Campbell on life as ‘Chucknician’

Beware SPOILERS for cast changes in Stargate Atlantis in the report below!

From Atlantis‘s “The Brotherhood” to the latest episodes of Season Four, Chuck Campbell has played the role of the Gate Technician with push-button diligence and a boy-from-next-door smile.

In last season’s finale, “First Strike,” the actor finally got a name for his character — his own! A coincidence? Not really. Chuck gave GateWorld the story. “It was kind of in the script in the sense that sometimes when they have stage directions — and it’ll say ‘McKay walks over to the terminal’ — one of these stage directions was ‘Chuck walks over to his duh-duh and hits a button,’ or something like that.”

“So where everybody kind of knew me as Chuck, we didn’t really know if the writer was just ‘Oh, that’s just Chuck.’ He just types that in. And then Torri, in the scene, when I come into her office, at the end of it says, ‘Thank you, Chuck.'”

With his real name already in the script as a placeholder, the director for the episode allowed Torri to take things to the next level. “Martin [Wood] was there and he was like, ‘Yeah, it’s there and there, and … Yeah! Keep it!’ And it just stuck. The big guys upstairs didn’t really seem to mind, and they had written it into stage directions already, so yeah … I’ll take it.

“I’m just glad it wasn’t Clarence.”

As a control room mainstay, technician Chuck has always reported directly to the base commander. Up until Season Four, this has been Dr. Elizabeth Weir. Now veteran SG-1 actress Amanda Tapping has stepped into Weir’s giant boots, and Campbell admits he didn’t know what to expect initially.

“I was intimidated by Amanda when I first met her,” he told GateWorld. “… Amanda’s so good and she’s been with it from the beginning. You ever meet those people that are just generally nice? ‘She’s going to flip out or going to get pissed.’ She doesn’t. She’s just a generally nice woman. She’d treat you the same way on set as she would if you were in the grocery store, because she’s just a nice woman.”

And what of the transition from Weir to Carter? “It was pretty smooth. I think it was more difficult outside of doing the scenes, just because ‘Ah, she’s gone. Now Torri will be off and she’ll be very successful in whatever she does, but you still miss her because there was a chemistry there.’

“And when Amanda came in she kept her character the same as she did with Samantha Carter [in SG-1] , but she almost played it like it would be the position she was in of ‘I don’t want to step on toes here. I have to be the new leader, but let’s respect what these people have done in the past.'”

Regardless of whether or not all fans of Weir accept the change, the chemistry is clicking for the actors and their characters alike. “I don’t know if it would’ve worked with another alpha male character,” Chuck said. “I don’t know if it would have been as easy a transition as it was. She’s just a born leader. It works that way.”

Visit the actor’s Web site at ChuckCampbellOnline.com! The complete, 30-minute audio interview with Chuck Campbell will be heading your way soon, and includes more details on Season Four. Stick with GateWorld and be sure not to miss it!