Stargate: Keeping it real...

July 20, 2005

Keeping it real...

So initial feedback to the blog is good, for the most part… Most people think it’s informative, upbeat, candid and fun… Almost everybody likes it.

Except for one person.

One guy thinks it’s too “fan-boy”. One guy thinks it’s too sugary, too gushing… Can you guess who that might be?

No. It’s not Richard Dean Anderson. Nice try. You can put your hand down now.

No. It’s not Ron Moore. He’s got his own blog to worry about.

Wait for it… Okay. It’s Robert C. Cooper, the show runner of SG-1. Yeah, it’s the guy who deserves a lot of the credit for making SG-1 such an amazing… I mean… such an okay television show. He’s the guy steering the ship.

Now, either Rob’s a little embarrassed about all the positive attention, or he’s worried my blog will be tuned out because it’s so adulatory. Yes, that’s a word, according to the Microsoft Word spell checker.

Well guess what, Rob? That’s just tough. I like sci-fi. I watched Star Trek growing up. I owned light sabers. And I like Stargate. Just because I happen to work here doesn’t mean I can’t be a fan, alright? Sheesh. (Just don’t fire me.)

So now what do I do? I’m not really down with being critical for no good reason. I guess I could blog all day about my office job (oh, you betcha, that’s coming, sooner or later). But I gots to keep it real, yo!

So, I guess what people really want to know is the behind the scenes stuff… All right – so here’s some interesting stuff about this week's episodes:

· Fire! In an upcoming scene in Avalon Pt. 2, our fearless SG-1 Stunt Coordinator Dan Shea caught on fire! Yep, it’s true. A wider shot selection forced him out of his fire-retardant garb so he could be in the shot and near the “burn” (the fire-stunt). When Dan went to put the “bridge” down over the flames to let the actress out of the ring of fire, the fire was accidentally blown toward him and he caught on fire. Stop, drop and roll! Thankfully he wasn’t hurt.

· Factoid: the village from Avalon Pt. 2 is entirely within our Effects stage – it’s not outside at all. There will be a behind the scenes featurette called “It Takes a Crew to Raise a Village” on the DVD’s for season 9, which, among other interesting things, shows the village being built via time-lapse photography.

· The Intruder… This episode reintroduces Col. Steven Caldwell, commander of the Daedalus. You can read his interesting bio on this site under Stargate: Atlantis cast. Brad Wright told us he talked to Mitch during shooting, and that Mitch was pretty stoked about his new role on Atlantis. Mitch apparently said something like “I actually get to command my own space ship!”

· Kimani Ray Smith, who plays Lindstrom on “The Intruder”, also works as Rainbow Sun Francks’ stunt double on the show.

Ok… next week, as promised, info about the origin of Ronon, the Runner… And maybe some more dirt…

Oh, speaking of dirt. If you’re thinking the Stargate powers that be don’t pay enough attention to detail, you’ll be amazed to learn that the network took issue with the color of the dirt in the village set. Thankfully, the matter was resolved. The producers and the network settled on brown. Now that’s keeping it real.

ATL

Posted by Alex Levine at July 20, 2005 06:01 PM