Q: Is Michael’s real-life wife, Lexa Doig, going to be a love interest for Daniel on the show?
A: Michael says he hopes not. He explained that his wife, actress Lexa Doig, will play the new base doctor in season 9. He says “she’s kinda cute” :), but there are no plans for a romantic relationship between the two characters. He doesn’t like the “lovey-dovey smush-smush stuff”, and that it belongs not on the show but in the “imaginations of our wonderful fans.” He mentioned a Daniel / Thor slash fiction he was sent recently, and said it was “disturbing” He also says there are no plans for Claudia Black’s character to be a love interest for Daniel.

Q: My other neighbor, Arlene, asked Michael how he’s holding up to the hockey lockout.
A: He looked quite sad, but said he was ok.  He said, “You all must be pissed, huh? Tampa wins the cup, and all of a sudden, that’s the end of hockey.” He says he realized that since he’s not watching hockey all the time, he got his life back, his wife got her husband back, and he sees Chris Judge far less. He’ll be ok as long as the lockout doesn’t last longer than a year.

Q: Since eight chevrons take us to the Pegasus galaxy, are there any plans to try a ninth chevron?
A: Michael said “there are plans for that in season 16”, then said more seriously that there are no immediate plans to deal with a ninth chevron.

Q: Why didn’t Sam marry Pete?
A: “Because he was a stalker?” Michael said he was the wrong guy to be asking this question of. He said, “Wasn’t it because of some unrequited love between her and Jack? I don’t know.” So apparently he’s not sure about this one :)

Q: How often does he work out?
A: “Today, not at all.” He tries to work out four times a week.

Q: Which does he like better – writing, acting, or directing?
A: Michael said that he plans to continue acting. He likes directing more, but that’s much more demanding on a technical level. Writing is fun, and he enjoys the shows mythology. He said that it’s sort of like playing Dungeons and Dragons when he was a kid.

Q: I couldn’t hear the question, but it apparently had something to do with Daniel’s long monologues.
A: Michael said that Bob Cooper recently wrote “the longest monologue Daniel’s ever had to say.” He told Cooper that this was quite a bold statement, considering Daniel’s past monologues. He said the longest one he’s gotten so far was in Sacrifices – 7/8 of a page, and it all had to be done in one shot. When they were filming the scene, they had some effects guys doing some welding in the corridor (“just so they’d have some action”, according to Peter DeLuise). Michael wasn’t expecting the sparks, so he flubbed his line. They then had to wait for the effects guys to reset the shot. When this happens, the actor tends to get the blame for making everybody wait. While they were waiting for the effects guys, Michael got really nervous. They ended up having to do the shot four times before Michael got it, and they wanted him to do it a fifth time. He asked the director, Andy Mikita, if he could “live with” that fourth take. Michael said Mikita still wanted him to do it a fifth time, at which point Michael made a wonderful sad face (“I looked like the cat in Shrek II”). He said he looked so pathetic that they “let him walk away”  :)

Q: My young neighbor got another question in – are there any plans for a musical episode of Stargate?
A: There are no plans for one, but it has been talked about. Michael said that no one would be more interested in seeing it than him.

Q: Did Michael study James Spader’s films when preparing for the role of Daniel?
A: “Yeah, I ripped him off totally.” I think he was being serious :)

Q: Did Michael perceive any changes when Stargate moved from Showtime to SciFi?
A: Michael said that nothing changed for him, but he did notice that SciFi is more reverent to the fans. He thinks this is good and bad. He said that Showtime “left them alone to tell their own story”, but Showtime also didn’t care about ratings.

Q: A long, rambling question about Star Trek. I didn’t really get the guy’s point, and I don’t think Michael did, either.
A: Michael did his best to answer this vague question. He said that, since Stargate is set in the present day, the characters can use pop-culture and scifi references more effectively. The characters are supposedly watching the same movies and tv shows that the audience does. He used an example from a recent episode (I didn’t hear the name) – Carter stated that certain concepts in science fiction are “absurd”, and Peter DeLuise agreed strenuously off-camera. Peter apparently had some challenges with the plot of the movie Signs. Michael did his wonderful Peter DeLuise impression and said, “They cross the entire galaxy, and the one thing they’re afraid of is water.”

Q: A woman in the audience said that she loves Daniel’s glasses, and that she’d love to see Michael on Battlestar Galactica. She then asked how they’re going to handle Amanda Tapping’s pregnancy on the show, and how they came up with “Daniel’s walk”.
A: They have no plans to include the pregnancy in the show. Her absence will be dealt with in other ways. She won’t be having any babies with Jack :)  He also mentioned that Richard Dean Anderson will be back for a couple of episodes in season 9. Yay!

Michael said he “doesn’t really know what Daniel’s walk is”, but he did a silly walk across the stage for us anyway.

Q: Another question about Christopher Judge that I couldn’t hear.
A: Michael said that Christopher is “scared of everything. He’s the biggest wuss on the face of the earth.” Christopher particularly has an irrational fear of bears. He talked about an episode in season 2 in which they were filming in a forest. Every time they’d hear a twig snap, Michael would try to would freak out Christopher by making him think it was a bear. At one point, Michael spotted a grip in a ditch, wearing a black t-shirt and black hat. He said to himself, “Oh, here’s a good opportunity.” Michael drew Christopher’s attention to the ditch, and started yelling when the guy in the ditch popped his head out. Christopher ran away, then realized that no one else was running and they were all laughing at him. So he turned around and chased Michael :) Michael said the other stories were too “unclean” for the youngsters in the audience.

Q: Will we see the Fourth Race?
A: “The Furlings? The Furbies?” Michael thinks they’re the Teletubbies :)  There are no plans to meet them.