Kathleen “Kate” Ritter, Stargate author and owner of the venerable RDAnderson.com, is joining Dial the Gate to share memories of meeting Richard Dean Anderson through MacGyver fandom, following his work to Stargate, and ultimately writing content for Stargate merchandise!

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Timecodes
0:00 – Opening Credits
0:25 – Welcome
0:36 – Guest Introduction
1:52 – A Great Deal of Kinship
3:05 – Writing Letters to Rick
6:22 – Meeting Rick in 1990
7:26 – The Old Internet Days
8:32 – Starting the Web Site
9:45 – Buying the RDAnderson.com Domain
11:28 – Building Awareness
14:51 – Making It Official
15:20 – On-Set for “Double Jeopardy”
17:53 – The Stargate Lexicon
20:20 – Pandora’s Clock
25:58 – Kate’s Interest in Science Fiction
27:00 – Quitting Coverage of SG-1?
29:05 – Kate is a One-Man Band
30:08 – Evolving Writing Skills
32:50 – The Stargate Fan Club From Lightspeed
35:24 – Trading Cards From Rittenhouse Archives
36:51 – The Ultimate Visual Guide to Stargate SG-1
41:10 – The MacGyver Reference Flags at MGM
43:53 – Getting Approval for the Air Force Generals
46:27 – Keeping In Touch with Rick
47:57 – Wylie Anderson and Right to Privacy
52:30 – Modern Fandom
57:00 – Thank You, Kate!
59:31 – Post Interview Housekeeping
1:00:50 – End Credits

***

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TRANSCRIPT
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David Read:
Hello, and welcome to another installment of Dial the Gate – The Stargate Oral History Project. My name is David Read – your host. Thanks so much for joining us for this episode. Kathleen “Kate” Ritter, who is a Stargate author and the creator and owner of the rdanderson.com website, is joining us for this episode. I’ve got a number of her pieces, particularly the Stargate SG-1 Ultimate Visual Guide that she created. If you don’t have this, I really recommend picking it up; this is a great piece and I’ll show you some details inside of this as we move forward here. She’s joining us for this episode. Kate and I go back, gosh, 20 years. We met once a number of years ago at, I believe, at GateCon, and she is a cornerstone in the Stargate online community with rdanderson.com. But she doesn’t usually do a lot of press herself. She has created a number of interviews for rdanderson.com over the years, interviewed a number of people that I would die to get a hold of. She has agreed to join us for this episode to talk about her love for the fandom and her content… in creating Stargate content and her legacy. And I’d love for you to meet her. So let’s bring her in. So I have been looking forward to having you on for a while now. I’ve been wanting to ask you on for a while because I feel a great deal of kinship with you as my half of the sphere over at GateWorld was, you know, we all buttressed Stargate together. You with a Rick focus and then Stargate and us with a franchise focus. And I can’t believe… I guess I can believe that this thing has survived as long as it has, but the fact that, you know, people are still interested in this franchise is just kind of mind-boggling. Is it to you?

Kate Ritter:
Well, it is, but also because I’m Rick-focused, I’m amazed at how many people are still discovering MacGyver.

David Read:
Yeah.

Kate Ritter:
That was 40 years ago, and there are whole new generations that have been born since then, that are just discovering it now. So yeah, the whole thing… I had no idea where this was going when I started.

David Read:
And where did it start with you? So, did you…
you started with MacGyver – is that how far you go back in terms of your interests in this actor?

Kate Ritter:
Yeah. There’s a story about the connection…

David Read:
Really?

Kate Ritter:
If you have time for this. I was a teacher for many years. I taught hearing impaired children for 37 years. So, because it was special ed, we had generally small classes, maybe 8 to 10 kids, and back in the early days, we were self-contained. So when MacGyver started, I was intrigued by the premise. I started watching the show. I became a fan. And I was enjoying it. And one of the lessons that I would teach in language arts was letter writing. Remember, this is the 1980s. People wrote letters back then.

David Read:
What are those things?

Kate Ritter:
Yeah, on paper. So we learned how to write a letter. And one of the fun projects was to write a fan letter because there was a chance you’d get an autograph back. So I asked my class, you know; choose your celebrity and sports figure and actor and musician. So one kid said, “Oh, I like MacGyver. I want to write to MacGyver.” And then the other kid said, “Oh, I love that show, too. I want to write.” Turns out the whole class were fans. So I thought there might be a better chance of getting a response if I put them all in an envelope instead of randomly sending them. So that’s what we did: the kids wrote their fan letters, I put them in a single envelope and mailed it off to the studio. And we got an answer. We had a handwritten personal letter, in all capitals, just the way he writes.

David Read:
From Rick?

Kate Ritter:
From Rick. Yeah. So, of course, we were all thrilled with that.

David Read:
Of course.

Kate Ritter:
And then later in the year… that was 1987, right at the end of 1987. So later in the school year, we were doing story writing skills. And one of the projects we did for that was they would write their stories and we’d adapt one of them into a script and we’d film it. This was back when VHS, remember, with the cameras? So I would film it, and then each kid would get a copy. So the story that we decided to adapt was MacGyver as a child. And so it was a mystery. He and his friends were trying to find… I don’t remember, it was lost jewelry or something. But we had sets and props and MacGyverisms.

David Read:
Yeah, a MacGyver element to it, like him using something.

