Joseph Mallozzi, Stargate Writer and Executive Producer

David Read: Welcome everyone to episode three, my name is David Read, thank you so much for sticking around. We just wrapped up with Tony Amendola and we’re going straight into Joseph Mallozzi. This will not normally happen, this was due to a schedule change so I’m gonna have a little bit more time to prep next time. Thank you Tony for pinch hitting for Christopher Judge, again, there was something perfect about that. We now have Mr. Joseph Mallozzi who was gracious enough to hold on for a minute, we had to shift things a little bit around. We’re going to get pretty much right into this here. So run of show, in this particular episode it’s going to be a little bit more standard to the intent of what the show is going to be. Joe and I are going to talk for a little bit, I have a series of questions for him then I will bring the guests Q&A in. I do have the form pulled up so thank you Sommer, Tracy, Ian, and Keith, for all of your hard work here. Those are my moderators, those guys are amazing. For Tony’s, I screwed up on which form we were viewing, there was something that went wrong. Tony has already agreed to do another episode, we will launch with that fan Q&A next time around and I’ve saved them all so I appreciate you guys spending those. Joe’s I’ve got ready to go here, the fan’s, as you submit them we will go through and discuss those together. Joe and I will have a brief trivia question where we embarrass ourselves and then any announcements, any questions that you have for me specifically on the structure of the show. I’ll give you another piece of wonderful fan art that’s submitted and invite you have to share the show with your Stargate friends, which I’m going to go ahead and do again right now. I really appreciate you sticking around for the program. Before we get started with Joe, if you like Stargate and want to see more content like this on YouTube, it would mean a great deal if you click the like button. It really makes a difference with YouTube’s algorithm and will definitely help the show grow its audience. Please also consider sharing this video with a Stargate friend and if you want to get notified about future episodes, click the Subscribe icon. Giving the bell icon a click will notify you the moment a new video drops and you’ll get any of my notifications of any last minute guests changes. This is key if you plan on watching live so keep that in mind. Clips from this live stream will be released over the course of the next several days on both the Dial the Gate and Gateworld.net YouTube channels. I’m not trying to spam everyone with my channel but it’s taking more of the the longer form approach and shrinking it down to more bite sized episodes and more specific topics so that people can share that with one another. That’s all I’ve got, I hope you enjoy the show. Without further ado, Mr. Joseph Mallozzi. Hello, sir.

Joseph Mallozzi: David, I rarely say this but I feel woefully under dressed today.

David Read: Well [straightens tie]

Joseph Mallozzi: Is that a clip on? Very impressive,

David Read: It’s the real deal, absolutely. I appreciate you guys being here, you can wear whatever. You can be in your PJs if you want but I wanted you to know.

Joseph Mallozzi: I feel very special.

David Read: I cannot thank you enough. I mentioned this to you before we started, I cannot thank you enough and tell you how much of what it means to be here with you in a first episode of what will hopefully be a series for the next, however long that it takes to get through the content. Content of a show that you helped to create, that has changed the lives of, or at the very least, enhance the lives of millions of people around the world for the past decade and a half and who knows how far out it will be into the future. Not just normal programming, programming that matters to people and programming that helps make them better people. So take it away.

Joseph Mallozzi: Thank you to you for doing this. I’m always happy to put it in an appearance but it’s great that you’re doing this for the fans. I’m sure they appreciate it as well.

David Read: Absolutely. I’m so thankful for the number of people who have already found us on the web. We’ve been up for 7, 8, 9, 10 days and already we’ve got almost 1200 subscribers.

Joseph Mallozzi: Wow.

David Read: It’s the drum that you have been beating for years. Stargate is still around and it deserves to come back in a fourth series, live action series form, wouldn’t you say?

Joseph Mallozzi: I would say and I have been saying.

David Read: Yeah, absolutely. You have recently said “five Chevron’s locked,” is what you believe is going on with this potential fourth series that Brad has been pitching to MGM. Can you elaborate on any of that?

Joseph Mallozzi: Not really. I’m, to be honest with you, not as in the loop as many would assume. It’s very much Brad’s show, both figuratively and literally. All we know is what he said, he had been in talks with MGM. I know things had kind of moved forward. I know that COVID put a wrench into things but I’m ever hopeful. I think the tweet storms that we did helped remind MGM that the fandom is still out there; the fandom is very much looking forward to new Stargate. The fandom is very much looking forward to new in-cannon Stargate which would mean a new Stargate series by Brad Wright. Hopefully all that hard work pays off, I keep on saying “sooner than later.”

David Read: But hopefully not later than sooner. These things take a long time to create, it takes a long time to give birth to a project. Development hell can can last years but hopefully that won’t be the case with this.

Joseph Mallozzi: Hopefully not.

David Read: Is it your hope to be part of the production or will you be cheering Brad on from the sidelines? What’s your intent?

Joseph Mallozzi: I really have no intent and no expectations. I just would love to see a new Stargate on screen again, I think would be great. It would be just great to revisit with all those characters as well as even just a viewer. It would be nice but it all comes down to, obviously, scheduling and a whole host of other things.

David Read: So it’s not a requirement for you that “oh Brad, the only reason I’m rooting this on is because I want you to bring me in.”

Joseph Mallozzi: No.

David Read: You love the project.

Joseph Mallozzi: I do.

David Read: You love the IP.

Joseph Mallozzi: More than anything I love the IP that Brad and Robert and Jonathan created. I love the IP and I love the possibility of seeing another in-cannon series about as much as I dislike the thought of someone else coming in and just rebooting it and erasing 20 years of TV canon. I’m very much a supporter of new Brad Wright Stargate. On the other hand, I will be very much a, probably dubious, what’s the word? Critic, of any attempt to reboot the franchise.

David Read: Coming from your perspective, and you guys worked on this for years, the meticulous level of detail and effort that you put into creating content that perpetually referenced itself moving forward and gave the fan base an expectation that “what I watched before matters to what’s coming next”. To lift that all the way into a new project, I wouldn’t necessarily myself have an issue with new Stargate if it weren’t to delete everything else, but just be like far enough into the future or something like that where it didn’t necessarily matter anymore. It wasn’t necessarily stepping on the toes of what you created in the present timeline, for instance. What I kind of suppose I’m saying is like what they did with Star Trek; the alternate reality where we’re not deleting anything, we’re moving over here to this layer. But if I had my choice, obviously, and this is one of the reasons I have you guys on, I’d want a continuation of yours.

Joseph Mallozzi: But that is still in-cannon. Even though, in an ideal world, you create a new show that allows you to revisit old characters. You can do what you said and create a show that is set in the future but you’re still making use of the rules that were established in SG-1, Atlantis and Universe. That is still very much an in-cannon show so far as I’m concerned.

David Read: Yeah, it’s not strictly a reboot where the IP is starting from square one and moving forward again.

Joseph Mallozzi: Exactly.

David Read: Yeah, I agree with that. What would you hope to see in a fourth series? What have you guys not done? Obviously, disclosure I can think of.

Joseph Mallozzi: Obviously that’s really up to Brad. I keep saying that, obviously, the best possible fourth series would be a show that would be a great jumping on point for new viewers. You don’t have to know anything about Stargate and you essentially join the adventur along with a cast of new characters. I think that’s what you have to do but that’s not to say you can’t have some characters from the past playing a supporting role. In an ideal world it’s a show that offers the best of both worlds. What made Stargate really, I think, resonate with a lot of fans is the fact that it was set in here and now. It’s a contemporary sci-fi rather than a far future sci-fi.

David Read: It’s about us.

Joseph Mallozzi: Yeah. Or a prequel. I am personally not a huge fan of prequels so that’s where I land.

David Read: I’m not speaking out of school. Brad, we had talked a couple of years ago at Gatecon for an interview for season two of Dialing Home, I asked him, what did you want to do next? I don’t know what his current plans are but I can say what he told me was his hope to create some kind of a situation where the Stargate Command units and the Atlantis expedition pooled their resources to save Destiny. That idea was just…I don’t know why I hadn’t thought of that before. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense, the other two teams as it were could come to the rescue.

Joseph Mallozzi: There’s no reason why that couldn’t happen in a new series; a new series that still focuses on this new team.

David Read: Yeah, a longer mission could be happening in the background.

Joseph Mallozzi: Yeah.

David Read: Missions can take years. Would you like to see some of the previous sets recreated physically, digitally?

Joseph Mallozzi: Um, I don’t really know specifically what the new show would be so I can’t really speak to set. I can’t imagine the show starting on Atlantis or starting on Destiny or taking place at the SGC since they shut down Cheyenne Mountain. Unless it was a sort of an all new SGC.

David Read: Or that Moonbase that they were talking about in Continuum?

Joseph Mallozzi: Possibly. Maybe you want something new, something fun, flashy?

David Read: Absolutely. I want to sidestep Stargate for a second because I know that there are going to be Dark Matter fans in here. I have to bring myself up to speed on this aspect of it. Is a fourth season still a possibility somewhere out there?

Joseph Mallozzi: No. At this point I would say the one hope to being able to complete the story would be a mini series. Hopefully six to eight to ten episode miniseries would be ideal.

David Read: Okay. Are you still looking for potential networks that could potentially carry that? Are you actively pitching that to anybody.

Joseph Mallozzi: At present I am not actively doing so but it’s something that hopefully will come up in the not too distant future.

David Read: Okay, fantastic. Keep us in the loop, okay.

Joseph Mallozzi: I will.

David Read: I want to take a step back here. In terms of the long view of this arc, the arc that we’re about to go on together, the journey that we’re about to commence. We’re going through dozens and dozens of the episodes that you have written, hopefully, every one of them one by one. This episode is really about you, it is about your personal heroes and the people who have helped you become the man who you are. I really want to go back to the beginning so fans may be like, “this isn’t the question that I planned on getting the answer to” but I think that it’s relevant when we look at the final result of what’s to come. Where were you raised? What did your family do? Who were you as a young man?

Joseph Mallozzi: I was raised in Montreal. My father was a salesman for a company that manufactures, what do they call, space heaters, I guess? My mother was a daycare director, formerly a minister in the United Church. That was my background. I grew up in Montreal and I remember I always used to love to write as a kid. Whenever people would ask “what do you want to be?” I would tell them, “I want to be a writer.” My mother would be like, “well, that’s cute but no one makes a living being a writer. You can be a journalist or a lawyer and you can write on the side.” Luckily, I didn’t really follow through on that law career. I got my start in animation and transitioned from animation to live action, kind of teen sitcom, a show called Student Bodies. Then I did one hour action adventure. Pretty quickly, Paul and I landed, my former writing partner and I, Paul Mullie, and I landed on Stargate for SG-1’s fourth season. At the time they were looking for new writers and we wrote a script called Scorched Earth that passed inspection, I guess, and it landed season four. I keep on telling the story where we landed for season four with the understanding that we would go two seasons and after season five the show would end and we would all go our separate ways.

