As Season Four draws to a close with episode 300 it seemed appropriate to invite Dr. Daniel Jackson himself, Michael Shanks, back to the program. We are excited to share more stories from the show and to give you an opportunity to ask him your questions!

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Timecodes
0:00 – Splash Screen
0:07 – Opening Credits
0:33 – Welcome
0:50 – Our Sponsor: The Last Lumenian Series
2:07 – Guest Introduction
4:03 – Michael’s Most Vivid Show Memories
7:29 – Memories of Don S. Davis
12:17 – Stuck in the Bathtub
14:10 – Lexa Doig and Laughter
16:46 – Sarcophagus Overdosing in “Need”
20:49 – We Interrupt This Program!
22:53 – Back to “Need”
27:50 – “One False Step” and Trading Barbs with RDA
31:40 – Playing Ma’chello, Thor and — yes — Ernest Littlefield
35:40 – Becoming Ma’chello for “Holiday”
38:52 – Directing “Double Jeopardy”
44:23 – Returning for “Abyss”
49:01 – Back Again in “The Changeling”
53:08 – No Clothes in “Fallen”
55:26 – Multiple Personalities in “Lifeboat”
1:04:09 – Teryl’s Death Scene in “Heroes”
1:07:39 – Claudia Black and “Prometheus Unbound”
1:14:24 – That Scene in “Unending”
1:15:22 – You Can’t End the Show
1:16:42 – Memories of the Final Shot
1:19:35 – Daniel Now
1:21:14 – Return of the Long Hair
1:22:58 – Playing Rick Singer in “The College Admissions Scandal”
1:24:59 – Creating “Resurrection”
1:28:21 – Did Daniel End Up with Vala?
1:30:05 – Thank You, Michael!
1:30:30 – Post-Interview Housekeeping
1:32:04 – End Credits

***

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TRANSCRIPT
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David Read
Hello everyone, and welcome to episode 300 of Dial the Gate. The Stargate Oral History Project. My name is David Read. I appreciate you tuning in for this episode, our final episode for Season Four. Michael Shanks is joining me for this episode, and I am privileged to have him. But before we get started with Michael, I have been working with the award winning sci-fi fantasy author S.G. Blaise for a while now, on her five book franchise, The Last Lumenian Series. And you might have seen my interview with her a few weeks ago. She and her company, Lilac Grove, are sponsoring this entire program today, and I want to thank her and her entire team for their support. This book franchise is right up your alley, if you’re into science fiction and fantasy, with a mix of Stargate elements, like a found family and realizing your true potential. And this is the one for you, if that’s the case. In The Last Lumenian, a rebellious princess is chasing her destiny, and it’s a captivating sci-fi fantasy with a touch of charming alien romance. A coming of age tale of the chosen one, Lilla, as she fights to shape her future. Bbreaking away from the damsel in distress trope, Lilla emerges as the heroine her world needs. Book five of the series, Eldryan Elders, is available in both print and digital formats, starting this Tuesday, December the 10th. Find the link in the description below this video to the complete book series now over on Amazon. I really think that you’ll enjoy it. Michael Shanks. Daniel Jackson in Stargate SG-1. I am privileged to have you sir, for my 300th episode. Thank you for being back Michael.

Michael Shanks
Pleasure to be here, buddy. Good to see you.

David Read
It’s good to see you. How are things going? Have you guys hit winter yet? Is it chilly up there yet?

Michael Shanks
Well, yeah. We hit winter, like, two months ago. Literally September, like, the kids went back to school, and Mother Nature said, “That’s all for you.” The sun went away, and the rain clouds came out, you know, it’s Vancouver winter. So, you know, we can’t complain too much, because we look east, and it’s buried in the snow and stuff like that. So it’s Vancouver winter, but it’s not nice.

David Read
I came up Valentine’s Day 2018, I think. The city was covered in several feet of snow, and y’all didn’t know what to do. People were flying off the road.

Michael Shanks
It’s like when it rains in L.A. People just panic, and nobody has winter tyres, and nobody knows how to drive.

David Read
It’s the End of Days.

Michael Shanks
Yeah, it’s like gong show for, like, 12 hours, and there’s never enough snow plows. It’s fantastic. Because all of a sudden, nobody’s on the road. If you do know how to drive in the snow, because I grew up driving in the snow… Nobody’s on the road, it’s fantastic. I wish there was more days like that. We get, like, one or two a year, but no such luck right now, unfortunately.

David Read
Other Canadians must be looking at you like you idiots, “You total idiots. Snow is life!”

Michael Shanks
Totally. It’s hilarious, like I said. The only thing that was comparable was when it rained in L.A., people were like, “What is this stuff falling from the sky?” Exactly, like the apocalypse is happening. So I thought that was pretty funny, coming from Vancouver, that people didn’t know how to deal with the rain. But, you know, we’re terrible for snow.

David Read
Michael, what are some of your more vivid memories from the show that stick with you? Is it a blur? Is it one amorphous blob? Are there things that stick out, like the birth of your kids, you know? I mean, there are, you know, appendicitis we’ve already talked about, or getting, you know, the eyelash. What are some of your important milestones?

Michael Shanks
Well, all of that. It’s all in chapters, right? It’s literally, like, when you watch an episode, although I do it very rarely now, because I think I sickened myself from when I was doing the show, what the audience sees and how they’re paying attention is not what the actors and what the people who produce the thing [see]. We have memories. All I see when I watch a show is actually what was going on behind the scenes, what phase of life I was in, what phase of, you know, the children [were], or, like you said, illnesses. It was just different things that were going on. And I’m fortunate that this never happened, when child actors talk about that awkward thing. Shannen Doherty used to talk about that thing. About, like, going through the worst period of your life. Your adolescence, and your post adolescence, and you’re doing it in front of millions of people, with tabloids watching you make the mistakes vivid color, right? And we didn’t have that kind of, you know, microscope on us, but at the same time, it was a long enough run that that’s our life. Because most of the time we were at work, eight, nine months a year, and we were [doing] 14 hours a day. And so all of the things that happened in your life, were going on while you were on that [show]. They had some association with the show. So that’s how I look at it. It’s hard when people say “What’s your,” you know, “a vivid memory?” I mean, “Pick a time,” right? It’s 11 years of different moments, and different feelings, and different emotions. And, you know, going from being a young man when I started this show to being a middle aged man when I finished it. There’s a lot that happens and changes, and growing up, you know, to a large degree. My daughter’s 26 right now. That’s how old I was when I started that show. I was 26 years old when I started that show, in February of 1997. I just turned 26, in December before we started the pre-production in February, March, and that’s where she’s at now. And so I just sit there and going, “Oh my God, I’ve gotten old.”

David Read
And without Stargate, you wouldn’t have her.

Michael Shanks
Yeah, exactly.

David Read
I talked with Vai. I adore her. She’s wonderful. And your daughter [is] a spitting image. Holy cow. Beautiful girl.

Michael Shanks
Yeah. And got her mother’s temperament as well, which is good and bad as you can find out over time.

David Read
We didn’t talk about [Don]. I don’t believe we’ve talked about Don. Just an extraordinary human being. I was privileged to know [him] a little bit. We shared an alma mater, so that was kind of our connection. And talking about the Vietnam War, you know, at that time when he was down there. An extraordinary man. What about Don sticks with you? Humble man.

Michael Shanks
Humble. Grateful. He loved doing that show, you know, to a fault. He always thought that somebody was going to walk in and fire him any day. So he was always, like, over prepared. He was always a little bit hyper tense, because he was making sure he was doing his job. Teryl and I were at a convention in France, and we were asked the same question. And I told this story that I adore. The moment when Don… Don had this nervous tick, which you never saw, but when he was afraid he was going to flub a line, Don would, you know, talk like this [deep voice, thick accent], when he would say this thing, and then all of a sudden he’d start going “[sputter sounds]”, like a car that was, like [inaudible]… He’d go “Daniel Jackson, you should [sputter sounds].”

David Read
He’s thinking.

Michael Shanks
He’s losing his breath. He’s so nervous, because he’s spiraling, right? It happens with every actor when you make a mistake. And of course, it was [Peter] DeLuise who keeps the camera rolling at all times, right? So when you’re in the middle of a giggle. Or, you know, you’re spiraling out of control with not knowing your lines. Or, you know, it’s the shit show. He’s documenting the whole damn thing, and you’re gonna have three minutes of this. And Don would do this. But of course, here we are, usually in the boardroom, we’re off camera, and we’re trying to keep our composure, because the more that we break, the more that it’s gonna upset Don. Because he’s trying to keep his shit together. It was fantastic to watch that happen. Only happened, like, two or three times, and you’d rarely see Richard, like, crack up. But that was one of the times. You know, usually Rick was making everybody else crack up.

