GateWorld: Let’s move on a little bit further into the season. “Cloverdale,” which was basically the “Scott-on-LSD” episode. Basically, the main theme of that too becoming him not sure in his hallucinations as far as what’s going on around him, where he’s coming from, where he’s at, but mainly it begins the arc in terms of Chloe and him starting to protect her a little bit more, because by this point already she’s been infected.
Brian J. Smith: Yeah, yeah, and he’s got feelings for her but at the same time she’s a threat. That whole episode was really interesting to me solely from the standpoint of how Scott saw all these people. His perception of the relationships, the different roles that people played in his subconscious. They got played out in this dream that he was having. I thought it was really fun.
It was fun for all of us, I mean Louis was like, “Oh my God!” We did this scene where we’re all smiling, being goofy and laughing. We rarely got to cut loose like that. Alex Chapple directed that episode and he did such a fantastic job, giving it a sort of cinematic feel. The color correction that they used in the dream sequences and all that was really, really well done. That was a fun one, a really fun one to shoot. It was great getting to drive out to that location every day.
GW: I was going to say, it probably had to be nice to get out of the sound stage.
BJS: Oh, it was. Any time that we did it was fantastic. We actually shot quite a bit on location, especially the second season. It seemed like we did a lot of on-location stuff in the second season and that’s like taking a field trip. All my fondest memories of the show are moments when we shot out on location. It’s like going out camping with your buddies and the crew, everyone’s having a great time, you’re up at the butt-crack of dawn driving out there, got your coffee, got your music playing. It’s just living the dream and you’re going out to make a show in this crazy location you’ve never been to and you probably never will go back to again.
GW: I was up in Burnaby in April and a friend and I, you know him…Sean Koo.
BJS: Oh, yeah! “Scoobykoo!” [Twitter name]
GW: We actually took a drive from Burnaby to Cloverdale, just to get there for the day and kind of check it out. That’s not a short drive!
BJS: No, it was a very long drive. It was a very, very long drive. I remember getting up at like three or four o’clock in the morning to drive the hour and some change it took to get out there. But, again, I love that. I mean, that’s why I do this. It’s so funny because it’s hard for us to communicate the experience of making a show like that.
You got to see the episodes and you talk to us, but for me, I don’t remember the episodes, I don’t really remember so much what my character did but I remember certain things that happened behind the scenes. I remember, oh my God, catering had an amazing lunch that day, or they made a cake [because] it was someone’s birthday. It’s those experiences, that’s what’s really important for me. That’s what made this experience so special. All the stuff that we went through that no one even really gets to see.
GW: One of the other big arcs for Scott over the course of the season was the relationship with Chloe and kind of watching her as she’s suffering and going through this illness that he doesn’t know how to help her with. I just think that the determination and sense of purpose in wanting to help cure her somehow, some way, the way that Scott almost comes to blows with Greer, who is someone he considers almost like a brother. [Greer]’s like, “You know, it’s going to get to point where we’ve got to put her down.” and the intensity that you brought into that also.
BJS: Well, you know, you’re watching someone die, someone you love, and not just die but become something that’s going to be a threat to yourself and everyone else that you love. I thought it had to be a really conflicting for him and I thought what made him human in his response to it is I think he was a little bit disgusted as well.
You’ve got that scene, I remember where it was the first time that she shows him her skin and she’s got this stuff growing on it, and in the script it said “there’s a look of subtle disgust that flashes across his face. “I was like, “That’s great, that’s really great. That’s really honest.” It’s not just like, “Oh, I love you no matter what!” It’s not this purely corny romantic type stuff.
He definitely has his issues and he wrestles with it and I think that he comes to terms with it when he has to fly her over to the alien ship and give her up, hopefully to be cured but who knows what was going to happen to, right? I think that’s when any doubts that he had about her were really resolved in his mind. He was crazy about this girl, he never had anything like that in his life before, she was his family. I just found that very moving. It was a very moving scenario to play.
GW: I think in retrospect — and we’ll fast-forward here closer to the end of the season — in retrospect, a lot of SGU fans and Stargate fans in general are going to consider “Common Descent” and “Epilogue” probably two of SGU‘s finest episodes themselves and easily some of the franchise’s best work in years. Rob Cooper and Carl Binder, they wrote some magnificent stuff. What were your thoughts when you first saw the script?
BJS: Well, we were scared to death, especially “Epilogue”, that was a really, really ambitious script. Just to be sure because I have to go back in my mind, it was so long since I’ve thought about any of this, that’s the episode when we go back and we find the tapes and everyone’s older and then there’s like this city at the end, right?
GW: Yep, Novus.
BJS: Yeah, yeah, I know that’s right. Again, Alex Chapple directed that episode and did a fantastic job with it.
It could have been a disaster, especially just in terms of makeup. Our makeup department pulled this together so beautifully well, because to age people like that, especially me and especially Louis, the kind of work that they did on them and all the change-overs that they had to do. It was insane and they did such a great job of selling that and making it feel real.
I remember going up to Carl and I was like, “How the hell are we going to do this?” because we only had like seven days to shoot an episode. That’s not a lot of time. But it happened and it came together great and I thought that storyline was fantastic. Novus and the ancestors and the drones coming in and finding the archive and all the tapes and everything. It was beautiful, it was beautifully done. I think why people responded to it is it had a sort of really traditional Stargate sense of wonder. As dark as things got, there was still a little twinkle of “isn’t this cool?”, a sense of “how freaking amazing”. It was so imaginative and so well done. I’m not surprised people had such a great response to it.
