[LMB] Space rangers, was Gender (long ago)

[Paula Lieberman]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "David McMillan" <skyefire at skyefire.org>


> Paula Lieberman wrote:
>> ----- Original Message ----- 
>> From: "Elizabeth Holden" <azurite at rogers.com>f
>>
>>> --- Paula Lieberman <paal at gis.net> wrote re Space Rangers:
>>>
>>>> Unfortunately, the show never got a real chance, it was shown out of
>>>> order
>>>> and cancelled after their third week... there were six episodes made.
>>> I'd forgotten they were shown out of order.  Huh: makes a person think 
>>> of
>>> Firefly somehow.  Why do
>>> they do that to shows?
>
> Somewhere online there's an essay by the guy who made the 90s film
> version of Heinlein's "The Puppet Masters."  *He* wanted to make an
> honest, faithful adaptation, but after a few years of bouncing around
> studios and being "script doctored," what actually hit the theaters was
> the closest he was able to come.  TV is afflicted with the same disease,
> just on a more... episodic... scale.

Too many vested interests and wannbee editors and writers among those 
holding control for the purse strings  with "If you want the money, you're 
going to have to do it MY way!"
>
>>>> I would like to get it on DVD one of these years....
>>> Is it out?  Not last I checked... [running to look] - OMG, it is!  There
>>> it is on amazon.com - th
>>> ough not on amazon.ca.  Well, they'll probably let me order anyway. 
>>> Happy
>>> dance!
>>>
>>>> Ah, the other character I think had the name Jo-Jo.
>>> Yes, that was it.  Thank you. Jo-Jo.  And she was interesting.
>>
>> Yeah. Do NOT, repeat, do NOT get into contest with her apparently
>> crash-drunk in a bar....  You will lose, -miserably-....
>
> A one-woman Bar Destroyer Crew, she was....
>
>> Oh, I -do- have the DVD set of Space: Above and Beyond.  "Chiggy von
>> Richtofen" ....
>
> "Stay with the dead!"
> Another show that could have really gone somewhere, if the people
> running and writing it had had a clue.  But they kept falling into
> Standard TV Cliches.

It got cancelled with no resolution of the cliffhanger ending, snarl.

The way that that industry works.... "Yes, it's what we -asked- you to 
write, but it's not what we -wanted-" -- Hollywood mogul-types who 
commissioned a pilot script for a TV show in early process of 
development--that is, at the level of exploring the possibility-- from 
George RR Martin, he wrote a script to their specifications, and.... that 
was that particular result.  Then there was the series he was working on, 
that got as far as having preliminary episode filmed and rough editing done 
on it.  It got previewed at a World Science Fiction Convention with the 
people who went to it used as one o the trial audiences ... I was one o the 
people who watched it.  Some people were enthused, I wasn't. Apparently the 
reactions of the test audiences wasn't as positive as required for 
continuing into full production and onto the air.