Space, the final frontier
- well, it is for TV producers, anyway. The cowboy theme has been done to death. Indiana Jones is already in its 50th cloning and war programs are politically incorrect. In fact if you're out to make an action show these days there's really only one direction left - up.
So that's exactly where the production houses are aiming, with a new crop of programs heading back where Star Trek boldly took us so long ago. At least four new space-based programs will hit our screens in the next year. The next off the rank is Sliders, Ten's romp through alternate universes.
But the leader of the pack is Seven's Space: Above and Beyond.
Created by the team formerly behind the X-Files, and partly filmed on the Gold Coast and in Warner Brother's Queensland studios, this program has fast become the cult hit in America. Set in the not-so-distant future when Earth is colonizing the closer planets, the series begins when we run into our closest alien neighbours.
There are no finger-glowing ET's, however. They attack without warning, blowing away our troops until the final line of defence is the untried space cadets of the 58th squadron - Above and Beyond's heroes.
Pretty standard raw-recruits-against-the-odds stuff admittedly, the kind of thing we've already seen at least a dozen times in varying backgrounds.
Usually it's the cast that makes this kind of show stand out but this time , even though the talented but relatively unknown stars are gaining fans, it's Above and Beyond's killer budget that's turning it into such a hit. Costing up to $3 million per one-hour episode to produce (the most expensive hour of drama so far) the series is an action-packed visual feast for audiences and, coincidentally, a giant playground for the actors.
"The sets are amazing," said Rodney Rowland, who stars in Above and Beyond as rebel of the team, Cooper Hawkes.
"Every time they build a new one, you go in and it's like 'Oh my God,' this show has money," he said. "It's just the greatest fun with all these toys, like the jets we fly, the different outfits with guns and different parts of the main ship we work in. There's explosions and action - I really get off on it all."
The program also makes use of some of America's youngest and most innovative set designers for "outside" shots, turning Californian deserts into Mars, for example.
"By the time they're finished and we're walking around in the suits waving the guns, you start to feel like you are on another planet," Rodney added.
Rodney also has the series' and one of television's most interesting characters to work with in his role as Hawkes.
As an artificially grown person, he is a person only in size, without any of the experiences. "He's basically a six-year-old adult," Rowland explains. "He gestated in a tank for 18 years and was born a full-grown adult, engineered for war.
"While he's basically a warrior, emotionally he's a complete infant. It's an interesting dichotomy."
While most of the action takes place in space, Rodney said future episodes will have a "creepier, darker" side, similar in parts to the producer's other hit, the X-Files.
"Things take a strange turn as we go along," he said. "It's always going to be a story set in space - we've never been to Earth! - but there will be some darker themes explored."
Space, Above and Beyond screens each Saturday on Seven at 7.30 pm."
All site graphics, original texts, and content other than specified © DrkNite. Fan art, fan photos, and other contributed materials © to their respective owners. All rights reserved.