Back by popular demand! Stargate Science Consultant Mika McKinnon and David Hewlett return LIVE to discuss real-life and theoretical Stargate science!

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Timecodes
0:00 – Splash Screen
0:33 – Opening Credits
1:04 – Welcome and Episode Outline
2:25 – Welcoming Mika (and baby)
2:55 – Welcoming David
4:08 – Rock Tasting for Toddlers
5:25 – Harnessing Curiosity
6:58 – We Have to Start Small
8:04 – The Robotic Frontier
9:38 – Visiting Other Worlds
14:07 – Joining Stargate Command
15:58 – Deploying Earth Technology Elsewhere
17:05 – Machine Learning is Processing Old Data
21:33 – Increasing Catastrophic Survivability
24:20 – Tech Bandits Goals
26:10 – David’s Focusing Goal
27:30 – Mika Recommends Newsletters
30:45 – Utilizing AI in New Stargate
36:07 – Contacting Destiny
40:10 – Mika’s Process for Detailing Stargate Science
41:40 – 3D Printers: Replicator Precursors?
44:58 – What Would 2023 M.A.L.P. Look Like?
46:53 – Thank You, Mika!
48:15 – Rodney in Season Six
49:28 – More Split Screen McKays?
51:38 – Feelings from Rewatching Projects
55:49 – Baz Joining the Family Business
57:15 – David Hewlett in Pin
1:02:21 – David and Kate in the Future
1:03:03 – Paris Manga Sci-Fi Show
1:05:16 – Stardust Stargate Documentary
1:06:35 – Upcoming Episodes
1:07:57 – Post-Interview Housekeeping
1:09:10 – End Credits

***

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TRANSCRIPT
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David Read
Hello everyone, welcome to episode two hundred and…what is it? Two hundred and something of Dial the Gate. I’m losing track, I’m getting so high up there. I think it’s 229. The number is right in front of me and then I forget it 10 seconds later, welcome to 40 [years old]. My name is David Read, thank you so much for joining me. I have David Hewlett, Dr. Rodney McKay from Stargate Atlantis and Tech Bandits joining me, as well as Mika McKinnon, science consultant for Stargate. I’m really excited about this one because everyone’s been saying “when are you going to get them back on?” I’m like, “You know what, that’s a good idea.” But before I bring them in, if you enjoy Stargate and you want more content like this on YouTube, click that Like button. It makes a difference with the show and really helps us grow our audience. Please also consider sharing this video with a Stargate friend and if you want to get notified about future episodes, click the Subscribe icon. Giving the bell icon a click will give you a notification the moment new video drops and clips from this live stream will be released over the course of the next few weeks on both the Dial the Gate and GateWorld.net YouTube channels. As this is a live stream we have moderators in the chat. I think we’ve got a full house here, standing by to take your questions. Science related questions, preferably, for David and Mika, although if you have any life related questions you can certainly ask them to. Especially with Mika here, she has been busy. How are you guys doing? Hello Mika, hello David.

Mika McKinnon
I’m doing pretty well.

David Hewlett
How are you?

David Read
Wow. Mika, who is this?

Mika McKinnon
This is newest member of the household who’s just going to snooze through everything.

David Read
Wow. Good baby.

Mika McKinnon
We have an emergency Flamingo to deploy if necessary.

David Hewlett
Unleash the bird, unleash the bird.

Mika McKinnon
Exactly. That and the noise cancelling headphones going on.

David Read
There you go. And David Hewlett, Dr. Rodney McKay of Stargate Atlantis, sage of leadership and depleting ZPMs. How are you sir?

David Hewlett
A few words on leadership. Yeah, it’s all about power and leadership for me. That’s what it all boils down to eventually.

David Read
You doing good?

David Hewlett
I am, yeah. It’s weird times, industry, very weird times in the industry, and the world for that matter. But yeah, I’m muddling along okay, trying to figure stuff out. I try to lose myself in the science.

David Hewlett
Great, yeah, actually really fun. I had one of my oldest Tech Bandits come in yesterday and set up this CNC machine and look at some PC problems for me and stuff. It’s just amazing. This was a little guy who was…my son and him used to sit on my elliptical. They used to stand on the elliptical, they were small enough to both be on a foot and they’d go up and down with the elliptical. Now he’s teaching me stuff about PCs that I didn’t know so it’s really fun. There’s a local community center that my son set me up at now so I go in there and do some stuff there as well. I’m just loving it, absolutely loving it.

David Read
How is Tech Bandits?

David Read
You never stop learning and even the smaller people can still teach you. Mika, as a scientist, do you ever quit learning?

Mika McKinnon
Of course not. Of course, now, instead of doing rock tasting notes for adults, I also now have to consider rock tasting notes for toddlers and the unique challenges of “okay, yes, technically that’s safe to lick but don’t chew it and don’t swallow it.” Or “we’re okay, yes, yes, we can eat this rock. It’s called ice and we’re gonna get nice synthesized samples from the freezer so it’s less contaminated. But it’s still a rock, I promise.”

David Read
Applied Chemistry.

Mika McKinnon
Exactly. The most lickable rocks; salt and water.

David Hewlett
It is weird how they’re just like magnets, magnets, for anything that they shouldn’t be into. I used to joke with Baz that you could have him in a completely padded cushioned cell and he would find a pin. I mean, they can always find a way to hurt themselves. It’s amazing.

David Read
They tend to want to seek out the undiscovered countries. Wherever there is a potential for new learning, “Ooh, that’s interesting. Let’s go do that.”

David Hewlett
New learning or new diseases. We’re big on bringing those home too, I love that too. Little petri dishes.

Mika McKinnon
What I love about this is we’re teasing that little kids do this but they have to learn literally about everything in the entire universe, right? They have to learn what gravity is and that shadows mean something as deep and all of that. But we still harness that curiosity. I swear that everybody goes through a rock collecting phase and some people grow out of it at three years old and some of it, people have it for the rest of their lives and turn into geoscientists. But we as a species, literally go out and collect rocks from other places in the universe. We just did another asteroid sample return mission where we just spent, literally billions of dollars, to go and get that cool rock from space.

David Hewlett
Is this the OSIRIS-REx, OSIRIS-REx mission?

Mika McKinnon
Hayabusa2 to asteroid Ryugu and then OSIRIS-REx to Bennu.

David Hewlett
There was the Japanese one.

Mika McKinnon
And then we traded samples between them because we weren’t sure whether either rock collecting mission would be successful. We’re like, “here, look, I’ll share mine with you, you share yours with me.”

David Hewlett
And Canada got a chunk. Canada got a chunk because they contributed some laser system for for mapping the asteroids or something.

Mika McKinnon
Which is kinda fun because previously we were all about the grippy claws. We’re expanding out now and also doing laser maps, is kind of fun. We’re not just grippy claws anymore.

David Hewlett
It is fascinating isn’t it? Just absolutely marvelous.

David Read
it’s wild. Our dip into the cosmos is not unlike a toddler exploring his first surroundings. We got to start small with the grasping and then we work our way up to the lasers and the atomic bombs.