David Read: Well that didn’t happen.

Joseph Mallozzi: No it did not.

David Read: I want to discuss Scorched Earth here in a minute. So you never gave any serious consideration to doing anything else, professionally?

Joseph Mallozzi: Not really. I enjoyed writing, I honestly thought I would be a novelist. I wrote a book and it was terrible and Paul advised me to try turning it into a script. I learned the script format, which is fairly straightforward, and I adapted it and my terrible novel became an equally terrible script.

David Read: Gotta start somewhere, man.

Joseph Mallozzi: Yeah, be honest with you. I decided that’s what I wanted to do, screenwriting, and I applied to like 100 production houses. I think maybe six got back to me and said, “no thanks” but one, which was an animation company, said, “well, if you’re interested in writing you can pitch ideas for upcoming shows.” That’s essentially the way it works; you get sent a Bible or an overview of the series and you pitch your ideas. If they like your idea they hire you to write a script. My first script was for Richard Scarry’s The Busy World of Richard Scarry, a favorite of yours, animated series. That was my first sale and that’s how I embarked on my career.

David Read: Wow, okay. How old were you when that was happening?

Joseph Mallozzi: It was fairly late. Before then I had an office job, I was actually a director of development for an animation studio. Was it like early 30s?

David Read: Okay. So you had gotten into the industry fairly late in scheme of things?

Joseph Mallozzi: Yeah.

David Read: Okay. I just remember, not to belabor the point, but I have this video of me at four years old where my parents hand me a Fisher Price tape recorder with a recording button on it. My parents say, “his dad’s boombox, we just couldn’t see him lugging that around anymore.” I got into recording and creating content pretty, pretty early. Did anyone in your family write or did you just sit down with a notepad one day and just start scribbling?

Joseph Mallozzi: I used to, I still do, love to read. It really started with comic books. I continued and still continue to read comic books but my mother got me interested in science fiction and the classics; Asimov and Arthur C. Clarke and Harlan Ellison. I remember creating my own super group, super team, and writing little stories for them. I was a big fan of Ray Bradbury and in grade four writing these types of short stories with the cool twist at the end.

David Read: Right, exactly. Like Foundation. I read that for the first time just a few years ago. I was like, “Man, that’s good.” These classics hold up for a reason. Did you see Stargate in the theaters?

Joseph Mallozzi: I did. I remember my writing partner Paul, calling to say, “we have to check out this movie” because we used to do something called “bad movie night.” We saw I think Barbed Wire and Boxing Helena and Battlefield Earth.

David Read: Oh, Battlefield Earth.

Joseph Mallozzi: Our local paper, The Viewer, rated it a bomb. We’re like, “oh, this is going to be terrible.”

David Read: Stargate?

Joseph Mallozzi: Yes.

David Read: While it’s still in the theater?

Joseph Mallozzi: Yeah. We went to see and I was actually disappointed because I was expecting a bomb, and it was not a bomb. It was actually quite good. That was my first exposure to Stargate.

David Read: What hooked you? What hooked you in watching that?

Joseph Mallozzi: Simply the fact that it’s sci-fi first and foremost, I just have always loved sci-fi. What I think draws audience to the series is exploration, the action, the adventure and also kind of that underlying sense of humor that’s sorely lacking from a lot of science fiction today.

David Read: That’s true. Yeah, absolutely. How old were you when you met Paul? When did you guys meet?

Joseph Mallozzi: Paul and I met in creative writing class in college.

David Read: So you were students together?

Joseph Mallozzi: Yes.

David Read: Okay. Just desk mates? What was the connection there?

Joseph Mallozzi: We met in a creative writing class. I think actually, we were part of the same D&D group as well.

David Read: You played Dungeons and Dragons together?

Joseph Mallozzi: He played a monk, Kaito the monk, and I was…

David Read: Fantastic.

Joseph Mallozzi: My goblin, Del Fosse, with the 18 charisma.

David Read: That’s perfect. Wyvern gaming is coming out with the the new Stargate world but that’s fantastic. All right. How long did you know each other before you guys were like, “we should try something together. Your sensibilities and mine, they connect like Legos.”

Joseph Mallozzi: I tried to think back, maybe like a couple of years. By that point, I think we co-wrote a feature, a sci fi feature and then I went off and got my start in animation. I think at the time he was thinking of heading off to do a PhD and I was like, “Well, why don’t you get into writing animation” Then he got into writing animation as well and then from there, at the beginning, we didn’t really work together. Then we ended up landing a job and on a live action teen sitcom called Student Bodies that ended up shooting in a high school. It was a great, great time and we were co-producers. From there we went to another show called Big Wolf on Campus to a show called Lost World. Quickly, we immediately landed on Stargate and we were there for 12 years.

David Read: Just a little bit of time. Did the opportunity to work on Stargate come up before you had seen the series or did you see the series and say, “Okay, let’s approach that.”

Joseph Mallozzi: I had seen the series. I’d seen an episode called Emancipation…

David Read: Katharyn Powers, okay.

Joseph Mallozzi: I was like “this series is not for me.” Our agent, who also represented Robert C. Cooper, co-creator of Atlantis and Universe, said, “hey, they’re looking for writers, would you guys be interested?” I said to Paul, “I don’t think I can write this show. I saw this episode and it’s not really…” But they had sent scripts and I ended up reading the scripts and they were very good and really a stark contrast.

David Read: Season 3?

Joseph Mallozzi: Yeah. A stark contrast to the episode I had watched so we ended up pitching, I think, five ideas. Two of those ideas they ended up buying, Scorched Earth and Window of Opportunity. Actually, Scorched Earth was really the one that got us the gig. We got on the phone with Brad and Robert, talked through our idea, they gave us some notes, we went out and wrote an outline. We delivered the outline, they sent us notes, from there we went to first draft and based on the strength of our first draft we were offered staff positions.

David Read: Scorched Earth. The Enkarans did it then?

Joseph Mallozzi: Yeah, they did. Thank you Enkarans.

David Read: Absolutely. I think it’s interesting, that particular episode, not only is it entertaining but it’s what sci-fi does at its best. It’s a moral conundrum; it’s a rock and a hard place situation for our team and the people that they’re having to deal with.

Joseph Mallozzi: Yeah, the one, I don’t want to say regret. I love the moral conundrum and the idea we originally pitched was not a happy ending.

David Read: Really?

Joseph Mallozzi: Yeah, I think Daniel convinces…

David Read: Lotan?

Joseph Mallozzi: Lotan to essentially shut down the terraforming process. The Enkarans stay on the world and the Gadmeer perish. That I think would have been a…

David Read: Ballsy.

Joseph Mallozzi: Yeah. I liked the episode. It was our first episode, I was happy with the way it turned out. I just thought the ending was a bit convenient in retrospect.

David Read: Really? So if you had a chance to go back and do that you would have made it a little bit more dark?

Joseph Mallozzi: I think I would have, yes.

David Read: Wow. I love that episode Joe, I don’t know how I feel about that. I suppose it’s like, “yeah, we researched the database and that planet was occupied because there are other Enkarans there. Oh, what did you say? Other Enkarans? Oh, we can put them there? You don’t expend fuel by traveling through space?”

Joseph Mallozzi: See, now you’re thinking as a writer and that’s an issue. When I used to go see movies with my ex she used to hate seeing movies with me because I used to pick apart any movie I would go see. In the same way it’s so hard to watch television and really enjoy a show now because you sit down as a writer and you think, “well, actually, that was convenient.” The three C’s are my pet peeves. They are coincidence, contrivances and conveniences.

David Read: In writing?

Joseph Mallozzi: Yes. Something called result writing. When you want to get out of a situation, “Oh coincidentally this happens or conveniently this happens.” It feels undramatic and unearned so I try to avoid that as much as possible.

David Read: I can certainly attest, as a fan, my appreciation of the awareness of that, so thank you. Do you recall at all the episodes that you had been sent in script form that had made you turn your head about Stargate and say, “you know what? I can work with this” I’d be interested to know?

Joseph Mallozzi: I’m trying to think.

David Read: So you’d only watched Emancipation on television? You never after went and got the scripts and sat down and watched Urgo or sat down and watched A Serpents Song?

Joseph Mallozzi: No. Well, actually, I think A Serpent’s Song was one of the scripts.

David Read: Oh, so it’s late season two?

David Read: I’m finding it, if I can here. Writer, so she did in season three Learning Curve, Foothold and New Ground.

Joseph Mallozzi: Yeah, so A Serpent’s Song was one of the scripts. Another one was, I loved it because it’s like a pure sci-fi story. It was by Heather E. Ash, was it the, your fingers flying over the…

Joseph Mallozzi: Learning Curve.

David Read: I love Learning Curve. That is an adorable story, that’s Stargate chicken soup at its purest.

Joseph Mallozzi: I’m always attracted to those standalone stories with the really, purely sci-fi angle. Whether it’s technology based or you’re kind of using a trope like AU, alternate universes, or time moves or time travel. Of any story, those are always my favorites.

David Read: Absolutely. The episode where the time dilation. Words fail me right now but the Stargate connects near a black hole and they’re trying to disconnect from that. I love that episode, it is the only episode that handled relativity. A Matter of Time. It’s just cool sci-fi. Absolutely. After years and years, how often would you have a story idea that would just get crushed because either you had done it, or one of the other writers had done it, or another sci-fi franchise had done it. When you’re constructing a show this had to have happened constantly.

Joseph Mallozzi: There was never a time when we would pitch an episode that had already been done on our show because we already knew our show, intimately. Invariably, there will be times when, Brad was always the one to point out “Star Trek already did it.”

David Read: He’s a Star Trek fan, so yeah. So that would that would happen fairly regularly?

Joseph Mallozzi: Yes. Well, I wouldn’t say fairly regularly. After the fourth season I remember Paul coming into my office and sitting down and having this kind of exhausted look in his eyes and him telling me, “I don’t know how we’re going to come up with new stories for season five. After everything we came up with for season four, I think we’re tapped out.” But I found that as we went along it actually became easier to come up with stories. Rather than generating those standalone episodes, if you look at a lot of the stuff we wrote in season four they were very much standalone episodes like Chain Reaction and Curse and Window of Opportunity. As time went on we began to draw on the mythology of the show and that mythology is what inspired a lot of the later stories. It became, I wouldn’t say serialized, but there was that kind of arc element to a lot of the stories.

