Here we are again. Day one. Year six.
Shooting "Redemption".
Stargate - the comedy.
That's a twist.
Michael. Season six, day one. How's it going?
I think it's going well.
Day one, season six. How's it going for you?
It was a great day when I managed to say a few of the words that were written.
- Which words did you have trouble with? - Any that had more than one syllable.
Close the blast doors.
We're gonna blow something up now.
Wray Douglas, Special Effects.
What safety precautions do you personally take?
I cower like a child.
Large balls of cotton in my ears,
and I usually let Scott do it so I don't get in trouble.
I'm in charge of the lightning.
How long do you want this to last? This duration on this little...?
Shoot it pretty quick.
There's 16 hits, so I'll just go pop-pop-pop-pop.
Open the iris.
And spin it.
(Carter) Energy transfers increasing.
Seven times greater.
Eight... ten...
And... Iightning!
And... explosion!
Close the iris.
What do you put in there to blow it?
Some match heads and a Ping-Pong ball.
Lots of match heads. And some chicken feathers.
Camera blocking is one of the first things a director has to do
before you sit down in a studio and start shooting.
So I do a lot of mine here, in my living room.
One reason for it is because, especially in a double episode like "Redemption",
what ends up happening is, every department has a million questions.
If I'm sitting in the office, everybody asks me questions.
Props has questions. So does Set Design.
Set Decorating has questions. Costumes has questions.
Everybody has questions that need to be answered.
So I never get any of my own work done, which is actually blocking the show out.
It starts out for me with a script.
I get the script and sit down and read it the first time through.
If I have any notes that jump out at me immediately -
transitions from scene to scene, things that don't work for me in the script,
because a lot of times the script changes drastically from the first writer's draft -
I'll make little notes and dog-ear the page so I can complain to the relevant people.
"Area 51 hangar. Two giant doors crack and roll open,
revealing SG-1, Jonas and two armed security guards."
"They look in. A huge hangar housing a very cool-looking airplane."
The writers didn't know that hangar doors generally don't open splitting like that.
In Canada, at least in the airports around here, they open from here.
So, hangar doors split here...
open up, revealing our characters.
Behind them, hopefully we'll have some planes.
OK, so O'Neill, Jonas, Teal'c and Carter.
They walk in, next step, they turn around and they see the X302.
There's Teal'c, reaching up and touching the bottom of the ship.
They're looking into the cockpit.
- Carter and Murphy are looking up. - I thought you'd like to see the prototype.
As you will see when we get out there,
only this part of the X302 actually exists.
It'll be sitting up on top of a big crate in here.
The trick to doing this is to make it look as real as possible,
so you tie in pieces like this, making it organic.
This, again, makes the audience - makes everybody, me included -
feel like there really is an X302 sitting there.
OK. You're not gonna believe this.
This is how they make the sky.
After a hard day at 40,000 feet, I like to settle back with a nice, cold Hamm's beer.
3.2 gets me there.
- Who are you? - Jonas Quinn.
Oh, the alien with the wacky naqahdah.
It was really about how do we incorporate...
Jonas Quinn into the team.
It was originally just a one-parter.
I started writing and realised that,
while the whole X302 story and saving the planet from Anubis's attack
was the main thrust of the story,
another large part of it had to be about who the new member of SG-1 was.
So, in fact, the whole first act of the show
became about who was gonna replace Daniel,
and that Jonas really wanted to.
Then the rest of the story started to evolve.
I got to the end of act four, I think, and was on page 45 or 50, and realised...
Our scripts are usually about 45 pages long.
I realised I still had a lot to go.
So I called Brad and said "l think I've got a two-parter."
All I can do is try and change what happens from now on.
I don't want you to exonerate me. I just want to be given the opportunity
to prove that I can make a difference.
I don't want it to be too comfortable.
We can't just fall into "There the four of us go, off exploring the galaxy."
"The new SG-1 ".
It can't be that easy. It's never that easy.
