[General Battuta]

Thread got kidnapped, trying to Liam Neeson it back.

Just a random thought, wouldn't be cool to have an HBO series for Freespace?

How far away do you think we are from that?  Can anyone think of a good cast list?

It's a pretty fun thing to speculate about but it'd never happen thanks to copyright and Interplay being ****heads.

Idris Elba seems popular these days, he'd probably make a good Steele now that Avery Brooks is too old.

I vote the guy from robocop as admiral bosch. The dude from independence day would make a great petrarch too.

I'm not so sure this is quite HBO's thing.

With so much of the story happening out in space between ships and fighters an animated series or movie seems more fitting to me.

But whatever kind of medium is used, the most essential thing will be to keep Uwe Boll out of it so it'll at least have the chance to be good.

I vote the guy from robocop as admiral bosch. The dude from independence day would make a great petrarch too.

You mean Peter Weller & Will Smith ? Yeah, that sounds nice enough.

If they can afford it, I'd love to see Morgan Freeman as Petrarch.

And Edward James Olmos as the voice of Command?

Lets make a movie ourselves!

using the voice cast would be absolutely hilarious for that

I'm not so sure this is quite HBO's thing.

With so much of the story happening out in space between ships and fighters an animated series or movie seems more fitting to me.

You would probably focus most of the storyline from the capship War Rooms and governing bodies emergency situation meetings planetside.  Plus the advanced experimental tech rooms where they develop all the rip offs of Shivan tech.  Ship-to-ship combat would provide the excitement when needed, but would not be the main focus.

My 2c.

Carry on!

[jr2]

  But you put it in Blue Planet.  xD

[Aesaar]

Because discussing casting for a FS2 TV series is kinda pointless when it has no real characters to cast.

BP, on the other hand, has many.  And much potential for discussion.

[NGTM-1R]

Because discussing casting for a FS2 TV series is kinda pointless when it has no real characters to cast.

BP, on the other hand, has many.  And much potential for discussion.

And as Batts is fond of saying, BP is not the entirety of FS or even FS modding.

[General Battuta]

Yeah, it's just a shame to see a good thread taken out behind the shed for no reason. Oh well.

[leoben]

I'd love to have one for BP. When was the last time we saw a good science fiction series on HBO? Right...too bad.

[jr2]

I was assuming you would come up with characters in the FS Universe.  BP would, of course, work just fine for that.    Just depends on where in the timeline you wanted it.


Hmm.  Does BP have any thoughts on doing an alternate FS and FS2?  Like, telling the story BP-style?  It would be quite interesting.

[Trivial Psychic]

Every time someone brings up the idea of a Freespace movie of TV series, I reference my post in THIS thread.

[General Battuta]

I was assuming you would come up with characters in the FS Universe.  BP would, of course, work just fine for that.    Just depends on where in the timeline you wanted it.

Hmm.  Does BP have any thoughts on doing an alternate FS and FS2?  Like, telling the story BP-style?  It would be quite interesting.

TV audiences are pretty sophisticated these days - in fact I think TV probably has the most sophisticated storytelling of any pop culture sector right now. So that means:

• Prestige miniseries do better than long runs. Get an eight episode order or a ten episode order. Ditch episodic storytelling. Serialize your plot.
• Audiences expect to be hooked by complex, compelling characters. You can't get away with an ensemble of archetypes who line up into roughly a full person. The first (and maybe only?) requirement of modern TV is to connect the audience to a character: not the plot, not the situation, a person or group of people. Who is Don Draper? Why would Walt cook meth? Why is McNulty talking to a city judge? What made Rust such a nihilist? What's giving Tony panic attacks? Why is Jaime ****ing his sister? How did Locke get out of his wheelchair? This is the line between modestly successful modern TV (Fringe) and explosively successful modern TV (every show I've listed here): they sell a character, not a premise. The characters lead the viewer into the show's conceits. People have learned to make the houses in Game of Thrones household names because they care about the people involved. So: you can't write the grizzled veteran, the well-intentioned new pilot, the girl, and the sidekick. You need flawed, conflicted people who act as narrative engines: they can pick up events, feed them into their own personal conflict, and spit them out as interesting decisions. (Bosch is one such character.)
• Combat is more exciting the less frequently it happens and the more budget you can put into it. Combat should force your characters to pay a permanent cost. The more often combat happens without a permanent change to the status quo, the less anyone cares.
• Ground your texture. People are nuts for verisimilitude right now. No pew pew lasers. No sets bouncing around wildly with sparks jetting everywhere. Probably no beams (sorry!) No jumpsuits. No invented future names. Guns. Missiles. Set design like the modern navy. People are easily embarrassed and you want to defuse that reflex.
• The show needs an operating principle. This is another difference between good genre shows and bad genre shows. In good shows, the operating principle governs everything that happens onscreen. In Battlestar Galactica, the operating principle is 'Are human beings worthy of salvation?' It uses artificial life, interpersonal conflict, and genocide to examine this question. The Cylons are not just a narrative enemy, but a possibility: 'if we act badly too each other, will the universe destroy and replace us?' In Lost, the operating principle is 'Can anyone change?' Everyone on the Island is trying to make up for, escape, or return to their past. In The X-Files, the operating principle is 'Can we learn the truth?' Everyone is trying to uncover something about themselves or the world. What should the operating principle be in a FreeSpace show? This principle has to govern not just the plot and the explicit philosophical themes, but the way in which the characters interact with each other.

