From Starburst Issue #286
After five years as SG-1's archaeologist Daniel Jackson, Michael
Shanks left the show, to the dismay of his many fans, and made little
secret of his unhappiness with his role in season Five. Ironically,
Starburst caught up with him as he was promoting the DVD release of
Stargate's fifth season, so we had to ask the tactless question: what
was it about the fifth season which convinced him he didn't want to
stick around for another year?
"It wasn't just what was going on in season five. It was something
which began in season four, and what got me through then was the
prospect of directing at the end of the season [for the penultimate
episode Double Jeopardy]. That was kind of my central focus for that
year." The actor pauses, and backtracks a little to the start of the
story.
"A bit of changing of the guard had happened on the production side
of Stargate at the end of Season Three," he explains, "and I saw
early on in season four what was going to happen. They were trying to
introduce this character of Anise [the glamorous Tok'ra played by
Vanessa Angel], and all of a sudden this love relationship between
Carter and O'Neill seemed to blossom, and I just went to the writers
of the show and went `What are you doing here? You're making it into
a soap opera!' I knew that with all this goin on, my character and
Teal'c would be just left on the backseat, but they came back to me
and said `It's just something we're experimenting with.'"
So here comes the $64,000 dollar question. Is this about the series
losing it's focus, or about one actor grumbling because he wasn't
getting much to do? After all, some would argue that Daniel was
neglected by the writers because his story had come to an end.
Originally, he was trying to rescue his wife Sha're from the Goa'uld,
but she was killed in Season Three. Did he have anything else to do?
Michael Shanks takes the point, but disagrees. "I think you can have
that problem of writing a character into a corner, but at the same
time you have the ability to bust him out of that corner. After all,
with the character of Carter they managed to cross the `mythical
boundaries' with complete frivolity, saying `We'll make her an
astrophysicist, we'll make her a Captain and eventually a Major in
the US air force. We'll make her a kick arse martial artist and an
ace shot, and a field medic and an expert in technologies – not just
knowing the basic principles of science, but understanding the
technologies as well – and then she gets penetrated by a Goa'uld so
now she has their inherited abilities… It's like `Wow, she should
have her own series!'
"They seemed to do that pretty freely with that character, so I
really didn't see how it would be too much of a stretch to find some
justification for giving Daniel some added aspects. It would only be
a matter of putting thought to idea and then pen to paper. But it
just wasn't important enough to the writers. That wasn't for lack of
me speaking out, saying `Hey, I'm not doing nothing, I'm not active
in this script.' Sometimes efforts were made, but more often than not
they weren't and so after a while I knew that no matter how much
jumping up and down I did it wasn't going to happen."
But there were still some good moments, surely? "I try to think of
highlights from the last couple of years and I just come up blank. I
could list probably a dozen of them from the first three seasons… but
the last two… Absolute Power was one, the one where Daniel got to
take over the world. That was fun to do, playing Daniel Jackson with
a bit of q sarcastic sense of humour… The Groundhog Day episode
Window of Opportunity was very fun, not necessarily just for me but
as a talented group of people working together. There's a lot of
sense of humour behind the scenes which the viewers don't usually get
to see, and that got to come through in Window of Opportunity… there
are highlights, and they're not all Daniel episodes, particularly
over the last couple of years."
He adds a note of appreciation for the co-stars who created that on-
set fun. "I think so, for the most part, with Don Davis, Teryl and
Mandy and Christopher Judge and myself, we're all creative people and
a good, grounded base of individuals, who've been somewhat
emotionally effected by what's happened. Talking to them, they all
relate to my standpoint. They in a way wish that they had the luxury
to take the sort of stance... but at the same time I respect their
decision to stay with the show.
"It would be certainly arrogant of me to claim that the show was not
a good show without myself at the centre," Michael Shanks
continues. "I didn't think that at all. Some of the shows I watched
were very entertaining, and if I look at it from the perspective of
flicking around the channels on a Friday night, I'd think that was
not a bad hour of television. I mean sometimes I would watch the X-
Files, and think `Wow, great show. I really want to see if I can get
on that show…' but I was doing the same thing on some episodes of
Stargate, thinking `I wish I could get on that show… wait a minute, I
am on that show!'"
