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September 15, 2006

They just keep getting better!

I sat Carl Binder down in my office and I put this question to him. "Talk to me about Phantoms", I said. "Tell me some exciting, behind the scenes stuff about Phantoms— about the show, about the actors, about the creative process. Enlighten me!" So Carl sits silently for a moment. Then he looks at me. And he seems to look right through me (as it turns out he was just thinking, but it was unnerving while it was happening, I can tell you that). And then he says, without any affectation whatsoever, "Phantoms is my favourite episode that I’ve done."

And this is just exasperating for an interviewer, because… and I’m serious here… he says that all the time! So me, being no push over myself, I say to Carl – I say "you always say that!" And I smirk a little, because I know I’ve got him in a corner, because his brow wrinkles and he’s got this look on his face like maybe he made a mistake or maybe I made a mistake or maybe he’s just going to punch my lights out… and then he seems to regain his focus, and he says, very deliberately, with an accusatory finger pointed right at my forehead… "so far." And then he explains that he meant it’s his favourite episode so far. He’s also really proud of Irresistible and also Michael. So I backed off, because I value my pretty boy looks and I’ve got a big weekend ahead of me. But the point is a good one. The show keeps getting better. And Phantoms is a great example of that.

Why does he like Phantoms so much? Well, for starters, he actually came up with the concept, which is no small feat. Remember they’ve done 250 episodes and they’ve turned every story idea around and around and told it from every angle, so it’s no small feat to come up with a strong, original concept. The working titles were "Wraith Fight Club" and then "Carl’s Rage Machine." And the story developed from being a story about a Wraith experiment causing uncontrollable anger to one in which a device causes personal traumatic experiences to be relived. This created perfect opportunities to delve into the characters’ backstories – specifically Sheppard’s. The Atlantis writers had been looking for a story in which they could flesh out Sheppard’s personal history, and Joe Flanigan was also anxious to do that kind of a story. They thought about doing it in Common Ground, but there was too much story already in that one to do it justice. So this worked out just perfect. I’m not going to spoil it for you, but check it out, because it’s very cool.

You’ll also see Company of Thieves tonight, in which SG-1’s mission is to recover the Odyssey. This is a serious story, with high stakes and personal loss. I talked with Alan McCullough, who wrote it. He said he pitched it as a "get the ship back" episode, and Rob Cooper spun it into a Donnie Brasco kind of story, where we get to see the seedy underbelly of the Lucian Alliance. And there’s a great stunt in this show where a character is floating in space and bounces off the window of a space ship. Apparently the actor was flown in from LA, put in a harness, and swung against our model ship window for 2 hours, and then flown home the same day. This is definitely a crazy business.

Enjoy!

ATL

Posted by Alex Levine at September 15, 2006 11:29 PM