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Being cast on the third TV series in the Stargate franchise was like a dream come true for David Blue. A lifelong science fiction fan, he took on the role of the audience surrogate character — the young genius and video game slacker Eli Wallace.

Eli is swept up into an astonishing adventure in the premiere episode of Stargate Universe, a show that intended to break the mold of what a Stargate show looked like and how it would be written. SGU premiered in the fall of 2009, and although the cast and crew had to endure some vocal opposition from naysayers they went on to produce a show that was compelling, dramatic, and utterly Stargate. And although the show was prematurely cancelled after just two seasons, in the years since many more viewers have boarded Destiny to appreciate how, in many respects, the series was ahead of its time.

GateWorld sat down with David Blue at Gatecon: The Celebration in 2022, and (after life got in the way and caused much delay) we are proud to finally bring you this conversation in full. David talks about his time on the show, fan reception, and how Eli’s final choice in the series finale signals so much growth for the character. He also considers how the story was left open-ended, and why he thinks any future continuation of Destiny‘s story ought to have SGU‘s original creators at the helm.

Our conversation with David runs about 40 minutes. Watch it right here, or listen to the audio version with the player above! It is also transcribed in full blow. You can search for “GateWorld Interviews” wherever you get your podcasts. And subscribe to GateWorld on YouTube for more original interviews and other Stargate videos coming soon.

GateWorld: David Blue, I have been looking forward to talking with you for … 13 years ago SGU started!

David Blue: Oh, God … that’s so much longer than it feels!

GW: OK, we’ll leave the numbers out of it. Numbers are bad.

DB: OK. “Yesterday”!

GW: I had a chance to visit the set before you premiered. And we met Brian and got to see Destiny in person, got to see the gate. And then we went on this incredible ride that was over way too soon.

DB: “So say we all.”

GW: I want to talk about the show, I want to talk about Eli, but let’s start with Gatecon first. You’re here hanging out with fans in Vancouver. What draws you to the conventions and what’s the experience like for you?

DB: I’ve actually wanted to do Gatecon For a long time. It’s my first time getting invited. Not only because I love doing conventions, I love seeing the fans, hanging out with the fans, seeing my fellow actors and artists and the background people, the crew and all of that. But I love Vancouver. I fell in love with this city, pretty much midway through Season Two – just in time to get canceled. I think I said to somebody, “I think I’m gonna live here forever.” And then it was like, “You gotta leave!”

So doing Gatecon, where I get to see friends, have fun, talk about the show that we all love, and also the city that I love, I couldn’t pass it up.

GW: Now, you were a science fiction fan. And you had done sci-fi/fantasy stuff before. We loved watching you on Moonlight, which is another show that didn’t go as long as it ought to have.

DB: Is it me? Am I the reason the shows keep ending too early? [Laughter]

GW: No, it’s an underappreciated genre!

DB: There you go.

GW: So you were a Stargate fan already when you got when you got your audition. Would you tell us a little bit about coming into this franchise as somebody who was already familiar with it and already loved it?

DB: I want to always clarify, because I had seen all of SG-1 and all of Atlantis before I was ever cast. But to be completely upfront about it, I had seen it kind of at first just by happenstance – because it was always on in repeats and stuff. I wasn’t watching when it was airing, at first; it was just always on and I would always catch it. And I ended up seeing all of the episodes because it was always on when I was getting ready for work or coming home from school or something like that. And then by the time I think Atlantis came around, I’m like, this is now destination television for me.

So much so that when I got the audition – I think I was in New York shooting my second season of Ugly Betty when they got me the audition for Stargate Universe, this new Stargate. And not only because it was another Stargate, but because of the character description – which I’ve said before, but sounded like McKay – I just remember thinking, “I can’t do this. I can’t be more or better McKay than McKay.” So I was gonna pass on it.

GW: Really?

DB: I absolutely was. I mean, I want to work and I love what I do, but it felt like I don’t know what I can bring to this. I don’t think I’m the right one for it, you know. And then I talked to some of my friends who had been on the other Stargates, and they were just wonderfully raving about their experiences. And I decided to do it. And then I found out that the character description wasn’t quite everything, and that the script was really good, and I just wanted to be on it.

