New show ideas - I miss space.

[maxrpg]

Hello,

Since Stargate left our screens I've had serious space withdrawals because there isn't any good space themed shows any more and until Sci-Fi leave orbit once again I was wondering if anyone had any ideas for a possible new show?

This is my idea for a show...really short version of the idea so hope you get it.

Alien abductions have been reported for generations with reports of people being taken, probed and returned a short time later and that is what usually happens in abduction cases...not this time...

Several people wake up in large dark rooms and begin to panic because the rooms they are in are completely messed up like bombs have gone off. Random electrical sparks and smoke all around them and being knocked off their feet by explosions but no alien life forms to be seen anywhere.

As they make their way out of the rooms they bump in to each other and obviously ask questions trying to figure out what the heck is going on and how to get out of there...eventually with all of them in a group they head through the corridors and come to a large room with some type of computer consoles and a large window...as they stand and stare out the window they realise they are "not in Kansas any more".

What they see through the window is space..lots and lots of space and a few strange looking planets none of them have ever seen before.

The story is that they were abducted by aliens but something went terribly wrong, the aliens were attacked by someone or something and were taken themselves. However one of the aliens managed to evade being taken by the enemy and joins the humans in a quest to repair the ship, free the captured alien race and get the humans back home (without p*ssing off the enemy to such a degree that the enemy decides to destroy Earth for the fun of it).

The alien race could look a little like Asgard and the humans can be from all different backgrounds like a soldier, a doctor, a mechanic, a nerdy genius and maybe make one of them a hardened criminal or something who takes no sh*t from anyone or anything and maybe chuck a kid in their as well.

OR you could rework the whole story and do something totally crazy like as they were under attack the aliens tried to flee and got caught in some weird space anomaly and got propelled millions of light years through space, sent forward in time 300 years and thrown in to an alternate dimension...lets see them get out of that one lol.

Could be fun lol.

[Wyrminarrd]

Sounds like it could be an interesting premise for a series. I'd tone down the character stereotypes and try for more "everyday" people, unless of course your going with the premise that they picked the best of best to abduct and experiment on

[min min light]

I like that premise too. I'd watch it.

[escyos]

I'd get rid of the alien, or at least make them unable to understand them or anyone else for that matter.

[Wyrminarrd]

I would have all the people wake up in the same room since the odds of just humans surviving in multiple rooms would be a bit of a stretch. It could be some kind of secure storage that's designed to keep people in but in this case the extra armor kept people alive. The damage to the ship would however have loosened up the door and one of the first challenge that the humans would have to face it getting all the way open.

[min min light]

This would be a fun role-playing sort of thing ...

[jmoz]

Write it up and flesh it out. Need to address quite a few things, one of them being why the humans would so readily ally with their abductors or maybe set this up as a reveal later. Communication will be a problem unless you modify the aliens with something, like telepathy. Personally, I'm not that into 'earthly aliens' as in aliens that really just act human in different bodies. Nothing really alien about that.

[knowles2]

I'd get rid of the alien, or at least make them unable to understand them or anyone else for that matter.

You sort of need the alien in their so that it make sense for them to know how to pilot the ship and where to go. Through having the alien being injured or in some way disable, not fully capable may be an interesting idea. An having the humans in doubt about whether the events they are partaking in are real or just another experiment for the aliens could be a interesting idea to play out over a few episodes.

If they been studying us then they probably learnt our language or at least some basics of, but I like the translations to less than accurate, it be fun to see a series where the alien and humans have to learn to communicate between each other.

[Wyrminarrd]

I´d make the alien be the human equivalent of a stereotypical nerd, very smart but physically weak and lacking in confidence (compared to others of his race as well as humans). Also make the ship require more than one person to operate and then you have a reason why both the aliens and the humans have to work together. The alien provides the knowledge of how things work (I hate it when humans figure alien tech out quickly, Eli from SG: Universe should never have been able to learn so much so quickly about so many different things aboard Destiny) while the humans are extra sets of arms (at least at first) that keep the ship moving.

I'd have the alien speak english, to be explained away by saying he was studying humanity and chose to learn the dominant language. If you want language barriers to be a problem then go with the humans having trouble with the alien language since all the operating systems and manuals would be in that language

[maxrpg]

Yes the idea I posted was the really quick version just trying to give you an idea of the whole "plot" of the story and the reason I thought of having an alien join them was because these people are just a random group of people with no idea of where they are or what to do and as knowles2 suggested the alien would be the one with all the knowledge on where they are and how to control/repair the ship and do what they need to do.

