Science fiction scribe Marc Zicree has an impressive list of writing credits on several major genre television series of the past two decades, including Start Trek: The Next Generation and Deep Space Nine, Babylon 5, and Sliders. He’s received Hugo and Nebula award nominations for his work on the Web series Star Trek: New Voyages Phase II, and a Humanitas Prize nomination (shared with wife Elaine) for the “Common Sense” episode of the animated children’s series Liberty’s Kids.
Marc is currently involved in an innovative feature film project called Space Command, a new sci-fi movie franchise. Funded (and with overwhelming success) by a Kickstarter, and with four films planned, the first movie will begin shooting this spring.
Featuring a host of genre regulars, including Mira Furlan (Babylon 5), Armin Shimerman (Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Deep Space 9), Robert Picardo (Stargate SG-1 and Atlantis, Star Trek: Voyager), and Dean Haglund (The X-Files), Space Command will honor the long tradition of science fiction space exploration dramas, but through a modern lens. I recently spoke with Marc about his new project, the science fiction genre, and another of his passions—the classic TV series, Rod Serling’s Twilight Zone.
I’m glad we’re having a chance to talk a little bit about your latest project. So tell me why you decided to do this, and in the way you’re doing it.
Where to start? I've been a writer, producer working in TV for, gosh, like 30 years, and I've written for a lot of franchise TV shows, like Star Trek: The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, Babylon 5, Sliders, and on and on. I think the idea of creating a science fiction show and basically building a universe was very appealing to me. I've created hundreds of hours of produced programming for the networks and the studios, but then I was noticing a lot of young people talking about Kickstarter, and I thought, well, let's see if I can raise some money on Kickstarter [to do my own project].
I met and affiliated with Neil Johnson, a young producer/director, who had been making low-budget science fiction films with a very high level of production quality, to do a series of films. It would basically be like doing a TV series, but [instead] it would be as a series of films. I wanted to do something set in space; something that was a hopeful vision of the future along the lines of Star Trek, or even Star Wars, really, and so I came up with Space Command. Our target was to raise $75,000 over two months, and we raised that in just over three days.
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