David Hewlett
We’re at that tasting phase right now. We’re so far forward where we get to analyze stuff on the planet, so we’re sort of almost tasting the rocks at this point.

Mika McKinnon
Oh, yeah, except for we taste them with lasers which just makes it so much more cool.

David Hewlett
Oh I know, I know.

Mika McKinnon
Like the Mars 2020 mission, that Rover is going around. First of all, it’s building little piles of cute rocks being like “this one, this is a special rock, you should come back and get it” because it didn’t come with pockets. So it’s building little rock piles for another one to come by and get it, which is definitely the toddler mentality of like, “Look, I can’t carry all these cool rocks so I’ll put them in a pile and mum and dad will carry them later.” So NASA now needs to build the mom and dad robot to go and collect the stockpile and bring it home.

David Hewlett
It’s like bringing the lunchbox into school because they forgot it. Yeah, I know that feeling very well.

David Read
That’s true.

David Hewlett
But it is, it’s true. We’re like toddlers. I’ve got to say, I’m much more excited about these sort of robotic adventurers rather than the humans. I don’t understand why we feel the need to, at this point, be throwing us bags of chemicals into space as well. It just takes up so many resources and there’s so many more cool things we could be doing with these robots and really sussing out the land even building things for us for when we show up. I think, right now, there’s this weird kind of macho mentality like “we got to get into space, we got to be out there floating around” like useless bags of water. You know what I mean? I much prefer these robotic things.

Mika McKinnon
I kind of appreciate that we’ve just flat out declared that space tourism is a thing. Having astronauts in space, I would love to be an astronaut, I applied to be an astronaut.

David Hewlett
Me too, I’d love to be as well.

Mika McKinnon
It’s super fun but it is more about PR than it is about actual science. Robots are way better at the types of things we need to be doing right now. I mean, there’s so many cool missions we could do. There’s a chunk of the Venus atmosphere where if you’re at the right height, it’s actually earth pressure. You could have like a little roll of blimps up there, at Earth atmosphere pressure, hanging out. The Venus clouds are so thick we’re pretty sure that you could have say…you’re definitely gonna have all sorts of weird little crystals and minerals up in there. But you could have bacteria living in the clouds of Venus and wouldn’t it be really fun to go explore and see and find out? Or at least map Venus properly? We haven’t sent something there since before I was born.

David Read
What about Io? Is that attainable as well?

Mika McKinnon
I would love to go there. I would, honestly it’d be so much fun. Just go check out the volcanoes in other places.

David Hewlett
Yeah, you’re bored of the volcanoes here? You’re done with the volcanoes here, you’re ready to move on to other planets now?

Mika McKinnon
I would like to see what’s the same and what’s different, right? You can’t build patterns if you only have one set. Again, the toddler mentality of “okay, this is the only world I’ve ever seen. This is the only type of family I’ve ever seen thus all families look like mine.” You get them a whole bunch of books to look at different types of families. We aren’t at that stage, we need to go looking for it.

David Hewlett
We’ve only got one petri dish, we need more petri dishes to look at it.

Mika McKinnon
Exactly. We know things like the slope of the volcanoes on Mars are the same if you account for the different gravity of the volcanoes in Hawaii. So we know that the basic chemistry of that volcano is the same. But whereas Olympus Mons means if it’s the same basic geology as here on Earth. It’s like the little hotspot there was stable for billions of years, just building up in one place over and over and over. Whereas for us on Earth, we’ve got Emperor Hawaii chain that moved and it’s been active for a long time, but not in one place. The sheath on top kept moving, the tectonic plate on top kept moving,

David Hewlett
And forcing it to come out in different places?

Mika McKinnon
Yeah, and it’s not that billions of years. So, is there something about being still and stable in one place that let that hotspot stay for longer? Does the movement kind of extinguish it over time? Or is it just “Hey, that was a quirk and one happens to be longer than the other?” I don’t know.

David Hewlett
Are there plates on Mars as well? Is it the same kind of structure as Earth that way?

Mika McKinnon
So nothing is moving.

David Hewlett
Oh.

Mika McKinnon
The Mars Insight was the geophysics lander. In terms of profession, it was the same profession as me, it was my little robotic avatar. It landed and its entire job was to stay very, very, very silent, for years, listening for earthquakes. It would use earthquakes as like a bat doing sonar to map things out; it would use those earthquakes to map out the inside of Mars. What it figured out is that it has a very thin crust. We have a crust on Earth that the tectonic plates go moving around. It’s got a very thin crust but that thin crust is really dry and broken so it’s more like the moon than like Earth. The only tectonic plate movement that happens is if the whole planet going [contracting] crashing down and cools off.

David Hewlett
Right.

Mika McKinnon
We think that Venus has active tectonics, we think that not only does it have active tectonics, it has like the entire surface of the planet roles over active tectonics. But we don’t know because we haven’t sent anything else to go mapping it. We’re looking at really low resolution maps from the 70s being like, “maybe I can see a line. I don’t know.”

David Hewlett
Why have we given up on that do you think? Is it because everyone is just focused on Mars?

David Read
Is it heat maybe? I mean, would our technology tolerate the atmosphere?

Mika McKinnon
Well, we landed things in the 70s. Of course, we got a couple of pictures from the surface of Venus before the robots melted. But the only attempt to sample on Venus, the robot popped up its lens cap and then went to go take a sample and took a sample of its own lens cap.

David Hewlett
No? Oh that’s great. That’s a kind of way I would take photographs.

Mika McKinnon
Exactly. So the only sample ever taken on Venus was…

David Hewlett
Of a lens cap.

David Read
Of itself.

David Hewlett
“My god! It’s made out of lens cap, all of it.”

Mika McKinnon
Yeah, lens cap all the way down.

David Hewlett
It is extraordinary to me the amount of detail that they have to go into for these landers. Just the amount of…absolutely everything has to be…they have to try to think of basically everything. It’s just extraordinary the amount of ingenuity that goes into this stuff. I mean, who would have thought, what are the chances of a lens cap falling off right where you want to take your sample? Of course, you don’t think of that kind of stuff until you’ve just spent a few billion dollars to send it up there and have it do that. Like they say, it’s very easy to get something to do something once, but to do it consistently is much more difficult, right?

Mika McKinnon
Yep.

David Read
That is just wild. Mika, I have a question from one of my team, General Maximus – given your love of science…

David Hewlett
General Maximus!

David Read
Yes, exactly. “Given your love of science and exploration, if the Stargate program existed in real life, would you want to be a member of one of the SG science teams and be on the frontline of discovery?” Or would you want to be doing something else in this sphere like staying back and monitoring everything that came back?

Mika McKinnon
When I was younger I definitely would have been a field work person and I love the idea of…extra terrestrial field work is just so cool. But now I’ve got small little monsters, I have to come home and read them bedtime stories at night, every night. I can’t risk bringing home alien pathogens, I don’t even want to risk bringing home earthly pathogens thank you very much.

David Hewlett
I’ll handle that for you, that’s fine.

Mika McKinnon
Exactly, exactly. I don’t need to have the additional risk of introducing goa’uld symbiotes to my toddler, that just is not on my list of…I don’t need to suddenly be raising an Ancient Egyptian God, hence asking them to not spit on the playground.

