CAPTAIN STARSHIP - THE MORTON REPORT: Stargate's Ivon Bartok Readies Captain Starship For (Hopefully) Eventual Launch
By Steve Eramo
July 27, 2011
For 13 years, producer/director Ivon Bartok worked for the long-running Stargate TV franchise, starting out as the assistant to Stargate SG-1 series lead Richard Dean Anderson and executive producer Michael Greenberg. The Toronto native later founded Grey Road Entertainment, a small production company that produced specials and special features for Fox and MGM. Among other things, Bartok himself produced and shot the Stargate DVD special features as well as directed the SGU: Stargate Universe “Kino” webisodes.
Since production wrapped on SGU in the fall of 2009, Bartok has been focusing his creative energy on some of his own projects, including a pilot for a new sci-fi TV series called Captain Starship starring Paul McGillion (Dr. Carson Beckett on Stargate Atlantis). Writing the script, prepping the pilot and ultimately shooting it were all labors of love and a true collaboration involving Bartok, McGillion, actor/writer Michael Northey and writer/producer/director Jesse Miller.
“Michael Northey, who plays one of the characters [Dropkick] in Captain Starship and is a really good friend of Paul McGillion’s, came up with the idea for the show,” says Bartok. “It’s a half-hour comedy where Paul’s character of Pauly Sullivan just happens to play the lead [Captain Frank Lucas] in this low-budget sci-fi TV show, but the real story of Captain Starship is about his life outside of work and dealing with his friends and family.
“In the pilot, Pauly is forced to make some changes in his life when his nephew Kevin [Quinn Lord] comes to live with him. Michael wrote the pilot script a while back and when we read it we loved it and thought it was really funny. A year or so ago, Michael, Paul, Jesse and I met for lunch and decided, ‘OK, what do we have to do to make this happen,’ and that’s where it all began...”
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