Join us as five channels come together to celebrate the Stargate phenomenon LIVE in a round-table discussion with Stargate SG-1, Atlantis and Universe Co-Creator Brad Wright, hosted by The Companion!

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Timecodes
0:00 – Opening Credits
0:46 – Welcome and Episode Outline
3:00 – Introducing Brad Wright
3:50 – New Stargate?
6:50 – Outline for Today’s Event
8:10 – Introduction of Panelists
9:03 – Stargate’s Online Presence
10:33 – Introducing GateWorld
12:34 – Introducing Dial the Gate
16:02 – Introducing Sci Trek
19:13 – Introducing 3 Fries Short
24:24 – Sci Trek Interviews Brad
27:28 – MGM’s Transformation
30:08 – Destiny’s Mission in SGU
32:30 – The Descendants of Novus
33:30 – Concluding Universe and Atlantis
34:38 – Staying Ahead of Episodes
37:30 – Writing for Star Trek
38:45 – Retconning Stargate Elements
40:06 – Brad’s Golf Handicap
40:40 – The Furlings and the Fifth Race
42:54 – 3 Fries Short Interviews Brad
47:24 – Wrapping Up Stories Sooner
51:03 – Story-of-the-Week VS Serialized
53:00 – Upending Sci-Fi Tropes
54:50 – What the Stargate Community Means to Brad
58:36 – Dial the Gate Interviews Brad
1:01:01 – Universe Ending Early
1:06:22 – Prophetic Technology in Stargate
1:08:20 – Sokar’s “Early” Exit
1:10:01 – The Goa’ulds as Gods
1:12:27 – Opening Credits for Stargate Universe
1:14:05 – Omniscient Aliens in Universe
1:16:08 – GateWorld Interviews Brad
1:22:00 – The Third Aschen Story
1:24:15 – Unmade Stargate DVD Movies
1:30:33 – Stargate Is Contemporary
1:34:03 – The Companion Interviews Brad
1:35:29 – Switching Lives with a Character
1:38:28 – Companion-Fueled Charities
1:40:15 – Richard Dean Anderson Pops In
1:42:06 – Discussing Legacy Stories
1:46:05 – Stargate’s Guinness World Record
1:48:55 – Stargate and Oxford
1:52:43 – Upcoming Companion Content
1:54:00 – Final Thoughts from Everyone
1:59:15 – Wrap-Up

***

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

#Stargate
#DialtheGate
#TurtleTimeline

 

TRANSCRIPT
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Lawrence Kao
Hello everyone, my name is Lawrence, founder at the Companion, the Companion. I think that’s the first time I’ve ever said that in public, I sometimes say it to the team. You can tell I’m pumped because I’m also today’s host for a very special Stargate celebration. I think this is going to be the largest Stargate fandom collaboration in history and I hope this will be the first of many more to come. This event is being broadcast live on five YouTube channels including the Stargate OG Gateworld with Darren, an absolutely incredible Stargate resource. David at Dial the Gate, David is another OG in the Stargate fandom. Also some newer folks including Jay and Matt from SciTrek and my favorite gals, Stargate gals, Rebecca and Athena Tano at 3 Fries Short. And of course, this is being broadcast also on the Companion otherwise how would I be talking to you now. The live chats from every channel are being pulled through to our screens here so we can see them so make sure you leave lots of lovely comments. I do want to say there are many other amazing partners and friends that we couldn’t quite fit into this one event. If you love what we’re doing today we’d love to start a new tradition to be able to bring those friends into future celebrations. But focusing on today, if you’re not familiar with any one of the channels or podcasts or websites I just mentioned, please please check them out. If you like what they do, Subscribe and follow their channels. You know the classic saying “the rising Atlantis tide lifts all puddle jumpers,” right? Or is it “the rising tide lifts all boats?” No, I think it was right before, “the rising Atlantis tide lifts all public jumpers.” It’s cleaner that way. So I want to kick off the event first by bringing in our guest of honor, the Companion’s creative advisor, my mentor, Brad Wright.

Brad Wright
Hey Lawrence.

Lawrence Kao
Brad, how are you?

Brad Wright
I’m good, man. I’m good. I have all this setup of in my office with microphones and cameras and we defaulted to the iPad because it was the only thing that worked. But here I am.

Lawrence Kao
I’m pretty sure this happens every time we do something. Not on your side, my internet just dropped out.

Brad Wright
Oh no, I think it was my fault again. Probably a button I didn’t press or something.

Lawrence Kao
It’s gonna be really fun, this is what it is. It’s a celebration, it’s a party, who knows what can happen? A dog will wander through in the background, I’m sure. Well Brad, like all events that we’ve done together, I know fans will inevitably ask you about a new Stargate. They’re holding out hope that you’re going to be at the helm. You may know, you may not know, there’s been a lot of talk right now that Amazon has a panel today at New York Comicon and there’s always going to be speculation “is there new Stargate” or some kind of announcement? So, I wanted to first give you the floor to clear up anything about what we can say or can’t say and obviously we can talk about it now.

Brad Wright
MGM did call me to write a pilot for a new Star Gate four years ago now. A whole bunch of things happened that were out of my control and even out of MGM’s control. When MGM was purchased by Amazon, it was after the pilot I had written had been sitting on the shelf all throughout the pandemic. Amazon is a different company so they were thinking bigger so they are very likely to want Stargate as one of their tentpoles, it just makes sense. It’s an MGM property that did very well for them and still does very well for them. They’ll probably want to go bigger and they’re not consulting me. Nobody’s phoning me and saying, “Hey Brad, what do you think?” I get that, it makes sense,. It’s not the old MGM, so I’m in the dark. In fact, some of the people who are going to be asking me questions today, I think, know more about what’s going on with Amazon than I do. I’m cautious to say anything because maybe they will call me, but they haven’t yet and that’s fine. It’s their property, they own it and it’s not like I haven’t done my share of Stargate. I’m fine with it, I’m very happy that it will continue. I don’t know when it will continue or in what form, probably a movie. I haven’t got a call yet even about that so I’m as in the dark but also eager to see what happens as everybody else.

Lawrence Kao
You know through our conversations and emails and exchanges I am #teamBrad. Not to say I would hate any kind of new Stargate or MGM or anything but we’re always here to support you. At least I am here to support you, right, you know that.

Brad Wright
I do. It’s nice that there’s this ongoing online thing about me being involved. I also have to say and I say this every time; it was never just me guys. It was Jonathan, Rob Cooper has an enormous impact on this show. Paul and Joe, Cark Binder, Martin Gero, a whole bunch of people, a whole whack of people made Stargate, not just me.

Lawrence Kao
No, for sure. So Brad, I’m gonna give you a quick rundown and I’m gonna give the viewers a quick rundown of how today is going to work since there’s a lot of people waiting to join us in the back. This is going to be around an 89 minute event. Is that right Brad?

Brad Wright
89? Yes. I made sure to pee before I came on.

Lawrence Kao
We are eight minutes late, you have to go fast. Basically we’re gonna start off with a 10 minute roundtable discussion with you and all the other channel partners. I’m going to then take everyone backstage and I’ll bring each channel back on one by one and they’ll each have 15 minutes with you, to interview you. Except for us, the Companion, we’re only going to take 10 minutes in order to make that 89 minute math work as my promise to you. I also know some of the channels had had some of their fans send in questions or they might have unique kind of little segments, I don’t want to give anything away, so that might happen. But essentially, each channel and their community will have a dedicated 15 minutes with you. For the purposes of hosting the event, when there’s about a minute left in each segment, I will kind of pop back in, my head will pop in and kind of give people a little one minute counter and then bring in the next channel. Sounds good?

Brad Wright
Sure.

Lawrence Kao
All right. So time to bring in our panelists and this will be in the order in which the segments are going to happen. First up we have Jay and Matt from SciTrek. Hey guys. Next up, we’ve got Rebecca and Athena Tano from 3 Fries Short.

Brad Wright
Rebecca and Christina.

Cristina with 3 Fries Short
Hello.

Lawrence Kao
And then we’ve got David Read from Dial the Gate.

David Read
Hello, sir. Good to see you again.

Brad Wright
There you are. Your face was frozen for the longest time.

David Read
Oh no. Can you hear me okay?

Brad Wright
Yeah, I can hear you fine now.

Lawrence Kao
And of course we’ve got Darren from GateWorld.

Brad Wright
Darren.

Darren Sumner
Hey, hi everybody.

Lawrence Kao
Alright, thank you so much for joining and being part of the first ever Stargate Celebration. Pretty cool, right? So everyone here loves the show that you created Brad all these years ago. So first, Brad, I’d love to know your experience. Well, I’d love to hear your experience as to how almost like this entire industry of online entertainment, as you can see, has been created, that’s been spun off of your show. Do you have any thoughts on that?

Brad Wright
It’s interesting because when Stargate began we were going online and seeing things but you had to go to news groups, you had to really work for it. There was stargatesg1.com for MGM and then GateWorld popped up and it was this thing that it was like, “Hey, what do GateWorld think?” So nearly from the beginning there was this growing online presence. But the shocker, I don’t even know, shocker is the wrong word. Maybe the cool thing about it is that it has continued; the life of Stargate online has continued long, long after the show in. It trended yesterday on X. I want to call it Twitter but it’s I guess it’s X. But it was trending and that’s pretty cool all by itself because it’s been a while since we were on the air.

Lawrence Kao
Yeah, I think that shows the kind of love and admiration, basically the legacy that you’ve you’ve created really. So Darren, I’m gonna go to you first. Can you tell us a little bit about what Brad was alluding to; the origin of GateWorld, you started popping up and really how far it’s come? It’s still “the” source for Stargate.

Darren Sumner
It’s been a really amazing ride to be honest. Gateworld is celebrating its 24th birthday in a couple of weeks, right! It’s been the majority of my adult life, I don’t even have any children that are that age yet. But because we’re talking about fandom and we’re talking about history, I want to start by giving a shout out to the website that preceded GateWorld. There was a big fan site, Brad, I don’t know if you remember this? I think it was SG1.net and it was a high school kid and MGM ended up basically buying his site and bringing him on. He had a set visit in season four.

Brad Wright
I remember that but I don’t remember his name.

Darren Sumner
I can’t remember his name, I apologize if he’s watching. The story was he went off to film school and MGM bought his site and as these things tend to happen, it disappeared and it was kind of lost to internet history. I’ve been really proud that GateWorld has survived as long as it has, in part because, well number one because of Brad’s support and the support of the studio, the support of MGM and everybody at Bridge. We couldn’t do what we do if we didn’t have their support, my first set visit was in season eight. If we didn’t have people who wanted to watch the show and then come online and talk about it and read news and maybe even some spoilers now and again. It’s been an incredible ride, it’s been really wonderful.

