Spaced Out

Originally published May 2, 1997, in Comics Buyer’s Guide #1224

Note from PAD: This is a somewhat unusual entry. Covering the cancellation of Space Cases, my original draft was somewhat more scathing over the opportunities lost thanks to short-sightedness from Nickelodeon. But at the time it didn’t seem politic since we still had hopes of placing the series elsewhere and needed Nick’s cooperation to do so. So the version that saw print was somewhat toned down and more optimistic. Corey, who oversees these reprints, asked which one I wanted to be immortalized online, and I’ve decided to combine the two for the interest and edification of Space Cases fans everywhere.

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I knew Space Cases was in trouble when we went head-to-head with the Super Bowl.

You have to understand… no one airs anything new opposite the Super Bowl. It’s like running new programming against the Oscars. You simply don’t challenge that kind of ratings vacuum.

But Nickelodeon aired our second season closer opposite the most highly-rated football game of the year. In addition to being the last new episode of the season, it also guest-starred George Takei as the show’s major villain, Warlord Shank. Takei’s presence had gotten major attention on 3rd Rock from the Sun, so if Nickelodeon had publicized it, we likely would have been able to benefit from George’s presence as well.

Nope. The show was aired with no commercial advertising. No promotion. No preview tapes were made available to any publications. And to add insult to injury: Episodes are usually repeated the following week in an earlier time slot. Not this one. It was pre-empted for a cartoon marathon. Buried, lost, forgotten. It was finally repeated some weeks later, in a new (and unadvertised) time slot, again with no promotion.

Space Cases, for those who came in late, is the tongue-in-cheek science fiction series created by Bill Mumy and myself, which has been airing for the past year on Nickelodeon. It features the adventures of a group of misfit space cadets trying to make their way home in an alien space vessel. Premiering in March of 1996, the show was moved five times in ten months, and pre-empted for weeks at a time. Furthermore, whenever Nickelodeon did annual high-profile promotions such as their “Kids Choice Awards,” “The Big Help,” or New Year’s Eve bash, Space Cases cast members were conspicuous in their absence while personnel from every other currently-in-production shows were spotlighted.

With all these positive omens, we rolled into January of 1997 having aired two seasons of thirteen episodes each. The ratings were okay, but not spectacular. This didn’t surprise us: Science fiction on television generally takes a good long while to catch on. X-Files took three seasons to really hook its audience, as did Babylon 5. And that was three seasons of twenty two episodes each.

By comparison, our air record was relatively modest (although at least we’d outlasted Hypernauts, yanked after barely half a dozen episodes had aired, pulled more for reasons of internal politics than ratings.)

During our time on the air, though, we had made some definite inroads into the fan consciousness. Attention was beginning a slow build. There were over two dozen unofficial websites about the series, and an online fan club called “Zabagabe” (named after a Saturnian chant in one episode which, in a typical Space Cases in-joke, was also the name of one of Mumy’s “Barnes & Barnes” albums) had hundreds of members and was gaining every day.

In the “real” world, we were getting more write-ups in such publications as TV Guide and, more importantly, we had been nominated for a Cable Ace Award for Best Children’s programming. (We lost to a series of HBO Concert Specials… a reflection of what voters wished kids were watching, rather than what they’re actually watching.)

In short, we were rolling. It was the sort of slow and steady build that anyone familiar with TV science fiction knows to look for.

We were supposed to hear by the end of January if we were to be renewed, but considering how our season ender was treated, I had a strong feeling that we weren’t being picked up. Nonetheless, Nickelodeon then threw us a curve by postponing the decision for six weeks, marking the day we would hear as March 15.

Well, then I knew we were toast. No one does anything on the Ides of March except beware it. As fans held their collective breaths, counting down the days on computer boards, I felt my heart sink with each progressive day.

And on March 15, Nickelodeon informed us that they were not going to be continuing the series.

I wasn’t particularly surprised. You see, the bottom line is that there are two reasons that science fiction series are desirable for networks:

1) Science fiction pulls in the demographically attractive group of 18 to 34.

2) There is a fortune to be made in ancillary merchandising such as toys, CDs, computer games, etc.

However, neither of these was pertinent to our situation. The only demographic that Nickelodeon is interested in is six-year-olds to eleven-year-olds. As for merchandising, Nickelodeon doesn’t believe there is any interest in the merchandising of live-action Nick series. There’s been some isolated stuff: A Clarissa Explains it All CD, an Are You Afraid of the Dark computer CD-ROM, but that’s about it. Nothing organized or orchestrated. I was deluged by email from fans asking where they could get Space Cases t-shirts, hats, photos and such, or a model of our show’s space vessel, the Christa, and the answer was: Nowhere. There was nothing out there at all.

