Blood and Fire (38 page)

“Aye, Captain.”

Korie traced the familiar path to the forward airlock. So many memories already. So many deaths. How many more? He shook the thoughts away and punched open the inner hatch of the airlock. The door popped shut behind him and the outer door opened into the transfer tube. It looked so innocent now. The last time he'd been through here—he thought it really would be the
last
time ...

He crossed over to the stardock hatch and repeated the process of stepping through airlocks. There was a young boy waiting on the opposite side of the door; somebody's son, no doubt. He looked a lot like—no, don't think that way. But the boy was looking at him with curiosity too.

An out-of-breath voice behind him called, “Captain?” Reflexively, Korie turned backward to see. It was Brian Armstrong; he'd run the length of the ship and plunged through the airlocks. “We just heard from the admiral—your promotion has been confirmed! She wants to speak to you,
immediately
.”

And then
another
voice yanked his attention forward again.
“Daddy—!”

Korie spun, caught between two moments—

“
Captain Korie?
What should I tell her?”

But Korie didn't hear. He was wrapping his son into his arms and crying with joy.

In 1988, I was hired to create a science fiction TV series for Universal Studios. The working title was
Millennium.
The mandate there was to create a show that could reuse the library of special-effects shots that had been created for
Battlestar Galactica
. (There were contractual reasons why they couldn't do another version of
B.G.
)

My gut-level reaction was to tell these folks that this was a particularly stupid idea; the science fiction audience is smart, they would immediately recognize the recycling as a cheap trick, and they would dismiss the show as cheap and not worth a second look. But I had a hunch that this challenge might also be used as a lever upward into something much more effective and profitable.

You see, the requirements of film production, whether television or theatrical, often determine their own solutions, and I had a strong feeling that if we got this show into production, we would have to design at least one new starship—the star of the series—build the miniature and shoot a new library of effects. In such a case, the
Battlestar Galactica
shots could be demoted, or even discarded. There was little question in my mind that the studio executives would eventually realize that the use of the older material would seriously weaken the look and feel of the new show.

From a production point of view, this was not an ideal prospect, but from a creative position, there was an enormous possibility here. If we could make it work, we would be creating an opportunity to tell some of the stories that a certain other science fiction show had shied away from. So I said, “Let's talk.” I suggested several different formats for the show. One was “Space Traders.” We would follow the adventures of a family of space gypsies, interstellar traders, as they traveled from planet to planet, buying and selling, wheeling and dealing, occasionally carrying passengers, sometimes being chased by the law, sometimes smuggling, and so on. It was not my favorite idea, but I wanted to offer the studio the appearance of options.

The second idea I suggested was the one I really wanted to do: “World War II in space.” (I'm a history fanatic, and World War II is a particular obsession.) The folks at Universal got it immediately. I didn't even have
to explain how it would work. (“See, it would be just like
Das Boot
or
The Enemy Below
or
Mr. Roberts
, only with spaceships.”) It suited their needs, and it was a format that allowed for open-ended storytelling. We could expand the show in any direction we wanted.

The next step was to develop an outline.

In 1972, I had written a novel called
Yesterday's Children.
In that story, Executive Officer Korie is a martinet whose obsession with pursuing an unseen enemy destroys him. But that ending had always annoyed me. I liked Korie too much. And I really wanted to see him solve his problem. So, in 1977 I added twelve more chapters to the book, giving Korie the opportunity to produce a brilliant military victory. It was a much more satisfying conclusion. The book was retitled
Starhunt
. (Not necessarily a better title, but it distinguished the new version from the earlier one.)

Now, as I started to block out a pilot episode for
Millennium
, I realized that I could reuse some of the characters from
Starhunt
, in particular Commander Jon Thomas Korie. (Two things about Korie's name: Commander Buzz Correy was the hero of
Space Patrol
, my favorite TV series when I was growing up, so I thought it would be a nice touch to have a new Commander Korie flying the star lanes. Korie also shares the same initials with a certain
other s
tarship captain; one who is also legendary for the exploits of
his
John Thomas ...)

The outline for the pilot episode had Executive Officer Korie assigned to a new ship, dealing with an aging captain no longer able to handle the rigors of starship life and totally unprepared for the coming war. As a personal in-joke, I had this captain bring along his legal advisor as an aide, a relationship which I characterized as “King Lear v. Iago.” And it also gave me the opportunity to give Korie a line of dialog especially close to my heart: “Why does a starship need a lawyer?” (Korie probably wasn't the only one asking that question.) Universal enthusiastically approved the outline, they loved the humor, and I went right to work on a two-hour pilot script.

In that first script, a Morthan assassin gets loose on the starship and not only kills a few crewmembers, he also eats them. This created the opportunity for two more deliciously nasty lines of dialog: “Ohmygod, the Morthan just ate the captain's lawyer.” “Voluntarily ...?”

Despite their love of the outline, the folks at Universal felt the script had turned out too dark, too grim to be a good series opener. They wanted a new pilot episode. They weren't quite sure what changes they wanted, but they wanted changes. I was a little annoyed at the vagueness of these notes, but I recognized their concerns and agreed to a second draft.

