The Stargate franchise has become science fiction’s equivalent of Law & Order.  Now, with Stargate: Atlantis currently airing it’s fifth and final season (before moving onto made for DVD movies), I spoke to veteran character actor Robert Picardo, who joined the cast as Commander Richard Woolsey, the main in charge of the Atlantis expedition.  He talked about being the first actor to appear full-time on both Stargate and Star Trek, why the key to good sci-fi is fast talking and his goal of breaking a highly unusual barrier in Playboy.

Q:  Do you think your experience on Star Trek: Voyager has prepared you for Stargate: Atlantis?
A:  I think it did help in the sense that I have a long history with sci-fi fans, and the reason why they used me as a guest performer on Stargate: SG-1 and Atlantis is because the audience knows me and they seem to get a kick seeing me in another show that they enjoy.  So it helped me get the job and I certainly am used to the live events and meeting sci-fi fans.  With regard to the character, I tended, due to the nature of my character, to have much more techno-babble on Voyager.  Playing a medical hologram, I spewed medical information, so it’s a nice change having people reporting to me and ask nice little three word interrogatives.  

Q:  Where do they come up with all that techno-babble? Is it rooted in scientific fact or do they just pull it out of their asses?
A: (laughs) You know why they come up with it?  Here’s what it is—it costs so much money for the optical shots that they need to spend as much time as they can with people talking in-between. I think it’s a financial imperative. I learned early on in Voyager that the faster you [talk], the better it is!

Q: If you talk fast and plow through it, it seems like you know what you’re talking about, right?
A: We were asked all the time why after three Star Trek series (Next Generation, Deep Space Nine and Voyager) that Enterprise wasn’t given the full seven years. It had a great company of actors and it’s Star Trek, but my personal feeling was that they didn’t have enough fast talkers in the cast (laughs). Now on Atlantis, we have David Hewlett (Dr. Rodney McKay) and nobody can touch him as a fast talker. I lay the crown at his feet.

Q: Were you nervous stepping into an established show like Stargate: Atlantis, despite the fact that you had done some guest appearances?
A: Not nervous about handling the commander role, but when you’re replacing Amanda Tapping (Col. Samantha Carter), who’s a statuesque blonde with beautiful eyes and then the audience suddenly is forced to look at me instead, I was more afraid of the shock to the audience! Amanda would be gone and then you’d have a middle-aged bald guy who looks like a shoe salesman. But they’ve accepted it. Of course, they also have Jewel Staite (Jennifer Keller) and Rachel Luttrell (Teyla Emmgan) to look at on a regular basis this season, so it wasn’t a complete loss. (laughs)

I was also concerned with the fact that the role had quite a few negative qualities that we had set up [in his previous appearances as a recurring character] that we had to be respectful of and yet try and see him grow into a leader. The biggest positive about Woolsey is that he means well. He really believes in what his responsibilities are. He just doesn’t know the best way to execute them and he certainly doesn’t know the best way to get along with people. So he’s a character who’s a bit of a jerk with good intentions. We’re able to make him a little more palatable. As the rest of the crew [of the Atlantis expedition] discovers that there’s more to me than meets the eye, the audience discovers that along with them. I frankly love playing characters with negative qualities because it’s what keeps it interesting. There are too many intrepid heroes in sci-fi that never are afraid. I think it’s good to have some guys in there who really aren’t that heroic.

Q: It’s like on Lost in Space, nobody remembers Don West but everyone remembers Dr. Smith.
A: Right, right! On Voyager, I used to say that my role was two parts Data and two parts Dr. Smith. I did borrow heavily from Jonathan Harris. Of course, I also borrowed heavily from DeForest Kelley (Dr. “Bones” McCoy on the original Star Trek). I met De Kelley after Voyager had been on for a year and I told him – because my character had these jokes that were very reminiscent of Bones, “I’m a doctor not a (fill in the blank)” – and when I met De Kelley, I said, “My character pays homage to your character,” and he replied, “Oh, so you mean you steal from me.”  (laughs)

Q: Woolsey was portrayed more as a bureaucrat—a sit-at-the desk sort of person—in his initial appearance. Now he’s actually in command of the Atlantis expedition. How does he handle putting theory into practice?
A:  That’s what made his development so interesting and fun to play. You can see him in each successive episode and each situation that he’s kind of building himself into a leader and that’s been pretty fun to play. In the episode “Ghost in the Machine,” you see him look the enemy in the eye and the enemy blinks. That was his Cuban Missile Crisis experience and you can see afterwards the cost to him emotionally and to his stomach lining, but you don’t feel it until he’s succeeded. I thought that was a nice moment. and there are other moments in upcoming episodes where he’s learning to fill the shoes. Now if I were ultimately to fill Amanda Tapping’s shoes, I’d have to start cross-dressing and eventually have a sex change. But the season’s not over yet! (laughs)

Q: That would definitely liven things up a bit!
A: I’d have to consult with my wife before I came home that way! Although if I could make it in Playboy…never mind! (laughs) That would be interesting, wouldn’t it? A guy in his fifties having a sex-change with his goal being to be in Playboy magazine!  I think there’s a movie pitch there!