David Read
Don would tickle him.

Michael Shanks
[They’ve] got tears in their eyes, because there was, you know, stoic Don going “[sputter sounds], Colonel O’Neill, you should [sputter sounds].” And, you know, Don was a good friend. He was a big supporter of me. He wanted to produce. We had a script, and we were going to produce a movie together that he wanted me to star in, and never quite got off the ground. But he wanted to find some vehicle for me to do something, and he wanted to produce. He wanted to sort of like branch off and produce. And this was in the early years.

David Read
Just the invitation, though. “I wanna work with you. I see, you know, I see you.”

Michael Shanks
The funny thing was, I don’t even know if Don remembered it, one of my first ever job… I was doing a TV movie for ABC. I think it’s on, like, HBO streaming now, or something. And I was playing like a frat kid with… God who was in it, Stephen Collins, and Faye Dunaway. And so I was just playing one of these brat kids that’s involved in a terrible incident, you know, “based on a true story.” This is before Lifetime would come up with all the, you know, “Torn from the headlines” things. And Don played the detective that came in and was laying down the law to all of us frat boys that were in there. And I just sat back watching him, you know, do his thing. I don’t even think he remembered. I think I brought it up with him once, and he was like, you know… Again, Don just focused on doing his job and stuff like that. But what a gentleman. Hilarious. Hilarious. Sometimes inadvertently. Just the way he would tell the story, that usually something happened to him that he’s not laughing because it’s a true story, but God damn it, it’s absolutely funny. Because, especially with that Ozark accent, I mean, Lordy be, he could make us laugh. He could make us… I mean, the one that Teryl told I’d never heard before, about Don getting stuck in the tub.

David Read
Whoa! OK, please transcribe this for us.

Michael Shanks
Well, I’ll do it. I couldn’t do it justice, because it’s Teryl’s story, because I don’t recall what… But it’s like, you know, the tubs in Europe are a little bit narrower than they are in North America. And it was in a hotel, and I guess he comes out, like, to meet us somewhere, like in the lobby, or something like that. And he’s like “You know, I was gonna come out here a little bit earlier, but I got stuck in the tub. Because I got a 52 inch chest, and it doesn’t fit easy. I laid back in there and I got stuck.” And we still don’t know, because he called the hotel because he needed help to get out of the tub. He called somebody. We still don’t know how he managed to get out of the tub, or, like, reach… was there a phone near the tub? Like, I don’t even know what the f*** happened. But my God, just stuff like that, that actually, you could totally picture happening to Don, and the way he would weave that story. He wasn’t trying to… He wasn’t doing stand up. He was just telling a story.

David Read
As it was.

Michael Shanks
We would be crying ourselves silly, because he just had a way. He had a way and a charm. And we miss him. I miss him terribly. He was one of those guys that, you know… You always say that there’s good guys in this business, you know, and he was one of the good ones. And gone too soon.

David Read
He told us the story, me and Darren, when Gateworld was interviewing him, of how he fell in love with oysters. And, you know, how he tried one, and he kind of chewed it, and then he just pulled the whole plate over to himself and began to enjoy everyone’s oysters.

Michael Shanks
I can see that. I can see that.

David Read
Man, what a great human being. Laughter, though, is a connection with all of us. And Lexa, thank you for connecting me with her, was brave enough to tell the story of the joke that she remembers making you side split and fall in love with her. With the dinosaur.

Michael Shanks
The infamous dinosaur joke, yes.

David Read
If you want to see it, you gotta go watch the interview with Lexa. But man, oh, man. What an amazing human being, you know.

Michael Shanks
Yeah, she’s great.

David Read
Yeah, as your husband, I would hope you would say that. I think laughter is such a cornerstone in a marriage. If you can laugh together, if you’re on the same wavelength there, you can get through a lot of crap.

Michael Shanks
It’s the only thing that, you know, doesn’t change in a relationship. Your looks change, your experiences change, everything changes. But if you can make each other laugh every day, and that’s what we do, because we have a similar sense of humour. Dark, and, you know, somewhere in the place that I can’t talk about on this podcast.

David Read
Gallows humour.

Michael Shanks
Yeah, gallows. It’s inappropriate kind of stuff. Because I was the youngest in my family, so when there was a fight at the table and nobody was talking to each other, I was the one who would break the ice by saying something funny, like going, you know, “Oh well, I guess if we’re not talking, maybe we’re all getting…” You know, like, some shit I would just come up with that would, you know… Because I couldn’t stand the silence, and I hated the tension. And so with our life, it’s like, when everything’s going south, the first thing I do, and first thing Lexa does, too, is we look for the chute to pull the joke that’s going to come out of this. I’m talking about through tragedy and death and all this other stuff that, you know. The first thing I do is, [when] I get told a terrible story, I’m going “Oh, I can’t say this,” because this is the way my brain works, but it’s also the way her brain works. So sometimes we just look at each other and go “We shouldn’t say anything,” and then we laugh together. When we’re together, we laugh, but in front of other people, no, absolutely not.

David Read
Oh, I see what you’re saying. OK. Well, it was one of those models in the production office, “LTS. Life’s Too Short,” you know? Why wallow? Sometimes you have no choice but to be there, you know, in circumstances that are uncomfortable, and then it’s like “OK, we’re moving past this now,” you know, because life’s too short.

Michael Shanks
Yeah, for sure.

David Read
Going from laughter to… I want to talk about overdosing on sarcophagus. This is my transition, my smooth transition to an overdosed Daniel in Need. What did you think of that? I’m pulling us back there, all the way to Season Two.

Michael Shanks
Let’s go in a wayback machine.

David Read
What did you think? When you get a script like that, that has you in a closet on the floor crying your eyes out across from Richard Dean Anderson, where do you go to pull on a place like that? Does it just come? When you get an episode like Need, what do you do as an actor? Just, like, “Well, we’re gonna figure this out”?

Michael Shanks
First of all, it’s a gift. And I don’t mean I have a gift. I’m saying it’s a gift to be given that opportunity. In the early years of the show, I got a tremendous amount of opportunities to do things that, you know, after doing other shows, and watching other shows, and seeing how sort of linear characters can be a lot of the time, that the opportunity to do a science fiction show where you could explore so many different aspects, play different people, you know, all these different things that we got a chance to do, and specifically that I got a chance to do as a young actor, were gift that were given. And that one specifically. You know, it’s difficult, because it’s, like, you know, you got to explore a darker side of yourself, and humanity. And you gotta also try and figure out… The tough part to do always is the translation from sarcophagus to drugs, like, “What do we talk like?” You know what I mean? Like you’re trying to figure out how this is gonna manifest itself in a way that you can get underneath as a human being, that you can relate to.

David Read
Well, the root of it, just for the folks in the audience, was the Goa’uld aren’t just evil because they’re evil. Yes, they have malintent, but also they have technology that makes them sick, you know. And we were beginning to explore that with this episode. Where you can get high on… They invigorate you, you’re invincible, you’re immortal, you know.

Michael Shanks
I would equate it to a, you know, like a cocaine addiction of sorts, where, you know… That’s kind of how I… And how it was kind of written in terms of arc. You have this burgeoning, wonderful, possible relationship kind of thing that’s happening. And so there’s all this high, this ecstasy, you know. He goes in and he feels good. He’s feeling powerful, [missing audio], which is something Daniel didn’t really exhibit a lot of the time. He’s, you know, like it’s taking hold of itself in both an amusing and [missing audio].

David Read
I’m losing you, Michael. I’m losing you. Can you hear me? Can you hear me? The experience of being on air, live, folks. Sorry. Just a second here.

Michael Shanks
[Missing audio] Then the irritability get to the depression, the downside, as the down starts to take over and you start do it more.

David Read
Oh, I lost him! Welcome to live television, folks. Things happen. The frustrating thing of it is, I loved what he was saying. So let’s see if we can get him back here. Just a second. Because when he’s on a roll, you just stand back and let him go. I’m texting him. It’s good thing we’re gonna go for 90 minutes. Hang on just a second. I appreciate everyone’s patience. Um, yeah, time dilation, that’s it. He must be close to a black hole. And now you get to see me tap dance with everybody while we’re waiting for this thing to pick back up. Give me just one second here. Honestly, we’ve gone 300 episodes of this show, and there were only, like, three or four episodes that had actual technical problems to them. There probably should be zero. But when you’re doing a live show, you just never know how things are going to shake out. So just waiting for him to come back. Oh, he’s typing. He’s trying to come back in now. OK. Here he comes. Hang on, everybody. Whoop! There we go.