Kate Ritter:
Yeah, he would solve… we used a boom box to open a safe. Yeah, it was pretty cute. And so I filmed it, and kids got their copies. And I mailed one of those off to Rick, too, just to see. And we got another response, another personalized handwritten letter from Rick. So that’s how it started. I had the same class for two or three years, I think. And over those years, we had several connections and contacts. I think at one point we did a science contest or something based on it. Anyway, that was how the connection started with the studio. And then… it was 1990, I was traveling on the West Coast and I was going to be up in the Vancouver area. And so I called the studio and I asked if they would have a list of shooting locations. I don’t know if you remember LA used to do that. I don’t think they do anymore. But you could go and get a printout, and you’d know where everything was filming. So I asked, and she said, “No, we don’t do that in Vancouver. But if you’re going to be in the area, give us a call. I’m sure Richard would love to meet you.” Which I was never expecting. So I was in Vancouver. I called. I got invited to the set, and that’s where Rick and I met for the first time. So that was 1990. All because of these letters he had been writing to the kids. And then we met a couple of times after that, and on the set the following year. I’ve written the stories of this; they’re on my website, about the on-set experiences. So that’s how the connection with Rick started, but that’s way before I had internet. I don’t know if anyone had internet.

David Read:
Right. That’s pretty early.

Kate Ritter:
Personal. I mean, maybe businesses, but yeah, 1990. So I didn’t go online until 1995, I think it was. I had an AOL account, dial-up, remember that? 14-4 over the phone line.

David Read:
That’s right. Not even 28K.

Kate Ritter:
No, no.

David Read:
Or 56K.

Kate Ritter:
And if you had an AOL account, you had access to AOL only. It didn’t get you out to the rest of the internet. So I kind of stumbled on a little group of MacGyver fans. And Legend was coming out that year. And so, you know, just talked because it was a novelty then to talk to other people online from all over the place. And that was how the online connection started. Then the website was almost an accident. I just thought it would be fun to learn how to do HTML. So I got a book from AOL – it was kind of a beginning HTML for dummies kind of thing, and I taught myself how to do text and how to do images and how to do links, and I needed a topic, and I had a couple of articles and a couple of pictures of Rick in a drawer somewhere because of the connections that we had had. So I thought, “Well, that’d be fun. I’ll learn how to use the scanner and put this up.” So it was a tiny little website. I had like a biography and a couple of articles and a page of pictures. And I introduced it to this online group on AOL, and the reaction was encouraging. And so I started adding to it. But it was just this little bubble within AOL – that was how it started. So, that was probably 1996, I think. And then as we started into 1997, Stargate hadn’t aired, but we knew it was coming because I knew from contacts with the studio what Rick was doing. So, by then, I finally got a real online provider and moved the website over and bought the domain. For a while, I didn’t… I didn’t have the domain right away.

David Read:
Was “RichardDeanAnderson.com” not available?

Kate Ritter:
I don’t remember if I looked for that one. I was trying to keep it short.

David Read:
Oh, I see. Understood.

Kate Ritter:
Yeah, so I chose that.

David Read:
It is a long name.

Kate Ritter:
In 1997, almost everything was available.

David Read:
Yeah, that’s true.

Kate Ritter: I relayed it that way. So I started… I loaded the website in its entirety, which it’s now grown a little bit. It was March of 1997. So actually the website predated Stargate because it hadn’t aired yet. But I still had some connections with the studio because some of the same people followed Rick there. So they were offering me images… I’m sure you as Gate World, you were getting it too; the publicity materials and that sort of thing.

David Read:
If it’s going to go up they want it to be right.

Kate Ritter:
Yeah. And, so they were encouraging too and so I added this Stargate section to the website. It was mostly MacGyver and general articles and things at the time. So that was how rdanderson.com started, March of 1997.

David Read:
What got it official? What happened there?

Kate Ritter:
Official with Rick, or official…?

David Read:
Yeah. Yeah, official with Rick.

Kate Ritter:
Well, that happened later. I didn’t realize that because it’s now on the internet and outside of the AOL bubble that people at Stargate were aware of it. So I was starting to hear that people like… well, let’s see; this would have been early on. So I remember hearing from Joseph Mallozzi – that he was aware of it, but he didn’t come on until later. So I don’t think I realized in the early stages that it was being watched. But I went to the first GateCon convention… were you at that one?

David Read:
I was not. A few years later. So that was 2000. So that’s the first year that Joe came on – GateCon 2000, so that was in the fall for Season Four, yeah.

Kate Ritter:
Right. Yeah. I can’t remember where you and I first met. It was one of those.

David Read:
One of them. My first one was 2003.

Kate Ritter:
Well, the first one was 2000, and I had no experience with conventions, but it sounded like fun. And it was in Vancouver, so everybody could come: all the writers, directors, producers, the cast, the guest cast. So I flew out to Vancouver and attended that. And it must have been the publicist [who] recognized my name, because we’d never met, and she came up to me at dinner and said, “Would you come over to the producer’s table when you finish eating?” And I went over and talked to John Smith, and… who else was there? Martin Wood.

David Read:
Yeah, that was pretty early on; they got a lot of them.

Kate Ritter:
So it was a whole table. They ate by themselves at the front table. And so she invited me to come up and John Smith said, “Are you free tomorrow? Can you come to the studio?” This was the last day of the convention. And I was actually going to be flying out the next day, but I had the morning free. So I drove over to the studio and was invited on the set and that’s where I met everyone else. They were filming “Double Jeopardy” at the time.

David Read:
Oh! Wow! They were nearly done with the season.

Kate Ritter:
Yeah. Well, it was September.

David Read:
Yeah, yeah.

Kate Ritter:
Most of those GateCons were in September in the early years. Which was a problem for me because I was a teacher, and school starts then. So I had to get a couple of days off around a weekend. So that was when I got to talk to Rick again. I mean, we had met… and that’s when I realized that he was aware of the website too. So word must have spread. And that was when he decided he wanted to make it… he wanted to make it official, but I hesitate to use that word because, technically, to be official he would have had to approve everything I put up on the website before I could put it up. And he.. I guess he trusted me or I did not want to be that involved. And so it was endorsed and it was technically official, but not with him approving every single thing I did. He just kind of trusted.