[swashmebuckle]

Personally I'd like to see something more like Alf.

[Rheyah]

The operation principle of any show about Freespace would be "There is always a bigger fish".

No matter how prepared you are, there is always something bigger out there.  It's also the subject of surprisingly few sci-fi stories.  Star Trek dealt with it once or twice, but only from the perspective of Q (who was effectively the best live action version of Loki), the Borg and one or two others.  Excession was the best written treatment of the trope, codifying it in its best real term - the Outside Context Problem.

Everything in Freespace is about scale.  The characters themselves are never as big as the events they set into motion.  It's even something Bosch discusses during Freespace 2.  You are a small cog in a large machine.  Your fighter is scattered between colossi.  No matter how powerful you are, the Shivans are greater.  It's also something that is laughably discussed during most sci-fi too.  What would a space navy actually look like?  BSG tried to explore it and wasn't able to because the civvies and military drifted together by necessity.  What if they were stable?

It is also a very, very hard story to write because for it to work, you need to lose things.  You can't get away with the contrivance of escaping every week.  BSG ran a very thin line between losing things people cared about and not.  People have to die and you need to write the moment where the sheer scale of the situation comes into being absolutely perfectly otherwise it comes off as poorly written.

I also disagree with Battuta about the 'grounding'.  I think that's the wrong thing to take from, for example, BSG.  BSG didn't work because of realistic premises, certainly technologically.  It worked because it 'felt' real.  The cameras felt real.  The ships felt practical.  The dialogue felt appropriate.  The setting itself felt right.  The general theme fitted.

There is plenty of room for a high tech, power ridden sci-fi world with immensely powerful plasma beams and rent planets.  A Freespace series wouldn't need to ape BSG to work and in fact, if it were to include the Shivans, couldn't ape BSG.  Freespace isn't Freespace without the unutterably alien.  When you think about it, the Vasudans aren't exactly conventional sci-fi fare, either.

[-Norbert-]

One thing I absolutely wouldn't want to see in a FS series or movie is pilots also acting as infantry. That is one aspect of far too many sci-fi settings I really hate. BSG, Space Above and Beyond, Star Trek (though here it's more about officers doing infantry's work rather than pilots, but the same principle)...

The only sci-fi series that comes to my mind right now that had this seperation between pilots and infatry is Babylon 5.

[General Battuta]

I also disagree with Battuta about the 'grounding'.  I think that's the wrong thing to take from, for example, BSG.  BSG didn't work because of realistic premises, certainly technologically.  It worked because it 'felt' real.  The cameras felt real.  The ships felt practical.  The dialogue felt appropriate.  The setting itself felt right.  The general theme fitted.

That's what I said! People aren't nuts for realism. People are nuts for verisimilitude.

There is plenty of room for a high tech, power ridden sci-fi world with immensely powerful plasma beams and rent planets.  A Freespace series wouldn't need to ape BSG to work and in fact, if it were to include the Shivans, couldn't ape BSG.  Freespace isn't Freespace without the unutterably alien.  When you think about it, the Vasudans aren't exactly conventional sci-fi fare, either.

BSG does a better job of presenting the unutterably alien than most 90s SF and points the way to handling the Shivans.

[swashmebuckle]

Code: [Select]

INT. APARTMENT - DAY

BOSCH prepares breakfast, whistling. COMMAND and TUT watch TV.

                    BOSCH
         I got a hot date tonight.

                  COMMAND
      Not another Shivan. It's a Shivan.

(laughs)

                     TUT
       Snorv grop bleyopetz guh!

(TUT and COMMAND fistbump, big laughs)

                    BOSCH
    No, she's a human. It's the receptionist from the
    dealership down the road. I finally worked up the
    courage to ask her out.

                     TUT
          Glowrap pbrrrt fulburgd?

                  COMMAND
     Oh yeah, wasn't she dating Alpha 1?

                    BOSCH
            (picking up phone)
               I gotta cancel.

Laughs. MINA HARGROVE enters looking frazzled.

                  COMMAND
     Incoming jump signature, hostile configuration!

(laughs)

                MINA HARGROVE
     All right, which one of you lunkheads hid my tampons?

(Laughs. TUT belches loudly)

                MINA HARGROVE
             Tuuuuuuuuuuuuuuut!!!

(Huge laughs)

                                                Fade out.


[General Battuta]

Just edit in the bass cue and it'll be perfect.

[Gee1337]

Norbert is bang on about B5. I know I have referenced to it a lot in this forum in relation to BP. But, it is the show which has covered almost every aspect that a science fiction show is able to cover and it was a show well ahead of its time. There was the philosophy, politics, character development, believable ships, species evolution, religion, balance of the cosmos and, as seen in "The Deconstruction of Falling Stars", the interpretation of events and aftermath. "In the Beginning" also touched on the complete and total genocide of the human race by the Minbari.

