Showtime Pushed For Nudity In Stargate SG-1, But One Star Fought Back

Roland Emmerich’s “Stargate” was a moderate box office success when it hit theaters back in 1994, making almost $200 million on a $55 million budget. The movie was undeniably helped by the presence of Kurt Russell, who played Colonel Jack O’Neill, a U.S. Air Force Special Operations officer who’s tasked with leading a team through the titular portal into unknown corners of the universe. Another thing working in the film’s favor was its PG-13 rating, which enabled a larger audience to watch Emmerich’s sci-fi stylings than if it had been hit with a full R-rating.

While there was talk of a sequel, and indeed an entire trilogy at the time, it seems “Stargate” wasn’t quite a big enough hit to warrant such things. Instead, the film received a spin-off TV series starring MacGuyver himself, Richard Dean Anderson, in place of Russell, who refused to return as O’Neill. Thus, series co-creators Brad Wright and Jonathan Glassner were faced with a problem. How do you get people to watch a spinoff TV series based on a mildly popular Kurt Russell blockbuster without Kurt Russell? Well, one option is to make people get naked.

That’s exactly what the pilot episode of “Stargate SG-1” did — though it wasn’t actually Wright and Glassner who were responsible. The series premiered on July 27, 1997, and introduced audiences to Anderson’s version of Colonel O’Neill, who once again leads a special operations team on a mission to explore the universe. But it seems MacGuyver wasn’t enough for the network execs, who felt their show needed a little nudity to spice things up.

Though “Stargate SG-1” became one of the biggest shows on the Sci-Fi Channel (now “SyFy”), before being cancelled after its 10th season, it originally aired on Showtime. Back in the 1980s, the cable channel ran a late-night slot called “After Hours,” which showcased adult-themed content — a commercial for which can be seen here. So, while Showtime was a premium service designed to compete with HBO, it was also known for its more salacious side.

This might go some way to explaining why the network was so eager to have people strip off in “Stargate SG-1.” The pilot episode, entitled, “Children of the Gods,” saw Colonel O’Neill and his team pass through the Stargate to the planet Abydos, where they find Dr. Daniel Jackson (Michael Shanks) living among the natives. Jackson’s wife, Sha’re, is played by Vaitiare Bandera, the actor that Showtime was apparently keen to see naked — to the extent that the original version of “Children of the Gods” actually featured a scene where Sha’re is shown topless, earning the pilot an M rating for mature content and separating the show from the PG-13 movie.

As “Stargate SG-1” developed, it became a much more family-friendly affair, and in later broadcasts the topless scene itself was actually cut from the pilot — which also originally contained unproduced dialogue hinting at a romantic relationship between two of its main characters. Co-creator Jonathan Glassner seemed pleased to hear that the nudity had been removed from the pilot, too, telling Gateworld in a 2009 interview that he was against it from the outset. “We were kind of unhappy with it having nudity in it,” he said, “But the studio thought that it would help the ratings on Showtime.” The co-creator remembered Showtime as being “known for” more adult content at the time, recalling how the channel “had full nudity.” But for him and the other writers, it seems such a thing was actually a hindrance to the show they wanted to produce, with Glassner adding, “When we finally finished the script and we got the cut, we were like, ‘You know, this is a family show, kids could watch this if we didn’t have this one scene in it.'”

Lamentably, the topless scene in the pilot wasn’t the only controversial nudity that accompanied the beginning of “Stargate SG-1.” Amanda Topping, who played Samantha Carter on the series, spoke to MovieHole about her first wardrobe fitting, explaining how she “panicked” after being asked to “put on a push up bra and a tiny little tank top.” She continued, “I thought ‘Oh my god, they cast the wrong person.’ I’m not that and this character isn’t that and if they wanted a blonde boobie bombshell they cast the wrong girl.” The experience was so upsetting that Tapping remembered crying after being asked to show off her skimpy outfit to executive producers, which she outright refused to do. “I said ‘No, I can’t do it,'” Tapping recalled, “Maybe they’ve made a huge mistake.”

The actor went on to explain that it wasn’t creators Brad Wright — who has some other regrets about “SG-1” — and Jonathan Glassner, or executive producer Rob Cooper who’d asked for the outfit in question, but rather the “networks.” She continued:

“It was different people who were making that decision, but I freaked and I guess Christina [McQuarrie, costume designer] went up to them and [said], ‘She’s uncomfortable and this is not what the character is to her and maybe you can come down and explain to her why you want this incredibly strong, feisty woman to be this,’ and so they said, ‘Don’t worry about it.'”

Based on Glassner’s comments to Gateworld, it really does seem as though the demand for more adult content was coming from the network rather than the writers’ room. The co-creator told the outlet he was glad the topless scene was cut from the pilot in later airings, and pointed out that the original episodes were very much about figuring out a tonal direction for “SG-1.” “Nobody really knew where it was going to end up tonally,” he said. “This is always a problem with pilots. You’re always trying to find what the show is in the first half of the first season […] But you see that we are finding the show a little bit at the end of season 1. If you look at the first half of it or so, we got a few dogs there.”