Robert Carlyle (Dr. Nicholas Rush) directed Carl Binder's "Pathogen." Photo by Carole Segal and copyright of Syfy.
Among the many contributions executive producer/writer Carl Binder has made to the Stargate franchise is his character-driven stories. Letters from Pegasus, Before I Sleep, Michael, Lifeline and Missing are just a few such scripts he penned for Stargate Atlantis. Binder has since put his talents for writing character pieces to good use on Stargate Universe. His first script for the show’s second season, entitled Pathogen, was also the first episode shot for year two and directed by Robert Carlyle, who plays Dr. Nicholas Rush.
“We looked at the first four or five scripts that we were starting with for season two and out of all of them we felt that Pathogen would be the best one for Bobby to direct,” says Binder. “It was then moved to the front of the production schedule so that he’d be able to prep for it as opposed to trying to do that while filming another episode, which would have been very difficult. So we decided to start off the season with Bobby’s episode and that was a lot of fun. It was quite a long prep as well because we started, then broke for the [2010] Olympics here in Vancouver, then came back to work and prepped for another week or so before filming began.
“Pathogen originated from two stories that I wanted to do. At the end of last season, Brad Wright [Universe co-creator/executive producer] pitched this idea to me of what if Eli’s [David Blue] mom Maryann [Glynis Davies] – who’s a nurse and who we established in season one is HIV-positive, having accidentally gotten stuck with a needle – takes a turn for the worse because she’s depressed. Eli’s father left shortly after his Mom got her diagnosis, and since then all she’s had is Eli. With him gone, she’s lost her reason to live. When Brad pitched that idea I said, ‘I love it. Can I write it?’ As often happens, one of these guys will come into my office, or we’ll be in the writers’ room, someone will pitch an idea and if I connect with it, I’ll ask, ‘Can I write it?’
Rush (Robert Carlyle) tries to find a cure to the alien metamorphosis taking place inside Chloe's (Elyse Levesque) body. Photo by Carole Segal and copyright of Syfy.
“So we had that story, but it wasn’t a full episode. Rob Cooper [Universe co-creator/executive producer] had also come up with an idea for a half-season-long arc with Chloe [Elyse Levesque] gradually going through this change, where we find that her kidnappers – the blue aliens from season one – did more to her than we first thought. You kind of got hints of this last year, like when she, Lt. Scott [Brian J. Smith] and Eli find the alien ship in Lost and she’s able to read alien language. Apparently Chloe has been having blackouts, during which she’s been operating consoles and doing all sorts of other things that she has no memory of. We discover that something is taking her over and growing inside her brain.
“We decided, OK, let’s put this story together with Eli’s mom’s story. Then I pitched a C-story, with Camile Wray [Ming-Na] returning home to see her lover, Sharon [Reiko Aylesworth]. We’ve established their relationship as the one stable, perfect relationship of all those on the show, but one of the things that intrigues me is what if you really were stuck on a ship on the other side of the universe. You can go home to visit but in someone else’s body. That’s going to mess up any relationship, no matter how strong it is.
“Up to this point we’ve seen Camile and Sharon as this positive, hopeful couple that finds strength in each other. Now, though, I wanted to portray the opposite of the episode I wrote last year called Life, where we start to see these little fractures in this relationship, and at the end of the story Sharon says to Camile, ‘Is this how it’s going to be from now on? You coming home and showing up in someone else’s body? I miss your voice, your face. I want to see you.’
Camile Wray's (Ming-Na) relationship back on Earth takes an interesting turn. Photo by Carole Segal and copyright of Syfy.
“In essence there’s a pathogen there, too, just like with Eli and his Mom as well as with Chloe. So the entire episode is about a pathogen in various forms, taking root and affecting our people. It has kind of a dark feel to it, and Bobby rose to the challenge and had a good time directing it. Again, it was a good way to start off the season because it wasn’t really a complicated story as far as visual effects, action or stunts.”
