Stargate: The Ark of Truth is the first of two straight-to-DVD movies to follow the 10th and final season of Stargate: SG-1, and is written and directed by executive producer Robert C. Cooper. “Ben Browder happens to be very good at having the crap beat out of him,” he tells Bryan Cairns.

Once Stargate: SG-1 was cancelled, how did The Ark of Truth come into being?

We wanted to do a straight-to-DVD or some form of long movie and take the show to another level. We had this as a back up plan should season 11 not get picked up.

We also boxed ourselves into a financial decision where we were producing two shows; we had this infrastructure in place and it was benefiting both shows to have some crossover in terms of stage space and resources. It was actually going to end up costing Atlantis to a certain extent not to have a sister production running. We needed to do something or rethink the way we did things around here.

MGM was already embarking on a slate of straight-to-DVD movies, so it just felt like a natural fit to extend the franchise that way and keep people excited about SG-1. If the question was directed more creatively, when we were discussing what the end of season 10 would be, I didn’t feel we had the time to do it justice. If people continue to watch the franchise and their biggest complaint is there is not enough, that they want more, well, that is okay.

The Ori storyline was supposed to take up most of season 11. What were you hoping to accomplish with the DVD?

Whenever you change formats and take a little more risk financially, in that you are suddenly doing something different than your comfort zone, you tend to rethink things a bit and say, “How can I appeal to a broader audience and expand the horizon?” That seems contrary to the idea of wrapping up something that was more accessible to devoted fans from seasons nine and 10.

It is really why we decided to do two movies at the same time. We figured the first one would address those issues for the fans and the second one would hopefully open the franchise up a little bit and keep that series of straight-to-DVD movies growing with bigger budgets. That is the plan anyway.

The mythology is pretty dense in Ark of Truth. This definitely seems like a movie for the fans.

Here’s the problem I faced as a writer. If you go half way and you sort of acknowledge the history, you are going to annoy the people who are really looking for the resolution they’ve been fans of. I don’t necessarily know if that is going to bring in new fans anyway; you really do have to start fresh. If we are going to do a wrap up, if this is going to be the last chapter, than really do the best of your ability and put the detail in there that is going to reward people that have been tuning in.

Was it difficult to service all the characters in such a short time frame?

It was certainly something I tried to. The more people you have to write for, the less screen time each of them has. I did think I tried to spread around the moments. Something that SG-1 has always done well is use the ensemble nature of the cast to its fullest potential.

Ark of Truth was filmed six months after SG-1 wrapped. Was it a challenge to reunite both the regular cast and guest stars such as Morena Baccarin and Julian Sands?

It was a challenge to get the main cast back. Once we had them on board, it wasn’t as much of a problem scheduling. In many ways, the schedule is being dictated by the availability of sets, when things could be built for, and actor availability. From that, a lot of creative choices are made.

That is the nature of doing something on the budget we had. People wonder why, if we had all this extra money, we didn’t do more with giant space battles or resolve certain other elements. These are all things that come down to budget.

Basically, I had Morena for one day on the schedule and you can shoot about five pages in a day. Was it my inability to imagine her in a bigger role that kept her out of the movie? No. We could shoot for one 12 hour day. The question that gets posed to me is 'Do I want to this without her or recast and make the role bigger with another actress?' I could have written it without her but - because I love Morena, the character of Adria, and the relationship between Adria and Vala – I chose to do the movie with her and take what I could get. It meant an incredibly long day because we could only get Julian for one day, so we had to get all these scenes involving them in a small window. That was a bit tricky.

SG-1 already has to deal with The Ori so why add The Replicators into the mix?

I like them. That is the short answer. They are cool. I had talked about doing a story in which the Replicators take over a human being to create a Replicator zombie. I have hung on to that, so I saved it for the movie and tried to come up with a way of making it an element. Things do evolve out of what came before.

I looked at the Asgards giving us the knowledge and what the repercussions of that would be. One of the questions of the series is “Why don’t we use the technology we are discovering as we go along?” The answer is because it would make us too powerful. There would be no challenge in defeating the bad guys so you have to come up with reasons why you can’t use everything you find. And one of the good reasons is we don’t understand it all.

There is a Pandora’s Box element to it - that if you mess with something you don’t understand, it can get you in trouble. I wanted to explore that thematically and even though we’ve learned that lesson, the IOA is a good excuse to tinker around with that. The nemesis of The Asgard was the Replicators, so why not sick your best friend’s enemy on your enemy?

Once again, Mitchell gets put through the ringer. Has it become a guilty pleasure to watch him take some serious lumps?

He is just very good at it. There is something about seeing a hero get the crap beat out of him and survive. The harder the journey for the hero, the more you like him in the end. Ben Browder happens to be very good at having the crap beat out of him.

Ark of Truth has been well received. Has that spawned early discussions about future Stargate DVD projects?

We have been talking about it for two years now. What are we going to do next? It is going to be something - but the question is what? However, the better the sales, obviously the more people want Stargate stuff, so it has been really exciting to see just how positive a response this is getting. As I said, it was a bit of a risk on our part and the studio’s to go directly to DVD, and the fanbase is really coming through for us.

Stargate: The Ark of Truth is out now on region 1 DVD and is released on region 2 DVD on 28 April 2008.

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