David Read:
Well, you also come from a scholarly background. So, you have the do’s and don’ts in terms of what’s acceptable and not. And you’ve already, you know, had at this point, 12 or 13 years of correspondence. So, that’s a pretty ringing endorsement at this stage, you know, especially considering, you know, the internet is as young as it is at this point.

Kate Ritter:
Yeah.

David Read:
That’s wild. Do you remember what… did you remember what scene you saw get shot for “Double Jeopardy”? The scenes always stick with me.

Kate Ritter:
I do actually. And it was… did Michael Shanks direct that one?

David Read:
He did.

Kate Ritter:
Yes. Yes. So I was there. He was in the director’s chair and they were filming the scene where Cronus was torturing Teal’c. And Christopher’s [Judge] little daughter, she must have only been about four or five at the time, was there on the set and she kept climbing up into Michael Shanks’ lap to watch. And I was very impressed that she didn’t seem at all disturbed that her father seemed to be in great pain and being tortured. So she seemed to already have an understanding of what’s make-believe. That was the scene.

David Read:
That’s so cool. Was this over at Norco or was this at Bridge Studios?

Kate Ritter:
That was Bridge.

David Read:
OK. Yeah, because a lot of the Goa’uld stuff was over at Norco.

Kate Ritter:
When did they first open Norco?

David Read:
Norco… that’s a great question. I don’t know. It was fairly early on because they needed all the extra space. But everyone who was a part of the studio and who went there was like, “Hush! hush! Don’t don’t tell.” But because it was they only had so much security. So, like, the Prometheus set, a lot of that stuff was over there. A lot of the larger pieces were there. But that’s so cool. And what a great episode.

Kate Ritter:
Yeah. Yeah, it was. Actually, because it was such a short visit because I had to fly out that day, they invited me back in the spring. So I went back in the spring and they were doing…

David Read:
Season Five.

Kate Ritter:
Yeah. Wait a minute. It’ll come to me. It was the… Oh, this is bad. I can’t remember titles – I sound like Rick, himself.

David Read:
Uh…. information… story beats.

Kate Ritter:
It was the one where they were trying to… the planet where the Unas were kept as slaves. Chaka was…

David Read:
Ah, yes! OK. Yep. “Beast of Burden.”

Kate Ritter:
“Beast of Burden.” And that was… they were on location that day.

David Read:
Yep.

Kate Ritter:
So we went all the way out to the little town that they used later for Edora and…

David Read:
Yeah. The Western town. Exactly. Wow. That’s so cool.

Kate Ritter:
So I ended up going back because a lot of things came out of this website. So I ended up being on the set quite a bit after that. But that was the first experience with Stargate.

David Read:
When did the idea for the Lexicon materialize? This is where I get into it.

Kate Ritter:
Well, the irony is the Lexicon was originally going to be for MacGyver.

David Read:
Yeah.

Kate Ritter:
I built the MacGyver section and people were always asking for a list of MacGyverisms and shooting locations. And so I thought, “Well, this is kind of what I do. I’m a teacher. So I collect information and make it easily digestible.” So I was going to start an encyclopedia dictionary kind of thing for MacGyver. And this was probably about 1996, I think. No, no. Can’t be. It’s probably 1998. It was after the website was already up and official.

David Read:
So Season Two of SG-1.

Kate Ritter:
Yeah, it was about Season Two. So my thinking at the time was: MacGyver ran for seven years, and that’s a lot of work, and it’s going to take me a long time. So I’ll start with Stargate. I mean, what are the odds it’s going to run seven years?

David Read:
And that’s also what Rick’s doing right now, too. So people are going to be coming and searching for that as well.

Kate Ritter:
Yeah. Well, I had no idea it was going to run for 10 years. And because it had only run for about two years… I think it might have been starting in its third season by the time I actually started doing this – I could do it a week at a time. So I only had one episode a week to work on. I didn’t have this vast amount. So I started it with Stargate, and then it kept getting renewed and I had to keep adding to it. And so it probably got uploaded toward the end of 1997 or into 1998 sometime.

David Read:
Wow.

Kate Ritter:
And then got connected to the website.

David Read:
So did you launch with the first couple seasons, I’m guessing, completed, or… how did you roll that out?

Kate Ritter:
I think I might have done it with the first… I think I might have launched it when it was caught up.

David Read:
OK.

Kate Ritter:
But I had started working on it in advance because I had about two or two and a half seasons to catch up on.

David Read:
OK. Yeah, I know there’s so much content there because… I wasn’t really a Rick fan… here’s kind of my Rick story: I knew of MacGyver but I wasn’t really watching it, but I loved “Pandora’s Clock” – that was my thing. And I loved the sci-fi element of it, the people trapped on a plane idea. So by the time Stargate SG-1 came around, I was more familiar with him through that than I was through MacGyver, although clearly aware of what MacGyver was. And then by the time I get involved with GateWorld, the first thing that I did was the Stargate Omnipedia, which launched around Season Seven. That’s when I became aware of you and the Stargate Lexicon. I got my marching orders from Darren [Sumner] to start creating this thing because it was his idea to create a GateWorld version. And that was the reason, the chief reason, that I got involved. And so, when I heard about the Stargate Lexicon, this was the first realization that, “Oh! Someone’s already done this.” So there was a little bit of a rivalry in my mind between me and you, because you’ve already done this impressive thing and you’ve got books literally on the coffee tables up in the production studio office – I’ve got my work cut out for me!

Kate Ritter:
That’s right. I printed it out.

David Read:
You sure did.

Kate Ritter:
I think, fifth and sixth season, the binders were like this thick [gestures], and I took them on my set visits. I forgot about that.