Lawrence Kao
Thanks Darren.

Brad Wright
24 years, that’s amazing. You were a kid, you had to be a kid when you started?

Darren Sumner
I was one year out of college. I think I was 23.

Lawrence Kao
All right. That’s awesome. Well, David, I know you’ve been also a pretty big force in GateWorld too but I wanted to ask you really about your channel, Dial the Gate. I can’t believe it’s onto season three already, awesome, and the finale is coming up with Michael Shanks in a few weeks. So anyone who likes Michael Shanks, check that out! So David, tell us about GateWorld, I’m sorry, Dial the Gate.

David Read
Actually Brad was one of the reasons why I started this thing. He and I had been talking about doing some content way back, I actually got to sit down and interview him at Gatecon. I’m still hoping that that interview is going to be coming out at some point.

Brad Wright
That was like an hour and a half interview that never went anywhere.

David Read
It was a great 90 minutes. When COVID happened I was spending a lot of time on YouTube and I discovered the Archive of American Television. It is this amazing free library of interviews from everyone in the business. They were Joe Rogan format at the time, they were two and three hours long. We’re a few months into COVID and now all these actors, so many of them are Luddites, are being forced to learn zoom. That was the in where it was like, “we can just sit down and I can start archiving these stories through YouTube for the world and for free.” I’ll be clearing the hurdle of 230 episodes this month and we’re finishing with Michael Shanks. It’s an enormous amount of material and I’m so thankful to everyone who has contributed to it because it has just changed my life and changed how I look at this show that I thought I knew so well. So many people come on who just expand that corpus of knowledge. We’re busy transcribing all these episodes right now but Brad, I’d still love to have you on one on one.

Brad Wright
When you first asked me it was right in the heat of everything that was happening with [MGM and Amazon] and there was literally nothing I felt like I could talk about in the current time. Then I thought “oh, it’s still gonna happen” because MGM still wanted it to happen and then things started going away and then I didn’t want to talk.

David Read
Right, and I don’t blame you.

Brad Wright
I’m okay now. I’m okay now.

David Read
Have you seen the any of the work that we did with Rob and some of the others?

Brad Wright
I saw the one with Paul and Joe, I saw the one with Rob. I watched it, it was cool. You know way more about the show than any of us.

David Read
I am so thankful to the journey that you provided all of us. One of the things that I was, I’ll be real quick, in discovering is that you guys created content that meant something, but especially in talking to Rob, that wasn’t necessarily the goal, you guys were just entertaining people. That’s really the perspective that I’ve taken on so thank you.

Lawrence Kao
Brad, David’s catching up to you. You know, he’s gonna hit that 300 episode mark soon. All right.

Brad Wright
That’s true. But ours cost more to make, that’s the only difference.

Lawrence Kao
Jay and Matt, it feels like just yesterday we first started hearing about SciTrek and what, it’s been three years now? Is that right? Jay, what made you first want to get started in this space?

Jay from SciTrek
I started my first YouTube channel during COVID because I had nothing better to do. II was talking about mysteries and things and nobody watched. I started to get people getting really angry at me because we didn’t always agree with their version of the story. I thought “instead of having this YouTube channel where people shout at me, why don’t I talk about something I love?” So I started talking about sciifi and we were able to monetize the channel in like six weeks. It took me two years to monetize my first channel. Just through sheer luck we started to get some information, just really cool information, about what was going on with Stargate and a few other things. But for me, I just love talking about stuff that I love. Brad Wright, thankfully, was a big part of my favorite show ever made. Stargate SG-1, I’ve just finished watching Atlantis, so I’ve watched both of those this year. I’m going to watch SGU next and then Travelers is also on my list. I watch Firefly maybe twice a year. Those are basically the shows I watch over and over to the point where I can virtually go word for word, which is just sad.

Brad Wright
That is not sad. It is very cool actually.

Jay from SciTrek
It’s glorious, your words are literally ingrained in my brain. When I started this channel two years ago I was doing it for fun and now I’m sat on a panel with Dial the Gate and GateWorld and talking to Brad Wright. I don’t get it [brain blown].

Lawrence Kao
Matt how about you? How did you get involved with SciTrek?

Matt with SciTrek
I joined 18 months ago which Jay reminded me of today. I didn’t think it was that long but it was. Initially it was because I noticed he had no sort of community so I just reached out to him “you don’t have a Discord server, you don’t have this and that. Do you want me to set it up for you?” He was like, “Yeah, I don’t know how to do that.” I came on as the technical support, started making a few videos, I go on the lives every single week. For me, it’s all about the community so being here with all of you is fantastic. Seeing all these comments in the sidebar is really good, really nice. But yeah, just talking about Stargate in general is my favorite thing to do. People who know me at work get annoyed that I talk about Stargate as much as I do. My family, I talk about it constantly but they’re not laughing now.

Brad Wright
They’re not laughing now.

Lawrence Kao
All right. We’re gonna move on to my gals, let’s start with Rebecca. Her day job is a producer at the Companion but not tonight, I think she’s a secret spy and co host of the brilliant 3 Fries Short podcast. I see 3 Fries Short, I think in general, as like part of this newer generation of Stargate fandom content creator. I don’t mean because your podcast is newer, but really I feel like you’re leading the charge, I guess, in this kind of Stargate TikTok kind of community. Lots of followers and if you aren’t on TikTok or if you need to find a friendly place, a Stargate friendly place, Athena Tano and Rebecca, those are the people that you should find leading that charge. Rebecca, how has your journey been over the last three years on that?

Rebecca from 3 Fries Short
Really interesting question, I’ve answered it a lot. I’ll try to answer it really concisely since I have answered it so many times. Let’s see, I got COVID and I decided to do a rewatch of Stargate SG-1 in December of 2020. While I was sick, sitting on the couch, I was looking at Tik Tok and I was like, “I wonder if Stargate stuff is on TikTok?” Sure enough, it was and that led me to Christina and to Sarah who are my, we call each other co-fries, at 3 Fries Short.

Brad Wright
That’s good.

Rebecca from 3 Fries Short
And that led us to connecting with the Companion. We were able to record a video for you, Brad and Rick, for the celebration, what a year ago? A little more than a year ago?

Brad Wright
Yeah.

Rebecca from 3 Fries Short
Not long after that, and I think you even said to Lawrence “hire them” and he did. I get to work with the Companion now, it’s opened so many opportunities for us even, on the podcast. It’s been wonderful just to see that whole progression and I think Christina and I would both say that we have done things now in our two plus, two and a half years, of our podcast that we never would have imagined. We’ve interviewed people we never could have imagined so it’s been a crazy two and a half, three year ride for us I would say.

Brad Wright
Cool.

Lawrence Kao
Brad, I’m not sure if you’re familiar with TikTok. I know you do those dances sometimes off-camera.

Brad Wright
I’m all over TikTok. It’s not my face.

Lawrence Kao
It’s the moves.

Brad Wright
Yeah, it’s the moves.

Lawrence Kao
Obviously Christina, you can talk about anything you’d like to introduce yourself but if you can also describe to Brad what Stargate TikTok, as an experience, is like. I’m sure we’d all love to know.

Cristina with 3 Fries Short
Oh gosh, okay. Let me think about this. So Stargate TikTok is this carved out space where I think a bunch of quiet nerds showed up, dipped their toe in. We were just experiencing the app because we’re trying to figure out what it was. I feel like everyone’s kind of stumbled onto each other kind of like when you show up to like a high school dance and everyone’s in the middle and then quietly, the antisocial people peel off to the wall. They’re just watching and everyone just huddles up and extends against the wall. That’s how I found the community. I didn’t know why it was on there but I was just kind of going along for the ride. I made a couple of posts, just trying to be on trend but then TikTok said, “Oh, you love Stargate. Here’s all your other Stargate people” and started sending them to me. That’s what it feels like. It feels like everyone is there to have a good time, wants to be engaged, iss appreciative of community but we have our thing and we have our own little niche way of doing it. Whether you’re a cosplayer or you’re a commentary or whether you’re someone who just wants to watch and make friends; it’s all welcome and there’s no expectations. I think that’s really cool and that’s what that community is on TikTok.

Cristina with 3 Fries Short
We don’t do a ton of dances, you don’t have to do dances to be a part of it. But that’s where we grew from. Myself and Sarah, who can’t be here, are predominantly commentators and give a lot of rewatch critique. From that community was the ask, “you guys should do a podcast” and that’s when Rebecca came on and said, “hey, I can help produce.” So it is a community asked podcast that we really just stumbled out and said, “sure, we’ll do it.” Through authenticity and this fandom has become where we are now and we’re just along for the ride and enjoying every bit of it. That’s the best way to put it.

Brad Wright
That’s great.

Lawrence Kao
All right. I’m glad Brad, now you’ve got to know everyone a little bit. You’ve known some of us for many years, like Darren and David, decades. We’re gonna all kind of go backstage now and the first kind of interview segment now will be with Jay and Matt, SciTrek, and then hopefully I’ll see you in 15 or so minutes. All right.

Jay from SciTrek
Oh, that was good. That’s better than ours.

Matt with SciTrek
I liked that.

Brad Wright
The Companion is pretty good, they know their stuff.

Jay from SciTrek
We’ll just get stuck straight into it if we can because we’ve got 15 minutes and I feel it’s just gonna go quite quickly. Can I throw you the first question?

Brad Wright
Jump in man.

Jay from SciTrek
Cool. Right. So it’s me first. So Star Trek has shown us that keeping cannon straight is actually quite hard, apparently, and Star Wars at times. Stargate was always really good at it though. We always talk about how keeping the cannon is always really good in Stargate. there’s not many times I think you made mistakes. How did you keep it all straight? Setting all these rules up and things and were there any times that you can think of that it nearly went horribly wrong?

Brad Wright
Actually the first time it went horribly, horribly wrong was in the opening scene of the pilot but I’ve told that story. Apophis stepped through and then stepped back and we went, “you can’t do that!” We fixed it, sort of, not really. The reason we were pretty good at continuity is because we had a team of writers and directors that so enjoyed working together that we just stayed for the longest time. I don’t know of many cases, if any, where this has happened before but I left the show for a bit and came back. I came and went because I needed to recharge and spend more than a few days with my family. But I came back and it was, “Oh hey Brad, come back in.” I would always spin stories. Because it was me, Rob, for almost the entire show. Rob came on as a story editor early, early, early on, I think we were shooting the pilot, so from the beginning. So there’s that continuity and then Paul and Joe came on in season four. So somebody basically would just raise their hand whenever there was an issue. Whenever there was like, “oh, wait a minute. No, can’t do that.” Sometimes we would go “have we broken that? Is that a rule? Can we do that?” Then we’d say “sure” and so that’s when you create new cannon because you’re not contradicting anything. But I think it was just the continuity of the of writers and directors because on set, occasionally, a director would say, “Oh, well let’s try this” and somebody would say “you can’t do that with a staff weapon. It doesn’t work that way, It just does this.” So that was very helpful, just the rules of going back and forth with Stargate. It is really handy when everybody knows what those rules are and you don’t have to explain it to a new director because time is money in that situation.