He's refering to the more political episodes about the implications
for the US military of the Stargate project, where his character
Daniel Jackson tended to stay on the sidelines. "That was really the
moment of realisation that, regardless of whether it's a quality
television programme, I'm not really doing much on it anymore, and
that wasn't always my lot. If it had always been from the start, then
maybe I would have accepted that, but the change that had happened,
where I went from doing a fair bit on the show to doing less and
less… Well, I didn't think that was deserved and I didn't think it
was true to the original premise of the series… and that wasn't
something I was going to tolerate, as an actor. I was told that it
wasn't a conscious decision, but the result was still the same. So
knowing that that wasn't going to change for the sixth season, I knew
that I was going to get out then."
But couldn't he have stuck around for half the season, taking a
leading role in the episodes where Daniel's skills were important,
and heading off on leave when they weren't? "I think they wanted to
character there for the whole time or they didn't want him at all. I
mean, [producer] BW has gone on record as saying he wanted Daniel to
guest star in six episodes of this series, but did anyone come
forward to me to talk about these six episodes?"
Of course, since we spoke to Michael Shanks, he has made a sixth
season guest appearance in the tenth episode, Abyss, but at the time
he saw little chance of making a return appearance.
"That was more a public relations exercise, something to throw at the
angry fan response than it was to actually guarantee the fans the
character would be back."
"I don't think at this point they are even thinking of that." He
adds, warming to the theme. "It seems strange to me that a company
which is so interested in forming a franchise, with a spin-off show
and a film to come, could fail to satisfy one of it's main
characters, and hold the door for him to re-appear. Is that good
business sense? I don't think so. It's not that I'm desperate to come
back… but their response was, `You want to go? Oh, well, there's the
door, don't forget to close it on your way out.' That doesn't seem
very smart business sense to me. I could understand if it was just
the last year of the show, end of discussion, but they're talking
about a feature film and a spin-off franchise after that so to
alienate their audience… It shows their complete disrespect to the
character of Daniel Jackson and to me as an actor, it show that they
don't seem to think he was that important to the show. But that was
something which was already reflected in the writing, so there was
nothing shocking to me about that."
Something the character's fans did find shocking was the way Daniel
Jackson's departure from the series was almost ignored by the powers-
that-be. While the fans had known MS was leaving for months, the lack
of official statements could have left you thinking he'd be around
for season six. "What a surprise!" laughs MS. "It's called denial,
it's denying the character was ever important enough to warrant an
announcement... I don't think the people who run the show really
think the Sam, Teal'c and Daniel characters are too important to the
show. They're just expendable assets, so that's just the way they've
acted. They never really promoted us when we were on the show, so why
promote us when we're off it? It's kind of like ignoring that we were
there, and ignoring that we're going…"
So how does he feel about Daniel's actual departure, in the episode
Meridian. "Well, I still feel he got short-changed. They introduced
another character, who is essentially Daniel's replacement, in that
same episode, which is not doing either of us any favours." Shanks is
referring to Corin Nemic's character of Jonas Quinn, a similarly
bookish scientist, who eventually comes through by confirming that
Daniel saved Jonas's homeworld from the folly of it's own dangerous
experiments. "I mean, he's walking into a very emotionally involved
situation for actors and fans alike… and this is his grand entrance?
You get this perception of `Can you go out and come back in an hour
when we're all done here?'"
So why does Shanks reckon the powers-that-be decided to crowd
Meridian with departures and arrivals? "Well, Brad Wright's gone on
record as saying the important thing was to introduce a positive
element in the midst of this tragedy, otherwise the audience would
get depressed by Daniel's demise. It's like... when your cat dies, is
the first thing you do the next day to run out and get a new kitten?
But it's again a reflection of the corporation's attitudes towards
the characters. 'Well, we'll just get another guy who's six feet tall
and of fair appearance to play this sort of character.'
"So I think I was short-changed in that episode, plus it's kind of a
speed bump on the way to the cliffhanger, in terms of it being the
penultimate episode. So right after he's dead. Then we have our big
cliffhanger episode, which is full of action and big fights on the
way to next season. I thought that was kind of funny as well.
Certainly I had a big spotlight shone on my character, but the fact
that it effects the overall shape of the show, well, that's `Ooops',
and then we continue on… I thought that a two-parter, which
incorporated all the elements of it, might have been a possibility.
