It’s easy to get lost in “Space.”
In the months since its premiere, Fox’s “Space: Above and Beyond” has quietly turned itself into TV’s most enjoyably complex adventure hour–and not just because of its reliance on terms like “Chigs,” “AIs,” “Tanks,” and “ISSCVs.” Stories are oddly structured, key series plot points are obscure, and paranoia runs rampant.
It’s often intriguing–and often confusing. So confusing, even executive producers Glen Morgan and James Wong admit to sometimes getting lost.
Well, that is, if you can find them.
The team’s “Space” headquarters is hidden away in a clothing warehouse off a Culver City cul-de-sac in a small industrial park that has been converted to sound-stage use. It was cheaper to rent the four stages they need here than at a studio, they explain. And besides, the location has its unexpected perks.
“You can go to the warehouse and check out a suit,” Morgan says.
“That’s the advantage,” says Wong, “and we took it.”
They could use every advantage they get. “Space” is a tough show to produce with a tough time-slot (6 p.m. Sundays on WFLD-Ch. 32) to conquer, and the producers admit they’re still trying to find their way.
“We’re finding where our strengths are, and where our weaknesses are too,” Wong says.
Among those strengths, he says, are the show’s ability to graft current social concerns onto a 2063 intergalactic war, its splashy special effects, and the unexpected popularity of James Morrison’s Commander McQueen.
And the weaknesses? A staff and cast that was not totally prepared for the challenges of a weekly space opera, and a gung-ho pilot episode that may have given the audience–and the network–falsely sunny expectations.
Undoubtedly, Wong says, “Space” is a darker and more intense show than Fox expected from the pilot.
“It was like, `Look, we thought we were buying “Star Wars,” not “Aliens.” ‘ But they like it. . . . They’ve actually been very good about it. They haven’t said anything like, `Where’s the cute robot?’ “
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If Fox didn’t exactly know where the show was going, neither did anyone else. Unlike some of the strictly structured “Star Trek” clones, there is no five-year plan for “Space,” and no “bible” telling the writers what they can and cannot do. Each week, cast and viewers alike learn something new and unexpected about the aliens and the earthlings. Wong and Morgan, who last worked as executive producers on “X-Files,” like telling the story this way–partly because they think it’s more interesting to reveal things slowly, and partly because they haven’t completely figured out where they’re going.
Looking back at the first half of the season, both producers say they’ve yet to make “a whole show.”
“Parts of episodes are my favorite,” Morgan explains. “It’s like our football team. They haven’t played a whole game yet.”
That football team, by the way, is the Chargers, which is why astute “Spacers” may have noticed a running string of anti-49ers jokes, including one about San Francisco not making the playoffs in 65 years.
What sets “Space” apart from its flatter competitors is its increasingly gray shadings. Our side is not all heroic; their side is not all evil. Motivations are less certain, and more interesting.
Still, despite the addition of Vietnam-era ambiguity, the producers still are doing what they set out to do: a World War II movie in outer space. With, however, one major exception.
“We’ve got these things in big green helmets as the enemy,” Morgan says. “We can’t have spies. We can’t have an underground. You’re taking out a huge element from those old movies.”
“Space” is a very complicated show to produce–so complicated, the shooting week sometimes stretches past 11 days. “It’s incredibly difficult,” Wong says. “There are so many different levels. . . . Everything you need, you have to build, because it’s a futuristic world.”
It’s also a very expensive world. It takes money to come up with the realistic special effects and appropriately banged-up space ships sci-fi fans have come to expect. Just to add a cockpit to that ISSCV (Inter-Solar System Cargo Vehicle) cost the show $50,000.
Sometimes things get so harried, they swear the next show they do will be something simple, like “Cooking with Wong.”
“I tell you,” Morgan says, “I would hesitate to do something as complicated as this again.”