Stargate SG-1 Memories: Beast of Burden, The Tomb, Between Two Fires
BEAST OF BURDEN (507)
Dion Johnstone reprises his role as Chaka in this follow-up to season four’s The First Ones. While Peter DeLuise did the scripting honors on this one, Martin Wood assumed the directing reins. This episode is a bit of a blur but I remember being genuinely surprised by early discussions to offer the role of Burrock to the late Larry Drake. His performance as the developmentally challenged Benny Stulwicz on L.A. Law had been so damn brilliant and convincing that I’d actually assumed the legal drama had hired a disabled actor to play the part!
THE TOMB (508)
The set for this episode was impressive as hell and, to this day, I regret not having helped myself to a faux stone before the whole thing was torn down. One of the critiques of this episode related to Jack’s old world Cold War mentality directed at the Russian team. This kind of mystified me because it was pretty clear in the episode that Jack didn’t have a problem with them because they were Russian, he had a problem with them because they were operating under secret orders that seemed to run counter to SG-1’s mission. The fact that they were Russian was beside the point.
BETWEEN TWO FIRES (509)
Man, this one had all sorts of problems at the outline stage, so much so that it earned the nickname “Between Two Acts”. Once the structural problems had been addressed, Ron wrote and delivered a first draft of the script. I remember we were sitting in Rob’s office, giving copious notes, when John Lenic’s dog hopped up onto the couch and relieved himself on a copy of Ron’s script. “That dog pissed on my script!”said Ron. To which Brad replied: “He wasn’t the only one.”. Anyway, in the end, the script came together – as did the episode which we wound up shooting on the grounds of Simon Fraiser University.
Trailer for the second season of my new show, Dark Matter:
Posted May 13, 2016, 6:10 PM UTC