Jay from SciTrek
Even when you went over to SG Atlantis and then SGU, it was sort of an extension of that team.

Brad Wright
It was, yeah.

Jay from SciTrek
You watched the crew and it’s like, “Oh, I know him from…”

Brad Wright
Rob and I both stepped back in the last two years of Atlantis a little bit. I kept coming in and help break stories and I wrote a couple I think. The Shrine happened in a year that I wasn’t on fully, but that was also to help free some time to develop and come up with something new because MGM was saying, “we’re going to need what the next thing is.” For whatever reason, Atlantis had a hard time, in terms of the business model, going beyond season five. That was fine. That was a business model issue more than anything else.

Jay from SciTrek
MGM was imploding at the time as well.

Brad Wright
Yeah they were. It was scary, it was scary. When they did implode it was kind of heartbreaking because people I knew, people I had talked to you for years, I would phone and it would be “so and so no longer works at MGM” and you go, “Oh, do you a number?” “So and so no longer works at MGM” That’s all they would say so yeah, it was kind of sad. Of course, we saw it coming in the last season in the Universe. It was like the Titanic heading toward the iceberg. It was like, “Oh shit, we’re gonna hit that iceberg. There was no way around. It was a slow motion perfect storm.”

Jay from SciTrek
It was heartbreaking for fans when it happened and now MGM basically doesn’t exist.

Brad Wright
They certainly do exist as a brand and as a library. There are people who work at MGM now, some of even the new people who I met when they asked me to write a pilot, have moved on. But MGM is one of the most recognizable brands in the world to this day. When Amazon buys something, it’s more than just a library, it’s that line.

Jay from SciTrek
I saw my first movie last night that was MGM. It’s called “Killing something.” It’s quite good actually but it was Amazon MGM Studios. It’s the first one I’ve seen.

Brad Wright
Interesting, interesting.

Jay from SciTrek
It was a moment I had to pause it, it’s like, “that’s a moment. I need to remember that.” But anyway, Matt, do you wanna jump in?

Matt with SciTrek
I do. I do.

Brad Wright
Oh sorry, we’re out of time. I’m kidding.

Jay from SciTrek
You wouldn’t stop him. He would reach through the screen and grab you if you tried.

Matt with SciTrek
You mentioned Stargate Universe there, which is probably my favorite of the three. How much of a plan was there for Stargate Universe? How much can you tell us about where they would have gone?

Brad Wright
It all had to do ultimately with the mystery and Destiny’s original mission. In Twin Destinies, that was intended to launch a whole new Ark. At the end of Twin Destinies, the crew basically gets sent to another timeline. We’re going to create, as we see in Epilogue and beyond, a whole bunch of humans that we could run into who would join in our quest and help keep the Destiny afloat and live and going. The transition was always supposed to be, and I think one of the problems with the show is we took too long to do this, it was supposed to be the wrong people on the ship. These people are not supposed to be here and then gelling over the course of a period of time to become exactly the right people to do the mission. That mission ultimately was to find out what the Ancients perceived as evidence of an intelligence that existed before the Big Bang, which had some spiritual impact on some people but also a science point of view. The other fun thing about that is the Ancients clearly figured that out or they would have gone to Destiny. They launched the ship hoping to do this and then went, “Oh, we got it.” Probably because they ascended. But we haven’t ascended so the idea of humankind taking over that mantle for our own purposes, I thought was always really interesting.

Matt with SciTrek
So you mentioned the descendants of the original crew that went back in time, would you have had those join Destiny at some point?

Brad Wright
We certainly already encountered them and because they moved on from that planet I had hoped that we would see seeds of them elsewhere in the next galaxy when we arrived there. Eli was going to fix the ship and we were going to emerge into a galaxy where there were also humans. They were our own descendants which is kind of cool. I just thought that was really cool. I remember the moment when I pitched that idea on the phone. I was in Arizona for some reason, I was on the phone with Robert and Paul and Joe and they went cool “we can shoot humans.” I was always objecting to the fact that if we’re a million galaxies away why would we run into humanoids? That’s why everybody was so alien when we met them.

Jay from SciTrek
The main question we got when we asked this out to fans was “will we get a conclusion to SGU? It’s the question, I know obviously we’ve no way of knowing but it is probably the most thing we’re asked.

Brad Wright
I get asked a lot too and whoever takes over the show may not even want to continue in canon. If they do, I’m pretty sure they have to answer that question “what happened?” I have come up with lots of ways and in my pilot script, addressed the issue.

Jay from SciTrek
It is a good way of putting it, “you addressed the issue.” That’s gonna get people asking questions.

Brad Wright
I don’t want to say what I did because whoever does it might want to do something like that and I don’t want to put it out there. In some ways it’s kind of an obvious solution.

Jay from SciTrek
Put it in your memoir? Tell us in your memoir maybe?

Brad Wright
I’ll put it in my memoir, Jay

Jay from SciTrek
Okay, as long as you get it out at some point.

Brad Wright
I can’t write a memoir because I don’t remember enough. I can tell you what happened at my kids birthday party that year, but I can’t, the show is a blur.

Jay from SciTrek
Doing 22 episodes? That must have just been…I hear stories about literally writing and then filming next day and things like this, that it was just…

Brad Wright
We were actually pretty good at staying ahead. I was a big big believer of giving the crew, and still am, a big believer in giving the crew time to prep a script. You can’t build the sets we were building with a script that you get during prep. I was developing story ideas with the art department. A writer would say, “why don’t we do this, this and this” and I would go down to the art department, or for that matter, go down to the the visual effects department and say, “can we do this? If we do this, let’s consider doing this” and that would be too expensive. So we would say, “okay, well let’s build this for this show but be able to repurpose the structure for this show.” You probably, for the most part, didn’t even know when we had done that. But preparation in producing as a writer/producer puts money on the screen and keeps your crew alive. Having said that, your lead way goes away, right? You start with 10 scripts or however many scripts and you think they’re in great shape but then when you read them…”okay, time to do a pass on the script.” You go “oh shit, I have to rewrite this thing completely.” It has generally less to do with the mechanism of the show, the mechanics of the show, than it does just the characters and the dialogue. There’s a ton of Stargates where I remember writing scenes, I’ll see it and go “I remember writing that scene” and then the episode, the credits will happen. I’ll go back and see what the credit was and “Oh, I guess I didn’t write that one or I did but my name is not on it.” A showrunners job is to rewrite and make sure that the characters all have the same voices for production. Something you think will be a great script at the beginning of prep isn’t necessarily going to work by the time you’re in August and you don’t have the money you thought you would.

Jay from SciTrek
I think it was actually Star Trek I was thinking about, that I heard stories about them literally writing scripts the day before and then sending them off. I remember watching Brent Spiner saying “I got a script one night and we were filming the next day.” He was like “I’m supposed to learn 30 pages?”

Brad Wright
Shit happens. I’ve been in the situation where I’ve had to write for the next day. An actor gets appendicitis or something, you have to make changes on the on the fly.

Jay from SciTrek
Or one of the directors falls over and hurts his ankle or something.

Brad Wright
Who knows, shit happens.

Jay from SciTrek
These things happen. We wanted to ask a question to sort of get a feeling of a bit more about you and what sort of thing you still watch now. If you got the chance to write an episode for something that was on TV now, or sci-fi or anything really, what would you love to like “I’d love to write an episode for that.”

Brad Wright
Well, that’s not really a fair question because I think you know the answer is Star Trek. I got into this business in part so I could write for [Star Trek] Next Generation. I really wanted to write for that show, I thought it was the best show on TV. When Terry Matalas did season three of Picard I was so jealous because I thought that ship had sailed. I told him so, I sent him a message and said, “Man, you just did my dream and you did it really great. You did it better than I would have so, congratulations.” If anybody asked me to write, I don’t care which Star Trek, I like them all, I would do that in a heartbeat. It’s not going to happen but if I would do it. it’s not gonna happen because you don’t bring in somebody from the outside as a freelancer anymore, that just doesn’t happen anymore. It used to, but it doesn’t anymore.

Jay from SciTrek
Two minutes Matt [inaudible]

Matt with SciTrek
So I’ve got the question – other than the Zat’nik’tel with the three shot rule, is there any other part of Stargate lore that you would have retconned in hindsight?

Brad Wright
Probably. Honestly, there’s a bunch of stuff that just…We ran through a lot of trees. You think, you write exterior, and you have to, you can’t shoot everything in the studio. I wish I could remove a couple of episodes just from the show. Emancipation is terrible. I know this, I’m not dumb, I knew then. I was like “Oh, this is gonna kill us.” But you can’t rewrite history, I’ve done a series about that too by the way.

Matt with SciTrek
I love Travelers. Travelers is one of my favourite shows.

Brad Wright
I’m very proud of it, it’s a good show.

Jay from SciTrek
I love that nobody noticed that the Zat looks like a penis. Did you just not realise that?

Brad Wright
Yeah, nobody noticed.

Jay from SciTrek
We’ve got two really quickfire questions from fans. [fan] asked us “how’s your handicap these days?”

Brad Wright
It’s down to a 13 index.

Jay from SciTrek
That’s not bad, that’s pretty good.

Brad Wright
That’s pretty good. I shot 82 yesterday.

Jay from SciTrek
Oh that’s very good.

Brad Wright
It’s pretty good.

Jay from SciTrek
Mine’s rubbish, three or something.

Brad Wright
It’s a hard game, man. It’s a hard game.

Jay from SciTrek
It really irritates me, I hit the ball and it goes to two o’clock so I think “I’ll aim over at 10 o’clock” then it still goes to two o’clock.

Brad Wright
No, you just need to adjust your grip Jay. We’ll talk about that another time.

Jay from SciTrek
Yeah. Last one.

Matt with SciTrek
Last one. This is from [greyhammer], I think I said that right? “What do the Furlings actually look like?” We all have the image at home of evil Ewoks, little Ewoks.

