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Rockne O'Bannon - Creator of SeaQuest DSV and Farscape, and a huge Trek fan

How Mr Spock inspired a dolphin
  Was there a particular thing in the original series, one character that you particularly loved?

I think the character that everyone really clicked to in the first series was Spock. He was so exotic and such a bold move for Roddenberry, also for Roddenberry to get the network to accept, an alien character as part as the crew. It was something that I was hoping to do with my television series Seaquest, with the dolphin character. I sold everyone on the notion of this dolphin character as essentially our Mr Spock, someone who was not a human, but who was accepted as part of the crew, and had rank and all that.

The other character, obviously, is Captain Kirk. I consider Captain Kirk one of the very few real heroes in television. He was the kind of guy who would go up to an alien that could blink him out of existence with no problem. He would go up and yell at him, and get in his face. One of television’s great heroes.

Roddenberry’s influence
  Are there specific things on Star Trek that have influenced your programme making?

Roddenberry was creating something that was absolutely new and original, and was really trying to do something based on science, on the research that was available at the time. If you think about the design of the Enterprise, it wasn’t aerodynamic. Everything we’d seen before Star Trek, had the cigar shaped aerodynamic spaceship. His research showed that it didn’t need to be aerodynamic, and this was long before we saw the Lunar Module land on the Moon, where we had a touchstone from real life.

I thought it was incredibly bold of him to go with what was a really wonderful design, an exotic design, which wasn’t sleek and sexy. What I find interesting is that every generation of Star Trek since then has actually made the Enterprise’s lines sleeker and more sexy, until you get to the Voyager, which is a terrific looking ship, but flies in the face of what Roddenberry did in the mid 60s.

Hope on the Final Frontier.
  How did these things you admired in Star Trek directly relate to your work?

In the case of the original series, Roddenberry was trying to create human life on board a starship five hundred years in the future. On Farscape, we’re trying to do something that’s modern day, but at another end of the universe.

Absolutely every aspect has to be created. There’s nothing that you can really relate to. It’s really quite fascinating to me that he was able to take all the research that he’d done, and apply it and project it in this way, five hundred years into the future, in a way that’s still incredibly relatable to us.

Another aspect of the original Star Trek that I really admire is the fact that it gives a positive view of the future. And I think this is something that’s carried through each of the various Star Trek incarnations.

Mankind isn’t going to blow ourselves out of existence, we’re not going to pollute our planet so it’s uninhabitable, we are actually going to survive, and there is a another frontier for us to explore.

It certainly gave my generation and it’s given every generation since the original series, a real hopeful message, which is that we’re going to be around in five hundred years. There’s going to be conflict, there’s going to be villains and there’s going to be dangers to overcome. But there’s a reason to hang in there.

From far frontier to Farscape
  What is the real difficulty for a producer of a really long running series?

One of the tough things in producing a science fiction series on a week-to-week basis is just staying fresh. Farscape goes to different planets. We visit new civilisations on a regular basis, something that the original Star Trek did quite often.

Next Generation and Voyager do something which from a production standpoint is very, very smart. They played a most of the episodes, on board the ship itself. The advantage that they had was that they had a mostly human crew, so that they could actually go down and find other areas of the ship and meet up with characters whom we’d never met before. You’d have fresh episodes with new characters, even though you essentially said that these characters have been on board all the time and we’re just introducing them to you for the same time.

On Farscape something that Brian Hansen and I wanted to do from the beginning was have John Crichton be the only human in this end of the universe. There are Sebaceans, a species that look like him, but we didn’t want to populate the show with a lot of Sebaceans.

The original concept of the series was to have a ship like Star Trek, where you had hundreds of characters on board the ship, and were able to play more episodes within the ship. The problem was, we couldn’t afford to do the make-up on all these aliens, just to have them walk down the hallway to portray a ship that was as populated as heavily.

So we pulled back and said let’s make it a small crew of five, which worked better. But that forced us to then go outside and go down to planets and other ships and things to meet up with the threat.

It’s a tough thing to do. We shoot in Sydney, Australia, which helps us a lot, because they’re just bolder down there, in terms of production. They’re willing to take a lot of chances. They’ve also got real exotic exterior locations so we can portray alien worlds and all of that.

Highly expensive aliens
  What’s the most expensive alien on TV in terms of a regular character?