Q: I’ll call Hef and get back to you! Cross-dressing notwithstanding, Woolsey’s not known for his people skills. Have you sort of brought a bit of your current experience—a new actor in an established cast—to Woolsey as he tries to settle in?
A:  Well, they established the Woolsey character on Stargate SG-1 and the times I visited Atlantis. It’s a story point that he rubs people the wrong way. But at the end of the very first episode where he’s a commander and he deals with the crisis, there’s a very nice scene at the end with Sheppard (Joe Flanigan) that shows he’s already broken the rulebook five times in dealing with his first situation. So all bets are off – everything he thought he was going to do and accomplish, he learned that you can’t command that way.  It set it up that it’s more important to him to be a good leader than to be right. As I said, I enjoy playing characters with negative qualities that my performances over the years that people have enjoyed, going back to Coach Cutlip on The Wonder Years, the gym coach who is clearly neurotic and screwed up. He wears his neurosis on his sleeve so much that you actually like the guy, even though there’s nothing likeable.

Q:  You know, it’s true. Cutlip always struck me as someone who, if he didn’t have that job, he wouldn’t have anything. I always felt so bad for him.
A:  I did too. When they cast me in that, I’m obviously not a big man or a guy you would think would be a gym instructor. I said I’m going to play this like a guy who majored in English and when he got this job, he ended up with remedial reading and gym and he has a chip on his shoulder because of that. “Why am I not respected the way I ought to be?” And that’s why he was so paranoid and expecting people to be disrespectful. My character on China Beach, who was very bright, but he had gone to medical school in the early 60s and his idea of women was very much embedded in growing up in the fifties. He was still trying to pinch butts at the beginning of the sexual revolution. It’s fun to play characters that make a bad first impression on the audience and they constantly have to struggle. The audience discovers that there’s something to like about them anyway in spite of those negatives. And that’s been sort of my stock in trade, I suppose.

Q: On Voyager, you once mentioned how you’d corner the executive producer outside his office with ideas for your character.  Do you do the same on Atlantis?

A: Well, when they hired me on Stargate, they had the bushes removed! (laughs) There’s no place to hide.  I’ve made a few suggestions, occasionally for a line or a joke, and they’ve been very welcoming. The big difference between shooting Atlantis and Voyager is that we rigidly stuck to the script on Voyager. You didn’t change anything without permission. If you came up with an idea, you better have come up with it three days before you shot and it and sent it up the chain of command. There was just no ad-libbing. On this show, as long as you don’t change the sense of the line, you can change the syntax or you can trim a word or two from it, or if you have a joke, you can ad-lib it and if the director laughs, then they’ll shoot it both ways. There’s a fun sense of freedom and I’ve been thanked for some ad-libs and additions which I don’t think ever happened in the Delta Quadrant! (laughs)  Having said that, Brannon Braga (Voyager executive producer) and the producers were all very open to what you brought to the role. They just had a different structure of getting it in that didn’t favor spontaneity.  

Q: Where you a little hesitant about jumping to Atlantis after spending seven years on Voyager?
A: That part was the cool part. I was proud of the fact that I was the first actor to straddle the two major sci-fi franchises. I was just more concerned about the logic of what we set up for the character. You know, being appointed to be the leader, a bureaucrat who vetted other people’s leadership.  But then I turned my fears inside out and said, “Wait a minute, I’m fearing what’s coolest and most challenging part of the job.”  Also, [in real life] we’re five years into a war now that was planned mainly by bureaucrats who didn’t serve in the military, so it’s sort of a comment on some of our recent history with this administration. I thought hopefully Richard Woolsey would be a little more successful in some of his judgments. Whatever gave me pause became the most interesting part of the opportunity.

Q: Do you think there’s more of an opportunity with the DVD movies now that Atlantis is wrapping up its regular run?
A: Well, the Stargate straight-to-video movies have been a big success and I know they’ve surprised the studio with their performance. My understanding is that Atlantis is even more popular than the original, so if we can hit a home run with our first movie, that there could be a regular future for Atlantis. That to me is the best of all possible worlds as an actor, because that means you could do a play every year or appear on other television shows or even do another series and still keep this thing that alive you can do with people you love working with.

Q: Has anything been scheduled?
A: Joe Mallozzi and Paul Mullie have the first movie planned, but they haven’t written a script yet. Beyond that, there’s nothing to read. They told all of us that it’s a go and we’d be doing it in the first third of next year.

Q: What’s your oddest fan experience?
A: At one of my early Trek conventions, I think somewhere in the south, a fan brought me a tombstone with my face carved into it. The fan carved tombstones for a living and took a three-inch chunk of marble and carved my face in it. My initial reaction was “uh-oh!  Is this the death of my career?” On the back he had written Robert Picardo as Dr. Lewis Zimmerman. It more of a monument created by a guy who carved tombstones. And it was great, but the most difficult part of it was getting it through airport security. They want to know why your bag is so heavy and you open it up and there’s this tombstone with your face on it!  They do look a little askance at you like, “Boy, you do believe in being prepared! Have you heard something about this flight we haven’t?”

Q: Where is it now?
A: It’s sitting at home in my garden!

--Ron Motta