David Read
Oh that’s funny.

Mika McKinnon
Toddlers are challenging enough without that particular quirk. So I think I’d definitely be the “stay at home” aspect of things. I’d also be very much in favor of sending more of the robots. There’s some great robots in Stargate and even just the little cameras, just send all the cameras going everywhere. You can get a lot with just pictures. It wouldn’t be that much to add on some geophysical equipment. In Vancouver right now we’ve got this whole set of people on social media being like, “oh no, there’s helicopters with long pointy nose doing close slowing lane flying right now.” It’s like, “yes, yes, that’s the LIDAR mapping to make sure all the transmission lines are fine.” That’s literally bouncing lasers off the ground to be like, “here is the ground. The ground is there. The ground is there. There’s the transmission line. It’s still standing. Yay, we don’t have any gas leaks. Woohoo.” You can do that on an alien planet, that would be super amazing to just do like super high quality maps.

David Hewlett
They doing that with a little helicopter on, is it Curiosity?

Mika McKinnon
Yeah. Curiosity is the Mars 2020 Rover is popping it up and over. Perseverance?

David Hewlett
Was it Perseverance? There’s too many names that all sound very inspirational. Yeah, exactly. The latest inspirational robot that went up there.

Mika McKinnon
Exactly, exactly. The Mars 2020 robot.

David Hewlett
As you say, it would just be nice to have maps of them. Imagine having maps of these things. It’s fascinating to me also that there are discoveries being made from data that came in 20 years ago, that we’re able to now process such large amounts of data. We’ve got these AI’s, machine learning models, that will actually help make sense of this firehose of data that we have. It’s extraordinary to see people discovering things on a computer that was observed 10 years ago in space.

Mika McKinnon
The data has been there all along but we didn’t know how to look at it. That’s somewhere that AI is really good and really awesome is helping us find patterns. Something’s, pattern recognition really useful to get better at, other times…

David Hewlett
Not so much.

Mika McKinnon
It doesn’t really help you.

David Read
The fact that we can use these tools to teach certain pattern behavior and have it recognize things that we wouldn’t be able to normally see just going through it, I think that’s one of the things that’s amazing. The technology that we have coming along now where we can put cameras on farm equipment and target specific plants that need pesticides and herbicides. We end up saving our consumption of those materials by like 80%, in some cases, because we’re targeting specific plants. We’ve taught these AI to pay attention to what each plant needs. Resource management is huge.

David Hewlett
The funny thing is that whenever we solve something with AI, it stops becoming AI. As soon as you say, “we’ve got a Smart Tractor that can sort of pick out the weeds” type thing, they go “Oh, that’s just part of the Smart Tractor.” That’s no longer like an AI at work. AI is always this thing down the road somewhere, you know I mean? We just start accepting this stuff as we go along. It’s all machine learning. I think there’s almost a need now for people to distance themselves from AI because there’s so much misinformation and confusion and I think fear around it as well. When you can see it doing something simple like “oh, it’s identifying that plant, but you don’t want that plant, we’ll get rid of it. Done. Great.” When you start talking about that with people, it’s a very different, very different story.

Mika McKinnon
Well, I think you want it to do all the really boring mundane tasks like stare at every single plant or go through every single photograph comparing for tiny one pixel differences. Fantastic, set the robots the boring jobs and free up the creative fun ones for people.

David Hewlett
And the back-breaking stuff.

Mika McKinnon
The idea of outsourcing writing to robots, but the storytelling and the creative…or outsourcing art to robots. That’s the fun bit, that’s the bit for the humans to do. Give them the bad jobs, not the fun jobs.

David Hewlett
The funny thing about that though is I feel like that’s the difference between art and commerce. The worst thing that happened to film and TV was that it started being referred to as “content.” It didn’t matter what it was, it just mattered how many eyeballs you had on it, how much money it made. I think there is always going to be a human voice needed because that’s art unto itself. I mean, yes, AI can do art, it can do some fabulous stuff. It’s amazing, it’s extraordinary, it’s still AI art. I still want to see what’s happening in someone else’s…I want that personal experience, I want someone’s uniquely human story on this stuff. I think there will be a lot more content out there. Mika and I were talking about this before, earlier. YouTube is being inundated with a lot of this pseudo science nonsense that’s been generated by AI, the images have been randomly stuck together to work with it and it’s just being posted online. Eventually that’s gonna become a huge problem because it’s just making stuff up faster than we could ever make the discoveries that we need to make that would counter them.

David Read
How do you sort through the noise?

Mika McKinnon
It’s the idea of the pattern recognition. It finds what phrases and ideas and structures that we use to tell these stories and communicate these ideas and it mimics that with random information jabbed in so it all sounds plausible. The part that you cannot outsource is the curation. We talk about this a lot in disasters of “trust networks.” I used to say before the pandemic that the number one thing that you can do to increase your survivability during a major catastrophe is throw house parties and invite your neighbors. The very, very first responders on scene aren’t the police or the firefighters or paramedics, it’s literally the people who are across the street or in the next appartment over who see that something is happening and can go there. When things are truly catastrophic, it’s having this connection with your neighbors who know that the person on the fifth floor is physically disabled and we’ll need somebody to help them out if the elevators go down. Or that somebody in that house over there is one parent with three kids at home and if things are going south, they really need to have somebody go and be a secondary adult with them. Those interpersonal relationships are key to survivability. We actually see this in things like giant earthquakes in Japan. The neighborhoods that have a tradition of having tea parties or Mahjong or things where you get the physical neighbors together, have greater survivability than the neighborhoods where it’s a more transient population or a more isolated population. It’s a little bit different briefing now that we have a post-pandemic world where we’re worried about respiratory infections and things like that, but that community resilience aspect is still true. That also works with curation and content and trust, in that, “I know you and you know me.” We have this, I don’t even want to admit how long our relationship is now, it’s over a decade and a half that we’ve known each other. If there’s aspects of the film industry that I’m trying to understand, because yes, I’ve been doing this a decade and a half but it’s not my full time thing, I would go to you and ask you things and I would trust that you would be able to tell me how things work. If you’re trying to understand “is this real science or not?” You have this scientist you know and yes it might not be my specific specialty, but you know I can figure out and evaluate it and be able to pop back to you, being like “Yeah, this is real. No, it is not.” Those personal trust networks, and then they extend out of, your son’s friends are asking a science question that nobody in their network knows, but you know somebody to ask. It might not be that I know, but I know a lot of scientists and I can ask someone and then we play this game of telephone. But it’s a trust network of telephone. That again is something that is just going to increase in importantance as the information gets more cloudy. It’s “how do you find that signal in the noise?” You have to find specialists who know how.

