By the time Claudia Black appeared on set for what was meant to be a one-time Season 8 guest spot on Stargate SG-1, she was only days removed from putting a final finishing coda on one of science fiction’s all-time great TV roles.
Through four seasons on Farscape (now streaming on Peacock) as well as its followup event series Farscape: The Peacekeeper Wars, Black had evolved the character of Aeryn Sun from a cold and emotionless space soldier into a warm and vulnerable wife and mother (opposite Ben Browder’s character of John Crichton).
For a sci-fi series, it was a role that came with a ton of nuance and emotional heft — a far cry, in other words, from the devious thief Black was originally meant to play as newcomer Vala Mal Doran on Stargate SG-1.
How Claudia Black managed her big pivot from Farscape to Stargate SG-1
Stargate SG-1 was in its eighth season when Black came aboard for a fun (and even funny) face-off against Dr. Daniel Jackson (Michael Shanks) as Vala Mal Doran in the episode “Prometheus Unbound.” Both SG-1 viewers and the show’s creative team quickly realized her character’s chemistry alongside Shanks was just too good to waste on a single episode, and Black would return for a recurring Season 9 role that eventually elevated Vala into a full-on series mainstay for the show’s final 10th season (plus a pair of followup films).
Speaking at the time with fan site GateWorld about how she handled such a quick character pivot, Black said the change of character pace — not to mention a well-established and “happy” SG-1 set — made it easy to embrace a role that came with far more comedic potential than her Farscape role as Aeryn could afford.
“Prometheus Unbound,” she explained, “was supposed to be a bottle episode: contained budget, nothing off-world, no expensive locations, what have you, just something that was character-based. And I liked that when I first read it, that it was just self-contained story, that I wouldn’t have to get used to the whole world straight-away, and be overwhelmed by it, potentially.”
Vala, she added, was “a very vibrant, very — hopefully — entertaining character. People responded very, very well — especially on set — immediately to the chemistry between Vala and Daniel. She’s a perfect foil for him because he is so serious, and she’s just this wonderful ball of light and energy. And the fact that she’s got an edge to her and can’t be trusted means comedically I’ve got fantastic scope.”
Black had to hop a plane with only days to spare between wrapping her final scenes for Farscape: The Peacekeeper Wars and joining the Season 8 set of Stargate SG-1. But Black said that SG-1 co-producer Andy Mikita assured her that she wouldn’t be walking into a pressure cooker: “When I spoke to the producers on the phone, and Andy Mikita in advance, they said, ‘A show that’s been running this long, they’re going to be a happy set so I think you’ll enjoy it,’” Black recalled. “And they were absolutely right.”
With full permission to offer Black free range in exploring her new character, Stargate SG-1’s creative team would go on to expand the role of Vala Mal Doran into something of a redemptive arc — all the while evolving her relationship with Dr. Daniel Jackson. And even before her full SG-1 story had been written at the time of her 2005 GateWorld interview, Black knew already that she’d found another sci-fi character she could fully inhabit and claim as her own.
“For me to turn that corner from Farscape, carrying the huge dramatic heart and soul of that piece as a series,” said Black, “…to be able to flip that and be in a lot of ways responsible for the comedy in our [Stargate SG-1] scenes — it’s a challenge, it’s daunting, but it’s a lot of fun.”
Catch Claudia Black as Aeryn Sun anytime on Peacock, where you can stream all four seasons of Farscape here, and Farscape: The Peacekeeper Wars here!
