Alan McCullough hard at work! Photo by Jeff Weddell and copyright of Sanctuary 2 Productions.
In Sanctuary’s second season finale Kali, Part II, our heroes appeared to be up the proverbial creek without a paddle. Dr. Helen Magnus’ leadership of the Sanctuary network was challenged when it was revealed that she allowed the most powerful Abnormal on Earth, nicknamed Big Bertha, to remain alive. A clever entrepreneur, Edward Forsythe, had his own plans for the creature, but after one of Magnus’s colleagues, Terrence Wexford, launched an attack on Big Bertha, the Abnormal created a tsunami that threatened to destroy the coast of Mumbai. When the series returned for its third year, it was up to series co-executive producer/writer Alan McCullough to figure out how to save the day when he penned the season opener, Kali, Part III.
“Kali, Part III was the conclusion to the extremely labyrinthine parts one and two of the Kali story,” says McCullough. “It was a challenge because we had written ourselves into a pretty tight corner with the tidal wave bearing down on Mumbai and heading out in all directions. We had to come up with a way to make our heroes look good, but not cheat the fact that there were these tidal waves. We had a number of discussions early on about whether or not we could show a tidal wave hitting the coast of Mumbai. Obviously it hasn’t been that long since the Indonesian wave of 2004, and we were very sensitive to that, but at the same time we thought that that was kind of what the story had to be and to show how serious the problem that our characters were dealing with was.
“We got a late pickup [for season three] and had to start writing immediately, so I had to throw that script together rather quickly, but astonishingly, for something that seemed very, very tricky, it came together quite easily. As it turns out, there was so much going on that was left over from the first two episodes, that all I was really doing was tying up lose ends. Martin Wood [executive producer] completely hit it out of the ballpark when he directed the episode, and we had some terrific performances from people like Callum Blue [Edward Forsythe] and Paul McGillion [Terence Wexford], all of whom brought their A-game to the show.
Dr. Helen Magnus (Amanda Tapping) in "Kali, Part III." Photo by Carole Segal and copyright of Sanctuary 3 Productions.
Kate (Agam Darshi) finds herself in the middle of Ground Zero as the tsunami heads towards Mumbai. Photo by Carole Segal and copyright of Sanctuary 3 Productions.
Behind-the-scenes on "Kali, Part III" with Sanctuary DOP (director of photography) Gordon Verheul and executive producer/director Martin Wood. Photo by Carole Segal and copyright of Sanctuary 3 Productions.
Terrence Wexford (Paul McGillion) and Dr. Helen Magnus (Amanda Tapping). Photo by Carole Segal and copyright of Sanctuary 3 Productions.
“I was really pleased with the final product. I was lucky enough to see the episode for its final mix at Sharpe Sound. They have a giant movie screen at the sound studio as well as full feature film-quality stereo sound surrounding you, and, my God, the score by Andrew Lockington just blew my mind, and the effects from Anthem Visual Effects were out of this world, too. So I’m very proud of this episode and I think it was a strong start to the season.
“There’s one other little nugget I’ll share with you, and that is late into the shoot we suddenly realized we had forgotten to pay off a very important piece of the story, so we had to hastily write some lines into a scene to make sure that we addressed the particulars of what we left out, and I think it’s seamless. I have to hand it to Damian Kindler [series creator/executive producer] because he kind of stickhandled getting those particular lines into the episode, but, again, I think it’s seamless and I don’t think you’d be able to pick them out.”
McCullough’s second contribution to Sanctuary’s third season is Hero II: Broken Arrow, a sequel to year two’s Hero, in which an ordinary man named Walter (Christopher Gauthier) bonds with a living organism that covers his entire body in a special ‘suit’ and transforms him into a superhero named The Adjustor. This time around, however, the suit is attracted to Kate Freelander (Agam Darshi), and she gets a glimpse into life as a superhero.
“Given the fan response to the first Hero story, we know we were going to bring back Chris Gauthier to play Walter, but we wanted to take his character in a new direction so we weren’t just rehashing the same old story,” explains the writer. “So we decided that Walter has moved on and become a famous movie exec, and ‘gone Hollywood’ as it were. We thought it might be interesting if Walter, who lied throughout Hero, had actually been mistaken about where the suit originally came from and that it had, in fact, been created in a lab as opposed to being something that naturally occurred.
“This was one of those rare scripts where we went out on-location to shoot a lot of the city scenes, because Anthem was completely backed up doing the visual effects for Kali, Part III as well as Firewall and, even to some degree, Bank Job, so we really couldn’t ask them to create the city behind Kate. On top of that, we had shot the exterior around our studio to death, so we more or less had no choice but to venture out on-location, and we had some tough days because a number of the scenes were little moves all around our location [Terminal City].