If you think of it like a TV series then the first few episodes would be focussed on the people getting out of the rooms, helping others out of rooms and slowly grouping together as more and more people are found and trying to figure out where they are etc. The alien would appear later possibly because it was knocked unconscious during the attack or maybe it could have been in a stasus pod or something and just woke up to discover what has happened and joins the rest. I have visions of people standing on the "bridge" of the ship pushing buttons and arguing then suddenly stopping and turning their heads to see a battered and bruised alien stood in the doorway.

We could also have some Earth stuff thrown in to the story like they also abduct animals and take planes and boats (Bermuda triangle) so the ship could be huge with big rooms filled with all this Earth stuff that they could discover and use throughout their journey :\

I don't know but I'm glad you like the basic idea

[Wyrminarrd]

It is an interesting basic idea, but how interesting all depends on execution

You'd have to be careful with how you start the show, the first 2-3 episodes need to be really good in order to hook people. SG: Universe made the mistake of starting things of kind of slow and it never recovered from it so learn from that and start with a bang and make people root for the characters

[maxrpg]

I know this is an old thread of mine but I've been thinking about it again recently and trying to come up with a back story that could explain the whole situation. Why do aliens abduct people, what do they want, why was the alien ship attacked, who by, what does the baddy want so bad thats worth blowing up the ship...what is the purpose of the humans being their and what could their mission/goal be?

lol been trying to think of a story that could explain it all and I've been through about 30 different version in my head but this is one I've stuck with for the time being, probably needs a lot of tweaking. It's a true sci-fi style story....

Billions of years ago when the universe was still forming it gave birth to the first life forms, a race of beings born on a planetary body formed from every known/unknown substance in the universe. The beings called themselves the 'Firli' and their planet sat in the center of the universe and like a lot of worlds that orbit each other the entire universe planets/galaxies in fact orbited their planet and this planet would come to be know as 'The Core' of the universe.

After millions of years of evolution the Firli became a very advanced race mastering science and technology and lived peaceful lives. However after millions of years spent learning everything they could from their home world they had reached their limits of what they could learn or create in terms of technology and advancement and so started to look to the stars. Unfortunately for the Firli their truly unique physiology prevented them from leaving their world and venturing out into space as their very existence was bound to The Core and could not live without the unique properties of their planet and so were unable to leave.

Because the Firli were so advanced and had learned all they could they found it difficult to find anything new to learn and because of their isolation and unfortunate situation of not being able to leave their planet they began to feel “lonely”. Even though they had never left their home world the Firli knew they were the only life forms in the universe and desperate to meet other races and share their advanced knowledge they came up with an idea, If they couldn't leave they would try to bring life to them. Using their incredible knowledge and unique materials found only on their planet they built thousands of probes to send out in to space and find planets capable of supporting life. Once a probe found a suitable planet it would begin the process of “kick starting” new life to form and during this process it would implant genetic memories engineered in such a way that these memories would only activate when the new life had evolved enough to understand what they meant and the message they contained. The memories would not become part of every life form on each planet, it would appear randomly other the natural course of evolution in certain members of each race.

The Firli being a peaceful and fare race wanted to share their knowledge with all life and not just those who arrived first and so the genetic memory system built in to each probe contained a piece of a “map” of sorts that when combined with the others would reveal the location of The Core, the Firli home world. They did this so that all the resulting life that was created would have to work together and share their own knowledge with each other in order to come and meet the Firli at which point the Firli would share their knowledge with them. So the Firli launched the probes but knowing it could take millions of years for the new life to evolve and with “nothing to do” they decided to put themselves in stasis and await their arrival.

This process worked and thousands of new life forms (races) were created throughout the universe and depending on the planets environment some races evolved quicker than others. One of these races known as the 'Mo-gal' evolved slowly and were a primitive race but something in their physiology caused those with the genetic memories to be accessed early and the Mo-gal were given the knowledge of space travel and a location point of the The Core. The memories also contain a message from the Firli seen through a sort of vivid dream and the message told them that the Firli created them and they wish to meet them and share their knowledge. The Mo-gal still very early in their evolution and very primitive meant they were quite barbaric and didn't really have any emotions, feelings and certainly no understanding of peace and sharing. Still in their quite primitive state but with the genetic memories giving them some form of intelligence over a few hundred years the Mo-gal managed to create themselves a ship and their entire population set off in to space. After seeing the Firli in their “vision” they saw them as enemies and were on a mission to kill them, effectively going to war with the Firli and they wanted their knowledge for themselves but in order to find the Firli they needed the other pieces of the map.