And it’s funny – not to talk about the negative side of things, but the stuff that the people who never watched the show, who hated on it because they never watched the show, the reason they hated on it without seeing it were what drew me to it. I had no interest in doing five more seasons of a show that was like SG-1 … because SG-1 exists! And it’s great! I had no interest in recreating Atlantis, because Atlantis is great.

So the idea of these creators of a show who made a franchise and a (to coin a term) universe that I love, expanding on it, telling news stories within it, trying to mix up the style a little bit – that was so exciting to me as an actor, and as a fan. I wanted to be part of that. If they came up to me right now and said, “We’re doing a whole new kind of Star Trek with a different spin,” I would be in. But what was great about Universe is it wasn’t even that. It was a gate, O’Neill, S.G.C., Puddle Jumpers – everything, just with different people who weren’t supposed to be there.

I loved the idea of risk, and drama, and tension, and all of that. So all I needed was that, and I was in and I wanted it so much so that I was worried I wasn’t going to get it. And I loved it from day one, and it hasn’t ended since.

GW: One of the things that the Stargate writers are so good at is, SG-1 starts with “It’s us.” It’s the present day. We’re just out there in the galaxy doing our best, getting into trouble and trying to get out of it. But SG-1 got more and more competent and more and more powerful. We got alien tech, we got ships, and so now the challenge for the writers in the long term is dealing reversals. And SGU – the premise, the pilot, is the biggest reversal you can think of. Because you’re in the middle of an Ancient ship, but as the teaser says every week, it’s the “wrong people” in the wrong place.

DB: You know – I hate retelling things that were told to me, or anything like that, so forgive me for quoting (or probably misquoting). But the way that I think Brad put it was amazing: I think when we first started, or even when I was just up for the role, I think I asked him, “Why are you doing this? I loved SG-1, I loved Atlantis – why are you doing this?” And he said, “By the time we were on like ‘Season 12’ of SG-1, they were superheroes.” And I agree as a fan watching it – there are certain things you watch that you’re like, “They’re gonna figure a way out of this. They always do, and they will.”

And it’s nice, and it’s comforting, and it’s fun – and it’s still great. But at a certain point it’s like, okay, they’re always gonna win. And Brad sort of alluded to, we wanted to see what would happen if we weren’t sure that people were going to succeed. And again, I love that. I love the idea of not knowing.

I auditioned for the lead of a big Star Wars-y type movie, [a] prequel, and you’re like, “I know you survive because you’re in the next movie!” And I always joke that there’s no risk. “We’re about to die!” You’re like, “You’ll be fine.” There’s no risk.

I love Michael Shanks, [he’s] a buddy of mine. But Daniel Jackson got to the point where he was Superman. You’re like, “You’ll just come down, you’ll snap your fingers Thanos style and everyone will be gone.” So to have a group of people that you don’t know how they’re going to come out the other end excites me. Even as a fan viewer nowadays.

Not to go off on a tangent, but it is funny. It really is true: the things that people who never watched the show and didn’t know, really, anybody who was hesitant, were the things that I think drew everyone involved to it. Whether we were fans, like me, or not like some of the others – it was great characters, a really compelling, interesting story, beautiful sets, amazing special effects. The only nerves I think a lot of us had going in who were aware were the fans. There was this worry of, “Ooh, are they going to like us?” And that was before we even knew anything else, you know, it mattered to us. We wanted to expand the family. That was always the goal. And I still think we did.

GW: We started talking with Brad [Wright] and Rob [Cooper] – you know, our annual pilgrimage to Bridge Studios – we started talking with Brad and Rob probably [in] 2006 or 2007 about the next spin off and what they wanted to do. And I, I think we were the ones who broke the news that they were going to call it “Stargate Universe,” and they had no idea what it was going to be about but they had the name. And I remember it must have been 2008 because they weren’t working on the show actively yet. You weren’t in production yet. And I said to Brad, “I mean, it’s got to be different enough that it’s not just a copy-paste of the same show, but it also has to be similar enough that it’s Stargate, and you’re going to bring along at least most of the fans.” And he said, “You’re exactly right.”

