What do you think of this idea for an SF TV series?

Cafe Society
21

Future fashion NEVER looks right. It always gets dated, especially civillian fashions. Military stuff usually fares better. (Compare the Imperial Officers in Star Wars to say… Lando. Or the B5 uniforms vs. poor, poor fashion disaster Jake Sisko.) (And yes, I know Star Wars isn’t technically “Future,” but you know what I mean.)

I have to agree that the title is atrocious, but I would watch. (sorry, “Giant’s Castle” is better, or even shorten it to “Type.5”, but be prepared to have a short and sweet explanation of the title in the first episode, or the opening sequence) Espescially if there were realistic space-battles, which to my kowledge have never been put onscreen.

In lieu of aliens, I’d try to extropolate the colony cultures a bit, so you can tell your Lunars from from your Terrans from your Europans or what have you. But that would really involve pushing the timeline out by another 50-100 years to allow for them to diverge, which you probably don’t want. And you’d have to be careful not to make them one-adjective trek-like cultures.

Unfortunately, I don’t think there’s much of a market for near-future SF on TV, Hard Sci-fi or otherwise. Century City flopped. VR5 flopped. Dark Angel flopped. Alien Nation only lasted a couple seasons, and they at least had aliens and alien tech. Tekwar was… well it was Tekwar, I enjoyed it but it wasn’t great. The only successful ones I can think of offhand are Stargate (which opens itself up to traditional space opera via the stargate), X-files (which is more modern conspiracy horror/sci-fi than near-future), and Quantum Leap (which only lasted 4 seasons, and didn’t focus on the future, but the past.)

22

Have you ever read Allen Steele? He writes near-future SF about orbital stations and such, where the characters are well developed and the plot is driven by the SF setting. Same with Ben Bova’s recent novels – Moonrise, Moonwar, and many others.

23

I think the top of the beanstalk would be a cool place for inventors and or companies to pitch their ideas and products to capitol investors and/or government/cultural watchdogs. That would be a great way to showcase new tech possibilities and discuss their repercussions without having to resort to odd plot twists to introduce them.

I’d better stop writing and send this. I’m having an urge to add an Amish guy.

24

No.

To me, though most of the things that get dubbed ‘hard SF’ aren’t science fiction at all. Speculative? Sure. But they’re just dramas set in the future. Period pieces, if you will.

So it’s the same as not having a so-called science fiction element at all.

Take, for example, the Cold Equations. Great little drama. Many people would call it science fiction, but for me, it’s just a drama.

25

More interesting, I think, would be to extrapolate the development of space-based human culture as a whole. On the one hand, it would “one-adjective” – that is, it would be a “melting pot” of all nations advanced enough to participate – meaning, most people would be from the U.S., Europe, Russia, Japan, and just possibly India, China, and Brazil; but few from really backward Third-World countries. Everybody would speak English, at least as a second language. OTOH, it would not be like earlier settler cultures because the first wave of settlers would be an elite, composed entirely of highly educated professionals, military personnel, scientists, technicians and engineers – and they would provide the “hearth culture” to which all later settlers would assimilate. Thus, truly ignorant beliefs and behavior, like religious fundamentalism and religious strife, as well as social pathologies like drug addiction and multigenerational unemployment, would mostly be left behind on Earth – and the space colonists, especially those born and raised in space, would develop a somewhat justified sense of smug superiority WRT Earthlings. But they couldn’t afford to ignore Earth-based political conflicts because their effects would always be flowing up the beanstalk. At the time I conceive for the setting – 2050 – all of this would just be getting started; the first space-born humans would still be children, and their parents would still think of Earth as “home.” The point I’m making is, neither Giant’s Castle nor anyplace else in space would be a “wretched hive of scum and villainy” like Mos Eisley or the Io mining colony in Outland. To the contrary, scum and villainy (except for white-collar crime and technological espionage) would be almost unknown, just as at a research station in Antarctica.

I’ve never even heard of Century City and only saw a couple of episodes of VR5. I wouldn’t say Dark Angel flopped. Just didn’t get renewed for as many seasons as it deserved.

26

I assure you, that characterization does not apply to Steele or Bova’s near-future SF novels. Nor to Neal Stephenson’s near-future novels, such as Snow Crash and The Diamond Age. Nor need it apply to The Giant’s Castle.

27

The title goes. And what about the kid? I don’t like the kid - Sparky McHoolihan, or whatever his name is. You know what? He’s a girl. That’s right. And the big, drunk guy too. In fact, everybody the damn series is a damn girl. I gotta talk to Guttenberg’s people…

[/End Referential humor]

But seriously, You’re putting in enough science to turn off the norms, and not enough science fiction to intrigue the escapists. I give it six episodes.

