Stellar Quest 1: The Beginning

November 2004

(Fevered Mutterings v1.0)

…..

*sigh* Yes, send them in, please.

Hello, hello, sir. My name’s Mike Sowden! *offers hand, not taken* And this is my assistant, John. And yes, I’m here to present my idea for a scifi series.

Ah now now now, I can see your eyes glaze over. But listen. This series has everything. Drama. Intrigue. Inexpensive but deeply innovative special effects. Explosions. Sex. Aliens with tentacles. Time-travel. The lot.

Yeah, sure. I mean, it was originally an hour-long presentation, but I suppose I can cut it down to half an…

Ten minutes, sure. You’re the boss, hahah. Not that I’m presuming you’re going to employ me, although…

Yes, I will. Sorry. Anyway. (John, can you start Powerpoint…? Thank you).

OK, this is Stellar Quest 1! POWWWW! ZANNNG! BRAPPP! What? Yes, okay, I won’t do that again. Sorry.

Here’s the premise. It’s set on a space station in the future. It has engines so it can fly around. And it detaches into lots of bits, like Lego, and it can also reassemble in different shapes when the need arises, like so, or so. Or even spell out rude words, look!

What? No, the command centre might be over there, now, but there are cameras that always allow them to look forwards. And….no, those are the engines. No, I know they’re not pointing backwards in this one, they are omni-directional engines. And, and they swivel. They’re set on enormous ball-bearings. That float on anti-gravity rays. It’s an alien technology that the human race gets when they go forwards in time into an alternative timeline. I’ll get to that later. It’s deep.

So: here’s the standard configuration. You have the nose here, it kinda bulges out at the end, and you’ve got the main shaft of the ship, crew accommodation, storage and so on. And here are the engines on either side, held in a huge web of interphotonic forces, it’s not solid but it looks like a big wrinkly bag on the back end. All the way down the shaft you’ve got these organic-looking conduits carrying liquid fuel and sometimes people. This, ladies and, I mean, this, sir, is the USS Faluzz. It’s named after a 23rd-Century admiral who….

Is it? I…I hadn’t really thought about it in those terms. I suppose, actually, it does rather look like…..well, anyway, we can mess around with the look of it later. When I was drawing this, it originally looked a bit like an enormous set of fallopian tubes with some breasts on the front, but then I watched Battle Beyond The Stars and realised it’s been done. No, this is an original design, start to finish. Originality is my watchword.

So, the Faluzz flies through the galaxy, on a 10-year……what? No, no, it’s a space-station, not a spaceship. Because it rotates. Yes, all of it. It rotates all the time. And that’s a big plot factor later on, because the crew can get into special suits that protect them while the ship speeds up rotation to around 300 revolutions a second. Yes. Well, firstly, it makes enemy weapons bounce off it, they deflect off sideways, and second, it gets rid of anything clinging onto the hull, like alien boarding ships or space-barnacles. And it protects them from radiation, because each section of the hull is only exposed for 1/300ths of a second, see?

No, it’s correct. I’ve no idea what you mean, I’ve done the maths. This is a real-world physics show. We get the physics right, for once. Except we have sound in space. But they all have sound in space. Except, get this, our sound effects are created underwater. Sheffield Public Swimming Baths – we have a sponsorship deal. Trust me, it sounds terrific. Occasionally you might hear someone jumping in, but it’s very distant and we can mostly edit them out.

Now this (click the next page John – the other way, John)…..this is the Space Station Commander. I present to you Lord Admiral Rodriguez Portalue. Yes, he’s part Spanish. Spain is a big part of his life. Yeah, we’ll have a poster for Carmen in his ready-room. And a basket of oranges. Military man all his life, lives for discipline, but not afraid to get his hands dirty, get into fist-fights (we’ve got some great music for those). Episode 3, for example, he’s pitted single-handed against a band of Ludichrods. Yeah, one of our alien races. Imagine spaghetti, but with wings. Big green wings. They evolved at the event horizon of black holes, hence their body shape, but then they grew wings and escaped. Trust me, we’ve done the groundwork, it all bears scrutiny.

