Anubis created the supersoldiers.
That came from a rather intelligent recognition on his part
that the Jaffa were no longer a reliable army.
We've done a number of stories now where the Jaffa have begun
to doubt the Goa'uld as gods,
and have turned upon the Goa'uld in many circumstances.
There are rebel Jaffa spies amongst the Jaffa,
and, at this point, I think the Goa'uld were being a bit silly
not coming up with an alternative servant warrior, so to speak.
That was one of the reasons we had Anubis create the supersoldiers,
was to make him look like a smarter, more formidable villain.
The Goa'uld are supposed to be this hi-tech, powerful master race
that has access to incredible technology
and yet all they have are these guys running around in skirts, blowing horns.
So we wanted to introduce a more formidable, but also higher-tech,
superwarrior that would present a challenge for us.
Yeah, it adds some sort of a cool factor to the show.
And I think that the multidimensional layer to them...
They aren't just a robot warrior,
there's a cool duality to them.
They have a Goa'uld inside them, and a Goa'uld that's been animated
using Ancient technology that Anubis has utilised.
It makes it very unique to the Stargate universe.
Rob came up with the idea of having
a new level of bad guy, if you will.
It was born of the issue that Jaffa were beginning to join the free Jaffa movement.
The logical step was to create a bad guy who was basically like a Terminator.
When we were getting ready to do "Evolution" part one and two,
we just started talking conceptually about the supersoldier,
or the Kull warriors, as they eventually became known,
and what they would look like and be like.
I guess the science behind them was an issue.
A lot of it was initially born of the ideas that came out of "Cure",
when you had a symbiote that had healing powers and gave you strength,
but it didn't take over your will.
It was basically a tabula rasa or a blank-slate Goa'uld.
Rob used that as a springboard for, "what if you could create a superhuman clone?"
And put a symbiote in them,
but they didn't have any of that ego and posturing that goes on with the Goa'uld.
Essentially, a Goa'uld slave with all sorts of interesting technology,
and from there, strength,
incredible allegiance and loyalty, which is not what the Goa'uld are known for.
So, essentially, you've got someone who was unquestionably loyal to Anubis.
You've got healing powers and strength of a Goa'uld,
and you've got technology that made them incredibly hard to kill.
To blow them up, you need a huge amount of explosives to do that.
Bullets don't work. Even zat and staff blasts don't work.
Even defensive weaponry - as you see in "Evolution Part One",
shielding and containment doesn't work.
It was mission accomplished in finding a tough-to-kill bad guy.
We wanted it to be more than just a guy-in-a-suit robot warrior.
We wanted there to be an added dimension to this bad guy
that made him extra creepy.
I think the idea of having a reanimated zombie Goa'uld inside this evil black suit
just made it all that much more scary.
Speak/
I serve Anubis.
Rob is great at blurring the line between the human and the technological.
I think people are fascinated when you see something
that symbolises the nexus point between that.
"Is it a human or is it a machine?" And you're not sure.
It's a creation of some kind. It's alive, but it'll kill you and you can't kill it.
I think that's what supersoldiers thematically brought to the show,
which is this very tried and true sci-fi element.
It's exciting to watch it come to life.
When we first conceive of a concept like the supersoldier,
that we know is going to involve
an expensive and intricate design element, like a suit,
myself or one of the other producers will go to the art department.
We'll discuss what our thoughts are and what we've imagined.
A lot of times, I will just let them come up with something.
I'll try not to give them too much direction because they're very creative people.
And they will often bring ideas that are even better than what we imagined.
It's a process, so we'll eventually work towards a result everybody's happy with.
The way the supersoldier was designed by the art department was done
mainly through Rob talking to them about what he saw it looking like.
I worked with them as I wrote "Evolution Part One" saying, "I'm thinking of this..."
I'd say, "I'm writing the scene where they take the mask off and there's mucus."
"Can we do mucus? Can the thing come off?"
"Can air escape? Are there hoses that disconnect?"
And they go, "Yeah." So I would work with them while the script was being written.
As often happens in TV. You don't go, "Here's the script. Design what it says."
It's often done in tandem. You're writing, they're working. You talk to each other.
And ultimately what came out was great.
It wasn't like I wrote, "And he's wearing red and he's got a moustache."
The original concept was probably less of a concept
and more kind of a general direction
as to the requirements of what this character had to do.
And the design wound up being based on that kind of thing.
They wanted something that was more hi tech.
The concept was that they were dead flesh -
cloned bodies that were reanimated
by use of... I believe it was the Telchak device.
The look of the soldier was basically just to be more hi tech, scary...
That was pretty much it. It was wide open when I sat down to do the first sketch.
This is the first drawing that I did.
When this went in, they didn't like the cloth headdress hanging from the helmet.
They would not be carrying staff weapons any more.
The second they were happier with. No staff weapon any more.
