the past year.

Jonathan Glassner
How is she?

David Read
She’s wonderful.

Jonathan Glassner
I haven’t heard a word about her and she…

David Read
What a beautiful human inside and out. I’ll send you the link for the show. But one of the things that she was surprised that she was under the, she understood that she was going to be shot from the chest up. But she was surprised when she found out that she was completely visible. And they she said that she actually had to go in and sign an updated contract at the end for that shot to even be released.

Jonathan Glassner
Oh, you see, I didn’t know any, I didn’t know any of that in terms of the contract because I was not privy to any of that. The business affairs people do the contracts in there. They’re here in LA. But what I do know is that I will always regret that we did any nudity in the show. And we did it for Showtime.

David Read
Yeah, that they demanded it. Yes?

Jonathan Glassner
Well, they didn’t, they didn’t say you have to do nudity here.

David Read
Right. What existed in the pilot?

Jonathan Glassner
But what they did say was this show has to be something that you can only see on cable, you can’t be a show that you would see on ABC or CBS or NBC. Because all they cared about was getting subscribers. And in today’s mindset, things you can only see on cable are things that are controversial or dark or, you know, The Sopranos started that path But back then it was cussing, nudity, and extra violent and graphic violence. Those are things that couldn’t show on the networks and so that’s what you did on cable. And so they said, “You’ve got to put some of that stuff in.” And personally, I would rather have nudity than graphic violence. I get I think a naked body is much less offensive than seeing somebody’s head get blown off. So that’s what we did. And when we were watching the cut, we asked if we could take it out and they said they’d rather we not take it out. And so we left it in but then it came out in the syndicated version. We took it out, obviously we had to and Brad then later took it out of the DVD version, after I was gone. But when it came on in the pilot, we were like, “Oh, we’re not going to do that.” And we just refused to do any more in the show, so we just wouldn’t do it. And they never, they never explicitly said “Do nudity.” They said, but the reason they canceled the show when they cancelled it was because it was something you could just see on network TV.

Jonathan Glassner
Well, that’s why it stopped at five years.

Jonathan Glassner
It stopped at three years didn’t it? It was five years?

David Read
Five years on Showtime.

Jonathan Glassner
Yeah, that’s why.

David Read
Okay, I can understand where they’re coming from, you know, if you’re going get this anywhere else, then why have it here, existing in time? If it’s successful, if it’s doing great, you know, to the point where it gets picked up another five years? Why, again, why fix something that isn’t broken?

Jonathan Glassner
Here was the problem with that. Is the deal that MGM made for the show, for financial reasons to make it producible because it was a very expensive show. Because it went into syndication, only like three weeks or something I don’t remember the exact time was, after it aired on Showtime. So if you just waited three weeks, you could see it for free. So Showtime needed their version to have something in it that made it so you’d watch it on Showtime and not in syndication. So that was the added problem. And I can’t knock MGM for doing that, because that’s what made it possible for us to make the show. But that’s what generated that problem.

David Read
That’s certainly true. I found the show, in its first run syndication, and it was 13 or 14 months after the the original had aired. And in the scheme of things, you know, when the Showtime is doing its rerun blocks, you know, a few months later, that’s not a lot of reruns to really pull that off.

Jonathan Glassner
Yeah. Were you in the States?

David Read
I was.

Jonathan Glassner
I thought it was less time than that.

David Read
It was either, it was, this was September of 1998 that I first saw the show.

Jonathan Glassner
I wonder if you were seeing the rerun of the rerun?

David Read
It’s possible. I always thought that I saw it the first time that it aired, Saturday night like 10 o’clock. And I was expecting Outer Limits or Poltergeist the Legacy and instead I got this really expensive ring and like, “Well, something’s happening here.” And so I watched the first part and it kept on going. It’s like, “Well, I gotta go to church next morning. So I’m going to tape good rest.” And so I did those and I was hooked. I was hooked after that. And then that Sunday night, that was the ABC affiliate. That’s Sunday night on NBC, Stargate was the movie of the week. What are the odds?

