VANCOUVER — Amanda Tapping is fighting the early signs of a cold on this early October morning, but she feels energized and reinvigorated just the same. Filming has concluded in Burnaby on the 13 episodes of Sanctuary’s fourth season, and Tapping — an executive producer, as well as Sanctuary’s lead actor — is immersed in post-production, putting the finishing touches on a season she says will take Sanctuary’s followers on a darker, more cerebral turn.
The modest, home-grown science fiction-fantasy series has confounded the doubters who scoffed at the idea that an eight-webisode series, originally conceived for the web in 2007, would ever make it as a full-blown drama series on prime-time TV, let alone one that would survive four years. Sanctuary returns Friday on SPACE. It has become a mainstay for the U.S. Syfy cable channel, and shows little sign of going gently into that good night just yet.
Sanctuary has become a full-time preoccupation for her, thanks to series creator Damian Kindler and a cast ensemble of fellow Canadians that includes Robin Dunne, JPod’s Emilie Ullerup, Stargate Atlantis’s Christopher Heyerdahl and Battlestar Galactica’s Ryan Robbins. Tapping is perhaps best-known from her years playing galaxy-tripping adventurer Samantha Carter in the long-running sci-fi series, Stargate SG-1, but Sanctuary is a personal passion project.
“This season is a little darker than previous seasons, a little more action-packed,” Tapping said. “We go back in time. It’s all part of a master plan.”
The new season will also feature the series’ first all-music episode, Fugue, with music and lyrics by Kindler and Sanctuary’s longtime background composer, Andrew Lockington.
“It’s hugely gratifying to see how far it’s come, and also a little surreal, because it did start so humbly,” Tapping said. “I often have moments where I think, ‘Man, we’re getting to make it into a TV show. Nobody thought we could make it into a TV show.’ There but for the grace of our finances we go, every year. We are a 100 per cent independent Canadian television series. I think that’s an anomaly in this country, and probably around the world, in most countries. To have a television show that doesn’t have the backing of a major studio or a major network is really unusual. We are supported by a couple of networks, but basically, it’s up to us to make the show happen.”
Tapping both acts in and executive-produces Sanctuary. Her supervisory duties include sitting in on story meetings, signing off on casting decisions, and overseeing the day-to-day running of a series that is both a labour of love and a considerable amount of labour.
“We’ll be working in post-production, probably up until a couple of weeks before the last episode airs,” she said.
Sanctuary would not have been possible to make anywhere other than Burnaby and the Vancouver area, Tapping believes, not just for the expansive sound stages and experienced film crews — many who worked on Stargate — but for personal reasons, as well.
“Many of us have small children,” she said. “We all have families. Doing it anywhere else would have been just awful. There’s a real sense of ownership. I don’t know that we could do this show anywhere else, not for the amount of money we do it for.”
Sanctuary has gone the Comic-Con route; Tapping appeared on a panel at the annual pop-culture convention in San Diego, and was almost mobbed in the process. Genre fans have embraced Sanctuary with the kind of passion — some might say obsession — that sci-fi fans are known for.
Those fans are also socially aware, Tapping says.
“They might be the most socially aware fan base there is, certainly that I’m aware of. And unbelievably generous.”
Tapping used that social awareness to help establish a small-scale, real-world charitable organization, Sanctuary for Kids, in 2009. The charity, which supports children in crisis on both a local and global level, and has raised more than $250,000 in just two years, has been adopted by Sanctuary’s other cast members and crew.
The idea, Tapping says, is that charitable aid can be just as effective on a modest, case-by-case basis — one school, and one child at a time — as it can on the large-scale NGO, non-governmental organizational level. Sanctuary has given Tapping the opportunity to pay something back for the good fortune she and others connected with Sanctuary have experienced in their lives, she says.
“To me, I’m living this great life; I thought there must be some way I can give back. Smaller charities can do a lot. There are places where a small amount of money can make a huge difference. The mandate is to help people who need help. It’s a small drop in the bucket, but it’s a drop. And it is making a difference.”
Sanctuary’s end days are a long way off, Tapping believes.
“I would like to see it continue for a while. We have a plan in place, and we’ve stayed with it so far. We always wanted it to go at least five seasons. From my perspective, I’m not ready to let it go yet. “
astrachan@postmedia.com