Michael Shanks
What the hell?

David Read
You know, one of the audience said it was time dilation.

Michael Shanks
Well, my Wi-Fi just kicked out. It just abandoned me.

David Read
Sometimes, Wi-Fi is gonna Wi-Fi, man. I’m so sorry that you were interrupted. You were talking about “He has power and strength that he’s never really had before.” That’s where we left off.

Michael Shanks
Yeah, he’s got this confidence that he doesn’t have which is this artificial kind of confidence that, like I said, I equated it to like a cocaine addiction of sorts. And then you have the… What happens later is the frequency, the irritability, and then the downside starts to happen, and then the desperation, and the “need”, if you will, for more, and more, and more. And that leads itself into what essentially is the ending, which is the self loathing, and the fact that you were led by this, and controlled by this. And that’s, you know, like I said, it’s a great gift, and it’s a great way to, you know, mask that kind of performance in the realm of science fiction. So make it PG-13.

David Read
Oh, absolutely. Yeah. You know, as much as you can. Is there a part of you where it’s like “It may not even factor in at all. I’m doing the work. This is my job. I’m just going to do the work.” But is there a part of you that’s like “I’m going to be performing this in front of people who are going to see this at the other end, who have experienced this?” So is there a certain amount of responsibility on your end to feel like “I just need to play this as true as I can based on my own experience?”

Michael Shanks
Always. That’s the job. You know, you’re always conscious of… I mean, the job is to make it as realistic or relatable as possible. I’m not, you know, weaving this from whole cloth. I’m borrowing somebody else’s life, somebody else’s experiences, and making it… Showing the mirror as twere up to nature. So whatever I do, it’s gotta be, you know… That’s the struggle, that’s the job, is to try and make it as real and realistic as possible. Like I said. The tricky part is the translation, because it’s something odd and not, you know, relatable to a person, like, “Sarcophagus addiction? What do I do with that?” Right?

David Read
That’s the problem that every kid’s having on the the corner of the city streets these days. Man, those sarcophagi are getting to them.

Michael Shanks
And it’s, you know, never quite clear, because the writers give a lot of license when they’re writing this stuff. They write dialogue, but they don’t write mannerisms and stuff like that. Like, it’s not a book, so you’ve gotta fill it with whatever you’re trying to draw from. And those were the choices that that I made. And then, of course, the easy ending for me in terms, you know, find some self loathing moment… You know, something is as I said, you know, “I was a terrible shit to my brother when I was smaller,” and this was my apology to him. My regret. And you draw from that, you know, on a personal level, and bear it all. It’s one of those things that for actors, it’s kind of therapeutic, you know, if you’re gonna be truthful about it. And the rule that I always have when it comes to those kind of scenes, is you can’t cheat them, you know. You can’t halfway those things. And if you do, “f*** off,” like you’re not… You need to go the whole way. And otherwise you’re cheating yourself, and you’re cheating your audience.

David Read
You must rise to the material.

Michael Shanks
Yeah, and the level of desperation has to be eleven, you know. It can’t be four, four and a half, like, “Why are we watching this if it’s a four and a half? It’s gotta be, you know, “This is a dramatic moment, so it’s gotta be eleven,” and so you gotta go to that place. And I always find them… [it] was therapeutic and freaking exhausting. And whenever people go “You’re so good at that! Give us some more!” And I’m like “OK. I’m good. I exercised that,” you know?

David Read
Those demons have been exorcised. Let’s do a fun one.

Michael Shanks
I had many opportunities to do a lot of, like, crazy stuff, and addict stuff, and whatever. And some of it… It’s not, like, something that’s really unique. I’m kind of, like, “I prefer not to, because it’s really hard,” like, internally. Not hard, like, you know, it’s a job. But it’s like, to keep going to those places, you have to find them. Because you have to trick yourself, too, right? You can’t just show up and go “I got this,” you know, “cocked and locked, and I’m gonna pull that out again.” No. If you’re gonna be honest, it’s gotta be fresh. It’s gotta be new.

David Read
I’m remembering one of my favorite scenes. It’s not from a very loved episode. I don’t particularly know why. I really enjoyed it. With all the white, naked, singing aliens. And you’re an airplane, you know, trying to convey the aerial vehicle. This is what happened to you, you know. And the fights with Rick outside of the little clay building there, “What’s happening to us?” There are moments like that, where it’s gold. Just watching you and Rick argue.

Michael Shanks
I think there was a lot of great moments in that episode. What was that? I can’t recall it. I can’t remember.

David Read
Please don’t do this to me. They used to be in the back of my mind, and now I’m gonna pull it up from records. It is, I think, One False Step.

Michael Shanks
One False Step. That’s it. I think it’s because it’s such a complacent episode. There’s no action in it. And people like the show for action. There was a lot of yammering in it. And those moments, like the Daniel and O’Neill fighting, were probably the high points of action. And the rest of it was just kind of like “Oh, it’s a plant,” you know, like, “Tune in for action adventure television.”

David Read
It made flower by the end. Oh, man, that’s funny. But I mean the back and forth between the two of them. We talked about that relationship a little bit last time. But I mean, when he gets he gets down to his, you know, “Honestly, you can be a little flaky.” He says “You can be arrogant and condescending.” “Not condescending. You’re misinterpreting me.” The gold that the two of you had on screen together.

Michael Shanks
And most of that was improvised, I have to say, in those particular moments. Because when Rick would do his bit, because the flaky thing, that was not written.

David Read
But it’s so true to Daniel.

Michael Shanks
And I was just like “Oh, OK, we’re gonna do this.” So I pulled out the “Arrogant,. Condescending.” Because that used to piss me off when he would do that.

David Read
“What about mythology?” “Rumors, lies, fairy tales.” “You see!?”

Michael Shanks
There was a fair bit of improv in that stuff. And I think that sometimes with Rick and I, in moments like that, we were cutting close to the to the skin a little bit.

David Read
Where does Daniel end, and you begin?

Michael Shanks
Yeah, yeah. And then so there was a certain amount of… There was a tension, but it was more, like, a certain amount of “What are you gonna say next? What are you gonna say next?” You know, that kind of thing. But that was some of the fun with the characters, is that with those two characters, is finding delightful ways for them to disagree. When they disagreed in a comedic fashion, it was, for me, anyway, most fun on the show because Rick is completely spontaneous. And so I got to dive in there. And you do have a safety net underneath you, because you could keep this or lose it or whatever, right? But you get to improv, and we’re off the page right now. So it’s always, you know, “You never know what’s gonna come out of his mouth, and I don’t know what’s gonna come out of mine. Well, let’s see.”

David Read
It’s a big brother, and a little brother.

Michael Shanks
Completely.

David Read
It’s like, “I’m going to beat you. I’m going to beat you down.”

Michael Shanks
Yes, yes, absolutely. I always equated Rick as an older brother to me, even though he’s three years younger than my dad. But he is more like my older brother than my older brother is. Still to this day.

David Read
A few episodes later, we were watching the character of an old man. “Inventions to fight the Goa’uld!” And Michael, I got halfway through the episode, and I was like, “Oh my God, it’s Michael.” I didn’t know. It was like, “Oh my God, what?”

Michael Shanks
Well, I’m glad.

David Read
Performance and makeup. Had you ever played a 100 year old character before?

Michael Shanks
No, no.

David Read
And was that the plan, to be you all along?

Michael Shanks
No. In the early days of the show, just like with stuff like Need and whatnot, Mike Greenburg was… I knew he was a big fan of my work. And [he] also [liked] the fact that I was enthusiastic. Because I was young and enthusiastic. He would try and get me to do stuff that I wasn’t expecting to have happened. And I don’t know if it was because I would do it for free, or it was because I would do it with enthusiasm and aplumb. A story I’ve never really told, and I will someday put these on social media, is that in The Torment of Tantalus, for example, up until the eleventh hour, I was gonna play young Ernest. Young Ernest Littlefield in the flashback sequences, the black and white stuff that Paul McGillion did. I was gonna play the younger version. We did a bunch of camera tests with me with a mustache, and stuff like this. Because we wanted, or I shouldn’t say we, [but] they liked the idea. And Michael Greenberg especially liked the idea of the character being so completely relatable that there was a parallel between Daniel and Ernest when he was younger kind of thing, drawing it completely where they’re played by the same actor.