In terms of regular aliens on television, we have Rygel, who’s a Jim Henson creation, and he’s a little guy. I wanted to have him as small as possible and still be totally functional, so he’d be as realistic as possible.

Because he’s a Dominar king, I wanted him to be ideally twelve inches tall, a ruler, if you will. I didn’t quite get him that small.

On the opposite, I’d created the character of Pilot, and Brian wanted him to be as big as possible, so we had the two contrasting things. To do that on a regular series is tough. It’s only because we’re doing the show under the auspices of the Jim Henson Company that we could possibly achieve that.

The make-up effects on Star Trek, particularly The Next Generation, which was really the first one to really delve into bolder make-up, are very, very impressive. They will do a great deal of prosthetic work on a lot of characters, and that takes a lot of time and a lot of expense.

The Next Generation - the show that couldn’t be done?
  Was The Next Generation ground breaking and in what way?

The Next Generation was the show that everyone said couldn’t be done. There’d been a lot of attempts to bring Star Trek back to television and there’d been work on a feature film that took a long time to come to fruition, until they made the Robert Wise film.

To bring it back to TV was something that they weren’t quite sure was going to work. What was great about The Next Generation was it proved that it could be done.

If you distil it down to the most important aspect, it’s the cast, and those characters. Gene Roddenberry did it again, he created a second series, using the original Star Trek template, but re-designed it in a way that was fresh and went in a different direction.

In the original Star Trek they would travel more, they’d go down to planets but if you notice, they go to the back street planet a lot, they’d go down to the Western town or they’d go down to the 1920s Chicago town because that’s what was on the back lot of Paramount.

By the time The Next Generation came along, the audiences were a lot more sophisticated, so you couldn’t quite do that same sort of thing. Roddenberry was able to create a show that had a very different captain, a very different character and production dynamic in terms of not going down to planets as often and pulled it off. And it made the transition very well into feature films, as well.

Trek - and maybe Farscape - on the big screen
  Did you see the first Star Trek movie and what did you think of it?

I’m a big Robert Wise fan, but I’m not a particularly big fan of the first film. I thought it was too sterile, and didn’t really explore the emotions of the Star Trek world,or have the energy that the original series had. Roddenberry wasn’t quite as involved with the first film as he should have been, to be honest. I think it was more a studio project.

I think everybody was nervous. They knew that Star Trek had a big following, but they didn’t know exactly what that would translate to. They didn’t know exactly how to modernise Star Trek, they didn’t want it to be like the TV show.

That’s why I think the Nick Myer film, the second one, which was done under the auspices of the Premier Television Division, was the one that really broke out. It was a sigh of relief. They made it for not a huge amount of money and it was done in a TV production way. Everybody could just be creative and have fun with it. There was a lot of character to it, a lot of background to the characters, enriching what we knew of them from the original series. That, to me, was key because it was doing exactly what you were hoping a feature film would do.

One of things that’s difficult to do is a film in the midst of production of the television series. There’s been talk since the first year of Farscape of doing a feature film. But we don’t know where to place it in the time frame of the series. X Files did it in the midst of the series production, but specifically created it to fit during the summer between two seasons, arcing the story line that had been created for that. It’s hard to do. It also gives the film a short shelf life.

So what Star Trek has been able to do is let the series run its course, get the audience interested and excited, and then create the feature film afterwards. What I found very interesting is that they were making feature films based on the original series, with the original cast, at the same time, The Next Generation was on the air. The fact that the franchise could support both a very successful feature film franchise and a television series as well as it did, just speaks to the incredible strength of the original premise.

The foundation for TV science fiction
  Is there a Star Trek blueprint which has just been remodelled? Do they just repeat the same set things over and over again?

The original Star Trek created a blueprint that’s been followed not only by the subsequent Star Treks but by a lot of other shows, as well. Babylon 5, I think, owes a great deal to the original Star Trek. It goes off on a terrific tangent of its own, but you can see original Star Trek in it.

On Farscape, we worked hard not to do what Star Trek was doing, not to be as technical as they are, to be a little bit more hot and emotional and all that. But, it was a direct reaction to what Star Trek was. If Star Trek wasn’t there we wouldn’t know what to play off of to try to make it different than the original Star Trek.