The only thing Nick cared about was bottom-line ratings. And the bottom line was that we did not have the sort of staggeringly impressive ratings numbers that sate the Nielsen gods. You remember the Nielsens. It’s the ratings service that networks are now claiming isn’t, in fact, an accurate measure at all.

The most frustrating and puzzling thing to us was that we had come up with all sorts of ideas to help jack up the ratings. Now granted, the first and foremost consideration for pulling in viewers should be producing a good series. Naturally that was our first priority. But let’s face it: The TV landscape is littered with quality, cancelled programs. The brutal fact is that quality isn’t always enough. Look at Babylon 5. Hugo Award winning, acclaimed series. Yet at a recent convention, someone asked Joe Straczynski why they had guest-starred radio personality “Cousin Brucie” on an episode of B5. With characteristic bluntness, Joe had replied, “Ratings, schmuck.”

Stunts are handy things to produce, because they get your show attention. The news media hooks onto them and gives you tons of free publicity. So much so, sometimes, that people who would never sample your show in a million years tune in and, if they like what they see, they’ll stick with it.

One would have thought, on that basis, that networks would encourage and support ratings stunts. Yet, the following concepts were rejected by Nickelodeon:

1) Lost in Space Cases. The original “Robot” from Lost in Space is owned by a movie executive who is a friend of Bill Mumy’s, and the exec had a brilliant suggestion. Have the crew of the Christa meet the Robinson family and find a way to send them home once and for all. Now this would have been an unworkable undertaking if it had entailed bringing in the entire cast.

But when you get down to it, Lost in Space to most folks consists of Dr. Smith, Will Robinson, and the Robot. Well, Will Robinson–all grown up as Mumy–would have been a snap to get. The exec was going to lend us the Robot. And Jonathan Harris would very likely have been get-able. And if we’d shown a generic flying saucer-shaped ship, that would have been enough to sell the Jupiter II visual. The rest of the family was going to be in cryo-freeze tubes, unseen but talked about.

Now we weren’t actually going to use the name “Robinson.” Will Robinson would simply have been William, Doctor Smith addressed as “Doctor,” and the word “robot” is hardly TM and © of Irwin Allen. But it would have been a spectacular nudge-nudge, wink-wink. And we believed the press would have gone wild for it.

With the advent of a big-budget Lost in Space movie, this was going to be a free tie-in with a high-profile property that would have netted us tons of new viewers.

Hëll, it would have been worth it just to have Dr. Smith and the Dr. Smith-esque character of Miss Davenport moan simultaneously, “Oh, the pain, the pain,” or have Thelma the android fall hopelessly in love with the Robot.

Nickelodeon said “No.” Their reasoning: Six-to-eleven year olds don’t know Lost in Space. While this alone is debatable, we pointed out that adults did, and would tune in, presumably watching with their kids. No go. The proposal never even went to script.

2) Calling Babylon 5: In an episode entitled “Long Distance Calls,” the stranded crew discovers a communications device that enables them to speak to their relatives back home and let them know they’re okay. We had half the cast of Babylon 5 lined up for cameos. All it would have required would have been the cost of a second-unit crew filming the cameos in Los Angeles, as we had done for the guest appearances by Mumy and Mark Hamill during the first season. Again, it seemed like a sure thing. B5 has gotten tons of publicity lately, as the series which many had dismissed as a Deep Space Nine rip off is now being hailed as one of the best shows on television, being endorsed by everyone from Howard Stern to Dilbert.

Nickelodeon said “No.” They didn’t feel B5 had sufficient wide appeal to make it worth going to the extra money or effort. In fact, “Long Distance Calls” wound up being a peon to cost cutting as we wound up saving money by casting production personnel, including–God help us–me.

3) Weirder and Weirder: We had the script written. We had him all ready to come to Montreal (where the series was shot) because he’s a friend of Mumy’s and, besides, he has friends in Montreal.

Who, you may ask?

“Weird Al” Yankovic.

We had an episode entitled “It’s My Birthday Too (Yeah)!” in which Al was going to play an accordion-playing alien hologram who would rampage throughout the ship, playing the Space Cases theme song at polka time.

Nickelodeon said “No.” The reasoning: “Weird Al” isn’t all that popular, and has no following among kids. The same month that the rewritten, Al-less episode aired, Al’s latest album debuted at #14 and went platinum within three months. It remains on the Billboard Top 200 even now, and CBS has given him a Saturday morning series in the vein of Pee Wee’s Playhouse. Not bad for an unpopular performer with no following among kids.