David Read
And Catherine would have been drawn to him.

Michael Shanks
And we just couldn’t get it [as] we didn’t want the audience to be confused. That’s what ended up happening. But we did camera test with it. I’ve got some pictures of it. It was kind of hilarious. The mustache, I looked like a pedophile, but that’s a whole other story. But Michael used to be a big fan of me. That’s how I ended up doing the voice of Thor. He just came to me.

David Read
That was Greenburg?

Michael Shanks
Yeah, he said, “Look, we got this character that I don’t know if he’s going to be recurring throughout. He’s, like, this little alien guy, blah, blah, blah. And we want a good actor to do a voice. This is not much. There’s a couple lines.” It was from Thor’s Chariot, I believe, when he was first introduced.

David Read
That’s when the character, the Asgard form of him, first appears.

Michael Shanks
Yeah. So he only had a couple lines in that. And so I was like “Oh, sure, yeah, I’ll do it.”Because I had an idea of how that voice should sound, and we did that. Little did I know that that character would end up, like, having wobs of dialogue. Because I did it for free. And then later on, when I got an episode like Fair Game, where the Goa’uld Council thing [happened], where he spoke more than most characters, than the entire thing, I said “Hang on a second.”

David Read
Do you get guest pay for that performance?

Michael Shanks
Yeah. “We’re gonna compensate to Shanks.”

David Read
Yeah, for sure. And, you know, in a situation like Ma’chello, you are a fit. They’d have to compensate. You are a guest star in that episode, as well as as regular.

Michael Shanks
No, they didn’t. I was so happy to do it.

David Read
You didn’t get paid for Ma’chello?

Michael Shanks
No, no. Because I was so happy to do it, because it was such a great opportunity. This is the thing. I’m free, right? This is why they loved bringing stuff to me, because I’d do it for nothing.

David Read
No, they loved bringing you stuff because you’re good.

Michael Shanks
Because I loved doing it. And Dave Dupuis, Emmy Award-winning makeup artist… What happened was, it wasn’t a huge part, because Ma’chello didn’t have a lot of lines. And so they were looking for somebody that was, like, really old. And at that particular time in the mid to late 90s, there weren’t a lot of actors in Vancouver. They didn’t want to bring somebody in. And there weren’t a lot of actors in Vancouver that fit that bill. There’s not even now. But there just weren’t many that had made a living in Vancouver that aged up to, like, 80, you know, 85 years old kind of thing. And so they’d had trouble finding somebody to sort of fit the bill. And Mike came to me and said “What do you think about you playing the part?” And I went “Dude, I’d love to.” So we talked about it with Brad and John[athan] Glassner, and they were behind it. They wanted to do a test. So we did the makeup test in their studio. The makeup artist studio. I’m trying to remember which one it was. I want to give them their due.

David Read
Todd Masters?

Michael Shanks
Yeah. I believe it was Todd. But it was David Dupuis [who] had come from L.A. specifically to do this one. Because I’d never done that before. I when Rick had done Brief Candle, when he got to age up, I was so jealous. Because we’re both big fans of Little Big Man, you know, the Dustin Hoffman movie. And I was like, “Oh, I so want to play, like, an old character,” you know, being 27 or whatever the hell I was, still wanted to play, like, an old character. And so when Mike brought this up to me, I’m like, “Yes, I want to do this.” Even though, there was about three, four hour application in the morning, and about two to three hours at night to take the makeup off, for about three, four days. I can’t remember what it was exactly. It was a lot of hours. But I enjoyed it. It was just fun. And I’m glad that you didn’t notice right away, because that would have completely ruined the illusion.

David Read
They’re standing there near the beginning of the episode, and Daniel’s going “No, I am Daniel Jackson,” [and Ma’chello’s going] “No, I am Daniel Jackson.” It’s going over my head. It’s completely going over my head.

Michael Shanks
I’m so glad.

David Read
What it was, really, is the twofer between yourself and yourself, where Ma’chello in Daniel’s body says “You’re not gonna find her. You’re never gonna get your wife back.” And this tear comes down to your face, “I will find her.” That was sooo good, Michael. Man, well done.

Michael Shanks
Opportunities, man.

David Read
That’s it. Double Jeopardy. You directed Double Jeopardy. Heavy visual effects, which I would imagine, because you get a slot, you don’t necessarily know what’s going to be in that slot. But, of course, in this case, they had to write you out of most of it, which was one of the most convincing visual effects on the show, having you, you know, with your real head, as opposed to your fake head, and then the circuitry underneath. What do you remember about that? The first of the four to direct, I believe.

Michael Shanks
Yeah, it was a complete debacle. I mean, listen, in terms of how things have gone in my directing career since then, much smoother. Because I didn’t know enough. I knew enough about what I wanted to do, but I didn’t know enough about managing a television set, on a television timeline, to be able to be handed such a large episode, and be able to do it smoothly. I could do it now. But at the time, not being experienced… Because I sort of, you know, as one would, I’d ask for, like, a small character piece. And I think the one that preceded [Double Jeopardy], which was Carter and…

David Read
Entity, I think.

Michael Shanks
No, it was the one with the…

David Read
Prodigy?

Michael Shanks
Prodigy. That’s what it was.

David Read
OK. With the light bugs.

Michael Shanks
Prodigy was kind of the episode that I would have been more apt to do. And I get the Rob Cooper visual effects extravaganza with not one but two of every team member, and the war of the planets, you know? And I was like “Jesus!” I remember John Smith, our line producer, came up to me at a certain point. He came into the director’s office where I was reading this thing, and he goes, like, pissed almost at me, “You gotta tell Cooper to tone this down.” Because he’s looking at cost and the size of it. And I’m like “You want me to tell the executive producer to tone it down?” And I go to Rob, and I always remind him of this moment, where I go in and I said “Dude, it’s big. I don’t know if I can do this.” And Rob goes “You’ll be fine. You’ll be fine.” I was very far.

David Read
It was usually Brad’s line. It’s like “Oh, it’s OK. It’s OK.”

Michael Shanks
Yeah. What’s the line for Pulp Fiction? “I’m very far from f*** fine.”

David Read
I would have been crapping bricks, you know?

Michael Shanks
Well, I kind of was. What ended up happening was, I made a couple of errors in the way shots finished up. There was some great stuff. Pete Woeste did some really great shots. But we ended up having an entire day devoted to second unit pickup shots, which we were not budgeted for. Because I was so far behind in terms of, like, the shooting of the Daniel robot head off, and stuff like that. Because we had to do an entire fake floor. So Andy Mikita directed all of this second unit stuff. And it just was a lot. As a first timer, it ended up being a bit more to chew than I would have hoped for. So it became the reason why nobody directed until, you know, sort of Amanda put her foot down in Season Seven and wanted to direct. And I still wanted to direct, but they didn’t want anybody else directing again. They didn’t like writing the character out as well. They liked the team being prominent in the episode.

David Read
He’s so key.

Michael Shanks
Yeah. I just think that they liked the whole team being there. They didn’t want to write Daniel out. It would become obvious when one person wasn’t there. Although cut to Season Eight, where they were doing entire singular episodes, right? It’s no problem when it’s saving money. But at that particular moment, they were like, “No, we don’t want any you guys directing.” But I think part of it, too, was, it had turned into a bit of a cluster. It wasn’t like a disaster. It was just… I take a lot of pride in my work, and it wasn’t how I would have liked it to sort of finish, and go down, and be remembered. So I have regrets, but it was a lot to be handed in terms of your first [episode directing]. Because a lot of the stuff that we were doing, it hadn’t been done on our show before. So here’s rookie guy going “Oh, I was just gonna, like, copy that, and copy that, and copy that, and copy that, and whatever. You’re asking me to invent stuff? I don’t know what to do.” Like, even the face replacement, when we had Rick wrestling with himself, when O’Neill was wrestling with himself.

David Read
Bill Nikolai.

Michael Shanks
I didn’t know we had this technology that you could face replace. We didn’t know that. Greenburg told me that on the day “Oh, we can face replace them.” I’m like “Whaaat?”

David Read
Dan Shea did that in the episode with the thing, when he flies back against the wall as Jack. I didn’t even know for years that that was a face replacement. For years, you know. So it was absolutely wild. The technology.