Jonathan Glassner
Oh, I’m sure that was intentional. I’m sure MGM put it on that way to promote the film.

David Read
Good for MGM because I got hooked after that. Absolutely. The pilot just all around you know, you have great cast you have for this you can stay at my place. You know, you’ve got the humor and everything is fully working there. And you have promise for much more at the end of that episode. The Broca Divide, was one of your episodes. And this was you know, Stargate, feeling itself out with the characters, now taking advantage of a historical concept. The Broca Divide and adapting it for the show. What are your, what are your thoughts looking back on on that particular episode? I know we’re reaching again for something very specific and esoteric.

Jonathan Glassner
The one thing I remember is the difficulty we had with the prosthetics on the people when they became…

David Read
Cro-magnons.

Jonathan Glassner
For lack of a better word, “Brocafied.” And, I was never completely satisfied with it. I thought it looked a little hokey, but it was hard to do because we had to do to a lot of people. If we were just doing it to one person it would have been spectacular, but we had to find a way to do it to a bunch of people and on a TV schedule. So I remember that being problematic. I don’t remember much else about it.

David Read
My understand was Rick stopped production, for it to have his headpiece redone.

Jonathan Glassner
Oh, that could be, it could be. Yeah, it was a constant nightmare. It kept, they kept pulling off, leaving seams and it was a mess.

David Read
You guys were figuring yourselves out.

Jonathan Glassner
You know, and it wasn’t just that it was it, you know, we never did that much prosthetic again after that. We would do a prosthetic on one person, or two people, but we would never have an entire race of people with it, you know, in the show where we had to have all the extras on it. So because we learned our lesson.

David Read
There’s some standout performances in that episode. I think Teal’c really grows in that show because he’s on his own. And he’s a fish out of water still pretty much at this point still figuring out how the Air Force works and how the team has to do what it does. Christopher was really beginning to shine in some of these stories when he wasn’t just the statue in the background of being, you know, “Look mean and take point.” You know, I mean, he had that presence to him, but the guy could act.

Jonathan Glassner
Yeah, yeah, I remember, one of the reasons we did that episode, if I remember correctly, was to give him some heroic time, some time to do more than just as you say, be the statue in the background. Everybody else had their shot at it. And we were having a hard time finding excuses for him to do it by himself since he was not yet fully trusted, you know, by the military. And so that was, if I remember correctly, that was episode one, that’s why we wrote that one was to find a way to make it so that he could be the one saving the day.

David Read
I think some of Christopher’s episodes, and moments are some of the strongest in that first season. We recently did a rewatch of Cor’Ai in Wormhole X-Tremists. And in terms of television trials, damn that’s good. You know, especially the scene between him and Rick and they are arguing over, what is, where, who does the buck stop with and it’s the Nuremberg question. And who does the buck truly stop with and you’ve got [inaudible] people?

Jonathan Glassner
Well, that’s what science fiction does best. That was one of those episodes where I was like, “Yeah, that’s what we should be doing more of.” That’s, and we had fun. I just remember having a lot of fun in the writers room on that one, saying, “Well, what can his argument be here? You know, what’s the other side of this?” And we had to play lawyer for a little while.

David Read
It was, it’s delicious to watch them because you can see on Jack’s face, that he in turn, that he believes he doesn’t think that, you know, he’s as guilty as Teal’c, because he wasn’t under such a malicious regime. But he knows in other ways, he’s just as guilty as Teal’c is with taking lives. And so as Teal’c is willing to let himself be hung for this, Jack isn’t, you know, Jack is like we had a job to do. And we did it. And now I’m your CO, and I’m telling you to keep your mouth shut, so that I can try and get you out of this. Extraordinary hour of TV.

Jonathan Glassner
Well, thank you. I know I that was one of my favorites, too.

David Read
One of my favorite guests.

Jonathan Glassner
You know what’s funny, though, is we were at those we were at sci fi, the science fiction convention in New Orleans promoting The Ark. And somebody asked me what was your favorite Stargate episode? And that I was trying to think of that one and I was trying to think of the Tok’ra and I could not remember the name Cor’Ai and it was, and I was, so I started describing the episode. It was embarrassing, but it was a long time ago.