If you think about how the group dynamic changed and grew over five years,
to suddenly introduce a new element and expect them to replace
the person that was there before, is wrong.
Out of respect for Daniel's character and what he meant to SG-1,
I thought it was important to really make it hard
for Jonas to get his point across, that he wanted to be on the team.
I don't think any of the team members would just accept him right away.
I wanted to be true to the friendship between Sam and Dan.
I felt that, if I walked in, blasé -
also recognising that this is the first time
the audience has seen Daniel's lab with somebody else in it -
if I were to be too blasé about him being in there reading Daniel's books,
going through Daniel's stuff, making himself at home,
then it wouldn't be true to the character or to the relationship.
They don't realise the threat out there. I can help them by helping you.
I can also help finish what Dr Jackson started.
Jonas.
I understand why you wanna join SG-1.
And I'm sorry, but...
I just don't see it happening.
I think partly because of Corin's presence,
you're trying to establish a new dynamic and figure out what that dynamic is.
It was actually not as bad as I thought it would be.
I miss him terribly, but it allows me to do other things,
Iike actually learn my lines in between setups,
and to work on things like scripts and stuff like that.
Whereas previously, we'd be in there goofing off,
telling jokes, or just talking about life or whatever.
It's also, to be honest, weird from an actor's perspective,
because Michael, Christopher and I spent the pilot living in each other's pockets
when we all lived at the hotel together for six weeks,
and got to know each other as people and had this shared experience on set and off.
I'm looking forward to how well I fit in with the group,
just like how Jonas has to fit in with the SG-1 and SGC.
The same thing has to do with me and everybody else here.
I also have to find out exactly what position I play
as Corin Nemec with this group of creative individuals.
- Dr Jackson's gone. - Yeah. I noticed that.
Not a day goes by when I don't think about what happened.
I stood by and watched while he saved my people from disaster.
It should have been me who disarmed the device
and he's gone because I didn't.
- You have to live with that. So do l. - You want me to make you feel better?
It wasn't your fault. I don't blame you.
I actually wrote the first episode with Jonas in it.
In a way, everyone else has had to follow my lead.
The warm part about it now is just creating the character,
discovering who this guy is.
That's something that we'll all do together,
myself as an actor, and the writers.
It's a real give-and-take thing, where we see the dailies,
see what the actors are doing with the part,
and we try and incorporate those elements into the scripts.
It all evolves from there, and you just try and stay true
to the idea of that character's arc.
In Jonas's case, it's to prove himself to us,
that he's actually a very courageous guy who wants to be a part of our cause.
I think that, as the newness starts to wear off for the character,
being in this new world, on this new planet,
I think that the real root of who he is will be well-defined at that point.
I'm pretty excited about who that guy is gonna be.
According to Dr Fraiser's tests, I have the ability
to learn much quicker than the average human.
- All very interesting information, but... - I wanna join you.
Explore other planets, discover new worlds, new cultures,
- help rid the galaxy of the Goa'uld. - I get the picture.
What I'm pushing toward, which hopefully will manifest itself later on down the line,
is a very well-assimilated individual
who has no characteristics of being from another planet.
Clear skies, 73 degrees.
There are at least 500 other channels, you know.
But this one... this one is fantastic.
I mean, you have all of your weather from all over your planet right here.
There'll be a different dynamic within the group, certainly.
But Daniel's presence, I think, will be felt throughout the show.
But I was pleasantly surprised by Corin
and how well he's working out and fitting in.
So it's definitely gone beyond anything that I expected.
He's just a super-nice guy.
I'm OK. I wasn't ready.
I'm ready now.
The character's new to the show so he brings a whole new point of view
and he's experiencing everything in a new unit of time.
So for the audiences who have been watching the show for the last five years,
or new audience members...
The new ones get to relearn what's already happened in the past.
Those who've been watching the show
get to re-experience the show in a new light
because of the enthusiasm of the character,
and his interest in what's going on around him.
