A Plea to Stargate Fans - Ten Reasons to Watch Sanctuary

I know, it's been rough for all of us since Stargate SG1 ended. Atlantis was nice, and Universe actually wrapped with some solid episodes at the end, but things have never been the same since our favorite (slightly interchangeable) four set out every week from the SGC.

And yet, very few of you have latched onto a show I know you'll love, so here's:

Ten Reasons Why Stargate SG1 Fans Will Love Sanctuary:
(by the way, if you are not a Stargate fan/want to know a heck of a lot more about the show, I did a really thorough review of it before Season 3 aired back here. Careful, there are lots of spoilers)

1. The Executive Producers (The 1 you know and the 2 you don't)

First off, Sanctuary is a privately financed show that is aired by SyFy, not a network show. The people who made all this magic happen are currently it's three executive producers: Amanda Tapping, Damian Kindler, and Martin Wood. And guess what, you actually know all three.

Amanda Tapping - You know her as Sam Carter, but not only does she star as Helen Magnus is Sanctuary, she's also been an executive producer since the beginning and directed 3 episodes. She's had a hand in designing the show since it first began as a few online webisodes. On top of that, along with Damian Kindler she helped found SanctuaryForKids, a charity that sponsors work all over the globe and receives 100% of all money made from Sanctuary merchandise. She is is one very talented woman.

Damian Kindler - The creator of Sanctuary and co-founder of SanctuaryForKids, he's also an executive producer and writer for Sanctuary, but you know him from, well, a lot of Stargate. The short list of episodes he wrote includes The Other Guys, Reckoning Pt 1 and 2, and Bounty.

Martin Wood - Executive producer and director for Sanctuary, he met Amanda Tapping during the first episode of Stargate SG1 he directed, where she talked him into helping with a now infamous prank:

2. Magnus isn't Carter, and never tries to be


Whenever I talk to Stargate fans, they say they won't watch Sanctuary because they'll always think of Amanda Tapping as Sam Carter. Well here's the thing, so does she.

Amanda Tapping has been incredibly vocal since Sanctuary started that she loved being Sam, she knew and related to Sam,  and felt she grew along with Sam over the course of Stargate SG1. When it came time to design Helen Magnus, she was very careful that nothing of Sam spill over, so Helen is a very separate persona.

And believe me, it goes far beyond the brown hair and accent. Magnus is un-compromising, very bad at taking orders, enigmatic, and much more of the science-for-science's sake breed. Additionally, well, let's just say she's had a much more colorful past than Carter. And to paraphrase an interview, even Tapping has admitted that she "doesn't quite understand Magnus - after all who could?"

3. Lots of familiar Stargate faces, but not celebrity-of-the-week

Let's face it, every SyFy actor in Canada has been on Stargate. So, you'd figure that many alumni and your bound to have a few familiar faces. I'll stick with the most obvious ones (besides Tapping) and that's still, well, 6.

 

First off, Christopher Heyerdal plays 2 roles on Sanctuarym, John Druitt and Bigfoot (above), but you know him as:

Not once, as Pallan (Revisions), the scientist who lives on the planet where people are erased from their collective memory once life support can no longer sustain that many people.

Not twice, as Halling, first Athosian met by the Atlantis crew.

 But three times, wrapping all that up along with playing the infamous Todd the Wraith. Damn.

Then there's Ryan Robbins, Henry Foss (above) on Sanctuary, aka Ladon Radim, Chief of the Genii.

How about fan favorite Jonathon Young, who plays Nikola Tesla. Pic above (from Chimera) basically sums up the character, as Magnus is currently really freaked about by a new baddy they just encountered while Tesla just thinks its so damn cool. Anyways, Young has also popped up as a botanist in SG Atlantis (with an oddly similar expression), and just to prove my point about SyFy and Canadaian actors, Eureka too. Tesla probably wouldn't be too happy he played a scientist named Dr. Ethan Edison, but then again, the high school's named after him:

                       

Here's recent bad guy extreme Ian Tracey, who plays Adam Worth, someone from Helen's long, long past:

Maybe he looks a little bit familiar?