David Read:
No, because when we would show up, people would reference… they would say, “This is the Bible, right here. Someone has gone through and pulled out all the person’s places and things and put it in this context here.” So you were hot stuff around the office, let me tell you. Because that was a manual that everyone could reference.

Kate Ritter:
I have to thank you, though, because I never saw it really as a rivalry between me and GateWorld.

David Read:
Healthy. Healthy.

Kate Ritter:
But you did your own work. I’ve had a lot of people who just copied, word for word, my material and then put it on their own websites and claimed it.

David Read:
Isn’t that awful?

Kate Ritter:
Yes, and GateWorld, at least, did their own research, did their own work, put it together in their own format. And you were all Star Trek, excuse me, Stargate related. And I was more Richard Dean Anderson related.

David Read:
That’s it. They each occupied their own bubble.

Kate Ritter:
Yeah, I didn’t really see it as a rivalry. Maybe it lifted us both up.

David Read:
Absolutely. No, a rising tide raises all boats. I saw it not just as… it was nothing negative at all, but I saw it as a motivation for me to raise my game because your work was so excellent. And I said, “OK, there’s an example of someone who got it right. Let’s see if I can take a crack at it as well with a little bit of…” Because one of the specialties about the Omnipedia was specific episode references at the bottom where subject was important. So we weren’t doing exactly the same thing. But boy, I completely get you, especially with the international audience. The desire for people – I won’t mention who it was – but there was a German website who completely lifted all of our information and translated it into German – the whole thing! And this was early enough on, still, where the translations websites were still becoming available, just beginning to be, so we could spit our english into a german website and see what was going on and we had to send out some emails, as i’m sure you did, saying, “Come on, guys. This is not cool. Do your own thing.” And, to their credit, they eventually did. But it was one of those; where it was like, if they really say no, what are we going to do? Publicly shame them? We have no money to spend on… they’re over on the other side of the ocean. Really, practically, what are we going to do at that stage of the internet? So there was a lot of that.

Kate Ritter:
It still happens.

David Read:
This is true.

Kate Ritter:
Occasionally. I’m finding it not so much copying onto other websites but on social media. Just whatever, like… especially all of Rick’s messages – they just go straight out to social media without giving where the…

David Read:
Attribution.

Kate Ritter:
Yeah. And that’s all I ask is a link back.

David Read:
Yeah, absolutely. You’ve spent a great deal of time on this and you also have the backing of Rick, personally. So if something is going to be published there, you know that it’s legitimate. And I really must thank you for continuing to put this thing on and keep it available because it’s not easy. You can’t just put it out there; there’s maintenance costs – you have to maintain it, and always having you there along with GateWorld has always, you know, given me a great sense of of camaraderie; that we love these talents and we love the projects that they’ve done, and that’s that’s what we’re in it for. So, thank you for that. It sounds like I’m wrapping things up, but I’m not; I just wanted to make sure that I got that out there. The genre is so completely different from MacGyver. Were you a sci-fi fan before Rick did this, or was this like, “Rick’s in it, so I’m going to enjoy it?”

Kate Ritter:
A little bit of both. I was an original Trekkie, way back in the day, for the original series, and I never really followed it to all of the other iterations that came out afterward, but that, I guess, started my interest in sci-fi to a degree. I’ve always loved things like time travel stories, and maybe it’s because I’m also very into history, so maybe it’s the time travel thing that appeals to me. So it’s not that I follow anything that’s sci-fi related, but when Stargate happened, Rick was in it, and so that’s what brought me over. It was legitimately a great show, so I did like it for itself.

David Read:
Was there a… how do I want to phrase this? Was there consideration on your part that when Rick was done at the end of Season Eight that you would be done covering the show as well? Was there part of you that was like, “Well, in for a penny, in for a pound, Kate”? I mean, you know, these people are practically family at this point. So I have an obligation to continue finishing out SG-1. Where did you stand on that?

Kate Ritter:
Well, he never really left completely in Season Eight. And, like I said, it was a great show and I liked it for itself. And so I did want to see it through. I did not follow then the way… I’m assuming that GateWorld did this because I don’t visit GateWorld as often as I used to. But I didn’t follow Atlantis and Universe and all those. So I kind of ended when SG-1 ended. And I needed to finish the Lexicon. It’s ironic that you reached out to me now because I said I had started the MacGyver Lexicon way back and then just shifted. And I’ve always felt guilty that I never picked that up again. Years go by and it’s so easy to put it off because it is… I know now, from experience, what a huge job that is.

David Read:
Are you working on it?

Kate Ritter:
Yes. A couple of weeks ago, just before you reached out to me, I thought I cannot let this website just die half finished. I need to finish it. So I’m only on Season Two, but…

David Read:
How do you eat an elephant?

Kate Ritter:
Yes. That’s exactly… starting with small nibbles.

David Read:
I’m so pleased to hear this!

Kate Ritter:
So, yeah, I think MacGyver fans might be pleased to hear that, too, because it just kind of ended there and… sort of the end of Season One, and I just never got back to it. And it really needed to be finished. I didn’t want to have the website left hanging like that. So, yeah, it’s that sense of trying to get it completed.

David Read:
Have you sought help or is this; “No. This is my cross to bear”?

Kate Ritter:
Help in building it, you mean?

David Read:
Yeah, yeah. Generating the articles.

Kate Ritter:
I haven’t.

David Read:
And the individual entries.

Kate Ritter:
I’ve had people offer and I haven’t because, maybe it’s the way I do it. I don’t know how you did it because you had all the links there, all the cross references. And that’s the hardest part: is to write all the separate articles and then cross-link them. And so I had to hold it all in my head at once for each episode that I was doing. And then, you know, especially with Stargate later when, you know, things from Season Seven linked back to something in Season Two. And so I couldn’t… I didn’t see how having someone else writing the articles was going to help if I had to hold it all in my head anyway.

