Allya
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My Little Monster!
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Post by Allya on Feb 20, 2014 20:37:12 GMT -5
A quick disclaimer...If we never finish this project I may pick it up solo in the future rather than let it die.
Pulling from some themes that I've used in various short stories, I've stumbled upon an idea for a television show that I think has some legs. The best part is that this idea lends itself to tons of different storylines and has the potential to really showcase some of the world-building creativity I've seen here. One of the main reasons that I thought trying this would be fun / a good idea is that the show I have in mind requires a lot of world-building and it's hard for one person to build and rebuild to drive the story. Ok, here goes...
The pilot episode would basically provide the framework and rules for all future episodes. In a nutshell: Scientist meets girl;they fall in love. But girl signed up for deep space mission prior to meeting scientist. Girl decides to go. Scientist, devises a way to check up on her using his new astral projection technology. (Clearly this is all pulled from old stories I've done but hang tight.) While he's checking up on her, something goes wrong on the ship. Desperate, he pushes his way inside the body of one if her crew. His efforts fail and in a final attempt to save her he pushes into her mind and breaks them both free of her body. Their consciousness has been untethered. When he comes to, he finds himself in an alien body and he must figure out where he is, where she is, and how to get home.
So the above pilot description is just to get us to the main premise of the show which is Quantum Leap meets Star Trek. As he travels from alien body to alien body, he experiences strange new worlds while the consciousness of the being he has replaced appears in his body back at his lab. His partner, Oz, will find a way to communicate with him using some pseudoscientific trace and will also be collaborating with other agencies unbeknownst to the main character.
As he travels, the main character will find traces of his girl, Ayla (which men's halo round the moon or heavenly light) who seems to be on the same type of journey. There is potential to put her actions at odds with his and also point throughout the show to a purpose or reason to his seemingly random adventures.
So there you go, aliens, world-building, the potential for over-arching themes and villains. Anyone interested?
Please forgive any typos. I'm on my tablet and auto-correct is a bitch.
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Post by ASGetty ((Zovo)) on Feb 20, 2014 21:05:53 GMT -5
Sounds a little convoluted.
Can't they just have an accident with their experimental Handwaivium engine?
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Allya
Senior Scribe
My Little Monster!
Posts: 2,271
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Post by Allya on Feb 20, 2014 21:13:01 GMT -5
Lol. Nah, I want the girl part in there because she has the opportunity to work at cross purposes. Same with tbd people at home.
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Post by Kaez on Feb 20, 2014 22:19:50 GMT -5
Sounds a little convoluted. Can't they just have an accident with their experimental Handwaivium engine? You can't market anything to SyFy that isn't at least slightly convoluted. This has just the right amount, IMO. I'd watch it. It's like my favorite part of Star Trek without my least favorite parts of Star Trek and included some sweet metaphysical consciousness-fumbling techno-spiritual stuff. Yeah, this is pretty cool. |
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Post by ASGetty ((Zovo)) on Feb 20, 2014 22:43:51 GMT -5
Okay, so, while he and/or she are having adventures in alien bodies... His body back on earth is inhabited by a different alien consciousness each time he switches? Seems like an odd loose end because you could never really have anything develop here since any alien-on-earth plot would end as soon as dude switched bodies again? Or do they just stack up in his old body, creating a sort of super-consciousness?
What about her, does she even have a home-Body to return too? Or was it destroyed when something went wrong on the ship?
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Post by James on Feb 20, 2014 23:07:13 GMT -5
His body back on earth is inhabited by a different alien consciousness each time he switches? Seems like an odd loose end because you could never really have anything develop here since any alien-on-earth plot would end as soon as dude switched bodies again? The aliens are forcibly pushed out of his body, leaving them untethered in the same way as he was? The consciousness of extraterrestrials floating around Earth. No idea what has happened. Scared. Vulnerable. |
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Post by Matteo ((Taed)) on Feb 20, 2014 23:09:53 GMT -5
Yeah, the aliens at home plot isn't sustainable. I have never watched Quantum Leap, but I'm under the impression that Scott Bakula's whole job was figuring out what was wrong with the life of the person he jumped into, and how to fix it. That loses a lot if the person is still around, on the other end of a phone line.
