Stargate: 10 Behind The Scenes Secrets You Never Knew About Children Of The Gods
5. Don S. Davis Hated The Version Of General Hammond In The Pilot
General Hammond was written to take over as the head of Stargate Command. He was initially conceived as an intimidating, powerful black man. In effect, he was a rewritten, fictionalized version of Colin Powell. At least, that's how Jonathan Glassner and Brad Wright envisaged him. With this template, Hammond would be a four-star general, a diplomat, and a politician.
When Richard Dean Anderson and Michael Greenburg joined the project as producers, they suggested Don S. Davis for the role. They had previously worked with him on MacGuyver. While he clearly didn't fit the mould that Glassner and Wright had laid out, he still won the role.
However, Davis himself was not a fan of how the character was written. In the pilot, he is a foil for O'Neill, appearing to be much more by-the-book, humourless and stereotypically rigid in his role. As quickly as he could, Davis, who himself was a Vietnam veteran, sought to change how Hammond was presented.
When comparing the character in Children Of The Gods to his later appearances, particularly his off-world adventure in Into The Fire, they are almost completely different. Davis took a thinly written part and made him one of the better representations of Military personnel in sci-fi.