Requiem for a Stargate

Have you ever discussed your opinion of Sci-Fi's Stargate SG-1 or Atlantis? Those two shows were supposed to be bigger than Star Trek at one time. Both are filmed in Vancouver and employ many Canadian actors. I am really interested in your take on the whole thing and the business side of things. After celebrating ten years of the show, Sci-Fi decided to pull the plug and not renew the series. How nasty is that? Yes, I know it's a business, but the timing really sucked. What is your opinion?

I might have alluded to it in the past, but I don't know if I ever came at it head on. I always really appreciated Stargate SG-1 because I thought it was well-executed and it knew exactly what it was. I haven't watched it too much since Ben Browder took over, but one of the things I think it had going for it was its sense of humor. The way Richard Dean Anderson delivered his quips, well...they were funny lines delivered well, and elevated even further by the performance.

I also think that Stargate transcended the film it was based on pretty quickly. It was always, like Buffy, a much richer television idea than a movie idea. There were so many stories to tell in that world.

Stargate was also a very important show in the realm of Canadian Content. Once upon a time, there were lots of shows like Stargate shot in Canada. But most of them had writing staffs that were filled entirely out of L.A. In some cases, by Canadian expats, so they got the full cancon credits, but if you actually lived in Toronto or Vancouver where the show was shot, you were screwed.

Stargate employed a lot of Canadians not just below the line, but above it. It's a show with a pretty decent budget that gave many Canuck writers a chance to move up. I know a couple of people who broke on Stargate, and the main showrunner there for several years has been Canadian. The spinoff, Atlantis, continues that tradition.

The shows were fun. Things blew up, you were entertained. Distribution of the show was spotty in Canada, so I really kind of discovered it on DVD. If you think Corner Gas gets no credit, well, Stargate's even in worse shape on that score. But screw those haters. It's made a lot of writers a lot of money, and trained them, too. So it's done the hell of a lot more for our industry than many of the other shows the cultural snobs will point to as "telling our stories."

And as for genre stuff, well let's just say that in my years at the Canadian Sci-Fi Channel, Space, I saw a LOT of bad shows that gave me a headache and made me think the future of Sci-fi TV was mired in terrible schlock. Compared to a lot of that, Stargate was like a sip of Fiji water.

And, I hate to say this, but ten years for Stargate? That's beyond awesome as far as a long run goes. It's almost inconceivable. Stargate did really well in syndication around the world, even after that market mostly dried up, and that's what kept it going all those years.

But after ten years, I can't really see Sci-Fi as the bad guy here. They're the ones who stepped in when the original network was going to drop it. They kept it going longer than anyone thought they would. From a business standpoint, after that long you're simply going to be risking running out of story areas or repeating yourself (How badly did Star Trek suck at the end, after repeating itself on fumes through about two series?) Not to mention the fact that your cast is going to demand more money and start to be more expensive...you're going to have to train new writers, new showrunners because your other talent is going to get antsy...and then there's the syndication package itself. If you have enough episodes for five days a week strip syndication, you're going to reach that magic tipping point where it's not worth making more, because you won't make enough back in adding value to the syndie or DVD packages to make up for the investment.

I find it hard to accept that a show that survived cast changes, and ran 10 seasons without a noticeable drop in quality has somehow been hard done by.

I'm tremendously grateful for Stargate SG-1, even though I never made a dime off it. Because I know I'll probably be working someday soon with writers, actors, and crew who cut their teeth on that show. They were trained right, they made a great contribution to the Canadian industry, and they did it all without once being celebrated at home. How very, very Canadian.