This is Sub Commander Napoleon Bonaparte. Yeah, he’s cool, isn’t he? I’ve always wanted to write a show with a character named after a historical figure. You have all this angst, ‘how can I live up to my namesake’ and so on. Oh, we’ve got a great plot arc for him. Firstly he loses his arm. Yes, the whole arm, to one of the Oplefrut’he. Another alien race. You ever seen one of those mops with the spongy flaps on the end that get up everything? Imagine one of those with 3ft long teeth. Vicious bastards. Yeah, Napoleon is on their homeworld, him and his troops are attacking the capital (called Mosko), lots of great great FX, he takes three Oplefrut’he down himself with his Ion-Truncheon, but then one leaps from a window and bites his arm off. Great, great scenes, the actor is really looking forward to filming them. And after that, Napoleon has his uniform sleeve pinned up with a little force-field.

The FX? You wouldn’t believe. We’ve hooked up 15 Pentium-IIs to a heavily altered mixing deck. Our FX guy is a part-time DJ. Stunning. It looks just like it would if it was real life. You’ll believe that the whole station is suffering from mumps. You’ll believe Portalue’s foot becomes the size of a planet when it gets bathed in Swellon particles. And, hey, we have the very first CGI crew-member ever on this type of show. It’ll floor you.

(John, slide 15, come on come on).

This…is Skaylectrixxe. He’s a Moronn. Yeah – that’s the finished version. It’s deliberate. The Moronns are two-dimensional beings. Cool, eh? That’s a key plot element. He’s always the one who goes for help, slides under doors and stuff. Only problem is that he wants to be 3D, that’s his quest, you see. He’d give anything to be 3D. He makes uniforms that give the isometric illusion of being 3D. It’s all kinda pathetic and poignant.

And this is Subsub-Commander Tripoly. She’s gorgeous, isn’t she? Her race is the Vorcons. The Vorcons are a mysterious, intelligent, deeply spiritual race, but with sudden outbursts of raw sexuality. That’s why the uniform…..yeah, mostly in this area, truth be told, but generally all over, yes. I mean, we could trim that back a bit. Or rather, trim it forward. But that’s her nature – she wears the tendencies of her race on her sleeve, or rather her chest. Yes, they’re space-tassels.

No it isn’t tasteless. It’s entirely consistent with the universe I’m trying to create here. This isn’t just any old show. This is an Epic. The Iliad, World at War, The Archers, these are my influences. It’s never been done in space before, not like this. This is new ground, and when you’re breaking new ground, you use a bigger shovel. Get it? Because you’re….breaking new….yes. Certainly. You’re the boss. 2 minutes?

OK. I hate to do this with a show this weighty, but I will try to encapsulate the whole blistering shebang for you. Right. The first season: human beings feeling their way in the universe, new aliens, introduce the characters. Big growing background of universal strife – there’s this Galactic Stock Exchange, and aliens leaders put up their planets as capital, and then the exchange crashes and all these races loses their homeworlds. Topical, see. Suddenly, everyone wants a new colony. So you have all the aliens expanding their territory, then suddenly PANG it all goes ape! And of course you’ve got the Faluzz shoved into the middle of this.

Season 2. Shit. Hitting. Fan. An evil alien race called the Darkest Ones….yes, here we go. Interesting thing: I was looking out my window one day and I was watching a raven, and ZAMMO!  inspiration hit me. No, it’s shaped like a raven’s beak, see? Up on end. But with compound eyes and a Mohican.  Our wardrobe department says they can do wonders. Well, technically it’s not a department as such, her name’s Vicky and technically she’s on work placement, but you have to look with better eyes that that.

Yeah, so the Darkest Ones are out blasting space-crap out of everyone, and up springs Faluzz. So now….

What? 30 seconds? Oh dammit. Right, big battles, time travel, wormholes, laughter, tears, Napoleon turns evil and goes back in time to become the real Napoleon, but he gets it wrong and becomes Bonaparte III, and spends the rest of his life supervising railway construction and posing for coins and so on. Portalue’s career goes down the pan and he becomes a soldier of fortune – it kinda sets it all up for a spin-off, revolving round him.

So….what do you think.?

Mr. Sowden. That is by far and away the most derivative, ludicrous, flatulent, narrow-minded, misogynistic, over-blown, pseudo-portentious, hackneyed, uninvolving, low-browed, god-awful pile of foetid dingo’s kidneys I have ever had the utter misfortune to have presented to me.

However, it’s better than what we have at the moment.

Sign here, please.

Image: Dunechaser