The original Star Trek, which started in 1966, predated all kind of science fiction film entertainment, that we’ve come to take as classic, since then. It was before 2001, certainly before Star Wars and Close Encounters or any of those things, it was before Man had landed on the Moon, so it really lit the fuse for a science fiction film.

So if you watch Star Wars, for example, you’ll see that there are elements of the Star Trek lexicon in Star Wars, things like tractor beams and all that. What that tells me is that George Lucas said ‘I don’t know what else to call it but a tractor beam.’ It’s a perfect name for it.

Naming the fantasy
  Rockne’s thoughts on getting the right names in science fiction

If you’re creating a science fiction television series, names of things are very, very important. And you just want to get them exactly right. Character names, obviously, and then the names of things, the lexicon.

Everything has got to be named, whether it’s a device, a unit of measurement or time, the propulsion system. Everything has to be created and named and you really want it to be right. If you think of the original Star Trek and its use of words like phaser instead of laser and dilithium crystals, all those things that Roddenberry came up with just seem absolutely right, and they still seem fresh today. That, to me, is probably the greatest example of what was brilliant about what he did back then.

Titles are very difficult in science fiction. Farscape was originally called Space Chase. That was the working title. We knew we didn’t want to use Space Chase, ‘Space’ sounded kind of old fashioned and it sounded like a kids’ show. Because we were being produced by the Jim Henson Company, we didn’t want that kind of kid association with this project. So we went on the search for a new title, just putting beginnings of words together and back ends of words, that sort of thing.

Finally I came up with Farscape, and everybody scratched their heads, saying, "Yeah, Farscape, what does it mean?" I sold everybody on Farscape by talking about Star Trek. I said, "Right now we say Star Trek and it’s just become legendary, it’s Star Trek this, Star Trek that. the emotions of But imagine if you had never heard it before. You don’t know if it’s saying 'Start Wreck'".

So I said "If the show’s good, then Farscape will become totally related to the series and people will like the title, in the same way as Star Trek". It’s not a conventional title or one that you would necessarily normally leap to. It’s distinctive and unusual, and I’d like to think that I was right.

My favourite incarnation
  How did the different Star Trek series evolve and which one do you most admire or like?

Of all the incarnations of Star Trek, the one that I admire most is the very first one. It was the beginning, and the hardest one to do. Each of the subsequent series had that original series template to work from.

Each had its own strength. Next Generation brought had an incredibly exciting cast and showed that Star Trek could live on after the first series. Deep Space 9 is well known for its characterisation. It delved into aspects of character which made it, for me very distinct, and a really enjoyable experience.

Voyager kind of took advantage of the fact that it was the last in that line, and was a very smart show and more of an adventure show. It touched on some aspects of the original series, and because the ship was lost, it had characters off centre a bit, which is always good for drama. It didn’t have the Federation to fall back on. I consider all the shows facets of the original diamond, which was the original series.

CGI universes
  What’s your thoughts on the special effects used on Star Trek?

Special effects on television have come a tremendous distance from the original series, which was done with models and optical effects available at the time. The new Star Trek, starting with Next Generation, benefited, from CGI, Computer Generated Imaging.

It’s something that we worked with on Seaquest, a series I created for Steven Spielberg, back in the early 90s. It was about a futuristic submarine, and with models and water it was going to be very difficult and expensive.

Steven was prepping Jurassic Park at the time, and I remember him running into my office, grabbing me by the lapel and saying, "Come with me." He took me down to show me some of the stuff that they were doing with the dinosaurs.

So it was the first series to use CGI exclusively for the exteriors of our ship. That was something that Next Generation was using moderately at the time and now it’s just become de rigeur. Every shot outside of our ship is CGI, and I’m sure it’s the same with Star Trek.

It’s opened up the world tremendously. We can do set extensions and all sorts of things that give our series the scale that we’ve come to expect in feature films. It’s something that The Next Generation really began and it evolved through the Next Generation into Deep Space 9 and into Voyager. To the point now where Voyager can have that same kind of scale that we really came to associate with films like Star Wars and never really expected to see on television.

Reacting against Star Trek
  When it came to TV shows in the 90s, did viewers now want a slightly different speculative fiction than they had in the 60s?

Everything goes, if not cyclical, there’s a wave. The original Star Trek and the subsequent Star Trek series were all very military and had a hierarchy that was very comfortable and understandable. It was always very much us against them.