David Read:
I see what you’re saying.

Kate Ritter:
Yeah, I’ve done it all by myself.

David Read:
It was a lot of HTML. I can tell you there were a couple of things. I started with Darren when I was 18. My writing skills were still evolving. So one of his particular beefs – this is a complete aside, but I hope it’s OK – was that, you know, GateWorld is his, and it has a particular tone. And if I’m going to even attempt this, I must match that tone. And so, you know, finding my own voice was hard enough. Then trying to mix in his was the other thing. And then on top of that, the links, exactly right. So we would have a long master Word document. And when I would complete a huge section, I would go in, and every person, place, or thing, would be – for the first entry in each entry that referenced that – I would replace it with the HTML link to lead back to the other entry. And that was a bear to make sure that we got it right. But that was how we did it back then. And now with Wikis, it’s so much simpler. The code is so simplified. But you, I think it’s all… you’re still running your own.

Kate Ritter:
Still raw HTML.

David Read:
Wow. At this point, yeah.

Kate Ritter:
I got used to it.

David Read:
Yeah.

Kate Ritter:
I did have to redesign the website several times. I mean, it started out as just a couple of pages linked together. And then I used frames for a while because I thought that would make the menu easier. And then frames became basically worse than obsolete. I mean, nothing would even support it anymore. So I had to rewrite the whole thing to make it responsive. I’m hoping that’s the last time I have to rewrite the whole website. I had to teach myself HTML all over again to make it responsive.

David Read:
Absolutely.

Kate Ritter:
But I’ve created templates for each kind of page that I have. So basically, you just bring up the template, insert the content, and then upload it. But you still have to test all the links and make sure it all works. I mostly do it that way because I wanted to be able to run the entire thing off my own hard drive.

David Read:
Yes.

Kate Ritter:
I didn’t want to have it out on the internet and then someday it disappears or whatever company is supporting it goes out of business, or whatever. I needed to have it that it would run on a hard drive.

David Read:
Do you still keep it local?

Kate Ritter:
Yeah. No, it’s on my hard drive. So that I can work on it. And then when it’s ready, I upload it.

David Read:
Oh, OK. So you have backups then. OK, good. All right.

Kate Ritter:
I have lots of backups.

David Read:
Absolutely. I want to switch gears into your space as an offline writer. When did the first opportunity to write for Stargate material come about and how?

Kate Ritter:
I’ll tell you the how, I’m not sure if I remember the when.

David Read:
OK.

Kate Ritter:
It must have been after 2000 when I was on the set and met everyone. And it might have been when I first… I had forgotten that I printed out those lexicons and took them to the studio. But the first one, I think, was the fan club. Were you a part of the fan club?

David Read:
I never was, technically.

Kate Ritter:
It didn’t last very long. And I can’t remember exactly when it came out, but Lightspeed wanted to do a fan club. And they apparently went to the studio in Vancouver and said, “Is there anybody who knows the show who could write for that?” And so I got this phone call saying, “We’re starting a fan club and would you be interested in writing articles for it?” And I knew nothing about fan clubs. I didn’t… I hadn’t really any experience in doing interviews or writing articles beyond what was on the website. But I thought it’s an interesting opportunity. I’ll try it. And so that’s what I did. So, really all of the articles from that “Explorers Unit,” was that what it was called?

David Read:
Yes, I think that’s right, “SG Explorers.”

Kate Ritter:
Yeah, I did all of those. So that’s really where I learned how to do interviews and wrote up articles as articles rather than as dialogue, you know, back and forth dialogue. So I did that for several years. And then when the fan club disappeared, or went offline, the article[s]… all the material belonged to me anyway, but I asked permission. Can I put it on the website? So it’s all on the website now if you wanted to read any of the articles. It’s mostly under the features section, I think, of Stargate.

David Read:
Oh, good to know. Yeah, absolutely.

Kate Ritter:
Yeah, the interviews that I did, cast and crew, and the fun ones were the on-the-set kinds of stories, watching how an episode is put together. So I did a lot of those. The next one happened almost the same way. It was the trading cards. I don’t remember what company did the trading cards.

David Read:
I do. You wrote for them?

Kate Ritter:
Yeah. So it was the same kind of thing. The company went to the studio, said, “We want to do trading cards. Do you have somebody who can write the episode summaries?” So that’s what I did. It was the base cards. I didn’t write all of the other ones. So I got a phone call one day, “Would you write these?” And I knew nothing about trading cards.

David Read:
Rittenhouse.

Kate Ritter:
Rittenhouse, that’s right.

David Read:
That’s it. Sorry, folks.

Kate Ritter:
It’s close enough to my own name that I should remember.

David Read:
Right.

Kate Ritter:
So I ended up writing all of the base cards for that. And that started… I could sort of estimate… because they did the first three seasons as one binder – as one release. So [the] first three seasons were already out by then. So I did those. That was a challenge; to get a whole episode summary on the back of a single card.

David Read:
Oh man.

Kate Ritter:
Then when they started with Season Four, there were three cards per episode. Then I had to figure out how to divide it up. But that, again, I started early on and had no idea it was going to run for 10 years, and so I was writing those trading cards every year as they would come out.

David Read:
Man. There’s so much Stargate content out there to be found – even to this day – especially among not just collectors but little corners of the internet: through eBay, through everywhere else, and it takes a village to really bring this stuff to life. There’s so much good stuff out there. One of my favorites of yours is the Illustrated Companion for Stargate. Can you talk a little bit about that?