 That's because this exact scene occurred about 8 years earlier, in SG1 Season 5 episode Prometheus. Tracey played one of the NID agents who tried to hijack the Prometheus on launch day, but did not account for Carter, Jonas, and Teal'c still being on board. And being, well, Carter, Jonas, and Teal'c.

Let's not forget the one and only Michael Shanks (Daniel) who showed up for one episode with quite a few nods to SG1 (and of course, he died at the end of the episode):

And finally, [find name] aka Walter, aka Chevron guy, delivered one of the best on-the-nose lines when Magnus switched accents to hide her identity during..... a bank robbery. Yep. An Abnormal escapes into a bank and too make sure no one leaves with it they "quarantined" the bank. And since women with classic Victorian-era British accents stand out in midwestern US, Magnus shifts accents. I couldn't find the clip alone, but it's just after the 5 minute mark below:

4. Wonky science, but with clear rules

We all know crystals aren't magic, and wormholes can't really be dialed up for 38 minutes at a time using a 7 symbol code. But the fact that there were rules, and Stargate writers stuck to them is what made the sci-fi bits of Stargate so wonderful. And Sanctuary certainly follows suit.

The abused tech in Sanctuary is that magical phrase "EM waves/radiation". Somehow, not even Tesla seems to speak sensibly about well, light, at times. That being said, every Abnormal or gadget comes with strengths and weaknesses (heck, half the time, the gadgets don't work at all) and even when they discovered uber-advanced tech in Season 3, they don't miraculously figure out how to make it work and reproduce it. Sanctuary relies more on you putting the pieces together; this Abnormal from that episode + that gadget we used from some other purpose + epiphany from Magnus, Tesla, or Henry = very cool new thing that saves them at the last minute.


5. There's A Daniel, but not THE Daniel

Yep, I went there. At first it was sad and a bit tedious, but now we miss seeing how Daniel will die/be mortally injured/eventually be saved this week. Enter Dr. Wil Zimmerman, Sanctuary's oh-so-plain-human and occasional damsel-in-distress. Not to say that he's useless. At first, yes, he's the bumbling scientist, but he picks up some weapons training (because unlike with Daniel's uber-pacifist mantra, that makes sense). Unfortunately, he's still the one always getting into more and more trouble.

What kind of doctor you ask? Psychology. Yep. All that squishy stuff again. He's actually not really a foil for Magnus, like the O'Neill/Daniel dynamic, but definitely one for Tesla. Will is the "yeah, this stuff is great and all, but it's trying to kill us and some of us aren't immortal" perspective of the bunch. He certainly grows over time, and though he's certainly a bit abused as the obvious ploy to explain stuff to the audience, he's definetly complex.

6. Some people actually stay dead (but never forgotten)

It's rather late in the list, but the fact is that this is one of the most incredibly impressive features of the show. It even surpasses Stargate in this regard. There's a common mantra that "you're never dead in SciFy" that Sanctuary honors sometimes, but mostly ignores. There are a few characters who seem to survive anything (Magnus and Will as main characters, Tesla and Druitt as well) but anyone else is fair game.

And the best part is it's never a non-subtle ploy to write someone off the show. The beginning of season 2 saw the death of a MAJOR character who is still remembered and mentioned as a big part of Magnus' psyche (now well into season 4). Recurring characters are fair game too; just because you have a bunch of redshirts in the background doesn't make you safe because you  have a name and backstory (RIP poor Alistair). In fact, there are currently two recurring fan favorite characters whose fates have been in limbo since the end of season 3; it's not something that's teased or constantly repeated, but subtly brought up in the unease of the rest of the characters.

