Michael Shanks was probably one of my favorite characters from the Stargate franchise, but then again, a lot of the actors/characters could be categorized as a favorite. Maybe I’ll say that he’s one of my favorite entertainment genre actors.
As it is, I’ve only seen Michael Shanks in a few things since Stargate was cut off at the knees canceled by Syfy. But neither has he been asleep at his career’s wheel though! Which I’m glad to see.
Michael Shanks was born December 15th, 1970 in Vancouver and he’s married to Lexa Doig (Andromeda, Stargate SG-1, 2010 series V) and they have two kids.
He’s been nominated several times for awards in relation to his Daniel Jackson role in Stargate and has won two Leo Awards: (2009: Best Lead Performance by a Male in a Feature Length Drama for Stargate: Continuum; 2004: Dramatic Series: Best Lead Performance by a Male for Stargate SG-1.)
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Throughout the Stargate franchise series run, he’s had some stellar episodes where some hit the heart strings hard and others just exemplify a humoring sarcastic mode dealing with Jack O’Neill (Richard Dean Anderson).
But I’ve only seen him in one other entertainment venue since then, and that was his short-lived role in the movie, Red Riding Hood.
But it’s not that he hasn’t done anything. I’ve only missed his other works since Stargate SG-1. He’s actually been busy and staying employed within the field of acting.
This upcoming month of November, (Happy Thanksgiving time!), we have a few events that if they’re in your town, you might want to look into! There’s the Comic Con event in Texas, and then there are some smaller venues for Twilight, Farscape, Eureka and Warehouse 13 get togethers as well.
But more importantly, making the publicity rounds to support their new movie, these will be scheduled public appearances by Twilight‘s Kristen Stewart, Robert Pattinson and more!
Check it out:
Austin, Texas has its Comic Con on November 11-13 at the Austin Convention Center. The usual cast of characters will be there, from Kevin Sorbo, Michael Beihn, James Marsters, Alaina Huffman, Julia Benson and Adam Baldwin. Genre fans should have a blast in Texas!
Something from YouTube to ponder for the Stargate Fan
If you’re a Stargate fan, you may or may not have encountered the YouTube user JaapVSWDelta. User JaapVSWDelta hails from the Netherlands, is a Physicist by day and big fan of the Stargate television franchise by night. He takes his enjoyment of Stargate and mashes it up by creating some wonderful music videos. He’s an incredible editor, who is not an editor!
Jaap has a wonderful talent in creating music videos by mashing scenes from Stargate and matching them to the music and lyrics of the song he decides to edit to. Whether it’s the tone of the music or lyrics being belted out, the scene(s) he chooses to mix with the music seems flawless to me.
The very first video I ever saw of his was via Joseph Mallozzi‘s blog where he said the following:
“cool Stargate-related online videos – we walked into post after lunch and found Visual Effects Producer Mark Savela sitting, mesmerized, by the following fan-made video. We stopped to watch and, in seconds, we too were thoroughly entranced. It’s epic, expertly edited, and includes almost every awesome visual effects we’ve ever done.”
Stargate fans know who I’m talking about, but if you didn’t know, Joseph Mallozi was executive producer for all three of the different Stargate television series’. The video being referred to is just an awesome piece of work by Jaap.
If you’ve dug around enough on the web as a Stargate fan, you’ve probably found some great and not so great fan mash-ups.
But in the case of the YouTube user/channel ‘JaapVSWDelta,’ we’ve got a guy who takes his love of both music and Stargate and mash them together using above his obviously way above average skills for editing footage and blending it with music.
The first time I encountered his work was in the video mash-up “Stargate – Diamond Eyes.” I found it to be an awesome vid and because of that video, I actually found myself searching for music from that group. (Music groups take note!)
Jaap’s newest video mashes up scenes explicitly cut from Stargate Universe and the music from Skillet, the song titled “Monster.”
I like this guys work. And in this case, he’s reminded me of how sad Stargate Universe fans must be, having lost this wonderful sci fi series to the sad but realistic world of TV ratings.
This week the new DVD/Blu-ray releases, we see over 200 new titles hit the store and website shelves. (I use the term “shelves” loosely.)
As I take a quick break from the mass of Comic Con reports I have, I thought I’d toss out a quick list of some of the titles in the hoard of releases, we have this week…
The 42nd Comic-Con International has come and gone. Everyone had bunches of fun and I’m still scrambling to collect all my notes from all the days and put out the news I absorbed while there! Next year’s dates for Comic Con are already set! Next year, Comic Con 2012 event in San Diego will take place from July 12 to 15th! Mark the calendars… though prereg sales already seemed to have sold out at the convention. Zoinks!
But for those who didn’t or couldn’t make it, there’s always the August conventions!