Kate Ritter:
Yeah. Well, that was an MGM thing. They came to me. No, wait. I forget who was going to publish it originally. But they had worked with MGM, and then that publisher came to me and they wanted to do it. It was right around [the] fifth season. And what they wanted was, basically, my lexicon just shrunk down a little bit and in a book, a paperback book with black and white images, just taken… it was just the screen captures from the website, and it was going to cover the first five seasons. I found it intriguing, but as we talked and negotiated, I was realizing that basically what they were doing was selling something that you could see for free in color on the website. It wasn’t really something that I thought I wanted to put my effort into at that point. And they had no plan for what happened if the show got picked up. Then the show did get picked up. So that idea kind of dropped with the original publisher. And the show went on… I think it was about [the] ninth season, I think, and then MGM reached out to me again with Dorling Kindersley as the publisher. And they’re known for their illustrated guides. I don’t know if you’re familiar with them, but they’ve done… I don’t know, Star Wars, and…

David Read:
Yeah.

Kate Ritter:
…and Castles…

David Read:
I’m sure I own some. Yeah.

Kate Ritter:
They’ve done all kinds of things. So that was more what I had in mind. So they wanted to do a coffee table book in full color…

David Read:
The Ultimate Visual Guide, yes.

Kate Ritter:
Yeah, with actual MGM images. They reached out to me to do it and I thought, “OK…” I can’t remember… I don’t think we knew yet that it was going to end with Season Ten, but

David Read:
A lot had been planned for a Season Eleven, in terms of the contracts with the cast.

Kate Ritter:
Yeah. So as I wrote it, I think I was writing it up through Season Nine and then sort of tacking on information where Season Ten was going to go, as far as the Ori and that kind of thing. But that was arranged completely differently from the lexicon; it wasn’t an alphabetical listing. I had to group things by topic. So the way that worked… Dorling Kindersley is in London, MGM – my contact – was in LA, and I was in New Jersey at the time and we never me. So all of this was done through email. Dorling Kindersley would tell me I basically had control over what went into the book, how it was going to be arranged. They gave me a limit of pages and a number of words per page, and the rest was basically up to me.

David Read:
Wow.

Kate Ritter:
So I planned the way it was organized. I guess I started with the Stargate, and then I did the SGC, and then the main cast, and then we went on to Aliens, and so on. So I organized it that way. I wrote the text for each thing that I was going to include. And then they sent me their whole library of pictures to choose from. So I had to go through them all and pick out which images I wanted to put on the page. And then I would send them, page by page, my text and my choice of images. And then they had a visual designer who would arrange the page layout. I’ll tell you a funny story: on one of the earlier pages, I was describing how the Stargate worked or the technical background, and so I included a little thing about the DHD and that they didn’t find the DHD, and it took 15 years and three supercomputers to MacGyver a system on Earth. And so I put that as part of my text. And I get an email back from Lindsay, “I’m sorry, we can’t word it that way.” And it didn’t have anything to do with copyright or or using it. I think she was just thinking I was using some kind of street slang or something, that this was probably before it was in the dictionary, she just thought I should have used, you know, like, “reverse engineer” or some fancier word. So I wrote back and I said, “The Stargate audience will get the joke. It has to be worded that way. If you’re not going to keep it in there then just take the whole section out because it was the whole point of that little little entry.” And she gave in and she let me keep it. So it’s now in the book.

David Read:
It’s also Sam’s line in the original version of the pilot.

Kate Ritter:
Yeah, well, that’s why I put it in there! Because it’s the line from the show. I knew the audience would recognize it.

David Read:
Absolutely.

Kate Ritter:
But she was not part of the audience. So she didn’t know what I was taking it from.

David Read:
I routinely… when I did work for… OK, fine. When I did work for MGM, in terms of writing content and in terms of doing interviews, I would routinely come across people who would give pushback because of the exact same thing. “This doesn’t work because this.” I’m like, “Well”… and the kind of ‘per my last email’ version of our fandom was, “If you knew the show, this is in perfect context.” But you couldn’t say that. You had to say, “Well, in Stargate this episode, this this scene here – this is why I’m doing it.” And then they would come back and be like, “Oh, OK.” But 80 percent, you know, 70-80 percent of the issues were always that: it was me saying, “OK. Let’s stop for a second. Let me fill you in on this detail.” Because I was dealing with people who didn’t – in the back end, in MGM corporate – didn’t know their own product. And you can’t expect them to know everything because they’ve got thousands of titles. So it’s just one of those things where it’s like; just deal with me here. I do know what I’m doing in this particular situation. That’s why you hired me.

Kate Ritter:
I had to explain it. It was from the show and it was an inside joke and it needs to be included. I had another interesting experience, on the MGM end. I wanted to include the two Air Force generals: General Jumper and [General] Ryan. And so I included a spot on one of the pages and I had just a little description of who they were and… because MGM didn’t have pictures of them, I just used my screen captures from one of the episodes and put them in. And MGM, my contact there, I think her name was Carol, she wrote back and she said, “I’m so sorry. We cant include these here because they’re not under any kind of acting contract that lets us have the right to their images. So we would need to have them sign off, and there’s no way for us to do that. And so you’ll have to take them out.” And I said, “Well, what if I could get clearance to use the images?” She said, “If you can do that, go ahead.” So do you remember Doug Thar [Air Force Technical Advisor]?

David Read:
Yes, I do.

Kate Ritter:
Do you work with him? Yeah. So I had interviewed him for the fan club, and we had been in touch. And so he was the Air Force Liaison. So I wrote to him, explained the situation. I said, “Do you think there’s any chance that they’d be willing to let their pictures appear in the book?” And he said, “I’ll work on it.” And I think it was only a day later, I got signed releases through Doug Thar from both of these Five-Star Air Force generals, and sent it off to MGM. And they said, “That’s all we need. You can include it.” So it was quite a learning experience putting this book together.

