I've been thinking lately about what this campaign is, what it means to me.
The issues seem complex on the surface, but I really don't think they are. For me and for others, there was a sea-change in Stargate towards the end of Season Three. The previously solid friendship of Jack O'Neill and Daniel Jackson, the core of the wonderful family dynamic I so enjoyed in the SG-1 team, faltered.
I was appalled by a number of jarring notes sounded in the latter part of the season:
· The viciousness of Jack's very personal attack on Daniel and the foundation of their friendship in 'Shades of Grey', which was to be the blueprint for their relationship in Season Four and in the latter part of Season Five.
· The unexpected and distastefully unprofessional 'feelings' the hitherto proudly independent and thoroughly professional Sam inexplicably revealed for her commanding officer in 'A Hundred Days' and "Nemesis'.
· The separation of the team, with an unwelcome solo focus on Sam working day and night to save her man while his best friend was shunted off-screen in 'A Hundred Days'.
· The team not caring enough about Daniel to work flat out to rescue him in 'Crystal Skull' as he had worked so tirelessly for them in the past. The joke reference to his actions to save them in Season One's 'Solitudes' was not funny.
Jack ceased to care for his team as he once had. Those fans who are service veterans are frankly uneasy about the new and in no way improved Colonel O'Neill. Jack became arrogant, unheeding, selfish, a cynical, jingoistic bully, a buffoon and a fool in love and war. Like so many, I don't 'see' Jack as he is, I excuse and see Jack as he was, as I grew to love him. Daniel's best friend, a caring commanding officer who would die for his teammates, embracing his worst nightmare to spare them. Jack was tactile, affectionate, engaged with and committed to his team. He was strong enough to care far more than he was supposed to for his kids, to make it personal. There was so much depth to Jack, so many layers of character and motivation to tease out, so much subtlety and warmth and humour, pissiness, sarcasm and violence to be mesmerised by. Our ordinary Joe was extraordinary.
We lost Jack as we knew him in Season Four. Perhaps we had to, because the fond illusions of Brad Wright and the small minority of shippers apart, Sam and Jack were NEVER the hook of the show.
"A bit of changing of the guard had happened on the production side of Stargate at the end of Season Three," Shanks explains, "and I saw early on in season four what was going to happen. They were trying to introduce this character of Anise, and all of a sudden this love relationship between Carter and O'Neill seemed to blossom, and I just went to the writers of the show and went 'What are you doing here? You're making it into a soap opera!' I knew that with all this going on, my character and Teal'c would be just left on the backseat, but they came back to me and said 'It's just something we're experimenting with." -- Michael Shanks, Starburst #286, May-02.
Sam was the focus of much of the creative energy in Season Four, to her detriment and to ours, as never before had a character received so much focus to so little purpose. We and Sam learned nothing. Of course, we were told that Season Five would feature lots of Sam because we'd seen so little of her...we've seen so 'little' of Super Sam! Saviour of the Universe, Xposition Grrl!, some previously devoted Sam fans are frankly sick of the sight of her. There's even more to come in Season Six, with a scary absence of spoilers for Jack which is eerily reminiscent of the scary lack of spoilers for Daniel in Season Five.
I like Amanda Tapping, a strong and capable actress, and I had always admired and respected Sam for being the most rounded and positive female supporting character I'd ever seen. I am nevertheless furious that "Stargate" has been systematically reinvented as Samgate, giving this character unmerited prominence that was built on the popularity of Daniel Jackson and Jack O'Neill, both characters reduced to a shadow of themselves.
The pettiness of the 100th episode celebration featurette which airbrushed Dr. Daniel Jackson, the man who solved the mysteries of the Stargate, right out of "Stargate SG-1" left me speechless and shaken. As did a fair bit of the revisionist history of Season Five, in which it was made clear to us we were to forget the tall cute guy in the glasses. Sam is the one who made the Stargate program viable yadda, yadda.
While Amanda freely admits to feeling his [Michael Shanks] departure has been a great loss, she also understands her co-star’s reasons for moving on. “Certainly, there are times when you reach a level of frustration where you know there’s so much more potential for your character, but it’s not happening,” she admits. “But, you have to remember that it is an ensemble show; there are four main characters, so you can’t always expect to be the ‘A’ story line.” However, the actress sympathises with Shanks’ worries about being sidelined: she sometimes feels the same way herself.
“There are times when you feel creatively frustrated, and I guess that I’m feeling it a bit at the moment,” she admits. “This year has been very mixed. In this season, we’ve had a lot of emotional episodes for Carter, and some great stories. But, there’s also been a lot of techno-babble that I’ve had to speak, and if that’s all this character is going to be next year...” -- Amanda Tapping, Starburst #284, Apr-02.
