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'Stargate' and the Single Girl
By Kate O'Hare
Credit: http://tv.zap2it.com

It's tough being a woman on a planet-hopping exploratory military team, surrounded by battle-hardened soldiers, an archaeologist and a bald alien. It's more difficult when the woman has more than comrade-in-arms feelings for her commanding officer.

But, that's the situation faced by Dr. Samantha Carter (Amanda Tapping) through much of the run of Sci-Fi Channel's Friday hit "Stargate: SG-1." Currently in its 7th season, Carter must cope with her attraction for Col. Jack O'Neill (Richard Dean Anderson).

"It's important for Rick and me -- and it's very important for me -- that Carter not sit there pining away for her commanding officer," Tapping says. "There's an obvious chemistry, an obvious attraction. We've admitted it, and we've dealt with it to a degree, but for this amazing female character to be stuck at work, pining over a man she can never have, it weakens her considerably. "I was starting to get sick of it. I was like, 'OK, guys, we get it. She has the crush on her C.O., and it's deeper than a crush.' I'm making it sound trite, but it's not. There's a deep, deep love between the characters. There's a deep love she has for all the team, she just has more sexual feelings for O'Neill.

"But, having said that, and knowing that it exists, and knowing that it can't go anywhere, can we not make her the chick? Can we move away from that and not be the whiny, pining chick?'

"I said, 'What keeps this woman up at night?' She's so focused on what she does for a living that it's who she is. As a woman, she has to say, 'What have I sacrificed?'"

Tapping also was not interested in taking the cliched sci-fi route of pairing Carter off with a dashing alien. "Why do we always have to date aliens?" she wonders. "All of Carter's boyfriends have been aliens, and all of my guys ... I killed one; I ran away when one guy's planet blew up; one guy ascended, I'm pretty sure, to get away from me. It's a joke. It became a joke on the Internet, the 'Black Widow Curse.'"

Fear not, Tapping is happy to report that in a future episode called "Chimera," airing in the second half of the season, she gets a chance at real love.

"I've spent the morning naked in bed with a man," she reports during her lunch break in Vancouver. "Let's talk, because it's the first time my character's had sex in seven years. Carter finally gets a boyfriend who does not die, for the first time.

"He's human. He's cute as a button. Actually, the actor playing it is David DeLuise, Peter DeLuise's youngest brother. Oh, my God, he's gorgeous! And the more you get to know him, the cuter he becomes. He's got the DeLuise charm, so I totally have a huge crush on him."

This hardly is the beginning of the DeLuise family's involvement in "Stargate: SG-1." Father Dom and sons Peter and Michael have guest-starred, and Peter also is a producer, writer and director for the show.

"We had to have him [David] because we've had every DeLuise on the show." Tapping says. "We were having a hard time casting this part, then David's name was thrown into the mix, and everyone went, 'Oh, yeah, of course!' He's so different from Peter and Michael, but he's fantastic and sweet and warm and funny -- total great chemistry right away."

DeLuise's character is a police detective and a civilian. "The conflict, the story, comes from that she can't tell him what she does for a living," Tapping explains. "Her brother set her up, totally cute, and she falls head over heels for this guy.

"Of course, there's a part of her that has to hold back, and it kills her that she can't tell him. It kills her."

On the other hand, it did mean that Tapping temporarily shed her military fatigues. "It's the first time you'll see Carter in some sexy skivvies. I got to wear skirts and heels, and at the end of the night, this very sexy dress. He takes her out dancing. I just spent the morning naked ... so, a whole new departure for this character."

Asked how many non-essential personnel may have come in for the morning's filming, Tapping quips, "I don't know how all the producers fit into that house!"

While Tapping enjoyed the change of costume, it did feel a bit strange. "As an actress, I'm so sick of Army boots and my P90 [sub-machine gun]. Yet, last Friday, we're shooting all this stuff where I was in frocks and this beautiful dress, and I felt so out of my element.

"I went, 'If I could do this scene with a P90, I'd be OK.' I have these smoking 3-inch heels and this dress, and I felt completely vulnerable."

The fact that Tapping longed for her gun surprises the Canadian actress most of all. "Me, Amanda, I don't like guns. I'm not afraid to say it. I just don't think that any single human being should have that much power. It's such a controversy to talk about guns in our culture, but it's an issue.

"It's something that I've always been uncomfortable with, but I have to be honest, I have such a Zen with my weapon. I'm so comfortable with it, it's freaky."

Tapping says that because of the war in Iraq, it became harder to get P90 shells to convert into blanks, so Anderson's character kept his P90, while Tapping's got a new gun.

"I don't know exactly what it is," she says. "It's an M16 with something else on the front and something else on the back. We're calling it the 'Carter Special.' It's a honking huge weapon. When I shoot it, flames come out. It's just craziness."