I feel like the show did that in spades, but it was a different show. And it was a different show in part because those guys also wanted to write a different show. They didn’t want to write 10 more seasons of the same stuff.

DB: I don’t want to speak too much on the negativity of it all – too much, because God knows it’s been spoken about enough. Although there’s a lot of misinformation. And one plea I will make to fans, or anybody who loves or claims to love, Stargate, is seek it out. I’ve answered in a bevy of interviews and posts, and I even did a livestream of it a few months ago to re-answer the questions and the facts. There’s a lot of misinformation, and people still believe it. And I really wish they’d find out what the truth of it is.

But the thing I’ll always say to anybody who, back then, had a problem with even the concept of a new type of show: It’s the same people who created the thing you love. So first of all, give it a shot. You know what I mean? They literally made what you love. You can’t crap on it if they made the thing you love. But also, they’ve done it now for 15-plus years, technically. They’re going to want to do something different. They don’t want to just keep doing the same thing. And I respect the heck out of that.

Today on social media before the convention, I’m defending the show 10-plus years later when people try to say things like, “Oh, it’s not Stargate,” or “Discovery is not Star Trek,” or something like that. Yes, it is – first of all, because it’s in the name. Secondly, it’s in the universe. That’s all it needs. But even more than that – let’s use us, for an example: you have O’Neill. You have the world, the history, that everything exists.

I always liken things (not to compare) to Star Trek: I love Next Gen. I started watching Deep Space Nine. I sort of watched Voyager. I didn’t really watch Enterprise. There were some that were for me, there’s some that weren’t, which is fine. But as I’ve gotten older I’ve rewatched them, and I love them all for different reasons now. They’re different stories around the campfire that take place in the same world, and I think there’s room enough for that.

And I loved Universe as a fan. They did experiment with new things, and they tried different kinds of storytelling, and I found them fascinating. There’s a reason we as a cast got together every night and watched it live together as it was airing. Because we weren’t just in it, we liked it. And I meet them here at the con and all sorts of other places – there are millions of people who liked and love it now. And I think that shows that it did something great.

GW: And millions more who are discovering it after the fact. I can’t tell you how many e-mails and comments I’ve fielded through GateWorld are “SGU was my show. I came to Stargate through SGU.”

DB: You know, it’s wild, and I worry that any of it seems like hyperbole, because it’s not. It’s been … [mumbles] years. I get an e-mail, a DM or a comment a day asking, “I just finished watching it. What happens in Season Three? You can’t leave me hanging like!” Non-stop. And I think that shows that we not only touched on something great, but that it was it was quality, it was good.

To be honest, I don’t even think I need to defend it anymore, because I don’t think it ever needed to be defended. But I do love to sing its praises. I respect the hell out of – behind and in front of the screen – everybody involved in it, before us and on our show. The stories they were telling were amazing. We would get the script – it was so funny, I don’t know if you’ve heard this before. We would be filming on set, a new script would get e-mailed to us, and everyone would scatter like roaches with the lights turned on. They’d find corners, and everyone would just be reading the script trying to see what happens next. And we were the cast.

That’s how good it was. And that’s why Ben Browder reached out to me and was like, “I want to be on this show.” That’s why when Robert Knepper came on he’s like, “I’m so happy to be here. This show is great.” It was a fun place, but it was also good work. I’ve rewatched it recently. It holds up a decade later! That’s a sign that it’s pretty freaking cool, you know?

GW: Yeah, it not only holds up, it in a lot of respects was ahead of its time.

DB: Yeah. I mean, again, testament to Brad Rob Carl, Joe Andy, Ron, everybody.

GW: But the Stargate is the ultimate vehicle for storytelling, and going into a very different kind of Stargate show, a Brad Wright script is a Brad Wright script, and it’s gonna be a banger. A Carl Binder script, and a Joseph Mallozzi script …

DB: Yeah, they’re fantastic writers. They’re so good at what they do.

GW: When you give them different tools and let them stretch different muscles …

DB: Yeah. All of the creatives involved in the thing were just killing it. Everyone’s like at the top of their game. I mean, every single time you would have … I remember yesterday I was in the dealer room here at the con, and somebody had like, “Oh, this is an actual chip used on set that we’re gonna sell.” And it lit up, and it looked crazy cool. And I’m like, Look at the detail they put into a thing that probably no one saw!

