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Like many of my fellow sci fi fans, I looked forward to the premiere of Sanctuary Friday night (10/3) because it is one of the few new science fiction shows we are getting this year. The other is Fringe, upon which I've already commented over at Snapshot Chronicles.
But Sanctuary isn't interesting simply because there isn't much else to divert our attention. Some of the other reasons the show appeals to me:
- It started as a web-based show last year before it was picked up by Sci Fi
- It uses green screen for its sets
- It stars a woman - Tapping - in her early 40s. Amen to that, especially in such a fanboy genre. She's also an executive producer.
Amanda Tapping did a Q&A during last weekend's Sci Fi Channel digital press tour, and addressed many of these things in her comments.
On her new role as executive producer of Sanctuary. Tapping finds it to be one of the most challenging jobs she's ever done. She's extraordinarily busy and commented:
"I now have the completely biased opinion that actors are wimps. Because I used to think that Sam Carter was the hardest job in the world. 10 pages of technobabble -- I'm going insane. And now I'm like, please, please sweetheart. If only. Yeah I miss being an actor."
Like many moms, she also worries that she doesn't spend enough time at any one of her jobs - producer, mom, actor. I'm sure many of the parents reading this will recognize themselves in her comment that she doesn't feel like she's 100% anywhere.
She works at her acting/producing job 14-16 hours per day when they are filming and then goes home to be a mom, with weekends devoted to family. It's a juggling act that we all play, regardless of how rich or famous. But well worth it.
"At the end of the day," she said, "I have a really happy child. She's well adjusted, very funny, very secure and I think if that's the kind of child I am raising, I'm doing a good job."
On leaving Stargate and her new character Helen Magnus. Tapping played the role of Samantha Carter in the Stargate franchise for more than 10 years. She said that only a really special character could have drawn her away, and it was a very difficult, tear-filled decision:
"The Stargate franchise has been great to me, the character has been good to me, it was a massive thing to let go of that. By the same token, to be honest, as I was bawling my eyes out, I was thinking there's this whole new groundswell of creativity that's coming up, a whole new challenge ahead of me. I was really excited by it, so it was this real double edged sword for a while. And slowly the excitement took over for the angst and pain."
While it wasn't easy to say good-bye to Carter, Tapping knew it was time, and describes it as a "soft landing:" "I did episode one of Atlantis and I just did their last episode last week so I never really left home. I just said, see you later."
For Tapping, part of what makes Helen Magnus so interesting is her backstory and the fact she is from Victorian England:
"It [Victorian England] defined women in a a huge way. The fact that she was a woman who thought outside the box, who pushed the envelope socially and scientifically so appealed to me. In an era when it would have been so easy to toe the party line and be status quo, she blew it out."
Another element that contributed to Tapping's interest in the character were some of the strange choices Helen makes, including the great love of her life John Druitt (played by the excellent Christopher Heyerdahl ) and the decision to have a child. "At the bottom of it all is a 157 year old woman who is incredibly lonely," she said.
In an episode called The Five, Tapping says we find out how the character has lived for so long.
On creatures and mythology. Tapping said that much of the mythology is taken from modern day mythology - the things that go bump inthe night, that scared us as children. They've also taken things in modern life, such as autism, and put a new meaning around them: "What I love about Sanctuary is that we (the characters) firmly believe that whatever we're studying is in
