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Topic: Star Control Television Series (Read 23891 times)
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Death 999
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We did. You did. Yes we can. No.
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I agree.. there should be a bunch of specialists whose job it is to go down; we would get to know them well.
Occasionally, one of them will die mining... but it should be a rare event.
Perhaps, in the beginning, the main issue is that there are no resources, and they NEED to mine everything they can...
Scene: Hayes and Zelnick discussing the outfitting of the starship:
Hayes: you'll need an second lander
Zelnick: actually, the ship can only control one at a time, so...
Hayes: no, I meant in case the first one is destroyed.
Zelnick: by whom? We aren't going to be mining under attack.
Hayes (gets very patient): Mining is dangerous. If you lose the first lander, having to come back to get a second one is an unacceptable waste. You won't even be able to get back to the star system to resume mining for lack of fuel.
Zelnick: ... (digests this)...
Later, there would be a scene, debating how to react to mining losses at Alpha Centauri:
Zelnick: How do we keep this from happening again? We can't bleed ourselves to death just mining.
Exec Officer: On the other hand, if we don't have the resources, we're doomed in the event of Ur-Quan attack. If we don't keep mining, we won't even profit from the trip as a whole, and the whole alliance will be starved to death for lack of material.
Zelnick: Last time, we were greedy, and it cost us. How much will we profit if we just drop down for a moment and grab what's nearby? There won't be as much chance of problems.
Exec Officer: Not as much... fuel costs a lot for these heavy planets. And our accuracy is not very good. We will frequently come down far from the veins we're aiming for.
Zelnick: Then we'll come back up empty.
Exec Officer: (grits teeth at visions of waste) ... I guess it depends what you call 'nearby'.
Zelnick: That's something we'll have to work out as we go along. *activates intercom*Lander bay, prepare for launch. Inform the crews of the following change in method...
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« Last Edit: September 21, 2004, 09:21:42 pm by Death_999 »
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Megagun
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 (replying to Death, that is.. heh)
Exec Officer: Lander is down...
<bleep-bleep-bleep>
Exec Officer: What the hell happened to the lander? It landed miles away from the minerals!
Lander crew: ARRGGGGHHHH GET US OUT OF HERE!!! AARGGH *sounds of burning crew*..
Zelnick: Shit.... It's a conspiracy! Something is completely wrong here! *looks at a very short human with purple "arms"...
Exec Officer: damn Umgah in disguise!
(okay.. perhaps not.. that could just be a dream though... Notice the expression on Exec Officer's face when he says "damn Umgah in disguise!"...)
Oh, and 0xE... It'd be something like a side-plot.. Perhaps it could be mixed with the history (like Sc1's plot).......
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« Last Edit: September 21, 2004, 10:47:44 pm by Megagun »
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There wouldn't be that much mining onscreen, but I think the idea that a huge amount of resources is being spent wandering star systems scouring them for minerals, and that people are constantly dying funneling wealth back to the Starbase is a great background for the first season, before the real action heats up with the enemy races. There needs to be a feeling of holding the New Alliance together by a thread, and people dying for the cause.
We shouldn't *see* mining very often unless there's some special incident involving mining, and there probably are a lot of plot modules you can pop in for episode ideas along those lines -- random things like finding hostile alien life forms on a planet, negotiating with some pissant pre-spacefaring race for mining rights, a whole team of people trapped on a highly unstable planet that's about to undergo massive volcanic eruptions and kill them all, and so on. It'd be a great way to have a less centralized plot -- the random adventures of one group of miners wandering a strange planet could make for many an interesting episode. Quite a few grand old shows had some cheesy practical concern as a hook for interesting plots. (ST: TNG's Enterprise spent a lot of time ferrying cargo, or ambassadors, or important messages around; the Stargate SG-1 team spends quite a bit of time doing boring archeological fieldwork and getting into trouble along the way; and ST: TOS actually *did* run into interesting situations with mining in more than one episode; I'm especially thinking of that episode with the Horta rock-beast.)
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Death 999
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My idea was that you'd basically have the mining take a central role in one or two episodes at the beginning, and after that it would be one of those offscreen activities that is sometimes referred-to but
A) would be repetitive to represent, and
B) is not so critical anymore because there IS a cushion which simply didn't exist the first time out.
After Alpha Centauri, the galaxy opens wide up. You can go wherever you want -- and you can be picky enough about the mining that it simply isn't show-worthy anymore. You can have a few episodes where the mining activity is interrupted, thus bringing about the incident of the show.
I do however think it is sufficiently important to represent centrally in one episode. Keeping it back to JUST one would be a good idea too.
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Fsi-Dib
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We shouldn't *see* mining very often unless there's some special incident involving mining, and there probably are a lot of plot modules you can pop in for episode ideas along those lines -- random things like finding hostile alien life forms on a planet, negotiating with some pissant pre-spacefaring race for mining rights, a whole team of people trapped on a highly unstable planet that's about to undergo massive volcanic eruptions and kill them all, and so on. It'd be a great way to have a less centralized plot -- the random adventures of one group of miners wandering a strange planet could make for many an interesting episode. Quite a few grand old shows had some cheesy practical concern as a hook for interesting plots. (ST: TNG's Enterprise spent a lot of time ferrying cargo, or ambassadors, or important messages around; the Stargate SG-1 team spends quite a bit of time doing boring archeological fieldwork and getting into trouble along the way; and ST: TOS actually *did* run into interesting situations with mining in more than one episode; I'm especially thinking of that episode with the Horta rock-beast.)
