Today I’m starting to publish a story here. It will be a (hopefully daily) series of posts that are a screenplay of sorts, though in the interest of screen-space it will not be in proper screenplay format. This is a sort-of movie script. It is somewhere between a proper movie and a movie-of-the-week or a series, or maybe a novel. Read it like you are seeing it on the big screen. It’s a space-western, in the Firefly genre. The story proper takes place circa 2655. FTL travel was discovered in the late 21st C, but not FLT communication, so star systems are still connected similarly to the 18th century days of sail, with message-drones and ships carrying data and people between stars, often taking days, weeks, or even months for flights.Explorers might be out of touch for months. Many star systems and planets have been explored, and some have been partially terraformed. A “local” supernova disrupted subspace so much, though, that FTL was shut down for several centuries, and each terraformed planet (and planets that were still very much “in process”) and colony had to survive (or not) on its own. This was known as “the long dark” or “the big blackout”, as well as by several other names. This takes place after things have quieted down a bit, and “the stars are coming back,” meaning FTL travel is once again possible in some places. But, FTL sub-space is like a stormy ocean, and “swirls” in it can make FTL flights faster, or slower, than normal, or even shut them down altogether.
Cultural note: the dominate cultures out among the stars are the descendants from former British Colonies, but there are scattered colonies from various other places as well.
If anyone in the movie industry sees its potential and wants to turn it into something “real”, I’d be more than happy to talk to them. Feedback from readers welcome, be it positive or negative.
OK, here we go:
The Stars Came Back, Part 001, Intro
A series of scenes showing the development of space flight and the expansion to other star systems and the subsequent terraforming.
- Stock footage of the first flight
- Stock footage of jet aircraft
- Stock footage of the space shuttle
- Footage of modern space craft heavy-lift rocket
- A glowing and turbulent star within the nebula Eta Carinea
- A smallish near future space craft orbits around Saturn with moons in background
- A large space station orbiting Mars with arriving and departing spacecraft
- A spacecraft moving fast relative to a space-station , then jumping to FTL with very simple FX (stars shimmer, then start to move visibly)
- Eta Carinea even more roiling and violent looking
- A large spacecraft around alien (more reddish) sun and planets
- Lots of ships around alien sun / planet / moons
- A pair of massive ships (terraforming platform, or TFP) that look like a cross between the Titanic, a Jawa Sandcrawler, and a giant tunnel-boring rock drill landing on a planet and starting to grind / plow through the crust with a large spherical “balloon” (gas-transport sphere, or GTS) sticking out of the top. In the distant background a large three-pronged “tuning-fork” like thing sticks in the air.
- A line of GTSs coming up from the atmo of a gas giant
- A GST landing on top of the TFP. Another is pulling away from another TFP in the background. A huge amount of water streams out of the backs, and sand and blocks of metal shooting out from the sides on conveyor belts. Camera pans over to show, then pulls away from a man in a space-suit standing on a stern railing looking at water streaming away through the trench the TFP has dug, and it’s full of water; camera pulls further out to show the planet is criss-crossed with channels of water with some leading to a small sea and some ending on other TPFs with a couple of the GTSs moving to and away from them. The top of the TFP is covered with clear domes full of plants, and the CAT logo in 50m tall letters can be seen. It looks like humans are taking over the galaxy.
- A fly-by scene of an obviously non-earth colony being built on a new world and small cities on an alien planet
- Eta Carinea roils, convulses, then goes nova, screen goes white
Fade to black
BLACK SCREEN. BELLS AND SIRENS AND WARNING ARE SOUNDING, LIKE ALL HELL HAS BROKEN LOOSE ABOARD.
DAY – INT – Bridge/cockpit of a small starship. There are several bells and sirens and computer voice warnings about exceeded limits and system failures and blinking warning lights. There is a man, HELTON STROM, strapped into the command /pilot chair, with one hand on the control yoke, and one flipping switches and making adjustments on the control panel in front of and around him. The whole cockpit seems to be shaking him and everything in it around violently. He’s obviously trying to get a ship in much trouble under control. He’s clean shaven, shortish hair, late 30s, well built, wearing a simple jumpsuit uniform. He grimaces as he struggles to get it back to “normal,” as things go from bad to worse, with more flashed and audible warnings (such as “CORE OVER TEMP” and “Hull Breach!”) and lights, then he goes sideways, then upside-down with stuff falling past him, then back to sideways. Smoke rises past him, and briefly he looks at in surprise. There are a couple of loud BANG!s and popping like something is breaking, then another puff of smoke, a final lurch and all the shaking stops, all the lights in the control panels and screens blank out, and go black. He hangs there in his harness, silently, motionlessly, sideways, an expression of tired fatalism on his face.
Instructor: (OC, drolly) Well, that’s a first.
Camera pulls back to reveal that there is a man strapped in next to Helton, looking at him as if wondering what to say. He’s also in a jumpsuit, with a “Flight Instructor” where his name tag would be and across his chest.
Instructor: (slightly incredulously) You managed to crash… and break… a flight simulator doing a simulated crash landing… Impressive. Test again after it’s repaired?
Helton looks blankly at the screen in front of him, then shakes his head slightly, and sighs heavily through pursed lips.