If there’s anything I’ve learned over and over and over again with fandom, let alone Stargate, is they’re wonderfully supportive, and there. Conventions like this remind me of that. I remember when we were premiering at San Diego Comic-Con for the first time, and we had already heard some rumblings that some people were hesitant about a new series and all that stuff. But we were having a blast because we had filmed a bunch. And Ming Na and I were backstage at Hall H (which is the biggest hall at Comic-Con), and I think she said to me, “I just hope anyone’s here.” And I was like, “Yeah, me too. I don’t know … just give us 100, 200 people.”

And we walked out and it was 7,000. It was sold out. And we’re like, “Oh, cool! Okay!” You never know how big the audience is going to be. But without fail, the Stargate fans show up.

GW: Yeah, great fans. Let’s spend some time talking about Eli. He didn’t get a full story – he didn’t get the entire arc that Brad and Rob have in their heads, but we got 40 episodes. We got two years with this guy, and he changed and he grew.

DB: And shrunk! [Laughter]

GW: Well you posted recently about how he literally shrunk as part of that journey. So tell us about Eli’s journey over the course of those two years.

DB: I loved it, beginning to end. You know, they kept their cards close to the chest about what was going to happen. They wouldn’t often tell us where things were going, unless we hounded them, poor guys. And I just knew going in, they made it real clear to me that Eli was going to be a fish out of water; he was going to be the audience surrogate. Which is a lot of pressure to put on an actor! But he’s like, “You’re them. You are somebody who doesn’t know the Stargate exists, jumping in.”

I kind of took it as I am my family, who hadn’t watched Stargate. It was like my responsibility to make sure they’d understand what was going on. Not that I was rewriting it or anything, but the performance of it, to be an access point if you will.

And the way they wrote him was great. We didn’t really want to be there, even though he was excited about the prospect. He didn’t really know what he was doing. He was just kind of a tool that people needed to use. And he was chasing others around. How did I phrase it this other day? He looked at Young and he’s like, “Oh, you’re in charge. Okay, cool.” And Rush, “You know, more than me. Okay, cool.” And then as time went on, what I loved about the way they wrote him, and what I loved about performing in him, is he started realizing their flaws – like a kid growing up and realizing your parents aren’t infallible. He started seeing that maybe Young doesn’t make the right choices all the time. He started seeing that Rush has ulterior motives, but also maybe a good heart. And what I loved in Season Two is he sort of came into his own saying, “You know what, if you’re not going to do it, maybe I need to.”

GW: “Maybe I can.”

DB: “Maybe I can, and maybe I need to.” Actually, there you go – the breakdown for Eli was something along the line of “acerbic sense of wit, an untested wunderkind” … the untested part. And I think two years on Destiny tested him. And by the end, you know, there’s a little bit of “I don’t want anyone else to risk themselves. Let me do it.” But I also think there’s a bit of, “I don’t trust that you will. I think I will.” And I loved that.

I love the growth. And I always quote the scene with Carlyle – with Rush, sorry – that sticks me, where Rush says, “You know, you’ve come a long way since you were that video game slacker I met.” And Eli says, “You’ve been pretty much the same.” I love that so much! Because it’s exactly how I saw his journey. He didn’t grow into perfection or anything like that, but he grew into the confidence of being able to want to try, and thinking he could maybe.

GW: The way that I heard this dynamic described between Eli and Rush – I don’t know if it was the producers who gave us this image – was Mozart and Salieri.

DB: I love that.

GW: And Rush was dealing with his resentment of the fact that he was not – that Rush himself was not Mozart.

DB: Yeah. And it started on episode one! There’s literally a problem and he can’t solve it. The minute you meet him he hates me for doing something he couldn’t do.

GW: And he wants to co-opt you as a tool to get where he wants to go. But by the time we get to “Blockade” and “Gauntlet,” just as you said, Eli has not only realized that he can do it, but he needs to be the one to do it.

