GateWorld: For GateWorld.net, I’m David Read, once again back with Mr. Chuck Campbell — I think for the first time in person, sir!
Chuck Campbell: It is true. The last time we did it it was on the phone.
GW: Ah, but it was so good.
CC: I didn’t wear any pants to that one. [Laughter] Are we cropped in? I am wearing pants on this one.
GW: Good to have you back with us.
CC: Nice to be back.
GW: What’s going on on set this year? Season Five of Atlantis.
CC: The theme for the technician this year is “Still alive in Season Five,” my friend. I made it to Season Five. And it’s crazy. There’s all kinds of stuff going on.
GW: Like what?
CC: Well, we start off — let’s just say all your favorites are back.
GW: Including Chuck.
CC: Yes. Yeah, we’re going to be having some new characters coming up in Season Five. There’s some new developing relationships between characters. I think we’re going be having perhaps a bit more Wraith, perhaps a little bit more Replicator scenarios coming down the pipe.
GW: The new race that’s coming out? It’s really exciting.
CC: We did have a new alien, too. I think it was “The Daedalus Variations.” I hope they bring that alien back. They didn’t really explain that alien.
GW: Yeah, they said it was kind of an alternate reality thing, so it could be either-or.
CC: He could come back. They were great looking. The guys, they did a really good job of making up the prosthetics and everything. We just started shooting episode five of Season Five.
GW: “Ghost in the Machine” with Michelle Morgan.
CC: That’s right! With Fran!
GW: Isn’t she cool?
CC: Yeah, she’s a very ugly girl. Hard to work with. If you really like Fran, which most people do, catch episode five, “Ghost in the Machine.” She’s a very, very principle character in it.
GW: Yeah, not exactly play Fran, shall we say.
CC: I know. Am I allowed to say that? Yes, there’s a twist and I think they’re leaving it open. She might even possibly come back.
GW: Yeah, we were talking with Carl Binder. He said now that we have the Replicator table any time we need a Fran we just push the button and it spits a new Fran out.
CC: Exactly! Sorry, it looks like Diana Ross! [Laughter] Yeah, so it’s been pretty cool. It’s just a whirlwind, as you know, because you’ve been on set the last bit. It just moves so quick. I’m blown away by the fact that we’re actually shooting episode five.
GW: You say it’s so quick, but yesterday we were there for seven or eight hours, and for most of that time I could’ve sworn you guys only did one or two scenes. It was insane.
CC: I wouldn’t doubt that. Especially when they do stunts or they have to do stuff with special effects, et cetera. We shoot, I’d say probably the average, is between seven and eight pages per day. That’s a lot of stuff to do for TV in a 12 hour period, but that’s usually the way it goes. Features, of course, are different.
Yeah, it’s just kind of mind-blowing how quick it’s going.
GW: Not just are you Chuck but you’re also David Hewlett’s photo double.
CC: Yeah, well I stand in for him. I do stuff with hands or whatever. I’ll photo double him sometimes. Mainly I’ll stand in for him. I’ll stand in for Zelenka. Sometimes even Lorne. It all depends. I kind of match the height for all of them, so whenever they need a body to set the light, I’ll do that. Then you get to read some off-camera and help them out.
“The Daedalus Variations” was very scattered throughout the different realities, so it was a lot of people talking to other people in the room. [Buzz saw starts] We’re actually building a house. You can’t see it. And there’s a line of about 40 construction workers standing here wanting to know who David is. [Laughter]
I’m kidding. That’s Vancouver. It’s not raining, so we’re trying to get proof that it’s not raining today!
GW: It’s amazing how often. We usually get pretty lucky but last year it rained the entire time.
CC: Oh, brother, that’s the way it is here. It’s pretty cool.
Episode four, “Daedalus Variations,” is the first appearance I make in Season Five.
GW: Oh really? You weren’t any earlier?