David Read: At that point, I mean, you can’t plagiarize yourself, you’re building on your own mythology, You’re going to the trouble of creating content for fans and then you’re rewarding those fans by referencing back to that content in intelligent and unexpected ways, so, good on you. You were involved in, I’m going to kind of do some some more glossy questions here, we’ll get into more of the nitty gritty in future episodes. You were involved in 14, I believe, of the 17 seasons. In your estimation, which episodes, it’ll probably be two parters and season finales and everything else. Which episodes were the most time intensive, we’re the most expensive of all of them, perhaps in unexpected ways? I know Martin Gero always talks about the episode where Amanda Tapping, Jewel Staite and David Hewlett are trapped in the Genii cave and that just ballooned.

Joseph Mallozzi: As you said, the mid-season two parters and the finales, simply because of the visual effects. They are always big splashy episodes and visual effects cost you money. Other times I look at episodes like Heroes One and Two, we’ve got those huge firefights and those were always time consuming as well.

David Read: Wasn’t Heroes shot over months? Like, “we got a bit here, we got a bit here. Rick’s here this week. We’re gonna get that here.” I was under the impression that took forever to shoot?

Joseph Mallozzi: There were occasions when, we tried to avoid it, but occasionally because of scheduling it would happen.

David Read: Wow. Was there ever a story that got away? Through years and years you could never make it really work? Or maybe you made it work on Dark Matter?

Joseph Mallozzi: I always like time travel stories and I remember trying to pitch this one time travel story. But, as often happens in any show, you’ll pitch ideas and some of them will resonate and some of them won’t. It was very rare that an idea you pitched didn’t move forward. Even if the idea that you pitched, for instance Window of Opportunity, was a very different pitch than what it turned out to be. It was actually very dark and concerned the team visiting a planet that was facing extinction, this extinction level event. They were using this device to re-loop time so that it will give them more time to come up with a solution. Very dark.

David Read: So, in practice what Daniel was talking about in his speech is what the characters were witnessing in the original draft?

Joseph Mallozzi: Yes. Well, what are you referring to?

David Read: He says the Ancients who were using this device never got it to work and in the end, they just let it come.

Joseph Mallozzi: Yes. Yeah. So that was the seed of that bit of dialogue.

David Read: Season four is in many respects my favorite season and going back, if you, now, as the matured writer that you are had your way with a lot of these episodes, it would have turned out to be a very different show. Also you know, 25 years of time have past in terms of audience sensibilities and what’s expected from television too.

Joseph Mallozzi: To be honest with you, we mentioned Scorched Earth and for me the ending of Scorched Earth is what stands out. But other episodes, I’m very happy with the way Window of Opportunity turned out, The Curse, Point of No Return, Chain Reaction. I’m trying to remember, did we do the finale? What was the season four finale?

David Read: The season four finale was Exodus.

Joseph Mallozzi: Exodus.

David Read: Terrific episode there. Okay, so did you find time travel easier to do on Dark Matter overall?

Joseph Mallozzi: I did not, I did not. We did an episode, a time loop episode. I’ve always joked that my career starts with a time loop episode, Window of Opportunity, and potentially ends with a time loop episode, All the time in the World. I knew I wanted to do a time loop episode. The issue with any episode involving time travel is that it has to make sense within the framework of the story or theoretically,

David Read: The audience has to buy it, whatever rules you lay down, you have to stick to. It’s like Inception.

Joseph Mallozzi: That’s it. That’s it. We were trying to make it work in the room and we weren’t able to make it work and we just let it go. I ended up screening, I think two dozen episodes, of time loop episodes that other shows had done and then a half dozen movies. In fact I did a blog post about it.

David Read: Run Lola Run.

Joseph Mallozzi: I did my time loop masterclass, TED talk, on my blog where I broke down “this is what makes a good time loop episode.” You synthesize the structure and then you tried to, not undermine it, but sort of subvert expectations. right. The audience who come in will be familiar with the formula but will be surprised what you do with it. My general approach to Dark Matter was always introducing those kinds of sci-fi chestnuts and then subverting audience expectations.

David Read: Take a sledge hammer to them and just, yeah. Oh gosh. So, Chris mentioned this in Dialing Home. I’ll take his word for it but I’m curious as to your perspective. There were certain cast members who hated doing time travel stories so therefore a lot of them ended up going away. Is there any truth to that?

Joseph Mallozzi: To the best of my knowledge, no. When we discuss stories we discuss them in the room. By the room, I mean the writers room. Really, the only ones who could say no we’re Brad and Robert. It could have been a situation perhaps where Brad thought “Rick is not going to love this…”

David Read: Because Rick was a producer, he got scripts early.

Joseph Mallozzi: Yeah. There was never a time where we wrote a script and you threw a script out. No scripts were ever thrown out. Once you got the go ahead to write a script and you were moving on to outline, that idea was going to see the light on the screen.

David Read: Okay. All right, interesting. I feel like I’m just jumping all over the place with you here. It’s just a very, very general approach. Was there ever serious consideration given to disclosing the Stargate program to the Earth?

Joseph Mallozzi: Yes. In fact that was the idea for Stargate Revolutions which was the third SG-1 movie that was planned. A first draft was written but it went away of Stargate Extinction which was the Atlantis movie script as well. We never really got a chance to, we never did get a chance to produce it.

Joseph Mallozzi: It’s not that I don’t want to, it’s just that…

David Read: Can you give us any..? Certainly, anything that can come out will not come out of this per se. Can you give us any idea of what that would have looked like?

David Read: Would William Devane have hopefully been involved?

Joseph Mallozzi: I don’t recall.

David Read: Okay.

Joseph Mallozzi: I recall, certainly all of SG-1 would have been involved.

David Read: It’s an SG-1 movie.

Joseph Mallozzi: Yeah. But in terms of the details, I sadly don’t recall.

David Read: Okay, I’ll give you that.

Joseph Mallozzi: I do remember there was a great Sam/Jack dinner scene. That’s one of the few details I remember.

David Read: Really? Were they an item at this point.

Joseph Mallozzi: I believe they might have been.

David Read: She’s not under his command anymore.

Joseph Mallozzi: Right. Exactly.

David Read: Wow. Throwing that nugget out there. So Stargate Revolutions, the intent would have been to have them probably an item?

Joseph Mallozzi: Or heavily hint at the fact they’re an item.

David Read: I like that. You don’t have to do a wedding scene per se, like you guys did.

Joseph Mallozzi: We did do one.

David Read: Exactly. Oh my gosh. The Road Not Taken, I rewatched this episode recently. It’s an alternate reality where the Stargate program was revealed to the world and it caused chaos and destruction. People were fighting each other for food, for gasoline. In addition to that, there was the threat of impending alien attack that came with it. Were you telegraphing to us that this is the way that you think it would really happen?

Joseph Mallozzi: I don’t know what you mean by telegraphing but certainly, I believe that that’s the way it would probably happen.

David Read: So it wouldn’t be peaceful, Kumbaya, “oh my gosh, there’s alien life.” It was one of your last episodes concerning that. I was interested to see if this was your way of saying, “this is how I would suspect that it would actually go down” and you just said yes.

Joseph Mallozzi: I think if the world learned that aliens were on their way, for the most part, people would not be cool.

David Read: Okay. Absolutely.

Joseph Mallozzi: You and I would be cool, of course.

David Read: We grew up expecting this to happen. I’m still expecting.

Joseph Mallozzi: It’s about time, right?

David Read: I have aliens for November this year. What do you have for November 2020? Take out the impending alien attack. Do you think that revealing the Stargate to the world would cause mass chaos? The Stargate itself?

Joseph Mallozzi: No. I don’t think the general populace would descend into chaos. I believe world governments, angling to get their hands on the gate, would potentially create a very bad situation.

David Read: They will start jockeying into position and using their political leverage against nations and everything else, hence the Moonbase. Get it out of there. What guest star could you never stop pinching yourself that you were able to get for one of your scripts?

Joseph Mallozzi: To be honest, I would have to say Bob Picardo. Just because I love Bob on on Voyager.

David Read: Yes. “Please state the nature of the medical emergency.”

Joseph Mallozzi: Yeah. I suggested him a couple of times and we got him on the show. He’s such a good actor and he’s such a terrific individual; just a real pro and just a genuinely good guy. I just loved Woolsey’s character arc. He was introduced as kind of this pencil pusher pain in the ass and he evolved. He was still kind of the pencil pusher at the end but you knew kind of what made him tick. You saw the vulnerabilities and the fact that he had a lot of heart. He was one of my favorite characters, definitely, and one of my favorite guest stars.

David Read: I loved Woolsey, don’t get me wrong, but I really would have loved to have seen had he done an alien of some sort.

Joseph Mallozzi: Done what?

David Read: An alien.

Joseph Mallozzi: Oh, yeah.

David Read: Like you said, he has such a range to him. He could have been anything.

Joseph Mallozzi: If he would have been an alien, he wouldn’t have been on the show as much as he did.

David Read: That’s true.

Joseph Mallozzi: The length of his arc. Just the character he played, I thought he just played him so well. He was so great as Woolsey.

David Read: I don’t know, you guys were able to do quite a bit with pretty much anything that you had. I really think that if he had hit it out of the park with whatever character he played, you guys would have moved mountains to make it work for the show. I really do think so. I mean, look at how many times we got to see Peter Williams. In the scheme of things, not not very much when you look back on it, it’s just a handful of episodes. But the impact that that actor had as Apophis was felt, rippling through the show so much, that it felt like he was there more often than he was.

Joseph Mallozzi: Yeah, Peter was great. He’s great. He was great as Apophis. He’s great at whatever he does.

David Read: Bob said that for Heroes, that one space that he was in, interrogating all the cast and crew, he said that he did that in one day. What a professional, having all of that ready to go. It had to have been intense. What was it like doing Heroes? Teryl had said Rob had called her, “last season, we’re not going to do another season, we want to have a death.” What was that experience? We’ve touched on Heroes once already and we will again. It’s such a cornerstone to the franchise, I think I want to bring it up again.