David Read
So good show, people are still eating it up in droves. One of my favorite guest appearances in that first episode is Suanne Braun as Hathor. You co-wrote with I believe, David Bennett Carren and J. Larry Carroll. We bring this Egyptian figure to life in this show. And she did that with a tremendous amount of poise, you know, she still recalls very fondly that experience on the show. Can you tell us about casting Suanne?

Jonathan Glassner
I just remember seeing her audition and thinking she was great. It didn’t you know, it? There’s not a lot of story to it. That was about it. I will tell you that that episode was originally designed to be one that had nudity in it.

David Read
Oh, right. Yes. I saw the the illustrations.

Jonathan Glassner
And we very quickly, you know, that’s how far ahead we were on the scripts. Right? And we said “no, no, no. All right, we’re not doing it.” And so we went to the wardrobe people and said “Can you just make her sexy but not anything, not showing anything?” And that’s what they did. They came up was that wonderful outfit she wears most of the show.

David Read
Absolutely. And that was like real metal. She said that thing hurt her sides. You know, it’s sometimes you think that things are a certain way for television and other things. They are exactly as they appear or even perhaps more comfortable but she looks great as a result and you know, even she says you know, “It was worth it.”

Jonathan Glassner
Yeah, she, it’s interesting. One of the departments that don’t get enough credit on the show was the Wardrobe Department. I mean, the amount of wardrobe they had to manufacture and make, you know, most shows you can just go buy wardrobe, right? They had to make everything for these cultures. You know, the military uniforms obviously and the Earth, you know, Earth clothes they could buy, but the, you know, they had to make that from scratch, they had to design that and make it.

David Read
You really had to, Christina McQuarrie was just brilliant. You really had to find people who were willing to work those long hours in the trenches for not one typical show, but in some respects, like two or three of that wanted to, because you’re, I remember Richard Hudolin saying, you know, “Every week we do, we make worlds.” you know, that’s a huge undertaking, not everyone could just pull that off,

Jonathan Glassner
It was kind of amazing what they pulled off. And we would, you know, we’d go on the stage one day, and they would be they’d be stripping a set out. And, you know, four days later, there’s this, you know, massive, you know, set that normally would be like the standing set for a series that would be for the whole series. And this was just for one episode. It was crazy.

David Read
When you and Brad were drafting the first season and bringing it to life, was it your intent from pretty early on that Apophis was going to pay us a visit by the end? That Earth was going to come under direct attack, the promise of what the film really set out to suggest, with a larger enemy threat out in the wild, was going to come true that earth was going to be paid a visit?

Jonathan Glassner
We always had the idea that once we let the Goa’uld know we’re here, you know, and that we killed Ra, that they’re gonna want to come pay us a visit. And that’s how it manifested itself ultimately. But that’s where we started with saying, you know, when Brad and I were first starting working off the show we were looking at the movie and trying to stay as true to it as we could. We said, “Well they killed Ra but then what? You know, what are Ra’s people, whoever they are, going to do about it?” That’s kind of what launched us into Apophis and having him come back.

David Read
You get a great closure of this season. It’s when you stand back and you look at it, it really is a four-parter because you have There But for the Grace of God, you have Politics, you have Within the Serpen’s Grasp, and then you have The Serpent’s Lair. Man, am I a geek for just knowing that?

Jonathan Glassner
You really amaze me.

David Read
Part of me wants to say, “I’m so sorry!” The other part of me is like, “No this works!” There But for the Grace of God, I love it because we see everything go to hell. And the hairs are standing up on the back of my neck just thinking about it with Michael Shanks his line, They’re coming.” When he comes back over because we see just how bad it can get because we know in the show we’re not you know, the heroes are ultimately going to save the day with a certain amount of sacrifice. But in this case, you guys decided to show it all and that was a great stroke whoever came up with that idea is like you know what, “Let’s go to a place where we can we can tell a really dark story with our characters and let them experience this.”

