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| Credit: Pixabay.com |
About two posts ago,
in part one of my WorldCon 76 review, I mentioned that I attended a
screening of a new space opera TV series in the making. I said I
would do a separate post about it and so that’s what this week’s
post will be about. If you missed my review of WorldCon, you can
catch parts one and two.
But then be sure to
come back here for a preview of this new sci fi series, Space
Command, a retrofuturistic space opera that, if it follows
through, will bring optimism back to sci fi TV!
For the past two
decades, science fiction television has been loaded with darkly
realistic and, in some cases, pessimistic TV shows. Two of these have
been The Expanse, and the 2001s’ revived Battlestar
Galactica series that hardly brought back anything of the
original 1970s show, including its message of hope for the future.
Director Marc Zicree’s Space Command is a return to that
hopeful message that the original Battlestar Galactica, Star
Trek and the 1950s Space Patrol carried. The main story to
this space opera TV series in the making is a group of space
explorers, collectively known as the United Planet’s Space Command,
travel and settle various planets of the solar system, including
Mars. The series focuses on three families: the Kemmers, the Odaras
and the Sekanders.
While Space
Command is
nostalgic of the many space
opera TV series of the 1950s,
‘60s and ‘70s and so has an atompunk fashion
to it, it features
futuristic technology based on today’s. Therefore, because the
culture and style in this series is reminiscent of the space epics of
the above eras, it can be considered retrofuturistic even though it
doesn’t particularly take place in an alternative timeline. The
clothes and appearance of the technology is 1950s sci fi style and so
can be considered atompunk fashion. The explorers’ spaceship, the
Palidin, has the elongated,
bullet-style and
bright red colour of the rockets typical of mid 20th
century sci fi. The clothes styles are ones such as shoulder-patched
tunics and Googi lightning bolt military logos. Yet much of the
setting’s technology based on today’s comes up such as augmented
reality-based computer keyboards and display monitors.
No TV series in the
21st century has been so atompunk as Space Command!
Even though 2014’s mini series, Ascension,
could be considered atompunk
fashion, it was much more realist and dark in it’s storyline
(as good of a show as it was). The closest that sci fi on the screen
has come to atompunk in the last 20 years with the message of hope
that Star Wars and Star Trek carried, and their
predecessors such as Space Patrol, is 2017’s Valerian and
the City of a Thousand Planets even though that was a big screen
movie. Still, it was much
better than many of the critics gave it
credit for and although
Space Command
doesn’t appear to have the dazzling
colourful and delicate
visuals that Valerian
has,
it’s
no less visually
appealing.
From what I saw in
the screening of the pilot episode, Marc Zicree and his team have
been doing a really good job with this series. Although, as he had
announced before the episode was played, the production was not
completed yet and so many of the visual effects came out pixelated or
choppy, other parts of the episode flowed well and the story played
out really good. The backstory to many of the main characters is
given and there is plenty of action and suspense. And what’s really
super is that Zicree is giving some of his characters surnames of
classic sci fi authors such as Ray Bradbury and even Jorge Luis
Borges.
The cast also
consists of big name actors of science fiction such as Mira Furlan of
Lost and Babylon 5, Robert Picardo of Star Trek:
Voyager and Stargate Atlantis, Bill Mumy also of Babylon
5 and Lost in Space (original series), Christina Moses of
Star Trek: New Voyages, and others! There’s no doubt that
Marc Zicree will do great with this show. His credits are also from
work on some of the most successful space opera TV series such as
Star Trek: The Next Generation, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine,
and Babylon 5. So the cast and crew are in no way new to
science fiction. As of the writing of this post, it hasn’t been
decided what venue the series will release through. However, Zicree
thinks it will probably be a video streaming service such as Netflix
or Hulu.
So far, Space
Command has been financially supported through
crowdfunding via Kickstarter. In fact, Zicree and his team met their
funding goal only less than two weeks ago—at the end of August,
according to the series’ Facebook page. I am delighted to say that
I contributed to that support. As I had told Zicree at the screening
during the question-and-answer session, I really hope this series
will be accepted by a TV distributor because sci fi needs more
atompunk since most of the retrofuturistic fiction of the last decade
has been steampunk.
Even though the
Kickstarter goal has been met, Zicree and his team are still looking
for support in other venues. Depending on what you contribute, you
can earn some really neat prizes! Visit the Space Command website to find out how and how to make this series come to television! If
you weren’t at the screening, don’t feel like you missed sampling
the series. You can see the segment from the pilot at Marc’s YouTube channel! If you check it out, let
me know what you think in the box below and definitely let
Marc know what you think at his channel!
Until next time . .
.
Available at Amazon!
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