David Hewlett
One of the things I added to Tech Bandits as my sort of little mission was to inspire the next generation of brilliant minds but also through different perspectives. I think it’s so important. Truth isn’t presented, truth is discovered; you have to find the components you need. Like you say, you have to refer to the people who know this stuff to get to the truth, you can’t just take it at face value. In fact, that’s the very nature of being a scientist isn’t it? Is that you question everything. That’s the fun of it, you go, “Oh, I wonder how that works?” “Wait a sec, are you sure that works?” That’s the beauty of it. The problem with the Internet is that it is so easy to put out something that isn’t true. You can do it before you’ve even finished the thought. To put out something that’s knowledgeable, that’s well researched and that is actually of use to people, takes a long time to do it properly. So there’s always going to be more crap out there than there is gold.

Mika McKinnon
There used to be a job in journalism that was effectively a curation job. You just go out and you find a whole bunch of stories and you go “this is the news that’s happening here, here, here, here, here.” It’s like “I did a 10 minute summary that’s really just referencing three other articles, four other articles, then you move on to the next one and the next one and the next one. Well, that job is dying off very fast because that’s a perfect job for AI if you can feed it good information in the first place to do that syndication. But understanding what is interesting or important, that takes taste, and I don’t think you can program taste very well. You can try.

David Hewlett
What I’ve been doing recently is doing an email I try to do once a week. It’s a way of sort of dealing with an ADD thing that I have which is that I want to know everything, I want to read the entire Internet. To try to get myself to focus, what I’ve done is I’ve given myself a goal of every week I have to take a couple of stories that I found interesting and just dig into them a bit, get a sense of them. If I think they’re sort of inspiring, I will share them in this email of awesome awesomeness that I do every week. It’s been amazing because what I’ve done is I’ve stopped going to social media for stories. I now just sign up for newsletters from the various different organizations that I’m interested in, whether it’s chemistry or biotech or astronomy or any of these things. I look through a newsletter from a trusted source, I read that story, I go, “Oh, that’s interesting. I can dive into it from there.” It’s not as quick. One of the things I find frustrating is that every week I miss a good story because that’s just come out. You’re constantly behind because you’ve got your lips up to a firehose of information, your like trying to get a sip. It’s like that dog with its head out of the window with the big lips flapping around. It’s impossible. You need, as you say, I think it’s so important to have people you trust who can find these things for you. It’s why scientists are so freaking important. It’s all very well for me to write and say stuff about this stuff.

Mika McKinnon
I will say if you’re doing the newsletters then two I have to recommend because they’re just so well written and so fun. Leah Crane writes one for New Scientist about recent astronomy discoveries and her sense of humor is just spectacular. Then Bethany Brookshire writes one on human animal interactions that I absolutely freakin love. It’s one of the few things that…we were talking before about how parenting is the ultimate distraction. It’s the only newsletter that I will actually finish all the way through even though I get interrupted three times. In general, after I’ve been distracted once, that’s it. It’s gone into the ether, I will find out about it 20 years from now when I’m no longer constantly getting interrupted.

David Hewlett
“I remember almost reading about that.”

Mika McKinnon
Yeah, exactly, exactly. So those two are definitely ones that need to be read.

David Hewlett
Do you know what they’re called?

Mika McKinnon
Bethany’s? Oh man, so Bethany Berkshire’s is on Substack and Leah Crane’s is on New Scientist. I can look up what the actual names of the newsletters are but I know the people.

David Hewlett
I got their names, the peoples. I got the people now so that’s good. I’m always on the lookout. I always have too much to read but I just like to be able to pick and choose things from different places otherwise you just sort of end up always with the same source, right?

Mika McKinnon
Exactly. Bethany’s is called “Team Trash” and Leah’s is…

David Hewlett
Really? Team Trash? That’s great.

Mika McKinnon
Yes. So she specializes in how humans and animals interact and actually she put together…

David Hewlett
I guess we’re team trash?

Mika McKinnon
Yeah, exactly. So she put together in her book called Pests, about how the concept of a pest is entirely human driven. The animals aren’t doing anything, it is how we interact with them and that the same animal doing the same behavior, in different places, is or is not a pest. Here in North America, elephants cannot be a pest. It is impossible for an elephant to be a pest. An elephant is a cool exotic animal doing cool exotic things. But, if you are a farmer in Africa, an elephant is absolutely a pest. It is a giant upscaled rat that is destroying your crops, and occasionally getting drunk and destroying your crops.

David Hewlett
I saw that video, I was amazed at that. Kangaroos too, same thing. We think they’re the cutest thing in the world but man, those suckers are like little Mighty Mouse.

David Read
Oh man. Yeah.

David Hewlett
Terrifying things.

Mika McKinnon
Then in Canada a bear is a pest. A bear is somebody who is going to come and destroy your trash can and maybe raid your kitchen and definitely be a hazard. But a bear is this adorable, cute, exotic animal if you’re, say, in Europe, and don’t have to deal with them raiding your trash can.

David Hewlett
Where do we stand on rats? I’ve got of a couple who like to roam around here that are freaking me out a little bit. I find if I name them they’re not nearly as terrifying to me once I’ve named them.

Mika McKinnon
Looks like Leah Crane’s newsletter is just the New Scientist newsletter.

David Hewlett
Okay, all right.

Mika McKinnon
It does not have a cute name.

David Hewlett
I get the New Scientist newsletter.

Mika McKinnon
So you already have Leah’s.

David Read
Jeremy wanted to know, Mika and David – assuming there would be another Stargate show, what role do you think that AI would take in it? Not the scary replicator kind. Would we be using AI to help us explore the cosmos?

Mika McKinnon
I argue it was already being used for all the times we have like, “dear computer, fix the thing,” Which we had anytime we were doing any of the Ancient tech, we just were very bad at interfacing with it and didn’t always understand it. If you think about Stargate Universe, every time they’re trying to work with the Destiny computer, especially the chair, how is that not an AI? Are we saying that Rush was just really good at hallucination? He’s got a very vivid imagination and should possibly give up his career as a scientist to instead be a novelist.

David Hewlett
Right.

Mika McKinnon
Entertainment, very key when in deep space.

David Hewlett
Right, keep the crews morale up.

David Read
David what to you think? In the next Stargate iteration, how would that unravel?

David Hewlett
Yeah, it’s an interesting one. As you say, I think there’s a weird that happens where we’re processing huge amounts of information. That’s all being handled by a lot of machine learning in many cases so I think it’s almost not as sexy anymore. It used to be a big glowing disk that you talked to, now we all have them in our kitchens and they’re called Alexa or whatever. So I feel like the shine has come off that now. Honestly, I think if anything, I would say AI will certainly play a huge part in the effects, I’m sure. The compositing stuff you can do now is all AI based. You give it a foreground, it takes the background out for you, you can do your visual effects. You can even generate images with that. Certainly in the production of a new show, AI would be huge, absolutely huge. But as a character in it? I feel like we’re almost there. I could see it as sort of an alien race being an issue for us. A replicator-like race of intelligence, super intelligence type thing. Maybe implants, I could see sort of like a hybrid. I could see a Data like character in there that’s got the technology that would allow them to process the amount of information we have to process a little better. And McKay would hate him.

David Read
Of course, absolutely.