Joseph Mallozzi: This is really more of a question for Rob because he wrote and produced the episode. It was a tough, tough episode. Not just from an emotional level, but just in terms of kind of brass tacks productions. It was tough and Rob kind of bore the brunt of the challenge, if you will, of producing that particular episode, then bore the brunt of the fan feedback, If you will.

David Read: To be diplomatic.

Joseph Mallozzi: Yes.

David Read: Absolutely. Did you think it was bold, to knock off Frasier?

Joseph Mallozzi: I did. Like Rob, I thought season seven would be its last. Every year, from season five on, I assumed that season will be its last until season ten when I actually thought “ah, maybe we could come back” and then that’s the season it ended.

David Read: Brad said, jump over to Atlantis for a…You know what, before I do that. You revealed to us in the Dialing Home discussion a couple years ago that iTunes was interested in picking up SG-1 for an 11th and final season.

Joseph Mallozzi: Yeah.

David Read: What can you tell us about that?

Joseph Mallozzi: Just that, they actually reached out. At the time, I don’t even know what iTunes was doing. They were looking to, I guess, get into television or programming. This would have been would have been a huge coup for them, saving SG-1, something with a built-in audience.

David Read: So you guys had a fan over at Apple?

Joseph Mallozzi: Yes.

David Read: Okay.

Joseph Mallozzi: I don’t know if they went really far down the line but it’s something that was discussed and then ultimately we were unable to pursue because of the contracts that were in place. Legally, we were not permitted to pursue.

David Read: Right, something about a clause in the agreement with Syfy Channel. Arc of Truth was the condensed version of what season 11 would have become I’m guessing?

Joseph Mallozzi: I don’t think so, unless has Rob has said that. We hadn’t spun any stories for season 11. To be honest with you, the way it usually works is once we finish shooting one season then we gather the writers room and spin for a couple of months, come up with stories and then go off and write. We found out about the SG-1 cancellation well before we finished spinning for season 10 which is why SG-1, out of the three Stargate shows, SG-1 is the only one with a series finale. It was actually written as a series finale even though I keep saying that Atlantis and SGU, Stargate Universe, work as season finales. SG-1 was the only one where the script was written…

David Read: Was intended to be.

Joseph Mallozzi: Yes.

David Read: Isn’t that interesting? And the only one that was pretty much guaranteed for movies at that point, right, as well?

Joseph Mallozzi: Yeah, I guess so.

David Read: Christopher talked about when they were filming Unending they knew the chances were pretty darn good that they were coming back

Joseph Mallozzi: Yeah.

David Read: Interesting. Man, what a show. What a run, 10 years. I know when Showtime launched it, they had two years out of the gate before Children of the Gods aired, then they had four and then it was extended to five. Just for those two years that you were a part of that, that had to have been a) wonderful that you know you’re getting a paycheck but b) you have time to delve into the characters a little bit more specifically than then you would under perhaps other circumstances. I know that there’s a lot of network shows that “okay, we’ve been given four more,” “oh,we’ve been given three more.”

Joseph Mallozzi: Yeah.

David Read: Brad mentioned to me in an interview a couple of years ago that the Wraith were not going to be defeated in Stargate Extinction, but rather that there was going to be an evolution of them. He said it would have evolved the Wraith. Can you tease a little bit about what he meant by that?

Joseph Mallozzi: Off the top of my head I’m not sure. It certainly would have evolved the relationship between between Sheppard and Todd.

David Read: Sheppard and Todd?

Joseph Mallozzi: Yeah.

David Read: Interesting. Like, a baby?

Joseph Mallozzi: No. Who knows though.

David Read: Come on, you gotta give me a little nugget more. Just a little one beyond that. Come on, Joe.

Joseph Mallozzi: Honestly, I’m not trying to be evasive. I just gotta go back and re-read the script.

David Read: I have it somewhere.

Joseph Mallozzi: You reread it and get back to me.

David Read: I’ve never actually read it.

Joseph Mallozzi: The story sees Atlantis returning to Pegasus.

David Read: I remember reading the first scene and it’s Lorne and someone, I think it’s Zelenka, on the moon and they’re staring at Atlantis.

Joseph Mallozzi: And we do that reveal of Atlantis.

David Read: I was like “man, please!” That would have been so cool. I still have hope, especially if we are going to be moving forward with a fourth series, that there is going to be some kind of resolution there. There has to be.

Joseph Mallozzi: Think positive, yes.

David Read: Absolutely. I would appreciate a little bit more than passing dialogue, but you know, we’re gonna get what we can. It’s like with SGU, we saw Picardo and we saw Hewlett, those characters persist, they weren’t wiped out by the scourge.

Joseph Mallozzi: The scourge of the reboot.

David Read: Well, that too. I was meaning the Wraith, but yes, very true. I loved what was done with SGU. I was one of its staunchest critics in the beginning, the sex in the closet scene and everything else. I was like, “oh really, we’re going there?” It grew to be my favorite of the three and I make no bones about that. Especially the last 10, they were extraordinary hours of television. Episodes like Time, Epilogue with Carl Binder, there were some extraordinary beats in there. One of the things that I loved about that show was the route that you guys took with time travel. You allowed the copy of the characters to exist 2000 years in the past and then deal with their descendants. You were in you were in the room when you guys were spinning that stuff, tell us about that.

Joseph Mallozzi: It’s funny because in retrospect you look back and you think Epilogue would have really been the perfect episode to end the series on. At the time we really thought we were coming back for a third and final season.

David Read: Third and final, not five?

Joseph Mallozzi: Yes. No. I think late in the going we were told that the show was not going to come back but there were discussions about coming back for a third and final season. We were like, “okay, fine, we’ll take it” and that went away.

David Read: Boy did it.

Joseph Mallozzi: Like I said, the finale was really not intended to be a finale but we were in the editing room and Brad and Paul had the idea of book ending with the same montage that we started in Air with the ship opening up and going through the levels and everything.

David Read: Instead of her going to sleep.

Joseph Mallozzi: Yeah, essentially we just roll it backwards. Then just that final shot of Destiny jumping into FTL and leaving us behind, I find so powerful.

David Read: I’m getting chills just thinking about it, man.

Joseph Mallozzi: In terms of Epilogue, it was just a perfect Carl Binder script.

David Read: Oh yeah.

Joseph Mallozzi: Carl is one of my favorite writers and he was always great at really character driven stories. Even how he can convey emotion, such powerful emotions, without any dialogue. You know that scene where TJ is getting sicker and sicker? She’s at the table and she’s eating with the family, she’s just getting sicker and then basically she’s gone, she’s no longer there.

David Read: It pulls your heart out.

Joseph Mallozzi: It’s one of the best episodes I think the franchise produced.

David Read: The cinematography of that episode is absolutely extraordinary. The shot of Alaina on the shore washing clothes and you can see she’s having trouble with grasping. It pulls back and you’ve got that master of the fog. I was like, “Man, how extraordinary.” The Destiny set, it was like being on the Nautilus, it was Jules Verne, it was just beautiful. I wanted to ask you one last thing before I start talking about the fans and getting them involved. You pulled our hearts out by nuking the Asgard at the end of season 10. It really solidified the fact that the loss of SG-1 was definitely a death of the series. Then we introduce them, because you had the puppet, in Atlantis and they were called the “evil Asgard,” they didn’t really get a name. I was one of the earliest people who had mentioned that they were, we’ll call them the Vanier, if we’re looking at that mythology. Was there ever a thought, a consideration, that you could address further down the road in a show of resurrecting the Asgard race through the Vanier, through the evil Asgard?

Joseph Mallozzi: Yes. In fact that was a very strong possibility. As I used to say whenever we used to kill off characters on Stargate, “no one ever really dies in sci-fi.”

David Read: And their consciousnesses are inside the computers on the Odyssey.

Joseph Mallozzi: Exactly. There always was a possibility.

David Read: So potentially could be one day again. I was watching that episode and was like, “Well, if we could somehow copy them, if we could deal with them as a species and everything that they’re doing that’s evil, and somehow use them and their current physical forms as a template and hopefully reverse their flaw then Thor and Heimdall and Freya would have a physical place to go.

Joseph Mallozzi: So many great opportunities that sadly we didn’t get to follow through on because we didn’t get that sixth season?

David Read: Absolutely. One of the reasons that you’re my first of the production side of things, in terms of guests for this show, is your heavy involvement with fandom to this day. You are one of the ones that, not to say that the others don’t, but you’re more active. You really appreciate and value the fan base and it’s continued importance to the growth of the franchise. Are there any particular interactions with fans that stand out over the years?

Joseph Mallozzi: In general, meeting the fans. I was always very touched by the number of letters and postcards we would receive from the troops serving overseas who were all big fans of the show. Particularly SG-1 because you have that Air Force connection, so that really stands out. But just in general, meeting the fans. I remember joining Gateworld before I even landed on the show because I was looking to research the show. That’s how I ended up kind of doing it the deep dive, obviously watching the episodes.

David Read: I did not know that, okay.

Joseph Mallozzi: But, yeah, interacting with the fans and finding out basically what really drew them to the show.

David Read: I guess it makes sense that that would be your research, just like anything else. I’m glad we didn’t scare you off. All right, that’s my line of questioning for this particular initial episode and we do have fan questions here.

David Read: Let’s see what we’ve got. I really want to extend my thanks to my moderating team, Sommer, Keith, Tracy. You guys are rock stars and it’s so good to have you out there. We did our first show last Saturday and there were like 50 people live. I would have been happy with five and three of those would have been my parents computers. These people came to me and they said, “how can I help out?”

Joseph Mallozzi: Fantastic.

Joseph Mallozzi: Thank you guys.

David Read: Yes, absolutely. Keith, Tracy, Ian, I appreciate you very much. I also have Linda, she’s helping me on the side with trivia questions, organizing trivia, and Jen as well. Before we get to that, I want to do a quick round of trivia with you, so before we get to the fan questions. Do you have your trivia questions pulled up?

Joseph Mallozzi: I do not.

David Read: Can you grab them?

Joseph Mallozzi: I will grab them. Hang on.

David Read: While you do that I will go ahead and do a quick call to action here. If you like what you’ve seen on this episode, I would appreciate if you click that like button. It really makes a difference with YouTube’s algorithm and will definitely help the show grow its audience. Please also consider sharing this video with a Stargate friend and if you want to get notified about future episodes, click the Subscribe icon. If you plan to watch live, I recommend giving the bell icon a click so that you’ll be the first to know of any schedule changes, which as we’ve seen, have already happened, so bear in mind. Clips from this live stream will be released over the course of the next several days on both the Dial the Gate and Gateworld.net YouTube channels. The clips are designed for people who don’t have a chance to sit through the full live show or want to remember the sweet moments of the episodes. All right, I’ve got mine for you. Did you manage to find them?

