Hi, I'm Christopher Judge. I play Teal'c on Stargate SG-1. Welcome to season seven.
- I look pretty, right? - I think so.
First there is the double-buttock flex.
Now this is a behind-the-scenes look at Stargate SG-1.
How you doin'?
Amanda Tapping and Michael Shanks showed you around on the Sci Fi version
of the behind-the-scenes look at SG-1, The Lowdown.
(man) That's the one!
I'll give you the real lowdown, something very special,
just for the DVD collection.
Now, I'm gonna start with a little tour of my trailer.
You will notice that my trailer is quite a bit more spacious than theirs.
My trailer is actually five inches longer than both of their trailers
because I'm bigger than they are.
Thank you. Bye.
This is my bathroom. Sometimes I come here to lounge and meditate,
and sometimes I take a steam. See, this is a little steam shower here.
And... ooh, look. Toothpaste.
Lotion, for the lonely times.
And the all-important air freshener because... You know.
This is my kitchen area.
It has all the accoutrements of home:
Microwave, fridge.
- He is Jaffa? - No, but he plays one on TV.
Rim shot.
And the all-important water.
See, water is very important to an actor.
You have to stay well-hydrated to perform the daily tasks
required of a serious actor like myself.
Mr Rooker, you've worked with a number of esteemed black actors.
- Yes. - Any finer than me?
No.
Here's my media system: Satellite, large-screen television,
VCR, and of course the all-important sound system
that comes fully equipped with surround, of course.
And here's my actual living area. Recliner, couch...
See, these are all the scripts I have that were written by some of our writers.
I haven't really perused too many of these yet...
but I'm sure they're quite good.
And my breakfast.
Like on any given day, I'll have a coffee...
chocolate milk...
Ooh, look.
Scrambled eggs, bacon and sausage: The key to starting a good day.
Hi, I'm Amanda Tapping. I play Major Samantha Carter on Stargate SG-1.
We'll take you on a behind-the-scenes tour of our show.
It's a special, right?
- (man) A special on Sci Fi. - Special on Sci Fi.
Bye.
(screaming)
As you know, Stargate SG-1 is a show about a top-secret government facility
that uses a round portal, a sort of doughnut-shaped thing
that we jump through every week to go to the various planets.
It kind of looks like a swimming pool on its side
when the gate is active.
We're about to start the seventh season, and what is so exciting about that
is we are... we're so tight...
- What's the name of this place? - An ancient planet is what it's called.
This year, I think we really finally got our act together.
- Ancient planet? Not even a name? - Not even a number.
Yeah, Sci Fi, that's a great channel. They've got all sorts of...
- (man) We carry Stargate, so... - Oh, good.
What's great about this special is we'll show you how
we are taking the stories and the acting to just new heights.
("Entry of the Gladiators")
And that's my theme song.
What?
As you know, the actors on this show are incredibly serious.
Well, no, take it. Just... I'm saying, if you want to take it...
You're out of line.
We take what we do... perhaps a little too seriously.
(man) Tell us about your process.
(gargling)
Your transport's waiting for you. Bye.
Ooh! Can I have a boyfriend who doesn't die?
(hisses)
Hopefully, before this is all said and done, I will have hair.
One thing we'll show you during this special is our topnotch crew.
There, they're coming on now.
They're warming 'em up.
Hang on a sec.
We will be getting into the Michael Shanks/Corin Nemec situation,
Dr Daniel Jackson coming back, Jonas Quinn, that whole dynamic.
(man) Welcome back to season seven.
Hey! Thank you. It's great to be back, it really is.
Any rumours that there may have been
some kind of, like, animosity between us is ridiculous.
Get ready to enjoy season seven.
It's gonna knock your socks off. I have to go save the planet.
(in alien language)
(snarls)
People not familiar with the show need an introduction to the characters.
Richard Dean Anderson, RDA, plays Jack O'Neill, our resident leader,
who's the sort of brave, stoic soul who likes to kill everybody.
We either made the mistake or we were blessed with the right decision
to have O'Neill deal with his emotional dysfunction,
at the time we started the shows, over the loss of his son.
It freed O'Neill to grow, to put some things in perspective and evolve.
I can be as diplomatic and open-minded as anyone.
It freed me up as an actor to kind of bring some levity to the character.
Do you not know the pain you will suffer for this impudence?
I don't know the meaning of the word.
Seriously. "lmpudence". What does that mean?
Richard Dean Anderson is goofy, irreverent, witty...
We're exactly one zat gun short of actually having a zat gun.