I'd have liked it to have seen something more like the departure of
regular characters in some other series, so it was less token. But
then I've seen that on other shows too, so maybe in a sense I should
be grateful for what I got…"
But what about another aspect of Daniel's `death'. Because he didn't
actually die… he's raised to a higher level of existence by Mother
Earth. "I think that was determined by the producers' agenda," says
Michael Shanks, "but it's a bit of a wimping out on the emotional
impact, by saying that he's not dead. I thought it was more of a
tactic than a plot device. I mean its purpose at the end of the day
is to make it very apparent that the character is still out there in
some form or another, but I don't necessarily agree with the way it's
done."
And it turns out that Daniel will probably be back. But by that
point, Corin Nemic will be an established part of the team, if he can
make his mark. We wondered which task Shanks would have found more
daunting: taking over another actor's role as a concept makes the
transition from big screen to television, as Shanks had to do at the
start of the series, or joining a long-established show as a new
character. "I think the second option would certainly be more
daunting, at least for me, because at least in the first, all the
players are different for the most part. We were all new producers,
new directors, new actors, we were all starting something new. It was
based on the film, but it was our new idea of what that is. We were
all starting new together." After all, it wasn't as if Shanks had to
step straight into James Spader's shoes to play against the original
Colonel O'Neill, Kurt Russell.
"Exactly, exactly. And I think the idea of stepping into something
for what you know is only going to be one season… Well, I don't want
to speak against the actor who's stepping into that, because I know
he's got a tough job ahead of him, and I don't blame him. I blame the
producers who put him in that position, where he has to face that
kind of adversity. But I'm sure he'll go in and do the best he can."
So what's next for Michael Shanks, aside from some movies and his
sixth season guest appearance? Well, there was almost a major role in
the next Star Trek movie. "Oh yes, that was just an audition and that
didn't happen. It was the young Patrick Stewart character, a kind of
gene spliced version of Patrick Stewart, which would have been an
interesting challenge. But because I haven't really watched a lot of
the Next Generation I didn't really have that Patrick Stewart…" he
clicks his fingers. "I didn't have that down right, and at the same
time I didn't really look enough like Patrick Stewart, so…" he
shrugs. Win some, lose some.
That seems to sum up his attitude to Stargate SG-1, after five years
of good times and bad. "I wish I'd known how it would have evolved ,
and that's kind of what fuels my ire a little bit, that fact that I
saw it coming but was told `Don't worry about it'. But I didn't get
what was promised, and I wish I'd known to get out at that time… it's
a learning experience."
After five years as SG-1's archaeologist Daniel Jackson, Michael
Shanks left the show, to the dismay of his many fans, and made little
secret of his unhappiness with his role in season Five. Ironically,
Starburst caught up with him as he was promoting the DVD release of
Stargate's fifth season, so we had to ask the tactless question: what
was it about the fifth season which convinced him he didn't want to
stick around for another year?
"It wasn't just what was going on in season five. It was something
which began in season four, and what got me through then was the
prospect of directing at the end of the season [for the penultimate
episode Double Jeopardy]. That was kind of my central focus for that
year." The actor pauses, and backtracks a little to the start of the
story.
"A bit of changing of the guard had happened on the production side
of Stargate at the end of Season Three," he explains, "and I saw
early on in season four what was going to happen. They were trying to
introduce this character of Anise [the glamorous Tok'ra played by
Vanessa Angel], and all of a sudden this love relationship between
Carter and O'Neill seemed to blossom, and I just went to the writers
of the show and went `What are you doing here? You're making it into
a soap opera!' I knew that with all this goin on, my character and
Teal'c would be just left on the backseat, but they came back to me
and said `It's just something we're experimenting with.'"
So here comes the $64,000 dollar question. Is this about the series
losing it's focus, or about one actor grumbling because he wasn't
getting much to do? After all, some would argue that Daniel was
neglected by the writers because his story had come to an end.
Originally, he was trying to rescue his wife Sha're from the Goa'uld,
but she was killed in Season Three. Did he have anything else to do?
Michael Shanks takes the point, but disagrees. "I think you can have
that problem of writing a character into a corner, but at the same
time you have the ability to bust him out of that corner. After all,
with the character of Carter they managed to cross the `mythical
boundaries' with complete frivolity, saying `We'll make her an
astrophysicist, we'll make her a Captain and eventually a Major in
the US air force. We'll make her a kick arse martial artist and an
ace shot, and a field medic and an expert in technologies – not just
knowing the basic principles of science, but understanding the
technologies as well – and then she gets penetrated by a Goa'uld so
now she has their inherited abilities… It's like `Wow, she should
have her own series!'