For one, there’s Wizard Worlds Chicago Comic Con taking place Aug 11-14th! Bruce Campbell, Sir Patrick Stewart, Felicia Day, Smashing Pumpkins and more are slated to appear. There will also be Morena Baccarin, James Marsters, the hot Charisma Carpenter and of course, so many more! After August, the event will be in Los Angeles in Sept!
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Creation Entertainment has a few conventions taking place in August also… I mean, when don’t they have events taking place?
When I watched what I thought was the series finale of The Event, I had a few choice thoughts about it… like leaving us hanging with a new planet in our sky, earthquakes rattling the world and those pesky aliens wanting to take back the planet for themselves. We had stopped their evil plans to kill us all with a plague, to find out that would have been the humane method of ridding the rock of these pesky humans.
The finale for The Event, I presumed, kept us and our creative hopes engaged by forcing us to decide for ourselves, what was to become of everyone and everything on Earth. I presumed humanity would win and adapt, with lingering aliens either accepting their fate and to continually plot for another 65 years to try again.
But now it seems that my imagined outcome and future of the mythical Earth may no longer be the case! Right now the “word on the street” is that the Syfy channel is in talks to possibly pick up The Event and continue it as a miniseries.
Gateworld, the renown website that copiously tracks everything Stargate, has introduced an interesting idea for all Stargate fans to participate in a rewatching of all of the series. This rewatch campaign will be starting with Stargate SG-1 and then working their way through Stargate Atlantis and then finish up your watching marathon with the recently ended Stargate Universe.
GateWorld wants to start this worldwide Stargate fan marathon to start on August 1st and crank out five episodes per week. Regardless of if you watch one per day or five per weekend day.
What they want you to consider is that this is a “worldwide community event.”
What they ask of you and I is that on Twitter, use the hashtag #SGRewatch when you post about it. They also asked that we post reviews of your favorite episodes on your blogs. (Or you most hated episodes.)
They’ll also be starting discussion threads for each episode over on the site. Remember, the goal is to rewatch all 354 episodes of Stargate together as a whole.
I noticed that for about eight hours after the series finale of Stargate Universe aired, Google Trends had the show pop up on their charts a few times. The show broke the top-10 search criteria a few times and even hit the top-5 a few more times throughout the night. Seems crazy that enough people can make the show crawl into the top-5 of web searches for Google but not have enough ratings to survive for a third season. But then again, the series finale of Stargate Universe pulled in just over 1.1 million viewers in the ‘Live + Same Day‘ TV ratings.
To be pragmatically honest about it, as a collective, fans didn’t make a strong enough statement with numbers of viewers to make the show worth it to the Syfy channel. I don’t mean that in a mean way. Please, read on to understand what I’m thinking.
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I have been saddened by the gaping hole that Stargate Universe has left in my weekly TV viewing schedule. I’m frustrated but what can I do about it? New episodes of the show are gone from the Syfy channel, the Destiny was last seen hurtling through space in that translucent wavering tunnel of shimmering bluish FTL light, continuing on its journey without the fans.
But I have to ask myself how did this happen? How did this much beloved show meet its demise? The following is a hard but pragmatic look at how this happened to the fans of Stargate Universe. I take a step back and have scrutinized the system of TV entertainment itself. End, Disclaimer.
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The Stargate franchise, after 14 years, has come to an end and from what I can see, various factors came into play that precipitated this event. I’m going to take some educated guesses and look at repercussions these factors had on the show that will be no more, on the Syfy channel.
This is a review of the series finale of Stargate Universe… and I take this moment to send out my appreciation and thanks to the creative forces behind the show, the series and the franchise. [Spoilers for the DVR viewers planning on watching this at a date other than the original air-date.]
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In this final episode of Stargate Universe, The Destiny’s path is blocked by the drone brigades and the crew has to come up a plan or suffer the consequences. The first plan is to attenuate ship shields so they can drop out of FTL to get supplies, but the drones adapt. Eli (David Blue) comes up with a plan to skip the galaxy they’re in and jump to the next one to get away from the drones, but it will take three years and the crew needs to be put on ice. (Suspended animation)
Welcome to the Destiny. Please gather your bags and wounded and find your seats!
Dr Rush (Robert Carlyle) doesn’t like it because it’s skipping a galaxy that the ship could collect information from. Yet if they stick around the drone brigade will take them down!
They choose to start putting crew members in the stasis pods but then discover some issues that need repair. Park (Jennifer Spence) comes up with an idea that helps them get the raw supplies they need to repair the stasis pod section. It works with the sacrifice of one of the shuttles.
With the latest Michael Shanks TV news about Saving Hope, it got me to thinking a bit.