...sarcastic, sexy...
and a jackass.
My attention span is so short, it's like a child's.
Her attention wanders. It's like she has the mind of a child.
All of the actors on the show work incredibly hard.
But then there's Rick.
Although he's willing to take a P90 to an entire division of Goa'ulds,
he has a fair amount, or greater compassion, for fish and dogs.
Dogs for ever.
There appears to be no fish here, O'Neill.
T...
it's not about the actual fish themselves.
Fish are not important in this context.
It's about fish-ing.
He has never caught a fish, ever.
I've had so much fun kind of dabbling in irreverence,
bringing a semblance of irreverence to the character,
or these little quirky aspects to the character.
- You've been a little tense. - "Tense"? Me? I'm not tense.
Am I?
- When did you first notice? - As we met.
Major Carter, who you know is sort of the brains of the operation,
she's the girl next door, Amanda is basically the girl next door.
That's quite a neighbourhood, you know?
Samantha Carter was very one-dimensional.
I've memorised your report from the first mission.
I think I've prepared for this all my life.
When I first met Amanda Tapping,
I was intimidated by her physical beauty.
She's not afraid of the physical attraction we share for each other.
I always wanted to be a pianist.
- Excuse me? - A concert pianist.
A guy who plays piano for lots of people.
Right.
- What did you think I said? - Never mind.
She tries to have a relationship with someone. It's nearly impossible.
A, she's never home. B, she can't tell them what she does.
Beyond that, it's been little dalliances with men that continually end up dead,
so sadly she hasn't had a great track record. It's pathetic.
Christopher Judge plays Teal'c, who is the stoic alien on the show
who wears the STP symbol on his forehead.
Little snack?
As you've seen, I've grown 25 pounds since last season, so...
Teal'c has become a lot more animated, a lot funnier...
The most important thing about playing an alien...
is buttocks.
There are several different buttock exercises. Let me show you a couple.
See, first there is the double-buttock flex.
Then there is the alternating buttock flex.
And then, finally, there's the all-important "shake it like it's hot".
Hey, guys. What are you doing here?
- We brought pizza and a movie. - "Star Wars".
- He's seen it eight times. - Nine.
Nine times.
Christopher Judge is charming, sexy, and a jackass.
I said "jackass" for Christopher Judge's sake.
I am the complete polar opposite of Teal'c.
I'm loud and obnoxious and get under the skin of many a director.
- And cut. - Good night, everybody!
Teal'c has a great singing voice.
I wish they would let Teal'c just break out into song every once in a while.
Let him explore the inner baritone that he is.
The Stargate, the Stargate
Travelling to worlds
Far and near
- What? - This is absurd.
I, too, have recently seen Daniel Jackson.
Really?
- Why didn't you say something? - Why did you not?
I play Daniel Jackson, who's the kind of moral voice,
but basically he's a whiny little bitch.
Don't touch me.
Oh!
Daniel comes back in a heap, in a naked heap, in the first episode.
Daniel naked is not a pretty sight,
especially when he's unshaved, cos he's like a werewolf.
He's like one of the Baldwin brothers.
We establish in an episode called "Ascension" in the...
fifth season of the show, phew!
Fifth season, we established where characters who are these Ancients
descend, as it were, back to earth to complete tasks
or to become human again, if they so choose,
and that's what happens to Daniel, he's chosen to come back.
This is the place where Daniel Jackson comes back into the series, right?
No.
Michael Shanks is intelligent, brooding...
He's probably the biggest enigma of all of us.
What?
We're both big pains in the ass,
we're both big podsters, we always rock the boat
and question things, maybe too much sometimes.
Why aren't you behind me on all this? I mean...
I'm finally taking your position. Let's build weapons.
Let's kick some Goa'uld ass.
Goa'uld are more advanced than us in every way
and there can be no doubt that they have hostile intentions.
Don S Davis is General Hammond.
He's the father figure. He sketches naked women.
I've got the best job on TV, for a lot of reasons.
They pay me a lot of money and I don't do a lot.
- How long will it take to set up? - Four hours, tops.
That's how long you have to come up with a better idea.
In the real world, in television and filmmaking,
not only don't you often not love your fellow cast member,
you may really hate their ass.
I can't say for sure, but her white-cell count is down significantly.
White blood cells are a major part of our immune system,
and she's still basically human.
The arc of Janet Fraiser... When Janet first came on board,
she didn't have a first name. Basically, I think over the six years,
we see she's become an integral part of the team, and a friend of the team,
and you see how strongly she cares about her fellow members.