Brad Wright
Okay, sure, that’s what it is. Robert was writing an episode called The Fifth Race and he wanted it to be The Fifth Race because it sounded cooler than he Fourth Race. As he was listing the things we “Okay, the Nox. Okay, the…you know.” He needed another name and he came up with the Furlings. I remember reading the script and I went “Furlings? Who the hell are the Furlings.” He went “I needed another name.” That is the extent of their creation, true story, which is why we mocked it so much in the 200th episode.

Matt with SciTrek
So the Furlings are basically whatever we think they look like.

Brad Wright
Sure, sure. And if you think that we sat around and “I think Furlings are this and that,” no. It was Rob needed another name and that’s what it was. Coming up with alien’s names is not always easy and we probably regretted that one.

Jay from SciTrek
We said the Furlings should be the villains in the new show wherever it comes out. We joke about the evil Ewoks quite a lot.

Brad Wright
Yeah, sure. It’s probably not a very good idea to make everybody furry in a television show.

Jay from SciTrek
Those poor actors.

Brad Wright
Yes, exactly.

Jay from SciTrek
Brad thank you so so much. 15 minutes is not long enough Lawrence.

Brad Wright
Well, I will lose my voice by the end of this so you got first at least. It was great to meet you Jay, personally. I watch your stuff, you know more about what’s going on at MGM than I do and I appreciate the insight, so thank you.

Jay from SciTrek
Thank you, that’s amazing, good to know. We’ve been very, very lucky. just stupidly lucky. Thank you so much.

Lawrence Kao
All right, thank you guys. All right, so next up, we’ve got 3 Fries Short.

Rebecca from 3 Fries Short
Hello, Brad.

Brad Wright
Hi. That is a really cool logo by the way.

Rebecca from 3 Fries Short
I love it. We quite like our theme song as well. So we are 3 Fries Short and you may have noticed there are only two of us here right now.

Brad Wright
You’re one fry short.

Rebecca from 3 Fries Short
We’re one fry short, yes. We wanted to play a video from Sarah, she has a question for you. We’ll just kick it off with that first if Tommy can do that for us.

Sarah from 3 Fries Short
Hello and welcome to the segment of 3 Fries Short: Unearthing the Stargate. I’m your co-fry Sarah who could not be there today so 3 Fries Short will actually be one fry short of being 3 Fries Short, I guess, or something like that. Something we’ve discussed on our podcast is how Stargate came around at a very particular time when meta arcs were becoming the norm with TV; how everything was tied together as one big plot line for a season. With SG-1 we got a really good mix of story of the week episodes, but then episodes that were also tied into bigger plot lines. We went to a lot of worlds and met a lot of characters that were just a one time thing and we never saw them again, like “What fate Omoroca?” man and Urgo. It was really a pleasant surprise when a world or characters would return kind of out of the blue like the Tollan, I was super surprised when they came back. Or the robots from Tin Man, I truly never thought we would ever see them again and when they had their follow up episode, my mind was blown. My question for you Brad is, are there any plot lines or characters that you wish you could have revisited or developed more that you just couldn’t get to?

Brad Wright
I guess. We always created characters or a character with the intention of adding to the mythology. The “What fate Omoroca?” guy, Nem, I think his character name was. I cannot believe I remember that, if that is it, maybe I didn’t remember.

Rebecca from 3 Fries Short
No, I don’t know either.

Brad Wright
His story was so personal and small. He wanted to know, basically, what happened to his mate, the other person in his life. That story felt complete. Whenever a story feels complete, it’s over right? So that’s cool. I wanted to do another…another set, you know what? I don’t want to say specifically because there was a lot that we planned or could have going forward. The nature of the structure of how we did Stargate is how I like to do TV, I call it like “a hybrid.” Yes, modern storytelling is one big story but even the best versions of that, like The Last of Us, do spectacular one off episodes that are a window into the larger picture. This is this story, this personal and intimate story that expands on a character, builds a world from a character perspective. Those are important to me and the fact that we managed to continually remind ourselves of a thread that we needed to pick up on, that we had left at the end of a previous season. What we would do at the end of each season, we would say, “okay, we have to revisit this, this, this and this. I think we’re good about this. I think that story feels over, doesn’t it?” That’s basically how it happened. I can’t think of another specific one that I would love to…Dom DeLuise was just fun. We did the Urgo character, I think Tor Valenza pitched the story for Urgo. I said “we would need like…” and Peter was consultant writer and director at the time and he said, “like my dad? and I went, “yeah, would he do it?” He said, “Yeah, I’ll ask him” and that was that. He expended so much energy in that performance, I don’t know that he would have come back anyway. But that story was told, you know what I mean? The story was told.

Cristina with 3 Fries Short
Sure. Absolutely. So kind of a follow up to that and you mentioned this a little bit earlier with SciTrek. There’s some episodes that you’re like, “I wish I could just get away with.” I think we all agree about Emancipation. But on that note, what are some storylines that maybe went past their expiration date in your mind and you would have liked to wrap them up sooner? What’s your process when you’re like, “I need to be done with this. I want to be done with this” but you have to wind it down? Is there a storyline within Stargate that you would have wrapped sooner?

Brad Wright
By the end of season seven, we thought we were ending the show every season. We thought this would be the last season. We found ourselves wrapping up storylines and defeating the goa’uld, they’re kind of defeated. People talk about the new show and “who will be the goa’uld?” Well, we kind of defeated the goa’uld. So I was kind of happy to move beyond that villain, the villain that we created. We didn’t really create, we borrowed from the feature, we just said that Ra was a goa’uld. It’s fun creating new villains. Rob came up with Ori entirely on his own as a new villain for season eight and nine, nine to ten, of SG-1 because he felt we needed a new one. I think that whatever the new Amazon series or movie is, I think it will need a new one. I think a new villain is necessary unless they do a reboot.

Cristina with 3 Fries Short
Absolutely.

Brad Wright
Did I answer that question?

Cristina with 3 Fries Short
I think so. What I get from that is you would have liked to wrap the Goa’uld up much sooner [inaudible] you keep killing them off. To your point, I think the Ori were a great villain and they only had a short window of time. We got their continuation through the movies that came but it’s interesting to hear that because now that I think of it in that perspective, they do, the goa’uld, they keep dying and coming back and it does get a little rinsed out.

Brad Wright
Well Teal’c was one of our main characters and he was tied in, and he was a First Prime, he was tied into that world. So for his sake alone, it was important that they be around for a long time and they were so dominant in our galaxy for the longest time. By the time we were moving on to other galaxies, and I remember even objecting to that, going, “we can’t just go to another galaxy. The galaxy is enormous, you can’t just leap around galaxies” and then we ended up doing it. I thought a new enemy, maybe I’m telling you a little bit about my pilot, should come from another galaxy. If they have access to this one, maybe there’s a whole new story that could happen there. Yes, I’m telling you about the pilot I wrote that will never see the light of day probably.

Cristina with 3 Fries Short
It’s just us here, nobody’s listening.

Rebecca from 3 Fries Short
There’s nobody out there.

Cristina with 3 Fries Short
I love this, though. That’s really exciting. I won’t push that question, we won’t go that far but I would love to hear about it but we’re super mindful of it. Yeah, Rebecca.

Rebecca from 3 Fries Short
So you kind of answered one of my questions about the pros and cons to those those plot structures; the kind of story of the week versus the metaplot. There seems to be a lot of backlash, especially in Star Trek, with the new trek versus…Everybody’s like “Strange New Worlds is great” because it is story of the week versus Discovery or Picard or something that has that overarching arch. I think you kind of talked, you touched on…

Brad Wright
Let me add to that because the rationale for it is I believe that the person who just checks in for one episode deserves a story. They don’t deserve a chapter in a book, they deserve a story. If you miss an episode of whatever, you deserve to sit down and have something that has a beginning, middle and an end and this is the story. Does it to tie into the larger arc? Hopefully, maybe absolutely. But I think it’s very important that the constant viewer get rewarded with a large arc and the frequent, if not slightly infrequent viewer, gets a story when they tune it. I think that’s only fair.

Rebecca from 3 Fries Short
It’s kind of like trying to jump in to a comic book character or something. You have no idea where to go.

Brad Wright
Also, I’ve watched shows that I have enjoyed and liked and missed an episode or two and gone “what the hell is going on? What did I miss? I missed one episode. How the hell is this happening?” I don’t think that’s cool. Well, it is cool when you’re binging it and you watch everything. I just think maybe it’s the way my brain is wired. I think in terms of story so when I come up with an episode it has a story. Yes, it ties a little larger arc but it also has a story.

Rebecca from 3 Fries Short
I love that. I’m gonna move right into this next question here, which is we did a whole episode on tropes in Stargate.

Brad Wright
Tropes?

Rebecca from 3 Fries Short
Yeah, so the question is – do you have a favorite trope or a least favorite trope? Have you ever upended a trope to like taking it and just completely flipped it upside down?

Brad Wright
I can’t think of a specific example but I think that was what we were trying to do a lot. The truth is, in science fiction, somebody pitches an idea and you go, “Yeah, but that was this” or “Star Trek did this.” Because I’m such a huge sci-fi nerd I would also go to books and say, “yes, Asimov did that” or whatever, whatever, whatever. So if you’re going to do it, using Window of Opportunity as an example, if you’re going to do Groundhog Day, you embrace it. You say, “okay, we’re doing Groundhog Day, we’re just going to make it the Stargate version and we’re going to have it have meaning by the end. It’s not just oh, “we live the same day over and over and over again.” That last scene, those last scenes with Malikai, I can’t believe I remember that character’s name either, and Jack about letting go. They resonate in Jack’s own life. It’s funny and it’s great but it’s a trope that we put our own spin to it. We made it the Stargate version of that trope.

Rebecca from 3 Fries Short
I think we, definitely yeah, we came to the consensus that Stargate does that the best because of that.

Cristina with 3 Fries Short
I think selfishly we love that episode because that’s where we named ourselves from, is “three fries short of a happy meal.”

Brad Wright
Three fries short of a happy meal, I figured that out.

Cristina with 3 Fries Short
Very appreciative of this episode.

Rebecca from 3 Fries Short
Christina, do you have another question?

Cristina with 3 Fries Short
Someone already asked about the Furlings in this space so I’m going to be [inaudible] because that was such a great answer to it. Let me In my mind put this the right way or ask this the right way. I’ve heard you talk a lot about this community and feeling this attachment with Lawrence and the Companion. Just taking a peel back from the Stargate space a bit, I would just love to hear what does the community mean to you. We’re having this chance with everyone coming together from decades old to newer and I don’t think maybe there’s an awareness of how much we all love and adore what you’ve done for this community and who you are in this community for us. I’d love to hear from you what this community has done for you.

