Question for Rick Sternbach: Shatterworld

[FalTorPan]

Here's a question for Rick Sternbach...

Rick, I was browsing eBay a short time ago, and I ran across this item:

Original Prop Spaceship-Shatterworld by Rick Sternback

(Yes, your name has been misspelled.)

Anyway, what can you tell us about this project? How were you approached to work on it? What's that nifty model made of, and how much say did you have in its design?

Thanks in advance!

 

[Rick Sternbach]

Here's a question for Rick Sternbach...

Rick, I was browsing eBay a short time ago, and I ran across this item:

Original Prop Spaceship-Shatterworld by Rick Sternback

(Yes, your name has been misspelled.)

Anyway, what can you tell us about this project? How were you approached to work on it? What's that nifty model made of, and how much say did you have in its design?

Thanks in advance!

I wasn't approached; I was one of three people pitching an idea for a series. It has absolutely nothing to do with the book by Lelia Rose Foreman; the title was simply a coincidence. The model was left in the care of one of our trio (split up long ago), and apparently it made its way to ebay. The Magellan was totally my concept for a nuclear-powered vessel like an LCAC, a hovercraft on steroids. The basic premise was that something at a government facility went kerphlooey, or the Milky Way drifted into some unstable darkish matter, and in a blinding display of CGI effects, the local universe was broken up into a lot of bubbles that recombined out of spatial and temporal order. A lot of SF shows exploit that sort of setup, so that your main characters can explore strange new worlds (did I say that out loud?) each week. Our intrepid band was stuck in one bubble, but fortunately the Magellan was close by and could be modified to penetrate the membranes and try, over many seasons, to figure out how to blow the bubbles back into the right configuration. The expedition leader was a woman, Dr. Jillian Sands, offered up some years before Capt. Janeway or Dr. Weir. A number of studio folks thought it couldn't work precisely because Dr. Sands was a woman. Ah well.

Rick
www.spacemodelsystems.com

 

[Captain Robert April]

The scary thing is that they misspelled your name throughout the whole bit.

We're talking about Intergalactic Trading Co., they should know better!

 

[FalTorPan]

Rick, thanks for the info! I get a kick out of learning more about people's creative endeavors, whether or not they make it to a TV or movie screen.

As for your name being misspelled, I guess you're in good company -- I don't know how many times people have misspelled Walter M. Jefferies' name over the years. The first major offender was Whitfield and Roddenberry's The Making of Star Trek.

 

[FalTorPan]

Thanks to Google, here's a Variety magazine blurb about the Shatterworld effort:

July 25, 1994

Some of the key creative forces of "Star Trek" have created a new sci-fi series, "Shatterworld." The group includes sci-fi writer D.C. Fontana, Rick Sternbach, who gave "Shatterworld" its unique look (and continues to work on "Star Trek"), and writers Sandy Fries and Fred Kron, who co-created the new show, which features a woman as captain of the ship. Innovative Artists Agency's Frank Wuyliger and Lisa Santos represent the syndie project ...

 

[Tigger]

The basic premise was that something at a government facility went kerphlooey, or the Milky Way drifted into some unstable darkish matter, and in a blinding display of CGI effects, the local universe was broken up into a lot of bubbles that recombined out of spatial and temporal order...

Ah, so a live-action version of "Cho Jiku Seiki Orguss".

 

[Rick Sternbach]

The basic premise was that something at a government facility went kerphlooey, or the Milky Way drifted into some unstable darkish matter, and in a blinding display of CGI effects, the local universe was broken up into a lot of bubbles that recombined out of spatial and temporal order...

Ah, so a live-action version of "Cho Jiku Seiki Orguss".

Well, only in the vaguest sense. The bubbles we imagined were fairly dense force membranes; they measured anywhere from a few kilometers across to maybe a few hundred, at least where earth was concerned. When they formed, they chopped roads, pipelines, power lines, people, cars, airplanes into pieces. You could see a continuation of the landscape past the skin, but it was really a frozen illusion. You had to "burn" an EM hole through the membrane to access the next bubble, and your exit vector determined what would be next door. It all made a weird kind of sense, or at least it would after 13 episodes. You know me; I could make it work.

Rick
www.spacemodelsystems.com

 

[Reverend]

A better design for a Starfleet hopper I have yet to see.
I may have to steal it.