I first met writer/producer/director Marc Zicree in 2018 at WorldCon. A veteran of series such as Star Trek: The Next Generation and Babylon 5, Zicree had plans to bring together some of his favorite actors from those shows and create something new — Space Command. He convinced me that his Kickstarter campaign was absolutely worth it. Though it’s taken some time to get mainstream distribution, the first two hour movie in his Space Command epic, Space Command: Redemption, is currently available for rental on Prime Video and Google Play, or you can watch it with commercials on Tubi.
It works well either way, because Space Command looks forward while being a throwback to the kinds of shows that made many of us fans in the first place. In addition to science fiction legends like Robert Picardo, Bruce Boxleitner, and Doug Jones, Zicree cast younger actors to build the foundation of his new crew. There’s more to come for Space Command, and we met Saturday morning at Comic-Con to talk over why he’s doing this and what’s to come. Appropriately enough, it was outside the San Diego Library, where he was about to head a panel about Space Command. Zicree’s work isn’t just optimistic; it’s downright inspiring. And he’s in the middle of the next Kickstarter campaign for Space Command: Great Solar War.
Derek McCaw: You’ve released the first film, Space Command: Redemption, but did I miss the second one?
Marc Scott Zicree: During the pandemic we did a bonus episode called “Ripple Effect.” We’re in post-production on Forgiveness, which is the one that fits after the first, Redemption. We’ve shot six hours of the twelve hour season, and started shooting the seventh and eighth.
McCaw: You’re doing aspirational science fiction. In 2024, it’s very important. We have so much that’s dystopian, and it’s seeping into the real world. I think back to the message of the movie Tomorrowland, where’s the fiction that gives us hope? And so, why is that your take?
Zicree: Because I grew up in a period where The Twilight Zone, The Outer Limits, Star Trek… those were all very humanistic, very optimistic in a way. They were often cautionary tales, certainly, but Rod Serling, Gene Roddenberry, they believed in humanity’s ability to come to a hopeful conclusion, come to a good conclusion. They believed in the goodness of man.
They had been through World War II, they’d been soldiers. Roddenberry was a bomber pilot, and Serling had been a paratrooper. They’d seen the worst that humanity could dish out, but we won that war. As a result, the forces of darkness – the forces of evil – didn’t win. We didn’t have the Nazis take over the world.
And so I think you can send a message out that it’s not fake, it’s not Pollyanna-ish, to say that we can reach out across boundaries and barriers and create a future worth living in for our children and our grandchildren and so forth. It’s as real a message as the negative message. Love and compassion are the only things that can oppose the darkness and the evil, the cynicism, and the fear and the hatred.
McCaw: Before watching Redemption, I think I’d seen about half of the project that you’d put online for those of us who kickstarted it, or maybe you’d shown it at WorldCon in San Jose. It hits me now that the lessons learned in World War II, there’s a certain thing about humanity reflected in your show that people have to re-learn. The thing with the Synths – they’re treated as poorly as we’d see people treated two centuries ago, and honestly, today. There’s still this negative part to human nature that has to be retaught.
Zicree: Yes. I think the message throughout my career and pretty much everything I’ve done in my life is I’m very interested in the people who are invisible. The people who are treated as, “we can do anything to them, they’re not fully human. They don’t count.”
In science fiction you can use synthetic humans, androids, as a parallel for any group that’s been treated badly. The thing I love about science fiction is that by taking it out of the current moment, you don’t polarize people the way that politics can.
Science fiction is a big tent; it lets in a lot of different viewpoints in. As long as people are touched in the heart, as long as they can say, “okay, I feel empathy for that person,” then it isn’t political polarization. It becomes common humanity. That’s what I’m always striving to create.
McCaw: You have so many fan favorites in Space Command. Can I say giants?
Zicree: You can say giants.
McCaw: You have Doug Jones as the leader of the Synths, before he joined Star Trek: Discovery.
Zicree: And he’s going to be in the next one, The Great Solar War.
McCaw: Oh! Redemption has a coda that sort of closes off his story, with the hope and hints that there were more adventures we just didn’t see. But what struck me is that… well, you had (the late) Mira Furlan, who I’m rediscovering in Babylon 5 thanks to the recent complete series re-release. I’ve really come to appreciate why she was so beloved. It made me a bit sad. With the way you’re casting and the way you’re able to film Space Command, you’re almost in a race against time with some actors. Though it was hard to predict with Mira Furlan. But you still brought her story to an end in that coda.
Zicree: I loved Mira. She was wonderful. When I worked with her on Babylon 5, I said to her, “I want to work with you again.” And I created the role of Vonn Odara specifically for her. It was terrible that during the pandemic, she was sheltering in place, like you were supposed to do, in the Hollywood Hills. A mosquito bit her and she got West Nile Virus and died of that. It was a terrible ironic thing.
Though interestingly enough, we actually are continuing her story in Forgiveness, the episode we’re in post-production on. We give her a heroic ending. We were able to utilize lines that we’d cut out of the first one, alternate takes. I didn’t want to use AI or anything like that. But I wanted to have her not just walking off into the sunset, but to have her being a central part of the story.
Originally she was going to be what we call a viewpoint character. Because she was genetically altered, she would have lived a very long time.
McCaw: Right. The sad irony is that she was essentially immortal.
Zicree: Yes. But you roll with what the world hands you. I love these actors. They’re wonderful. I’ve worked with George Takei; I’ve worked with many of the greats. We were able to shoot a scene with Nichelle Nichols before her passing.