28

sigh Then let me present you with a challenge: You are charged (your job at the studio is at stake) with coming up with a concept for a TV series which (1) is near-future hard-SF, as I have defined it here, and (2) will get good enough ratings to guarantee at least a second season. What show would you propose?

29

I don’t think it can be done.

At least, not without a lot of breasts.

30

Fine, work some breasts into it! But try! Remember, after the tabloid expose over your “Lost Weekend” with Richard Gere, the Free Mexican Air Force and the schnauzer, this is your last chance to save your career! :wink:

31

Maybe that’s all it should have. Seriously, the idea that a series must have an indefinite run is just a way for studios to milk a concept for everything they can. It usually doesn’t serve the story.

It seems like a lot of sci-fi programs–realistic or not–tend to wear out their welcome pretty quickly. Once the novelty of a new world, technologies, aliens, et cetera wears off, you’re left only with the strength of the characters and the plot, and way too many shows devolve into the Star Trek-esque villian/challenge of the week resolved by some kind of technobabble particle. The Star Trek franchise was an anomoly, and was largely sustained by fan interest and/or really well-endowed cast members in tight outfits. (You know it’s true.) I’ll admit, I’m biased–except for a couple of seasons of TNG and some of the old shows here and there, I’ve never really followed the whole Star Trek thing–but when your show ends up as a standard Ad Libs drama but with blinking lights and knobby foreheads, there isn’t really much of a draw for the audience to hold onto.

One of my favorite sci-fi shows was “Max Headroom”, and the reason I enjoyed it was because every episode was unique, and the writers were always throwing in something new. Of course, they only aired thirteen episodes so it didn’t have time to wear thin. One of the great thing about science fiction films is how they give you a peek into a future world, and let you leave the theater filling in the rest with your imagination.

Just IMHO.

Stranger

32

I should stay out of this thread. Now I’m imagining low-gravity, hydroponic breast farms. And, yes, I know hydroponic isn’t the right word. Talk about the ultimate modified-cloning product. They aren’t artificial if they’re your own.

33

I know this will sound uncritical compared to others, but I’d definitely watch it. I love the concept of a space elevator, and I think any skilled TV writer should have no trouble finding stories to tell in your setting.

Once Earth has a beanstalk, there would be an explosion of ‘Big Projects’ under way. I’d expect at this point there would have been a couple of PR-driven Mars missions, but nothing substantive. Having the elevator, they could begin building a truly large, major mission. A ship is being constructed in orbit and will carry a crew of a couple of hundred scientists and explorers. The elevator is constantly ferrying traffic to and from the construction, and a season finale-season premiere cliffhanger story could revolve around the launch of the mission.

The elevator would make orbital industry so much easier that asteroid mining would be a virtual necessity. However, at the time of your series, it is just beginning. I don’t think you’d want to follow Bova by having a lot of wildcat space miners, but you could certainly get some conflict between various agencies or corporations trying to develop the best space-mining tech and to claim the richest rocks. Imagine if one of them decides it’s a good idea to move an asteroid into Earth orbit before stripping it for materials–Loads of excitement if they lose control of the rock and it threatens the elevator, or Earth itself.

By the way, I’d like to state that I give anyone free license to use these ideas. I wouldn’t want some lawyer telling any possible producers that they shouldn’t do these things for fear of me suing. (Though I think you should hold out for a cut of the take, BrainGlutton.)

34

I too, am not a big fan of hard sci-fi, for the following reasons:

In it’s attempt to show everyone how hard it’s science is (hee hee!) hard sci-fi stories often neglect those oh-so crucial elements of plot and characterization. And I cannot stress how inportant characterization is to a show, especially if you’re trying not to be escapist. People watching will need something to relate to, and that comes through with well developed characters. In other words, you need to have equal measures of hard physical science and hard social science.

If you really want a successful show, you can do one of two things. One method is to create a serial-stand alone hybrid show, sorta like BTVS or Angel. That is, all of the episodes tie into a vast story arc, but many episodes can stand independently.

A second method is to take the Law & Order or Perry Mason approach and use a simple formula that allows for a wide amount of variation episode to episode.

Of course, you need to decide who your main characters are going to be, not to mention how many main characters you will have. You could stick with 4 or 5 people, which would work well with either format listed above, or you could have a whole host of characters. You could even have each episode focus on a different set of characters, or rotate a story arc each week or month.

Posted by Brain Glutton:

I respectfully disagree, in particular with the part about social pathologies. The fact of the matter is, all of these things are rooted in a bunch of other factors, namely, family issues and individual psychopathology. It’s entirely possible that some of the settlers carry their own fundamentalism, racism, and psychopathology with them when they move away. Bad shit is eternal. Part of the series could be dealing with such bad shit in the beanstalk environment.

35

I don’t know much about appealing to the masses, and I’m hardly an expert on characterization, so I’ll set those aside. I can, however, say a few things about the technology.