It’s frustrating enough to do everything you can and get your series cancelled. But to know that you could have done more and still get cancelled is even worse.

However, there’s no downplaying the impact that the series has had on my life. First and foremost, I’ve had the privilege of working with Bill on creating the show and writing the scripts. We worked together on scripts in every imaginable way: Sometimes he did the first pass on the script, sometimes I did, sometimes we each wrote half the script. On one memorable occasion, we were working on two different scripts seated across from each other and, every so often, we’d switch. (Since we were working off detailed scene-by-scene outlines, it was easy enough for one of us to pick up where the other stopped.) And the show’s producer, Susan Dietz, helped ramrod much of our vision through.

I was at all the casting sessions and I think we put together a great gang: Kristian (Radu) Ayre, Rahi (Bova) Azizi, Paul (Commander Goddard) Boretski, Paige (Rosie) Christina, Becky (Suzee) Herbst, Walter (Harlan) Jones, Cary (Davenport) Lawrence, Anik (Thelma) Matern, and Jewel (Catalina) Staite (who had to leave us after the first season, since she was contractually obligated to do a series for Disney called Flash Forward). And our sort of unofficial 10th cast member, Marcel Jeannin. Marcel, an incredibly versatile actor, was in our original, unaired pilot and became a sort of one-man rep company, appearing in four episodes in various guises. If anyone out there is putting together a convention and wants some terrific guests—guests who, by and large, are genuine science-fiction and/or comic-book fans and will appeal to kids as well as adults—get word to me and I’ll get word to them.

Nor will I forget filming in Montreal. I’ll never forget when people learned I’d be spending the entire winter up there. How they pitied me. So there I was in Montreal, and, in the meantime, New York got hit with the mother of all winters. It was like a thousand feet of snow. And in Montreal—not much of anything.

The fans have been and continue to be terrific. I can’t tell you how much it means to me to see how so many people have embraced the series, the characters, and the Space Cases universe—and don’t want it to end. And who knows? I mean, heck, if series ranging from Star Trek to The Jeff Foxworthy Show can be brought back, why not us?

The show gave me my nationwide acting debut, when I had a cameo playing Bova’s father in one episode. If nothing else, it convinced me that I shouldn’t quit my day job.

And I guess, most of all, I’m pleased for the opportunity the show gave my kids. They would come up, sometimes for a week at a time, and got along great with the cast. Gwen was an extra in one episode called “King of the Hill,” while Shana did a full-blown guest stint in our final episode, appearing as a computer entity named Pezu. Five-year-old Ariel didn’t get her own guest shot. She simply watched. The show had no greater fan. There was one time where she marched up to a kid on a playground and said, out of the blue, “Hi, I’m Ariel. My daddy does Space Cases. Do you watch Space Cases? It’s about some children out in space. It’s on Nickelodeon.” She just kept chatting for five minutes, as the other child stared at her in confusion, having no idea where this kid came from or what she was talking about.

Ariel was there for the last days of filming.

(As was Shana. Both of them can be seen in the lower left of this cast and crew photo, Shana in blue face makeup and Ariel holding a little doll of Bova.) She did nothing except watch the show being made, hour after hour. I thought she’d be bored out of her mind, but I couldn’t pry her from the soundstage. She seemed to be taking in everything. Just how much, though, I hadn’t quite suspected until just yesterday.

I was running Return of the Jedi for her, and she was watching the scene in the swamps of Dagobah wherein a glowing Obi-Wan Kenobi walks up to Luke Skywalker. And Ariel turned to me and said, “Daddy?”

Clearly she had a question. I figured there was some plot point that was confusing to her. She is, after all, only 5 (well, 5 and a half). I said, “Yes, honey?”

And she gave me a serious, thoughtful look and said, “Did they shoot Obi-Wan against a green screen?”

And if you don’t know what that means, I can send Ariel over to explain it to you.

(Peter David, writer of stuff, can be written to at Second Age, Inc., PO Box 239, Bayport, NY 11705. Latest weird Star Wars change: in Return of the Jedi, when Han Solo is hanging upside down from the skiff as Lando is about to be dragged into the Saarlac pit, the supposedly blind Solo shouted, “’Trust me!” and shot the creature’s tentacle, releasing Lando. But in the “Special Edition,” I could swear I heard additional dialogue with Han shouting something like, “I can see better now!” First Han lets Greedo shoot first and then he has to explain himself to Lando. Weird.)