But, you know, we never know how people are going to respond to the episodes. I remember we shot a few episodes we thought that people were going to love and they thought they were donkey-doo. So I have no idea and I can’t analyze it. We’re all a little bit too close to it to understand why people respond to certain things and why they don’t respond to others.
GW: To a degree, I think part of it too was by the time that it aired, everybody knew that there wasn’t any more coming after and they were looking at it as — the series, at least, we wouldn’t find out later it was the whole franchise — these were the final episodes. I think people, at least the ones that were enjoying the show already, were savoring them more and taking in more of the nuances. Does that make sense?
BJS: I think you’re right. People were enjoying the moment so much more.
GW: Deep down, I don’t think anybody truly expected, even with the numbers that the show was pulling in and we could go into all the various reasons for why that happened … but that’s been done to death. But in terms of the end itself, I don’t think anybody ever really honestly figured that the series, if it did end, that when it ended, that that would be it. Now we’re sitting with no Stargate on the air for the first time in 14 years.
BJS: Yeah, it’s wild. It’s easy for people to kind of sit back and go, “Oh, you know Stargate‘s always going to be around. It’s always going to be here.” It’s funny … the minute that the show got cancelled was when for the first time in two years I felt that we were really embraced by a lot of Stargate fans. I think we all appreciated it and we were very happy for that, but at the same time it was like, “Man, too little too late.” You know what I mean? Where were you?
GW: Having talked with you throughout those two years, it was a rough couple of years.
BJS: It really was. Then all of a sudden it’s like these people who’ve been spending these last two years just crapping on everything that we did, all of a sudden they’re, “I can’t believe the show’s over, man. Oh my God. Now I really like it.” I’m like, “Well, of course you do!” Because it’s gone! And now everybody gets to be sad about it.
GW: I think history will be kind to the series in the end. Ratings aside, the content and what was trying to be established, I think people are going to look back fondly.
BJS: Oh, I think so too. I have absolutely no doubt. I think that this is going to be the show people look back on and I know people are going to hate me for saying this. I’m probably going to get a bomb sent to me in the mail, but I think that this is going to be the show that people look back and go, “Oh, that’s Stargate.”
GW: Had SGU continued, what would you have liked to have seen more explored in Matt’s life? I mean, we saw his work ethic, his love life, his leadership and fear of it. What other sides to Matt would you have liked to see that maybe they talked with you possibly about doing or that maybe you just personally thought would be a neat and interesting wrinkle to throw in yourself.
BJS: I wanted to see some more of his opinions. He is a deeply religious person on some level and there is a conflict of his own person drives and his appetites and his desire at times, and then at the same his spiritual life. It would have been really interesting to see how that spiritual side of him starts to clash with all of this scientific information that they’re getting, especially concerning the background radiation and how that might conflict with his own sense of faith or if it just reinforces it.
Because in essence, what they were looking for once they discovered the background radiation was God, was the source of what everything came from, possibly. And for someone who has a sense of faith about him, I thought it would have been really interesting to see how that screws with his head.
Who knows what crazy back alleys and U-turns the character could have gone down. You know, there’s part of me that doesn’t really want to know. We were always so surprised. We’d get scripts and we would have a general idea at times of where the season was heading, but at the same time it was just delightful to be surprised when the script showed up at our doors. They just did a great job surprising us.
NEXT: Acting off-Broadway, British television productions, Orient Express, and Syfy’s lack of pure sci-fi
good interview! I think he hit it on the head, one of the things missing in SGU was the wonder. Which given the story, struggling on a ship in space, it wasn’t always about the wonder, but about them getting through life. Again, beaten to death, but maybe that’s part of what it was.
p.s. I was at the inner space thing! I was the guy from Ohio! haha, they acted like it was such a long drive. But I live 3 hours from my family and I drive that a lot, so 5 hours to Toronto was nothing. Plus I’d never been, and the whole experience was amazing! I have his autograph!
I liked red planet, I think Syfy would be stupid if they didn’t pick the series up. But it is the Syfy channel we’re talking about.
I watched every SGU episode from day 1, and I miss the show, and I agree with what BJS was saying. Too many “stargate” fans didn’t watch SGU and jumped ship when the show got cancelled. Anyway good luck.
p.s I hope Syfy pick red faction up fingers crossed.
Great interview! :) I too was at the SGU Innerspace special in fact I think I was right behind you in the line for the autographs as I remember people commenting on it. I would however disagree in regard to the wonder in SGU, to me SGU was more about the wonder then either of the previous shows as it was the core of the show, What is the Destiny, what is it’s purpose, why did the Ancients build it, Why didn’t they ever go to it? All of these to me at least are all about wonder.
Never was a fan of SGU but good luck to Brian in his future.
Sadly, I think Red Faction is dead. After the game was released to a ho-hum reception and if I remember right, that TV-movie didn’t get all that great of ratings. THQ pretty much killed it as a franchise. Which is pretty sad as a fan of RF:Gurella and the older games. Armageddon was a big misstep.
@DustoMan
You’re right in saying the last re faction game was a little bit lame.