Brad Wright
I’m always surprised, I’m always blown away when people express how much the show means to them personally and how much they give me credit for that. I always go “you’re giving me too much credit.” I was the chair at the end of the table but the table was full of people, really smart, creative people who deserve props for everything that they did on the show. Here’s a little metaphor for you. I also want to move on myself, right. I also consider myself an artist who wants to come up with a new show and does a new show and I’m pitching new stuff all the time. Travelers was, to me, a completely different departure but when the Stargate fandom embraced, it was lovely for me. I was like, “Oh, I get a sense of Stargate in Travelers” and that’s because I suppose my writing has a style and Travelers was in that style. That was lovely, that was lovely. The only other metaphor I want to give you, I went and saw Peter Gabriel in concert and the audience loved him. It was a whole arena full of people who adore Peter Gabriel and I was one of them. Everybody was listening to his new album and going “this is good. This is really good. This is terrific. This is terrific.” Then when one of his old hits came on everybody went nuts. He recognized “Yeah, I know, this is the reason you love me.” As an analogy, I know whatever I do now, I’m trying to continue to be an artist and I hope it’s really, really good, but I know that fandom and the community are going to “I’m the Stargate God.” So thank you for that, it’s a badge that I will wear with honor.

Rebecca from 3 Fries Short
Thank you so much Brad, for talking to us. It’s been a wonderful opportunity and thank you for being here for everybody today. It’s such an exciting event.

Brad Wright
It’s fun. It’s a great idea, Lawrence, good idea you had.

Lawrence Kao
Me? Oh thank you. Thank you Christina and Rebecca, amazing. I’m actually sweating backstage. I’m typing everyone, “Oh man. They’re asking such good questions. I have to reformat everything now.” Speaking of good questions, it’s now David and the Dial the Gate segment.

Brad Wright
David’s going to stump me, I know it.

David Read
God, I love these logos. They’ve just done such a great job.

Brad Wright
Yeah they’re good.

David Read
I am gonna reach out to whoever this is and say “I need some help over here.” How are you?

Brad Wright
I’m very well thanks. You David, how are you?

David Read
Good. I went to John Williams live at the Hollywood Bowl five or six years ago. It was just one of those bucket list items and the whole night was euphoric. He finished with the Imperial March and the whole place, the entire night, was just insane but when that played the whole place turned upside down. I’m so glad to hear that you also recognize, it’s the reason why you’re here, that what Stargate means to us is also what it means to you. You can still come up with new great shows like Travelers and new ideas but at the same time we can still go back and love this thing that you created with all these amazing people for seventeen seasons.

Brad Wright
Yeah, seventeen seasons is a giant chunk of my life and I would never turn my back on it. The desire to create different kinds of art, new shows, is just because my brain, I just keep coming up with stuff. Whether or not, I may be retired, you never know, but hopefully I’m not and I get another chance. I thought that was going to be Stargate for a little while and I went “do I really want to do this? Sure, sure you can do this.” Realizing that I was going to not please everybody and there was still going to be people “this isn’t the Stargate we want!” But I still accepted the challenge, if you will, because they called me. To not be doing it, I’m also okay with that. I’m completely sanguine about it because somebody had to take over eventually anyway.

David Read
Have you seen The Orville?

Brad Wright
The show?

David Read
Yeah.

Brad Wright
Yeah, of course.

David Read
We’re hoping to see season four but it was finished in such a way in season three that I, as a huge fan of it, was even like, “if this is it, that’s okay.” I’ve always felt that way about SG-1 but not for Atlantis and Universe because they were ripped from us in terms of fandom. I will repeat that SGU, as one of the earlier folks said, is my favorite show.

Brad Wright
Thank you.

David Read
That was really hard.

Brad Wright
That was a tough one. It was a tough one and I dug in my heels when they suggested that we end it. I am probably one of the few, I love the ending of that, season two. I just love the music cue that Joel did, speaking of John Williams

David Read
Will you tell me about that call with Joel, him playing over the piano.

Brad Wright
He played it for me on the piano, live.

David Read
I miss him. I miss him a lot. I met him twice. The first time he met me he said, “give me a hug.”

Brad Wright
It was one of the last times I spoke to him, that’s why it’s so sad. It was such a good cue and to this day it haunts me. As an episode, as an ending of an episode, it’s beautiful. It was a beautiful season finale and because it ended up being a series finale, I still think it’s beautiful. Do I wish we had an opportunity to continue? Absolutely. In fact, I started writing a movie, a sort of a rescue mission movie, where characters from Atlantis and SG-1 went to save the Destiny. I thought, “well let’s wrap it up at least in that way.” When I found out that MGM really had no interest in doing that it was heartbreaking. We kept the set up, right? We kept the set up for the longest time and then it was okay, “We can’t afford to keep the lights. Okay, let’s take donn the lights.” When I walked into that empty stage, I couldn’t watch them take the set down. I walked into the empty stage, it’s really sad too.

David Read
I’m thankful that you guys pulled pieces from that for Travelers because pieces of Destiny were in that show. That was a big deal. Brad, what can we do to get Joel’s music out to people? I have been beating the drum. When I was there as a freelancer for MGM I was like, “What can we do to get this music out?” Who has it? His widow?

Brad Wright
Possibly, possibly. When the Continuum score, I can’t even remember what it was. I think it was the Continuum score, when it was released, I talked to the music guy and I said “it should all be released.” It’s MGM music so it will end up being Amazon Music Department and it just needs to be done. The truth is his music is so so great. It elevated the show beyond the show. I don’t mean to belittle the show but without his expertise, he made the show better than it was, just because his music was so amazing. I can hear cues in my head, I can play the Window of Opportunity [hums tune]. I remember the first time I heard that, I went “oh god, that’s perfect.” We would listen to a day one mix, and Joel would send me individual cues, and I would just listen to the music independent of a picture. Our interaction was pretty constant but I didn’t spot with him. I didn’t say “oh music should go here. I’m not going to tell you what to do; where the music should go. Your Joel Goldsmith man.” It was great. I miss him to.

David Read
Absolutely. I am the same about that last piece of music from the show. I think that’s the best piece of music that he ever wrote, you could feel in his heart that it was the culmination of his love for that for that franchise. I have a hard time rewatching that last 15 minutes because “someone just take take a steak knife on my heart, man. Just cut all the way through because that’s what it feels like.” There are fan versions of that online. Because they couldn’t get it released, fans have gone and recreated it and it’s just beautiful. No one will duplicate him, no one. Stargate ended up including a number of episodes which turned out to be prophetic, especially on the technological front. Revisions I am constantly referencing right now because we know that it’s coming. We know that wireless integration, at some point, will be a part of our society in the next 100 years. That’s it, we’re going to be plugged in. Neuralink, I think, is the birth pains of that. Are there any stories you felt turned out to hit closer to home than you expected?

Brad Wright
That’s interesting you say that because my producing partner, Carrie Mudd, we did Travelers together. She asked me the same question and then the same thing happened in Travelers. We did a an episode that, speaking of prophetic, everybody thought, “oh my god, they predicted COVID.” It was just a pandemic episode and then a pandemic happened. There are lots of little things, like in Universe, I was worried about the batteries. I said, “Well, why don’t we just create this thing, we’ll call it a charging plate and you put your flashlight on it and then the batteries work again.” We wrote that scene into the thing and now I put my phone down on a…no, we did not invent that. It was just simply an easy way of getting around the fact that we were out of batteries and it made sense. Clearly there were engineers working on that technology before, but it is kind of cool.

David Read
Absolutely it is. Were there any others that stand out?

Brad Wright
In Travelers? In Travelers yes. But in SG-1, we’re going way, way back. A lot of the technology that we came up with was naturally going to happen.

David Read
Urius Tosh wanted to know “why did you do Sokar so dirty? Apophis totally stole his arc.” I think this goes back to a larger question of what audiences expect of the villains in terms of lead up. It was certainly a shock to me when I was watching, “okay, a moon just took him out. That’s probably over.” I spoke with Jonathan a little bit about this, specifically to Sokar, and in a larger conversation of villains in general, was it an expectation like, “okay, we’re done with this guy. Let’s throw the audience a curveball and nuke him and return to Apophis” which was not necessarily expected. Certainly Darren didn’t expect it, he created GateWorld because of it. I’m sure he’ll talk about that.

Brad Wright
I honestly don’t remember the rationale in the moment. It might have even just been practical. Apophis was our ongoing guy so it was kind of cool to bring him back to. What did Jonathan say? I don’t remember.

David Read
He was very much like, “the character has fulfilled his purpose. We’re moving on.”

David Read
You could have gone on with him for a couple more years.

Brad Wright
That was probably it.

Brad Wright
There were so many Ancient gods that the Goa’uld were adopting, we could jump, we could just have new ones.

David Read
If I may insert really quickly here, what’s posited early on in season one is that the goa’uld either we’re here on Earth or they took on the personas of our gods. Which do you think it was in the final analysis?

Brad Wright
I think that they came and transplanted humans to their own worlds and adopted their gods. Maybe it went both ways to a certain extent. We didn’t invent that concept, we borrowed that from the movie and then expanded upon it, that’s all. That’s to me what it was. If you think about it, it’s a pretty powerful way to take over a culture. To say, “yeah, I am that guy.” “Really?” “Yeah, I can fly, I have a spaceship.” “Okay, well you’re a god then. You are that god.”

David Read
In Wormhole X-Tremists we just rewatched the episode where, I’m 40 now and these names are going away, the episode where they go through the Stargate and they find a religious society who, they’re uncovering the gate and it’s going against their religion. We had the conversation in the episode, “what if Christ came back?” What percentage of the population would just be like, “No, I don’t believe it.” This is real?” How far are you willing to go to prove something wrong that you know “this can’t be real. Someone’s got to be faking this with our news and everything else now.”

Brad Wright
There’s two things that come to mind. One is the Arthur C. Clarke quote, “any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic” or supernatural by extension. The other one is, I can’t remember what season it was of the original TNG series, where an alien posed as the god of a culture and…

David Read
Devil’s Due, Ardra

Brad Wright
There you go. See, you knew it. But I remember the episode and that is that structure. There it is, right in one episode.

David Read
HarveyAndToddTheWraith – If you could go back and change it would you have added a full opening to SGU? Opening credits.