First of all, avoid nanobots entirely. Yes, there is such a field, and yes, it does have promise to improve life in various ways, but it seems to have a distressing tendancy to turn into black-box magic in speculations and fictional treatments. I would only include nanotechnology at all in so far as it’s necessary for the beanstalk itself (which would presumably be made from carbon nanofiber).

Secondly, there’s going to be more than one beanstalk. Once you have one up, it would only cost a fraction as much to put up your second and subsequent cables. You’ve already got all the R&D, and the first elevator can be used to lift the material for the second one. It would be nice, for dramatic purposes, to have multiple elevators controlled by rival governments/companies, but given the edge the first innovator is going to have, I think that the market would be saturated before that could happen.

Third, a space elevator makes exploration and colonization of the Solar System very easy. As soon as you have your Earthly elevator (or a few of them, for redundancy), you’re going to want to build another one and send it to Mars, as well as skyhooks for the Moon and Mercury. Presto, you can now ship people and cargoes anywhere in the inner Solar System for very nearly free. The moons of the outer planets would follow shortly, as quickly as the flight times would allow.

Even absent other technological advances, this will have a huge economic impact on the Earth. Iron, for instance, will plummet in price. Conventional building materials might end up being competetive over higher-tech synthetics for many purposes: Even if a pound of plastic can do the work of ten pounds of steel, the steel might be cheap enough that it’s still worthwhile.

You’re also going to have rather a technology gradient, between whoever has the Beanstalk and everyone else. You’re not likely to see dogfights in space, for the simple reason that the Beanstalk is the only economical way to launch fighters, and as I said above, I can’t see more than one entity building beanstalks. You might use offworld colonies (on the Moon, say, or Mars) as antagonists, but you’d probably have to push the series further into the future, then, to allow time for cultures to diverge and for the colonies to gain their independence. Otherwise, the conflict is going to be coming from lower-tech adversaries, smuggling and sabotaging.

One other suggestion, on a more social point: The Beanstalk will probably be operated by Americans (either the government, or an American-based company), but its base will be located near the Equator, say, off the coast of Equador. White-collar personnel will be coming from the United States and elsewhere in the developed world (most of Europe, Russia, Japan, Australia, etc.), and will probably speak English as the official language of the installation. But most of your blue-collar workforce is probably going to be local, and may not even speak English at all. In addition to being more realistic this way, it also gives you an opening for cultural conflict between the American management and the Equadorian workforce.

36

Well, you seem to be getting the idea that you need more than just a near-future background as a show basis. I also wonder about the gravity situation at the counterweight. Is the centripetal force there enough to simulate gravity? Because simulating weightlessness week in and week out will be a SFX killer right there. If it’s not an issue, though, having the characters standing “upside-down” with the Earth filling the sky will make an awesome visual.

Here are my thoughts on some other things.

In the context of some other ideas I had, I was thinking the elevator starts as a strictly non-military endeavor with payloads uploaded from countries around the world with few questions asked, basically in the interest of openness. Eventually, some bad boy nation manages to put what amounts to little more than a satellite with a point-and-shoot rifle to start picking off other countries’ satellites and a shit-storm ensues. Episode bounces between the search for the rogue satellite and the political repercussions as various countries/entities call for militarization of the elevator and the elevator organization resists (and of course some personal interest thread on the side as well). Eventually, the satellite is found and the space elevator organization reaches an agreement to accept a military presence in the base station to control what goes up and, just as grudgingly, provide free lifts for replacement satellites.

This bit gets me rolling my eyes. I think the whole “all nations come together to do this great thing” is just too idealist cliche. How about a “rebel billionare”-type (a la Howard Hughes) that sells off his other holdings, buys a rocketry company, and disappears for five years doing what most assume is building a simple rocketry launchpad and associated rocket system but what turns out to tbe the base station and cable/counterweight delivery system? Okay, this has its eye-rolling elements as well, but I think it’s a bit more compelling given the recent advances in private rocketry and makes perhaps better television with a “personality” to hang the early series on. The conflict between this person’s vision (for instance, keeping the military away from the project in the above example) and political realities could prove interesting as well.

Other ideas/bits of flotsam and jetsam:
Legal status/law enforcement- if erected by an entrepreneur, would the counterweight be it’s own micronation? What laws would apply? A murder mystery episode?
Sex tourism (there’s your boobies)- you know people will pay to do it in space
Space Diving

I also like the idea of a limited series, Prisoner-esque, run, perhaps with the end coming as other countries begin putting up their own elevators and the initial elevator falls out of favor, existing mostly as a reminder of how one man tried to change the world. The question when it’s over is, “Did he succeed?”

You should have watched “Century City”. You could have doubled its audience.