Binder’s next season two Universe episode, The Greater Good, was much bigger in scope and served to steer the series in a new direction as far as our heroes’ attitudes were concerned. “One of the things we keep hearing from fans is that here are these characters on this incredible spaceship that’s traveling through space and exploring the universe and all they’re doing is complaining about it,” he notes. “When are they going to stop complaining and start enjoying the ride and the adventure of it?
“One of the things we’re trying to do with this show is make it a more realistic depiction of a situation. Right from the start we posed the question, what if you were one of these ordinary people thrown into this extraordinary situation? What would you do? First off, you wouldn’t be making jokes as we’ve done in the past with the previous two Stargate series because of the reality of things. This is very serious stuff. And two, you’re going to be thinking, ‘How the hell do I get out of here and back home,’ because you don’t know where this ship, Destiny, is going, you don’t know if it’s going to fall apart, etc.
Rush (Robert Carlyle) has to reveal a well-kept secret to the Destiny crew in "The Greater Good." Photo by Carole Segal and copyright of Syfy.
“As our people learn more about the ship, Rush eventually discovers why Destiny was launched in the first place. It all comes out in The Greater Good and these characters finding a derelict alien spacecraft just floating in space. We stop Destiny, send a Kino over to the ship to check it out, and discover it’s deserted. It was in a serious battle and got its ass kicked. The aliens or whoever was onboard were either killed off or abandoned ship a long time ago. Rush, however, thinks that there might be some technology onboard that they might possibly be able to salvage and put to good use. So he and Colonel Young [Louis Ferreira] go over to investigate.
“Something else that’s revealed in this episode, which is why it’s such a crucial one, is that Rush has broken Destiny’s master code and he has complete control of the ship, but hasn’t told anyone. When he and Young are on the alien ship, Rush accidentally hits a wrong button or whatever, and fires the engines, which blows out all the rest of the power and sends the ship on a trajectory away from Destiny.
“Now Rush is in a quandary and people are on the Destiny saying, ‘There’s nothing we can do. We don’t know how to steer the ship.’ Rush is thinking, ‘What do I do?’ The wheels in his mind are turning very quickly and he says, ‘Well, I’ve been working on a way to fire certain thrusters so that we can turn Destiny, but I don’t think it’s possible. We need someone who’s an expert on this type of Ancients drive system’ He convinces them to use the communications stones to bring Dr. Amanda Perry [Kathleen Munroe] back onboard. Through the Kino radio broadcasts, Rush manages to get her away from the others, tells her that he has broken the code, and explains how you turn the Destiny.
Colonel Young (Louis Ferreira) explores yet another alien ship in "The Greater Good." Photo by Carole Segal and copyright of Syfy.
“Rush does a pretty good job of keeping this whole ruse up, but ultimately they find out that he’s broken the code and was lying to everybody. Remember the fight that he had with Colonel Young and in [season one’s] Justice? Well, that was the warm-up for the one they have in The Greater Good. The two of them really have it out, but it’s cathartic in that it takes them to a place where they can finally sit down and have the talk that they’ve needed to have for a while. It’s actually half of act three as well as pretty much most of act four and it’s just Young and Rush talking. The actors really sunk their teeth into it, and we wound up combined the entire sequence into one 10-minute take that Bobby and Louie shot on the day.
“This episode was also a big one visually – you have Perry turning Destiny around and flying it back towards the alien ship. She gets too close, though, and hits it, which causes the ship to start tumbling. Our people don’t have a shuttle – they had to put on spacesuits and do a spacewalk to get over to the alien ship – so how do they get Young and Rush back? The two men have to use the ship’s centrifugal force and time it just right so that they can launch themselves back to Destiny. I liken it to [the Stargate Atlantis] episode Adrift and the spacewalk that Sheppard [Joe Flanigan] and Zelenka [David Nykl] did. That’s the kind of stuff we did between the two ships in SGU. It’s a phenomenal sequence that Bam Bam [James Bamford, series stunt coordinator] and Wray Douglas [series special effects supervisor] along with their guys put together. Will Waring directed the episode and did a terrific job,” enthuses the writer.
