Appreciation: One of Stargate’s Finest
Making Stargate SG-1’s Maj. Gen. George Hammond hard-nosed was a given. Making him human, as well, was a Don S. Davis mission.
Davis played the commanding Hammond for several seasons on the 1997-2007 sci-fi series. The show reunited him with Richard Dean Anderson, with whom he began his prime-time career in the 1980s on MacGyver, and cemented his credentials as a genre actor of the first order.
It was Davis who played Agent Scully’s father on The X-Files. Who conversed with the Log Lady on Twin Peaks. Who appeared on The Dead Zone, Andromeda, and, for students of obscure 1990s television, something called M.A.N.T.I.S. Invariably, he was cast as a military man, which he once had been in real life.
Davis died last Sunday of a heart attack at his home in Canada, the Vancouver Sun reported this week. He was 65. And he left behind one last Hammond mission.
Davis and other Stargate SG-1 veterans will be seen in Stargate: Continuum, a new movie-length adventure debuting on DVD July 29.
Other recently noted passings:
- Henry Beckman, 86, was a well-traveled character actor whose stops including a notable stint as retired police Detective Frank Briggs during the first season of The X-Files.
- For the past 11 years, Star Trek: The Experience has been a multimedia, Quark’s Bar-hopping must for the Federation faithful. It was announced this week that the attraction, based at the Las Vegas Hilton, will go dark on Sept. 1. Hailing frequencies closed, indeed.
Appreciation: "Oh My God, They’re Turkeys!"
Maybe you know turkeys can’t fly. But Mr. Carlson…Well, he didn’t.
WKRP in Cincinnati’s “Turkeys Away,” maybe the funniest and, in terms of sheer bird casualties, deadliest holiday-themed TV episode of all time, was written by Bill Dial. (View the entire episode at Hulu.com.)
Dial died June 2 at his home in South Carolina, various sources, including WKRP’s “hometown” newspaper, the Cincinnati Enquirer, reported this week. He was 66.
Dial acted in, as well as helped write the 1978-82 sitcom. (He popped up a couple of times as station engineer Bucky Dornster.) Later, he coexecutive produced the Jerry O’Connell sci-fi series Sliders and scripted episodes of Star Trek: Voyager and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.
But it is for dreaming up one, fatally flawed publicity stunt that Dial will be best remembered. Certainly, Mr. Carlson never forgot.
Terminator Loads Up on Some Garbage
Some cyborgs are only happy when it rains.
Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles is bringing aboard Garbage frontwoman Shirley Manson as a regular next season.
The Scottish singer will play the CEO of a cutting-edge high-tech company that may be a precursor to the humanity-hating Skynet…and possibly a target for Sarah Connor’s merry band of terminator hunters. The casting was first sniffed out by the Hollywood Reporter.
The second season of the Fox sci-fi series will see the return of Lena Headey (Sarah Connor), Thomas Dekker (John Connor), Summer Glau (terminator Cameron), Richard T. Jones (FBI Special Agent James Ellison) and Brian Austin Green (Derek Reese).
Manson should be plenty busy in the coming months. Garbage has been working on a follow-up to 2005’s Bleed Like Me that the band hopes to release later this year.
Sarah Connor may be coming back for another season on FOX
If you were a fan of FOX’s mid-season drama The Sarah Connor Chronicles, and you were wondering if the show was going to come back or not, the following information should give you a bit of relief. Or, at least a bit of hope as to the future of the series given FOX’s erratic pattern of pickups and renewals.
According to Kristin over at E! Online, the sci-fi series that takes place in the universe of the Terminator movies (even though some die-hard fans scoff at it), the show will be coming back for a second season in the fall. That information comes from Thomas Dekker, who portrays the young John Connor on that program. Dekker was reported to say that Chronicles’ producers are currently pitching second-season stories to the network at this time. In addition to this tidbit of information, unnamed sources are saying that production for the show will resume in mid- to late-June.
FOX, as usual, is remaining mum about the whole thing, saying that the press and public will know about Chronicles’ renewal during the May upfronts. So, if you want to know if John and the Cameron (the good Terminator played by Summer Glau) will have another chance at getting together in the near future, you’ll just have to wait until the official word from FOX. Unless, this was the official word “leaked” to the press by Dekker to resemble a rumor. Then again, this could be the insane wishes of Thomas to remain on an regular series.
Oh, television … why dost treat us so poorly?