Mika McKinnon
The out sourcing of the data analysis chunk of it, of the like, “Hey, do all the boring bits for me?” A lot of sci-fi is taking what we have and extending it out and going “well, what next?” Right now it’s “here, do data analysis to my statistics, do my pattern finding.” The human asks the question but being a really good scientist often involves more, how do you ask and frame and think about questions than it does the skills of analyzing the data. Understanding how to collect the data and frame the data and process the data are all part of asking the question. But asking a question that can be answered by the data and understanding the limits of your question, that’s where we’re at right now. So we need almost a character that goes “well, actually, that isn’t the question that you’re asking.” This is causation, it is not correlation.”

David Hewlett
You need a prompt engineer as well. “ou’re asking the wrong question.”

David Read
Framing is everything.

David Hewlett
Yeah, that’s it.

David Read
“What about if we asked this other question?” We have a toddler. We need a toddler to be with us to just ask “but why? But how?”

David Hewlett
That;s it! AI toddler, I love it. It’s here to learn as well and as it learns, it would pick up things as well. That’d be a fascinating character, a character that, I guess that is kind of a Data like thing as well. The idea of an AI that comes on the journey with you and is there to learn, that’s it. It’s basically a shadow for us and we only start gleaning information once it’s had enough information to take in.

Mika McKinnon
So we did Datas in an adult body but occasionally has very childlike questions as they learn. Occasionally we have the villain character who’s in a child like body and has very adult views on things. But having a child like character in a childlike body being like, you’re just followed around by a very inquisitive toddler. There’s that meme about you turn on the alerts from the BBC Science Focus and you just have “what is this? What is this?” just popping up on your phone.

David Read
It’s like a kid.

Mika McKinnon
Well, there you go. That’s the character, is just like wandering around “hi. Why?”

David Hewlett
Asking questions, which is usually my job to be honest. Normally I walk around on set asking “what does that do? What’s that camera? What’s that?” That was always the joke because I spent more time walking around trying to figure out how they were making these things as I was actually doing the acting. I was just so fascinated. One of the things I loved about filming is just the whole process of it; the whole extraordinary machine that’s required to make this thing happen.

David Read
You’re learning.

David Hewlett
That’s it, you gotta learn. That’s it, I think that’s the curiosity thing. Curiosity is a superpower.

David Read
Philippe Canat – question for Mika and David, according to Brad Wright, and this recently came up in an interview, contacting Destiny would have been successful with the help of Rodney McKay. According to you guys, what would have been the solution used here do you think?

David Hewlett
You’re going to ask me to McKay this?

David Read
Yeah. McKay it McKay.

David Hewlett
The solution would have been to snap your fingers a lot, get snappy at Zelenka and then…

David Read
Wormhole drive.

David Hewlett
Randomly buttons. Yeah, that’s it. Randomly hit buttons or something until Mika comes up with a solution for us.

Mika McKinnon
My favorite thing was actually always coming up with the wrong answers because you can’t get to the solution right away, you have to have everything break first, so coming up with everything that’s wrong and everything that doesn’t work. Stargate Atlantis Brainstorm, that was the climate change episode, where we had…

David Read
Freeze lightning.

Mika McKinnon
…Neil deGrasse Tyson and Bill Nye the Science Guy. Everyone’s showing up in the desert and we’re sending heat to a parallel universe and gets locked on. Having all the ways in which things do not work was so much fun for the background science of like, “what doesn’t happen? What are all the solutions we don’t try, or that we try and fail?” So coming up with things that don’t work is a key part of the science consulting process and definitely my favorite part of plausibly bad ideas. So plausibly bad ideas? Trying to do something to amplify the communication stones, maybe set up some sort of resonance on that. We’ve done interdimensional bridges before so maybe a multi-universe bridge hop. Treat one like “we can’t wormhole from here to here, but maybe we can go to another universe and back.” Trying to get ahead of the Stargate network, so trying to brute force dialing every possible Gate combination. There’s a way to use AI!

David Hewlett
AI, there you go, perfect.

Mika McKinnon
Be like “what are the most plausible things based on what we know about how the Ancients structured their gate system to anticipate future addresses for gates that we have not yet visited?”

David Read
Because there is a logic to it.

David Hewlett
Like we did with the periodic table. Exactly like the periodic table.

Mika McKinnon
Exactly, so can we create a periodic table of gate dresses? For an energy source, what can we have as astrophysical energy sources for this? This gets into the field pf astrophysics which I always wanted. Let’s just have a space station around a really exotic star and just be like, “let’s experiement.” Astrophysics and geophysics, really the only actual difference between the scientists is whether or not you get to poke it with a stick. On one side you can, on the other you can’t. Astrophysics would totally love to be able to poke their science with a stick so getting that opportunity of having that…

David Hewlett
Very big stick. Very long stick.

Mika McKinnon
Exactly and the improvisational capacity of that would be super fun and be able to be like, “can we go find a star, use it as a direct…?” We’ve gotten our stargates accidentally locked on black holes before, we’ve used the power of a solar flare to do time travel before. Clearly we can use astrophysical batteries. Can we harness one in order to get the power to do this?

David Read
Wireless energy transfers.

Mika McKinnon
Which is just light which makes it even more fun. Then all the different stars and astrophysical bodies could be different ones that fail for this. Maybe finding a nice big brown dwarf or a really big Jupiter sized planet, maybe finding a couple of those and Goldilocksing which one has the exact right dimensions in order to be a good power source.

David Read
Wow.

Mika McKinnon
Those could all be great bad answers.

David Hewlett
Mika did you go through every Stargate episode and detail the science? How do you get to the point where you know enough about what has happened in the past on this show?

Mika McKinnon
The very, very first science was all done by prop master Kenny Gibbs with his high school physics textbook. Eventually it got handed off to Steve Conboy, who is one of my friends, String Theorist, who now lives in South America and his thesis shows up in Stargate before he ever published it in science papers. I know the science from that because I know Steve and I was one of his friends while he was writing his thesis, I know that chunk of it and then I got to take over so I know it. I have the file folders still, if we ever make another Stargate. I’ve now digitized most of them but I’ve got all the reference papers we use and which formulation of Stargate do we use? There’s a whole bunch of possibilities. What flavor of time travel have we used in Stargate in the past so that we can be consistent with that? Some of the characters, alien glyphs, are used consistently throughout the years. Steve picked one for a particular thing and I just kept using it or I got to assign one and now I know what it is and keep using it. So, it’s a lot of reference material.

David Hewlett
We need like a Mika bot. We need a Mika AI that we can ask questions like a chat GPT type thing. We can ask Stargate questions.

David Read
Lockwatcher – question for Mika. Many of the 3d printers available can duplicate many of their own parts now. Rep Rap Project, evidently. Do you think that our 3d printers that we use now are precursors towards replication system?

Mika McKinnon
Yeah. Flat out that’s what we call them on the International Space Station. We’re calling it a replicator when we send up the raw supplies in order to make the tools on demand. It was a big deal to be able to do that. It’s challenging when you’re in a fully sealed environment because, you know, outgassing. You’ve got to be very low waste on it. Anyone who thinks that the solution to our environmental problems is “go to another planet” needs to understand if you’re doing deep space, “reduce, reuse, recycle,” gets amplified. Yesterday’s coffee is tomorrow’s coffee, you harness that. You get everything re-done. So yeah, I absolutely say that 3d printers are primitive replicators and we’re just getting more sophisticated in the printing materials over time. Then apparently making it universal because that doesn’t ever break, to make everything in all-in-one solution.