Behind-the-scenes on "Hero II" with Agam Darshi. Photo by Carole Segal and copyright of Sanctuary 3 Productions.
Another behind-the-scenes shot from "Hero: II" with Christopher Gauthier (Walter) and Amanda Tapping (Dr. Helen Magnus). Photo by Carole Segal and copyright of Sanctuary 3 Productions.
"Super-Kate" (Agam Darshi) in "Hero: II." Photo by Carole Segal and copyright of Sanctuary 3 Productions.
Henry (Ryan Robbins) and Bigfoot (Christopher Heyerdahl). Photo by Carole Segal and copyright of Sanctuary 3 Productions.
“I think Mairzee Almas, who was the director, did a phenomenal job of putting together the episode. She comes from Smallville and one of my favorite moments in the story is something she brought to the table. Apparently in Smallville when they shoot Clark Kent [Tom Welling] moving at super speed, they have a particular way of doing it that we tried to mimic for the final showdown at the end of Hero II where Walter takes out the bad guys. It basically involved placing all the actors in awkward positions and kind of frozen in midair, then having Chris run through them and then blurring and speeding that footage up. Anthem did, in fact, help out by showing the guns flying in midair as well as keys dangling in midair and stuff like that. It was a very cool effect and something that was all Mairzee. It wasn’t in the script originally, but when she pitched it out during the concept meeting I added it to the script right away because I thought it was neat.
“I have to say, too, that Agam Darshi did an incredible job with a very difficult role. It was a huge departure for her character of Kate, and she absolutely brought her A-game every single day. It was miserable on-location, too. It was cold and raining, and Agam was running around in a thin black spandex suit. So it was a challenging shoot, but she really met that challenge head-on.”
The writer’s next season three Sanctuary script, Vigilante, had been planned to be part of a multi-episode arc but it subsequently became the conclusion to a particular storyline. “The storyline with the killing of Bigfoot’s friend, Father Jenson, and actor Martin Christopher playing the disguised Father Clark was initially conceived as a four-episode storyline,” says McCullough. “We had a pretty good idea of what we were going to do for the four episodes, but when we pitched out the second half of the four-episode storyline, the network ultimately decided to pass. We then had to scramble a little bit to come up with a satisfying conclusion in one episode to a storyline that was supposed to take three additional episodes.
“So it was a challenge of sorts was trying to figure out a way to make our characters look heroic along with pay off what we had already set up. The original idea for the storyline was that the Father Clark character was a chameleon, so he looked different every time we saw him. Just when our heroes caught up to the supposed serial killer, the creature within him had moved on to someone else and they were all a step behind. All that went away, though, but we had already shown Father Clark’s face in episode four [Trail of Blood], assuming that we were going to be moving on from that in the following episode.
“It was a bit of a dance to still be able to play the episode out and not make our characters look kind of silly and make it seem as though this guy had been there all along and that they didn’t know he was a killer or that they never suspected him until now. Having said that, I’m really happy with the way the episode turned out. Obviously the acting was terrific; there were some touching moments involving Bigfoot [Christopher Heyerdahl], and some nice moments as well between Magnus [Amanda Tapping] and Druitt [Christopher Heyerdahl]. We also have the introduction of Will’s [Robin Dunne] new girlfriend, Abby Corigan, played by Pascale Hutton. I think we found a winner in Pascale. She and Robin really click together, so we’re obviously bringing her back in the second half of the season.
Behind-the-scenes on "Vigilante." (L-R) director S.A. Adelson, Robin Dunne (Will Zimmerman) and Amanda Tapping (Helen Magnus). Photo by Carole Segal and copyright of Sanctuary 3 Productions.
John Druitt (Christopher Heyerdahl). Photo by Carole Segal and copyright of Sanctuary 3 Productions.
Dr. Helen Magnus (Amanda Tapping) in "Vigilante." Photo by Carole Segal and copyright of Sanctuary 3 Productions.
Will (Robin Dunne) and Kate (Agam Darshi) find themselves in a tight spot in "Vigilante." Photo by Carole Segal and copyright of Sanctuary 3 Productions.
Behind-the-scenes with Ryan Robbins (Henry). Photo by Carole Segal and copyright of Sanctuary 3 Productions.