Then because of those series and what they’d established, other television creators like myself and Chris Carter and Joss Whedon have tried to take that and curve it the other way. So a show like X Files has a darker, more conspiracy minded vision, or there's Buffy which can have a great deal of humour but also has a real edge to it.

Farscape, I hope, does the same, as it’s a more in-your-face experience. I think all these shows are direct reactions to the science fiction template that Star Trek created in each of its incarnations.

Where will TV science fiction go next?
  What’s the next wave in television science fiction?

The incredibly positive thing for science fiction television is the fact that technology’s allowing us to portray the scale that we’ve come to expect in feature films and bring it to television. In creating the design and the look of Farscape, I went and talked to the production designers and said, ‘Go to the book store and look at all the book covers of science fiction fantasy’, those incredible, very evocative scenes, with aliens and two moons and enormous alien palaces. The great thing, technologically, is that with CGI, we’re actually able to portray that on the small screen.

Making technobabble work
  What makes Star Trek’s science work?

Star Trek has Andre Bormanis, who knows science but also understands how to try to apply that in dramatic context. They’ve always had a science consultant on hand, which is terrific for the writers if they conceive an idea and need to apply some science to it. It also is terrific because you’ve got someone that you can take to lunch who can ramble on about really fascinating scientific concepts. Then you can say, ‘Gee, that’s fantastic, I can make that into an episode.’ It’s a terrific resource.

Having that basis in science just lends the entire series a foundation of reality that is one of the great appeals of the show. It’s always been very honest about rejecting stories that didn’t have a foundation in real science. They don’t like to go into things that are magical per se, they want things that have a basis in real cosmology and the like.

More fun than a barrel of tribbles
  Would you say playing with sci fi is the most fun that actors and writers can have on a TV programme?

Science fiction, to use Orson Welles’ analogy, is the greatest train set of all time. You can portray things that don’t have to have a foundation in our everyday world. It also makes it difficult, because if you’re doing a lawyer’s show or a doctor’s show, you can research and easily determine what the parameters are of this particular operation or this legal case. On the other hand, you really can let your imagination fly, and it’s just so much fun.

On our show, Farscape, it allows us to create characters and alien civilisations that really are unique, using every bit of our imagination. You really feel like a creator when you’re creating an episode of a science fiction series.

The Borg, Romulans, Klingons, Vulcans, all these have become absolute icons to us in terms of science fiction, not just for television, but for film and books and everything else. Go up to any schoolkid and they probably know what a Vulcan is or what the Borg are, and can very possibly tell you more about the history of the Vulcans and the Borg than they can about their own national history. much more fun.

Why Farscape doesn’t steal from Star Trek
  If you were creating a new series, and you were allowed to steal one piece of technology from Star Trek, which would you choose?

I think people steal all sorts of things from Star Trek. With Farscape, we’re trying to do a series that’s very different from Star Trek. But because Star Trek exists, we have something to play off of. We don’t want it to be as technologically advanced as Star Trek. We want our show to be much more dirty fingernails. In Farscape you’ve got to take a wrench to do this, and you have to take a transport down to a planet, you can’t take the transporter. It’s a less technological world that we’ve created, but it’s a direct reaction to Star Trek.

It’s not because we don’t like Star Trek, it’s exactly the opposite. What we want to do is to do something that was as fresh and original and different for the audience as we could. We’d always say that that’s too much like Star Trek, or what did Star Trek do here, and how can we make it a little bit different? We work very hard at that, but we’re all very aware of the original Star Trek.

Enduring appeal
  Is it unique to Star Trek that fans have remained with it so long? Has it a quality which means it’s dated less than other sci-fi of the time?

I think those who watched the original series are just predisposed to science fiction and things of imagination. So, using myself as an example, I was a big fan of the original series, and admired The Next Generation quite a bit. It’s been important to me to check in on Voyager and Deep Space 9, and I’m really looking forward to the new show, as well.

There really wasn’t any television science fiction before Star Trek. There was Lost in Space, which was a totally different sensibility. It was truer to the sensibility of television at the time. Very palatable, a family in space, unrealistic, but something that your common audience could identify with, at least so they believed. Lost in Space didn’t endure, Star Trek has.