Joseph Mallozzi: I did.

David Read: All right. Do you want to ask me first or do you want me to ask you? Or do you want to go back and forth?

Joseph Mallozzi: Wait, are these questions for me or do I have to ask you questions?

David Read: Those three questions are for me. I have not seen them.

Joseph Mallozzi: Oh, okay.

David Read: I have questions for you.

Joseph Mallozzi: Okay, we’ll start with the easy then.

David Read: Okay. What species attempted to wipe out the Enkaran encampment in Scorched Earth?

Joseph Mallozzi: That was the Gadmeer.

Joseph Mallozzi: I remember because Rob called me into his office and was like “I need to come up with…” We didn’t name the race in the script, he was “I need to come up with an alien race and they won’t let me name anything anymore after the Furling debacle.” I came up with a bunch of names, Genii, Gadmeer, and a bunch of other ones. He chose Gadmeer and then we ended up using the Genii for Atlantis.

David Read: Yes.

David Read: Genii was that early on? Wow. Okay. That was also a TNG species.

David Read: Yeah, that was the…

Joseph Mallozzi: Oh, I did not know.

Joseph Mallozzi: I did not watch it.

David Read: Oh, really? Okay. That was the species that were all the same sex.

Joseph Mallozzi: Oh, interesting.

David Read: Yeah. But you know what? There are only so many sounds in language. At a certain point, just what can you do? Very good. You have an easy one for me?

Joseph Mallozzi: I do.

David Read: So one point to you.

Joseph Mallozzi: Who was the first character to sit in the Ancient control chair on both SG-1 and Atlantis? Actually, there are two characters.

David Read: Okay, so the Ancient control chair in Lost City, that would have been O’Neill?

Joseph Mallozzi: Correct.

David Read: And the first one seen on screen in Atlantis, I’m pretty sure it’s Beckett.

Joseph Mallozzi: According to this, the answer is John Sheppard.

David Read: Really?

Joseph Mallozzi: But I think you’re correct.

David Read: Beckett’s already sitting in it. It has to be Beckett because Sheppard’s still in the helicopter.

Joseph Mallozzi: See, you know better than the experts I would say.

David Read: I’m going to have to get new experts.

Joseph Mallozzi: I’m going to give you the point. I’m gonna give you full points for that.

David Read: Yeah, I think that that’s the case.

Joseph Mallozzi: It activates.

David Read: Right, he has to trigger the drone.

Joseph Mallozzi: Wait a minute. Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

David Read: Like the scene with Ayiana and millions of years ago.

Joseph Mallozzi: I’m trying to think back, when does…?

David Read: Sheppard’s still in the helicopter, he’s still flying Jack there. I’m gonna have to check my folks with the trivia questions.

Joseph Mallozzi: Someone’s getting fired.

David Read: No, someone’s not getting fired, no. So it is Beckett, okay. Back to that, getting Ona Grauer to come back in for that one scene and her husband actually, to play opposite of her. How wonderful was that to have that little tie, no dialogue, nothing, to that episode, Frozen, from season six?

Joseph Mallozzi: Yeah.

David Read: Maybe you can answer this for me because every time I watch the episode, he looks like he’s scouring at her before he walks away. Is he pissed at her about something? Was she a bad girl? Is that the intent there before he leaves her alone on Atlantis or is he just walking away from her? What was your guys’s intent?

Joseph Mallozzi: To be honest with you I don’t recall.

David Read: I’m pulling weights. Because it looks like something has gone terribly wrong.

Joseph Mallozzi: Yes, definitely there’s a suggestion that there’s been a falling out.

David Read: Okay, there we go. Absolutely. A medium question for you, sir Joe. What production issue with Jason Momoa over season break had to be addressed in Reunion? What had to be done on screen?

Joseph Mallozzi: Oh, well, there’s a reference to his tattoo that he got in the offseason. Where I thought you were going was the dreads where he ended up losing the dreads.

David Read: I think a later season.

Joseph Mallozzi: In between season four and season five. Basically he said, “I want to cut my dreads.”

David Read: He said it was hurting his head?

Joseph Mallozzi: Yeah, exactly. I was like, “well, that’s fine” and I checked with the network and they were like, “oh no, we can’t lose his dreads.” I was really annoyed because Broken Ties, yeah, it would have been Broken Ties. Yeah. I wanted to write a scene where he goes dark side and shaves his head, cuts his dreads and we could have done it all on screen. But they were like “no, the character is known for his dreads” so we ended up having to wake him.

David Read: So Jason reached out to you guys and said, “is it okay for me to do it?” He didn’t just do it?

Joseph Mallozzi: No. He basically said, “they’re kind of making my life miserable.” We’re not going to tell him ” no, you have to live a miserable life.”

David Read: In pain. Well, medical complications could eventually arise so that’s a big deal. What’s your second question for me?

Joseph Mallozzi: Okay. Who was the last captain of the Prometheus?

David Read: I think it’s Everett. Is it Everett?

Joseph Mallozzi: Is it your final answer?

David Read: No. It’s not Ronson. Ronson was the first. Pendergast. Pendergast went down with the ship.

Joseph Mallozzi: Do you remember his rank?

David Read: I think he’s a Colonel.

Joseph Mallozzi: Correct. Lionel Pendergast. See that one I knew. Very good.

David Read: That’s a great shot of him. Just closing his eyes, you see him swallow hard and then he blows up. What a sequence, holy cow. Then Mitchell and Teal’c’s reaction after, “oh hell.” That season you guys blew up two ships. You blew up Prometheus and you blew up the Russian ship. What was that? What was that called? The Korolev. We lost Colonel Chekov in that to for all intents purposes. He went out with a bang. Alright, hard question, SGU.

Joseph Mallozzi: Okay, yeah.

David Read: How long was Colonel Telford with the Ursini?

Joseph Mallozzi: It’s pretty embarrassing because…

David Read: You wrote it.

Joseph Mallozzi: In terms of episodes or in terms of time?

David Read: He mentions how long he’s been with them.

Joseph Mallozzi: I’m going to say, and this is a total guess. Even though it was my episode, I don’t recall. I’m going to say three months.

David Read: One month.

Joseph Mallozzi: Oh one month. It felt like three months for him though.

David Read: I wonder what he ate.

Joseph Mallozzi: That’s what I’m saying. Basically the food was not good, it was really cramped.

David Read: That’s a species I would have loved to have seen again. They sacrifice themselves and just drive the seed ship right into the berserker drones. The species, plural, that you guys were developing for SGU were so cool. I loved who would have eventually been named the Nakai, the fish people who were following. Just yes or no, do you know what their ultimate goal was in Destiny or was that not determined yet?

Joseph Mallozzi: No, they basically wanted the ship.

David Read: Okay. So there was no like connection with like they were like former Ancients or something like that?

Joseph Mallozzi: No.

David Read: Okay, interesting. Then I think the all time coolest one would have been the Star System Builders. The most advanced whatever they were in all of Stargate lore. Was your guys’s intent to create something to outdo the Ancients?

Joseph Mallozzi: People ask me what was the end game for Stargate Universe and Brad told me the end game back in season two. He’s like, “don’t tell anybody because I want the opportunity to tell that story.”

David Read: So that may have been a part of that?

Joseph Mallozzi: It may have been a part of it.

Joseph Mallozzi: In the vault.

David Read: Absolutely it is. I’m hoping one day, if you know, God forbid, that this doesn’t come to pass with the next series, I’m hoping that Brad will take me into his confidence and tell me one day.

David Read: I know that you know it. I know that David blue knows it and he’s not telling even his classmates.

Joseph Mallozzi: Think positive. A fourth season is coming.

David Read: Absolutely.

Joseph Mallozzi: Okay. Your hard question. How many SG-1 episodes were written by Christopher Judge and can you name them?

David Read: The Changeling.

Joseph Mallozzi: Correct.

David Read: He had “story by” credit on The Warrior.

Joseph Mallozzi: Correct. That was actually, when I got the answers here I was like, “well, that’s not right. He didn’t write that episode.” Correct.

David Read: We’re gonna sort these out together. So he had “story by” credit on The Warrior. He wrote The Changeling, he wrote the Amazonian Jaffa episode which was, both of them. I can’t think of the first one’s name but Sacrifices.

Joseph Mallozzi: Correct.

David Read: The season seven episode, I can’t remember its name off the top of my head. All the episodes for years were in my head and now they are gone.

Joseph Mallozzi: You’re getting up there.

David Read: Exactly.

Joseph Mallozzi: The answer is Birthright.

David Read: Birthright.

Joseph Mallozzi: I remember, I think this was the episode with the horses in the Gate Room.

David Read: Sacrifices because they’re there for the marriage.

Joseph Mallozzi: Okay. So sacrifices was the one with the horses in the Gate Room. I remember it because I remember on the day we were like, “we’re never having horses in the Gate Room again. This is a disaster.”

David Read: The horse flatulence and all kinds of…

Joseph Mallozzi: And everything that comes with it. You know?

David Read: Oh man, that’s funny. Oh my gosh. Well, very good. I think we’re two and two?

Joseph Mallozzi: No, I think you…

David Read: Did I?

Joseph Mallozzi: You missed out Birthright.

David Read: I kind of won it.

Joseph Mallozzi: I said three months.

David Read: Well, I appreciate you playing. All right, let’s look here to the viewer Q&A. Thanks everyone for submitting. Sommer, Keith, Tracy, I love you guys. Sommer would like to know, “will you reveal the Furlings in a new SGU show and will they be the new main bad guy? Yes or no?” That even rhymes.

Joseph Mallozzi: That is a question for Brad. I think personally for the Furlings, the less you know about them the better. I kind of like the fact that they are kind of mysterious and you imagine them, it’s like I say, the Carebears of outerspace; adorable ragamuffins.

David Read: Giant koalas.

Joseph Mallozzi: Yeah.

David Read: I think that if we were actually to see the Furlings, I don’t think that they would have a single hair on their bodies.

Joseph Mallozzi: I always pictured that they would be these gaunt, kind of scaly creatures.

David Read: I wrote a story a long time ago but I’m not gonna bore you with it, or an outline. Ian – had the Emmy for Best Production Design existed when SGU was on do you think it would have been nominated or potentially won? Good question.

