GateWorld: Were you satisfied with the Doci’s role in the film, in terms of the size? He seemed to have a much greater leadership role in the crusade before Adria was born.
Robert C. Cooper: Again, I was dealing with actor availability and shoot schedule. It was really a question of “Do I put Julian in the movie as the Doci, or choose to do the movie without him?” And I chose to do it with him. I think his presence is significant and has an overall impact on the film.
GW: Yeah, it’s really great to have him there.
RCC: It seemed to me to be better than not having him in it.
GW: Yeah, absolutely.
RCC: But I would have loved to have the freedom to do more with the character.
GW: Let’s switch gears and talk a little bit about the Replicators. Tell us about your decision to include them in a movie that is about the Ori, in such a large way.
RCC: I like the Replicators! [Laughter]
GW: You know, one thing that is cool about it is that it hearkens back to the old “bug” combat that we saw in “Nemesis” and “Enemies,” and not the human-form Replicators that we’ve been busy with for so many years.
RCC: Yeah, I guess in part — if you wanted to psychoanalyze me — it was my desire to try and please everybody. There’s a lot of people who like old-school Stargate, and this was in some ways a bit of a throw-back element to some of the things that I know I liked about the show in the past.
To me, I felt it was a natural extension of what would have been logical, given what we were given by the Asgard.
GW: Mmm-hmm. It’s totally logical for the I.O.A. to make that kind of bone-headed move.
RCC: Yeah. And even in another situation, maybe for us — Carter makes the mistake of using the time dilation field in “Unending.” We’ve screwed up so many times over the years by kind of stumbling around, using technology that we don’t understand. And that’s another thematic aspect to Stargate. It’s about us using advanced technology that we don’t understand. We’re up against alien races that have technology that we don’t understand. It’s kind of about us now, dealing with that.
When I looked at the elements that I wanted to include in a final chapter of the series, I wanted to try and incorporate things that I felt were key aspects of the series as a whole. And one of them was technology getting away from us. And in this case, the I.O.A. making the mistake of opening Pandora’s Box, I felt was a logical extension of having that knowledge.
One of the things that I think fans have always complained about is that we seem to gain access to technology but then don’t use it. And this case I think helps to explain why we are slow-moving and cautious in implementing some of the things that we have discovered over the years.
GW: Yeah, right. The last time that we talked about the Ark of Truth, the device, you referred to it as a “mass brain-washing device.” From a story perspective, is this too easy of a solution to a giant, intergalactic war?
RCC: You know, I can see people’s point of view when they suggest that. What I thought was interesting about it … first of all, the situation that essentially arose is that we were going to resolve the issue with the Ori followers in one story, essentially — one movie, which is essentially the same as a two-part episode.
I think that one of the other key elements or aspects to Stargate has always been the struggle [over] how to resolve conflict. Daniel and O’Neill are the key characters that essentially began this series. There’s a military guy, and essentially the moral, human conscience in Daniel. And one solves things with a gun, and one tries to solve things by talking about it and through ideas. That was another thing I felt like I wanted to bring to the resolution of that series.
So Daniel’s mission is searching for a non-violent means of ending this conflict. There’s two ways to go: either you can talk people into not fighting any more, or you’re going to have to fight until somebody’s dead.
I look around me at the world, and I take a great deal of issue with propaganda. I really look at the conflicts that go on, and I wonder what the truth really is. I don’t think we know. I don’t think that “the media,” shall we say — the means in which we get our information — is necessarily representing the truth.
As an analogy, I think the Ark itself is a box that light comes out of, and you believe what it says! To me, it’s a really cheap, pretty clear example — it’s television! It’s how we get our information nowadays. And I thought it was an interesting idea that that was the way in which we were able to win a war, and that our choice was to do it without guns. But was this particular method any better?
It’s a question, and it’s an interesting question. I’m not sure we answered it. Because I think Daniel is very conflicted in this story as to whether this is really the moral way to go. I think there are certain segments of the population that would have liked to have seen more intellectual debate about that. But again I think there are other people that would have said, “This is boring. Just shut up and move on.”
NEXT: Area 51, the original ending, and evaluating the Ori storyline