(L-R): Lt. Tamara "TJ" Johansen (Alaina Huffman) is hoping that Dr. Caine (Tygh Runyan) can give her information she so desperately needs concerning her baby in Stargate Universe's "Visitation," written by Remi Aubuchon. Photo by Carole Segal and copyright of The Syfy Channel.
A lover of Science Fiction, especially the Stargate franchise, Remi Aubuchon always wanted to work in that particular genre. Over the past few years, the writer/executive producer has taken his vast experience in character drama and applied it to his work on Caprica and similar-themed shows. Needless to say his interest was piqued upon hearing that Stargate Universe co-creators/executive producers Brad Wright and Robert C. Cooper wanted to bring a new writer or two onboard their staff for the show’s second season.
“As fate would have it, Brad and Robert were looking for someone who had some experience writing character drama,” says Aubuchon. “As you probably know, SGU is a slight departure from the other Stargate series in that Rob and Brad really want to do more character-related pieces, even though I think we still have the same fun Stargate stuff going on, including the mythology, which has taken me forever to get up to speed on. As Brad [jokingly] said to me one day, ‘It’s only 400 episodes, Remi. You should be able to figure it out pretty quickly,’ because It’s one thing to be a viewer, but quite another to actually work on the show and have to keep track of everything going on.
“So I met with Brad and Robert, we liked each other and decided that I would come join them this year. I actually began watching season one episodes before they were even completed so that I’d at least have an idea of where Brad, Rob and the other guys were going with SGU. A big part of that was just getting the audience comfortable with this new version of the franchise along with its characters, which has given us the opportunity this year to do some really interesting things and focus even more on the characters themselves.
“For me, finding the voices of these characters has been a tough one,” continues the writer/executive consultant. “I’ve been a show runner before, and I’ve had that issue where it’s hard for a new writer to come in and nail the voices 100% right away. Brad and everyone else here have at least 20 SGU episodes in their heads and are familiar with how the characters speak. They’ve worked with the actors and know what they can and cannot do. So I kind of relied on Brad to do a pass on my first script so that he could bring the characters in line, and that meant I got the chance to see where I went off-track and where I was right on.
“The hardest thing for me, though, with SGU is trying to come up with a new situation. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve pitched an idea and been told, ‘We’ve done that before.’ The other thing, too, is trying to come up with stories that are going to keep the story we’re telling right now moving forward. That’s been a challenge, but an exhilarating one. I’ve never spent more time talking about theoretical astrophysics, time travel, properties of black holes, etc. These are things I’ve always wanted to talk about in story meetings but never had an opportunity before to do so. It reminds me a lot of when Ron Moore [Caprica co-creator/executive producer] and I were trying to figure out how one’s personality could be downloaded into a virtual environment and then into a robot. At one point we looked at each other and said, ‘We’re just making this up, aren’t we?’ Of course we are. It’s Science Fiction.
Eli Wallace (David Blue) in "Visitation." Photo by Carole Segal and copyright of The Syfy Channel.
“Having said that, there are significant rules that have been established in the Stargate franchise and we’re not about to bend them. So it’s almost been like a puzzle; how do we create a totally new environment/structure/way of telling a Stargate story, and yet still be true and maintain the Stargate mythology as well as the rules that have been part of this franchise over the past 13 years. It’s a challenge for any writer, but a real challenge for someone who hasn’t been here nearly as long as these guys have.”
Aubuchon wrote two scripts for Universe’s second season, the first one being Visitation, which is a follow-up to an episode from last year. “If you recall, in the first season we dropped some people off on a planet [in the episode Faith], and my first story this year is about their return,” he says. “These people return in a way that seems impossible, and in Visitation we pose the question of at what point are you a human being. Is it a person’s physical appearance or is it what’s inside them, and much of the story is about trusting your own instincts in terms of what you believe in.
“It turns out that these people aren’t who we think they are, but they’re also not a threat. They’re just not completely who they once were, and they’ve been returned to Destiny for unknown reasons. Ultimately, they don’t survive, but we’re not so much interested in these people who have come onboard the ship, but rather how it affects our characters, like Colonel Young [Louis Ferreira], and specifically TJ [Alaina Huffman], who, if you recall, opted not to remain on the planet.
“That’s what I was talking about before; the stories that we’re telling this year are much more character based. Throughout the second season there are going to be lots of neat space battles as well as other crazy, fun stuff and some things that I don’t think anybody will expect, but ultimately, the heart of the show is the conflict between the characters and what they want and what their expectations are. In this instance, it seemed like a number of people regretted not staying on that planet, but here’s a reminder that maybe the choice you think at the time is the right one, isn’t always the right choice.
“So that’s the nut of that story, and it’s interesting because as a group of writers on SGU, we have different ways of approaching a story. I always come from a character point of view, even though I’m a genre guy. I don’t often start with, oh, wouldn’t it be cool if out of nowhere an alien ship landed on Destiny and began boring a hole into it. In Visitation, for example, I wanted to find out how TJ was going to deal with these people coming back from a planet that she had intended to stay on, and now all of a sudden they’re almost like zombies. It’s like the horror and realization that if she had stuck with her original choice, what would it have meant to her as well as her unborn child.
Camille Wray (Ming-Na) uses hypnosis therapy on Peter (Tobias Slezak) in an effort to figure out how and why he and the others have returned to Destiny. Photo by Carole Segal and copyright of The Syfy Channel.