DB: Forgive my bad memory … which episode was it? I remember right when Young leaves Rush on a planet [Season One’s “Justice”]. That’s the first, like, “That’s a choice that … I don’t like him, but that seems like an overreach.” And then there started to be [Young] asking him to do this for him, spy on him, do this – these little moments where you’re just like, “I don’t know if you’re a good person after all.” And those are what excite me as an actor – but also just playing the character of Eli that I loved so much – the changes in the relationships.

And to be honest, I think that’s a testament to the writers. Part of that stretching they wanted to do was, instead of “these are the people in different situations” it was what television has sort of grown into nowadays, which is “watch these people evolve and change.” You know, Sons of Anarchy: he’s this and then he grows into that. Breaking Bad: he’s this and he grows in that. It’s what audiences seem to want to watch nowadays. And the creators were a bit ahead of their time in that. Because I for sure see different characters in episode 40 than I saw in episode 1. A hundred percent.

GW: Yeah. And you go back and watch it, and you know the journey that someone like Eli has gone on, or someone like Volker has gone, and it changes the way that you watch the show and appreciate the performances.

DB: Yeah – for good or bad. Some people take a bad journey, some good. But that’s what makes stories interesting is the unexpected, the change, the growth, the hero’s journey (or lack thereof), the failure. That’s what I think excites us all about the stories. And we always want to hear new stories. I think they had a good job of it.

GW: What do you think we would have seen – or, I know you don’t know the answer to that – what do you hope we would have seen in terms of Eli’s growth in a third season?

DB: I can’t answer that. I can’t answer that because, to be clear (as I said on the panel today), it’s not like I know everything. I don’t have, like, a script for the finale or something like that. But I was lucky enough to be privy to some information about where it was going, what was happening. And I’ll never say it …

GW: You do know a little bit …

DB: I said on the panel today, and I’ll say it again: The reason I’ll never say it is twofold. Number one, it’s not mine to say.

GW: Yeah, it’s Brad and Rob’s story.

DB: They wrote it. It’s theirs. As a fellow writer, producer, and also just I would hope a good human being, it’s not my place to reveal someone else’s creativity. Secondly, if I say it, they’ll never do it because everyone’s heard it. So if I keep my mouth shut, maybe someday! But it kind of wraps up into that – where it was going, where it was evolving, and pieces and stuff.

But I will say this. I was always excited by and looking forward to, since we were canceled unexpectedly, looking forward to seeing what happened next. How his confidence grew, desperately hoping his heart would mend in a way where he would figure things out, since he found a soulmate and then very quickly lost her. And I was looking forward to him growing up and coming into his own.

You know – it’s so inside baseball, so it’s weird – it’s a strange thing as an actor, especially when you get to play a role over a while, there are parallels and big, huge differences, but they teach you as much as you inform them. And that’s definitely true with Eli: especially as he changed, I was sort of changing too in different ways, a bit in parallel. So I was kind of looking forward to more of that.

I joked with Brad, I think, the second to last week of filming. You know, I intentionally lost weight from day one of filming. That was my choice. I asked Brad, Rob, Carl and Joe, and they one hundred percent supported it. They loved the idea because it made sense. We’re on a survival show. Also for my own personal David Blue health and stuff I wanted to live longer and feel better. So I did.

And so I joked with Brad about two or three weeks before we finished, and I was like, “I have a pitch for Season Three.” And he’s like, “Jesus Christ … What?” And I said, “Okay, so they’re all asleep in their stasis pods. They wake up three years later and nobody can find Eli. And they’re like, he’s got to be here somewhere because we’re all still alive, right? And they just go room to room to room and they can’t find him anywhere. And they finally get to this one room and they open it, and for no reason fog pours out of the room. They can’t see anything! Finally it clears and they just see this person doing pull-ups – you just see their back!”

I wasn’t even remotely fit at the time, but I was just like, “… doing pull-ups, and then drops down and turns with like a peg leg, a gun, maybe an alien on his shoulder, patch, and he goes, ‘It’s been a long three years.'” I liked this idea that you see him and he’s different. What happened? We never had to do that, which was funny. But that’s why that hiatus between what would have been [Seasons] Two and Three I started working out even harder, because I just liked the idea of, “Ooh … what now?”

