GateWorld: Let’s shift gears a little bit and talk some Sanctuary. The last time that we talked … it was prior to Season Three … was the last time I talked with you.
Amanda Tapping: Oh, yeah! That’s right!
GW: A lot has occurred since then, both on the business side and also within the series’ mythology. After resolving the whole Kali storyline, there’s some great stand-alone episodes in the first part of Season Three. We also get to see some developing relationships for Will and for Henry start to build up. Was that always part of the plan going into the season? Or was it more of a response to fans wanting to see more of the personal lives of the characters?
AT: I think in any series it makes sense that, once you get all the blocks in place and you know who’s who in the zoo and what the zoo looks like, then the next logical step is to start to bring out more of the personal aspects of the characters. For us, things like when Pascale Hutton came on the show, she was so fantastic and so lovely. So it made sense to bring her back more and more. And even when she was pregnant, and we were trying to shoot hiding her pregnancy and when she was really pregnant and we didn’t try to hide her pregnancy — you find something really special and you find a great chemistry. And that sort of helps predicate how it rolls out.
It’s not like we said “Oh, let’s give Will a girlfriend in Season Three and do this …” or “Let’s give Henry a girlfriend and do this.” It’s just often how it rolls off the truck.
GW: It’s been nice seeing them happy for an extended period and not have something interfere with that.
AT: I know, right?
Martin Wood: I think when we first started Sanctuary … The reason I laughed when you first asked that question is because, I have to say, there was no plan. There was an idea. It was a grand idea up here (points to his head). And what ended up happening was that, as Amanda said, things started to gel and people came into our lives and they started to work. You just want to keep moving those storylines along. And there were storylines that we had thought we were going to pursue. And they sort of fizzled because you really didn’t like where they were headed, or what’s happening with them.
It’s a very organic process making a TV series. And unless you have a very definitive end mark that you want to get to … we never did. Because we were like “Why would we want to stop this?”
AT: We are also in the position on Sanctuary where we never knew that much in advance of when we had to start shooting. Or whether we had the final green light because of our financing situation. So we often only had a month, five weeks if we were lucky, to prep an entire thirteen episode season. Or in one case, a twenty episode season. So, it’s not like ‘Let’s get the first three episodes out and then these are our long-term goals’. But the minutiae of it is …
We had Jonathon Young come in and he blew us away so much that every year we wanted to use him more and more. And it was basically based on Jonathon’s availability. It was like ‘So when are you not doing a play?’ and ‘Alright, we’ll plug you in here and plug you in here and here.’ That was like seven episodes.
MW: We actually scrapped a huge number of plans because he wasn’t available. I think the interesting thing about what happens when you do that kind of stuff and you are that liquid … really, the only place that a plan resided was within Damian [Kindler]’s brain. He had an inkling about how to get somewhere. And he’d sit down with the two of us and we’d discuss plans. What’s funny is that because it was a very dynamic plan in terms of “we could go here,” we all got to input how we wanted to get there. And it doesn’t usually happen like that. It doesn’t usually happen that you get the ability to have that sort of a growing petri dish of a series inception in there. That allows you to keep moving forward but everybody has their fingers in it. Which is awful if you put your fingers in a petri dish.
AT: Probably why I’m sick! Strep!
MW: Yep, you had your fingers in the petri dish.
GW: Midway through Season Three began the whole Hollow Earth plot thread, and that actually had repercussions all the way to the end of Season Four.
MW: You know why Hollow Earth came along? Damian found an access to Hollow Earth in his backyard!
GW: Really?
MW: Yeah, and he was gone for like four days! We didn’t know where he was. He came back and he said “I have a great idea!”. And we never figured it out until we were shooting the one show in his backyard, and we were like ‘What is this?’ and he says ‘It’s access to Hollow Earth.’ It’s unbelievable.
AT: And that’s how it all started.
MW: That’s how it started. [laughs]
AT: True story.
GW: It was just a big gopher, that’s all it was.
AT: Yeah!
GW: It had repercussions all the way through the end of Season Four and an opportunity to give all the characters some much deeper plotlines to work with.
MW: Season Four was the most amazing season we did. Bar none, it was the greatest season we had.
