Vancouver: At the Gemini Awards in 2001, Brad Wright experienced first hand the discrimination of Canada’s production sector caste system. Stargate SG-1 – a CAVCO-certified series he codeveloped since it debuted in 1997 and managed into one of the most successful sci-fi shows in syndication – was up against 10-out-of-10 Canadian-content dramas like Da Vinci’s Inquest in the best drama category. As the Stargate name was mentioned in the list of nominees, someone yelled out, ‘They don’t belong here!’

Stargate didn’t win. Despite its nomination as best Canadian series, it lacked the beavers, maple leafs, French-Canadian street signs and Downtown Eastside drug addicts to attract the votes. Nationalists still have trouble looking beyond the small detail of Stargate’s ownership by U.S.-based MGM.

But here Wright sits in his Bridge Studio production office, a few years later, with Stargate scoring better audience ratings than any Canadian series, hiring more Canadians than any other drama made north of the border, stimulating more B.C. economic activity than its 100% Canadian cousins, and getting a quasi-Canadian spin-off that keeps the franchise and opportunities going.

But the slap still stings.

‘We shouldn’t be included?’ asks Wright, incredulous. ‘Just because we are not sucking off the public tit, that means we don’t belong here? I’m not going anywhere.’

With Stargate: Atlantis having begun production Feb. 23 and the eighth and last season of Stargate SG-1 beginning production March 8, Canadians Wright and Robert Cooper will preside over more than $90 million and 40 hours worth of television production by the end of 2004.

They are by far the highest-paid series showrunners in Canada. They want to live and work in Canada, with Wright making his home in White Rock south of Vancouver and Cooper splitting his time between Toronto and Vancouver. After proving their ability to cultivate the Stargate brand, series owner MGM gives them free range to develop the series.

‘It was really hard to get the Americans to take Canadian above-the-line talent seriously,’ says Wright. ‘We did it one inch at a time. I pulled their asses out of the fire enough, they found me valuable.’

Stargate fulfills Canadian-content requirements for broadcaster CTV and has doubled the core audience for Sci-Fi Channel in the U.S. Wright and Cooper actively hire Canadians for above-the-line jobs – most of the cast is Canadian, while the high-profile jobs go to mostly Canadians such as director Martin Wood. While they say it’s more for novelty than nationalism, one of the main characters in Stargate: Atlantis is Canadian. The cast features Canadians Torri Higginson in the lead along with Rachel Ruttrell and former MuchMusic VJ Rainbow Sun Francs.

Yet drama purists continue to discount Stargate and other 6/10 Canadian shows such as Andromeda and The Dead Zone as American shows, because they are owned or commissioned by U.S. networks. It doesn’t matter that the top Canadian shows are genre-driven police procedurals emulating the fare we see on U.S. networks or inspired by U.S. news programs like 60 Minutes. More likely, it’s the size of Stargate’s $2-million-plus per-episode budget and international audience, more than its mixed passport, that spark the envy in its Canadian competition.

‘We’re flattered that Stargate looks like an American show,’ says Wright. ‘It means the production is of high standards.’

For Cooper, the industry snub means that the cast and crew don’t get the recognition they deserve ‘for working their asses off. Everything is done here, from production to effects to editing. When people hear that Stargate is made in Vancouver, they are surprised.’

The success of the show, say the producers, is its crossover appeal and its reach beyond the sci-fi fan base. Cultural imperatives, they add, slow a show’s financial prospects.

‘I would hope that the world would embrace all things Canadian,’ says Cooper, ‘but it’s better to be global and commercial. Some people believe we’re selling out.’

‘I have a different mandate,’ says Wright. ‘I want this show to be financially successful.’

Wright began as an actor and playwright in the 1980s but moved into television when, as a father, TV writing put more food on the table. The Toronto native began with Black Stallion, was a series writer on the Vancouver-shot Neon Rider and then moved to the sci-fi series Highlander and The Outer Limits, both shot in Vancouver.

He joined Stargate SG-1 – the story of a tactical team that travels through portals to other worlds – as a writer, but quickly moved into the showrunner/executive producer position and has been there since. Along the way, he discovered Cooper, a promising writer schooled at York University who traveled on points to the West Coast to take a meeting with Wright.

Cooper has risen quickly to be a creative collaborator and executive producer on SG-1 and is now Wright’s partner on Atlantis, the story of a new portal linked to the mythical city that takes a new international team through to a new universe and new villains.

Cooper’s other credits include a U.K. coproduction called Copy Cat, the 2001 feature The Impossible Elephant, the 1992 teen thriller Blown Away and a writing stint on Psi Factor.

‘This franchise is growing,’ says Wright of the busy schedule of creating and completing 40 one-hour scripts. ‘I’ve scheduled the nervous breakdown for a little later in the year.’