 
GW: Are you enjoying writing for Robert Picardo this year?
AM: Yeah! Unfortunately I have not had a chance ... I got to write him a little bit last year in "The Seer," which incidentally was another good episode, although I can't take credit for that one. The story changed so much by the time that went into production that Paul had to do a very substantial rewrite on that one. I do like the episode but I can't take full credit.
McCullough mourns the loss of Tapping, but is excited to write for Picardo. | |
I haven't had the chance to write for Robert Picardo because he hasn't been in any of my episodes. We have him for 14 episodes this year. We have to use him judiciously. In an episode where the team is trapped on a ship jumping in alternate realities, there's no good reason to cut back to Atlantis. So we have to use his talents, again, judiciously. Just like we do with Mitch -- with Caldwell.
It's funny, in "The Queen," the one I'm writing right now, he wasn't in it in the first draft and we're talking about possibly using him for a scene in the second draft, but again it's just a scene, and we're hoping maybe we can figure out a way to do it in a believable fashion where we can be on the base but not have Woolsey sitting in on the discussion.
It's a bit of a challenge sometimes to keep him out of a story but I would love to write a big Woolsey story. Joe's working on one for the back half, no details on that yet, but it's something he's working on which will feature him heavily. That will be great because he's such a great actor. He's really a great actor. He's brought such comic genius moments to a lot of scripts like "The Seer."
I know Carl's working on a story this year called "Ghost in the Machine." There's just some great comic bits for Woolsey. Actually in Joe's script, "Broken Ties," it has some great comic moments for Woolsey as well. It was sad to lose Amanda, obviously, but boy, if you had to find a replacement there's no one better for Robert Picardo.
GW: And how telling that was, in the last episode. That wasn't even planned yet and then here he is. Here's a glimpse at the future
AM: Oh I know! Exactly. It's amazing how these things work out. We get a lot of credit for having set things up years in advance. Often times we back-sell. We do make it correspond, or concord, with the past. "How do we manipulate this so it looks like we set it up three years ago?"
GW: So often it just falls into place.
The Hoffan drug in "The Kindred" is a great example of that. Do you guys go back into past years, like three, four, five or more years, into the mythology and look for pieces you can use in that way or is it just a happy coincidence that it worked for the story?
AM: We definitely do that. We mine the past for stories. There's another Hoffan story coming up. I'm going to be working on it next. We definitely mine the past for stories. And it's a great place to get stories. There's so much information that comes out in an episode that most of the time there are things left unanswered.
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" I'm looking forward to writing the next story I'm working on after this because it involves Beckett, who is a favorite of mine
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"What would happen if the Hoffan drug was spread on a wide scale? Who would benefit from that?" I think it was Joe, originally, [who] pitched out that it could be the Hoffan drug. I think when we originally designed the story, "Well there's a plague afflicting the galaxy." Then we think about it out a little more and talk about it a little more. Somebody suggests, "Well maybe it's not a plague. Maybe it's the Hoffan drug."
It's good to have a seasoned team of people to be working with who do have encyclopedic memories. All these guys have encyclopedic memories who can draw things from the past, and characters. "What about Janus's lab? What about the Hoffan drug?"
GW: Is that an extra challenge for you as a writer who's just in your second year?
AM: Yes. It's always a challenge to keep up with stuff. I wrote on SG-1, obviously, for Season Nine and Ten and watched every single episode. When I first started on the show I hadn't watched that many episodes. Although to write "Prototype," I got a FedEx with twenty episodes in it, and they were all saying "Just watch these so you can get the background for Prototype." My God.
Once I was hired on as a staff writer I worked my way through SG-1 and subsequently through Atlantis as well. So you do lose little things. You lose little details, but the bulk of the stuff is all in there somewhere.
GW: What character moments, or moments between characters, would you like to write this year? What's spinning in the back of your noggin?
AM: Well, first of all I'm happy to be writing a Teyla story. I like the fact that, particularly in Season Four and to some degree in Season Five we've started to open her up as a character and focus on her a little more. So I do like writing Teyla stories. I'm looking forward to writing the next story I'm working on after this because it involves Beckett, who is a favorite of mine as well.
Alan hints at a potential love triangle between Dex, Keller and McKay in Season Five. | |
Character interactions between each other ... I don't know if we've planned that far ahead. There is a nice thing going on, which I haven't really had to deal with or had a chance to write for yet, which is we're setting up a bit of a love triangle. There's a possibility of a love triangle.
Last year we saw Dr. Keller get in a near kiss with Ronon, and towards the end of the season in "Trio" and following up in "[The] Last Man," we see a version of an alternate future where she and McKay get together. We thought it would be fun to ...
GW: ... experiment on that.
AM: Yeah. Let's see where that takes us. Let's put these characters in a situation, in an ongoing situation throughout several episodes, and see where it takes us.
To be honest we don't know how we're going to resolve it yet. We're playing around at the moment. Carl's written a great episode this year which delves into that relationship in a little more detail, that triangle. And then I don't know. We'll see. I don't know what we're going to do with it to be honest. We haven't decided.
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