Then the Writers' Guild went out on strike for six months. And that meant that I could not turn in the second draft script, could not get paid, could not move the show forward. It was a very frustrating period, because on the one hand, I recognized the validity of the Guild's negotiating points—on the other hand, the delay was going to kill production deals all over town.

The strike ended in August and a few days later, I turned in the second draft script. In this version, a new captain comes aboard, makes a bad decision and inadvertently triggers the interstellar equivalent of Pearl Harbor. I also added the Quillas and Brian Armstrong's sexual adventures. The studio loved the second draft script and for a while, there was even some discussion of shooting the series in HDTV so that Sony could use it as a showcase for their new video technology.

And then, nothing else happened. It was set aside as the studio's priorities changed. It was now officially one of those things “that seemed a good idea at the time.” So I went back to work on my novels and finished
A Rage For Revenge,
the third novel in my alien invasion series, The War Against The Chtorr.

Before tackling the fourth book in the Chtorr series,
A Season For Slaughter,
I decided to adapt the
Millennium
pilot into a novel called
The Star Wolf
. At the last moment, to avoid confusion with Edmond Hamilton's classic novel of the same name, the publisher retitled my book
The Voyage of the Star Wolf.

One afternoon in 1990, I received a phone call from a producer named Ed Elbert. A long time ago, he'd read a book of mine called
Yesterday's Children
and had always thought it might make a good TV series. Would I be interested in optioning the rights to him?

I sent him my pilot script, now retitled
The Star Wolf
. He recognized immediately that this was exactly what he was looking for; we could take all of that early development work and expand it. I brought in Dorothy Fontana as a partner in this exercise and we expanded the original concepts of the two scripts already finished. Another good friend, who also recognized the potential of the series, came aboard as well; he opened his checkbook and invested in some artwork, costume designs and the construction of a starship model.

Somewhere in there, we realized that there was more story to tell than we could fit into two hours and I expanded the second draft pilot script to four one-hour episodes structured so they could be shown either as four one-hour episodes or a four-hour miniseries. We began showing it around town.

We presented it as “World War II in space” and almost everybody understood the concept immediately, but nobody wanted to pay for the privilege of putting us into production. (One studio loved it so much they made an offer, withdrew the offer the next day, then took our tag line “World War II in space” and used it to produce a forgettable series that failed quickly.)

During all of this, Dorothy Fontana and I continued to develop the series' “bible”—the Writers/Directors' Guide. And we made a promise to ourselves. We were not going to do a pale imitation of
Star Trek
. We would do all the things that
Star Trek
couldn't do or wouldn't do—the stories that were too dangerous or too subversive or too disturbing. We said our goal would be to go where no TV series had gone before.

We developed backstories for all of the major characters, we created a military arena for the war, we designed and staffed an entire starship and we invested a great deal of time working out story arcs for all of the characters, even some of our favorite background people. Most important, we even blocked out complete outlines for a number of episodes.

Here are a few of the ideas we generated:

Our crew is not the best and the brightest and our ship is not the biggest and the fastest. She is a liberty ship, fresh off the assembly line, untested and inexperienced. As the series proceeds, we start to see this nice clean vessel age. She gets dirty, she gets posters glued to her bulkheads, graffiti shows up everywhere, things break down and get hammered back together with whatever materials are available. Many of her internal walls are a kind of Styrofoam (you don't need more than that and this is a hastily-assembled liberty ship), so they get easily dented and punched.

The first twenty minutes of the first episode are about some
other
ship—this one is the best and the brightest. She is the
Endeavor
and she is commanded by Captain Richard Long. (Or Richard Head, I forget which.) Everything on this ship is just a little
too
special, a little
too
wonderful, a little
too
well color-coordinated. Then, just before the first commercial, she gets ambushed by Morthan marauders. She blows up and everybody dies. When we come back from the break, the
Star Wolf
shows up for a planned rendezvous, a much less impressive vessel, dirty, gritty and crewed by folks whose uniforms aren't quite as well-tailored ... Hello, this is the
real
starship in this series. We expected this would be one of the most outrageous gags in television history. We knew the audience would understand exactly what point we were making.

Jon Korie, the executive officer of the ship is our central character. He deserves to be promoted to captain, but fate has conspired against him
and his promotion is held in permanent limbo. This may be lucky for him, because the
Star Wolf
is a jinxed ship. She keeps killing her captains. This would let us have big-name guest stars come aboard to be captain of the
Star Wolf
for two or four episodes and then either die in combat, have a nervous breakdown, be eaten by Morthans, be recalled by the manufacturer, fall out the airlock or experience some other bizarre twist of fate.

One story we wanted to do had the
Star Wolf
caught by a Morthan battle cruiser in the very first scene of the episode, the “teaser.” The brand-new captain opens a channel and says, “We surrender,” and Brik immediately kills him. “Surrender is not an option.” The rest of the episode would be Brik's court-martial. (The jury would be three Alliance Morthans, because only they could understand Brik's reasoning.)

We wanted to establish Molly Williger as the ugliest woman in the galaxy—make her the butt of a legendary joke—and then give her the most seething and passionate love affair in television history, because not only the pretty people fall in love. Love is more than just a nice package of chest and cheekbones.