Appreciation: One of Stargate's Finest

Genre favorite Don S. Davis was sci-fi series' Maj. Gen. George Hammond—and an X-Files father

By Joal Ryan Jul 04, 2008 2:03 PMTags

Making Stargate SG-1's Maj. Gen. George Hammond hard-nosed was a given. Making him human, as well, was a Don S. Davis mission.

Davis played the commanding Hammond for several seasons on the 1997-2007 sci-fi series. The show reunited him with Richard Dean Anderson, with whom he began his prime-time career in the 1980s on MacGyver, and cemented his credentials as a genre actor of the first order.

It was Davis who played Agent Scully's father on The X-Files. Who conversed with the Log Lady on Twin Peaks. Who appeared on The Dead Zone, Andromeda, and, for students of obscure 1990s television, something called M.A.N.T.I.S. Invariably, he was cast as a military man, which he once had been in real life.

Davis died last Sunday of a heart attack at his home in Canada, the Vancouver Sun reported this week. He was 65. And he left behind one last Hammond mission.

Davis and other Stargate SG-1 veterans will be seen in Stargate: Continuum, a new movie-length adventure debuting on DVD July 29.

Other recently noted passings:

  • Henry Beckman, 86, was a well-traveled character actor whose stops including a notable stint as retired police Detective Frank Briggs during the first season of The X-Files.
  • For the past 11 years, Star Trek: The Experience has been a multimedia, Quark's Bar-hopping must for the Federation faithful. It was announced this week that the attraction, based at the Las Vegas Hilton, will go dark on Sept. 1. Hailing frequencies closed, indeed.