AMANDA TAPPING: Tapping a Nerve Dreamwatch #93, May 02 (extracts printed with permission from Dreamwatch)

Tapping a Nerve

Dreamwatch: There have been significant changes on Stargate recently, primarily the controversial departure of Michael Shanks...

"I understand why Michael wanted to move on, but I also think that the show is going to be so different without him. I’m sad at losing the dynamic of the four SG-1 members by losing one [of us]. I’m really sad about that. On a personal level, as a friend of Michael’s and someone who spent five years hanging out with him 24/7 practically, I don’t know how it’s going to affect the show."

They’re going to bring in a new character that they introduced at the end of last season [Corin Nemec’s Jonas Quinn]. It’ll either be a really great thing and infuse new life into the show and create another interesting dynamic...or not! I really don’t know what to expect.

I’m excited about next season in some ways because it is going to be different. I don’t know how the dynamic is going to work. I think it’ll probably be the last of the series. I just find it incredibly sad that we couldn’t have finished what we started [with Michael]."

Dreamwatch: It must have been an emotional experience for you all when it came time to shoot Shanks’ final scenes in Meridian?

"Absolutely heartbreaking...the last two episodes were, actually. Christopher Judge [Teal’c] and I couldn’t even look at each other without bursting into tears. On Michael’s last day of shooting the three of us couldn’t get through a scene without crying. It was crazy. We were inseparable. Our craft services person [on-set caterer], Jack, brought us a pot of tea and biscuits. We sat in Michael’s trailer, having tea from little tea cups, crying. It was very heartbreaking. Finally, Christopher had to leave because he couldn’t take it anymore. I stayed for about 10 more minutes. I said “I’m cried out, man. I gotta go.” It was very difficult."

Dreamwatch: The character of Major Sam Carter has changed quite a bit over the last five years of the show so far...

"I think that in the first season and a half she was a very linear character and then they [the show’s writers and producers] opened her up emotionally and gave her more depth and more warmth and more humour. Then I think in the last season a lot of that has sort of gone away. Now, she’s like the techno babble speaker and very exposition-based. They’ve given me some great episodes this season, no doubt. There’s certainly been some wonderful emotional moments this season, but I would like to see her open up again. I would like to see more of the soldier come out. I would really like to see her develop a healthy relationship with someone, someone who doesn’t die."

Dreamwatch:The ‘dead boyfriend syndrome’ is obviously a source of frustration for you...

"It is a great source of frustration and embarrassment, I have to say. It’s embarrassing being the black widow of the show. I’d also like to see more humour. Christopher and I have talked ad nauseum to the producers about developing the relationship between Teal’c and Sam. We’d actually played some moments in the second to last episode [Meridian] that ended up being cut out due to time constraints. I was so disappointed because there were just some really lovely moments which showed how desperately these characters care about each other and how much they loved each other. They snipped them out and I thought, “There was your opportunity to show character development through relationships.”

I sound like I’m just so down on the Stargate producers: “You let Michael go! There’s no love in Sam’s life!” [But] if this is the last season, let’s show that they’re friends at least, let’s have a conversation for crying out loud!"

Dreamwatch: In some respects Stargate SG-1 can appear to be a very formulaic action-adventure SF show, but the format allows for great diversity. It’s an unusual series, which can encompass episodes as diverse as Wormhole X-Treme! and Meridian. Is that a challenge for you?

"It’s part of the challenge and part of the joy. I think if I was on a truly formulaic sci-fi show, I’d go nuts! Because our show is present day, because we’re real life, current, fallible human beings and because our esteemed leader [Colonel Jack O’Neill, as played by Richard Dean Anderson] is such a goof, it helps to make it more interesting. I think Rick really had a mandate when he started the show that there had to be humour, and I think that is what saves our show so often. I like the fact that there is that diversity. I like the fact that we’re not on a ship every day. I like the fact that we don’t have a prime directive...that we make mistakes. Some of the greatest joys for me as an actor on the show is playing those “uh oh, we made a mistake” moments, because people do. If you’re charting this unexplored territory, then we’re not going to be perfect. I like that; it’s not challenging at all, it keeps it interesting. The challenge would be if we didn’t have that diversity."

Dreamwatch: It seems you have ambitions to write and direct episodes of Stargate. You’ve famously mentioned your idea for a planet run by women.

"I want to direct an episode! I actually asked at the beginning of season three, at the same time as Michael did [Shanks went on to direct Double Jeopardy] and for whatever reason [mimes her lack of penis with her wiggling finger]...I can’t say that. I’d be so fired...! I’m sure that my lack of penis had nothing to do with it. For whatever reason, I wasn’t allowed to and that’s a source of frustration to me, to be honest. I actually think that the depth of understanding that we all have for the show now is very strong. The dynamic, the relationship that I have with the crew and the fact that I spend a lot of time sitting behind the monitors watching the process, means that I have learned a great deal about it over the course of five years. I think I’d be pretty good [director] for a first-timer. That’s not to say that I’d be a great director, but I don’t think I’d be that bad!"

Dreamwatch: What’s your reaction to the growth of Stargate fandom?

"Oh my God, it’s amazing. I have to honestly say, after all this time, I’m still blown away by the generosity of the fans, by their encyclopaedic knowledge of the show, by the amount of thought they put into questions they ask or comments they make on the internet...It’s overwhelming, it really is. No matter how tired you are or how sick, you walk onto that stage [at a convention] and you get so much more than you have to give from the fans."

Dreamwatch: Is Stargate fandom bigger in the UK than in the US?

"Yes. There’s more fervour around the show here."

Dreamwatch:So apart from writing, directing, getting a boyfriend who doesn’t die, having Michael Shanks back and visiting a matriarchal planet, what other ambitions would you have for the last season of Stargate?

"I’d like to go fishing with Jack. Once and for all. Gosh, I don’t know. I would like to see – this is gonna sound really heady – the consequence to Carter personally of war, of killing and what that does when this character lays her head on her pillow at night. What goes through her mind? I know that soldiers go through this. You have to question things. We’ve killed so many Jaffa, what if one of them was another Teal’c? That sort of thing. It’s too esoteric for an episode, I think, to actually write that as a sci-fi action-adventure episode [laughs]...But in my little perfect, bizarre world I’d love to explore what that means."

Dreamwatch: And if the movie happens, you’ll be there?

"If they ask me. From your lips to God’s ears!"

Amanda Tapping interviewed by Brigid Cherry and Brian J. Robb

(c) 2002, Dreamwatch.  All rights recognised.  No copyright infringement intended.

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