Plus I hated that [Brian J.] Smith and everybody would be going on jogging scenes in the show, and I was never in a workout scene! Yoga. That’s all I got to do. [Laughter] I’m like, “Where’s Eli while you guys are all working out together?”

GW: He did grow, he did evolve. And he came into his own in a way that was satisfying. Like the rest of “Gauntlet,” the series finale, is – it’s not enough, but it’s satisfying and it’s a beautiful finale. It really is, and Eli’s last scene is a testament to the beauty of where the character has gone.

So I’m not trying to get any anything out of you, but would you say that Eli’s journey is tied to Destiny‘s journey in some sense?

DB: Well, first of all, if I may say, none of us expected “Gauntlet” to be the end. I don’t think anyone knew it was going to be. They were very good at the show about kind of putting a semicolon at the end of every season. It was not meant to be the end. I don’t want it to be the end; I didn’t want it to be the end. But I think it weirdly served well.

I’ve said over and over – people are like, “I hate it. I hate it.” I’m like, it’s kind of cool in a way, because it puts it in the audience’s hand. It became a “Choose Your Own Adventure”: what do you think happened next? And especially with the whole “three years or more.” Is it going to come back? Is it happening right now? What’s going on? I loved that, because it made people’s imaginations spark. So in a way I kind of loved it. (I’d love to be doing more. I’d love to be filming right now!)

GW: Yeah. But the fact that they’re out there, they’re in a void, they’re frozen … it’s a pregnant pause.

DB: Yes, and I will defend [it]. And everyone’s like, “Did Eli …?” Eli’s awesome – come on. But to go back to your question … remind me what the question was! I forgot the question.

GW: Is Eli’s journey in some sense tied to Destiny‘s journey?

DB: Yes, and that’s actually partially why I love the “Eli” of it all. Because he wasn’t supposed to be here. He was supposed to … I don’t know, go to some other college, get some lame degree, or get a get a part time job or something like that to take care of his mom. And then instead he got kidnapped in his Last Starfighter fate. And from that moment on, could you let that go?

If right now – this is a huge nerd test that I’m about to fail – if right now I disappeared and reappeared on the bridge of the Enterprise and Picard is like, “We need you,” I’m like, “Goodbye everything, let’s go!” You know what I mean? And I think that’s what happened to him. I’m on a spaceship, making a difference, making new friends, living life, learning things, figuring things out. How do you go back to anything after that.

So wherever it ended up going, I think it’s tied to the Destiny. I think it’s tied to the gate system, to space, to aliens, a hundred percent. It’s in his DNA. He just didn’t know it until he met them.

GW: Big Finish just recently brought back – they got their license renewed and brought back some of the Stargate audio projects (which they had kind of wrapped up before SGU got their chance to tell stories). But here’s an example of another venue where we could tell stories. Would you be interested in revisiting Eli in some form?

DB: I would. You know, I’m really weird about it and I don’t know if people know, and I always feel bad because I do write, I produce, I direct, and all these things. But going back to the ownership of creativity, I love every fan fiction out there. I love every idea of continuation. But to me, especially knowing the little bit that I do about where they were maybe headed, if Brad and Rob aren’t involved it’s not it. It’s not canon.

It’s not fair to say that, because Star Wars, Star Trek, all these other things that exist … eventually someone else picks up the baton, as it were. So I’m not saying that can’t happen. Sure. But as long as they’re there, let alone maybe trying to do more, I feel like it’s stepping on toes.

So I’m always hesitant to participate in anything that says what happened, or speculate what happened, or anything like that, because it feels like I’m stepping on the toes of what actually happened, if that makes sense.

GW: If you did a project like that it would have to be a self-contained Eli story that’s not like an “alternate Season Three” or somebody else’s version of Brad and Rob’s story.

DB: Yeah, that’s a better way to put it. I love acting. I love what I do. I love the characters that I’ve played. So I’m always down to have fun and play, and I love working. And when people have asked me before – I’m not gonna lie, some people have reached out to me like, “I’m making a fan film, will you be in it?” And I always say no, not because I want to be in a fan film. Because I don’t want to step on the toes of what would have actually happened, or may happen (knock on wood) someday.