Brad Wright
Oh, I thought you were talking about the Wraith. That’s the person’s name, got it. Whatm Harvey? No, I loved it. Here’s the funny thing, this is a true story. Syfy wanted us to shorten the the credit sequence for Atlantis, you probably know this story. But Joel had written this gorgeous, beautiful piece and the one thing that allowed me to win the argument, basically as we were still in the midst of arguing about whether or not it should be a short thing or a long thing, was Joel got nominated for an Emmy. I thought, “okay, well if you want to cut the Emmy nominated music down to nothing? Okay, I guess we could do that.” It went very well, in my [favour]. Television changes and it evolves. Even in Travelers, I remember Carrie and I going over about how long the opening sequence should be. Netflix said any opportunity you create for somebody to turn it off or fast forward or just switch channels. that’s what short titles help you with. So we made it 18 seconds.

David Read
I have one question for you remaining. It’s kind of like a yes or no, if you want to expound on it it’s up to you. Throughout the run of Universe there appeared to be omniscient aliens interfering with Destiny’s path such as when they created a solar system, where some of the Destiny settled and were later miraculously returned to the ship to end their lives again with their colleagues. Did this race have anything to do with Destiny’s ultimate mission?

Brad Wright
It could have, it certainly could have. We wanted there to be a race of beings that at least rivalled the Ancients, but not necessarily the Ancients, in fact not the Ancients. They were pretty powerful and they were clearly trying to understand us and trying to do things for us. But for me, we wanted them to be as powerful, more advanced than we are as we are to ants. They didn’t have to be omniscient and they didn’t have to tie into the arc of the show as we saw it, but they certainly could have.

David Read
Brad, thank you for doing this. It means so much that all of us can sit down with you together and I’d love to get you on Dial the Gate next year.

Brad Wright
Well I’m glad we had this and I knew you were gonna ask a question that would make me choke over something. You’re the Barbara Walters of interviewers David.

David Read
Barbara Wawa. Thank you, Brad.

Brad Wright
Thank you.

Lawrence Kao
Thanks, David. I am frantically now crossing off my questions. Another great interview. Oh man, I wonder if there’s any material left? Next up is Darren with GateWorld.

Darren Sumner
I have the same experience; kind of being towards the end of the queue, listening to all these great interview questions and just enjoying everything as it goes.

Brad Wright
Just wind me up. I can talk for 15 minutes, you don’t have to worry about it.

Darren Sumner
Folks might know if they’ve been around for a while, GateWorld used to visit the set annually when you guys were in production. I was a kid, I was really nervous walking around, talking with Joe Flanigan. Torri Higginson and Amanda Tapping. Then we’d go upstairs to the writers room and you were the easiest interview. I could just walk into your office, plop down on the couch and say, “Brad, what’s going on?” You would talk for 20 minutes.

Brad Wright
I’m like a wind up toy. I can just pull my string and off I go, “Yap yap yap yap yap yap yap.”

Darren Sumner
I want to ask you first about your craft. I’ve been following your work since the Outer Limits all the way through years and years of Stargate and through Travelers. As you’ve moved through your career and had those different experiences, what are the elements that you would say make up a good writers room? The different writers rooms that you’ve been a part of, how have they differed from each other?

Brad Wright
That’s an interesting question. The Outer Limits was, because we were each writing individual stories there was never an arc that we had to worry about tying into. I would go into Jonathan’s or Scott’s or Manny’s office back in season one and say, “how about this?” and they would say, “that’s cool, let’s pitch that to Trilogy.” Trilogy was the studio, not the studio, MGM was the studio, they were the production entity that sold the Outer Limits to MGM. So we’d have to pitch that and it would just be like a document, “what about this?” They would just go “yes, no, yes, no” and we would either write an outline and it would get developed further or I would just write the damn thing and say, “here, how about this.” We got so desperate on the Outer Limits because we were a little behind when I started on that show. Jon [Glassner] and I were very good at working together and spinning story, Jonathan and I, and we did that on the Outer Limits together. When we came to Stargate, the writers room was catch as catch can. We were never all together for any length of time, except at the beginning of the season, in a real room and long enough to even call it a writers room. It was like, “hey guys, can we steal an hour?” and we’d all sit and we’d spin the idea or whatever we needed to spin. That kind of just carried over into the rest of the rest of the show except for the beginning of the season and the end of the season when we actually were able to sit down. We did not have a structured writers room in the same way that, for example, I was able to do on Travelers. With Travelers we had three or four weeks and all through prep it was me and the writers spinning stories, breaking stories on the whiteboard. All which we did in Stargate but in a more structured way and in a more “all at once” way. Part of it was because Jon and I were also producing the Outer Limits so we just didn’t have time. We were like grabbing time to put stuff on a whiteboard and break stories. We got better at it and we started devoting more time to it. I have to say, there is no more fun place than a writers room when you’re on fire. Especially when you have people as funny as Martin Gero and Paul Mullie just making you cry laughing at anything that we’re discussing, in context or out of context. That continued into Travelers. It is just so much fun to spin stories. It can be frustrating as hell, it can be painful. You know there’s something there but the thing is in the way, or whatever, and you don’t have an act four. “It’s always act four” as Joe Mallozzi would say. But it’s so satisfying when you come away and drive home and think “yeah, that was good. It was exhausting.” It can be really exhausting but so much fun. Another thing I learned on Travelers was you break a story, and this is what we started doing, we broke the story again. We would wipe it off the board and do it again. Amazingly, when you try to do it a second time, all the glue and spit that was holding together the version one reveals itself. It quite often is different and it’s like the second pass on any draft. But by starting from scratch it’s like a proof of concept. The proof that “oh yeah, this is a good story” or “this isn’t a good story.” But there is no more, there is no more fun place in the world than a bunch of people in the writers room.

Darren Sumner
One of the really fun stories that you contributed to the Stargate world was season four’s 2010 and season five’s 2001. We’ve heard whispers over the years that the Aschen we’re going to be a trilogy. I wonder if you could talk us through the genesis of the idea. How did the Aschen come about and how this idea gets developed in the writers room and then why didn’t that third one come about? What was in the way that you couldn’t overcome.

Brad Wright
It could have and I could have probably come up with another Aschen story because they would have been angry with what we did to them after 2001, after that episode. I laugh and smile every time you say it because Rob was not a fan. He liked the episodes but he didn’t like them as a villain. He didn’t like the slow game, the long game that the Aschen played out. Like “they’re gonna starve us out” and Rob went, “Oh my god, they’re not growing corn. Isn’t that a great..!” and again, funny writers room moment. 2010 is arguably my favorite of my own episodes, mainly because Andy Makita did such a great job directing it. It was one of his first directing assignments. The last act is like a feature and Joel’s music again! Was spectacular. The story that sort of came to mind in terms of the Aschen coming directly without a Stargate to Earth ended up being a component of one of the direct to video movies, indirectly. I can’t even say it’s the same but it just felt like it stepped on it. I think that was the reason and I may even be wrong about that.

Darren Sumner
You mean because you were already planning the sort of Earth invasion for a different race, for a different storyline?

Brad Wright
Yeah, something like that.

Darren Sumner
That’s good. One of the things that I do on GateWorld is, we sort of think of ourselves as chronicling the history of the show, the history of production, which is why I ask all these sort of backward looking questions. I think a lot of people who have been around for a while, they know that there were a couple of movies that didn’t get made. Joe and Paul’s Stargate Extinction script for Atlantis and I think it was you and Carl we’re working together on Stargate Revolution. Is that right?

Brad Wright
Yeah, that’s right. The truth is that not they didn’t get made, they were relatively early in their development. It’s not like we had a script that we could have shot, we had first drafts I think. They were something we were planning to do six months down the road. Continuum and Arc of Truth did very well for MGM as direct to video movies. The market for direct [to dvd], it was a good business model, it was a really solid business model. It was a way, especially for Atlantis, to keep going because the television model was arguably going to be difficult. We loved doing it. Rob loved making Arc of Truth, I loved making Continuum and I thought “man, I could make two of these a year for a while. This would be great.” It was purely the collapse of the DVD market that triggered the sidelining of those projects. It began as “could you just put a hold on development for a couple of weeks because we’re getting some numbers here that are…” Literally a month later, “yeah, I think we need to put a stop on development on this for now and just see how it pans…” and then a month later “forget it, there’s no way we can make these.” Continuum was one of the last movies MGM released direct to DVD that made money.

Darren Sumner
Yeah. What I really want to ask about is the movie that didn’t get as far and most people probably don’t know about. It is the one that you mentioned earlier in the livestream, a sort of combo team up of characters from all three shows, to give some kind of conclusion to Destiny’s story. How far did that get into development and what can you share with us about what it was going to be?

Brad Wright
Well, I just started typing Darren. I asked my boss at MGM who was a huge Stargate fan and was kind of mortified by the fact that all this was happening. I said, “look, we have many millions of dollars worth of sets here that are going to have to get packed up and basically discarded. If I can get a script in your hands quickly enough I bet I can get the cast of SGU and bring aboard enough cast members from the other show that I could at least give us a two hour movie to wrap it up, or a 90 minute movie, to wrap up SGU and finish the story that we were trying to tell.” I pitched him the rough idea I had forwarded and it was rough, I was typing as fast as I could. My process is not like, I didn’t whiteboard it, I just had this sort of structure in my head and concept of the characters from the other series that I was going to bring in. I started writing it, started laying it out. It started with McKay and began with recognition that Destiny was in trouble and..I don’t want to go into the plot details but at the end of the day, two weeks into the process, I found out it’s not going to happen. Even as we were going through it, it was “could you do it for this number? Could you do it for this number?” Then it got to the point where I, “look I’ve already taken my own producing fee out of the budget but I can’t take visual effects out of the budget.” There comes a time where the desire to finish something doesn’t line up with the financial resources to do it. That’s was where it was already heading when I found out they’re not interested, the new regime was just not remotely interested.

Darren Sumner
Yeah, that’s my memory, is that it was 2011 I think by my reporting. This would have been after the bankruptcy, after there was a new set of people inside MGM.

Brad Wright
Yes. We had left the sets up out of the hope that we could do that. We funded it with, I can’t even remember how we funded it. The truth is it probably cost MGM a few bucks for that show of good faith in the hope that we could keep the flame alive, if you will. That was sad because I was trying really hard. I had been spoiled for so many years Darren, of them saying, “well come up with another one, well come up with another one.” To have something that was not only out of my control, but out of the control of the executives at MGM that I was working with, a structured bankruptcy means everybody goes home and a new regime comes in and takes over. The new regime was not interested.

