Note: This is the first in a three-part interview with the creator, writer and producer of the upcoming SCI FI Channel series Sanctuary.

Many fans of science fiction and action-packed television shows are likely to have seen the work of Damian Kindler. The Australian-born writer and producer worked on Kung Fu: The Legend Continues, Earth: Final Conflict, Relic Hunter, Code Name: Eternity, F/X: The Series, PSI Factor: Chronicles of the Paranormal, Stargate SG-1 and Stargate Atlantis. Kindler’s latest venture is the fantasy series Sanctuary. Produced through his enhanced-media production company Stage 3 Media (S3M), Sanctuary stars Robin Dunne, Emilie Ullerup and Stargate’s Amanda Tapping. It debuted on the Internet in 2007 as a two-hour pilot divided into eight webisodes. The series’ success led to a distribution and licensing deal with the SCI FI Channel and an order for an upcoming 13-episode season for TV broadcast.

Yours truly spoke to Damian Kindler at the Vancouver offices of S3M. In the first of a three-part transcript of that interview, Kindler discusses his writing career, the opportunities afforded by science fiction and fantasy, and why his name is associated with babe scientists.

Michael Simpson: How did you get into writing for TV?

Damian Kindler: I would say there’s nothing unique about the way I became a writer. [It was] more of a desire to pay the rent than carve out a niche for myself in the great canon of anything. When I was in high school I really loved writing. I was quite good at English and, like a lot of romantic young teenagers, [I thought] 'I want to write the great Canadian/Australian/Irish novel.' But even at a young age I had tremendous ADD. When I was in [Queen’s] University I did take film writing courses. I had a romantic love of feature films and quite a lot of disdain for television as a young, young man. It’s funny; one of the people I knew very well at Queen’s is a woman named Simone Urdl, who’s been a producer of Atom Egoyan’s features for quite a few years ... She wanted to go work for City TV or Chum and I was thinking, 'TV? It’s the grindhouse of the lowest common denominator. I’m not interested. I want to be a feature [writer].' Then she went and worked for the high art lama of Canadian feature films and I started working on TV.

So anyway, how I ended up in TV is actually a shorter story than I am making it. I was working as a script coordinator for a Warner Brothers TV show called Kung Fu [The Legend Continues], starring David Carradine ... I worked very closely with the producers. They really liked my work and the way I viewed the show, so they offered me a script. I had script samples that I could show them so they offered me a script and I started writing for that show ... When my contract was up for renewal as the script coordinator — and I was quite good at it — they were terrified of trying to hire someone else ... so a writer on the show said, 'Hey, do you want to write a script?' I said, 'No. No. God no. Why would I want to do it?' He said, 'Have you seen how much it pays?' And when he showed me I said, 'Yes! Where do I sign?'

Michael Simpson: Is there a process that you go through with every script that you write?

Damian Kindler: Absolutely. There is an absolute distinct process that I go through. It’s called agony, and procrastination, and making those immediately around me suffer because I am chewing on problems I haven’t solved. My wife can tell you exactly what stage of the scriptwriting process I’m at by either how happy or miserable or grumpy or irritable I am. [She would say,] 'Oh, you’re happy because the people in Stargate liked your pitch and your golden,' 'Oh, you’re in the outlying phase because you’re still structuring it,' 'Oh, you’ve gone to draft, you’re actually kind of smiling,' [or,] 'Oh, you’ve just got notes, and that’s why your snapping at me.' ... I love to talk about [writing] with writers and other people who understand what we’re doing, and then I really need some solitude to go and problem solve off in a corner with myself ... It’s like a public and private kind of thing until finally the script is where it needs to me. I really do like to collaborate with people, but I like to write the script myself. I am not an over-the-shoulder 'you write a scene, I write a scene,' type person.

Michael Simpson: What do you find is the hardest thing about writing, and what aspect of it gives you the most satisfaction?

Damian Kindler: The hardest thing about writing is finding a structure that works. It’s easy to say that the character does this, the character does that and this would be a neat action sequence, but finding that iron clad spine that’s unassailable is very hard. Anyone can come up with a concept of, 'Oh, this should happen, this should happen,' but it’s very, very easy for that concept to get distilled into moments that work with very weak filler in between. So making sure that every section of the script is a logical place, a surprising and interesting place and that nobody’s way out ahead of you [is important]. Audiences are so savvy ... and they will all guess unless you really think as hard as they do about what you’re doing. So it takes a freshness, originality, strong plot spawning and not confusing people. It’s like a joke. If you have to explain to your audience, you’ve blown it.

Michael Simpson: A lot of your work, at least in recent years, has been on science fiction and action adventure shows. What is it about those genres that you find particularly appealing?

Damian Kindler: All good drama is escapism. I really get kind of sick of people going, 'You know, The West Wing’s plots are really good television. All this stuff with things blowing up and visual effects is just another piece of garbage.' No. There are wonderfully profound things to be said in every art form. I think the great thing about sci-fi is you’re able to more directly comment on social issues. There are issues that we explore on Stargate — religious issues about belief, about faith, about fanaticism and fundamentalism — that we would never have done if we were writing The West Wing or things like that. I think you’re able to create metaphors more readily that allow you to discuss heavy issues. Star Trek did it all the time. Issues of the human condition now are always best explored in a science fiction metaphor.

The action adventure ... I don’t know. That’s a really broad sweeping thing. You could say that Children of Men was action adventure because they went on an adventure and it was full of action. But that was a really profound and intellectual dissertation on evolution ... I think one of the shows that really broke down the barrier between what a genre show was and what a drama was is X-Files because X-Files put out wonderful, wonderful shows that were really good dramas. I remember [my wife and I] watching an X-Files. It was the one with the metaphors like the Branch Davidians. It was a cult with reincarnation, and it was like the Civil War [Kindler is referring to the Season 4 episode "The Field Where I Died"]. There was a particular area which, when you entered it, it triggered reincarnation memories very powerfully. And they regressed Mulder. He has this wonderful reincarnation memory that he and Scully had been on this journey for lifetimes and lifetimes together as different people. And my wife was wiping away her tears going, 'It’s so wonderful.' And I go, 'Wow, this is transcendent.' It’s not just 'what’s the monster in the closet?' That’s, in a way, what I wanted Sanctuary to be more like ... So I think that’s what attracts me to sci-fi. It has the ability to be everything you need in entertainment.

Michael Simpson: Under your description in the Internet Movie Database it says "babe scientist". Is that an accurate description of you?

Damian Kindler: That’s more my wife. I’m joking; she’s not a scientist [Kindler laughs]. I hope she hears this. I would say that babe scientist would be the key word because [Sanctuary] stars Amanda Tapping, who for 10 years has been a babe scientist on Stargate and now is playing a babe scientist on Sanctuary. That has nothing to do with me, although I do have a predilection and favoritism towards characters who are babe scientists...perhaps. [But] I don’t have a fetish.

In Part Two of this interview, which will appear next week, Kindler will discuss his inspirations for Sanctuary, putting the series together, and his plans for its future.