37

Good one. Imagine also the geopolitical conflict of one third-world country having this source of money that basically pours down from the sky, while their neighbors might still be poverty-stricken. Whoever controls the elevator is going to need the host nation to be as stable as possible, but will they go so far as to fund some sort of repressive regime just to protect their anchor point? What do the people of the space station think of the people at the ground station?

These plot kernels are easy to write, but reading the last two sentences of the preceding paragraph makes me think it would be too easy to make the show about an evil megacorporation that controls space travel. I don’t think that would be good, as it would lead to a few too many cyberpunkish clichés. And, we want to feature how this tech would help everyone, not focus on how the little guys get screwed no matter how advanced society gets.

38

Of course bad shit is eternal – but people from our modern professional classes have distinctly different bad shit in their lives than people from other classes, and that would make a culture whose first generation was drawn almost entirely from professionals very different from any culture previously known to history. No wildcat miners, no space pirates, no space-going equivalents of youth gangs or drug cartels. But possibly space-based branches of corporations going rogue and hiring their own mercenary armies, plus lots of industrial espionage and cutthroat tactics of that kind. Think Yuppie Scum in Space. (Hey, there’s my title! :slight_smile: )

Only if it’s a purely private-sector project. And I don’t think Bill Gates could pay for a beanstalk out-of-pocket. It would have to be a government or multigovernment enterprise. Here’s an idea: 50 years from now, the hostility of the Islamic world towards the west has not entirely been resolved. There’s an international Islamic Alliance and it has build its own space elevator, based in Indonesia. (A beanstalk doesn’t have to be anchored at the equator, but it simplifies things – the further you get from the equator, the more lateral tidal stress on the cable.) While the U.S. has a beanstalk anchored in Ecuador (by some arrangement similar to the Panama Canal Treaty, and just as resented by the locals), and the European Union – now grown into the Euro-African Union – has one anchored at Mt. Kilimanjaro.

I’m envisioning a series that opens after the beanstalk has already been built, so labor politics of its construction wouldn’t have much effect on the story. OTOH, there might still be Ecuadorans in the maintenance crew, and the political status of a U.S.-controlled beanstalk anchored on Ecuadoran soil might be a source of tension (see above).

A space elevator’s cable would be 72,000 miles long, anchored at the outer end by a counterweight, possibly a captured asteroid. But that’s not where the “Giant’s Castle” would be located. The space terminal of a beanstalk would have to be at the geosynchronous/geostationary orbit point (about 22,240 miles above sea level – see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geosynchronous_orbit), precisely because that’s the only point along the cable that is perfectly in free-fall, simplifying the process of spaceships taking off and landing. (OTOH, if all you want to do is fling a payload into space, it would be better to launch it from some point below or above the terminal, because lateral tidal forces would give you an extra boost.) See this GQ thread: http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=169721 See also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_elevator

So, the terminal would be in free-fall – but the local environment inside need not be. Just build a cylindrical or ring-shaped terminal and spin it to provide a local gravity of 1g. That’s old hat in SF, you don’t even need to explain it. Then Earth would always be visible – as a rapidly spinning disk – out the windows of the “down” side of the station. And the station could be indefinitely expanded by adding more ring-segments (parallel to the first ones, not on the inside or outside of them.) On arriving at the terminal via the elevator car (which probably would take at least three days to rise from the ground to the terminal, so it would have to be a commodious space habitat in its own right), you would be in local free-fall; then the car would be put into a spin until it matched the outer ring’s, so it could link up with the access tubes to the outer ring. Not an insoluble special-effects problem.

39

I agree the international-cooperation scenario is implausible, but the Heinleinian space entrepeneur scenario is even more so, at least for a project on this scale. More plausible is a set of three beanstalks whose construction was spurred on by international (or intercivilizational) competition. See above post.

40

Hey, come to think of it, there’s another source of conflict! Three competing beanstalks three competing sets of space colonies! Maybe more, but the Chinese, having no equatorial territory, would have to hire use of the Muslims’ Indonesian beanstalk. Maybe more – Brazil looks likely to emerge as a great or at least medium power in this century, and has plenty of territory on the equator. And India would work out a deal to build one on Sri Lanka – or just use the southern tip of its own territory. It’s not on the equator, but it’s close enough. So, discard what I said above about a “melting pot” culture in space. Imagine, instead, several cultures, each of which is a “melting pot” within its own civilizational boundaries, but each of which represents a fundamentally different civilizational world-view from the others, and with very complicated relations between them. Therefore, everybody on the station lives with the knowledge that they are living on a facility that, under some circumstances, might turn into a very obvious military target. The cable could be attacked at any point along its length. The station would have to be designed with engines that would allow it to turn into a free-going spaceship in an emergency. Maybe it would be designed to break into segments, so it’s not stuck on that flailing cable like a washer on a fishing line.