Stargate Universe - SciFi Pi: Joseph Mallozzi Interview

At Australia's SciFi Channel's SciFi Pi:

(Please follow the link for the complete interview.)

SGU's Writer/Producer Joseph Mallozzi: 'More Space Battles, Aliens'!

Tuesday, December 8 by Captain


Joseph Mallozzi has been working on Stargate SG1, Stargate Atlantis and now Stargate Universe for just on a decade.

Having written dozens of episodes, the writer/producer is one of the key voices that sing in concert with the two Stargate stalwarts, Brad Wright and Robert Cooper.

He has written the upcoming Stargate: Extinction, the movie length addition to the Stargate Atlantis story, as well as (among many others) the classic SG1 episodes ‘Moebius’, ‘Lockdown’, ‘Descent’ and ‘Homecoming’. And 'Wormhole X-Treme'. On SGA, his writing credits include ‘Home’, 'Travelers', 'This Mortal Coil' and the final episode, ‘Enemy at the Gate’.

As executive producer, consulting producer and just plain producer, he has had a hand in hundreds of Stargate episodes.

If you wanted to talk to someone (besides Brad and Robert) about all things Stargate, HE is your man.

So we did. Here's what he had to say:


A brief excerpt:

SGU’s new style has been quite confronting for many Stargate fans, and especially for the more impatient Stargate fans. When you are writing SGU do you find the style more constricting or less constricting than say on SG1 or SGA?

It’s a completely different animal. In some ways it’s more restrictive, in others it’s less restrictive. One of the things that always appealed to me in SG1 and Atlantis that I felt we didn’t do enough was delve into the characters. When I was writing SG1 I always liked to include those little scene. Say for example, I forget which one exactly, perhaps ‘Lockdown’ when Teal’c and the rest of the team are discussing Teal’c getting his own apartment and what gift they’ll bring for the housewarming. Little instances that suggest that after all the action is said and done, these characters are friends. It added a depth of humanity to characters who are, in some respects, more heroic than the average hero.

In much the same way, when we went over to Atlantis, I always enjoyed the episodes where we could explore the characters. I remember ‘Broken Ties’ was one episode where we got to explore Ronon’s backstory. Showed that vulnerability that made him the warrior that he was, at the same time juxtaposing the introduction of Woolsey, who up to that point had just been the officious jerk IOA character, and through humour, which Bob Picardo was so good at, be able to humanize the character.