Season Nine is more ‘hardcore Stargate’

The new season of Stargate SG-1 will appeal to fans of the old days, executive producers Robert C. Cooper and Brad Wright told GateWorld. Though the show hasn’t lost its sense of humor, it is taking itself a bit more seriously.

“I think that a little bit of the self-referential humor and the feeling [on the part of some fans] that maybe we, the writers, weren’t taking things as seriously as the fans did is gone,” Cooper said in an interview with GateWorld. “Certainly, there’s a little more of a straighter take to Season Nine, if that makes any sense. It’s a little more straight-forward, hardcore Stargate like it used to be, where we’re not mocking what’s going on in the show.”

Saving the world from intergalactic bad guys on the regular basis has become increasingly challenging both to the writers and the cast of Stargate. With new cast members and a shake-up in the show’s on-going plotlines, the upcoming season promises to inject new life into a formula that has shown signs of age after eight successful seasons.

“When Jack, Sam, Daniel, were in the midst of saving the Earth for time number 73, it became difficult for them not to at least acknowledge, ‘This is familiar,’ Wright said. “Whereas with the new blood it’s a different story. ‘Wow, it’s my first time saving the Earth! This is going to be great!’ And, in fact, Ben [Browder] has been playing that energy because Robert wrote a great deal of enthusiasm into the character.”

Browder joins the cast of SG-1 this season, playing F-302 fighter pilot Lt. Colonel Cameron Mitchell. “One of his early questions was, ‘Why am I so enthusiastic?'” Wright continued. “And the short answer is: ‘Because he [Robert] was!’ And so it shows in the work and it shows now in Ben’s performance.”

The producers assure fans that Season Nine maintains everything that Stargate SG-1 is — “but it’s also very much a new series. It has a whole new dynamic,” Wright said. “There’s a new enemy. The team has got new characters and has been reinvigorated in that sense.”

Don’t miss GateWorld’s 3-part audio interview with Brad Wright and Robert Cooper, available now! The ninth season of Stargate SG-1 makes its worldwide premiere Friday, July 15 at 8 p.m. Eastern/Pacific on The SCI FI Channel.