David Read:
That is so extremely cool. You know, the people who worked on this loved it. And they knew that if you were going to go out of your way to do something, if there was a way for them to help make it better or make it just right, they would be willing to do it. That’s extremely cool. So you never know until you ask.

Kate Ritter:
Yeah. Thankfully, MGM handled all the legal stuff. So I didn’t have to keep straight in my mind what could and couldn’t be done. They’d tell me if there was a problem. Certain cast members had the right of refusal for the use of their image. So I would choose the pictures I wanted to use, and then Carol would run them past everybody that needed to approve them…

David Read:
Absolutely.

Kate Ritter:
…and Take care of it. I remember Corin [Nemec] was one of the ones who had approval, and he didn’t like one of the pictures we chose, so we had to trade it out.

David Read:
Absolutely. For sure.

Kate Ritter:
Rick was another one who had approval, but he was good with everything, so he didn’t refuse anything.

David Read:
Do you still keep in touch with Rick? And what is it like, at this stage, with your current situation with rdanderson.com in terms of its age and where it is and with his career? And what’s your day-to-day, week-to-week responsibility for it at this point here?

Kate Ritter:
My project now is to get the MacGyver Lexicon done, and that’s going to take months, if not years. So, slowly, I’m working my way through that. But up until I started on that project, most of what I was doing was just updates that Rick would send. So he doesn’t do social media. And I should make a mention, I am hearing from a frightening number of people who are on social media and who have been taken in by these scammers who pretend to be Rick and have lost money to these people. So he is not on social media. Do not believe these people who contact you. But to communicate with fans, he sends messages to me. So I have an Updates page, and that’s where most of my most recent updates have been. That and documenting with pictures when he’s appearing in a convention or something like that. So it’s not so much related to the series anymore, but more just what he’s been doing. Since he’s retired, most of what he’s doing is either conventions or with his daughter, but he doesn’t share everything about his daughter because, you know, she has her own career and…

David Read:
Absolutely, you know.

Kate Ritter:
He wants to give her her wings.

David Read:
The right to privacy, in this day and age… you know, you’ve got some talent out there who everything is online and they’re comfortable with everything being online including their kids, and some others are just like, “You know what? I’m cool that you know that they’re out there, but beyond that; our family is our family.” There’s not a thing wrong with that. I remember Rick up on stage at GateCon – Gosh, this had to have been 2007, 2008, somewhere around there – and talking paparazzi stories, you know, and just… it’s the nature of the beast. It’s only so much that you can do. And he was generally pretty cool about it. Even when Wylie was relatively young, it’s just like, “If you want a photo, ask. Don’t just take a picture. Ask me if you can take my photo.” And so consequently, in a couple of magazines out there, there are some charming pictures of the two of them. And it’s always a tightrope walk, in terms of what’s an acceptable boundary and what’s not, what’s going too far.

Kate Ritter:
Yeah, he was usually comfortable if he knew you were taking the picture, and he would even stand and pose and smile or whatever, even with Wylie in it. But it’s the one where you could tell the person’s hiding behind bushes or behind cars and taking pictures that he had trouble with those.

David Read:
Yeah, well, it’s not fair.

Kate Ritter:
I’ve shared the nicer ones, and he’s shared some pictures of Wylie , especially like her graduation and things that he’s really proud of. But she’s going into the business herself. And so that’s for her to find her way. And I wish her all the best. She’s extremely talented.

David Read:
Have you heard what she wants to do?

Kate Ritter:
Well, she’s…

David Read:
That you can discuss? This is the first I’m hearing of this, that she was interested in the business, but I’m not surprised.

Kate Ritter:
Well, and I’ll be totally honest, I’m not exactly following her either because I feel that she should be making her own way. So I do not follow closely. But things that Rick has said; she went to school for theater and for film. And I think she also got a teaching degree out of all of that. So, she’s really well-rounded. And she’s done writing, and she’s done a little bit of directing of her own projects, and she’s done acting. So I think, right now, she’s really enjoying doing some of her own original work. I haven’t seen a lot of it recently, but… I mean, she did appear with Rick as [a] guest star on Raising…

David Read:
What was that show? Yeah, exactly. Let me have a look at it.

Kate Ritter:
This is terrible. I’m starting to sound like Rick when I can’t think of the titles.

David Read:
“Raising Hope.”

Kate Ritter:
“Raising Hope.”

David Read:
Yep. You started it off.

Kate Ritter:
All I could think of was Raising Arizona.

David Read:
Right?

Kate Ritter:
Yeah.

David Read:
Wow.

Kate Ritter:
So, that worked out because one of Wylie’s school friends was the son of the producer. I guess, Executive Producer of that show. And so both of the kids were in it, with Rick as the adult. And so that was fun. So she got her taste of acting fairly young and went on to pursue it. She’s remarkable.

David Read:
Well, you can’t be surprised that she has talent. You really can’t. They find their own way.

Kate Ritter:
Yeah, and she’s watched Rick navigate the paparazzi and the public all these years. So she has a good sense of how to deal with that. I’ve met, her when she was young, one of the times… I flew out to Vancouver, and I flew out to Los Angeles several times. So we have met, but I don’t think we’ve met since she was maybe in elementary [or] middle school. But she’s… even then we were… Rick and I were at her dance studio because he had dropped her off, and so we got to watch her doing her tap dancing.

David Read:
Aww!

Kate Ritter:
She was talented, even with that.

David Read:
Good deal. What is it like watching the fandom in this modern era? Do you stay involved in the MacGyver and Stargate fandoms in any respect? Do you just sit back and watch? And what do you think is in store for the future?