7. Romance is kept comfortably in the background

I'm tired of will-they-or-won't-they SciFy. Now, let's make one thing clear, I LOVE Castle, and I love that tension in Castle. It's not a horrible thing to have in a show. But constantly intertwining huge world ending crises with before-we-die sex, dramatic confessions of love, and everyday "why am I single?" angst is tedious, annoying, and overly-abused as a way to make characters fallible and relatable. Even with Carter/O'Neill tension for the show's whole run, Stargate always did a great job of not hashing it to death, letting it quietly simmer in the background. It made the Carter/Pete storyline all the more interesting because we weren't used to seeing a story of that nature before.

Sanctuary is the same way. Magnus' colorful past certainly catches up to her a few times (most notably whenever ex-fiance and serial killer John Druitt stops by), but romance was mostly absent for the first two seasons of the show. In fact, one episode, Next Tuesday, focused quite a bit on Will's frustration over being unable to date and have a normal life. Contrast that with Seasons 3 and 4, where both Henry and Will have significant others that have appeared in quite a few episodes and seem headed for the chapel. While some fans protested Will's girlfriend, Abby, as unlikeable, I think that's what makes the show genuine. They aren't a perfect Hollywood couple; I'll admit, I don't love Abby insanely much, though she has really grown since her first appearance. But Will clearly does love her, and that's what matters.

8. In-jokes, improv, off days, and lamp-shading

It's no secret the cast of SG1 were goofballs. Tons of material in the episodes were done on the spot, and the show loved poking fun at itself. Don't believe me? Try "Window of Opportunity" or "Wormhole X-Treme" or "200". Or when O'Neill refused to hold a wake for Daniel because he knew there was no way he was actually dead this time. Or all the pop culture jokes made with Vala and Teal'c. Plus, they often had episodes like "The Other Guys" and "Heroes" that showed us what everyone else is doing when SG1 is off saving the world.

You guessed it. Sanctuary does that too. The characters are very genre-savy. Don't believe me? Here's two of the season 4 trailers below. Now before you freak, time travel does not normally happen. It was a one shot thing at the end of season 3, which was handled with a very similar vibe to SG1 episode "Moebius". (My favorite line is a voice-over in the second one at about 1:05)

Improved lines are often some of the funniest:

And we even get to see what people do on their days off, like when Will's run in with a nasty Abnormal put him on the couch for a few days. Will gets pissy when Kate and Henry come back from a mission and won't shut up about it, only to get a "now you know how I feel!" from Bigfoot.

It's a nice touch that just makes the incredibly strange SciFy world they live in seem so much more real.

9. It's a secret! Except for, you know, every government and then some....

Yeah. That basically says it all. As the show's gone on, it's covered the whole globe. We've seen Mumbai, Jakarta, Tokyo, and London to name a few. And Magnus has friends everywhere. Season 4 has been about showing how much world governments already know about Abnormals, as each begins to set up their own investigative branches, aka, SGCs and cutting off Magnus and the Sanctuary Network. It also shows us a very different perspective from Stargate, as Magnus is fighting to keep Abnormals from being weaponized by every single government, but also to protect agents who are being sent own with no training or knowledge of what they face.

10. The cast and crew love it, and they love the fans

Can you really ask for more? The cast are incredibly generous with their time for fans (during filming, Amanda Tapping does weekly fan interviews via Twitter). Not only that, but because they are an independent show, they have a tight budget for all their physical props and green screen effects. By all accounts that I've heard, this has led to a massive amount of camaraderie between cast and crew alike, with everyone pitching in to help out around set. (As well as inspiring some very unconventional episodes in an effort to cut back on special effects - like filming an episode about a human turning into an Abnormal from 1st person, or their first clip show, which was a double date where Will and Henry competed over best story)

All in all, it's a great show with a great vibe, and if you honestly managed to read all of this, I hope it convinced you to watch the show! So get to Sidereel or any other online video host (that of course I do not condone in any way_ because the season finale is coming up, and your going to need a bit of background first!