So with the whole self-contained thing, it’s the same caveat I tell them: as long as it doesn’t speculate about what happened to the crew of Destiny, or anything about wrapping anything up, or anything like that, of course. But the problem is it’s always that. Now, if Brad and Rob and Carl and Joe reached out to me in the next four seconds and said, “Hey, we want …” I’m like, “Yep! Let’s go.”

I’ll tell you this, having interviewed the entire cast of SGU and most of SG-1 and Atlantis, I’ve asked them all – because I get asked all the time – would you do more? Every single one of them said, “Of course.” Every single SG-1 person I’ve talked to is like, “I want us all to be together.” I haven’t talked to everyone from Atlantis, but 99.9 percent are like, “Yes, let’s do it.” We all love each other, we love the characters, and we love the stories, so to revisit them is like a blessing. You know what I mean?

GW: Boy, to get Brad’s movie that he was planning, for some sort of combined crossover rescue of the Destiny crew …

DB: Let me tell you, I feel just like the fans. When we got canceled most of us were on hiatus. So we had a two-month break. So I went back home, which was Los Angeles, and all my stuff was in Vancouver. And we’re like, “Well, I’ll see you in two months!” And then we suddenly get canceled. [We] find out on Twitter. And I think I messaged Brad on some social media. And I said, “Hey, is there any ‘maybe not’ to this? Because all of my stuff is stored in Vancouver. Do I need to move? What’s happening?”

And he said something (I think I still have it), he said something along the lines of, “No, wait, I’m working on something.” And I got my hopes up so hardcore, not just as an actor who wanted a job. But because I was like, “Ooh, more!” We loved coming to work. So then when that fell through or didn’t happen …

GW: This was the “let’s see if we can take the show somewhere else. Let’s see if we can get Apple to do something …”

DB: Yeah. And he told me, very similarly, what he was thinking of doing. I was like, “Yes! I want to play with Michael Shanks and Ben Browder and Claudia and Amanda. Bring it!” And Hewlett, oh my God. It was exciting. It’s unfortunate. Because I think that alone – fans would have lost their minds. It would have been so much fun.

GW: For sure. But more than a decade has gone by now. Is this sweet memories at this point? I mean, not the cancelation, but when you look back on the experience.

DB: I mean, yes and no. During the pandemic – we were already friends, but during the pandemic I started having monthly phone calls with Ben Browder. I’d just be walking around my neighborhood and we just be on the phone talking, and we would every once in a while talk about Stargate and talk about … we all know things that we’re not supposed to know. Talk about what he’s pitching and what he’s trying to do. And always, again, it comes down to “God, it would be fun to be in it with each other, wouldn’t it? It would be cool to do things with each other. Wouldn’t it be cool if this happened?” Same thing with Robert Ricardo, Connor Trinneer …

It’s sweet memories because in a weird way, it didn’t end. Not only our specific Destiny stories – they’re up there somewhere, doing something – but we’re all still friends. We all still talk about it. When you do conventions it still lives on. So I hope that’s not sad in a way. To be clear it’s not about “you can’t let it go” or something like that. It’s like looking back at any wonderful experience and being glad it happened, and just enjoying the memories of it.

I have a kino in my house, so it’s cool to look at it. It doesn’t make me sad – the only thing that makes me sad is that it’s over. Hopefully for now. But that it ended. What is that quote? “Don’t be sad that it ended, be happy that it happened.” That’s what I try to hold on to, because life’s too short not to.

Why, what do you think happens? What would you want?

GW: You’re interviewing me now?

DB: Yeah, don’t interview an interviewer! You’re screwed. [Laughter] I mean, look at this convention. How many people are here supporting a thing … if they were here for SG-1, how long ago was that? And they’re here – dressed up, getting autographs, having costume competitions, selling and/or buying props.

GW: I hosted a panel yesterday, and I said at the end of it to the actors who were on stage, Stargate is special to us. For some people, they just watch it. It’s a cool TV show. But we come from all over the planet, and spend a lot of money to come to conventions like Gatecon, and invest our time and our money and our passion because it matters to us. Because somehow it got under our skin and it became a part of us.

DB: I’m a huge nerd, I have watched everything. But I had a Star Trek: The Next Generation birthday party, “How to Host a Mystery” birthday party, when I was younger.