The writer’s third script for this season, Hope, is a medical drama that was shot in August 2010 after the summer production hiatus. “Rob Cooper had an idea about what would our characters do if they had a serious medical emergency onboard Destiny,” says Binder. “This episode follows one in which there is a problem with the communication stones and they lose contact with Earth for a while. Now we have a situation in which one of Destiny’s crew needs a major operation, but without the stones there’s no way to connect to Earth and get a doctor to take over and perform the operation, so TJ [Alaina Huffman] has to do it. Meanwhile, there’s a second story unfolding at the same time involving a member of the Lucian Alliance and something that happened in an earlier story this season, Malice.”
Having worked for two seasons of Universe, are there any differences Binder has found between writing for it and Atlantis? “It’s hard to compare the two,” he explains. “The problem is when you end up saying what you really enjoy about writing for SGU, it sounds to some people like you’re disparaging what you did before, which is not the case. I loved writing for Atlantis and that show was a blast to work on, but it lived in a different world from the one SGU lives in, and I’m really enjoying that world.
“In some ways Atlantis was more fun because you could joke around. You could have the smartass comments or give Sheppard those quirky little lines. Sometimes I’m in the middle of writing an SGU script and think, ‘Hmm, this could be a funny line.’ More than once I’ve given Eli a little quip and then thought, ‘Wait a second. In reality, he would not make a joke in this moment because it’s far too serious.’ SGU has kind of a darker feel to it and it’s a whole different entity. So I can’t compare it to Atlantis. There are so many things about SGU that I really like as opposed to Atlantis and vice versa. Atlantis was a great deal of fun to do, as is SGU.”
Steve Eramo
As noted above, photos by Carole Segal and copyright of Syfy, so please no unauthorized copying or duplicating of any kind. Thanks!
Lovely interview. Thank you, Carl, and Steve!
Posted by: Kelly Szentgyorgyi | 03/21/2011 at 04:32 AM
Great interview!
Posted by: Joseph Jones | 03/21/2011 at 12:26 PM
That sums up all : 'In some ways Atlantis was more fun because you could joke around.'
SGA was more fun in every way
Posted by: Dinabr | 03/21/2011 at 05:30 PM
robert cooper decided the stargate saga needed a new direction in universe . so he used a lot of battlestar galacitca's dark
drama aimed at the 30 and under age group . unfortunately for mr. cooper he seems to have forgot the stagate sg-1 fan base is 30 and up . like gunsmoke, the x-files , babalon 5 , st/next generation , voyager and the list goes on with one cancellation after another . universe died because the people in charge made bad decisions in vancouver and syfy only cares about money ! not quality science fiction programs . they would rather have grown men in tights pretending to wrestle and hurt each other . this has been said many times and i also hate to see the stargate series end when universe was finally getting very good . by universe , you will be missed . so now to doctor who ?
Posted by: ratmman | 03/25/2011 at 01:50 AM
It's too bad they decided to cancel the show. Well, the show's not over yet, there even is a 1.000.000$ donation project, I think the webpage is w w w . keepSGUalive . c o m
Posted by: George | 04/08/2011 at 12:09 PM
I would like to see more of the Stargate Universe series initiated in 2009. Are you planning on releasing more episodes?
I find your series to be very creative and I have enjoyed watching all of the episodes.
Posted by: Terry Roberts | 11/29/2012 at 10:22 PM
Hi Terry, Many thanks for the post. Unfortuantely, there are no more Stargate Universe episodes being made. The series was cancelled after 2 seasons on Syfy.
Posted by: SciFiAndTvTalk | 12/04/2012 at 07:36 PM