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Spike TV Is Turning Red Mars Into a TV Series (arstechnica.com)
An anonymous reader writes: Kim Stanley Robinson's popular trilogy Red/Green/Blue Mars is going to see its first book turn into a TV series produced by Spike TV and is slated for release in 2017. The episodes will be an hour long, and their writing will be led by J. Michael Straczynski, the creator of Babylon-5. According to Variety, "the series will follow the first settlers charged with terraforming a mysterious planet, all of whom have competed to be a part of the mission."
The books were interesting, but pretty boring. Very slow moving.
>> Spike TV
Now there's a blast from the past. I kind of forgot about cable networks over the past few years, but I remember that Spike carried STTNG for a while and otherwise seemed to run the same 10-movie cycle (Godfather, something with Bruce Willis, etc.) over and over again.
that is MarsOne's job!
NB: The message above might reflect my opinion right now, but not necessarily tomorrow or next year.
The books spent a lot of time on the science and on characters' personal motivations. By its very nature, a television (or movie) script will elide most of that, or at most allude to it, and automatically become more concise.
When there wasn't a massive space battle, Babylon 5 was basically a soap opera. In honor of this fact, they even hired several former soap opera actors. The Mars trilogy can be written much the same way.
On the other hand, part of the feeling inherent to the books involves the emptiness of the planet, and they're probably going to have to have some long shots and long silences to convey that. It's questionable whether modern audiences will sit still for it.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
There are some potentially impressive scenes. Anything featuring Olympus Mons could be good but the real money shot is going to be...
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...when the space elevator is brought down and wraps twice round the planet.
I suppose when a canal is created using the orbiting lens to cut a path in the planetary surface using focused sunlight is another bit with potential.
Kim Stanley Robinson's popular trilogy Red/Green/Blue Mars
According to Variety, "the series will follow the first settlers charged with terraforming a mysterious planet
Spoiler alert: it's Mars.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
I just look forward to jokes and romance scenes that make you as s cheeks clinch with embarrassment and make you think "I hope no one sees me watching this sh it". Babylon 5 was great otherwise, that is until the crap fest that was season 5. I was so f-ing happy when Byron blew himself up.
you can't terraform mars.... god crap like this is stupid....
I think I'll wait for the spin-off videogame. I'm a fan of city-builders.
So this is going to be on Spyke and and not SyFy? Color me surprised.
The Reds were a terrorist group in the books, but weren't exactly the bad guys. I wonder how the show's writers and executives are going to portray that in today's environment.
Come to think of it, most of the characters in the book were "terrorists," at least from the point of view of the UN organization that governed the project. It has massive infrastructure destruction (don't want to spoil it), guerilla warfare, cultural sectarianism, etc.
I doubt the network execs are going to allow that on the TV show without some major editing.
Those who can't do, teach. Those who can't teach either, do tech support.
I hope they bring Red Green in for a cameo. He can fix some space equipment with the handyman's secret weapon, duct tape.
Man, you really need that seminar!
That was my immediate thought upon readling the headline. I hope they make it as impressive as it deserves to be. What they did to the moon with the base (not going to spoiler) could another great scene.