No disrespect whatsoever intended to Amanda Tapping or to dear Sam Carter, but after two seasons in which her character has dominated much of the action, Sam has become less and less realistic, more and more of what fan fiction writers term a 'Mary Sue', an unbelievable character imbued with unearthly skills and characteristics. A classic example of that is the dead boyfriend of the week syndrome afflicting Sam in Season Five. To meet Sam is to fall in love with her and then dead at her feet, we are to believe.
"I think you can have that problem of writing a character into a corner, but at the same time you have the ability to bust him out of that corner. After all, with the character of Carter they managed to cross the 'mythical boundaries' with complete frivolity, saying 'We'll make her an astrophysicist, we'll make her a Captain and eventually a Major in the US air force. We'll make her a kick arse martial artist and an ace shot, and a field medic and an expert in technologies - not just knowing the basic principles of science, but understanding the technologies as well - and then she gets penetrated by a Goa'uld so now she has their inherited abilities! It's like 'Wow, she should have her own series!'" -- Michael Shanks, Starburst #286, May-02.
Meanwhile, Teal'c faded into the background. Fans actually argue that counting Teal'c's lines doesn't mean anything because he can say so much so eloquently with a look or his presence in a scene. I say, do you actually HEAR what you're saying? Teal'c, our strong, noble warrior, complex and flawed, is comedic relief or scenery. In his rare, show case episodes Chris Judge shines so much it makes his use as backdrop in other episodes that much harder to bear.
And Daniel - ah, Daniel. I loved Daniel Jackson, loved the way every 'geek' stereotype was turned on its head in him. Loved his depth, his passion and wonder, his fierce intellect, his compassion, his gentle love and determined loyalty to his friends, his sarcasm, his thirst for knowing more. Always more. There has never been a character with the dimensionality Daniel Jackson was imbued with by the sensitive portrayal of Michael Shanks and the commitment of writers such as Peter DeLuise and Robert C. Cooper. When Jack and Daniel were at the heart of the show, there was room and time for everyone. Sam is our star now and all must revolve around her. There was nothing left for Daniel, so much wallpaper in episodes that would at one time have given every team member a contribution to make. We learned so much about them all in those small moments. It was feast or famine, with Daniel either showcased or backdrop. Daniel was isolated from his team time and again, Michael Shanks speaking out for Daniel's inclusion in the team focus he missed.
According to Shanks, this season [Four] was a little disappointing in terms of how his character was, or was not, used. “Our writers dream up some great ideas when it comes to writing Daniel stories, and I’ve had some excellent ones this year. I relish those episodes as they allow me to spread my wings as an actor,” says Shanks. “Unfortunately, in group situations they’re still not quite sure what to do with my character. I think that’s been a common theme since the series began. Daniel is a bit of a loner and an outsider and, to top it off, he’s not a soldier. So when the fighting starts what do we do with him? We have him crouch behind a rock and leave him out of the action or we don’t have him in the scene at all."
“I found this happened more and more this year, especially since the creation of this red-herring relationship between Jack O’Neill and Sam Carter [Amanda Tapping]. The series has gone in a direction that I did not expect, and, believe me, I'm not saying that’s a bad thing at all. I'm just saying I think Daniel has been slightly limited this year in his actual interaction with the team. Again, stories where he has been the focus have been wonderful, but they sort of wind up excluding the rest of SG-1. So, if anything, my wish for next season would be for my character to be worked a little more into the group dynamic." -- Michael Shanks, TV Zone #134. Jan-01.
The degradation in characterisation is matched by a banality in much of the writing. 'Must see' slowly devolved into 'if I haven’t anything better on'. What has been lost? Some episodes continue to remain stand-outs, comparable with the best of the best season of Stargate, Season Two, the season of family and peaceful exploration. The season, not coincidentally, of the highest ratings. Even then, there were shows that were set on base and on world, and we welcomed the character insights they gave us. Earth-bound shows jar now.
I think the reason is simple...the balance has been lost. We have no new cultures to explore - even the best episodes in Season Five simply package American history and pass it off as the unlikely evolution of Norse Culture or Egyptian. Calvinists and cowboys are no sop for an audience hungry for that balance, for mythology and the challenge of alien and ancient cultures.