Michael Shanks
Yep, it’s amazing. I can’t even imagine what they can do now. So it’s crazy.

David Read
Season Six. You were away. Did Brad call you about Abyss? How did Abyss get started?

Michael Shanks
Yeah. Brad had said before I left that they were going to be stories to tell in Season Six with Daniel involved.

David Read
Was it too soon? Did any part of you think “I just left,” you know? Or was the material…?

Michael Shanks
It’s funny because you miss it pretty quickly. It was the best way to put it. I didn’t think of it in terms of too soon, because I really liked the script. Like, it’s a really good [script]. Brad’s script was really good.

David Read
What was his pitch to you? Just “I’m gonna send you this,” or was it “Jack’s in hell, and Daniel’s there to be with him?”

Michael Shanks
He sent me a copy. Because I was being petulant. I was being a bit of a brat at that particular time, and I said, “I’d like to see the script first.” And so he sent me the script, and, you know, as soon as I read it, I was like “I’m not being a dick about it.” I said “This is fantastic. Love to do it,” you know, “blah, blah, blah.” And what was great about it was that… I think all the stories that Daniel was involved in the Season Six were all really great stories. I think that had been part of my my issue with the character.

David Read
Give him something to do. In Season Five, we just finished rewatching it, it’s like “Where is he,” you know, “Oh, he’s over there.”

Michael Shanks
There was a lot of wallpaper in Season Four and Five, that I think both Teal’c and Daniel Jackson were, like, just kind of there. And it got to be a little bit, you know, [inaudible]. So coming back and being a sort of linchpin for the story, for the character to be a linchpin in the story, was great. And especially that one, because it was poignant, and beautiful.

David Read
It’s Rick finest hour.

Michael Shanks
Yeah, and also it let you understand what was going on. Because I didn’t know. We didn’t know what the f*** ascension was, right? Like, it was, just this amorphous idea. And so you got a little sense of what was going on. And it was, like, political, and it was all this other stuff. So that you knew that Daniel was in a place where he was still attempting to do good. And then you got this great O’Neill story where he is being murdered, tortured, and murdered again and again. And he has to, you know, do that thing where you start to question whether or not you want, you know your soul. Whether or not you want to continue. Brad’s great at that. What I always say about him is… The sign of a really good writer, really wonderful writer, is to take two characters, lock them in a broom closet, and entertain the audience.

David Read
He’s a playwright at his core.

Michael Shanks
That’s essentially what he did. Because we didn’t deviate from the script. I’m sure, like, a little bit we did, but, you know, most of that was all scripted dialogue. And at the same time, too, I missed Rick, and I think Rick missed me a little bit. We had enough time to sort of, like, appreciate each other. Like little time to sort of, like, “I miss that guy, damn it.”

David Read
There was such… It’s fireworks when you’re on screen together, you know. “I just threw my shoe at you.”

Michael Shanks
And the best thing too, Martin Wood directing it, because, you know, he gets it, to have somebody who absolutely understands, and understands what we do. What Rick and I do, and started, you know, give us a little bit of leeway to take it over here, and over there, and to understand the poignancy of what’s going on, too. To give it that weight. It was great.

David Read
It’s great television. And it gets down to, like, “We’re not talking about,” you know, “life and death. We’re talking about your soul. We’re talking about you. This is it, this is hell.” And the whole set design with the gravity, and everything else, everyone was just firing on all cylinders.

Michael Shanks
Yeah, it was great.

David Read
So cool. And you came back later for Christopher’s script with The Changeling. Did Christopher send you this script? Was he the first to let you know “Hey, I want you back?” It’s a very similar situation. He’s teetering between life and death.

Michael Shanks
Yeah, he had said in the early [inaudible] that he was being given an opportunity to pitch and write, and whatnot, and that the first thing he wanted to do was to find a way to bring my character back. Because he enjoyed Abyss as well. And he was like, “Oh, I want to be part of it” kind of thing. And so it was his version of that. And he had given me a rough idea of what it was going to involve, but I didn’t know until I read the finished draft of, like, the layers that were involved in that. That’s quite a Jacob’s Ladder head trip, for sure.

David Read
Before we get into it a little bit more, I asked Christopher… I said “So what was your idea for this,” you know, “the depths of despair,” you know. “What was the original nugget for sharing the Goa’uld back and forth, and it’s a kidney?” And he said “Dude, the first beat was, I wanted to ride in a fire truck.” And I was like, “Whaaat?” That was the starting place.

Michael Shanks
The depth of Christopher Judge is revealed, I guess.

David Read
But what a tearjerker, you know. “I’ve been with you. I haven’t left your side,” you know. He’s a guardian angel again in this episode, you know.

Michael Shanks
But even that image, that shot that Martin did, of Bra’tac and Teal’c lying in the water with the swath of bodies all around them, trading the symbiote, and whatever. What a great shot. What a great story. I mean, it doesn’t happen that often, where you can layer those realities in that Forever in a Day kind of way. You layer those realities, and as opposed to being confused, it gives depth to the overall story. And a great way for Daniel to come back again in this, you know, “Which reality?”… I swear to God, there was that show that Jason Isaacs did, called “Between,” or something like that.

David Read
Oh, “Awake.” I loved “Awake”. What a great season of show. “Where is he?”

Michael Shanks
Two realities. Talking to a therapist. “Hmm, I know this story from somewhere. I’m not sure where.” But what a great storytelling tool. And a great way, because it keeps the audience off balance, you know. And especially the way Martin did the transitions, just, like, open a door and all of a sudden you’re, you know, back in the in the world, or you’re in the gate room. He’s sitting on the park bench, and O’Neill comes over, and puts his hand on his shoulder.

David Read
Oh, the transitions are amazing.

Michael Shanks
Yeah, it’s great. Martin did a phenomenal job. And I was just happy to be part of it. And the way the character was utilized in that way, both poignant and fun. Gets to play this, kind of quirky, forgetful, you know, scientist psychologist. So that the audience is wondering “What the hell is he doing,” you know, “Teal’c doesn’t recognize him?” It was fun. It was multilayered. I enjoyed it.

David Read
Daniel’s in there, but he’s not, you know. He’s kind of like… There’s a part of that that’s like “Is that really Daniel, or is that Teal’c’s, like, displaced memory?” There was layers. You can rewatch that episode a million ways. My favorite scene in that whole thing is the scene with Apophis. He’s like “You know when all the chips are down, deep part of you knows that I’ll be waiting for you in the afterlife. “Because that to me is like “Ooo.”

Michael Shanks
Chilling, right?

David Read
Yeah, absolutely. There’s a piece of Teal’c that still thinks that. You come back, they bring you back in, and it’s like, “We’re making you butt naked, in February or March.” Tell us about that experience, like, “This is how I’m coming back in? OK. What’s the temperature out?”

Michael Shanks
Yeah. It was February in Surrey. So, you know, talking about Vancouver winters. It was cold. I didn’t know how we were gonna do it, and we just did it how we did it. No smoke, no mirrors, a dog walking park in Surrey, where we can only keep the public back to a certain degree. And there’s Michael getting his kit off in the middle of, you know, the dog poop in Surrey in three degree temperatures. Good times. Thanks, Coop. I always said that that was his punishment for me ever leaving the show in the first place, was that scene.

David Read
What are the technical processes for something like that? Obviously, they have to make you comfortable. The logistics of some kind of a shot like that, and just not freezing your parts off man out there.

Michael Shanks
Well, that’s the thing, is that there is no… You’d think that there’s kind of smoke and mirrors, the way that you can do it, but not the way that we did it. So it’s like, at a certain point, you just got to do it. It’s like when Schwarzenegger is buck ass naked, stepping out from behind a garbage truck, walking towards camera. Sometimes you just gotta be buck ass naked, walking towards camera like this, you know…There’s no way around it. So when Michael’s gotta be naked, you know…

David Read
Michael’s gotta be naked.

Michael Shanks
You talk your bit, even though it’s cold, so you don’t have much to talk. And you just shoot it. And, you know, like I said, you take the robe off, you lie down in the grass, and you shoot the damn thing, and you trust the director to keep it in the realm of taste.

David Read
Sure, absolutely! When the script for Lifeboat came around… Something to sink your teeth into, man. I mean, holy crap. With that one, it’s so many personalities, so many layers. What do you remember about Lifeboat?

