When a TV show runs for a decade, even the background characters can slowly become fan favorites as the years roll on. And in the case of Stargate SG-1, they can even eventually earn a real name — even if it comes by accident.
In a deep dive oral history about Stargate SG-1 with SYFY WIRE in 2018, series co-star Gary Jones (best known to fans as the SGC hand working in the gate room who shouts “Chevron seven locked!” in pretty much every episode).
Not surprisingly, during the show’s early days, he was little more than a glorified extra in the background. But as the seasons wore on he eventually got a name, and a few promotions to go with it (locking those chevrons is no easy job!). But his name was formally locked when stars Richard Dean Anderson (Jack O’Neill) and Don Davis (General Hammond) flubbed in calling him by his name — which led to a new name, and another one.
Stargate SG-1 star Gary Jones on becoming Chief Master Sergeant Walter Harriman
Here’s how Jones explained it to SYFY WIRE: “[My name] was a huge joke amongst everybody because I started out as just ‘technician.’ When you’re just ‘technician,’ you can be replaced with any technician. I had to make sure I was the best technician they’d hired. Eventually, I started to get more episodes and then I think [in] Season 2 I got more episodes, but I was still ‘technician.’
“Then I was like ‘sergeant’ and they changed it in the script and they started to ID me. I had a nametag that I wore in the show, it was Davis, so I was Sergeant Davis. Then once they switched it in the script I had a character and that makes a huge difference because it’s hard then to get rid of a character because you named him. I knew then it probably meant they would have to kill me off so they’d have to make something of it.
“Then I became Master Sergeant. They kept promoting my character and I didn’t know why. I was like, ‘Why am I promoted?’ They went, ‘You just are.’ Then I come back and suddenly I was Chief Master Sergeant and then at one point Richard Dean Anderson called me Walter. I was supposed to be Norman Davis but he called me Walter in I think the episode ‘2010’ and they said, ‘His name’s not Walter’ and Anderson said, ‘Well it is now.’
“So then I was Norman Walter Davis.
“Then, at one point, Don Davis, who was General Hammond, because he was from Missouri he had a real southern accent and at one point because I was an Air Force guy, one of his commands was to ‘open the iris, airman,’ but he pronounced it in such a way that it didn’t sound like airman, it sounded more like Harriman, so they changed my name to Harrima. So then I went from Norman Walter Davis to Walter Harriman.”
It was the Harriman name that finally stuck, with Jones’ character officially listed as Chief Master Sergeant Walter Harriman.
Stargate SG-1 was a long-running hit for SYFY in the late 1990s and early 2000s, spawning multiple spinoffs and new films that ran for more than a decade.
The Ark brings Stargate creators back to SYFY
Stargate might be over, but the franchise’s creative spirit lives on in SYFY’s original series The Ark, which returns for its third season in 2026.
Dean Devlin (Independence Day, Stargate) and Jonathan Glassner (Stargate SG-1) are co-showrunners and executive producers on The Ark, which stars Christie Burke as a space explorer leading a rag-tag crew trying to find a new planet to call home.
Stream the first two seasons of The Ark on Peacock now, with Season 3 coming in 2026 exclusively to SYFY.