Season Five felt tired for the most part. We had re-hashed old plots from blockbuster movies and old episodes of "Stargate" not just revisited but in some cases insultingly re-packaged and re-filmed, while the writers cut a swathe through favourite races and recurring characters. The return of Martouf and Tanith were criminally wasted, along with the entire race of Tollan, Daniel, Teal'c and much else that made "Stargate" stand out. Instead, "Stargate" did the "X-Files". Badly. We have Brad Wright to thank for that. The NID sub-plot we've all been hallucinating for much of Season Five (we have to have been hallucinating, 'cos Joe says it isn't so) was invented by Brad Wright.
"The show was moving in a direction that seemed to hold less and less a place for my character,” explains Shanks. “There were a number of conspiracy plots developing and other Earth-based scenarios that were being done in order to flesh out the different aspects of dealing with the Stargate."
“Stargate had become a programme about a military group in a military institution surrounded by all the various aspects and organizations that people in the military might have to deal with. As the sole civilian of the team, other than Teal’c, there’s wasn’t much for Daniel to do. For example, in the fifth season we seemed to revisit many of the same planets we had been to in the fourth year. Being an anthropologist/archeologist, Daniel goes to other worlds to meet new races and study new cultures. Instead, we were dealing with old situations and becoming further entrenched in past conflicts. As a result, the archeological and cultural interests of my character had to take a backseat."
"It was getting to a point where Daniel was in scenes just to he there, you know, and, frankly, I didn’t want to do that any more." -- Michael Shanks, TV Zone #146, Dec 01.
The hook of the show was always the friendship between Jack and Daniel, the two original characters who drew us into SG-1 from the movie, the characters who ensured the movie was a worldwide sleeper hit. "Stargate" gained the box office it did because it drew in adults, particularly adult women. Those protesting so vociferously over the loss of Daniel Jackson consistently mourn the loss of their team, the family that so engaged us until mid-Season Three. The audience for "Stargate" has not changed, though it has been forgotten. "Stargate's" demographics are extraordinary for a sci-fi show, perhaps unique.
The primary audience for Stargate SG-1 [identified by Showtime] - a whopping 60% of its viewers - are adults aged 19 to 49, evenly split between males and females, which is unusual for a sci-fi show. --Gate Expectations by Melissa J. Perenson, Hollywood Reporter, Sept 4, 2001.
Those viewers, the ones who made the movie a hit, the ones so loyal to SG-1, have been falling away since the latter part of Season Three. A 15% fall then. On Showtime, a 26% fall within the first third of Season Four. "Stargate's" Season Four in Syndication has enjoyed being first ranked in the action hours. However, despite the claims of Joseph Mallozzi and Brad Wright to the contrary, its audience share is lower than previously. Interestingly, even with a 25% gain in the desired young male demographic, two of the three highest rated shows are those heavily focused on Daniel Jackson - 'The First Ones' and 'The Curse'.
The new audience, the mythic young males loves Daniel Jackson too. And regrettably, that 25% gain in young males means very little compared to the whopping 26% of the audience as a whole accelerating over to another channel on Fridays, Ten Sharp.
Oops.
"This was during a time during the show when we were trying to bump up the ratings and we were taking our cue from Seven of Nine, thinking that that might help the show. And, in fact, the show didn't need help. It was perfectly fine the way it was and we didn't need half-naked, really hot, skilled actresses walking around trying to keep our interest." -- Peter DeLuise, (Creative Consultant, writer, director) Audio commentary for "Crossroads"
We wish the producers of the show would refrain from disrespecting us so comprehensively. Many of the fans they dismiss as an 'out there' vocal minority are mature professionals. We're granted a respect in our daily lives we don't meet with from the production staff of "Stargate". They in turn have abrogated their right to our respect.
We are not just forgotten, but unwanted.
"First and foremost," Wright suggests. `The SciFi Channel is our new broadcaster, and we'll have a whole lot of new viewers, so our new guy is going to provide an enthusiasm and a newness to the team that the new viewers deserve. Nobody wants to tune in to a show for the first time and see a bunch of characters going through the Stargate where every one of them is in `been there, seen that' mode. I understand and respect our regular actors' decisions to act that way because it makes sense. This is their job and they have been doing it for five years. However, the new guy will give a freshness. He will deliver a fresh approach to how we look at every situation.' " -- Brad Wright, SciFi Magazine, Apr-02.
Not just unwanted, but dismissed.
stargate_heart_soul: Mr. Wright, have you even looked around? No one has to be 'devoted' to Michael to not like the idea of a coward, liar and thief suddenly merrily romping along with the friends of a man who he allowed to die without trying to aid in any way.
Brad Wright: You must be one of the people who won't be watching the show anymore. -- Official Lycos transcript of Brad Wright's Lycos chat 28-Feb-02
Not just dismissed, but insulted.