Joseph Mallozzi: Well, I think it certainly would, or should have, been nominated and impossibly won. The fact is sci-fi really receives little…

David Read: Don’t get me started.

Joseph Mallozzi: Respect when it come to those awards and the more mainstream awards.

David Read: It’s nice to think about though. TNG, it’s last season, it was nominated for Best Dramatic Series for season seven so these things do happen every now and then. Scotty0709 – I know that the primary focus will obviously be Stargate but I’d love to know if there’s any hope for a continuation of Dark Matter at some point in the future? I think asked and answered a little bit but Joe, you can you can come back around on that.

Joseph Mallozzi: No, I haven’t given up hope. Right now I’m actually working on other stuff. We tried very hard. There was a point, I think I mentioned, where MGM actually offered to step in and potentially help save Dark Matter. It would have opened up to a whole host crossover possibilities but the clock ran out on us. I’m not actively pursuing anything now and yet, in a way, I kind of am by by working on these other projects that hopefully get off the ground. Hopefully they will create a little more movement in terms of my career. They’ll give me the opportunity to sort of reach out to people and try to get me a mini series, which is what I would ideally love to do, and just kind of finish the story that I’d set out.

David Read: Absolutely. That’s the only way to go as far as I’m concerned. I’m sure it wasn’t your intent going, you were wanting to create something different, but at what point did it come across your mind that Dark Matter was enough out of the way of the type of content that it was as compared to Stargate that a crossover could be still viable?

Joseph Mallozzi: When MGM presented the possibility I might have thought that we could do a crossover. More SG-1 and Atlantis, because tonally I think Dark Matter really, in terms of humor, in terms of kind of the color of the character, in terms kind of the action adventure, propulsion of the narrative, they’re very much like.

David Read: Yeah, I would agree. Let’s see here, Raj Luthra – will we see any of the main cast from Dark Matter in a Stargate series? Boy, that was the case with Jodelle Ferland.

Joseph Mallozzi: Yeah.

David Read: She started off as Adria.

Joseph Mallozzi: It went the other way. I remember working with Jodelle when she was 13 as Princess Harmony, thinking “she is fantastic.” Actually, when I wrote the character of Five in Dark Matter, she was originally intended to be around 13 or 14. I did think of Jodelle but of course Jodelle had grown up a bit since then but she was fantastic in the role. Then we had, obviously, David Hewlett on the show and Torri. In fact, I wrote the role for Torri because I thought she would be great and she was fantastic.

David Read: It was so fantastic to have her back involved. Raj Luthra – will SG-1, SGA and SGU return? I think at this point it’s safe to say, you would probably agree with me Joe, the fourth series is the most ideal path forward at this point.

David Read: Were a fourth series success, it doesn’t change the fact that the sets are gone. CG animation has come a considerable distance since these show’s closed. You’ve got the actors, they’re still thankfully all with us. Anything’s a possibility.

Joseph Mallozzi: Yes, absolutely. A fourth series, as I keep saying, it would be an all new team. A show that would be a great jumping on point, or an easy jumping on point, for new viewers. But it would certainly allow Brad to wrap up all those other storylines; be it Universe, SG-1 or Atlantis.

Joseph Mallozzi: Yeah, absolutely.

David Read: Scotty0709 – Joe, this is a yes or no. Does Joe know what caused the pattern in the cosmic microwave background radiation in SGU?

Joseph Mallozzi: Yes.

David Read: Is it cool?

Joseph Mallozzi: It’s pretty cool. Yeah.

David Read: Okay. Claire Cowan – What’s the weirdest thing you’ve ever eaten? Now Joe’s eaten some pretty weird things. He’s a foodie.

Joseph Mallozzi: Yeah. I remember being in Japan, of course. I didn’t even set out to eat anything weird, I just ordered a soup at the hotel. It came with this seafood and there were these little dumplings. I don’t think they were dumplings but they were basically filled with like ricotta cheese or something. It was basically very mild and I was like, “what is this?”

David Read: So you’d already started eating it?

Joseph Mallozzi: Yeah, I’d eaten it already, it was actually good. I was like, “What is this?” and the waitress was like “milt, milt.” I was like, “what is that in English?” She was like “milt, milt.” I had to actually go to Wikipedia to look it up, it’s cod sperm. So that is probably the weirdest thing.

David Read: Okay then, fish sperm. Hey, whatever man, whatever floats your boat. But it was good right?

Joseph Mallozzi: You’d never know it. You’d never think “oh, why don’t they ever serve that?”

David Read: Yeah. “What can we serve to a foreigner in a hotel?”

Joseph Mallozzi: The Chef’s are all looking out the window, “he’s eating it, oh my God, he’s eating it.”

David Read: “He likes it.” Scotty0709 – If you could put the main cast of Dark Matter into a Stargate series, what sort of roles will be perfect for them? Five would be a tech head.

Joseph Mallozzi: Yeah. The roles they play in Dark Matter would actually be pretty close. Obviously Anthony Lemke would be a merc or maybe kind of a loose cannon soldier. Melissa would definitely be another Sam Carter with a lot more swagger.

Joseph Mallozzi: Alex Mallari Jr. would be like a by the book…They would all be great, I think, frankly soldiers.

David Read: Gotta change it up a little.

David Read: Let’s see here. DNo IT, sorry, I’m butchering, probably butchering that one – the most fun episode that you created? You look back at it and are like, “you know, that was a good time.”

Joseph Mallozzi: I think back to my experience on set, I had a great time on Harmony. It wasn’t my episode but we were in the woods, I was in the woods with director Will Waring who was always a blast to work with.

David Read: He’s cool.

Joseph Mallozzi: I had a really good time on that episode. In terms of my episode, I’m very fond of Ripple Effect. that remains actually one of my favorite, just the various versions of SG-1. I look back and I think I put them up on the blog – the script went long so there were so many scenes I had to excise. A lot of those scenes, there were so many in jokes and references to past episodes and I’m kind of sorry that they never saw the light of day.

David Read: You had Teryl back, you had JR [Bourne] back, those are big pieces of Stargate canon. You handed us a silver platter of wonderful content in that show for sure. Claire Cowan – Amanda kept all of her scripts, what did you do with yours?

Joseph Mallozzi: I think I might still have a couple of scripts but sadly I don’t… I have the digital versions, most of the scripts.

David Read: Because you started there, the actors got them later and would probably put in notes.

Joseph Mallozzi: Yeah.

David Read: Heather Kowilich – tell us about the project you were working on that is now a no go. I want to know what was on your mind. Do you know what she’s talking about here?

Joseph Mallozzi: Um, I will say this basically, I’ve been working on an adaptation of a comic book and it’s been temporarily shelved but I have hopes that it will continue. To be honest, in this industry you’re juggling so many projects that more often than not they end up in your project graveyard, which is kind of sad. What I will do is I will tell you, if a project is dead, I will definitely tell you. There’s just so many that come to mind. I pitched a Starcraft series. I sat down and I watched, I think, like 16 hours of gameplay. I basically got the story down and made the pitch and it didn’t go anywhere and I was incredibly bummed.

David Read: Absolutely, that would have been awesome.

Joseph Mallozzi: Yeah. Then there was another show, it was like a horror series. In the industry they do something, it’s almost like a bake sale. They have different writers pitch their take and essentially they pick the one they like. I pitched a take that I thought was great but the buyer did not think so and they went with someone else. It crashed and burned, it was cancelled after one season and it kind of breaks my heart because I thought I would have done something really great with it. It’s all part of the business sadly. For every Stargate SG-1 I’m sure there are dozens and dozens of missed opportunities.

David Read: You do the best you can with what you got. Some days you win, some days you lose; it’s a competitive industry.

Joseph Mallozzi: It is.

David Read: FreeSpirit999 – what advice would you give to people who are wanting to get in on helping to make a new show who don’t live in Vancouver?

Joseph Mallozzi: Um, very tough and really depends on what you do. If you’re an actor you get yourself in front of a casting director so that when the time come and they’re looking for certain roles, they’ll think of you. That’s kind of tough. If you’re a graphic designer, if you work in visual effects, there’s more of a possibility. It really depends. On Dark Matter we used one visual effects house for the first season then on the subsequent two seasons we ended up using a bunch of different visual effects houses.

David Read: You farmed it out.

Joseph Mallozzi: Whereas on Stargate we ended up creating our own in house department. It’s kind of tough. I think depending on what it is you do, just keep your eye out, if and when a show gets a green light, find out the production address and send in your resume.

David Read: Absolutely. Another one from FreeSpirit999 – how would you like to see the fourth Stargate show progress storywise? Kind of flow like Game of Thrones? Be more episodic? Be an mix?

Joseph Mallozzi: Um, I think the best of both worlds would be great. I always loved the fact that on Stargate Universe, and kind of the same thing as Dark Matter, even though it was more serialized, each episode pretty much had a beginning, middle and end. So there was kind of that satisfactory, standalone quality about the episodes as well. So, I think more like Universe.

David Read: Scotty0709 – looking back on Universe, would you change anything about that first season? Hindsight 20/20, Monday morning quarterbacking, right?

Joseph Mallozzi: Yeah, I don’t know. I don’t know.

David Read: The further we move into the future, the velocity of the movement of SGU season one is far more palatable because of the programming that we’re watching now. It unpacks slowly like almost any kind of programming does now that’s long form.

Joseph Mallozzi: Yeah, we were able to tell those later stories like Incursion because you laid the groundwork in those early episodes like Earth and Water. So I don’t know what I would have necessarily done differently.

David Read: There’s a lot of talk in the chat here about prequels, like how the Stargate was created, the four great races. You’ve already established you’re not a big fan of prequels.

Joseph Mallozzi: I am not a fan. Like I said, who knows what the fourth series Brad will come up with but I’m pretty sure won’t you see a prequel?

David Read: Yeah. Well, that’s good.

Joseph Mallozzi: Prequels essentially, you already know the end of the story.

David Read: And the most, arguably, important part of the story because that story was told first. FreeSpirit999 – would you like to keep the story in production to stay family friendly like SG-1 and SGA, rather than like SGU or other modern TV shows that are showing more mature content? So the audience level of the fourth show.

Joseph Mallozzi: Um, I kind of prefer tonally and thematically a show like SG-1 and Atlantis which is very much what Dark Matter was. It’s not only family friendly but really there was a sense of family at its core, through SG-1. In Universe as well, if you take away maybe a few scenes in Air part one, it…you know.

David Read: It works fine.

