Former
Stargate SG-1 star Michael Shanks heads the cast of SCI FI's original movie
The Lost Treasure of the Grand Canyon, but the actor told SCI FI Wire that he never quite made it to the Arizona landmark. Oddly enough, he pretty much ended up ... home.
In the period adventure/fantasy movie, Shanks plays Jacob Thain, an archaeolgist who joins the search for Dr. Samuel Jordon (Duncan Fraser), a fellow archaeologist who's gone missing in the Grand Canyon while searching for an ancient civilization. The rescue expedition, led by Dr. Jordon's daughter, Susan (Shannen Doherty), crosses through a wall that's protected by evil spirits, among them a winged serpent, as well as Aztec warriors with a habit of sacrificing humans. Below is an edited version of an interview with Shanks.
The Lost Treasure of the Grand Canyon airs Dec. 20 at 9 p.m. ET/PT.
How did this film come about?Shanks: This period piece was brought forward, and we were going to film it in the Grand Canyon. I thought that would be very cool. I'd only ever done one period piece in my entire career, and the prospect of going to the Grand Canyon was pretty neat. And it was a fun adventure story, from what I read, with interesting visuals, with the archaelogy and the mythology, and the wardrobe was neat. It was more about the discovery and the journey, and it was an interesting character. I was daunted by playing yet another archaeologist, but, at the same time, this character was very different in a lot of ways [from
Stargate's Daniel Jackson].
This story continues below the image.
Michael Shanks is Jacob Thain, and Shannen Doherty is Susan Jordon.He's very formal, soft-spoken and shy around Doherty's character.Shanks: He was a bit of a throwback to the early days of playing Daniel Jackson on
Stargate, but I enjoyed it, because the way it was written and the way I wrapped my head around it is that he's a very reluctant hero. And there were differences even between this character and the early Daniel Jackson. So that made it interesting.
But you actually never shot in the Grand Canyon, right?Shanks: Right. We shot in the town that I grew up in, Kamloops, British Columbia. So all those outdoor locations were in this town that I literally spent my life in from age 12 to, I think, 19. I grew up in this town. I hadn't been back there in seven or eight years, so it was quite a strange thing to go back there to film a movie, for sure. --
Ian Spelling 
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