Darren Sumner
Yeah. Well, we’re on our one minute countdown, there’s Lawrence. Let me ask you one last question. Kind of looking forward, we’ve been pushing hard for a lot of years for your involvement in the next project. If not your involvement, then the universe that you’ve helped to build to continue on with that continuity. You’ve always said in interviews like here at the Companion and on your reddit AMA that you think one of the core ideas about Stargate is that “it’s us.” These characters are relatable or they’re contemporary. So [JeremFG] on GateWorld asks, “do you believe that ‘here and now’ is still the secret ingredient to GateWorld’s future success, even under this new paradigm of binge watching, serialization, streaming series?” I’ll just add to that by asking, “in your mind, in new creative hands, is there room for something like a Stargate The Next Generation that’s actually set a few decades in the future?”

Brad Wright
The answer is absolutely yes. Frankly, one of the difficulties, and I say this as somebody who would probably benefit from an in-cannon continuation, I get the rationale for a reset. But a next generation is sort of a happy medium because it is sort of a reset. It is enough in the future that the world is different. Another thing that happened in Stargate, and I know Lawrence you are probably…But if you’re next, I can make you wait, right?

Lawrence Kao
I made you a promise at 89 minutes and we’re at 92. We’ll go fast, we’ll go fast.

Brad Wright
The thing that you can’t do if you do a future Earth is walk around Earth the way it is right now; Earth has advanced. O had this conversation with my producing partner Carrie Mudd about another idea that we had and I said “it’s so hard to do the future. If you do something that’s set 80 years from now what do the cars look like? What does Earth look like? What are the social norms? What are the politics?” It’s a whole other world building in addition to the sci-fi component, right?

Darren Sumner
And everything has to be shot on soundstages.

Brad Wright
Yeah, pretty much. Honestly, Star Trek is doing a pretty good job of it, of modern Earth. They really are, but they have a lot of money, they have a lot of money. So if you do that, then my suggestion is, have a lot of money. Does that make sense?

Darren Sumner
Yeah, good answer. Thank you, it’s always a joy. Thank you.

Brad Wright
Thank you Darren. It was good to see you. I appreciate the decades long support.

Darren Sumner
Well, let’s do it again.

Brad Wright
Okay.

Lawrence Kao
Thanks Brad. We will, I guess roll into our segment. I don’t know if Tommy has a graphic. He might for us, he might not.

Brad Wright
I bet he does. I have my Companion t-shirt.

Lawrence Kao
I love it. I have been thinking about making Companion merch for myself and I just think “that’s kind of cheesy isn’t it?”

Brad Wright
Hey, I still have Stargate hats. I always grabbed a couple every year.

Lawrence Kao
Well next time, as in the first time, we actually meet in person we can wear buddy buddy buddy Stargate hats.

Brad Wright
If you make Companion hats though make me a visor because I don’t wear…when I’m golfing I…

Lawrence Kao
We have these community members that we call “Companion Champions.” They help us out, they give us feedback, etc. I recently saw this really awesome line of Adidas golf shirts and stuff and I thought “you know what? Both the men and the women would look so good in these.” Almost these kind of elite uniforms if they had these Adidas kind of Companion almost like uniforms I guess. I’ll send you one if we end up printing out that line.

Brad Wright
If you end up doing it, sure.

Lawrence Kao
I think we will, yeah.

Brad Wright
Not a triple extra large like the one you sent me last time.

Lawrence Kao
It wasn’t me, I was just gonna go double large.

Brad Wright
No, no, no.

Lawrence Kao
We’ll work out those details. So I think one thing, you know this a lot about the Companion, is that I don’t think about it as really like me, or just Tommy or even like you and Rebecca etc. It’s not just the people who kind of work on the project and work here but it really is all of the members. They feed in, they vote and they pick screens for scenes for Stargate AI and things like that. I wanted to actually give some time to one of our members that we absolutely love and you might even recognize her. Her name is Mara and she was at your masterclass in writing about a year ago. So Tommy if you can bring in Mara to ask a question.

Brad Wright
Hi Mara, I recognize you.

Mara
Hi, nice to see you.

Brad Wright
You too.

Mara
I had a question. If you had switched lives to one of your characters for a day, who would it be and how do you think you would do at each others jobs?

Brad Wright
At each other’s jobs? That’s so interesting. My instinct is, I don’t know why I think of Rush. I guess because he was in charge and I was in charge for a long time. Also because he would have no time at all for my job, he would be “come up with your silly stories.” My first instinct to that question too is Daniel but I know only one language and it’s English and I barely know that one. I think Daniel would be very good at storytelling because he would just borrow from the ancient histories of Earth and come up with some good old stories I’m sure.

Lawrence Kao
Mara, I think you’re also wearing a very special shirt that we were all proud of. If you can…You remember that? The Stargate…

Brad Wright
That’s Paul McGillion, the dog, yeah.

Lawrence Kao
The dog McGillion.

Brad Wright
That’s hilarious, yeah, that was funny. It creeped me out for just a second and then I remembered. That’s great.

Lawrence Kao
Mara, thank you so much.

Brad Wright
Did I answer your question Mara. Was it good?

Mara
Yeah.

Brad Wright
Okay good, thank you.

Lawrence Kao
We love Mara. Mara’s so great.

Brad Wright
I do remember her from the writers, from the workshop we did.

Lawrence Kao
Yeah, I kind of wish that was broadcast, there was such good information there. I think a lot of people would really benefit. We’ve been kind of writing about it and kind of sharing some of those lessons. You introduced us to Amanda, right, the first time we ever did an AMA three years ago. Obviously Amanda has been a really huge part of what we’ve been doing. We’ve been doing these events called “embracing mental health” as a fandom, we do some charity work sometimes. I’m just kind of catching you up a little bit, I guess. Last weekend, also, you’ll know that we did Jewel Staite’s AMA and it was raising money for wildfire relief and you asked a question there.

Brad Wright
Right, I remember that.

Lawrence Kao
Last week I cut all the cheques to the charities. Really this summer, you know, we haven’t really caught up since the summer, but I cut cheques for $17,000. It’s members like Mara and Gemma and Vicky and all the other people that have come to these events or have supported or donated. It’s like, I mean genuinely, I was just thinking “this is like Ed McMahon, big check.” When we were thinking about doing it, “maybe we’ll raise 1000 bucks here or there” but $17,000?

Brad Wright
That’s a lot, that’s a lot of money.

Lawrence Kao
Yeah, it’s pretty incredible.

Brad Wright
It’s fabulous. That’s what community is, right? That’s the difference between a bunch of people and community and that’s what you managed to develop with the Companion. It’s true.

Lawrence Kao
Thanks Brad. But yeah, I mean, it’s also what you developed, right? You created the show and yet we could talk about mental health. We could talk about wildfire relief and cooking. It’s the bond of Stargate but we can just talk about all these other subjects because we got something to fall back on, that connects us.

Brad Wright
Yeah, that’s the touchstone, the touchstone between us all.

Lawrence Kao
Yeah.

Brad Wright
It’s a classy thing.

Lawrence Kao
So we got another video question. Really it’s a video comment I think, from maybe your biggest fan. He had a few words for the celebration.

Richard Dean Anderson
Well hello Bradley. Well, if you can guess who I am then you’re a step up on me. Here, let me help you. Yeah, it’s me. It’s Rick. Listen, ha..what is it? Birthday? Some kind of celebration for you, buddy. You deserve it. What? No, no, no, I don’t take direction well. Alright buddy, you know I love you but I’m starting to love Felix better than you, more than you. But it’ll be short lived, I’ll get back to you. Congratulations on whatever this is. See ya.

Brad Wright
I love that guy, he’s great. It was so kind of him to comb his hair before he came on.

Lawrence Kao
He was pretty good. We didn’t have to do any kind of editing or anything.

Brad Wright
He kills me, he just kills me. I hard time hearing it though, I got the gist.

Lawrence Kao
We’ll send it to you afterwards.

Brad Wright
Okay. Please do.

Lawrence Kao
Well, kind of speaking to Rick, a year ago we did that Stargate Legacy with me, you and Rick.

Brad Wright
And my mom

Lawrence Kao
And your mom, and your mom.

Brad Wright
Don’t leave her out, she was the hit of that particular show.

Lawrence Kao
Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. And the painting, the whole thing, the whole thing was awesome. I loved that event. You know, we’re kind of continuing this as a, I’m kind of jumping ahead, but we’re doing this again next week. Another Stargate Legacy but this time with Window of Opportunity so we’ll talk about that in a second. Hopefully there’ll be lots of touching moments in that one too. Getting to Children of the Gods, a year ago I pinged you because I remember in that conversation we talked about, effectively in the pilot and that script, the new Stargate. I just want to make sure I get this right. You called it “It was like a gleaming metal Stargate, different than any we’ve ever seen before and it is entirely of human design.” I think I remember you were describing it to Rick and you were saying it would kind of speed up a little bit different. It’d be like chong…………. chong………chong…chong, chong, chong, chong, chong, chong, right?

Brad Wright
Yeah, that’s right.

Lawrence Kao
Can you describe a little bit more about what you were thinking with the new Stargate?

Brad Wright
Well, we have retrofitted and updated and used Ancient technologies and Stargate technologies all through all three shows. Each series had its own iconic Stargate; SG-1 was the original one found in the desert, Atlantis was the digital one which had a different look and feel and texture and of course the one aboard Destiny was the oldest of all and it had that cool [look]. I love the design, James Robbins design that one. It looked like the Destiny itself, the chevrons within the Stargate were that shape. So I thought we needed a new one and I thought, “well, we can’t find one” because one of my goals was to go to another galaxy, I’m giving away too much information again. To do that we would have needed another human built, purpose built Stargate. I just thought it’d be really cool, not to take work away from Gary Jones, but to not have to go “chevron one encoded,” you know, a snail’s pace. To just have the sequence initiate and to have the whole thing spin really powerfully and doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo and then kawoosh, I thought that would be really cool.

Lawrence Kao
We’ll have to hit a button or something.

Brad Wright
Maybe they’ll do it. Maybe they’ll do something like it, I don’t know, who knows?

Lawrence Kao
Would you imagine, if it’s going to be a human made Stargate is it necessarily materials from Earth? Is it other planets that we visited already?

Brad Wright
I would have to sit with a production designer before I started talking about that stuff. I had this image of actual glass. of actual parts of it being transparent and being able to see through components of it. I just want it look powerful and human built. I just wanted it to have those qualities and Carter would have her hands all over it, right? It would have been her brain child.

Lawrence Kao
That feels really, obviously really modern, that kind of aesthetic.

Brad Wright
Yeah, it would look great. Don’t make me cry Lawrence.

Lawrence Kao
We’ll cry together. We’re gonna figure this out. Behind you is the Guinness World Record, I believe.

Brad Wright
Oh this?

