Video: How STAR WARS Almost Never Was

In THE MAKING OF STAR WARS, J.W. Rinzler goes into the Lucasfilm vaults for the complete story behind the original pop culture phenomenon, and tells how it almost never came to be.

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Emotional Resonance & Rocket Launchers: YouTube Should Become The Next Scifi Channel

A couple of years ago, I wrote a column above how much trouble it was to download episodes of the scifi TV series I had been missing. I predicted it would take at least a few years for the technology and business models to shake out so that viewing Internet video would be as easy as watching television.

That day is fast approaching.

The TV networks are falling all over themselves to push you to their websites to watch reruns of your favorite shows and broadband capabilities have expanded to make watching them more seamless.

I, myself, have more recently come into the Web video world myself as content manager of Energy Policy TV, a website that's sort of a CSPAN for energy and the environment. As both a consumer and distributor of Internet video I'm astounded on a daily basis on how this market is moving.

In the realm of science fiction, as with most scripted TV series, big studios still control the content. Episodes may now live on the Web, but if some Hollywood executive axes a series, that video will still certainly dry up and we fans are still on the outs.

The Internet offers a different approach, however. We've heard for years how scifi is mostly a "niche" audience. Fair enough -- the Internet is absolutely designed to serve such niches.

A couple of years at a scifi convention, author and one-time Star Trek writer David Gerrold was describing how the costs for professional-quality gear -- the cameras, CGI generators, etc. -- were coming down dramatically on the production side of the equation.

The rise of Internet video now puts the distribution side of the equation in more and more hands, as well.

Fans have already begun making use of this convergence, of course. Several groups have sprung up in recent years that produce fan-produced Star Trek episodes, with fans also playing the major characters.

These projects, however, are the video equivilent of fan fiction -- there is no profit motive in it.

But what if an entrepreneurial producer were to take this to the next step?

What if someone were to tap some forward-thinking investors to create a for-profit, original Internet scifi series?

The idea would be to avoid Hollywood altogether. Hollywood has no monopoly on talent -- either in front of, or behind, the camera. Hire a cast and crew -- not for blockbuster salaries, but enough to live on comfortably.

Create special effects are that aren't Lucasfilm-level, but are of good quality and are good enough. Then sell advertising around the whole thing to pay the bills.

Take the whole enterprise, so to speak, directly to the fans -- I think they would respond overwhelmingly.

This new Web series would find its fans, who would feel a direct connection and investment with this sort of production precisely because they are closer to it -- they will not be separated by huge corporate entertainment conglomerates.

And more good science fiction would find its way into the world.

Any takers?

A former entertainment journalist, Scott Nance has been active with the USS Chesapeake Star Trek/scifi club for more than a decade.

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Emotional Resonance & Rocket Launchers: Series Finales That Aren't So Final These Days

By Scott Nance

What happened to the good ol' days when folks understood a TV finale was supposed to be, well, final?

The not-so-final finale reached a crescendo this summer -- most famously with the cable-outage-like ending of HBO's Sopranos crime drama.

That series ends with nothing more than a dark screen as crime boss Tony Soprano goes to munch an onion ring.

Then there was the finale after 10 seasons of Stargate SG-1, titled, what else? "Unending." The episode, very much by design, feels much more like a season finale -- not the last episode of the entire series.

Don't get me wrong. I wasn't eager to say "goodbye" to either series -- especially SG-1, which is one of my favorites of all time.

And although Sopranos creator David Chase seems to have precluded any future installments of that series, the same cannot be said of Stargate and its producers who very much want to keep that franchise alive.

But I say if a finale is going to be a finale, there has to be some finality to it. As "Unending" concludes with our heroes climbing the 'Gate ramp to embark on "just another mission to save the universe," it appears as if we'll see the SG-1 team again real soon.

Except we won't. Not for a good long while anyway.

Even Star Trek: The Next Generation went out with a proper finale. Sure, Capt. Picard and the rest would soon be back on the big screen, but Q finishing his "trial" of the human race gave the TNG finale the feeling of some kind of closure.

Make no mistake: "Unending" was a great episode. The fact that it was so well-done makes the agony even worse.

The fact that the finale was of such good quality and the series doesn't really say goodbye just proves that Stargate SG-1 had a lot of great stories left to tell. This was not a series on the downside creatively.

The Gate Room closed entirely and solely because of finances. While maybe in a business sense, that's a good reason to end a series, for us viewers it stinks. And it's worse that because the finale was "Unending," we can't really say goodbye.

All we're left with are fond memories and a Gate-shaped hole in our hearts.

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Emotional Resonance and Rocket Launchers: A Meditation on 'Lost'

By Scott Nance

It's long been said that religion and science don't mix. Religion and science fiction -- that's another story.

Scifi has been lifting religious themes and symbolism at least as far back as Leonard Nimoy's borrowing of a Jewish blessing to create the Vulcan salute for the original Star Trek series.

Often, science fiction has adapted concepts from Eastern religions, such as Buddhism. Imbuing an alien culture with Eastern, Buddhist-like trappings and whatnot has proven to be a quick and easy way to convey a sense of the exotic upon the fictitious culture.

These Buddhist attributes tend to be things like using meditation practice, incense or some similar embellishment as a story or plot device.

The "ascension" by the Ancients of Stargate SG-1, for instance, sounds a lot like an interpretation of Buddhist Enlightenment. (However, while the recent Stargate Atlantis episode "Tao of Rodney" postulated a technological path to Ascension, Buddhist Enlightment only comes from lifetimes of meditation and dedicated practice.)

But no recent series, anyway, has made such a concerted, albeit murky, connection to Buddhism than the ABC drama, Lost. The very name of the organization that runs the research stations on the mysterious island on which Lost is set -- the Dharma Initiative -- is an unmistakable Buddhist referrence. Among other inrepretations, the word "Dharma" most frequently refers to the teachings of the Buddha, or what is Buddhism itself.

If that wasn't enough, the survivors of Lost spent much of the second season of the series living down a hatch where they had to key a series of numbers into an old computer every 108 minutes to prevent catastrophe. The mumber 108 is a very significant one for Buddhists, as Buddhist rosaries, or malas, are made up of 108 beads which we use to count out our recitations of mantras.

All of these familiarities have gotten more than one Buddhist wondering what the real connection is -- beneath the many mysteries of Lost -- between our Dharma and the Dharma Initiative.

The Buddhist magazine, Tricycle, last year ran a story on the show and its continuing flirtation with Buddhism.

"Certainly at least one of Lost's writers seems to have some real knowledge of Buddhist practice," writer Dean Sluyter says.

I don't think we Buddhists are offended by the producers' use of at least the trappings of our religion on Lost. All of the fans of Lost are left to try to figure out the many questions and mysteries the series puts out there -- these odd references to our faith only present we Buddhists with just one more such puzzle to wonder about.


A former entertainment journalist, Scott Nance has been author of the online Emotional Resonance & Rocket Launchers column for more than three years. He's also been a longtime member of the USS Chesapeake, an active Star Trek and science fiction club in the Washington, DC, region, and is the publisher of Life, The Universe Media. Email him with any comments.










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