SJHW: Are the cast & crew aware of the SDJ campaign?
MALLOZZI: "Yes, some are more aware of it than others. Unfortunately for the real Daniel Jackson fans out there, the individuals involved in the SDJ campaign have done their cause a disservice by a) being rude and insulting and b) encouraging individuals to be rude and insulting and threatening to those involved in the production. As a result, they're viewed as an 'out there' vocal minority by many. And quite frankly, they haven't helped the character of DJ any." -- Joe Mallozzi in another chat with the SamJack Horsewomen, 13-Apr-02.
"We're all stunned; many of us are grieving and angry. We *URGE* you to *PLEASE* be *CONSIDERATE* of all MGM and Stargate Productions employees in your calls and letters while stating the strength of our feelings on the importance of Daniel Jackson to Stargate and our support for actor Michael Shanks." -- Admonition appearing throughout the SDJ website.
Rude and insulting? Um. Yes. Quite. That's not what my dictionary gives as the definition of 'considerate' but there ya go. Mr. Mallozzi has spoken. He hasn't offered any proof whatsoever, but he has spoken. At length.
We may watch and enjoy "Stargate SG-1", but as well as being fans, we are educated, articulate individuals who can obtain and comprehend authoritative industry data, such as Nielsen ratings. If the producers could accept this simple fact, we might in future avoid Joe Mallozzi embarrassing himself and MGM by vocally dismissing throughout the fandom a feature article in the influential online magazine Salon.com as a work of fan-fiction. Within the industry, Salon is as authoritative a source as the LA Times (which covered our campaign sympathetically) or the Orange County Register, a fact which appeared to have escaped Mr. Mallozzi's attention.
We've been privileged to read hundreds (525 and counting) of messages from fans on our guestbook, and hundreds more (350 and counting) via our letter forwarding service. The majority of fans posting and writing are not online fans. Some comment about using the computer in their public library or coming online to finding out what the hell was going on after seeing "Meridian", some after seeing "Small Victories" and wondering about that, some have read the articles in the press about the campaign, and in the US, the trailer for "Meridian" that followed the airing of "The Sentinel" on Showtime has led people onto the internet. Some have found us via our adverts, or via web searches. All the fans are stunned, utterly incredulous that there could even BE a Stargate without Daniel Jackson. It's inconceivable to them.
We at SDJ are dismissed as a vocal minority, but that is nothing new:
SJHW: How do you gage how the fans feel?
MALLOZZI: "That's a bit tricky as well. The fans who disliked D&C were very vocal - but that doesn't mean they're in the majority." -- Joe Mallozzi chats with the SamJack Horsewomen, 26-May-01.
The overwhelming response of the hundreds of fans posting at the site, the thousands calling MGM, the thousands writing letters and sending emails (so many MGM's feedback option now has an entry for "Stargate", the only TV show to have this option) and faxes is clear.
Reinstate Daniel Jackson. Give us our team, our family of SG-1 BACK.
Protest began when "Small Victories" aired on Showtime. The episode was shockingly cold, the family uncaring towards Daniel. There was time to have Major Samantha Carter, Ph.D, astrophysicist, simpering at her commanding officer, Colonel Jack O'Neill, but none for the team to express the mildest concern about their teammate Daniel's health or distress over them. Season Four was shallow and empty, the team's previously sizzling chemistry, their palpable love, affection and loyalty to one other inexplicably absent.
Instead of equality, we had favouritism. Jack apparently didn't just have the juvenile hots for his second in command, he couldn't give a shit about a man who was his best friend, the great hook of the show, their complex friendship and endlessly fascinating bantering and head to heads replaced by one-dimensional conflict, hurt without comfort or resolution.
The great irony here is that in re-tooling the show, Brad Wright has made error after error. Under his aegis, "Stargate" is the classic example of do what's wrong, harder. And yet, at the end of Season Three, optimism was high. He and the writers were gods who could do no wrong. They enjoyed the faith and fierce loyalty of their fans online, though the ratings had slipped 15% in the latter half of Season Three. Little did fans know, but the traits which had dissatisfied them in those episodes were to be the creative direction for Season Four.
"The show had developed an intensely loyal following of fans who loved its Trekkian premise: interplanetary adventure in which a team of four explorers dials a set of symbols embedded in a gate, allowing them to pass through and set foot in other worlds. What's more, in a category largely aimed at males in their teens and 20s, "Stargate" appealed to a broad audience that included many adult women.