GW: Were there any aspects of that continuing storyline that you felt worked better than others? Or ones that didn’t work as well even if it still made it into the finished product that you maybe would have done differently?
MW: I think … it was such a huge idea. When you actually decide to make a whole other world on a TV show, especially one with a budget that is like three people’s wallets big, it’s really difficult. We tend to overreach like that a little bit, and in that case, we stretched our resources as far as we could in creating Hollow Earth. I think once we got back, and deciding the repercussions of Hollow Earth was what we were going to deal with on our own surface planet — it was a little bit easier than being in Hollow Earth.
AT: I liked Praxis, but I wasn’t particularly fond of the rest of Hollow Earth.
MW: The fungus farmers? [laughs]
AT: The fungus farmers, and the caves. Like Martin said, when you have an idea that is so big, it’s almost impossible on our budget to realize the full potential of what we wanted to realize. But I thought Praxis was incredibly cool. I think bringing them up, and the idea of containment made sense, but, I don’t know …
MW: I don’t think any of us were really super happy with it. I think we liked the idea of Hollow Earth better than the way it came out.
AT: But I liked the repercussions of it. I liked the splitting …
MW: Yeah, and I’m glad we got rid of the Hobbits, because that would have been a terrible waste …
AT: That was so expensive.
MW: Such a dead end. [laughs]
NEXT: Amanda and Martin breakdown some of Sanctuary‘s high-concept Season Three episodes
Terrific interview, Chad :-) Really miss the show and have recently gone back to randomly rewatching the series quite often in the last couple months. Just can’t get enough and have great ideas for cross-over stories as well. Feel the Universe story isn’t over and needs to be revisted someday. Hoping someone has left the light on and we’ll regroup down the road :-)
Great interview, however Martin that last idea is unique, but don’t lose base of what works. We want missions through the Stargate. Other species. It’s why Universe failed. There was one constant setting.
Two words. KICK. STARTER! I’m serious, guys! A kickstarter campaign for Sanctuary and Stargate WOULD be successful! What will it take to get this point across to MGM/SyFy/Brad Wright/Martin Wood/whoever and get it starter? WE WANT MORE STARGATE AND SANCTUARY! WE WANT A PROPER CONCLUSION TO SG-1/SGA/SGU!! It doesn’t even need to be on SyFy! We can air it on the Internet. SyFy had an opportunity to make Stargate its own version of Law and Order/NCIS – that show that was always there. The one grounding factor of the network, that you knew there would ALWAYS be a Stargate on.… Read more »
nice to read amanda’s and martin’s views on stargate’s future, and that they think there IS a future!! i totally agree with martin to continue stargate with things the fans find comfort with…
*fingers crossed*
ONE CAN ONLY DREAM FOR THE ABILITY TO ONE DAY WATCH THE REBIRTH OF GATE TRAVEL.
I would LOVE to see a new Stargate series, but you know what, I want a conclusion to the LAST one first! Give us a few movies to put the old guard SG-1/SGA/SGU to rest and then bring on a new series to jumpstart it! Maybe the movies to conclude it could pave way for a new show! Either way, its hard to imagine a third series when we know there’s two that are still open with no idea what’s happening to those characters.
@ browncoat: i agree! conclude the other stargates before starting something new.
and really, it’s *so* easy to do!!
Yea, Chad, love the article! Amanda Tapping is just amazing, I admire her the way I always have admired Tina Fey. And that is a big deal, because not every actress is worth admiring, at least, not to me. So many of them are so phony, but she is so real, and incredible. Martin Wood proves to be one of my favorite SG-1 directors, next to Peter DeLuise. They were the most charismatic directors on the show, and I love all the Director Featurettes on the season six DVDs. I especially love how he says “CUT!!!!” and throws his hands… Read more »
Great interview! I’m pretty much only interested in the movies if they have the old SGA and SG1 cast, I really want to see what happened next for them. :)
Another vote for this movie they talked about that will tie up the three SG series. And, they say there’s a terrific script… DO IT!!!!
[…] don’t fret yet loyal fans. Amanda Tapping and Martin Wood did an interview for Gateworld recently and said that they would love to continue the series on as either a miniseries or continue […]