David Hewlett
Prusa, the guy whose printer I have, who I love, amazing guy who’s built this company, he’s got a whole printing farm that basically prints printers. He’s got whole rows and rows of printers that are printing the components for the next printers. When this one, we had an issue, it was another one actually, an earlier one. One of the parts broke, just from me carrying it around probably, and one of my Tech Bandits just 3d printed another part and rebuilt it with that part, on the same printer. So basically fixed the printer with the printer. I think we’re almost there, you know.

Mika McKinnon
The International Space Station has the Canadarm, but it has also the hand, Dextre. Dextre and the arm, together, are the first self repairing space robots, in that they went around and fix themselves, just to see if they could.

David Read
I didn’t know about that.

David Hewlett
How wild is that? How wild is that?

Mika McKinnon
It was just like this tiny little checkbox thing where you’re like, “well, we could send the astronauts out on a spacewalk.” But as we said, humans are fragile and have biological needs. It takes a huge amount of time to do a very small task and they’re in big, bulky gloves and it’s exhausting and all of that. Or you could set the robot to do it.

David Hewlett
Or design something specifically. Designed something specifically for the job as opposed to us. The backbreaking work, the repetitive stuff, all that stuff needs to be replaced by robots.

Mika McKinnon
How is AI used in sci fi? We already kind of did this with things like having the little like robots that can replicate and generate whatever particular screw or nut or bolt it needs in order to do the thing of the repair tasks.

David Read
Like the Exocomps in Next Gen [Star Trek].

Mika McKinnon
Exactly. Just make them a background. It’s a Swiss army knife, it’s not anything exciting, it’s a really boring tool that you use to go out and do the things. It’s not exciting, it’s just data crunching, getting rid of all the boring bits

David Read
YUKI at HOME – I loved the classic M.A.L.P from SG-1 and first few seasons of Atlantis. What would the 2023 M.A.L.P look like or would it be pretty identical?

Mika McKinnon
I would want better wheels, be better all terrain on that. Let’s borrow from Boston Robotics with creepy robots that can get over better things. Or get the search and rescue robots that go into piles and collect rubble and all that. I also want more geophysics tools; so borrow from the Mars Rovers of “hey, can you zap with the laser” and artificially taste the rocks. Can you sample the atmosphere and tell me more about it? Just amp up the tool set.

David Hewlett
And flight. There should be a flying component as well for sure.

David Read
UAVs.

David Hewlett
You want to scan your area, that’s the way to do it.

Mika McKinnon
Exactly, humans should be superfluous. We get to ask better questions than the toddler does apparently. So wrigley I’m saying that we should replace SG teams with toddlers…

David Hewlett
The robo toddlers.

Mika McKinnon
…who just sit there and ask questions and they have one responsible adult who has to keep them from all jumping off cliffs by mistake,

David Hewlett
Or Sam?

Mika McKinnon
Yeah, exactly. The one responsible adult.

David Hewlett
You know, it ain’t gonna be McKay, you know that.

Mika McKinnon
Robo toddlers don’t need to have humanoid, bipedal shapes because we’re not particularly efficient. That would be the first exploration team and then you can send in the squishy humans to go do…

David Hewlett
Negotiate with the life forms that they’ve discovered or whatever.

Mika McKinnon
Exactly, you do the upfront diplomacy. I can hear my human alarm going off in the background there so I need to wrap up pretty fast.

David Read
Miko, I really appreciate you coming on and taking time with us again.

David Hewlett
Thank you so much. It’s just fascinating Mika, it’s just amazing. I just love getting to do this.

Mika McKinnon
It’s always fun.

David Read
Absolutely. David, can you stick around for a few minutes?

David Hewlett
Sure. Yeah. Okay.

David Read
Can we do it that way? All right Mika, we’re gonna let you go. I really appreciate you taking the time. It is always a pleasure to have you on and best of luck with the young ones. Enjoy.

Mika McKinnon
Thank you. Always, I get to ask lots of questions; how, why, what?

David Read
Exactly right. You take of yourself. Bye bye. Alright, let me set this up so I can have myself view here for a few more minutes.

David Hewlett
Of course.

David Read
Hang on just a second.

David Hewlett
Poor Mika. Man, you gotta be run ragged. Three year old and what did she say? Three month old?

David Read
Yes, exactly right. Sorry everyone, seeing how I make the sausage here.

David Hewlett
Oh really? Cool. Please do not look behind the curtain.

David Read
Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.

David Hewlett
Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.

David Read
That’s it. David, I got a couple of questions for you.

David Hewlett
By all means.

David Read
I think we’ve explored this one a while ago but I’m interested in your assessment now. Let me see here. Here it is. Jeremy wanted to know – if there had been a season six of Atlantis, what direction would you have liked to have seen the character take?

David Hewlett
I’ve always said I would love an evil McKay, always wanted to do some kind of an evil McKay. We talked about AI, I actually had AI right a little evil McKay episode for me. Not an entire episode, I just thought it was curious to see what it would come up with. It’s kind of fascinating, it came up with the idea of a scene, it is a montage, of the two McKay’s on different planets arguing about why they work the way they work. So basically, the battle between the evil and the good McKay was just basically us having arguments with each other about what different forms of science we felt were more accurate or not. Each one trying to prove each other smarter than the other so that the bad guy could…Bad McKay wasn’t going to kill him until he knew that he was actually smarter than him.

David Read
Until he knew, isn’t that wild?

David Hewlett
That was a storyline that I always really wanted. It was just like a classic 1980s TV thing for me. Growing up watching television in the 70s and 80s, there was always the bad twin of some sort, or brother or whatever. It would be fun.

David Read
Would you have done any more, or have liked to have done any more, of two McKay’s in one scene or perhaps more? Or was that just technically exhausting? If you had your choice, not do that again.

David Hewlett
It’s a bit like a lot of the roles I play; they’re absolutely miserable at the time but they’re so much fun, if that makes sense. I think I’ve got a weird sort of sadistic, masochistic quality to myself. I feel like if you’re somehow in pain it makes for a better show.

David Read
It’s worth the trouble.

David Read
But your timing would still have to be spot on. That’s the trick; you have to be internally consistent. When you’re not in control of which takes are going to be used, that’s got to be madness?

David Hewlett
Yeah, it really is. It’s like theater. I mean, who would do theater? Theater is not comfortable, theater is incredibly uncomfortable. You’re in front of the stage, things could go wrong, there’s so many possibilities. I found it absolutely exhausting but at the same time, what a great role and what an opportunity. I think also the technologies are better now, I think it’d be easier to do now than it was back then. The compositing would have been insane back then so we had these motion control cameras and such. I think the technology now to make a show with multiple McKay’s would be would be a lot easier now. I think as a result, maybe a lot easier… Now I say that, it’d be a lot easier for them to shoot it, that means I’m gonna have more lines though isn’t it?

