Michael Shanks Launches A New Stargate Podcast As #SaveStargate Flies A Second Banner, This Time Over Comic-Con Itself
Michael Shanks isn’t waiting for Amazon MGM to make the next move. The actor who played Dr. Daniel Jackson for all ten seasons of Stargate SG-1 announced today at the #SaveStargate campaign’s official Comic-Con event that he’s launching a new retrospective podcast, a full rewatch of SG-1 starting with the original pilot, featuring cast and crew guests on every episode. “I’m going to break the mold here and be the first one of the original cast to do the Stargate rewatch podcast,” Shanks said. David Read, host of the existing Stargate interview series Dial the Gate, is producing. If the show catches on, Shanks said the plan is to keep going: “David is going to produce it and be part of it, and we’re going to get guests for every episode of SG-1. If it carries on, we’ll do Atlantis and we’ll do Universe.” The team is targeting a mid-October launch.
Shanks was direct that the podcast exists because of the cancellation, not despite it. The idea grew out of watching how fans reacted to Amazon’s decision to scrap Martin Gero’s revival roughly 20 weeks into preproduction back in June. Rather than wait on a studio that’s said nothing since, Shanks is building new, ongoing Stargate content himself, on a platform no executive can cancel out from under the fanbase.
The podcast announcement wasn’t the only thing happening at Comic-Con today. The #SaveStargate campaign flew a second aerial banner, this one directly over the San Diego Convention Center from 11 AM to 1 PM, the same tactic organizers used a month earlier when they flew a banner over Amazon MGM Studios’ own Culver City headquarters. That first flyover was funded through a GoFundMe that blew past its original $4,500 goal within days and eventually raised over $11,000, with Christopher Judge, Teal’c across all ten SG-1 seasons, marking the moment with a simple public post: “#SaveStargate Indeed!” Today’s follow-up flyover puts the campaign’s message directly above tens of thousands of genre fans and press already gathered in one place for the industry’s biggest convention week, with a rooftop happy hour event at Bay City Brewery following that evening.
The campaign has kept escalating at a pace few fan movements sustain this long. What started as a single flyover in mid-June has grown into a Times Square billboard reading “Unscheduled Off-World Cancellation,” a Change.org petition now closing in on 115,000 signatures, and public support from cast across all three live-action series. Franchise producer Joe Mallozzi has stayed the campaign’s most consistent voice throughout, previously accusing studio executives of holding their own audiences in “contempt.” Through the petition, both banner flyovers, the billboard, and now a Comic-Con presence with a plane over the convention itself, Amazon MGM Studios has maintained the same position it’s held since June 2: total silence. No comment on the cancellation reasoning, no comment on the flyovers, no comment on the billboard, and as of today, no comment on a fanbase organized enough to buy airtime over the studio’s own conference and its biggest annual competitor’s convention in the same month.
Six weeks in, the #SaveStargate movement isn’t losing momentum. It’s building its own infrastructure. A podcast that doesn’t need Amazon’s permission to exist is the clearest sign yet that this fanbase isn’t just waiting for a reversal anymore. It’s building something Amazon can’t cancel a second time.
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