"They seemed to do that pretty freely with that character, so I
really didn't see how it would be too much of a stretch to find some
justification for giving Daniel some added aspects. It would only be
a matter of putting thought to idea and then pen to paper. But it
just wasn't important enough to the writers. That wasn't for lack of
me speaking out, saying `Hey, I'm not doing nothing, I'm not active
in this script.' Sometimes efforts were made, but more often than not
they weren't and so after a while I knew that no matter how much
jumping up and down I did it wasn't going to happen."
But there were still some good moments, surely? "I try to think of
highlights from the last couple of years and I just come up blank. I
could list probably a dozen of them from the first three seasons… but
the last two… Absolute Power was one, the one where Daniel got to
take over the world. That was fun to do, playing Daniel Jackson with
a bit of q sarcastic sense of humour… The Groundhog Day episode
Window of Opportunity was very fun, not necessarily just for me but
as a talented group of people working together. There's a lot of
sense of humour behind the scenes which the viewers don't usually get
to see, and that got to come through in Window of Opportunity… there
are highlights, and they're not all Daniel episodes, particularly
over the last couple of years."
He adds a note of appreciation for the co-stars who created that on-
set fun. "I think so, for the most part, with Don Davis, Teryl and
Mandy and Christopher Judge and myself, we're all creative people and
a good, grounded base of individuals, who've been somewhat
emotionally effected by what's happened. Talking to them, they all
relate to my standpoint. They in a way wish that they had the luxury
to take the sort of stance... but at the same time I respect their
decision to stay with the show.
"It would be certainly arrogant of me to claim that the show was not
a good show without myself at the centre," Michael Shanks
continues. "I didn't think that at all. Some of the shows I watched
were very entertaining, and if I look at it from the perspective of
flicking around the channels on a Friday night, I'd think that was
not a bad hour of television. I mean sometimes I would watch the X-
Files, and think `Wow, great show. I really want to see if I can get
on that show…' but I was doing the same thing on some episodes of
Stargate, thinking `I wish I could get on that show… wait a minute, I
am on that show!'"
He's refering to the more political episodes about the implications
for the US military of the Stargate project, where his character
Daniel Jackson tended to stay on the sidelines. "That was really the
moment of realisation that, regardless of whether it's a quality
television programme, I'm not really doing much on it anymore, and
that wasn't always my lot. If it had always been from the start, then
maybe I would have accepted that, but the change that had happened,
where I went from doing a fair bit on the show to doing less and
less… Well, I didn't think that was deserved and I didn't think it
was true to the original premise of the series… and that wasn't
something I was going to tolerate, as an actor. I was told that it
wasn't a conscious decision, but the result was still the same. So
knowing that that wasn't going to change for the sixth season, I knew
that I was going to get out then."
But couldn't he have stuck around for half the season, taking a
leading role in the episodes where Daniel's skills were important,
and heading off on leave when they weren't? "I think they wanted to
character there for the whole time or they didn't want him at all. I
mean, [producer] BW has gone on record as saying he wanted Daniel to
guest star in six episodes of this series, but did anyone come
forward to me to talk about these six episodes?"
Of course, since we spoke to Michael Shanks, he has made a sixth
season guest appearance in the tenth episode, Abyss, but at the time
he saw little chance of making a return appearance.
"That was more a public relations exercise, something to throw at the
angry fan response than it was to actually guarantee the fans the
character would be back."
"I don't think at this point they are even thinking of that." He
adds, warming to the theme. "It seems strange to me that a company
which is so interested in forming a franchise, with a spin-off show
and a film to come, could fail to satisfy one of it's main
characters, and hold the door for him to re-appear. Is that good
business sense? I don't think so. It's not that I'm desperate to come
back… but their response was, `You want to go? Oh, well, there's the
door, don't forget to close it on your way out.' That doesn't seem
very smart business sense to me. I could understand if it was just
the last year of the show, end of discussion, but they're talking
about a feature film and a spin-off franchise after that so to
alienate their audience… It shows their complete disrespect to the
character of Daniel Jackson and to me as an actor, it show that they
don't seem to think he was that important to the show. But that was
something which was already reflected in the writing, so there was
nothing shocking to me about that."