Michael Shanks
I remember I was really pleased. Again, what a tremendous gift. What a tremendous opportunity. Like, if I had been bitching about not doing much in Season Four and Five, then, you know, there you go. Deal with that. Now carry it. Like, now carry the show, with no bells, no whistles, whatever. It’s just you and Teryl, locked in a room, doing the thing. And then you go, “Oh, Jesus, this is terrifying.” That particular character… I’d done a TV movie, after I had left the show, where I played a psychologist who was working with a patient who had schizophrenia, who had multiple personality disorder. And they had given this poor actor very little prep time. They’d cast her two days before we went to camera on it. And I thought that was colossally unfair. She had, like, six or seven different personalities.

David Read
Oh, my God.

Michael Shanks
And when you’re playing personalities, they have to be dimensional. And so in order to give them dimension, you need time. It’s like anything. If we’re building characters from the ground up, you need time. You can’t just [do it]. Unless you’ve got a repertoire of, like… If you’d done a one man show where you played 17 people, then Bob’s your uncle. But is it gonna fit in this capacity? Is it gonna fit in this script? And she’d gotten so little time and did her best. So I don’t mean to fault her at all. Did her best with the material. But I could tell that, you know, she got sick while we were filming, and she would struggle becasue there was so many… The pitfall of falling into cliches, and stuff like that, was so readily there, you know, “There’s the bad one. There’s the good one. There’s the one in between.” And I just remember thinking to myself at the time, going “Well, Jesus, this is a lesson,” you know, “as an actor. If you ever have the opportunity to do this, preparation, having time to prepare, is paramount.” Sometimes people, like producers, don’t get that actors need a little time with this.

David Read
You have to find these people. You have to find these people in yourself.

Michael Shanks
So when you give us an audition the night before and tell us, you know, to show up and whatever, you’re gonna get essentially a work in progress. If you’re lucky. And anyway, I can’t remember what episode we were doing. The preceding episode. That’s when we were given the script. And I just remember going “Holy shit, I gotta prepare.” And I can’t remember the episode we were filming.

David Read
Revisions. With the little ear pieces here.

Michael Shanks
That’s right. And so we were pretty busy. And we were also doubling up. That’s when we had started shooting Heroes as well. So there was a lot going on at that particular moment. We were kind of second uniting Heroes, shooting Revisions, and then I got this script for Lifeboat. And I just remember going “OK, well, anything else I plan on doing, forget it. I’m going home tonight, and we are creating these characters from the ground up.” And that’s what I did. And again, as always with this craft, this business of being an actor, it’s all work in progress. It’s just, you know, always evolving, if you’re doing it right. It just happens to be that we ran out of time, and now this is where we’re at with this. And so I look back at that now when I go “I would have liked to done this. I would like to done this, and blah, blah, blah.” But tremendous opportunity that Brad gave me to do that. And tremendous trust to say “Here, take this and carry this episode. I think you can do it.” And, you know, you don’t want to let anybody down when they give you that kind of confidence, and, you know, opportunity.

David Read
And Teryl rose to the occasion. Man, oh, man, one of her best episodes.

Michael Shanks
I worked on a project with Teryl. I was telling her last week. I had mentioned this to her before, but I’d worked on something, again, one of my early jobs. And Teryl was playing, like… It was a mini series about street kids, and I was playing a street kid, and she had played, like, some realtor [in] one scene. And I remember from this, like, eight part mini series, she had one scene. And I just remembered going “Damn, that woman’s good.” From one scene. She was showing an apartment. It was nothing. On paper, it was nothing. But I remember going “She’s good,” like, “that’s solid.” You know, just like “No small parts, just small actors.” [She] nailed the shit out of the one scene. And I just remembered that. And so when she came working on the show, when she got those little moments… Because she never got many, because it was always techno babble and, you know…

David Read
Right. She’s an exposition machine in many cases. Move the plot along.

Michael Shanks
Yeah. So whenever she got, like… She had a couple beats with Rick, in… What was the caveman episode?

David Read
The Broca Divide. “No, I’m not wearing that. Change it.”

Michael Shanks
Yeah, I know. My god.

David Read
“Me Daniel. Me throw rock.”

Michael Shanks
That first season had some doozies. But anyway, so whenever she got a chance to step out of that exposition zone, you really see the chops that she had. And also to Mr. Park, who played the dad, the guy who was…

David Read
Oh, in Lifeboat? He was the father. Give me a moment.

Michael Shanks
Something Park, I know that.

David Read
Teryl Rothery. Travis Webster played Tryan. Ryan Drescher played Keenin. The dad, I think, was Travis Webster, I think. Or, no. James Parks. Pharrin.

Michael Shanks
James Parks.

David Read
Man, Michael, your memory. Holy cow.

Michael Shanks
He was fantastic in it. And I remember watching some of the rushes of his performance, and I’m going “Damn, I gotta step up. Because he’s extraordinary in terms of transitions he was making.” But, yeah, what a great opportunity. And like I said, you go your way and you try and dimensionalize these characters, you know. Yeah, there’s a certain amount of mustache twiddling in what’s his face, the bad guy. Can’t remember his name, off the top of my head.

David Read
Tryan. Martice. Pharrin.

Michael Shanks
Martice. Martice’s the bad guy. Tryan’s the engineer. And Keenin’s the kid. There’s a certain amount of, like, mustache twiddle to him. There has to be. Because he’s, like, an asshole, you know? He’s a spoiled, rotten, entitled [inaudible].

David Read
Really? Out of all the personalities, we had to save him?

Michael Shanks
Exactly, right? But that’s the thing. You go on this journey. And like I said, Teryl was fantastic to work with, just in terms of, you know, that great moment.

David Read
“I don’t give a damn!”

Michael Shanks
“This body doesn’t belong to me.”

David Read
Yeah, taking it back.

Michael Shanks
“Damn girl, you go,” you know, she was fantastic.

David Read
After when she was shot in Heroes…I don’t think I told you this story before. And I’m partially just hoping you can confirm this or not. I met her at Gatecon just a few months after this was shot. Pardon the pun. The blast hits her, and you’re giving… “Fraiser’s hit. I need a medic.” She said you held her hand in that shot. We can’t see it in the frame, but I hope that that’s true. There’s part of me that’s like, “Yeah, that did happen.”

Michael Shanks
Yeah. It was tough. And because of the nature of the way that we shot that scene, it’s all done from the POV of this handy cam, you know, that’s a tough moment to share with another actor.

David Read
A part that you’ve watched her carry for seven seasons. And “Oh, by the way, you’re gonna be alive tomorrow for the other scenes,” you know. Oh, man.

Michael Shanks
Yeah, it wasn’t easy. It wasn’t an easy day. But, you know, in moments especially like that, you feel the sense of obligation.

David Read
“I’m here.”

Michael Shanks
Yeah. That you’re there both as acting partner, and as character, when the character had that closeness as well. But you’re there at this pivotal moment. She didn’t want to go. No, I’m not talking about Dr. Fraiser. I’m talking about Teryl. She didn’t want to leave the show. This is a tough moment to shoot, you know. I think it would have been a lot tougher if she’d known we went for another damn three seasons.

David Read
Yeah, you guys thought it was wrapping up and going to films.

Michael Shanks
So you feel a tremendous obligation to give the character their due, and, again, be present as that character to give it as much authenticity as possible. Because this is going to be a big moment for the audience, and you don’t want to short-change anything. But we’re shooting it on a handy cam, so all you can do, where the camera is, there you are as actor in front of the camera, and the parts that aren’t the actor…I’m holding her hand because I’m her friend. Michael is her friend, is Teryl’s friend. And when we finish this scene, we won’t work together anymore on this show. Full stop. Tough bit of business, you know?

David Read
I’m in talks with Julius Chapple to bring him on. He’s not in the industry anymore, but I’ve communicated with him, and I’m gonna do my damn just to have him back next season. Because, man, what a profound two hours. You and Claudia Black. I don’t think I’ve mentioned [her]. I don’t think we’ve discussed Claudia. Prometheus Unbound. The script comes along. You’re getting Claudia Black. First thoughts?

Michael Shanks
Well, it was interesting. I didn’t know Farscape. I didn’t know anything about Farscape. I’d met Ben. I’d met Ben on an airplane. He was coming to Vancouver to shoot a movie that we both auditioned for. Imagine that.

David Read
Is this the Farrah Fawcett film? Lee Majors? It’s Farrah Fawcett-Majors, damn it!