Viewers loved the chemistry among the four leading cast members, a dynamic that some felt rivalled the camaraderie of the original "Star Trek" series. They were enthusiastic about Sam (Amanda Tapping), a strong female officer physicist, and they fell for the alien Teal'c (Christopher Judge), a paragon of dignity and strength. In particular, they attached themselves to the relationship between Jack, a crusty Air Force colonel (Richard Dean Anderson), and the learned archaeologist and linguist Dr. Daniel Jackson, played by Michael Shanks.
Indeed it was Shanks' character, with his Spock-like appeal to female fans, whom many viewers saw as the pivotal figure in the "Stargate" universe.
It's unclear how MGM and SciFi Channel could have misread the core audience for "Stargate" so dramatically and allowed Shanks, whom many viewers saw as the show's heart and soul, to slip through their fingers." -- Fan rebellion threatens Stargate by Mary McNamara, Salon.com, 13-Feb-02.
The team, the family was sacrificed for...what?
The emperor's new clothes, the myth of the SamJack ship, apparently. I doubt any successful show has been struck by such a miscalculation as this one. Brad Wright has pursued this alleged doomed, thwarted romance the majority of us find obvious, clichéd and rather distasteful. The popularity of the ship is the biggest myth of all, despite the sustained attempts to marginalize those who are fans of Daniel, of Jack and Daniel and the team.
Myth:
"Cautioned that within two episodes millions of people will phone, write or e-mail to bemoan the fact that 'Carter is going off with Jonas', Nemec gives a nervous laugh." -- Thomasina Gibson, writer in the SF press interviewing Corin Nemec for Xpose #67, Apr-02
Reality:
"Finally, I have found some people who have the same opinion on the relationship between Sam and Jack." -- Charlotte Thorn, SG-1 fan, letters page, Xpose #66, Feb-02.
So which is true? The perception of writers, at least one of whom is a member of the samandjack list (NOT Thomasina Gibson, I hasten to add!) involved with cast, crew and fandom, of which the Executive Producer is a SamJack shipper, along with the mysterious production staff poster 'CJ4' who was egging on the members of the samandjack list, and in fandom, the shippers are vocal and omnipresent, though that is nothing whatsoever to their discredit - or the perception of a viewer at home, who had to read a letter from a shipper in a sci-fi magazine to even find someone else who shared her 'romantic' view of the Sam/Jack relationship.
Revisionist history is a popular pastime of the Stargate producers and crew:
"One of my favorite scenes in this episode 'Solitudes' is when Sam falls on top of O'Neill and says, 'Ah, Colonel...,' and he comes back with, 'It's my sidearm I swear.' This is the first time we get the tiniest hint of a connection between the two characters. It really caught people's attention and there was a great deal of buzz about it on the Internet. Since then I've tried to make sure that there's a moment like that in all of my episodes... This has been a marvellous running joke that, I'm proud to say, has its origins in one of my episodes." -- Martin Wood, TV Zone #130 Sep 2000
Versus:
"....eventually Brad and Robert decided they really had to get the 'more than colleagues' relationship out of the way. Amanda and Rick wanted it stopped too, because they were tired of skirting round that arc. A lot of the fans weren't too happy either, so we decided to knock it on the head. Anyway, we got the whole 'feelings' thing out of the way, and I think it was necessary and long overdue." -- Martin Wood, Stargate Companion, 2002.
A lot of the fans? Hmm. Try a whopping 26% of the adult audience on Showtime who walked within the first seven episodes of Season Four. It's tragically easy to see how the producers could be misled by listening to fans telling them what they wanted to hear. If Wright and Co wanted to use the internet as a focus group, it behoved them to listen to ALL fans. If they had, we would never have had 'Divide & Conquer'. We would never have had overt ship. We would never have had Jack's distance from and conflict with Daniel. We would never have had Daniel separated from his team and sidelined week after week. Teal'c would not be wallpaper. Sam and Teal'c's friendship would have been explored. The team would still have been a family. Daniel would still be part of that team, that family. The team members would be written equally, they would all contribute to episodes and we would have character development.
Fans have been protesting vociferously for two years. Brad Wright has heard us. He's posted to us on the Stargate Usenet newsgroup.
Subject: Re: Disappointed with Season 4 (or Divide and Conquer)? Read this...
Date: 08/01/2000
Author: bradwright <bradwright@my-deja.com>
Folks,
Normally I wouldn't do this, but...
I've been amazed at the fan response of "Divide and Conquer".
I feel I should reassure those of you who fear O'Neill and Carter will soon be holding hands as they enter the gate. Their mutual affection has been developing since season one, and it was time to let it become a genuine obstacle in an episode. Their feelings would never have come out were it not for the extraordinary circumstances of the story. Sure they care about each other, and yes, that may occasionally complicate things, but: Carter and O'Neill will not become romantically involved. They are Air Force professionals.