Kate Ritter:
Oh, I don’t know if I know what the future is. I don’t think I was very good at predicting where this future would be way back when it started. As far as fandom, I’m not really on… it all seems to have moved to social media. And I don’t do Facebook. I don’t do Instagram. I don’t do Twitter or X. So I’m not really aware of what’s going on in a lot of those. There is a forum on my website where fans do interact with each other. It’s rather quiet compared to some of the other places, but it’s also very safe, I have to say. It’s kind of protected from a lot of the imposters and the trolls and the kinds of things that you might find in social media. So I’ve been comfortable just there and I can interact with fans that way. When I do an update to the website, I will send out an email to anyone who has subscribed to that, and I’ll often hear back from people. And there’s the contact email on the website that people can write to me. And so I can communicate with fans more on a one-on-one, or a smaller group, than going out and finding the fandom as it was. Conventions, I really enjoyed the smaller conventions, like the early GateCons – they were a lot of fun. And then as the conventions have been getting bigger and they’re not really necessarily focused around Stargate anymore, it’s all these other fandoms that I’m not necessarily familiar with. I haven’t been going to a lot of those. But, about once a year, Rick ends up doing a convention close enough to me that it’s a convenient drive. And so we catch up. So about once a year we catch up. This last time we met in Richmond because he was here and it’s an easy drive.

David Read:
I’m thrilled that he is doing them now, because one of those things back in the day was that he – like around the early GateCon years – he wasn’t interested. And I think part of it was he was just very busy. But the other part of it… I got the impression that he wasn’t crazy about them. And it’s a funny thing: the first convention that he did, the first Stargate convention, was in The Simpsons. And so that episode aired, and it’s like, “He’s not done that. He’s doing it in the show, at least.” But it wasn’t long after that that he did his first GateCon. And to now see him at conventions, to see him get it, you know, and to see he’s clearly having a good time is great, you know? And it’s only as much as you want to do it.

Kate Ritter:
I just forgot what year The Simpsons came out. But the first convention he did was a small one and it was in England.

David Read:
Oh.

Kate Ritter:
In 2006. And it was just Rick and Amanda [Tapping]. That was it.

David Read:
OK.

Kate Ritter:
So that was his first little taste of a convention. But when he started doing GateCons, I think GateCon might have been one of the first Stargate-related ones that went beyond just, you know, one or two cast members. So that was 2007 or 2008, I guess.

David Read:
Original air date of “Kiss Kiss, Bang Bangalore” was April 9th, 2006. Right around there.

Kate Ritter:
April. OK. So he had just…

David Read:
Isn’t that interesting?

Kate Ritter:
Yeah. The one in England, I think, was just a little bit earlier. Maybe January.

David Read:
Wow. OK. Was that the GABIT event?

Kate Ritter:
Yeah.

David Read:
OK. Yeah, because I know “Weekend with Amanda Tapping,” or whatever it was called, they were doing that for ages. So, yeah. That was really cool.

Kate Ritter:
I think he felt comfortable having Amanda there because she was used to it and he didn’t know quite what to expect. But he enjoyed himself enough to do it again, and again.

David Read:
Absolutely. This has been a treat for me, Kate, to have you on because, you know, there are pillars of fandom that have lasted for a quarter of a century now – oh, gosh! – and I am privileged to have been a key player in one. So to be able to sit down and talk with another one of those key pillars has been a real treat for me. And I can’t thank you enough for coming on and sharing your story. Really.

Kate Ritter:
Well, you’re very kind, and I don’t normally do this sort of thing. As I said to you earlier, I’ve been… what is this now, almost 30 years. I’ve been pretty invisible. I’ve managed to stay out of sight pretty well, and I was very comfortable there. But I think as time has progressed and things are moving more into social media and other areas, there are maybe new fans that aren’t even aware that some of these websites that have been around for so long are still here and they’re still an option. So maybe it’s time just to mention that. And I appreciate the opportunity to do that. Thank you for inviting me.

David Read:
Absolutely. Social media isn’t everything. And there are still pockets of the Internet where you can go and get information and not have to worry about someone just absolutely sliming you – like your forum on rdanderson.com, I’m very thankful that that exists. And there are spaces where people can go and ask their questions and get answers directly from the source of knowledgeable people. So thank you for continuing to keep the web… thank you for keeping the website going.

Kate Ritter:
Thank you. And it’s probably going to have to keep going until I get this lexicon done.

David Read:
Absolutely.

Kate Ritter:
I think, maybe, several more years.

David Read:
That was Kate Ritter; Stargate author and owner of rdanderson.com. This was terrific to sit down with her – something I’ve wanted to do for a long time. When you reach out to people, you never know who’s going to respond and say yes. Especially when, you know, they’re used to being, frankly, behind the scenes. And that’s where I was for the longest time as well. There’s just a realization that you have to come to at a certain point where it’s like; if no one else is going to produce the content, it’s up to you. And I am just delighted that she came on and joined us. If you enjoy Stargate content like this and you want to see more, please click like. It makes a difference with the show and will continue to help 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 subscribe. And giving the bell icon a click will notify you the moment a new video drops and you’ll get my notifications of any last minute guest changes. And clips from this episode will be released over the course of the next few weeks on the Dial the Gate YouTube channel. I am winding down Season Four. You may have noticed I took a bit of a break from July and August and the first half of September. But the Stargate… is it 30th? Stargate’s 30th anniversary is going to be in the month of October. And I’m hoping to secure a few guests from the Stargate feature film. So, it’s all up to them as to whether or not they want to do that. I appreciate you tuning in. I appreciate my moderating team: Antony, Tracy, Jeremy, Marcia, and Sommer – they’re the ones who make the show go around week after week. My producer, Linda “GateGabber” Furey, Frederick Marcoux at ConceptsWeb for keeping DialtheGate.com up and running. Thank you all for contributing to the show, and thank you for tuning in. My name is David Read for Dial the Gate, and I will see you on the other side.