Claudia Black on the Difference Between Her Farscape & Stargate Roles

Beginning in 1999 and lasting well into the new millennium, back-to-back roles on a pair of iconic sci-fi shows made fan favorite Claudia Black a welcome weekly TV presence for the better part of a decade.

First on Farscape (stream it here on Peacock!) and, later, as a new addition to the cast of Stargate SG-1, Black was an enduringly familiar face on the science fiction small screen. On Farscape, she starred opposite Ben Browder as emotionally-reluctant alien Aeryn Sun through all four seasons of the classic series, before tagging in for a guest stint on SG-1’s 8th season as human newcomer Vala Mal Doran — a role that proved too popular for producers to toss aside as merely a visiting one-off.

From Farscape to Stargate SG-1: How Claudia Black kept things fresh

Actors Claudia Black and Ben Browder perform in the television show "Farscape." (Photo Courtesy of Sci Fi Channel/Getty Images)

As Vala Mal Doran, Black’s first Stargate SG-1 encounter was meant to last only for a single episode. Hijacking the Prometheus in the Season 8 episode “Prometheus Unbound,” her freelancing space days as a pirate seemed destined to vanish into the series’ episodic ether... until, that is, the producers realized there was real chemistry there between Vala and Daniel Jackson (Michael Shanks) — the kind of character rapport that was simply too sweet to let slip away.

Sure enough, Black was back on the SG-1 set during Season 9 of the series for more recurring appearances as Vala, and by then, she’d grown into the character fully enough to put some contrasting perspective to the time she’d spent playing two distinctly different roles on both Farscape and SG-1. As she explained to Stargate fan site GateWorld at the time, Vala’s more human and approachable nature made for a refreshing change from playing the colder, more rational Aeryn on Farscape.

Vala, said Black, is “a very vibrant, very — hopefully — entertaining character. People responded very, very well — especially on [the SG-1] set — immediately to the chemistry between Vala and Daniel. She’s a perfect foil for him because he is so serious, and she’s just this wonderful ball of light and energy. And the fact that she’s got an edge to her and can’t be trusted means comedically I’ve got fantastic scope.”

Black’s fondness for Farscape and the role she carved out for Aeryn already are well documented, so it’s no slight to her former Farscape gig that she found something fresh to love about playing a different kind of space character over in the Stargate TV universe.

The fact that Vala knew how to bring the comedic sass, she said, “was the main reason why I took the first role on ‘Prometheus,’ because I read the script and thought it was really funny. And I just wanted to make sure that they had the same intentions as I had inferred. And so I spoke to [director/producer] Andy Mikita and said to him, ‘How far can I go with the comedy, because I see some great potential for the character.’ And he said, ‘Oh, go all the way, honey! Do whatever you want.’”

As Stargate fans know, that’s exactly what Black did, eventually becoming an SG-1 cast regular as the series entered its 10th and final season (not to mention reprising Vala’s character through two subsequent lore-connected films, Stargate: Continuum and Stargate: The Ark of Truth). “For me to turn that corner from Farscape, carrying the huge dramatic heart and soul of that piece as a series, and to be able to flip that and be in a lot of ways responsible for the comedy in our scenes,” she confided to GateWorld, “— it’s a challenge, it’s daunting, but it’s a lot of fun.”

Catch Claudia Black as Aeryn Sun in Farscape, streaming on Peacock here.