(Your response to "Beneath the Surface" will be interesting...)
Also, if you're interested...
Anise was a guest star for a three episode arc we planned at the end of last year. She will not return.
Martouf's death served the story. His death was heroic, and, obviously, a surprise. (I'm still getting flak for killing Kawalsky in episode one of season one, and he's been back on the show twice since.)
Rest assured, we read your posts and care about what you think of the show. As I write this, we're just finishing off the last six episodes of season four, so, much of the season is already completed. I don't think you'll be disappointed.
Either way, I'm sure I'll read about it here, and enjoy the debate.
Brad Wright,
Executive Producer, Stargate SG-1
Mr. Hank Cohen, President of MGM Television Entertainment, graciously acknowledged the efforts of fans to help secure Season Six of Stargate.
Stargate SG-1 Season Sixth Notice
There has been a considerable amount of speculation and rumor regarding the return of Stargate SG-1 for a sixth season. It is important to let you, the fans, know that though we are hopeful, no decision has been made.
All of us at MGM are extremely grateful for your outpouring of support. While we are closer, the job is not yet done. But, please know that your cards and letters have definitely gone a long way toward making Season Six a possibility.
"We hear you!"
Hank Cohen
President
MGM TV Entertainment
Mr. Hank Cohen doesn't appear to be hearing us now that we the audience are asking something of him in return for the money we're investing in his show, instead of giving freely of ourselves. Brad Wright, meanwhile, is markedly less gracious towards the fans who fought hard and long, writing letter after letter in support of the show.
urdreamkeeper: Brad, do you think the fans have a lot of "pull" when it comes to how the show is run? Or is it mostly politics and such?
Brad Wright: Many fans will think their write in campaign was the key element in securing a sixth season. While Hank gives them credit in supporting us, I have to give the credit to Hank Cohen for selling Stargate to the SciFi Channel after Showtime had more or less cancelled the show. -- Official Lycos transcript of Brad Wright's Lycos chat 28-Feb-02
I'm really curious to know why the fans were called to arms to help secure Season Six of Stargate when the sale was a done deal in 1998.
1998 - USA Networks Inc.'s Sci-Fi Channel plans to pay an estimated $150 million for a mix of off-net and first-run rights to MGM's Stargate SG1, The Outer Limits and Poltergeist: The Legacy.
I'm not so much a cynic as a realist. The most likely scenario that suggests itself is that because MGM regards "Stargate SG-1" as a cash cow and they're so cash strapped they need to keep right on milking it 'til it moos, they needed the revenue from Season Six. With faltering ratings on Showtime and in syndication, this was somewhat of a hard sell.
The Sci Fi Channel has acquired the rerun rights to MGM Television's drama "Stargate SG-1" and as part of the deal, the network has ordered an additional 22 original episodes of the series. "Stargate SG-1," starring Richard Dean Anderson, had been running on Show-time arid in syndication. -- Hollywood Reporter, August 21, 2001
Sci Fi plans to launch what will be the sixth season of "Stargate SG-1" starring Richard Dean Anderson in June. Sci Fi also will run "Stargate SG-1" as a weekday strip starting in fourth-quarter 2002 as part of the network's 1998 deal with MGM.
Sci Fi officials said the ratings track record for "Stargate SG-1" in its syndication runs made it a valuable acquisition.
"It's one of the top syndicated hours in its post-Showtime run in weekend syndication," Sci Fi president Bonnie Hammer said. "We think it had vast potential on Sci Fi; it fits our genre perfectly, and our fans watch this show." -- Hollywood Reporter, August 15, 2001
With the benefit of hindsight, and despite the wry smile raised by well-meaning advice from fans to Bonnie Hammer to ask for her money back, I find it dispiriting that fans rallied so readily and fought so hard for the show and the team we love so much.
In the early days of the SDJ campaign, the producers denied outright that they knew Michael Shanks was leaving the show while fans were fighting to save it in the belief he would be part of it. The sale was announced mid-August. Brad Wright announced Michael Shanks departure in September at Gatecon. But of course there was no question that they knew Michael Shanks was leaving and they just didn't tell us because they really needed that ground swell of support for the show.
"Michael had made it very clear, to me, that he didn’t want to return and so the issue of replacing him came up even before the end of last season... It’s not - and was never - just ‘The Daniel Jackson Show’. Michael talked to me about this at the start of Season Five. He thought he was being under-used. I think he was being used at roughly the same level he had always been used.