“There was a lot going on in the episode, with Will being in charge of the Sanctuary, then the missing cyber-beetle, and Magnus and Druitt teleporting around the world trying to find the keystone. A great deal of the credit for Vigilante goes to director Steve Adleson, who did a fantastic job of navigating those three stories and making it all flow smoothly. Credit also goes Anthem, who created some great visual effects for this story. In it we go from the Mongolian grasslands to Hong Kong and even the British Museum. All that is virtual, we didn’t build any sets. In fact, Lee Wilson [visual effects supervisor] told me that Vigilante has more visual effects shots in it than Kali, Part III. It doesn’t look like a very intensive visual effects-heavy episode, but it was. Between the beetles and the backdrops and a bunch of other things that the audience doesn’t necessarily see, its one of the biggest visual effects episodes we’ve ever done.”
McCullough’s fourth episode of the season, Metamorphosis, was designed to be a cost-cutting one for the series. “By this time in season two we were out of money,” he notes. “Anthem had to create the Hollow Earth city for episode 10 [Hollow Men] and had to do it all over again for episode 11 [Pax Romana]. Then there are a couple of different creatures running around in episode 12 [Hangover], so both 13 and 14, One Night and Metamorphosis, and 15 for that matter, which would turn out to be a clip show, Wingman, were all designed to be ‘cheaper’ shows, with fewer cast and less visual effects-intensive. So for Metamorphosis we came up with the idea of essentially doing a Sanctuary version of The Fly, where little by little one of our characters starts to lose his or her identity and becomes less and less himself or herself and more and more a monster. Because of our inability to show the creature due to the visual effects, we decided wouldn’t it be neat if we shot it as a P.O.V. episode largely from our character’s point of view and only judiciously show the monster at key moments in the story.
“We brought Andy Mikita over from Stargate to direct this episode,” continues the writer. “He also directed episode 12, and I couldn’t have asked for a better director. Andy and I have worked together a lot, and he’s got a great style and a great humanity to the way he directs. I haven’t seen the episode with all the visual effects in it, but I did watch a cut of it and I love it. I think people are going to be divided on it. Some will hate it, and others will absolutely love it. There are a couple of reasons for that, one being that the P.O.V. is jarring. It’s not unlike [the movie] Cloverfield; some people really love it, and some really hate it. This is going to be the same thing because of the P.O.V. Also, it’s not your usual episode of Sanctuary. However, there are amazing performances from our cast. There’s some real humanity to the episode and some scenes between Will and Kate as well as Will and Magnus that will break your heat. I’m extremely pleased with the way it all came out. If you take it as an emotional journey, which it is, then I think you’ll enjoy the episode.”
Having written the season three opener, McCullough was thrilled with the opportunity to bookend his contribution to Sanctuary‘s third year by penning the season finale, Into the Black. “This was another episode where we had to end the year strong but we didn’t have a lot of money,” he says. “We’d spent a fair bit on Normandy and Carentan, both big stories, which will be apparent when you see them. I mean, we built a French street for Normandy on the backlot of our studio just like we did with Mumbai, and it cost a fair bit.
“So when it came time for the finale we needed a strong episode that was going pay off events from the mid-season two-parter. This story is sort of Sanctuary’s take on [the movie] District 9, where we have to contain a group of Abnormals, and Magnus finds herself in a jurisdictional battle with the UN and this private security firm a la Blackwater that wants to seize control of the Abnormals and take over the project from the Sanctuary.
“Once again, there are some great performances in this episode, including some fantastic scenes between Druitt and Magnus, and we also learn that a character we thought was dead is, in fact, alive. The last thing I’ll tell you is that the finale’s cliffhanger is one of the greatest that I’ve been involved with in my career as a Sci-Fi writer,” enthuses McCullough. “I had originally written a much more expensive script that, again, we just didn’t have the money to produce, but Martin Wood came up with some extremely smart producing adjustments that really helped out and enabled us to make this episode.”
Steve Eramo
As noted above, all photos by Jeff Weddell or Carole Segal respectively and copyright of Sanctuary 2 or Sanctuary 3 Productions respectively, so please no unauthorized copying or duplicating of any kind. Thanks!
Great story/interview. I always love to hear about how some of the episodes come together, the choices made, and how they manage to pull things off within their budget. Can't wait for the second half of S3.
Posted by: Obscur_01 | 02/22/2011 at 02:42 AM
I always love to hear about how some of the episodes come together, the choices made, and how they manage to pull things off within their budget. Can't wait for the second half of S3.
Posted by: the writers room | 03/14/2011 at 11:51 PM
Really got some awesome inspiration from the super creative minds behind this 3rd season of Sanctuary. Think Ive seen some of the most innovative creativity in writing!
Posted by: Kristy Hesketh | 03/20/2012 at 12:11 AM