Joseph Mallozzi: It was pretty much that.

David Read: Yeah, absolutely. There is some intense stuff, when Telford is having the air sucked out of him. That’s hard to watch. Not only speaking of that, air sucked out of him, look at a Riley, season two. That’s a hard scene to watch but what television

Joseph Mallozzi: There were instances that were pretty dark in Atlantis as well.

David Read: Burying people alive.

Joseph Mallozzi: Beckett’s death and Sheppard feeding a guy to the Wraith. Was that episode…

David Read: Miller’s Crossing.

Joseph Mallozzi: Yeah, Miller’s Crossing.

David Read: That’s pretty intense. Absolutely. Let’s see, Ian says, “were there any storylines that you wanted to write more episodes about or that you thought could have been expanded on?” Man, where to begin on that one probably, right?

Joseph Mallozzi: If we had done a sixth season, I remember having an idea for a time travel episode that would involve the hybrids, Michael’s…

David Read: Michael’s men.

Joseph Mallozzi: Wraith hybrids. Yeah, so that’s a missed opportunity.

David Read: ThatDudeRightThere – on the 304’s there were mysterious labels on the badges; second tactical wing, fast attack wing, deep space defense, deep space carrier. Was there a structure behind that? I imagine that was the design people probably just, they would create something…yeah, go ahead.

Joseph Mallozzi: That’s it. Really more on SG-1, the Air Force vetted everything, less so on Atlantis and Universe. I think the production team took their cue from what we had have done in SG-1 and I know Brad was kind of a stickler for trying to remain as true or grounded as possible.

David Read: I think the cool thing about that is you’re suggesting, through these different patches and different styles, that there’s a larger universe at play here, there’s a lot more going on than we’re watching on screen.

Joseph Mallozzi: Exactly.

David Read: There’s a bigger group of people involved. Nathaniel – how would you deal with the power creep that has slowly increased during the lifetime of the three shows i.e the Tau’ri now has Ancient/Asgard capability and defeated the Ori? That’s a good question.

David Read: Sorry, can you repeat the question?

David Read: How would you deal with the power creep that has slowly increased during the lifetime of the three shows? Like Daedalus and Odyssey had Asgard beam weapons. Eventually we become pretty darn powerful near the end of it.

Joseph Mallozzi: Yeah, I remember actually, Ben Browder be like, “you know, let’s find a way to get rid of that Asgard beaming technology. Maybe there’s a horrible accident that forces us to pack it away.” I mean, it was an issue, especially in season 10 where you essentially have leapfrogged modern technology by such an enormous bounce that it becomes less of the show it was when it originally premiered. Creatively, they’re always way around that, there’s always issues with new technology. I mean, those sarcophagus’ sure would have come in handy on many occasions.

David Read: That’s the truth, absolutely. Jonas says – how exciting about the news that microbial life may exist on Venus?

Joseph Mallozzi: That is very exciting.

David Read: Isn’t that cool?

Joseph Mallozzi: Yeah.

David Read: Ugly Pig – were you ever into Euro comics or were you all about the superhero genre?

Joseph Mallozzi: I’m trying to think. I’m a big fan of Blacksad, I don’t know if they are French comics.

David Read: Like Valerian?

Joseph Mallozzi: No, actually. They are actually noir, I think, 1940s, 1950s books. The characters are cats and dogs, it’s an excellent series, that’s actually one of my favorites.

David Read: Like anthropomorphic cats and dogs?

Joseph Mallozzi: Yes.

David Read: They wear trench coats and hats?

Joseph Mallozzi: Yes. It’s a really smart book series. I would highly recommend it.

David Read: Okay, what’s it called again?

Joseph Mallozzi: Blacksad. Black and sad. Sad.

Joseph Mallozzi: No. People always ask about the Reetou and, what was the race with the birds nests in their hair?

David Read: Blacksad? Got it. Scotty0709 – were there any more plans for the Reetou?

David Read: The Nox.

Joseph Mallozzi: Yeah. People always asking about the Nox and the Reetou. No.

David Read: The Nox are important because the Nox are one of the great races.

Joseph Mallozzi: Yes.

David Read: That’s interesting. The Reetou do get mentioned in season three. I thought that there was a hope to bring them back, just never could make it work.

Joseph Mallozzi: Well, to be honest with you, it never came up in the room in season four. Because they were before my time they we’re not a race that I necessarily would go back to.

David Read: And they’re effects heavy. DNo IT – Have you read any of the fandemonium Stargate books?

Joseph Mallozzi: I have not. I’m sure they’re fine products but given the fact that I wrote for the show, it’s very unlikely that I would read a book based on it.

David Read: That makes sense. ThatDudeRightThere – You’ve shared a lot about Extinction. Any plans for more reveals in the future like the story behind future Todd? There’s a Todd that comes from the future into the past. What happened to Keller? Anything with John and Teyla?

Joseph Mallozzi: Um, I think I revealed quite a bit actually. I think I posted a bunch of scenes. We did a big script read through, we went through several scenes at SDCC.

David Read: And you revealed that Elizabeth, in her physical form, survived. I was thrilled.

David Read: But where else do these things come from but your minds?

Joseph Mallozzi: In my mind.

Joseph Mallozzi: In the series they assume she’s dead because Oberoth says “we killed her.”

David Read: Oberoth’s a jerk.

Joseph Mallozzi: He’s a human form replicator, you’re gonna take him for his word? So in my mind, she was always somewhere off site. To be honest with you. I think after season four, there was an intention to potentially bring her back.

David Read: Ghost machine. Torri I think, just moved on mentally. I think she brought that up and we were lucky enough to have her involved in Dark Matter. Can’t blame her for it. FreeSpirit999 – were you team John/Elizabeth or team John/Teyla?. I’m a Weir/Sheppard fan myself.

Joseph Mallozzi: I was team John/neither. John solo. John/Rodney.

David Read: John/Rodney, absolutely. Scotty0709 – according to a Gateworld poll, fans want a new Stargate series to be serialized rather than episodic. Does that fact surprise you?

Joseph Mallozzi: Um, no. I think you can still have the best of both worlds.

David Read: And television audiences have moved on in terms of what they expect now, we binge.

Joseph Mallozzi: I agree.

David Read: Ákos Tamás Nováki – do you look back to Stargate rather as a job or as a fan and can you separate the two from each other in your mind when you think back on it?

Joseph Mallozzi: Oh yeah, absolutely. I mean, of course it was a job but really I look back fondly on the time I had, really with the experience with the people and yeah, very much as a fan. I mean, in terms of what we accomplished, over 350 hours of sci-fi television. It’s pretty damn impressive. I look back on a few of those years where we were producing 40 episodes of television a year, which is insane. Today and…

David Read: 10, 8, every two years.

Joseph Mallozzi: 13, yeah.

David Read: Mythology question, and this is actually one that I considered as well. I just assumed that this was the case when this aired and then after SG-1 ended I was like, “Oh, that wasn’t revealed.” Did you intend for the Ori to be behind the plague that wiped out the Ancients?

Joseph Mallozzi: That is a question for Robert Cooper.

David Read: Rob Cooper is the Ori guy.

Joseph Mallozzi: He was the architect of the Ori and the Ancients.

David Read: Got it. Sarah Langlois – How many writers were there for any one given episode?

Joseph Mallozzi: It was only one writer per episode. However, we would get together in the room, as I said, between seasons, and we would spin ideas. Someone would like throw an idea like, “Hey, how about an episode where Sheppard retires and opens a hotdog stand” and you’re like, “What a great idea.” We’d all throw out our ideas, we would all generate ideas, we would break the story as it were on the whiteboard, five acts and then usually the writer who came up with the idea would go off and write the script.

David Read: That makes sense. You guys aren’t an island unto yourselves. I know in certain circumstances, like Martin Gero commented on the fact that he had created…I forget the episode title for season nine but it’s the episode where Daniel has the confrontation with the Prior and Vala is imprisoned on the, is it The Powers That Be? Martin had written that episode but there was like a scheduling thing and Rob had to finish it. Rob basically ghost wrote a lot of it so those kind of things had to happen every now

Joseph Mallozzi: That happens a lot. It happens on any show where the writers name on the script may not necessarily be the one who…They may have written part of it, maybe they wrote all of it if they had beem with the show for a while, but sometimes that really wasn’t the case. It’s always interesting to see sort of fan reactions to certain episodes like “why don’t you bring this writer back?” It’s like, well, you can’t really say anything, but actually Brad wrote that episode.

David Read: Right, exactly. And you would have to have like a pretty thick skin, you’d have to to survive a business like that. I presented a product. Roddenberry was notorious for rewriting, just ripping stuff out of the Star Trek scripts that he was given. A lot of the writers were complaining that he was doing it just to make it his own. It’s hard to say over decades of time what that was, but the end result is the content that was put out. Stargate Props Memorabilia Museum – Do you believe in extraterrestrial life?

Joseph Mallozzi: Um, I believe it’s very possible.

David Read: I hope that life exists. I’m not sure, but can’t be sure. Egal – How did it happen that General Ryan had an appearance and I guess, General Jumper too, in season seven? Did the Air Force reach out or did you?

Joseph Mallozzi: There were high level discussions and I think they may have asked. I think it was General Ryan was first. It’s always fun telling this story but General Jumper was in, was it?

David Read: He was in Lost City. He was on set. He couldn’t do the ADR so the audio that you have of him on set is the only thing that you could use.

Joseph Mallozzi: He’s a very busy guy and he came on. I remember seeing him in the hallway and I was like, “so, is this your first show? Are you going to be doing anymore guest appearances on anything else?” He’s like, “No, this is a rare exception. I’m only doing SG-1” and I’m like, “okay, but if I turn on my TV next week and I see you on Moesha…” He’s like “no, no.” I didn’t watch Moesha but I’m pretty sure he did not put in a guest appearance.

David Read: Corinne Crook – the more you wrote SG-1, did you find the characters easier to write for?

Joseph Mallozzi: Absolutely.

David Read: So the new situations didn’t complicate things in that direction?

Joseph Mallozzi: No, not at all. The characters definitely got a lot easier to write as time went on.

David Read: Also their voices I would think, once you internalize their voices?

Joseph Mallozzi: Yes. And you know exactly what Teal’c would say, how he’d say it. The same for any other character.

David Read: Who was the toughest of the original for you to write for?

Joseph Mallozzi: To be honest with you I think it was Teal’c. It was fun to write for him because he had that stoicism about him.

David Read: He’s an alien.