Halfway through season five, when he was overtly miserable on set for reasons that may have been related to his perception of under-use, I really did make a concerted effort to let him know that there were stories coming down the pipe for him. It wasn’t enough. We talked about it and I said: ‘You know, I guess you need more than Stargate can offer you right now’ and he agreed. I didn’t ask him to leave, he asked me to let him leave. I told him life was too short and I wouldn’t hold him to anything. I wanted him to stay until the end of season five." -- Brad Wright, Impact #125, May 2002
I remain politely incredulous on this issue.
The furore over Michael Shanks' departure from the show and the loss of Daniel Jackson from the family of SG-1 knocks the fan efforts to help secure Season Six into a cocked hat. There IS no comparison. The British sci-fi press wasn't inundated for five months with impassioned letters to save the show. They were to save Daniel. No adverts appeared in the sci-fi press or in Hollywood Reporter or Variety to save the show. They did to save Daniel. Thousands of letters were written by fans to help save the show. Thousands and thousands more have been written to save Daniel. Thousands of overseas phone calls were made by British fans after "Meridian" aired - over one thousand received in the first six hours. Every call is counted as representing 50 to 100 viewers. Overseas calls are reputed to be an amazing thing to executives, who love to hear from fans who love their shows. One thousand in six hours, from British people, who just don’t do that? From British people with internet access, which makes the numbers even more significant.
MGM commented to one indignant caller who reported back to us that 'we've had a few calls'.
Way to respect your grieving, incredulous and frankly angry audience, MGM. Although it doesn't really matter. Brad Wright already told us we're being traded in for a newer, younger, more co-operative model that could care less about the geek and will embrace the coward who got him killed (who we're assured does feel a little bit responsible) to their bosom.
And MGM's response to those thousands and thousands of letters from all over the world - twenty-two countries at last count - to the deluge of letters published for five months in the sci-fi press, to the unprecedented adverts drawing attention to the departure of an actor, not even the cancellation of a show, but for a single character and a single actor, to the internet campaign with over 76,000 hits and rising, to the thousands of calls and to the viewers switching off at home we'll never hear from?
It has been five months, after all.
If we ever get a response, we'll be sure to let you know.
In the meantime, MGM would quite like us to shut up, go away and stop embarrassing them. Of course, the flaw in this otherwise damned fine plan is that they actually don't have a clue how many of us have already shut up and gone away.
Us.
You know?
The audience?
MGM would quite like the audience for "Stargate SG-1" to shut up and go away so they can get on with milking their cash cow, the one we, the established audience, helped them sell to the new channel, with its fresh new perspective and its new audience.
Um - thanks for that. Really.
We won't let the door hit us in the ass on our way out.
Much like Michael Shanks.
“From the moment I said that I was going to go, there didn’t seem to be any sort of fight from the producers to try to keep me. It almost seemed as if it were something that they were hoping I’d do so that they could have a fresh new perspective for Season Six."
"That angered me — and any second thoughts I had after that were quelled by the fact that it didn’t seem as if the door was even open for me to change my mind. If I changed my mind, that door wasn’t going to be open anyway, so it was almost as if the moment I said I was going to go, then that was the way it was going to be and live with it.” -- Michael Shanks, Xpose #66, Apr-02.
I'm British. I hate unfairness. I have a lot of American, Australian, Canadian and European friends online. They hate unfairness too. The thousands and thousands of people writing, the thousands of people calling, the hundreds posting at this site, they share our views. We hate the unfairness of this situation. We hate that mediocre creative and business decisions sidelined a beloved character and a talented actor, effectively ended the central friendship that was at the heart of this show and destroyed the team as a family.
How loyal are Stargate fans? Many of us writing, calling and posting are loyal enough to forgive mediocrity, to forgive poor characterisation and tired, re-hashed plots. To forgive what we've been dealt the past two years because until the latter half of Season Three, "Stargate" was sublime. There is no stronger ensemble cast than this one, no better blend of characters and chemistry than this. We were loyal enough to fight for the future of a show that could care less about what we wanted from it creatively, and for a production team that wants to trade us in because we expect too much from them creatively.
I don't know anyone who didn't struggle through Season Four wholeheartedly believing in Brad Wright, that once he understood his errors, understood he'd listened to a tiny minority he'd get it right. He'd understand that for an awful lot of people, Daniel is the main character, at the very least the equal of Jack. That the buddy friendship between Jack and Daniel is the heart of the show. That we do love the team as a family and we want to see them caring for one another.
Hope, optimism and trust sprung eternal. They sprung for two years.
We were fooled until Gatecon, September 2001.
We will never be fooled by this production team again.