The biggest problem with the Freespace universe is... Where do you start?

Do you start with the Vasudan War?
Do you start with the events of FS1?
Do you go straight to Silent Threat?

or...

Do you got straight to Freespace 2?

The logical approach is to start with FS1. But as the series develops, how do you bring it to (what I believe) the more exciting events of Freespace 2 when there is a 32 year gap?

The only way for this to be done, imo, is to to have two separate series. Realistically, I don't think any studio is likely to sign up to that straight away and I can't personally think of any show that has done it, which I suppose could give the series an USP, but probably not a desirable one.

Outside of the usual factors of a good series, the core principles of a potential show for me would have to revolve around cosmological balance, philosophy and humbling survival. These are things which have been done before in different shows, but luckily there are many different ways of how they can be explored.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Since this thread is now in the Blue Planet forum, I believe that creating a TV show out of Blue Planet would actually be more realistic to a studio because of higher character driven plots being intertwined with philosophical debates whilst fighting out a potential cataclysmic war.

I don't believe it would matter with such a TV series whether to start with Age of Aquarius or War in Heaven. However, make series line up would be:-

Series 1:- Age of Aquarius
Series 2:- Chrysilis
Series 3:- Apotheosis
Series 4:- Tenebra
Series 5:- Whatever Act 4 is called
Series 6:- Ditto for Act 5... although I wouldn't be surprised to see it called Endgame.

Straight away, you have the plot outlined for six series! The only problem that might be flagged is the change in characters between series 1 and 2. But this has been done before by "Strike Back" (for those that don't know it... http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1492179/?ref_=nv_sr_1 ) where Andrew Lincoln's character was killed off, as was Richard Armitage's character, as they didn't make a return for the second series. As previously mentioned, Game of Thrones has killed off many a character and before that, even Prison Break killed off major characters within the 1st series.

As a BP series progresses, it can always call upon the FS universe for reference and delve into it as much as it likes, and use it as a "pre-story". As we all know, there is plenty of narrative which can be exploited or focused on.

The only thing I fear for BP becoming a TV series, is the creators' fear of their work becoming Freespace canon, which is something that I would not object too, but understandably they do not want to undermine the work done by other community projects.

So, in conclusion, I believe that the making of Freespace as a tv series is not a real possibility due to the fundamental factor of the timeline's size. But Blue Planet would work and would probably draw more people in due to a more fluent continuity (the film maker's swear word). In fact, I would say that once the Blue Planet story has finished being told, pitch it to a studio and go and earn yourselves some damn hard earned cash for the amount of time, effort and good work that you have created for this community! (brown nosing is not the intention here, it's just genuine respect)

[-Norbert-]

I doubt the starting point would be a big issue. If a studio picks up FreeSpace they are more likely than not come up with their own story rather than using the story of the actual games.

A few key events and facts will be the same, like there being a TV war and the Shivans appearing during it but beyond that I'd guess that all bets are off.

[bigchunk1]

I doubt the starting point would be a big issue. If a studio picks up FreeSpace they are more likely than not come up with their own story rather than using the story of the actual games.

A few key events and facts will be the same, like there being a TV war and the Shivans appearing during it but beyond that I'd guess that all bets are off.

That's the only way I would see it working. Freespace 1 and 2 are event driven games. Television shows generally focus on setting and the lives of the characters in it. Do we know what a Vasudan eats for dinner, or what sort of living standards Terran civilians have in Polaris? A lot would have to be inferred or invented to create the show.

[leoben]

I'm partially with Norbert on this one. FS1 and FS2 are almost impossible to tell through a TV show. Or even a movie for that matter - someone said it before, lacks complex characters. Even AoA would have to be revisited completely, and told from a different angle.

I agree with Battuta to some degree only, but BSG had its moments with big ships pew pewing at each other, and they were finely done. I agree that you have to be conservative on how many of these battles you show. Probably one per season. Maybe two.

I was actually toying around with the starting point idea, and what I came back to over and over again, is the end of Tenebra. As Bei is showing Laporte what happened during AoA. So you'd probably go with three different points in time for the first few episodes, switching between them

1. Bei talking to Laporte in the nagari network
2. The recount of AoA
3. Recount of Laporte as a child/rookie, story of Chrysalis and then Apotheosis

I think it has an insane amount of potential, if done right. Would need an insane budget though too.

Also there's the problem of how you set up the universe. How do you set the stage for BP, and telling people what happened in FS1 and 2.

[-Norbert-]

Something like the beginning of Serenity could work, though simpler (no need for history lessen within a dream within a holo-recording here ^^).

We see a young person in school learning their history and then an alarm sounds and the same person, but several years older now, hurries to get in gear and rushes to the briefing room for the next sortie and the "history lessen" was just a dream of his/her past.

This method should work reasonably well in any setting. The TV war was decades long before the Shivans turned up, so people would have been able to learn about it in history class and then age enough to become pilots. And if the story parallels FS2 or BP there are decades between the conflics so it'll work easily there too.