For over a year now I’ve been thinking about a TV series “franchise”, but a conversation about it I had with JBQ today made me decide to write about it. I hope some TV exec reads about it, likes it, and materialize it — given enough funds.

The idea is to have five one-hour TV series (Mon to Fri), 12 episodes per season each, for 3 seasons (hard deadlines and concrete stories, no fillers). The year is somewhere around 2230.

Series 1: Takes place on Earth. The old country tries to hold together both the planet, its colonies, its corporations, and a new (perceived) enemy for human kind: the transcending to complete cyber entities.
Series 2: Takes place in orbit, between a space station that it fights to not get out of commission, and a space Elevator. The two compete as to which one will be the main hub for commerce and supplies.
Series 3: Takes place on the Moon, on a mining colony. It’s the oldest space colony, out of fashion, and therefore it doesn’t get enough favors from Earth’s government.
Series 4: Takes place on Mars. The machinations and politics of a colony of 250k people trying to gain independence.
Series 5: Takes place on Io. The orbiting spaceship and mining/research colony on the surface are on the farthest reach in our solar system, almost forgotten, but they hold an ace on their sleeve regarding the next big step of the human kind.

Each series will have its own storyline and characters, but the bigger issues will be inter-connecting, as everything usually is when it comes to politics. Every episode title would also include the date, so future viewers can find the correct order of how to view all 5 series in a way that it’s most satisfying and logical. In terms of atmosphere I’d gun for something between the third season of Babylon 5, LOST, and SGU. Many different topics would have to be explored, including genetics and eugenics, the role of politics, corporations and military in any decision made and how this affects everyone, what it means to be human etc, etc.

I want to challenge my viewers. For example, when one decision is made by some figure of authority, which might be the correct decision for his/her people, it might have devastating consequences for the people of the other series. In politics, often there is no black and white, and usually what’s good for one country it might be bad for another (e.g. lobbying on keeping low wages for Haitians in order to keep having cheap Levi’s in the US). I want people to think about these things, and such TV series can help with that if done right.

At the very end of the series, I’d like to show what sacrifices must be done, what alliances, destruction, and even… DNA changes must happen to get to that second step of the human kind: the ability to create stable wormholes, and explore & colonize the galaxy. But this won’t come cheap. I can promise this much.