GW: I went to one of those.

DB: My friends and I would watch the shows and immediately hop on the phone and talk to each other about the episodes and what we thought, and what was going to happen next. I went to my first convention ever because I begged my dad to bring me to a Star Trek convention in my small town where I was growing up. And it was my first time seeing TV-film actors and getting their autograph. I entered a raffle. I was not old enough to drive, but I entered a raffle to win a car that had the entire cast airbrushed on the front of the Trans Am, and the gear shift was like a warp core. I was like, “I want it so bad!” And that’s still me.

So to then be a part of that, to be on the other side of the table all of a sudden, it means the world to me. Because I remember that – I remember what I wanted when I was that.

GW: And you are that for an 11-year-old somewhere.

DB: I hope! I try. You know, that’s why I’m exhausted at cons, because it’s my job to provide that. But also, I remember, with that feeling, Star Trek: The Next Generation changed who I am now. Hearing Barclay say, “I plan to go to a party and talk to everybody and then when I get there I talk to the plant.” I’m like, that’s me. It made me feel less alone.

It may give me stuff to aspire to, and Stargate did that for countless people. I’ve met them. Even the ones for SG-1 and Atlantis. But every time I meet one who says that about Universe – I don’t know how to describe it. It’s like icing on the cake. I’m an actor. I got paid to do a job. I enjoyed the job. I made friends. That alone is amazing. The fact that I also maybe touched some people’s lives and left a mark … you can’t even quantify that.

GW: Well, from the fans – SGU fans especially – thank you. Because it matters to us.

DB: That’s nice – thanks. I appreciate it. It’s weird. It’s weird because I want to say thanks. You know what I mean? As an actor, I do what I do because of the audience. Without an audience, what do we do? We’re just crazy people who talk to ourselves. But with an audience it’s fun, and you can sometimes make a living doing it. It’s wild. So seriously, thank you. And to all of the fans.

I can just say from SGU – we looked at the Twitter as we were premiering to see what everyone thought. Until I told them not to we read the message boards. I immediately wanted to do cons to see what was going on and have discussions about it and all of that. It matters. It may not directly influence storylines. I mean, you know, it’s entertainment. There’s no ownership, and I think that’s something that fandom nowadays has to kind of work on a little bit. I’m not just talking about Stargate, I’m talking about like fandom.

But it’s for fandom, you know? They are the audience, and they’re very important, and it wouldn’t happen without them. I hope they realize that.

GW: What are you doing now? Where can we find you? What can we look for you in next?

DB: Well, there’s been a bit of a pandemic going on! Actually, it’s been quiet, because the whole industry shut down for two years. What have I done recently? So I am a villain on a kids show. I’ve been for a little bit – Henry Danger, and then Danger Force. I’m the bad guy, which is kind of fun having played the nice guy for so long. I had a bunch of movies, everything from a Christmas movie to rom-com to World War II historical kind of thing, to a horror movie, to a thriller.

What’s next up on the plate? I honestly don’t know. I’ve actually been writing and producing and directing and teaching a lot. I started a Twitch stream, 4DavidBlue, during the pandemic – kind of to keep myself sane, and discovered a wonderful community of people that I not only play games with, but also interview people Ming Na, Amanda Tapping, Ben Browder, and interview people in chat and stuff like that.

Julie McNiven (who played Ginn) and I started six years ago – we just discovered we had a lot of stories we wanted to tell. And we got coffee one day, and we’ve now written three pilots that we’re trying to take out, one sci-fi, one period, one fantasy. Developing a few features with some other people. Producing some stuff. Might try to produce something with Alaina [Huffman, “Tamara Johansen”]. We were just talking about it today.

Nothing coming up that I can talk about, but I love what I do when I’m not going anywhere.

GW: We’re excited to see what’s next.

DB: Yeah, and I think all of us kind of view – you know, we might not have all read the script, but I think all of us view Stargate as like this red bat phone off in a corner. If it rings, we’re coming.

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Special thanks to David Blue for his time and insights, and to the whole team at Gatecon for hosting this event! Watch GateWorld for more interviews coming soon.