Michael Shanks
And as soon as I met him, I’m like, “Well, God damn it. They gave the part to the right guy,” you know. And Ben’s a delightful, chatty, very warm, and thoughtful [person].

David Read
He’s a good kisser, Michael. He’s a good kisser.

Michael Shanks
Listen, he sometimes gives a little too much tongue, I have to say. And with his mustache right now. Hippers, beware!

David Read
Were you expecting to get what she gave with that episode?

Michael Shanks
Sorry, say that again.

David Read
Were you expecting to get what she gave in that episode?

Michael Shanks
No, not at all. Because the way the character was written. They had originally offered it, and I hope I’m not speaking too much out of school when I talk about people that they’d offered it to, to Krista Allen, who turned it down. You’re gonna google it?

David Read
I don’t know who that is. Oh, hello! OK.

Michael Shanks
She’s a kitten.

David Read
She’s a beauty.

Michael Shanks
So in my head, I’m going “Oh, so they want her to be like a little sex kitten,” you know, very flirty and very whatever. Not at all what I expected when Claudia shows up. Because, again, I didn’t know Farscape, so I don’t know Claudia. I’d met Ben on the plane. That was as much as I knew. And so when Claudia showed up, I’d heard she was from Australia. That’s all I knew, swear to God. And what a delight. I mean, from the word “Go.” I always tell this story, because it was so rare but poignant in that particular moment. We’re gonna do our first [scene]. We’re in between setups of doing our first scene. And she just says to me “So what can I do to help you? What would you like to achieve with your character in this episode and what can I do to help?” And I was, like, “[gurgling sounds]. That’s something actors don’t do. That’s a very theater thing. It’s something actors don’t do because we operate in vacuums a lot of the time. We kind of, like, have the big defense walls up when we go into working with people. Because we don’t know what to expect. Because we’ve all had good, bad experiences.

David Read
“I’m a guest in your house. Do you want me to do the dishes? Do you want me to? What can I do?” Wow!

Michael Shanks
Yeah. And it’s like “Oh, Michael.” I was just, like, “Thank you.” I knew I had a partner right then for that episode. So from that moment, we were kind of inseparable. We were going off and talking in the trailers about different scenes and stuff, and I was talking about [the show]. She didn’t know the show very well, because I was explaining what the hell was going on with certain things. And then we were talking about what we were gonna do in certain beats. And because we were at that point where we’re doing second unit episodes. This is Season Eight, right? So ours was the second unit episode, which meant that we didn’t have executive producer oversight. So Andy Mikita was directing, and Claudia and I were the actors on it. And so let’s just say, the kids ran a bit amok.

David Read
Oh, man. “We’re gonna need a lot of floor mats, folks. I’m going backwards, over the console.”

Michael Shanks
Yeah, we did a bit of a sitcom kind of thing that was, you know, happening. I mean, just for everything. Obviously, the fight scene when Dan showed me what they had, I was like “What the hell?” Like, it was a real fight. And I’m like, “No,” you know, “we can’t have it. I’m not a ninja,” like, “what are you doing?” Like, “We’re trading kicks?” What the hell, you know?

David Read
She’s trying to take over your ship. You’re defending your ship.

Michael Shanks
Yeah but it’s gotta be funny, and Daniel’s gotta get his ass whooped. It’s gotta be funny. We gotta have a little bit of that, you know, James Bond fighting. What was it? Pussy Galore in Goldfinger, in the bar, and that kind stuff. Or with what’s her face? Grace Jones. When Grace Jones is beating the crap out of him, too. It’s gotta be a little bit sexual, but a lot of, like, knees to the nut kind of stuff, right? We may have gone a little too far, but it was still, you know…

David Read
Well, part of my fear would be, like… People gonna see this, and they’re gonna be like, “This is ridiculous. This is completely silly.”

Michael Shanks
We wanted it to be.

David Read
At the same time, she’s crazy. This woman is crazy. And this is what Daniel’s dealing with, and he’s gonna deal with it.

Michael Shanks
The absurdity was the choreography. When Todd Scott, who was doubling me, gets his ass kicked and goes flying over the console, we were, like, measuring the width of his legs in a V. That’s how the choreography of this, for comedy’s sake, needed to be. We had a lot of fun. And I think, obviously, clearly, the fun that we were having translated to the screen, to the dailies, and everybody in the office noticed that there was this dynamic that was taking place. And that’s how Claudia became a larger part of the show in Season Ten.

David Read
And then by the end of that run, talk about makeup, another opportunity for everyone to go old. That scene that [Robert C.] Coop[er] put in with the two of you holding each other in the bedroom during the montage. I didn’t know what I was seeing. And I had to be explained later by Darren. They’ve lost a child. It’s like, “Oh, wooow.”

Michael Shanks
It was purposely meant to be ambiguous, because it was just written. It was not written with “This was what it’s about underneath.” It was just written that she’s weeping and he’s holding her. And we were like, “What are we doing here?” We don’t know the time. This is, like, eternal. We don’t know what phase of this this is. And so we had to ask Rob “Is this about this?” And he’s like, “Yeah.” “OK. All right. Good. We’re good.” We just didn’t want it to be, like, neutral or benign.

David Read
What did you think of the ending?

Michael Shanks
Well, I always said about the show that you can’t end this show. That the ending is unending. It has to be where they go through the gate at the end, and we imagine them in our…It can’t be the end of Three’s Company, where they turn off the lights in the apartment and close the door. We can’t close this. This is about, you know…

David Read
This is about going.

Michael Shanks
Yeah, this is about adventuring. And what they’re doing is, you know… Starship Enterprise doesn’t shut down and go into mothballs, and we see Kirk, you know, checking into the home. It’s like, the Enterprise goes sailing off into the sunset. This was our way of “We’re walking off into the sunset. This isn’t ending. So keep us alive in your imagination.” And I thought that part was perfect, because I always said that about the show. But that’s what needed to be the end.

David Read
Even though you’re going off to do movies.

Michael Shanks
Yeah, that’s the thing, is that we didn’t know. We didn’t know how that was gonna turn out. You know, it’s unfortunate that, like the show, it kind of ended before we thought it would. But we had a healthy run, so you can’t really bitch.

David Read
I’m thrilled that we got the two that we got. But the entire crew came down to that itty bitty set. I think you’re in the morning at this point.

Michael Shanks
No. Well, we were in the wee hours of the morning.

David Read
For that final shot. What was that like?

Michael Shanks
It was purposely boarded in the schedule to be the last shots that we shoot of that episode. So it was purposely done to have a send off for the actors, for the crew. You can’t shoot that scene on day two. You can, but…I guess I don’t know. Maybe it would have been better to shoot at day two, because we wouldn’t have been all stopping, weeping messes. Poor, you know…Judge’s makeup is going down his face, he can’t keep it together. But it was the right thing to do for everybody, because it’s that big space, so everybody could come spectate. And, you know, it is what it is. It’s beautiful and tough.

David Read
Cathartic.

Michael Shanks
Yeah. And then we ran back up to the to the overlook, you know, to the to the top, to the board room up there, where we started 10 years before, looking down on the thing, looking down on the Stargate, going…You know, that’s how we started when we were in prep. When we were touring the sets, we stood up there for a while, and just stared at that gate. And we’re just like “Man, this is so cool.” And here we are, 10 years later, looking down on that set, going “That happened,” you know. “It happens in a blink.” But it was great. I don’t know a better way to end the show. I can’t think of an ending, a way to end the show that wouldn’t disappoint somebody. When we ended Saving Hope, we pissed off half the audience. Half the audience [went] “Well, it’s about right,” and the other half [went] “We felt cheated.” I think endings are tough.

David Read
You can’t please everybody. You can’t do it. Part of you shouldn’t try. You should make something for yourself.

Michael Shanks
You should make the choice. You have to make the choice as an artist, and the audience is going to feel what they’re going to feel, but you should be true to the characters, true to the story, and true to yourself as an artist, as a writer. And, you know, let the chips fall where they may.

David Read
That’s that’s absolutely right. Stargate Seed and Spock’s Friday Nights: Is that what Daniel still doing? Is he’s still going off world? Where do you see him right now? What’s happening to him?

Michael Shanks
Well, he’s either one of two things. Either he is gone back to Abydos…

David Read
There’s no one there anymore.

Michael Shanks
Or some version thereof, or created something like Abydos, somewhere else. That’s one possibility, in terms of that, coming full circle, he’s gone back, and he’s got a group of people that he’s training to defend the gate and whatever. And he’s happy digging up archeological trinkets from some Egyptian place. Or he’s still fighting the good fight. Whoops!

