Stargate Atlantis third season opened with Doctor Rodney McKay in a bit of a sticky situation. Marooned on a Wraith Hive ship headed

for Earth, alongside an equally trapped Ronon Dex, the future looked at best bleak for the not-so-intrepid scientist. For actor David

Hewlett, this was nothing new. Having spent the past two years as McKay, he’s used to being on the tail end of the Stargate Atlantis action!

“It’s kind of difficult for McKay to evolve,” explains Hewlett, during a well-earned break from filming season three, “because once you

know people like the character, you can’t change him that much. He goes through stuff, but the reality is, people don’t want too much of a dramatic change. The advantages that I have with McKay are that the situations he gets put in change him temporarily. Every single time something goes wrong its an absolute disaster for McKay. I get so much range within my episodes – which I think is a fine line to walk. I remember when we first started; the original concern was that you have this sarcastic bastard, who came in for a couple of episodes of SG-1. How does that become part of a show without turning it into Lost in Space’s Dr Smith? Not that that is necessarily a bad thing, but that’s not where they are going with this.

“If anything,” Hewlett continues, “what this guy is learning is how to have friends. I don’t think he’s ever had friends. Its ‘one step forward, 10 steps back’ for McKay. He acknowledges one nice thing about somebody, is slightly sympathetic for a moment and then he’s right back to being a jerk again. The thing about McKay is, its all bark. He cares very deeply for these people; he just has no social graces at all, and doesn’t know how to acknowledge that. If there is an overall change with McKay, it’s getting used to people being his friend as opposed to just his competitive co-workers. He’s there to stir things up. And that’s the beauty of the show. I love the fact that it’s a bunch of scientists, brilliant people all put together with different agendas. So there’s not so much politics to play, because I think they tend to bond together as they need to, to battle their various enemies.”

The actor points out that as far as season three does, that theme of co-workers bonding has become a central thread. It’s definitely something he is enjoying exploring himself, and an opportunity arose during that very ‘sticky’ scene in the opening episode, No Mans Land.

“I’ve got to say that one of the characters who I hadn’t had a chance to really play with up until this season was Ronon. We got to do a number of scenes stuck in a cocoon. Ronon and I are from different worlds. Our characters, and in fact in life as well are absolute opposites – what he does for cool, tall and good-looking I do for the nerds of the world. We’re like Romeo and Juliet,” he jokes. “So

being stuck in a cocoon with him was fun, because his reaction to being trapped is very different to McKay’s, who gives up before they’ve actually finished building the cocoon. So there’s a lot of fun there. We actually got to shoot that a couple of times because they had a change in design halfway through, and they decided to re-shoot stuff. We’ve been doing lots of exciting things. They’re really

concentrating on the characters this year, on bonding all of the characters together. I don’t know how that works for McKay! I’m not supposed to get along with anybody. Its fun making that work – the anti-bond,” says Hewlett with a laugh

One of the most exciting experiences of the first half of season three was filming Sateda, an epic story that examined the roots of

Ronon’s character, and featured plenty of the action. Action that McKay found himself in the thick of. “Its non-stop. Sateda is a season

unto itself – people might get hurt watching it! They witness McKay getting hit in the ass by an arrow. I am struck by an arrow in the

gluteus maximus in one of the first scenes and spend a large portion of the show on my front on morphine. It was interesting – one forgets that one has an arrow in one’s ass after a while, and then the jokes eventually just get tiring, because every single person on the crew has to mention something ass related or arrow related, I suppose. Those were definitely some of my funniest scenes to do.

[Robert] Cooper, I believe has no other life,” jokes the actor. “He sits just coming up with awkward, possibly embarrassing situations

for McKay to be in, and then he smiles about it! He comes in like he’s done you some big favour. ‘I wrote you some great stuff!’ And its

like, ‘Well, no you didn’t, you wrote me some embarrassing stuff that my parents will disown me for!’

“McKay was generally being injured and making a nuisance of himself,” Hewlett continues, of the genius scientist’s contribution to Sateda. “It’s a big Ronon back-story thing. I ran around a lot, mocking it. Jason would see the rushes because he was really excited

about it. He’d be like ‘Oh dude, you gotta look at this,’ so you’d follow him in, and he’d show you these amazing shots of [him in] slow-mo, pulling the pins out of grenades and tossing them over his shoulder, walking towards the camera, things exploding. Then I would recreate them the next day using a donut. What would happen if McKay had this scene? McKay walking down a hallway, and he’d take a bite out of a jelly donut. He’d maybe dip it in a coffee, and then toss it back at his enemy…” Hewlett drifts off into a reverie involving (an uncharacteristically) heroic McKay taking out all of Atlantis’ enemies by means of only a donut and his own (distinctly understated) brawn…Who knows, perhaps McKay would have had his chance to right the wrongs of the Pegasus Galaxy using his talents with a

donut had executive producer Robert Cooper not been directing – although Hewlett has nothing but praise for the experience.

“There’s just something very funny about – no offence to him in any way and I know I can say this, being of that ilk myself – but not the coolest man in the world standing there with his two hands in the air doing his ‘two camera’ pose…’The first shot is…this!’ He’s like Cooprick.” laughs Hewlett, comparing the executive producer to revered movie director, Stanley Kubrick.

“It was actually really fun, because he knows what he wants. Other directors have to guess what the producers want but he knows, so there was a lot more time to play. So you walk into a scene and he’s like ‘Well, what do you guys think?’ and we’re like ‘What? You don’t just want to put us places?’ He definitely has some cool shots that he’s set up, but it was just very relaxed. He was obviously having fun, he’s not nervous, so you don’t pick up any of that. He’s impossible to tease because he can fire you, and he knows what he wants, which is great. He’s such a part of the show. It’s his show basically – him and Brad [Wright]. I’d have killed for some more stuff to do just because he’s very fun to work with but apparently I don’t look as cool in slow motion – too many things wobble that aren’t supposed to…”

Thank you to tammy.