You should have the body walking around at home just be the original version of himself. Philosophy of the mind nerds would love you if you portrayed mind uploading accurately. In reality, the brain cannot be "emptied." If you copy someone's mind the original shouldn't be deleted. The version that got astral projected has to deal with the fact that he is in some respects a copy, and that if he doesn't get home in time he'll have diverged too far from the original to be reintegrated. Meanwhile, the version that stayed behind is anxious to have everyone forget about the copy so that he can get on with living his life.
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Post by James on Feb 20, 2014 23:11:06 GMT -5
His body back on earth is inhabited by a different alien consciousness each time he switches? Seems like an odd loose end because you could never really have anything develop here since any alien-on-earth plot would end as soon as dude switched bodies again? The aliens are forcibly pushed out of his body, leaving them untethered in the same way as he was? The consciousness of extraterrestrials floating around Earth. No idea what has happened. Scared. Vulnerable. Joss Whedon's unspecified governmental agency...  ... that "Oz" is working for goes around collecting them for some purpose as yet undetermined. |
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Post by ASGetty ((Zovo)) on Feb 20, 2014 23:13:42 GMT -5
His body back on earth is inhabited by a different alien consciousness each time he switches? Seems like an odd loose end because you could never really have anything develop here since any alien-on-earth plot would end as soon as dude switched bodies again? The aliens are forcibly pushed out of his body, leaving them untethered in the same way as he was? The consciousness of extraterrestrials floating around Earth. No idea what has happened. Scared. Vulnerable. Sounds like scientology. |
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Post by James on Feb 20, 2014 23:15:21 GMT -5
The aliens are forcibly pushed out of his body, leaving them untethered in the same way as he was? The consciousness of extraterrestrials floating around Earth. No idea what has happened. Scared. Vulnerable. Sounds like scientology. Tom Cruise as male lead. |
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Post by James on Feb 21, 2014 4:36:56 GMT -5
Actually. Witch Doctor, which I just finished reading and therefore fresh in the mind, had a really cool concept of an "astral umbilical". So it can become dislocated and you can survive, but if it becomes detached then you die.
That probably ties into Taed's "the version that got astral projected has to deal with the fact that he is in some respects a copy, and that if he doesn't get home in time he'll have diverged too far from the original to be reintegrated."
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Allya
Senior Scribe
My Little Monster!
Posts: 2,271
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Post by Allya on Feb 21, 2014 5:49:07 GMT -5
Hmm that's an interesting idea. My thought process with the temporary alien inhabitant of the main character's body was that then the people on earth that are monitoring the main character would interact and learn about those races. When he switches they snap back unaware of what occurred. But the copy idea could have legs too. I'm not married to this part. It was mire just something to do with the alien consciousness and provide subplot on earth.
The copy thing reminds me of an outer limits or twilight zone movie I saw about travelling to the moon.
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Allya
Senior Scribe
My Little Monster!
Posts: 2,271
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Post by Allya on Feb 21, 2014 5:50:05 GMT -5
Mire=more Damn tablet.
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Allya
Senior Scribe
My Little Monster!
Posts: 2,271
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Post by Allya on Feb 21, 2014 6:38:47 GMT -5
I was also thinking this show could have a sense of humour. Like the main character doesn't always improve things for his host. There is a series of sci-fi books, the name escapes me, about a soldier bumbling through the universe with animal body parts and a thick skull. I think it starts with a B. Any who, point being, it could be funny either overtly or subtly depending on how the story takes shape.
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Post by ASGetty ((Zovo)) on Feb 21, 2014 14:22:37 GMT -5
Ok, so, I know I'm going to sound really critical because I keep pointing out things which don't seem to work for me, but I assure you, it's in the interest of quality. I'm not trying to poo-poo the project.