Jonathan Glassner
I don’t know Brad probably said this to you but we we prided ourself on The Outer Limits of of destroying the earth at least once every fourth episode or so. And so, you know that’s what makes, that’s what makes it the most heightened is if you can take it right up to the edge of disaster and come through, you know? I directed those episodes in the last, the last image of the earth when they come up over in the, space shuttle’s coming up over the horizon. That’s what made my, the hairs on the back of my neck, which was by design.

David Read
“These shuttles they are formidable craft.” Oh yeah. what a shot. Absolutely. You know, we brought, you brought back, you wrote Within the Serpent’s Grasp with James Crocker and you directed like you said Serpent’s Lair. One of the things that Brad mentioned in the DVD was that it’s suggested that that Skaara and Klorel die. But in the editing room, you guys changed that around so that he escapes with Apophis, you use previous shots of Skaara and Klorel? Can you tell us a little bit about that?

Jonathan Glassner
Yeah, well, you know, this was a time when the Internet was really just starting up. And there were all these, they call them bulletin boards. BBs is back there, which is basically like, sort of like Twitter, I guess. But they were what’s more like Reddit. They’re they were topical bulletin boards. And so people, there was, there were Stargate fan bulletin boards and people were posting and when they saw the end of the first season that we had killed Skaara they went ballistic. The fans just hated that we had killed him. And so we responded. And we had already shot the second one. The you know, the Serpent’s Lair, Serpent’s Grasp, — Serpent’s Lair, Serpent’s Grasp, which is it?

David Read
The Serpent’s Lair.

Jonathan Glassner
Yeah. Is this, and so we went to the visual effects teams and we said, ‘Can we beam him up with Apophis?” And they cut him out of a shot and put them in that shot. And it satisfied the audience that at least he was alive.

David Read
It was worth it. And you know, it’s one of those. It’s one of those cool stories where it’s like, it’s the fans were being listened to. Now, even back in season two, that’s cool.

Jonathan Glassner
Today, today, it’s harder to, you can’t really do that today. Because there are so many sites and so many fans and so many voices, and it’s just overwhelming, your head will explode if you try to read all of it. But back there and it was really there were probably two bulletin boards dedicated to Stargate and that was it, you know. So you could go actually read them, which we did. And also back then people weren’t as mean as they are now. Because you had to use your real name you couldn’t use… So people were a little more polite,

David Read
Always wasn’t always about the next jab. But no, I mean, that’s there’s that I will say this for the Stargate crowd largely, is compared to the, for instance, the Star Wars crowd, it is largely very well behaved. And I think largely because it skews older. If you look at the demographic data for a lot of this, it’s, you know, 30s and 40s. And you’re presenting an intellectual product, which lends itself to intellectual discussion. So I will say that.

Jonathan Glassner
Which is fine. I mean, that’s true. I think that’s true of most science fiction. But then they’re still you know, the people who get angry and somehow managed to bring the today’s politics into it.

David Read
Oh, of course.

Jonathan Glassner
This is too woke, this is not woke enough for…

David Read
Right. Season two, I want to get to the Tok’ra and then and then cut off, because that’s obviously a big one. But before that we have, we have The Gamekeeper which you co-wrote with Brad Wright. This is one of my favorite episodes of the show. You have a [inaudible], well, for one thing, you use the top of Vancouver, Bloedel Conservatory, for the exterior and interiors. But also you had an incredible guest performance by Dwight Schultz. And we have a great peek into some of Jack’s history, which was rare. We’d never met his parents and the entire show. But we saw what he was doing in East Germany and what he had to do in the Cold War. And we saw the death of Daniel’s parents. And so it was a great sci fi idea. And it it allowed us to explore the characters a little bit more as well. What can you, what do you remember about The Gamekeeper?

Jonathan Glassner
I know that Brad and I came up with it on a plane, or sitting on a plane being flown to LA for a meeting or back to Vancouver from a meeting one or the other with studio. And we were just batting around ideas and came up with it on that flight. And then we went wrote it. I think we were in a hurry on that one. I think this was one of the times where we needed that sixth script. Because we were behind. And I remember being very excited that we got Dwight Schultz because I had grown up watching the A-Team. And thought that he was so funny on the A-Team, and he can do all those characters. And he’s perfect for the part, one that I heard we got him I was thrilled. And he was, he was great or the part. I mean, he’s such a character.

