Stargate’s Mark Savela Reflects on Franchise Cancellation

We spoke to Visual Effects Supervisor Mark Savela after the announcement that the Stargate Franchise was officially at and end.  The news came following the cancellation of Stargate Universe and the decision by MGM not to pursue a series of planned DVD movies.  Mark was in attendance at Vancouver Con 2011, and shared with us the reactions of cast and crew as well as those of Stargate creator and champion Brad Wright who delivered the news to fans during a Stargate panel.  Reporting for Chevron One were Samantha Kimm and Jennifer Griffin.

Chevron One:  How are you?

Mark Savela: Not too bad.  I’m at the convention here, meeting with Brad.  It was interesting.  It was pretty sad.

CO:  We just heard the news. It’s the end of an era, really.

MS: Yes, I know. I just had brunch with Brad. It was pretty sad. We had actually only known for a day or so, and he had wanted to announce it as soon as possible to everyone here.

CO:  There are going to be a lot of disappointed fans.

MS: Totally! Lots of disappointed people. Especially Brad. It’s been a lot of years of his life. He’s been the number one supporter and fighter behind everything. The champion of the whole franchise really. So it really wasn’t the best of news to happen today. It was a really good panel. (referring to Brad Wright’s panel at Vancouver Con) He did a great job. I had brunch with him after the panel and I showed him all of the tweets that started coming about five minutes after he got off stage and it was pretty overwhelming. There was a LOT of support, which is good.

CO:  I just heard the news myself five minutes ago.  It was actually one of the questions we wanted to ask you.

MS:  How are the movies coming along?

CO:  We wanted to know if there was any news.

MS: I guess it’s kind of answered by now.

CO: Unfortunately.

MS: As we were talking one of the things I said to Brad was that he made the show so much fun that actually right now for everyone involved on the show there’s a big void for us. Usually at this point in time in the year we would have shot at least one episode by now. We would have been into working. There’s a little bit of emptiness around Vancouver. He (Brad) made it such an enjoyable show to work on. It’s really a shame. They were the best years of my career, working on Stargate. The most enjoyable for sure. So it really is the end of an era. But as Brad said in his panel franchises get rebooted. It’s kind of like science fiction where nobody really dies. No franchise really dies. (laughs) Hopefully we’ll see something at some point in time.

CO: I would love to think so.  I hope so.

MS: I’ve heard from some of the cast and people are really disappointed. I know David Blue was really looking forward to coming back. A lot of people really loved working on the franchise but even on Universe in particular.  People talk about families and how a show really becomes a family and it’s kind of clichéd but on Universe it really was a family.  Everybody, in terms of cast and crew, all got along so well.

We all miss each other right now.