Another race of beings known as the “Edom” had evolved quite quickly and were quite advance mentally, physically, scientifically and technologically and had already accessed the genetic memories some hundreds of years ago. The Edom knew what the message was and wanted to meet the Firli but because they (just like the Firli) were a peaceful and patient race they decided not to contact any other worlds until they were evolved enough to understand the message as they did. As the Mo-gal moved from planet to planet taking life forms to extract their genetic memories for the other parts of the map and then wiping them out the Edom became aware of them. When they found out what the Mo-gal were up to and they were killing entire races they knew they had to stop them but being a peaceful race the Edom had no weapons or means of defense and being such a peaceful race they were virtually incapable of inflicting harm on anyone, it just wasn't in them. They had to do something they couldn't just sit by and watch entire races being wiped out including inevitably their own race...so they did the only thing they felt they could do and decided to get to the other worlds before the Mo-gal, find the life forms with the genetic memories and remove them in the hope that because they no longer contained the memories the Mo-gal would have no reason to attack and wipe them out.

For years the Edom managed to stay ahead of the Mo-gal and successfully extracted the memories from dozens of races and just as they hoped the Mo-gal left those worlds alone but were wise to what the Edom's were doing and were hot on their heels. The Mo-gal ships were slow and cumbersome so couldn't quite keep up with the Edom but the process of extracting memories without harming the host was slow and that gave the Mo-gal time to catch up to them.

The Edom spent a number of years searching a planets vast population (Earth) for those carrying the memories so they could extract them and they were almost finished and ready to move on to the next planet when the Mo-gal appeared. The Mo-gal demanded the Edom hand over the memories they collected or be destroyed... the Edom knew they wouldn't destroy them because they have the memories and if destroyed the Mo-gal would never learn the location of The Core and so they powered up their engines (hyperdrive or something) and fled. The Mo-gal however fired at them in an attempt to stop them and got off a lucky shot, the Edom ship was hit directly in its engines at the moment of entering hyperspeed which disabled their ship and threw them violently out of hyperspace some lightyears away.

When the Mo-gal finally caught up with them the Edom were all unconscious on board their ship and the Mo-gal took them all including the pod they Edom had used to store the extracted memories and then continued on to their next target. The Edom were enslaved on board the Mo-gal ship and forced to work adapting the ship to make it faster and more powerful using their technological knowledge.

The Mo-gal were now long gone but failed to search the entire Edom ship that was left battered and broken in space. On board were several human subject the Edom were extracting memories from and one by one they slowly awoke to find themselves in this terrifying situation....

On a damaged alien ship....somewhere in the depths of space...no idea where they are or what to do. With the help of a few surviving/escaped Edom they learn of what has happened and why it happened and so set off on a mission to free the enslaved Edom race, protect innocent life forms, stop the Mo-gal, unite the races and find The Core.

Is it any good?

[jmoz]

It's ok, lots of hokey science and sorta comic book alien races.

The universe has no 'center', think of a perfect sphere that is like a balloon that is being inflated. Everything resides on the surface of that balloon, but the balloon doesn't have a center. The Firli's planet would be on the surface of that balloon but doesn't mean they are the center of anything. It's sorta like that.

Genetic engineered memories huh, biology always felt a bit hokey to me. It could work. I don't like the whole Firli being constrained to their planet even though they are so advanced to have seeded life across the cosmos and done that level of bioengineering. I also don't feel that they really could be that knowledgeable because the Universe is constantly changing; plus they're making all these new species which means they haven't studied them, which could be considered new knowledge. Plus it seems they have some magic formula to create life, but what magic formula was used to create them? Also, why not bioengineer themselves in the probes to seed themselves across the cosmos?

But I do like like the level of detail you added but I guess sometimes less is more?

The Mo-gal seem a bit like the Klingons. The Edom, being as advanced and intelligent as they are, should have come up with a more effective means of subduing the Mo-gal. I'm sure they could have come up with non-lethal forms of combat and then maybe figure out a way to force the Mo-gal to gain a certain level of wisdom to counteract their barbaric nature.

Don't get me wrong, I like the Klingons and all, but I could never understand how a race like them could ever develop space travel and hold together such a vast empire with the level of self-destructive nature and violent tendencies they have.

You can feel free to ignore all of that of course. I find that most of the times, if people like the characters, they'll like the show, book, whatever medium. Of course, the converse may not necessarily be true.

You can maybe chop up all of that exposition you wrote up and set it up as reveals to be discovered. What I mean is that, don't information dump all of that. Maybe have some little hints dropped here and there and reveal a little bit as the show progresses in the form of archeological digs, anthropological expeditions, scientific ventures, etc., and those survivors figure out the whole big picture through various adventures they have as they explore the galaxy. But that's just one angle that I favour, and it definitely doesn't have to be the route you go.