David Read
He is and under that hat. I mean, like whatever this thing is [pointing to hat]. He played that really well. It’s funny, you know, you’ve got everything’s blooming outside, he’s got the residents trapped in their virtual reality because he doesn’t want them to ruin the garden. And it’s just hysterical, though, just like, “You got to let the inmates out of the prison. The crisis is over.” You know, you can’t you can’t keep cultivating the garden just for your own little, so you can be king of your particular hill, you got to let these people out. It’s a great little story. I love that show. And again, it gives us a look at Michael acted as his pants off and so did Rick, you know, we get insights into both of their pasts.

Jonathan Glassner
That was one show where we really had a great cast. There wasn’t a weak link in that cast.

David Read
We have this idea with In the Line of Duty that our worst fear comes true, what happened to Kowalsky happens to one of our core team members. It’s a great moment. You’ve got the gliders blowing up the beach, and Sam gives mouth to mouth to one of the Nasyans who have fallen, and Jolinar takes her over. And we don’t know about the Tok’ra at this point, we have no idea who they are. And we’re like, “Well, we did this with Kowalsky and it didn’t work. How are we going to get Sam back?” You’re introducing the idea of the Tok’ra. And Teal’c is aware of them a little bit, you know, but I love that episode because, you know, it was great growth for Sam and it leads into the Tok’ra running one and two. Tell us about developing that offshoot of the race, the anti-Goa’uld.

Jonathan Glassner
There was a point where I said, “I’m getting sick of these Goa’uld all being evil, evil, evil, bad, bad, bad, and I don’t believe there’s any culture or race in the world, except maybe the Klingons, that are every single one of them are bad. There’s got to be some resistance to that within their own people. And that got my mind going and I started thinking well what if there are rebels within them that could actually help us? It would give them more dimensions, the Goa’uld themselves more dimensions and it would help us expand upon their culture and learn a lot more about their culture and it will give us a lot of story. Which ultimately did give us a lot of story and then when I got to the Tok’ra I thought about what is the most touching way we can do that and that’s when we came up with dad has cancer and the one way to heal him is to put a Goa’uld in him. And thank God for Carmen he was, because that part could have been really bad because he had to play two characters in the same body and without a really good actor doing it…

David Read
And with cancer.

Jonathan Glassner
Yeah. Without a really good actor doing it, it could have been funny. Funny in the wrong way, you know? And Carmen just nailed it. I wanted to give him a big hug.

David Read
He came back for so many shows. You know his death it was, that was a hard one to swallow. Because everyone knew him in the Stargate fan base as “Dad,” you know, Dad has passed away and it was just — that was his character. And he loved that part. He adored it and he adored Amanda and the rest of the cast. You guys really had a gem there. Absolutely.

Jonathan Glassner
Yeah, he was and he was such a sweet guy and talented. I wanted to cast him on every show I ever did but I never was able to.

David Read
He was busy.

Jonathan Glassner
Yeah, he was busy and I never had a part the part that was really…

David Read
Yeah that, it’s an example of one of those great setups you if you’ve got all the runway to put together an interesting story like that because he’s introduced in Secrets and his illness, which is another terrific episode itself, you’ve got multiple layers going on with Abydos and with Earth and the political intrigue is the Earth-side stuff is starting to come out so you know people, other people know about this thing, Kinsey is talking to somebody, but you really leveraged that with Carmen and with Jacob and Selmak, you have a great, you know, if something’s going on we just that we need a little bit more help, you know, we dial in Jacob, you know, we need this thing to see these bugs, you know, maybe we should check in the Tok’ra. Maybe they’ve got something going on there. It was a great, they were a great lever of an ally that we could go to, not like they could fix everything for us, but it’s like, okay, let’s let’s add some moving parts to this.