Like I told in a previous post by me, Eta Vulpeculae (Androsynth Homeworld I suspect) would be a fabulous episode, seeing that one dude get himself trapped into the computer room and start screaming, as the others start to try to break the doors down. Exciting!
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« Last Edit: September 22, 2004, 03:21:13 pm by Fsi-Dib »
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The unofficial music critic.
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Megagun
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Indeed.. ^^
About the mining issue, I think it'd be nice to have the mining thing come up once in a while, even when they already met Alpha Centauri (which will be pretty late in the season)... Something like the mining crew doing some mining, while starting to doubt the captain's decisions. Some kill-that-fungal-squid-scenes would be nice, too.. (incaseyoudidn'tknow: Fungal Squids are those purpleish and pretty damn hostile lifeforms, which can be found a LOT on one of the rainbow worlds (forgot which one, though). The fungal squid-attacking scenes could also be replaced with some other, interesting alien)..
Ofcourse, you don't HAVE to have the screen show the mining sequence always, when they are mining. Expect something like this to be a nice thing:
*Zelnick calls the landing crew
*Landing crew gets inside the planet lander, and heads for the planet (expect some nice planetlander-going-through-atmosphere scenes here)
*Zelnick tells the Landing Crew (via a hyperwave transmission) to "remain radio silence" because some Thraddash are appearing (or any other alien race, ofcourse).
*Nice zoom-out scene, where you start by seeing the planet lander's numbers-painting on it's hull, and end with seeing the Vindicator in battle with the Thraddash, all in a smooth transition (Expect to look at something like: numbers -> planetlander -> loads of surface with a tiny-looking planetlander -> atmosphere -> planet -> vindicator, battling with Thraddash, planet in the background)...
This all would make a good excuse for some landing scenes.. Partially, sometimes.. Sometimes full landing reports. To throw in some randomness, those landing reports are MEANT TO BE "boring" sometimes, when nothing happens, but you get to look at the beautiful scenery of a damn-beautiful planet. Good excuses for some landing scenes, again.. ^^
Talking about the conversations, I think it'd be pretty nice to have them done a bit different than the usual "you see someone, and he/she is talking" thing. Perhaps something like "you see the interior of a ship, and hear two people talking (you can barely see them between the chaos of that ship)"...
Okay.. enough talking for now..
Oh, and about the people thinking this would do good as a anime: no. No. NO! Sc2 is a GAME. Having it in anime form wouldn't do it any good. 3d renderings are the way to go, especially because of all the beautiful planet/space scenes. Those also make Sc2 as a anime series just.. bad....
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Tiberian
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I have enough courage to face the reality in the mining. It would not be very interesting no matter how it would be done, because the reason is not-exactly-necessary nor is it 'really' dangerous. Imagining that 'we' fight evil forces all over the Quadrant and survive, but we land on a rock, where a brainless slimeball melts our lander to scrap metal and the crew inside it...
I think the whole concept of mining could and should be sidestepped in some way. Not changing the plot, so that the mining exists, but to make it proper for TV, the whole concept would have to face some modifications. (I constantly get the image of drilling the planet's surface into my mind.)
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Megagun
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The planet lander doesn't drill in the surface, it just *collects* the minerals which are lying on it's surface..
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Death 999
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I always rationalized this by thinking that the precursor ship had fabulous sensors which could detect deposits buried deeply within the rock of the planet, and the landers could nearly instantaneously drill down and get it -- BUT these deposits had to be extremely pure in order to be collectible.
That explains why you can't begin strip-mining (you're not equipped for it), and explains why local residents might not have noticed these resources.
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VOiD
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Well, it is a computer game, and as such, one with very simplified physics. That's a pretty good rationalization right there... 
EDIT: (Hmmm... hit-and-run drilling... pretty interesting concept)
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« Last Edit: September 23, 2004, 11:53:42 pm by VOiD »
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Kaiser
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Another intresting thing that could happen would be stumbling across old, abandoned Alliance bases. You figure that not all would have been destroyed. Maybe even staff them as listening posts or something.
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Cronos
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Good idea, once an abandoned alliance base is discovered, the crew could scavenge fuel, supplies, resources etc.
Then they could have the resources to go forth and make Allies. The Pkunk could be a reasonable first contact (hehe), followed by the Spathi. The Orz could be the first race to reliable begin shipping the necessary materials to the Starbase, or they could refuel in Orz space, whatever would work.
There also must be a way to help introduce people unfamiliar with Star Control to the series. Perhaps some kind of background explanation when the credits are rolling by as they did with SeaQuest...
<credits scrolling by>
"Starbase Commander Hayes at your service Captain. As you know the Alliance of Free Stars had it's begginings with the Chenjesu/Mmmrnmhrrrm mutual defence pact...."
Etc.
Things would probably have to be compressed/extended to the length of the credits.
Also, when time is meant to be "Passing" (as in landing on Spathiwa to eliminate the Evil Ones, or just chugging along in hyperspace) there should be asides where we see mysterious dark ships blasting some Utwig juggers, or we could see a red probe begin the replication process or something. Just to let the viewers know that there is a lot of stuff going on. Heck, we could even show the Ur-Quan dreadnought being downed on Alpha Pavonis and the subsequent Arilou discovery/Talking Pet mind controlling the Umgah etc.
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