The chest section changed largely
and I based it more on human physiology than anything else.
Here's what we anticipated they'd look like once they were cleaned out.
And also a detailing of the impervious suit.
This is my first take on the man inside the mask.
I guess the initial reactions were "a little too Borg".
I was also gonna do something I'd not seen,
which was have this fibre optic network running across the skull.
This is a profile view of the clay maquette, keeping the praying mantis look in here.
Todd Masters' take. The final prosthetic.
And there you have it. The making of a monster.
We knew it would be very expensive to create one suit,
but the idea was to create moulds
so that we could ultimately create a number of suits.
The nice thing about the supersoldier is he's wearing a mask.
We cast a couple of guys, one in particular, who's our hero supersoldier,
and even though we kill the supersoldiers all the time,
Dan Payne comes back and plays him every time.
It's been a great gig for Dan. I know there's downsides to playing it.
Being in that outfit can be quite hot,
especially outside in the summertime.
But I think it's been a pretty good gig for him.
The secret of the supersoldier is that there's a nice guy inside,
despite all the evil and killing. OK? That's about it. No.
Secrets about playing the supersoldier...
They built a body to build the suit on for me, and the head as well.
They built the armour on top and a suit to go underneath. They did an amazing job.
It was the most functional, mobile full-body unit I've ever been in,
so for comfort, it's awesome.
The discomfort comes from the heat.
As was mentioned, there was a couple of days
when we were running around in 100-degree weather, or so it felt.
If you don't stay hydrated... I started to see pink elephants with purple tutus.
I shot at them.
It was just good times, except for overheating, basically.
There's a girl, Nancy, who was primary care person for me for the suit.
Any little... If something was sticking in here or there, she'd second-skin it.
At first, it took us about 30 minutes to get into.
Now it takes about 15 to 20.
And getting out? As fast as I possibly can.
It's sticky and evil, but, yeah, you get out of it no problem.
I think this character, although we do eventually see underneath the outfit,
I think he's kind of scary anyway.
Dan Payne, the unseen man inside the mask, I believe is about six foot five.
Then we put a pair of two- to three-inch heels on him, in the boots.
And on top of that is the added height from the helmet itself,
because we've placed the eyes... His real eyes would be here,
and the electric glowing eyes are actually about forehead level on him.
By the time he's all suited up, he's, I'm guessing, close to seven feet tall.
So, I mean, just his sheer stature is kind of scary.
The quality of the material
is dark, reflective, high-gloss material all through.
And it takes light beautifully. That's one of the things I love.
You can see almost no detail on him,
except you get these two glowing eyes staring out and then surface detail -
light rippling off the ribs in his outfit and the lines.
Everywhere I could, I kept the lines changing and moving.
I was really pleased with that aspect of it, because at the end of the day,
the light just lives and moves on him. It's a very cool thing to look at.
The supersoldier is cool because he's a seven-foot massive dude in black armour.
I think that, just visually...
The cool factor is anything that's tough to kill, people are interested in.
That's the Terminator mythology. How do you handle something almost invincible?
How deep inside do you have to go to defeat something almost undefeatable?
- That's a neat dynamic. - It wasn't fun any more to kill Jaffa.
We had gotten to know them so well through Teal'c, we realised that they were
very much just victims in the whole milieu of Stargate.
I worked the word "milieu" into a sentence.
There are situations where, in stories,
you wanna just be able to shoot the bad guy and feel good about it.
That's what the supersoldier became for us.
He's definitely cool.
I think it's made the Goa'uld, specifically Anubis, look a little smarter.
It's given our team a new obstacle to overcome.
Episodes like "Avatar", in which,
even though the supersoldier was just a figment of the game Teal'c was trapped in,
he was a great video-game foil for Teal'c.
We see them in key moments in "Lost City" and in season eight episodes.
Just suggesting that where there's Anubis, there are supersoldiers.
Anubis is a tough enough customer,
but he's also got this posse of badasses who work for him.
I think it's added an extra layer of coolness to the look of SG-1.
I bet that the technology Anubis was using to create them has not been shelved.
I think there'll probably be more variations on that kind of bad guy creation.
I spent a lot of time thinking about how you reveal this brand-new bad guy.
In the opening to "Evolution Part One", Bra'tac and Teal'c discover a massacre,
and someone says it wasn't an army, it was one man.
You go, "What?" And then suddenly there's this guy just starts laying waste.
There's a great moment where both of them go:
"Wait a minute, we just shot this guy and he just laughed it off."
I think that's a great moment of arrival.
Yeah, I loved "Evolution". It was the introduction.
I think it was a great introduction -
everybody's awe at how powerful this guy was.
"Prometheus Unbound" is an episode we've just finished shooting
and will air in the second half of season eight.
It brings a whole new dimension to the supersoldier that, probably,
none of us really ever expected when he was first created.
I think the fans will really enjoy that.
EN