To abuse two years of loyalty in the teeth of so much wrong in the show for so many - I can't adequately describe my disappointment and disillusionment in people I had hitherto trusted, respected and admired wholeheartedly.
There are fans who've posted at this site who withstood the departure of Daniel Jackson, driven from watching Season Six by the online shenanigans of Joe Mallozzi exercising his right to free speech, posting with impunity all over the internet with all the security of his position as a writer and producer on the show, the security of being seen as an official of MGM. Those fans can never be won back.
There are more fans who can't believe that Daniel is to be replaced by Jonas Quinn. The character is widely disliked, and not just by we horrible Michael Shanks fans being so nasty to poor Brad and poor Joe. MGM has to sell not just the loss of Daniel Jackson, but his replacement on the team we loved by the man who effectively killed him. A coward, a liar, a traitor, a thief. Also a Daniel clone with ludicrous super-powers. Oh, and we forgot alleged 'handsome hunk'.
"It's like... when your cat dies, is the first thing you do the next day to run out and get a new kitten? But it's again a reflection of the corporation's attitudes towards the characters. 'Well, we'll just get another guy who's six feet tall and of fair appearance to play this sort of character.'" -- Michael Shanks, Starburst #286, May-02.
So we see.
Daniel's resume is a tad more impressive.
When I asked fans why Daniel commands such depth of feeling, they counted the ways. Arguably, their comments reveal a great deal about what captures the imaginations of women: They are enchanted by flawed but heroic characters. Courage of conviction, contagious passion, dimensionality and a sense of wonder were recurring themes.
"Daniel is...a fascinating combination of contradictions ... honest, considerate and compassionate, at times endearingly sneaky, sulky and difficult as a thwarted toddler. There has never been a character out there with more of the courage of his convictions."
"He's incredibly loyal and caring, courageous and understanding, but ... he has lots of flaws, he tends to get carried away, tends to present a major case of tunnel vision and can be very, very rude in the worse moments. That makes him even more realistic."
Viewers have bonded with the character in a way that seems remarkable, even by the standards of obsessive fandom. "Daniel is someone who has grown and developed before our eyes in a way that few fictional characters are permitted to do," says L. "We have seen the events that have shaped him and seen him logically altered by them." Jackson seems so real to viewers that many report feeling stunned by the grief they are experiencing at his "ascension."
That intensity of feeling may be partly explained by the fact that viewers see the character as tapping into an ancient, ancestral current of meaning. His background is classically heroic: orphaned and alone with a tragic love history. -- Fan rebellion threatens Stargate by Mary McNamara, Salon.com, 13-Feb-02.
I think this is the reason fans just cannot believe this has happened. Daniel's popularity is such a self-evident truth to us, we find it distressing to read Michael Shanks describing himself variously as wallpaper, an anchor weighing down the team, and useless on the show. To wantonly throw away the richest, most beautifully real and realised character on TV, to stifle the talent of an actor such as Michael Shanks is nothing short of catastrophic.
Daniel is loved, respected, idolised by some, identified with by most. Daniel's fans are eight years old or eighty. Married couples, courting couples. Families. Moms and sons. Moms and daughters. Students gaining the confidence to love history and languages or become archaeaologists. Rich young professionals with large disposable incomes. Senior citizens on Social Security. Young women, mature, professional adult women. Young men, mature, professional men.
All these fans are saying to MGM, to SciFi and to Brad Wright what the majority of fans online have been saying to Brad Wright and Joseph Mallozzi for two years. ALL OF US. We want Daniel at the heart of the show, the team and the family. The friendship between Jack and Daniel is the core of "Stargate", the centre of the team dynamic, the caring, the chemistry and characters we love so much, the cast we admire so much, who have engaged us and moved us so deeply.
We can't say this louder, clearer or longer than we have. What, exactly, will it take for MGM to hear us? The buck stops with Hank Cohen, not with Brad Wright and certainly not with Joe Mallozzi. The "Stargate" production staff have certainly antagonised fans with their tactlessness and poor handling of this affair, and many of us do have deeep reservations about the creative direction of the show and the quality of writing, but at the end of the day, Brad Wright and the producers are only responsible for delivering the product MGM demands of them. MGM is where we need to direct our energy, our focus and our calls to have Daniel Jackson reinstated to this team and Michael Shanks to this cast who have touched us so deeply.
"I wish I'd known how it would have evolved, and that's kind of what fuels my ire a little bit, that fact that I saw it coming but was told 'Don't worry about it . But I didn't get what was promised, and I wish I'd known to get out at that time. It's a learning experience." -- Michael Shanks, Starburst #286, May-02.
What he said.
Alison
08 May 2002
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