McCaw: I saw a reference to that. You come to this as both a professional and, obviously, a fan. You worked on The Next Generation. You worked on Babylon 5. The thing with Space Command is that we can’t pretend it’s not as slick. You’re Kickstarting it. You’re using CG; I’ve described it as you’re doing it with some really great people using Adobe Creative Cloud. That’s not a dig. I think people are hungry for things that feel more handmade. It feels like the story is what matters.
Zicree: Exactly. All of us who are science fiction fans have watched these enormous shows with gorgeous special effects, gorgeous scenery, gorgeous costumes, and then the stories go south. You say, “why didn’t they put the focus on the writing so the people could be people you cared about? Then they could have a satisfying ending.”
I mean, we’ve all been pissed off by many shows where we say, “geeeeeeez.” The lovely difference between my method, I’m at the top of the food chain and I get to say what goes, as opposed to having to dance to the studio or the network terms. When they’re writing the checks they can say, “hey, put in this actor who can’t act.”
Whereas with me, I just choose these brilliant actors who are wonderful. I don’t ever have to deal with that.
McCaw: We talk about these legends…
Zicree: With many more to come…
McCaw: But your central cast is young. As I’ve watched you take almost seven years to do this so far, I thought that was actually REALLY brilliant…
Zicree: We had a world-wide talent search. Because I knew I was casting Doug Jones and Mira Furlan and Bill Mumy and Bob Picardo and Bruce Boxleitner, I thought for two of the leads we’d have a search where anyone could audition for the show.
And so we got 7,000 inquiries. 1200 audition videos for the roles of Captain Kemmer and Lieutenant Bradbury, and ultimately cast about 9 actors from that, including Ethan McDowell and Bryan McClure to play those two roles. Now Ethan’s been a regular on The Walking Dead, he shot on The Righteous Gemstones and Doom Patrol. His career took off like a rocket. Bryan was just on a thing that Jessica Lange starred in on HBO. It was great that I could make their dreams come true.
McCaw: And they’re still attached.
Zicree: Yes.
McCaw: You’ve brought up some of the character names, you have all these literary names in there. As I look back, for the new generation coming up, you’ve acknowledged all these writer and I don’t think they may have read them.
Zicree; My thought was that if someone young watches the show, they might learn something and think “oh, that character’s name is Leguin. Let me see who Leguin is.” Or who Sturgeon is. Or Bradbury. It might point them toward those authors.
When I was a kid watching The Twilight Zone and The Outer Limits, I started to notice that the writers of those shows were the same writers of the short stories and novels I was reading. And sometimes those writers like on Star Trek and other shows, I’d go seek out their work because I liked their Star Trek episode.
McCaw: As a quick start, it’s unfair to ask “who’s your favorite?” But what would you recommend for younger readers? This younger generation, Generation Z, has been through so much, it could have been worse, but it was still terrible, almost an apocalyptic event. Which writer would you recommend to give them hope?
Zicree: Ray Bradbury. Absolutely Ray Bradbury. He was a dear friend of mine and a mentor, an astonishing man and an astonishing writer. He wrote Fahrenheit 451 and The Martian Chronicles. These are great wonderful optimistic tales set in some dark places. Again, he didn’t candy coat things, but he said we can do wonderful things as a species. His heart was full of love.
He was the first writer I ever saw in person. When I was 7, he spoke at the library. I remember something he said, that affected me profoundly. He said, “ideally your life and your work and your art should all come from the same place,” and he pointed to his heart. And I thought, “wow, that’s amazing.”
In his later years we became close friends. I’d go over to his house about once a month and we’d just sit and talk about life and art and everything. Over ten years I did that, until his passing. It was a great honor. In fact, we talked about Space Command and I told him that I was naming one of the characters after him. He was very pleased.
I grew up in a time when science fiction had a bit of optimism. And it wasn’t false optimism. Martin Luther King told Nichelle Nichols to stay on Star Trek. Ultimately, Nichelle Nichols inspired young black women to become astronauts. We have the power in television to reach millions of people and to show them possibilities.
Again, the priority, the first obligation, is we have to entertain them. If the story doesn’t work, if the characters don’t work, we’ve lost the battle, you know?
You were talking about Generation Z a moment ago. I’m not at all dismissive of the younger generations. I understand. Information is delivered to them completely differently than when we grew up.
I’m of the first TV generation. As a result, you couldn’t record shows. You had to watch them when they aired. So if it was The Three Stooges, whatever, you’d watch what was on.
McCaw: We just watched what there was.
Zicree: Right. As a result you got this amazingly wide range of information on the world, on the media. And you’d go to your school library and Bradbury’s books were there, Heinlein’s books were there, so you’d have access to that kind of information.
Now you have to search for what you’re looking for. The algorithm starts to shape what you see by what you’ve seen. It’s just a totally different way of doing things. I want to point them in a direction because they’re not being given the opportunity that I was given.
McCaw: And there’s something interesting about aspirational science fiction. You almost never see what passes for pop culture in that time. They’re busy actually doing things. But I’ll bring up one that my writer friends and I talk about a lot – Thea Von Harbou’s Metropolis. “Between the head and the hands, you have to have the heart.” I probably mangled that.
Zicree: We create the future. We are responsible for the future that happens. Because we’re active participants in it. I think Space Command is the dream of my lifetime. We’re doing a twelve-hour series then we’re doing six other series beyond that, and features. That’s all in motion. There’s a kickstarter campaign; I sell investment shares as well. That’s allowed me to raise $4 million so far and shoot.
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