“Then there’s Young; I just love the character of Colonel Everett Young because he had no idea that he was ever going to be in charge of something like this, and every day is a challenge. He’s always checking himself and wondering if he’s made the right decision. Young is a great character, and he’s clearly been wondering all this time if he made the right choice of allowing these people to remain on the planet. Suddenly, he’s faced with these individuals, and it tears him up inside because he has to protect the rest of his people from their former crewmates. It just doesn’t make sense that Destiny is a million light years from the planet that these people stayed behind on, and yet out of the blue they’re here in the shuttle. So it was fun to deal with all that.”
At the time of this interview (early July), the SGU writer/executive consultant was working on his other season two script, Seizure, which was directed by Helen Shaver and sees the return of some familiar faces. “We’ve finally lit a fire under the people in charge of the Stargate program back on Earth and made them realize that maybe they can’t get their people home, but perhaps they can figure out a way to dial into Destiny to at least supply them with necessities,” explains Aubuchon. “I’m hoping this episode will be fun for the audience because we bring back a few characters from Stargate SG-1 and Stargate Atlantisto help search for another Icarus-type planet with a naquadah core big enough to power a Stargate and dial the ninth chevron.
“I’m also hoping that an episode like this will help start to weave SGU more into SG-1 and Atlantis and allow fans to realize that everything is interconnected. Brad and Rob have, I think, unfairly taken a great deal of flack from some fans who say that the show has made a left turn away from the Stargate franchise. I don’t buy that, and for several reasons. Yes, you could do Atlantis forever and ever, but after a while you’re going to run out of stories because it’s a fairly contained series. It’s a fun show and I enjoyed watching it, but with SGU here’s a chance to do something even cooler. I think we want to prove to fans that we remain true to the Stargate franchise. We’re still telling Stargate stories, just in a slightly different way."
The son of character actor Jacques Aubuchon, Aubuchon spent quite a bit of time visiting sets while growing up, so it is no surprise that he eventually followed in his late father’s footsteps, only behind the camera as opposed to in front of it. “When I graduated from high school I realized that I couldn’t act,” recalls the writer with a chuckle, “so I went to the American Film Institute and trained to be a director. However, when I graduated from AFI and began having meetings with people, they kept asking me, ‘What have you written?’ So I decided that I should probably sit down and write something, I’d always goofed around with writing, but never took it seriously. I got lucky – I sold the first thing I ever wrote and in the process, discovered that I really liked writing and never looked back.
“I have a huge admiration for directors, but you’ve got 100 people behind you trying to tell your version of your story, whereas I’ve just got my computer here, and in a way I’ve already shot and edited my story in my head, and I really like that. I’ve run four or five shows and I get to do more than just write them. In fact, sometimes I lament because I don’t get to do enough writing, but I just love the process of it. Sure, there are other things I’ve thought of doing. Every so often I have this fantasy of getting my PhD in some obscure, archaic subject and teaching in a small college. However, I think those fantasies tend to start cropping up more when you get to the burnout stage at the end of the season. Someday I’d also really like to write the novel that no one will read, and I will get to that, but I’ve always loved TV and show business is in my blood, so that’s where I’m at now.”
Colonel Everett Young (Louis Ferreira) in "Visitation." Photo by Carole Segal and copyright of The Syfy Channel.
Providence, Chicago Hope and the miniseries From Earth to the Moon are among Aubuchon’s early writing credits. He went on to write for/executive produce such series as The Lyon’s Den, Summerland, Wildfire and Person’s Unknown. Aubuchon also co-created as well as served as an executive producer on the aforementioned Caprica and also played a part in orchestrating Jack Bauer’s (Kiefer Sutherland) adventures in season two of 24 as a writer and co-executive producer.
“Caprica is one of best working experience I’ve ever had,” he enthuses. “Ron Moore is crazy, but in a good way, and challenging in an amazing way, and he was a really good [creative] partner to work with. What we did on Caprica was not unlike what we’re doing on SGU, which was trying to figure out how to tell that [Battlestar Galactica] mythology in a way that no one had seen before.
“They had toyed with the idea of doing a sequel to Battlestar, but then I came in and pitched a prequel. I’d had an idea about a robot uprising long before Battlestar came on, so I pitched them a general idea, and together we came up with the concept of wouldn’t it be wild if the birth of the Cylons actually came from a disenfranchised, angry teenage girl. From there, we sort of built the rest of our story around that. I had a wonderful time doing the pilot. I was very excited with the cast we got, which was tremendous, and it was fun to watch the maturation of that project.
“As far as 24, I actually left three-quarters of the way through the season because I’d written a pilot that got picked up by NBC, but while I was with 24 I learnt a lot. That was a crazy show to write for, especially when I was there in the second season. They had just finished season one and weren’t entirely sure if they had pulled it off. [Co-creators/executive producers] Joel Surnow and Bob Cochran really fought hard for that show. The network was never totally onboard with the whole concept, and the execs kept asking the question, “Why can’t every episode be one day? Why do they have to be a single hour?’ Even when we got to the second season they still didn’t quite get it.
“So it was very exciting to watch it all come together. At one point we were working on episode four, and I innocently asked, ‘But how does that work into episode 13?’ Joel looked at me and said, ‘Who cares about 13. We’re working on episode four right now. We’ll deal with 13 when we get somewhere close to 12.’ That’s how they did that show, especially in the first three seasons, which I think is just brilliant. They kept it very focused and truly didn’t know, for example, that in season one they were going to kill off Jack’s wife [Teri Bauer, played by Leslie Hope]. That kind of energy comes across in the show, and even though it made me and guys like [executive producer] Howard Gordon kind of ‘crazy’ because we always wanted to know what the entire arc of the season was, I learned so much in that sense and try to apply as much as I can to all the other shows that I work on.”
Steve Eramo
As noted above, photos by Carole Segal and copyright of The Syfy Channel, so please no unauthorized copying or duplicating of any kind. Thanks!
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