David Hewlett
Yeah, it really is. Aalso, you start getting frustrated cuz you’re going like, “Oh damn, they’re gonna keep that one because technically it’s better.” The performance is better than that one that they’re gonna throw on the editing floor. That’s always the trade off I find with…as an actor you don’t have control over that stuff. I guess there’s some actors do, but I don’t. You just got to do your best every time and hope that they can piece something together from it. It’s basically the way it works.

David Read
Are you completely divorced from it when you see it on television for the first time or are you still saying to yourself, even though you’ve given that pep talk to yourself, “I liked that other take. I liked it. They didn’t use it.”

David Hewlett
It’s happened on some stuff. There’s definitely some stuff where I’ve gone like, “Ah, really? We’re there? Why are we on that shot?” There’s definitely times you do that. But also, having done some editing and directing and stuff, you realize that it’s just not all about you, weirdly. Weirdly it’s not all about me. There’s so many other things that could come into play. There’s no point in having a great acting performance by you if you’re watching a grip in the background holding a tree. But again, the tools are getting so much better now that you can fix a lot of those problems in post. I think, in a way, it’s going to be easier to get better performances. You never know what they’re gonna do with stuff anyways.

David Read
I remember being backstage when you were filming Adrift and you were trying to get Sheppard to accept your apology. ” I know I screwed up, you may have some cause for feeling this way, blah, blah, blah.” I remember you’re going through the speech again and again and I’m thinking to myself, “Oh, that’s a good take. I’d like to see that. That’s a good take. That was…” Then when it airs, they have thought of it all in terms of the larger piece and it is represented in the larger piece, not the individual scene, that’s the most important.

David Hewlett
That’s what it comes down to. The other thing that you realize, very quickly. Well, first off, there’s two things I do. One is, I don’t know when this snapped into place. It used to be that I could not, I would watch the stuff I was in, all I could watch was myself. I’ve got to this weird point now in my career where it’s another person. I go, “Oh, he didn’t do a good job on that.” Or “that didn’t work well for him.” It’s literally like a different person. But I also know I’ve got no control over it so it’s like there’s a weird sense of release now where I’m just like, “Yeah, great, they did what they…” The other thing you realize is that they don’t see the other takes. If you’re there and you see the rehearsals and you go, “Oh, there’s three, four takes there, oh man, those are all great.” Then the last one when finally it all worked is not as good, no one’s seen the other stuff. It works in a whole different way than than it did before. The thing that’s always bothered me about acting is the lack of control. I’ve always been very envious of painters who could just grab a blank canvas and paint something and then it’s like, “there, that’s what was in my head, that’s on the page, done.”

David Read
Or Tom Cruise who can say “I want that one.”

David Hewlett
Well that too, yeah, that’s true.

David Read
I’m curious, I wonder why you have divested yourself from that other person who did that? Is it just it’s been so long, you’re really not that person anymore?

David Hewlett
It’s weird, it happens even with newer stuff. I just had to put together another demo reel because my demo reel, I realized, was so old. If they hired me and I showed up on set they would be like like, “no, no, we wanted to hire your son.” So I thought I’d better redo my demo. I was going through all the old stuff and it really was “Ah, why did you do that? That’s not gonna work.” Again, it doesn’t work for me, for the demo. It works fine for the show but for me, I wanted to be able to cut there. Everyone has their own little kingdom to worry about within the film industry, whether it’s a sound issue or a lighting issue or directing thing or writing thing. Everyone has reasons why they need things to change. Also, what’s best for you is rarely best for the show, that’s the other thing. There are actors who come in and it is them and it is about them and it’s all about them. They can be amazing actors but it doesn’t necessarily make for a good show. If you shine in a show that no one else can get a look in, then it’s not a good show is it?

David Read
You joked “that’s not the person I thought, I wanted your son.” Has Baz indicated any interest in getting into the family business?

David Hewlett
No, he mocks and derides what I do for a living all the time. I love him for it. If, god forbid, he scrapes the barrel and ends up being an actor, then I guess that I would support him in anything he does. If he showed a love for it, I would absolutely support it in every way but I definitely have not made it easy for him. The funny thing is if I was back at his age now, I’m not sure that I would pursue it as a profession, it’s a different world. When I came into acting, films and TV, we set the trends, we were the news, that was everything. Everyone wanted to be a famous actor or a famous musician, basically. Those are the two things, maybe sports, I guess there were sports stars as well. But that’s just not the same anymore; there are YouTubers who are doing crazy cool stuff, building empires of their own. I think Hacksmith Smith and stuff built their own empires doing exactly what they want to do. There’s so many more opportunities out there for people that might have that extrovert desire, like I did, for some reason. What was that? I’m hearing…I’m in the garage.

David Read
You got a couple more minutes?

David Hewlett
I do. Yeah.

David Read
I watched Pin a couple of months ago.

David Hewlett
Oh wow.

David Read
And I loved it.

David Hewlett
It’s pretty wild, isn’t it?

David Read
That was wild. I am a huge Terry O’Quinn fan.

David Hewlett
He’s fantastic. Oh my god, what a guy. What a guy.

David Read
That was really exciting to see. Kate had always said, “you look at him in that age, he’s like a young Jude Law.” I’m like, “Yeah, I can see it. Absolutely.” What was that role like? Or do you look back on that going, “Oh my god, [inaudible]?”

David Hewlett
It was fantastic. It was my first really big role, it was the first lead basically. I didn’t have a clue what I was doing and I was so nervous. I did so much research, probably too much research. This was before the days of the internet. I was at the public library looking up stuff about psychosis being the nerd that I am. One of the joys of acting is you get to learn a little bit about a lot of things, basically. That was one of those things and I was reading like Manson’s diaries and all sorts, just trying to get a sense of what this…

David Read
Psychosis.

David Hewlett
Yeah, how does one split one’s personality like this. Weirdly, I had a lot of fun with the research part of it as well. It’s my first time out, really out of the city. I’d been out, I’d traveled around a little bit but it was my first job out of the city. I was in Montreal, it is a fantastic city. Cynthia Preston, absolutely lovely, lovely actress who played my sister. Terry, we were in awe of Terry and he was absolutely lovely. Great director, Sandor Stern, did an amazing job on that. It’s a weird little film and it comes up all the time. I’m really proud of it. One of the great things about being a Canadian actor is you can have lots and lots of work and no one knows who you are. By the time I got to Pin I had done a lot of little things. I had got the technical stuff out of the way so the when you get a chance to play a role like that, you can roll with it so to speak. Oh god I loved it, absolutely loved it. I also love playing those uptight, almost like vibratingly tense characters.

David Read
Oh man, absolutely. These kids did not have childhoods, their parents had plastic on the furniture. The story in a nutshell is about an anatomy doll from his father’s doctor’s office whom may or may not be sentient. I liked watching it because there are a couple of scenes, especially just before some of the characters die in a car crash, that almost suggests that there may be a demonic presence in this thing. You can look at it that way or you can look at it as just a straight up psychotic group of people.

