Showtime pitching ideas for the new show they're making (ca. 1995, colorized)
I watched the new podcast A Full Circle with Michael Shanks recently. While they are throwing out a bunch of fun facts, there were only a few things that stuck out to me as information that was actually new to me:
- There was more nudity planned. It is well-known that the pilot episode that aired had a scene that was controversial among the producers because the network was really pushing to add nudity but the writers and whatnot did not want to make that kind of show. The pilot episode had a "director's cut" of sorts that cut up that Shau're scene so that there was less visible nudity. What was news to me was the fact that they had actually filmed several nude scenes. The airman who was abducted in the first scene had a nude scene, they had hired some local strippers to lounge around naked in the harem scene, and it sounds like there were likely more other nude scenes that they just didn't really explain in the podcast. They had fought to cut all the nude scenes, with the final compromise being to keep just the Shau're scene because it acted as exposition demonstrating how the goa'uld work. Jonathan Glassner insisted that it was just the two scenes (airman and Shau're), but Michael Shanks assumed he was just forgetting the details and that there was more.
- Skaara was going to be SG-1. In the first drafts of the script, Skaara was planned to join as one of the members of the newly-formed SG-1 team. I am not sure how the rest of the team was looking at this point (was Teal'c a member as well?), but I found that interesting. It was after the actor confirmed he would not be available for a full lead role like that that they rewrote the script so that Skaara stayed abducted and future episodes could focus on freeing him.
- The eighth/ninth chevron were originally intended to connect to a couple other specific planets. Stargate was originally dreamed up as a trilogy of films (long before anyone considered a TV series) and the stargate itself was always shown to have nine chevrons. The first film utilized the seventh chevron to connect to one planet, then the second film would utilize the eighth chevron to connect to a new planet, and the third film would utilize the ninth and final chevron to connect to another new planet. But for whatever reason, the plans for the trilogy fell through, they let someone else take the idea and make it into a TV show, and they came up with a different purpose for the nine chevrons.
- There is an HD version of the Final Cut that is not publicly available. This two-part episode had been later recut as the "Final Cut" and released on DVD (blog post that goes into the differences in the versions). Years later, after multiple Blu-ray pressings of the original series, the only way to watch the "Children of the Gods - Final Cut" is still on that DVD from 2009. But David Read made a quick mention that he has watched and enjoyed an HD version of the Final Cut that is not available to the public. I am not sure if that means that was an advanced screening or something and that we will eventually see a Blu-ray release of that soon or what he was referring to.
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