CC: Well, they have this new girl who’s just like the technician role I played [David grimaces] — yeah, that’s what I said — I wish I could hate her but she’s good. Can’t. She was the girl, her character’s name was Banks, and if you remember in [Season] Four in “Quarantine” when we got to leave and go down stairs and try to find people, that’s her. So they brought her back, she’s sitting behind the desk. I think they’re just trying to mix it up a bit.
GW: Chuck maybe has got a girlfriend.
CC: I might’ve had some R&R. I was making a pizza in my room. I don’t know. But I mean, yeah. They’re mixing it up. She’s I think in the first two episodes of Season Five. And she’ll be back.
GW: Do you know any episodes that you’ll be appearing in the near future beyond “Ghost in the Machine” and “Daedalus Variations?”
CC: The only one I was told was the two-parter.
GW: Ah, with Michael Shanks. “First Contact.”
CC: That’s it. “First Contact.” I was told that I would be appearing in that.
GW: Very interesting script.
CC: Haven’t even read it, bro.
GW: Yeah, it just came off the presses two days ago.
CC: I did see it but I didn’t read it. That’s a two-parter, and hopefully I’m in the second part, too.
GW: Well, you can’t take it for granted, but chances are.
CC: It’s television, man. I could walk down an elevator shaft and some Wraith could come around the corner and slap me in the head. I don’t know. I don’t know what’s worse, TV or sci-fi TV. You could die so quick. Who knows.
GW: Well the benefit of sci-fi TV is them coming up with an explanation to bring you back very easily.
CC: Exactly. I think there should be a Chuck clone who just sits and the back and just smokes. He’s the bad Chuck. Just swears and smokes, and doesn’t do any work.
GW: You were in “The Last Man,” were you not?
CC: Yes.
GW: You and I talked about that very briefly, but it hadn’t aired yet. With the corn meal?
CC: All the sand and the cornmeal, exactly.
GW: How do you think that episode turned out? Have you seen it?
CC: I did. I was lucky enough to catch that. It so interested me because when they had everything implode on them, like the building. You don’t get to see it. You don’t know what the effect will look like from the pan-back and all the visual effects.
When I saw the visual effects, boy, I thought it really added to it big time. The other actors are trying to work with that. That’s how it ends. It’s just a bunch of Styrofoam concrete. When you actually see how they did it, it was pretty cool. I thought it was a pretty good cliffhanger, myself.
It says something, if people work on the show honestly don’t know what’s going to happen that’s pretty good writing. “I don’t know if so and so is coming back,” or “so and so got their head crushed.” You just don’t know.
GW: If you had your say, some in fun but mostly in honesty, what would you like to see this character do this year? If you had your say?
CC: If I had my say — let’s just fly it out here — I would love it if he went bad and they put it in the story that this whole time I was there I was a spy, and I was a Replicator. I’m the one who’s communicating with Weir’s character, who’s the Replicator. I the codes, I have the gate addresses. Then I get to wear a vest, and then I would get to hold a gun and do some bad stuff. Shoot some stuff down the hall. I would love to do something like that, where the character just goes “whoop!”
GW: Well in terms of guns and things like that, if Atlantis is invaded, even the basic technicians become infantrymen. I know Gary Jones (“Sergeant Walter Harriman”) in Season One of SG-1, he did that. He had to defend the base.
CC: We had it, I think, in “The Siege,” where Martin Wood let me wear the tac vest. That was kind of fun. I usually wear the same jacket every time. That was kind of cool. I would like to do that. I though that would be, I think, a real fun thing for the fans. For one episode. “What? This whole time?” I’m going to say it — a Cylon-ish. “You’re kidding me! You’re a Replicator?”
GW: Battlestar Galactica‘s good.
CC: It is good. You’ve got to give credit where credit is due.
GW: One of the things that has always surprised me, they haven’t created an impenetrable vest that Wraith can’t stick their hands through.
CC: You know actually what works? Tinfoil! [Laughter] They just don’t know that yet!
GW: That’ll big the big reveal at the end of Season Five.
CC: We’ll sell these rolls of Stargate tin foil.
GW: “Why was Midway Station blown up? We can’t get any tinfoil! It’s life and death!”
CC: Exactly! Someone go to the Safeway!