Lawrence Kao
Would you mind sharing that because that’s the Stargate Guinness World Record, right?

Brad Wright
So this the certificate, the actual certificate, from the Guinness… I think that record has since been beaten. This is me outside of a fighter jet that I actually got to fly, which is very cool.

Lawrence Kao
Incredible.

Brad Wright
This is a photograph, as a gift from Eric McCormack, of me and my producing partner, Carrie Mudd, her giving her feelings to that photograph. These are some of my precious things in my office that I quite enjoy.

Lawrence Kao
I knew that the Guinness…

Brad Wright
She’s gonna give me shit for showing that.

Lawrence Kao
With this being Stargate Celebration I thought it’d be pretty cool for fans to be able to see at least the Guinness World Record. I guess in a small/big way they helped make that happen, I guess.

Brad Wright
You know, Thomasina Gibson said basically “you know, I think you deserve a Guinness Book of Records thing” and I went “really, do we qualify?” and she said, “yes.” She basically just called them and they went, “yeah, absolutely” and so it happened. It was cool. Thomasin’a work really.

Lawrence Kao
Oh, very cool. All right, well I think our 10 minutes are up Brad.

Brad Wright
Oh really?

Lawrence Kao
As promised.

Brad Wright
It seems like I’ve only been talking for a day and a half Lawrence.

Lawrence Kao
Not to me.

Brad Wright
Not to you. There’s only 11 people left.

Lawrence Kao
Oh no no no.

Brad Wright
My mom may be among them. Hi mom.

Lawrence Kao
We’re hitting record numbers, actually. I think it’s almost actually to the point of nearly 1000. Some people were tallying it up, over 800 people live.

Brad Wright
That’s great. Hey, everybody follow me on X or Twitter or whatever it’s called, @bradtravelers. I want to see how many people follow me if I ask them to.

Lawrence Kao
Yeah, do it. Oh, one more thing. I was gonna actually update you on this and then kind of explain it. I think it was two or three weeks ago Laurence Moroney and I…So for those of you who might not know, Laurence Moroney actually built Stargate AI. One of the projects that we all worked on together and obviously Brad helme. Oxford, Oxford University invited me..

Brad Wright
You told me about this and I completely forgot. I was even going to participate.

Lawrence Kao
Yeah, it would have been great for you to be there.

Brad Wright
Oh well. I miss traveling. I was flying in the air all over the place at that time.

Lawrence Kao
Tommy and I went, Tommy is one of the producers here with Laurence. It was fun because obviously, I’m very lucky, I went to Oxford and I’ve been in that building a million times. Then it struck me, not only was that it at the business school, later Laurence gave a reference to the project in the Sheldonian. The Sheldonian is like that kind of 500, 600 year old style building were genuinely people liked J R R Tolkien, myself, Bill Clinton, heads of states, fantasy writers, people who discovered DNA, we all have to matriculate and graduate there. It hit me, “Whoa, Stargate and Stargate AI is in the Sheldonian” and it’s the oldest school in English speaking history. I guess, I want to ask you one final question in terms of Stargate and its legacy. I guess being in Oxford, do you have any thoughts on that?

Brad Wright
Let’s just say I would not have been qualified to get into Oxford, on any subject. I am envious of the experience that you had going there and just in the oldness of the place. Knowing the minds that have taught and learned there, to have Stargate even discussed in that context seems kind of remarkable to me.

Lawrence Kao
There were a ton of fans, a ton of fans came back and said, Oh my goodness, I didn’t know Stargate AI existed. I loved Stargate growing up,” all of that. It was definitely like you would be at any convention, just talking to fans, it was the same thing there.

Brad Wright
That’s cool. That’s really cool.

Lawrence Kao
You got a lot of fans everywhere.

Brad Wright
You never know, right? You meet somebody at a dinner party or wherever and they will be “your a writer? Have you made anything that I may have seen before?” I always say Travelers because that’s the most recent and they go “na na na na.” And then “Stargate.” “Stargate!” and then that’s the whole evening, they just want to talk about Stargate. And then some people go “yeah, I’ve seen that” and that’s fine with me. It’s not everybody’s cup of tea but it’s really remarkable when a genuine fan gets going on it, as evidenced by today.

Lawrence Kao
Yeah. I had to not look at the comments section so I literally have 799 unread comments because it was coming in so fast. It was distracting me from hosting and doing timing and everything like that.

Brad Wright
I’m glad it worked out and I hope my iPad was a suitable replacement.

Lawrence Kao
Oh yeah. We’re gonna hopefully continue this conversation and that’s why we kind of tried to keep our segment short. I think we’ve actually gone long now so I’ve broken the trust of all the partners. For everyone else who wants to see us and kind of Stargate Legacy and Brad talk about Stargate, continue next weekend, next Saturday actually. We’ll be talking about Window of Opportunity. Joseph Mallozzi, Paul Mullie, they’ll be back so hopefully you and the writing crew will be able to reminisce and maybe shed some light on on the episode.

Brad Wright
Cool.

Lawrence Kao
Just kind of last note about the Companion and everything else. We’re trying to do events basically every two weeks. This has kind of been an unusual time where we’ve had an event today and then next week. Hopefully people like what we do and they sign up to us if they haven’t heard about us before. We’ve got a pretty cool offer going on right now so hopefully we’ll see more members to Brad at the next kind of live stream.

Brad Wright
It’s pretty great, Companion is pretty great. Tere’s a lot of stuff, there’s a lot of good resources. I’ve written essays for you guys, there’s a lot of podcasts there. It’s fun. It’s great. I love it.

Lawrence Kao
Nice. We’re going to bring back in all of the other guests. I think some of them had to potentially jump off but hopefully most of them will…

Rebecca from 3 Fries Short
It was just Christina that did. She has mom duties so…

Lawrence Kao
Absolutely. I want to just say a final thank you to Brad. Obviously a final thank you to everyone else who has come and joined here. I want to just give everyone kind of one final note. I’ll start with everyone, one at a time. So Rebecca, I don’t know if you want to start.

Rebecca from 3 Fries Short
Oh, wow, on the spot. Thank you so much Brad, this has been amazing. I have the job that I have now because of the universe that you co created so it’s much appreciated. And yeah, that’s what I have to say, thank you so much.

Brad Wright
You’re welcome and thank you. Thank you. I love that you have a job.

Lawrence Kao
Jay or Matt, how has this experience kind of been for you two.

Jay from SciTrek
Just mental, it’s not right. I don’t know, I think I told you this Brad but you actually followed me on Twitter on my birthday this year. My kids bought me presents and I was like, “yeah, Brad Wright followed me on Twitter.” That’s a nice watch, Brad Wright followed me on Twitter.”

Brad Wright
I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I apologize to your family.

Jay from SciTrek
My wife hates you. She’s like, “Who the hell is this Brad Wright and why have you been talking about him for the last four hours?” It’s just crazy that I started my little channel talking about a show I loved and now I get to do things like this. It’s amazing. Thank you, just thank you.

Brad Wright
I enjoyed chatting with you to Jay.

Lawrence Kao
Matt, do you have any quick word or anything like that?

Jay from SciTrek
Can you just say “shut up Matt” for me. Everyone in my thing has asked me to tell you to do it. Please. “Shut up Matt.”

Matt with SciTrek
Go on Brad, you can say it.

Brad Wright
It’s okay, no, keep going.

Matt with SciTrek
No, he wants you to say “shut up, Matt.”

Brad Wright
I’m not gonna do that Jay. I don’t do that.

Matt with SciTrek
It’s a thing on our channel.

Brad Wright
I know.

Matt with SciTrek
I don’t know why it’s a thing. I just want to say thank you for creating, co-creating, the show that I love. Thank you to everyone here for this event.

Brad Wright
Shut up Matt. I’m kidding. Sorry, I’m sorry.

Matt with SciTrek
Clip that.

Brad Wright
I’m sorry, buddy. It felt wrong.

Matt with SciTrek
Well, thank you for that Brad, thank you.

Brad Wright
You’re welcome.

Matt with SciTrek
Thank you to everyone, this has been fantastic.

Brad Wright
Good, I’m glad.

Matt with SciTrek
Shut up Brad.

Lawrence Kao
Whoa, no, no, no.

Brad Wright
That’s okay. It’s okay. It’s okay. I have broad shoulders.

Jay from SciTrek
I can only apologhise.

Lawrence Kao
David.

David Read
I know it’s mushy and I told you this years ago, but it’s true. My father and I are very close but I was only allowed to watch PBS and Star Trek when I was growing up until eight or nine years old; wasn’t allowed cartoons or anything like that. Sci-fi is a part of me and I consider my sci-fi dads to be Roddenberry and Berman and Cooper and Glassner and Wright. So thank you.

Brad Wright
Wow, cool. Wow.

Lawrence Kao
Wow.

David Read
And thank you to Darren for finding me and making me a part of something that I can continue to be thankful for. There’s a segue for you.

Brad Wright
Good segue.

Lawrence Kao
Yeah, Darren.

Darren Sumner
Guys is just amazing that we get to do this. I want to say thank you to the Companion, thank you to SciTrek, thank you to 3 Fries, Dial the Gate. This is kind of an amazing thing that Stargate fandom is this cool and that we have this kind of platform and then we have the people who made the content that we love so much. Sorry, I’m not supposed to call it content, the art that we love so much, here and still willing to talk about it all these years later. So thank you Brad for giving us your time. Stargate is becoming an intergenerational thing and it has been for years. We’ve heard stories for so many years about people who introduce their kids to the show. Well, I finally introduced my kids to the show on the umpteenth rewatch, and you know what, just last night we finished Atlantis. So we’ve watched two of your three shows so far with my three kids. Now I get to have that experience of sharing that thing that I love so much with them and it’s always gonna be a part of our lives. So thank you.

Brad Wright
Thank you. Thank you. I love hearing that and I love it when new generations find a show that I started over 25 years ago. It’s remarkable.

Lawrence Kao
All right, well, thank you everyone. Thanks all the fans for coming too and sending in all the questions. Like what Darren said, please follow GateWorld, Dial the Gate, SciTrek, 3 Fries Short. If you want to come next weekend, Stargate Legacy, you could do that too on the Companion.

David Read
Thank you Lawrence and thank you Companion for making this possible.

Brad Wright
Thank you. Great job, I am glad it all worked out.

Lawrence Kao
Awesome. Thanks all.

Brad Wright
It’s technologically quite difficult.

Lawrence Kao
It is, yeah.

Brad Wright
Thank you to Rick.

Lawrence Kao
And Rick, yeah.

Brad Wright
I really have to pee now so I’m gonna go now. Bye!