You dirty bastard.
- They've been eavesdropping. - Totally.
I'm a little hyper. They sometimes call me the Eveready Bunny.
I'm hyper so they like to cut me off on my caffeine
and you're going "No (beep), Sherlock." Um... Oops!
What are you smiling at?
It's just that it's my first time... in space.
Ah.
Last year was great, you know, it was really smooth sailing.
The crew's obviously so well-oiled at this point, you know, but...
So I came in at a good time. It was really a breeze, you know.
All I had to do was memorise my lines,
show up on time and enjoy the ride, you know.
I love watching these actors act.
I'm really awed by a lot of the work they do.
We're getting out, Edwards.
- This is my command. - OK.
Nobody fights on this show. I can say there have been moments
where we get on each other's nerves because six years, it's a family.
- You mean I didn't that time? - He went early.
- Damn. - We'll fix it.
I'll get him.
"Don't you guys get sick of each other?" We say
"Between season two and five, yeah, but then that..."
Let's be real here: It should be fun.
We're not saving lives, we're entertaining them.
Stargate crew. There's definitely a story behind this
because they make this place run.
It's the best group of people on the planet.
It's the best crew I've ever worked with.
(interviewer) Yeah, well, what are some of their names?
Um...
I...
It's the crew. I don't know. We don't talk or anything like that.
I'm Michael Shanks and you're watching
The Lowdown on Stargate SG-1 on Sci Fi.
Well, because the behind-the-scenes shows are so boring, they're dry.
Our crew gets so stiff, they take themselves so seriously.
Come on, the universe is chasing us. Let's go!
Come on!
This door's locked. Come this way!
Directing Stargate is a little bit like running a marathon
with big, heavy cement boots on,
because you like running the marathon, and you're in shape to run the marathon,
but you've got these big, heavy boots on.
See where my nose is? This is like the camera looking at 'em.
I'm the camera looking at 'em and we're flying along like this.
Because of the fact that it's such a huge machine to move around,
there's like a million trucks...
Living the dream.
...10,000 people and you've got all this stuff to do,
and these scripts are like these big tomes of visual effects
and you have about seven and a half days to prep them.
This is a theodolite or something like that.
Think this thing's gonna be working in my lifetime?
This is my biggest and I think only fan.
The death gliders come in like this... That won't happen.
You've got live-action photography, computer animation, matte paintings...
...a big visual effects department and a big art department,
and because we're going to different worlds every week,
it's quite formidable, the task in front of us.
What used to take us an hour and a half to set up takes us 20 minutes now,
a bluescreen shot, so that enables us to get a lot more money on the screen.
So if you take an evolution in the script
and the script gets better and better
and the set operation gets better and better, you end up with a better show.
And... explosion.
Here you can see the wonderful Jackson Pit here in sunny Maple Ridge.
I've got my anti-rain gear on.
We anticipated some lousy weather out here
but we've got a big crew of people and lots of extras for "Orpheus".
I think we've shot in every pit in Vancouver, you know, Stokes Pit,
this pit, you know. We're all over the place.
This is my pretty look.
Traditionally we don't shoot night
because it's very time-consuming but it looks really, really cool.
(yelling)
This is a death camp, a labour camp,
where they actually work rebel Jaffa to death,
and to inspire them into working even harder, they grab a couple of slackers
and take them over to the execution pit and they kill them,
which is what I like to do to inspire our crew.
Once in a while I'll take a grip or an electrician
or even a crafts service person and I'll take them and I'll kill them.
The lava rock, if you can believe this, is rented.
We have to give it back, so don't break that lava rock,
make sure that lava rock stays intact
because we have to give that back. It's a rental.
And one big...
That's the one! Then when he pulls that move...
(laughing) That was good.
(gunfire)
In the end, you watch the show and you go "I froze my bag off for that?!"
(Carter) No welcoming party.
Someone's been reading Martha Stewart.
I'm basically in charge of the visual aspect of the show.
If sets are designed by Bridget and Peter,
I will illustrate those sets to give the directors and the executives
a clear image of what the finished product will look like.
Basically my goal is just to provide them with
as near to what they'll arrive at on the day
whether it be dress location or a visual effect that's worked into a location.
What we have here is hallways
and this whole area, of which I think you just saw an aerial shot,
will be used as our Goa'uld hallways for all of season seven.
There's a lot of ships that are just different lighting setups.
- Where to now? - It all looks the same from here.
You've seen one ship, you've seen them all.
We could put a control board right here
and someone could be working the control board
and referring back to a System Lord in a big captain's chair.