Joseph Mallozzi: Yeah. I don’t think that any of the four were pretty hard to write for but if I had to choose one of the four. O’Neill was always a lot of fun because he would crack wise. Carter had that sci-fi/techy grounding which is always fun. Daniel had that humanity. Teal’c, I love being able to write Teal’c as a fish out of water. There was Murray in Point of No Return, those instances.

David Read: His episodes, moving out on his own, Affinity. Just for pleasure, absolutely. Derivedclass1 – I’d love to hear Joe discuss the show’s relationship with/portrayal of the US military. Were you ever accused of making propaganda? I guess I read that wrong.

Joseph Mallozzi: I’ve never been personally accused. I know I’ve seen criticisms of both shows, but especially SG-1, the fact that the connection to the Air Force and the fact that we’re glorifying the military.

David Read: I initially read the question wrong. I shouldn’t have chuckled so hard because I was thinking more along the lines of were a Stargate program to exist, was this like a cover up? But in making propaganda like in support of the military for people who are anti-military. I must retract my chuckle. A lot of repeats guys. In the future, please ask one question if all of you intend on jumping in like you have, so thank you for that. T H – can you please enlighten us on the unknown enemy in Prometheus in the cloud? That was a cool ship but I think that was just not meant to be explained was it?

David Read: Grace, where Sam’s on her own.

Joseph Mallozzi: I’m trying to rememeber.

Joseph Mallozzi: Yeah, no, no, that was never meant to be explained. It was just one of many possible races out there.

David Read: Pete Mein – ballpark number, how many alien races have you come up with for any future SG shows?

Joseph Mallozzi: Over the course of the…

David Read: Any future SG shows. I would think zero.

Joseph Mallozzi: Yeah. I am not involved in the creation of the fourth series. It is a question for Brad Wright, I’m sure he has all your answers.

David Read: Egal – the revisions device, the memory device, who had that idea in the writing staff?

Joseph Mallozzi: That was my idea, that was my episode.

David Read: That’s prescient.

Joseph Mallozzi: That was another episode where it was actually quite dark, the original version was very dark. I think I have the original pitch somewhere on my blog but in talking it through with Rob we came up with kind of another twist but originally I loved the idea of this device that allows people to forget or essentially reboots them.

David Read: Rewrites their brain.

Joseph Mallozzi: Yeah. Like I said, originally it was envisioned as a dark episode although at the end there is kind of that bittersweet moment where, I want to call him Halling [Pallan], his name wasn’t Halling.

David Read: Yeah, Chris Heyerdahl’s first episode.

Joseph Mallozzi: Yeah and basically asks Samantha tell me about the wife he no longer remembers.

David Read: I love that ending. Chris Heyerdahl, oh man, did he go far on that show? Holy cow.

Joseph Mallozzi: Yeah. Terrific.

David Read: Yeah. What do you think about Neuralink? Elon Musk’s Neuralink? I think it’s terrifying.

Joseph Mallozzi: I’m dubious, frankly.

David Read: Once you unlock someone’s brain and it has a Wi-Fi that you can’t shut off, I’m not going to be in the first batch. Let me tell you that right now. Let me see. Orville Nation – who came up with Sheppard calling Ronan Chewie?

Joseph Mallozzi: That I believe was an improv on Joe’s part.

David Read: Okay. watcher652vids – are the replicated team SG-1 actually dead? We didn’t see them dead, did we? I think they’re talking about the…are they talking about the team in This Mortal Coil? I think they died, didn’t they?

Joseph Mallozzi: Yeah, if they’re the ones from this Mortal Coil, then yes, they did die.

David Read: Sorry if I missed that one. That’s pretty much it. Thank you guys so much for all of these questions I had no expectation of that.

David Read: But in the future please do submit one so that everyone has a voice. Joe, we ran over, I apologize for that. It means so much to us to have you here moving forward on this journey together. The next time that we have you on, I’ll reach out to you for dates, we’re going to go right back to Scorched Earth and move forward with Window of Ppportunity. Obviously that’s going to be a highlight of everyone’s so thank you so much for joining us today.

Joseph Mallozzi: Thank you.

Joseph Mallozzi: Thanks for asking me to join. Best of luck with your show and thanks to the fans. I’ll see you guys soon.

David Read: Thank you so much, sir. You take care of yourself. I’ll be in touch soon.

Joseph Mallozzi: I am going to take the dog out now.

David Read: Absolutely. You be well.

David Read: Bye bye. Joseph Mallozzi everyone. Joe, thank you again for joining and everybody out there, thank you so much for watching. I opened up the document for the fan questions and I realized it was 10 pages long. The show just launched and I did not expect to have this many. We’re going to have to figure out a means of culling that down. A lot of people asked repeat questions which was fine for this particular episode but in the future, please ask one. And moderators, if you guys could make sure to make that point and just make sure that that’s what’s the case on the end here. Questions for me – where did the Borg go? The Borg is upstairs in my bedroom now, Tracy. The Stargate characters that are going to be where this Jaffa are are out in my hallway. If everyone’s interested, at some point I’ll do a walk through the house; it’s basically a Stargate Museum. The Jaffa is here for the weekend. I may switch him out for Flanigan tomorrow, my next character from Stargate Atlantis. But his helmet is so tall that I risk damaging him bringing him in and out of rooms so that’s the thing. Raj says “what are your favorite episodes?” For SG-1, it’s probably Heroes. For Atlantis it’s Sunday. Martin Gero and I were talking about Sunday when season one was in production. We would chat a lot and he was telling me about that idea so in many respects I felt almost, but not exactly, having been a part of that process while he was talking through developing that episode. Sunday was really the biggest one for me. For SGU it’s Epilogue, unquestionably. DNo IT – every time I tried to use the forms on the website I’m told they’re not working, we should check on this. So what’s happening is you’re using a mobile device. When you go to dialthegate.com and you scroll to the bottom to submit questions to the show, you’re going to need to be doing that on a PC or a Mac. I don’t know when we’re going to have a fix for this but the intent is to have something in place at some point. Until then, you’re going to have to do it on a physical computer, a mobile device is not going to work. You can click on “contact the show.” Right now you can submit questions to Rob Cooper and Andee Frizzelle because they are going to be our previously recorded guests. Beneath that you can also submit Stargate trivia as well. Linda “gategabber,” she’s helping me organize those. The questions that Joe gave off, let me see who that was submitted by because I did not ask him to provide credit to that person and I do definitely want to give them credit for that. Plachu, gesundheit. So Plachu was the one who submitted, I believe, the questions for that one and if not I’ll get a caning for sure. But I believe Plachu submitted those questions. Still a first week, first for a lot of things this week so we’re going to iron things out and get things straightened out. I really appreciate everyone submitting their questions for Joe and the trivia questions as well. This episode proves that things are working and that’s a good thing. Any other questions for me? So I addressed the issue with the form right now, you can’t do it on mobile. Room setup looks great – Brainshatterer – thank you very much, I worked hard on it. The trivia questions that will win you these two concept art are now on the wall. The concept art from the trivia are now on the wall. Gategab – can we get an entire episode on Heroes? I know Teryl hasn’t ever watched it, perhaps with one of the writers? My intent going forward here, and Teryl is going to be on later on in this year, my intent moving forward is for commentaries. Some of them will be live, some of them will probably be pre-recorded if they’re not all pre-recorded. Diana Botsford and I, the novelist, the Stargate novelist, she and I recorded commentaries for a separate show that we were developing years ago called Dial Home. So I’ve used every combination of Dial that you can possibly imagine at this point. But Dial Home was the original idea behind Dialing Home and it was going to be a podcast. For Dial Home we had Alexis Cruz record a commentary for the feature film, we had Katharyn Powers, the writer, record a commentary for Emancipation and we had Jay Acovone record a commentary for The Enemy Within and we participated with him. I still have that so I am more than happy to release that content to all of you at the beginning of the year so you can get an idea of what the commentaries are going to be like. They were great commentaries, I have to say they were fantastic. I wasn’t a big fan of Emancipation and then we sat down with Katharyn and we walked through the process together of developing that episode, the Mongol culture, the Yurt’s and everything that went into that. I went away really respecting that so that’s some content that we’ll be releasing, I just have to get Diana’s permission and the permission of the people who were involved in those. They’re already involved in the show anyway so we’ve essentially got commentaries in the bag. But yes, commentaries are the goal. I would love to have David and Paul sit down and do Sunday, I would love that. Dean Devlin, I’m hoping that after our conversation with him next week we’ll get him invested in doing a commentary with some of the cast and crew. I don’t want to repeat what’s already been done. The commentaries that exist out there now are fine, this is supplementary material, tat’s the intent of this podcast. Let’s see here, that’s it. That’s all that I have from you guys. If you’ve liked what you’ve seen, please give us the like button. The YouTube algorithm is very specific and if you want more of this content, pressing that like button will put this episode and others, well specifically this episode because you’ve liked this one, in front of other Stargate fans for it to be seen. That’s a huge help and I do appreciate that. If you want to be around for future episodes when they air live, you can subscribe and click the bell icon. Your device will notify you when we go live. Thank you everyone for submitting the questions that you did, this episode was just over the top submitted with questions. I’m blown away, I have no words. Someone’s been making fun of me for saying over the moon twice last week. I’m over the moon. Sommer, Keith, Tracy, Ian, you guys are princes and princesses. Thank you so much for everything that you’ve done. I’m gonna get rolling here. I think that this is good. This is good. Joseph Mallozzi, thank you again sir. Tony Amendola from earlier today, thank you again. Tomorrow we have scheduled Joe Flanigan at 12pm Pacific Time. Colonel John Sheppard right here so be sure to stick around live to ask your questions. You can go to dialthegate.com and click on the time that’s listed on the website and it will open you up to the corresponding portal YouTube link for that episode. Wyvern Gaming, Brad Ellis and Westley Walker are going to be joining us at 2pm pacific time. They’re going to be taking your questions regarding their Kickstarter and the upcoming SG-1 role playing game. The Kickstarter blew out its expectations, in like the first three hours they’d met their goal and they’re just hitting stretch goal after stretch goal right now so this is really exciting guys. Thank you again, I’m not going to belabor the point, I’m going to get out of your hair. We already went over in this episode anyway, which is a blessing. Thanks so much to Joe, thank you all for sticking around. My name is David Read, this has been Dial the Gate and tomorrow we’ll be back again for more shows. I’ll see you on the other side.

Joseph Mallozzi: See ya.