If you watched "Summit" and "Last Stand",
in "Summit" there are only three hallways that had to look like 20 different places
that they needed to be walking around.
At the same time, you've got Daniel and Yu walking around in these hallways,
other System Lords are walking around the hallways.
So the trick to doing it with a standing set, when you build a standing set,
is to actually make it look twice as long.
Sometimes they'll turn a corner and they're just coming in the other direction.
"Enemies" was exactly the same thing,
but in "Enemies" we had to make two different ships out of the same hallways.
If you look at "Enemies", you'll find
there's all these different hallways in two different ships.
It's the same hallway. We just put braziers in it.
Here, what I'm gonna do is, I'm going to take scene 1 48, the SGC corridor.
I'm actually gonna take our long hallway and make it twice as long as it really is.
I'll start them coming down this way.
Carter on that side, McKay on that side.
They'll walk all the way down to the end here.
Once they get down here, they'll stop in this position.
McKay here, and Carter here.
The camera's here and has been with them the whole time.
This will end up in an over, McKay to Carter.
Now, when I turn around and shoot this direction right here,
I'm actually not gonna do it right here.
I will shoot the reverse... up at this end.
So we've seen the hallway from this way looking back that way.
Now we're gonna see it from this way looking back this way.
So I will put Carter here and McKay here.
And it'll look like our hallway is actually twice as long.
What's interesting about this show is that we're using exactly the same room
for three different things in a row.
I'm going from the gymnasium, where they're having the boxing match,
into the cafeteria, and it is exactly the same room.
Then, immediately right after that, we go out into the hall,
and we see Bra'tac coming through that room again -
the utility room will just be turned into an addendum to the gate room.
All three of those scenes are back-to-back in this, which is neat
because you'll see the way that we do this.
Hey, first team! Come on, let's go.
We're waiting for Tony.
(laughter)
This is one of the more dangerous shots that we've done today.
Not!
And... camera!
Action!
This is Dan Shea. He's gonna do something amazing with you.
Some intricate fight choreography.
When you do your cool little thing,
spin it 10,000 times,
then you're shooting off in here somewhere.
He turns, fires it that way.
You turn and go that way.
So I start it here, right? He wants an underhand softball thing... whoa!
Then shoot back in the same direction and get the second guy, and that's it.
We must move!
It was great to see Neil Denis, who plays Rayac.
I haven't seen him for a couple of years. He was a boy, now he's a young man.
I thought it would be interesting that that was paralleled in the script.
It was interesting for me to relate to him, not only as a character on the show,
but also as a person.
I think that made a lot of the scenes really work
because of the different dynamic of our interpersonal relationship.
We've always had this idea about revisiting Teal'c and his son
and his wife, and what's been going on with that.
I thought that that whole "destroying the weapons" subplot
would be a nice backdrop for Rayac's "coming of age as a warrior" story.
And also Rayac trying to prove to Teal'c that he can be a strong warrior,
redeem himself in the eyes of his father, because he feels guilty
and somehow responsible for the events that took place during "Bloodlines",
in which he was brainwashed by Apophis.
I thought there was an opportunity for a great scene, in which I think
Chris Judge does some of the best acting I've seen him do in the series.
He explains to Rayac that he had the same thing happen to him.
Whether you believe in me or what I have chosen to do
does not change the fact that I have never doubted your heart, Rayac.
You need never win back my trust, my son,
for you have never lost it.
What do you think the high points of this show are?
When Carter and O'Neill are flying in the X302.
- That's the coolest part? - That bit where they're flying around.
The 302 itself and all the visual effects that go around,
the cockpit stuff and trying to save the planet.
I think they're spending a lot more time and money on visual effects.
There are more of them and they're bigger.
And I think they look much cooler than they used to.
- SG-1, you have a go. - Thank you, sir.
Big crane move for the very end of the whole movie here.
They won't stop there, guys, so just keep moving.
ENHOH