Something the character's fans did find shocking was the way Daniel
Jackson's departure from the series was almost ignored by the powers-
that-be. While the fans had known MS was leaving for months, the lack
of official statements could have left you thinking he'd be around
for season six. "What a surprise!" laughs MS. "It's called denial,
it's denying the character was ever important enough to warrant an
announcement... I don't think the people who run the show really
think the Sam, Teal'c and Daniel characters are too important to the
show. They're just expendable assets, so that's just the way they've
acted. They never really promoted us when we were on the show, so why
promote us when we're off it? It's kind of like ignoring that we were
there, and ignoring that we're going…"
So how does he feel about Daniel's actual departure, in the episode
Meridian. "Well, I still feel he got short-changed. They introduced
another character, who is essentially Daniel's replacement, in that
same episode, which is not doing either of us any favours." Shanks is
referring to Corin Nemic's character of Jonas Quinn, a similarly
bookish scientist, who eventually comes through by confirming that
Daniel saved Jonas's homeworld from the folly of it's own dangerous
experiments. "I mean, he's walking into a very emotionally involved
situation for actors and fans alike… and this is his grand entrance?
You get this perception of `Can you go out and come back in an hour
when we're all done here?'"
So why does Shanks reckon the powers-that-be decided to crowd
Meridian with departures and arrivals? "Well, Brad Wright's gone on
record as saying the important thing was to introduce a positive
element in the midst of this tragedy, otherwise the audience would
get depressed by Daniel's demise. It's like... when your cat dies, is
the first thing you do the next day to run out and get a new kitten?
But it's again a reflection of the corporation's attitudes towards
the characters. 'Well, we'll just get another guy who's six feet tall
and of fair appearance to play this sort of character.'
"So I think I was short-changed in that episode, plus it's kind of a
speed bump on the way to the cliffhanger, in terms of it being the
penultimate episode. So right after he's dead. Then we have our big
cliffhanger episode, which is full of action and big fights on the
way to next season. I thought that was kind of funny as well.
Certainly I had a big spotlight shone on my character, but the fact
that it effects the overall shape of the show, well, that's `Ooops',
and then we continue on… I thought that a two-parter, which
incorporated all the elements of it, might have been a possibility.
I'd have liked it to have seen something more like the departure of
regular characters in some other series, so it was less token. But
then I've seen that on other shows too, so maybe in a sense I should
be grateful for what I got…"
But what about another aspect of Daniel's `death'. Because he didn't
actually die… he's raised to a higher level of existence by Mother
Earth. "I think that was determined by the producers' agenda," says
Michael Shanks, "but it's a bit of a wimping out on the emotional
impact, by saying that he's not dead. I thought it was more of a
tactic than a plot device. I mean its purpose at the end of the day
is to make it very apparent that the character is still out there in
some form or another, but I don't necessarily agree with the way it's
done."
And it turns out that Daniel will probably be back. But by that
point, Corin Nemic will be an established part of the team, if he can
make his mark. We wondered which task Shanks would have found more
daunting: taking over another actor's role as a concept makes the
transition from big screen to television, as Shanks had to do at the
start of the series, or joining a long-established show as a new
character. "I think the second option would certainly be more
daunting, at least for me, because at least in the first, all the
players are different for the most part. We were all new producers,
new directors, new actors, we were all starting something new. It was
based on the film, but it was our new idea of what that is. We were
all starting new together." After all, it wasn't as if Shanks had to
step straight into James Spader's shoes to play against the original
Colonel O'Neill, Kurt Russell.
"Exactly, exactly. And I think the idea of stepping into something
for what you know is only going to be one season… Well, I don't want
to speak against the actor who's stepping into that, because I know
he's got a tough job ahead of him, and I don't blame him. I blame the
producers who put him in that position, where he has to face that
kind of adversity. But I'm sure he'll go in and do the best he can."
So what's next for Michael Shanks, aside from some movies and his
sixth season guest appearance? Well, there was almost a major role in
the next Star Trek movie. "Oh yes, that was just an audition and that
didn't happen. It was the young Patrick Stewart character, a kind of
gene spliced version of Patrick Stewart, which would have been an
interesting challenge. But because I haven't really watched a lot of
the Next Generation I didn't really have that Patrick Stewart…" he
clicks his fingers. "I didn't have that down right, and at the same
time I didn't really look enough like Patrick Stewart, so…" he
shrugs. Win some, lose some.
That seems to sum up his attitude to Stargate SG-1, after five years
of good times and bad. "I wish I'd known how it would have evolved ,
and that's kind of what fuels my ire a little bit, that fact that I
saw it coming but was told `Don't worry about it'. But I didn't get
what was promised, and I wish I'd known to get out at that time… it's
a learning experience."