David Read
You’re OK. Still fighting the fight.

Michael Shanks
My daughter’s calling me. Yeah, just still, you know, working for the man, fighting the good fight. But he’s getting to do what he wants, which is going through the gate. How that looks? I don’t know. And I always wanna find out, because I’m quite curious as to what they’re gonna do with the property, if we will come back to it in some capacity. Even for, you know, a moment.

David Read
I will let you know if I hear anything. I hear rumours.

Michael Shanks
They’re taking their sweet ass time.

David Read
They sure are. Perfection takes time, though, right? Ian Zenia: “My girlfriend wants to know if you ever missed the long hair after you guys cut it at the end of Season Two?” And she says, “I was sad it never returned.” Was there ever any consideration to go longer again?

Michael Shanks
Rob wanted me to grow it back when Ben came onto the show. He wanted me to grow it back. And I said, “Rob, hair doesn’t work that way. I can’t will it to grow that fast.” And I said, “And quite frankly, I don’t want to.” Because I only had the Daniel hair at the tail end of my grunge fashion, post-Stratford [phase]. I had this kind of, like, “I’m going to grow my hair long, man” phase. But they never let me grow it long. They wanted to be that sort of goofy length. And at a certain point, I was like, “I’m gonna do Hamlet, and I’m gonna cut the hair. And it’s not coming back.” Because it’s the pain in the ass. It’s like, you know, if I could explain the different moments. Especially in Vancouver, where we’re outdoors so much, and it’s raining all the time. Or you’ve got a hat on one minute, and then then you don’t. And then they’ve got people coming in with spray bottles and blow dryers and shit. And I’m just like, “No. No way, Jose.” No, I never missed it.

David Read
There you go. Esvee: “You played Rick Singer in the College Admission Scandal movie with Robert Moloney. What was it like playing a real person? That kind of a real person with that kind of a personality?”

Michael Shanks
I’ve played worse. It was interesting. I mean, it’s always interesting. That story is so interesting because it was so fresh. And being in Vancouver, Lori Laughlin had just worked with so many people up here. She had just gotten sort of, like, taken away from Hallmark, or, you know, put in up to pasture by Hallmark, because of the scandal.

David Read
Full House didn’t finish with her.

Michael Shanks
Yeah. And so we kind of knew people that knew her. It was a little bit weird. The timing of it, because it was so new, was a little odd. But playing the character, I enjoyed it. I didn’t know too much. They gave me an opportunity to study it. He is, [and] was an opportunistic dude. Like I said, I played worse. He’s not the worst character I’ve ever played. He’s just, you know…There was a loophole. He thought he did it. You know, “That’s America, baby!”

David Read
Exactly. We’ve already asked that one the previously. Let me see here. Some of these are wild. Anki Leave Black Jack and Lauren Hollander wanted to know “Is there anything going on with you right now that we need to keep our ear to the ground on?”

Michael Shanks
Not at the moment. No.

David Read
Kappa1611, “Any memories from creating Resurrection?” And Amanda directed it.

Michael Shanks
Just that that was great learning experience from the point of view of when you are a junior writer. Because it’s kind of like the directing thing, there’s a learning curve. When you’re basically a junior writer, you say “Oh, I want to do this,” and you’re gonna go pitch. You’re not given any quarter, right? Because, you know, if a writer came and said, “I want to be an actor,” and showed up on set to play a character, we would expect him to be a professional. And so this is the same thing. Just because you’re an actor, you just stumbled into… You’re in their lane. So they’re not gonna give you any quarter, and I wouldn’t expect them to. It’s a very political process. It’s a very political process. I was not sure about the level of politics that is involved in it. Just in terms of, you know, you’ve got the buck stopping with the show runner, and you’ve got the pitch process, which is a bit of a strange thing, in terms of, like, half ideas, full ideas. The idea that I had was basically the last of, like, seven pitches, which was a cocktail napkin scribbling I had as a rough outline. And it got thrown around the writers room in this broken telephone kind of way, and then got handed back to me as an outline. And I was like, “Oh, it was handed back to me to do an outline.” And I was like “Oh, this was not what I wanted to write. OK, I’ll go write this.” And then you go write it, and, you know, some of it is familiar, and some of it is completely unrecognizable. And so when I was on, when Amanda was directing, and people had questions about it to the writer, because my name’s on it, I would say “Ah, I don’t know. Because I didn’t write it.”

David Read
It’s a process.

Michael Shanks
There was a lot of things that were mine and there were things that weren’t mine. That’s show biz, baby, you know?

David Read
There was a nice reference to Shifu in there. There was a nice connection to the harcesis, and a lot of those other elements. I would think that, you know, that was you.

Michael Shanks
Nah…

David Read
OK. I understand.

Michael Shanks
There’s a lot of Rob in there. Let me just put it that way. Rob was shepherding that script through a lot of… Especially, like, it’s no coincidence that the same episode that I wrote was the one that Amanda directed, that Rick wasn’t in. So it was kind of turned into this side event.

David Read
It was a different kind of show.

Michael Shanks
Yeah. So that was on purpose. Not a great controversy but that’s what was done. I’m just pointing to the fact.

David Read
You know, it was near the end of the season. He’s got to save up his time for Lost City. A lot was going on then.

Michael Shanks
Yeah, absolutely.

David Read
Last question for you. CasuallySandra wanted to know, “Do you think there was a chance that Daniel still might have ended up with Vala in our timeline?”

Michael Shanks
Oh, yeah, for sure.

David Read
You think so? Yeah.

Michael Shanks
Well, define “ended up with her.” Like, in permanent? Like, forever and ever?

David Read
I think, like, to finally acknowledge “Yeah, you’re mine. I’m yours.”

Michael Shanks
You know, [inaudible] saying there’s a chance. There’s always a chance. I don’t know if those two personalities on a long timeline would be able to maintain a, you know, lovey dovey even keel, and one of them would become restless. I picture them kind of like Indiana Jones and Marion. Two very strong personalities, who can, you know, live… When the credits start rolling and they’re holding hands, it looks great, but cut to them five years later, you know, cut to them 10 years later, and it might look a little bit different. But you never know. Maybe there’s a happily ever after, but I don’t think that there’s a Cinderella story there.

David Read
I see what you’re saying. So they would have remained in each other’s orbits?

Michael Shanks
Exactly. Like that kind of way of, like, “We’re destined to be together. I just can’t live with you right now.”

David Read
“I’m taking you with me. We’re going crazy.”

Michael Shanks
He would think that he’s never gonna see her again. And then two years later, she beams him up from some ship that she stole, and say “I need you for this.” “Oh, for God sake, woman.”

David Read
Michael, it means the world to me to have you back for [episode] 300, and to finish out my season with so many wonderful stories. I cannot tell you how much it means to have you here to take the time to share once again.

Michael Shanks
Thank you, David. It has been a pleasure as usual.

David Read
Well, I appreciate you, sir. I’m gonna go ahead and wrap up the show on my end. I’ll reach out to you.

Michael Shanks
Alright, boss.

David Read
Thanks, brother.

Michael Shanks
Thanks guys.

David Read
Michael Shanks, everyone. Daniel Jackson in Stargate SG-1. Really appreciate you guys tuning in for this. Thank you so much to everyone who submitted questions. I got a little carried away there, but I hope it was an enjoyable show. My tremendous thanks to my amazing moderating team, Tracy, Antony, Jeremy, Marsha, Sommer. You guys make the show possible week in, and week out, and I couldn’t do it without you guys. So I really appreciate it. My moderator, Frederick Marcoux, over at ConceptsWeb, he’s keeping dialthegate.com up and running. Now with transcripts. Go and check out the transcripts, and submit any errors if you find them. My producer, Linda GateGabber Furey, who has always been at my back, to keep things going. Really appreciate all of you for making Season Four possible. I’m going to take a bit of a break for a few months, and then we’ll come back guns ablazing. Probably March, late March. I haven’t figured that out yet, but we’ll make those determinations. In the meantime, Wormhole Extremists is gonna continue over on our sister channel, and we’re going to keep those episodes coming. And hopefully I’m going to be working on some transcripts for dialthegate.com for the more permanent archive. That’s what we’ve got going on there. I think that that’s everything. Thank you so much to all of you for submitting some amazing questions. Really hope you had a great time. My name is David Read for Dial the Gate. I appreciate you tuning in, and I will see you on the other side.