Jonathan Glassner
Yeah, it was somebody to go to, them and the Asgard became very much that.

David Read
This has been great Jonathan and I really appreciate you taking the time to go to one of your old shows and discuss through it a little bit more, while we’re eagerly anticipating the next one. And I think that you’ve, watching the pilot I think you’ve got a tiger by the tail here.

Jonathan Glassner
Well thank you.

David Read
This is going to be…

Jonathan Glassner
Wait till you see the rest of it, it gets better and better.

David Read
I can’t wait. Part of me wants to go back to him and say hey, “Give me the other three.”

Jonathan Glassner
This isn’t fair.

David Read
What am I chopped liver?

Jonathan Glassner
Yeah, I’m surprised they didn’t, you know, I think you might have asked for it before they had the other three. They gave the other three to everybody right before TCAs, so they wouldn’t get out.

David Read
Okay, well I can’t recommend the show enough to audiences. If you’re watching this, it means you like Stargate and if you like Stargate, this is going to be in your neck of the woods for sure. And give the characters a chance and give the setting a chance because you guys get off cooking with gas and it doesn’t let up. So I’m thrilled for you guys really,

Jonathan Glassner
Thanks.

David Read
My thanks once again to Jonathan Glassner, Stargate SG-1’s Executive Producer and Co-Creator for helping to make this episode possible. If you like Stargate and you want to see more content like this on YouTube, if you haven’t clicked Like yet please do so. I would really appreciate it. Dial the Gate is brought to you every week for free and we do appreciate you watching and if you want to support the show further, get yourself a t-shirt or a tank top, sweatshirt, hoodie, something, cup — variety of sizes and colors at dialthegate.com Just click on the Merchandise tab or you can type in your web browser dialthegate.com/merch. Checkout is fast and easy. You can use a credit card or PayPal. And thank you so much for your support. Things are cooking with gas with the show we’ve got a number of special guests lined up. This is current as of a few days ago. So by the time this airs this may be adjusted a little bit but I doubt it. If anything we’ll have more people added I’m in talks right now. James Titchener, Visual Effects Producer and Writer of a couple of episodes of Stargate SG-1 is joining us February the 11th at 12 noon Pacific Time. And then later that afternoon, evening, Anna Galvin multiple roles from SG-1, Atlantis and Universe. She was Chloe’s mom, she was the Sakkari consciousness, and she was the murdered lady in Mitchell’s episode, brains don’t fail me now, Collateral Damage. That’s it. All right. Anna Galvin is going to be joining us February the 11th at 4pm. It’s one of our later shows. I really hope you can make it. John de Lancie, Q himself, and Colonel Frank Simmons is going to be joining us midweek episode Wednesday, February the 15th at 11am Pacific Time. I know we’re a weekend show, but you know what, I mean, some of these guests, there’s no other way to do it. and if they say “Yes,” so do we. So we’re going to have John de Lancie oining us February the 15th. And then Linea herself is returning, Bonnie Bartlett, she is promoting her new book, Middle of the Rainbow: How a wife, mother and daughter managed to find herself and win two Emmys. So if you go to dialthegate.com, you can click on that or just go to Amazon and type in Middle of the Rainbow as well and that information is all there. Wormhole X-Tremists is continuing. I’m not going to go through Wormhole X-Tremists, except to say that on February 15th, we are doing a sci fi movie, Alien, in the middle of the week. So it’s our little reward for getting either halfway or a full way through a season. I didn’t want to do one until we had had a full season one, a full season of Stargate episodes under our belt with our core team. So we’re going to do that now. My thanks. Tremendous thanks to my moderating team Sommer, Tracy, Jeremy, Rhys, and Antony, you guys make the show possible behind the scenes. My Producer Linda “GateGabber” Furey. She’s also making, sending out a lot of emails and making some calls to make guests possible. And Frederick Marcoux at ConceptsWeb, our web developer over at Dial the Gate. Thanks so much for tuning in everyone. I appreciate it so much that watching the Channel continue to grow just means everything to me. My name is David Read for Dial the Gate. And we’ll see you on the other side.