In fact, I think that is part of the plan, that Anubis will be hanging out here
and his Jaffa will be saying
"There's an enemy ship off port bow," and he'll say
(mimics static)
"Destroy them"...
Now I will destroy Abydos.
...and it'll be very fascinating.
The visual effects are some of the best on TV.
Our guys are fantastic, but we throw a lot of money at them to do that,
some might say too much.
Other areas of the show suffer.
For example, I get one little tub of hair product at the beginning of the year
and it has to last me the whole year.
Whenever you see a spaceship on Stargate SG-1,
more than likely we've done CG alien characters,
a virtual world that doesn't exist.
We'll create it on the computer using high-end computer graphic software.
An average episode will be 20 to 30 shots.
A really big episode will be 110 shots.
You know, there's lots of great acting, great stories, great make-up,
but there's one thing that makes this show a hit.
We'll blow something up now.
That wasn't bad. It didn't suck too badly, did it?
There was supposed to be this huge ship and it was supposed to be in the distance,
so, you know, you tell someone "huge ship",
OK, there's gonna be a big ship.
So all of our reactions were just like "Oh, there's a huge ship."
So when we saw the episode, this ship was massive
and our reactions were just, like, "Oh."
That's the last time we ever got caught
underestimating what would be on, cos we just looked dopey.
So now anytime they say that something's gonna be spectacular,
we take it for as big as we can, our reactions,
because it's gonna be spectacular.
I mean, just the production value on this,
it's like doing a little feature every week. It's really amazing.
Whenever you blow something up, you have to have it particleised,
you have to have bits and pieces of something come out.
So for "Full Circle",
we ended up building a $100,000 pyramid. We rebuilt the pyramid.
It was a difficult show to write as we didn't know
whether the series was ending, we didn't know whether it'd be
a bit of a stepping stone to the feature film,
or whether we'd come back for a seventh season.
So it had to encompass all of those story elements,
it had to serve as potentially a series finale,
and so we wanted it to be big, we wanted it to be an extravaganza.
I think that the first budget came in at somewhere around $50,000
and we went "Well, that's a very big single viz effect for us."
And then the second one came in at $100,000 and we're sitting there going
"This is kind of too big" - even though it may be the last show we ever do,
we still have gliders blowing up and we got all this stuff happening.
"Should we do this?" But we'd committed to this pyramid.
There's people making these little blocks
and things like this that have to be blown up,
and on the day when it blew up, it looked amazing.
(distorted) I compose the music for SG-1?
I'm not sure what you're talking about. I'm not sure I've heard of the show.
I don't know who this Richard Dean Anderson is.
I'm not clear what you mean.
You know, we did not agree on lights or anything like that.
This is not what we talked about.
At first, on SG-1, it's one of those classic Hollywood Cinderella stories.
My agent knew the producers
and agreed to kick back half my salary to the producers,
and it worked out beautifully.
And it worked out really well for the producers.
They have very nice houses. The producers will call me,
and Robert loves to hum little melodies over the phone
as we go through the show, so, "Can we have some music?", he goes
(scats)
I'll go "How do you want it to go?" He'll go "doo-doo-doo",
and I go "You mean doo-doo-doo?" And he'll go "That's exactly it."
And that's really how the music develops, and it's worked out very well.
On Stargate SG-1, we have an unlimited budget.
The producers say I can do anything I want, use as many instruments,
as many musicians...
Basically unlimited. We generally go to England for every episode,
use the LSO - that would be the London Symphony Orchestra.
(zapping)
(engines)
The sound effects ruin everything. They make my life miserable.
They step on my music.
I believe they aren't paying attention to what's on-screen.
I believe they do it because they don't like me.
I don't like them either.
- Oh, this has a zoom. - (man) Yes.
Jeez! You have the best gear. You guys got the best gear.
Rrr!
(Stargate SG-1 on TV)
You want me to be serious? OK, I'll be really serious.
We get the show Monday morning.
We play video games until Friday afternoon
and then Friday afternoon we do the score and deliver it Saturday morning.
Stargate SG-1 is a very funny show.
The next session's about the comedy and humour.
Stargate? There's nothing funny about this show, really.
As you see, it's a lovely day in scenic Vancouver, British Columbia,
and we're gonna take a little break. That's to keep costs down,
because instead of having one hour, we're gonna give you two half-hours,
so more bang for your buck, right?
Anyway, hit the pause button, get a sandwich,
check out the interactive menus, do whatever you want,
but we'll be right back.