Anyhow, here's a couple things I keep getting hung up on and primarily they all lead back to motivation. You've got this base-line idea for a scenario but I'm not seeing any reason to care about it. You've got a scientist quantum-leaping his way around the galaxy in search of both his lost girl friend and a way to "get home." Which is great, but... Why do I, the viewer, want him to get home? What's at stake? Why does it matter?
His girlfriend is lost in space, perhaps more lost than he is, and he's looking for her (somehow?); but at the same time bouncing between bodies. This is sort of the same problem you have with alien consciousness back on earth; he can't really take any steps toward finding her because he doesn't even know where he'll wake up tomorrow. It seems like the two story points ("finding her" and "getting home") are sort of at odds with one another, each distracting from the other. Unless they are still linked somehow, how does he expect to have any chance of tracking her down through the entire cosmic expanse? Especially if she's bouncing around as well.
My biggest question, though, on the girlfriend issue is; Do -you- know what happened to her? I can understand leaving the viewer in the dark, but you, the writer, -need- to know the answer ahead of time so you can steer the story in the right direction. If you don't, you end up with Lost type situation where you end up making it up as you go and have to reconcile your answer with all the bullshit you conjured in episodes past.
Now the question of getting home. Why does he need to get home? I mean, yeah, it'd be nice to see him get back home and live happily ever after but if he doesn't... so what? What are the long term consequences, why is it important that he finds her and gets home? I guess what I'm saying is, your story starts with a whole ship being ruined and all the crew aboard presumably killed, then this guys gets displaced and begins bouncing around the universe... which is a -huge- backdrop. So you've kind of diminished the plight of your protagonist by making everything else so big. He's one guy, why does he matter?
Now in the issue of making him a copy... That actually makes it worse. In that case he's a displaced copy of a consciousness, separated from his original who has no reason to assume the copy still exists after the link is severed. But if he's separate for too long he won't be able to re-integrate... so what? Does the original even miss him? I mean, he's a copy, not a piece-of. If I lose a photocopy of an original document, I don't give a shit, I make a new copy. So, you've got a character that -shouldn't- exist, displacing random alien minds and I'm supposed to care about that. I mean, if the copy is lost in space forever; it's probably for the best. Honestly, I care more about the beings having their bodies usurped by some alien techno-ghost than I do about the ghost himself.
Which brings me to another issue; if the ghost is a copy, we'll presumably see the original back on earth doing stuff to find his girlfriend as well. Whereas we'll have this non-corporeal character out in space bouncing between bodies... It just seems hard for me to visualize how you're going to communicate that those two entities are the same person. . . but not.
But wait! I have a solution that retains the essence of the premise but simplifies it a a touch.
Scientist meets girl, they fall in love. But girl signed on for a deep space mission that isn't just some random deep space mission. It's a colony ship, sent to a specific target far away with the intent to colonize. There's a couple hundred people on board this ship; possibly thousands. Girl decides to go as she is not just some random girl; she a smart, quick witted technician whose presence on that ship is nigh-essential. So, Scientist devises a way to check up on her, and the whole mission, using his new astral projection technology; something about distance and radiation or something makes other forms of communication between the ship and earth impossible.
During one of these communication sessions, something happens on the ship. Maybe it's hit with some manner of space debris. The ship is crippled, knocked off course, and unable to correct and no way to tell anyone. The ship wasn't designed to support life indefinitely, in time they're doomed. Worse, something went haywire with the astral projection machine in the impact; our scientist is displaced from his body (which is in a semi-comatose sate back on earth).
So, now you've got the same elements in play but with motivation. His girlfriend is still lost in space, but instead of doing her own quantum leap, she's on a disabled colony ship trying to keep people alive (more story options!). Our scientist is a displaced soul trying to get home but now he has a real, heavy, reason. He needs to tell someone on earth what happened to the ship so a smaller , faster, rescue mission can be dispatched in time to save these thousand-plus civilians slowly dying out in space.
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