Michael Shanks, best known as Professor Daniel Jackson on “Stargate: SG1,” will star in the SciFi original movie, “The Lost Treasure of the Grand Canyon.” The movie debuts tomorrow night (Saturday, December 20th) at 9 p.m. EST on SciFi with Shanks as Jacob Thain.
Thain is an archeologist searching for Dr. Samuel Jordon (Duncan Fraser), a fellow archaeologist who’s gone missing in the Grand Canyon while searching for an ancient civilization. The rescue expedition, led by Dr. Jordon’s daughter, Susan (Shannen Doherty), crosses through a wall that’s protected by evil spirits, among them a winged serpent, as well as Aztec warriors with a habit of sacrificing humans.
“I was daunted by playing yet another archaeologist, but, at the same time, this character was very different in a lot of ways [from ‘Stargate”s Daniel Jackson],” Shanks told SciFi Wire. “I’d only ever done one period piece in my entire career, and the prospect of going to the Grand Canyon was pretty neat. And it was a fun adventure story, from what I read, with interesting visuals, with the archaelogy and the mythology, and the wardrobe was neat. It was more about the discovery and the journey, and it was an interesting character.”
” He was a bit of a throwback to the early days of playing Daniel Jackson” he said,” but I enjoyed it, because the way it was written and the way I wrapped my head around it is that he’s a very reluctant hero. And there were differences even between this character and the early Daniel Jackson. So that made it interesting.”
Not to be a giant geek, although this would be the appropriate place, Daniel Jackson was a Doctor not a Professor. He had a doctorate hence being called Dr. Daniel Jackson. Not once in my recollection was he ever called Professor.
A minor point, and entirely unrelated to the article, but if you can’t nitpick scifi miscellania on sliceofsclfi.com where else can you.
Thank you.
mymatedave: You’re not wrong about Daniel Jackson’s title. Although, if we’re going to be really geeky, I should point out that the flashbacks from ‘Chimera’ (in season seven) showed Daniel and Sarah Gardner to be working under Dr. David Jordan at the university. Most graduate and post-graduate students are required to teach in some capacity. So they might have been adjunct professors during that time. 😀
That’s something that amused me. A couple of the main archaeologists in Grand Canyon — Jordan and Langford — share names with the elder generation of archaeologists in Daniel Jackson’s life. Could writer Clay Carmouche be an SG-1 fan?
As I surfed through cable wasteland mix of sports, reality shows, infomerchials, and other stellar offerings highlighting the pinnacle of earth’s human civilization, I happen to catch a few minutes of Grand Canyon.
After a few minutes I had to switch away lest my synapses were permanently damaged. The brain’s own survival mechanism kicked in and I promptly forgot about the brief exposure, so 20min later I chanced upon it once more, just in time to see some incredibly well-rendered monsters (I presumed them to be Quetzlcoatls or similar creatures, although not ever having seen one, that is just a guess on my part).
. . . I dislocated my thumb while trying to quickly switch away from the terrible sight.
the only bad thing about this movie is Shannen Doherty. she was terrible. poor acting, it looked like she was a sleep duing all of the movie. no emotions, a blank face. i never liked her and all she did for this otherwise good movie is bring it down. did the producers or director have someone else for the role who bailed on them at the last minute? is that why Shannen Doherty was used, or did she pay to get this role. whatever the reason Shannen Doherty ruined the movie with her bad acting.