New Space Opera Series May Bring Optimism Back to Sci Fi TV

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 20^th 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 21^st 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 . . .

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