Amanda Tapping Drops Out of Ascension 2 and Dragon Con — She's Off Directing a Pilot
Amanda Tapping has pulled out of two of the biggest Stargate SG-1 reunions of the year. In a video message circulating on social media, the Samantha Carter actor told fans she will not be attending conventions until at least the middle of October, explaining that she has been hired to shoot the pilot of a new series and cannot say more about it yet.
The casualties are Starfury's Ascension 2, running August 28–30 at the Hilton Metropole in Birmingham, and Dragon Con in Atlanta over the Labor Day weekend, September 3–7. Both were built around substantial SG-1 reunions. The sting is sharper for Ascension 2: German fan site Stargate-Project reports the convention's dates were specifically chosen — and later moved — so that Tapping and Teryl Rothery could both be on the line-up. Tapping is also the second guest to drop off that bill, after Rainbow Sun Francks cancelled in July.
No replacement guest has been announced for either event, and with Ascension 2 now a fortnight away there may not be time for one. The Birmingham line-up still reads strongly: Richard Dean Anderson, Michael Shanks, Corin Nemec, Teryl Rothery, Lexa Doig, Dan Payne and Alex Zahara are all still listed. Long-running fan site Amanda Tapping Fans has marked both appearances as cancelled and lists her current project simply as "directing the pilot of a new series" — while flagging her September Ottawa Comic Con date and the October "Return to the Gate — Queens of the Chevron" events in Sydney and Melbourne as likely to follow.
Tapping has spent recent years working mainly behind the camera rather than in front of it, directing episodes of a string of genre shows, so a pilot commitment swallowing her autumn is entirely in keeping with where her career has moved. What the series is remains under wraps — she says she will tell fans as soon as she is allowed to.