David Hewlett
It was around the time of Flowers for Algernon and there was a whole bunch of these different… was that the right one? There was a bunch of these weird, slightly sort of incestuous kind of family weird relationships between brothers and sisters and stuff that was sort of popular in that era. Sandy, I guess, had written the Amityville Horror, I guess, the movie. He just did a great job with that, just a fantastic job of that film. It’s weirdly funny, it’s got of weird sense of humor to it. There’s definitely some 80s moments but there’s definitely some questionable stuff. But yeah, it was a wonderful role, I couldn’t wish for more.

David Read
I think it still holds. It is an 80s product and there’s a couple of twists in it that definitely did surprise me. Like “Well, now that character is gone…wow, they’re okay!” It’s worth going out there and watching. I just wish it was available to stream somewhere and it’s not right now.

David Hewlett
Is it not? Is it not streamable?

David Read
No, I had to go to high seas to get it.

David Hewlett
Oh, really? Wow, okay.

David Read
Yeah. It’s a great film and anyone out there who enjoys David’s work, I highly recommend seeking it out.

David Hewlett
It’s a good Halloween one.

David Read
Very much so.

David Hewlett
You should watch Pin and then watch Cabinet of Curiosities The Rats episode. It’s like a time lapse between my first show and one of my latest.

David Read
I have not seen that, I need to sit down and watch it.

David Hewlett
Have you not?

David Read
I have not, no, but Del Toro is brilliant.

David Hewlett
Vincenzo [Natali] directed it, Vincenzo, the guy who did Cube directed it. Between the two of them it was magnificent.

David Read
David, it’s always great to have you on. It’s great to see you.

David Hewlett
I’m sorry it was such a nuisance to get us together.

David Read
We made it work out. You have a wonderful holiday season.

David Hewlett
You too, enjoy.

David Read
I’d love to have you and Kate back for season four next year.

David Hewlett
Yes, we should do it. Yeah, let’s do a Kate and I. I think it’d be better to have a Kate and I together. I thought it wasn’t fair on Mika to have…

David Hewlett
Oh no, I wasn’t going to have the three of you. I was going to have the two of you if Mika couldn’t show up.

David Hewlett
Oh I see.

David Read
I’ll reach out to her and put a pin in her ear.

David Hewlett
I’ll try to talk her out of it and tell her she’s not wanted or loved. I will say, if anyone watching this is in the Paris region, I’m going to Paris next week. Its Paris Manga and Sci-fi Expo. I’ve been to it once before, it’s really fun, so I’m looking forward to going back. I haven’t been to a convention for ages now.

David Read
By TGS, sci-fi show. Oh look at this, I’m posting this right now. This is great, very cool. So this is next weekend?

David Hewlett
Next weekend. Yeah. Is it next weekend? Oh my god it is, it’s next weekend. Yeah.

David Read
Wow. What a great lineup.

David Hewlett
I haven’t done a big convention in a loooong time so I am really looking forward to getting back out there again.

David Read
28th October, that’s it.

David Hewlett
Be there!

David Read
Tony Amendola, very cool.

David Hewlett
Yeah. Is it Leah Pinsent? Lea Thompson? Lee Thompson.

David Read
From Back to the Future?

David Hewlett
Back to the Future.

David Read
Let’s see here. Yes, Lea Thompson. That’s right. Elijah Wood, very cool.

David Hewlett
I want to talk to Elijah Wood because he did a film with Vincenzo in France years ago and I’m curious to know if he remembers the experience. It’s interesting. So if people are there, come and say hi. Obviously techbandits.org, go check it out.

David Read
I’ve put the link on the description.

David Hewlett
If people want to sign up for the email of awesome awesomeness, that is the way to do it. I’m just trying to get as many people as I can because it helps and it’s just kind of fun.

David Read
Yes. Anyone who’s interested in that, just go ahead and click on the description below for Tech Bandits, it will take you there.

David Hewlett
You rock, you rock. Fantastic.

David Read
No, you rock, sir. Always. Appreciate you man.

David Hewlett
Thanks so much man.

David Read
You take care of yourself okay,

David Hewlett
You too.

David Read
I’ll close out on this end.

David Hewlett
Thanks to all the mods doing their fantastic modding work with or without hammers.

David Read
Be well Dave.

David Hewlett
Cheers.

David Read
David Hewlett, Rodney McKay in Stargate Atlantis. Always a pleasure to have David and Mika on, they are always so fascinating. You think you’ve heard it all and then it’s like, “wow, that’s a thing. Wow.” The world is always an opportunity to learn something new. I also have an announcement to make. I along with Joseph Mallozzi, we were a part of a French documentary by Stardust, who’s on YouTube, the Air and Space channel. He put together a Stargate documentary and I’ve put a link in the description below regarding that so you can go and check that out. It’s over an hour long and it’s in French and in English. He’s done a great job with interviewing myself, Joseph Mallozzi and the people who were responsible for making a physical Stargate. It’s a French team and they went ahead and put this thing together. You can go over there and follow the link below and learn more about how…I’m trying to find the clip from that and I’m not going to be able to pull that off. There it is, there’s one of them. A French team made a Stargate so he has interviewed them as well. Over at Stardust, the Air and Space channel, he’s done a complete Stargate documentary that I really recommend, it’s really cool. We have tomorrow, let me pull this up here. Mark Savela is going to be joining myself and Jenny Stiven to discuss the state of the visual effects industry. Since the writers strike and the actors strike, a lot of the behind the camera workers have really been hit hard. We’re going to learn, through Mark, a little bit more about the process of what it takes to bring so many of the effects that are key to making our favorite shows, the process come to life, and how they’ve been impacted since then. So just bringing a little bit more awareness into the public consciousness of what’s going on. Mark did a wonderful article for, it’s like an op-ed, on Facebook and if you go over to our page on Twitter/X you can see a link, a reply, with the announcement of this particular episode and the complete op-ed that he did. I’ll also be posting a shot of it at the beginning of the show tomorrow, but really looking forward to having Mark Savela on and Jenny Stiven to discuss the state of the visual effects industry in Hollywood and I think it’s going to be a good episode. We got a number of shows for you before we finish out our season next weekend, October 29th. Go over to dialthegate.com and get the latest rundown of everything that we’re going to have. A lot of this stuff is going to be pre-recorded so I’m just going to post it. This is an insane number of episodes to have the moderators moderate for a premier so we’re just going to post them. If you want to comment on it, you can just leave comments in the comment section. My name is David Read for Dial the Gate, I really appreciate you all tuning in. Thanks to my moderating team, Tracy, Antony, Sommer, Jeremy, Rhys; you guys make the show possible. Frederick Marcoux at ConceptsWeb, he keeps dialthegate.com up and running. My producer, Linda “GateGabber” Furey, and my amazing team of transcribers who have been working diligently to transcribe every episode of the show. Hopefully we’ll be releasing those on dialthegate.com in some format fairly soon here. I think we’re about halfway through, if not more, at this point. It’s a lot of content and they’ve been blowing through it so I really appreciate them. Again, my name is David Read for Dial the Gate. Thank you so much to David Hewlett and Mica McKinnon for joining us. I’ll see you on the other side.