This is a duplicate post of one I made at my own forums at scifi-online.org. I might try to steer people there, but then I've turned off registration due to all the spambots that kept trying to join. So I thought I'd post this here for the fuck of it and see if anyone might be interested in discussing the things I bring up here. This is all about the development of a rebooted version of the anime series Blue Gender. Why? Well, much like Enterprise, while I didn't care that much for its execution, I did like many of the concepts and feel kind of compelled to make a better version of it, just as I did for Enterprise by starting Foundations in much the same way I'm doing here now, with public input. While I would like help developing this, keep in mind that as a grad student, I'm probably not going to be able to get to work on this right away, much as I've been unable to really work on Foundations for quite some time. Still, it doesn't hurt anything to work on the concepts of the show even if there's going to be a long wait for any payoff. :-\ Anyway, let's get this ball rolling, since, to be fair, some of this is stuff that I worked out previously with my IRL friends, only to fail to write any of it down and to forget all of it. Things I liked about Blue Gender I liked the premise of the protagonist/viewpoint character waking up from cryo-sleep to find himself in a devastated world he knows nothing about. It's well after the end, and he has no idea what's going on or what the hell happened, or initially how long he's been asleep. Believe it or not, I also like this being because of giant bugs, and I even like the angle of the bugs being that they eat and make nests out of the artificial materials humans have made their cities out of. I also like the premise of a group of soldiers being sent to retrieve sleepers like the protagonist, and that shit hit the fan for them in this particular mission. I like the idea of Marlene, the strong, competent, ice-cold soldier who is a major driving force in keeping herself and the protagonist alive and getting them to safety. I also like the idea of both Marlene and the protagonist being changed during this, and the idea of them falling in love. I like the idea of "Second Earth" being in orbit, and even the idea of humanity, or at least the humans of Second Earth being messed up in their own way, though for me this would serve as both an obstacle, and as something that could be changed as the story goes on. Incidentally, this means I also liked the idea of the scientist guy leading a coup and the attempt at a counter-coup by the authoritarian leadership council. Yes, all of these things would still need to be developed and fleshed out more to make sure their execution didn't suck, but I at least liked the idea of these things. Problems with Blue Gender The major problem with Blue Gender was a lack of real coherence. This lead to many of the sudden changes in the story, and in character development. It's like the writing staff had no idea what to do with the many different ideas they brought up, which made the show kind of mysterious and drew the audience in early on, but then failed to have a satisfying conclusion to any of these various threads. Then there was the frankly insulting final revelation, which was that the planet was alive, as in literally alive, and it was trying to kill off humanity, because pollution and over-crowding, the ultimate upshot of which was that humanity would be better off living in grass huts in the jungle. It was kind of like watching something Micheal Piller had written for Star Trek later in his life, when he'd fully bought in to the idea of "rural simplicity" and thought that the Amish lifestyle represented a utopia all of humanity should strive for. And while I'm sure there's an audience for that, it isn't really the kind of thing one expects when tuning into a sci-fi. Also, Second Earth blows itself up at the end for no reason in a montage that lasts maybe a minute tops. Needless to say, I hope to remedy that lack of coherence and lose the hippie, "one with the Earth," kumbaya bullshit. What needs to be worked out The following is a list of items that I feel need to be worked out before the story proper can really be gotten into. Feel free to bring up items you feel should be added. Main Character: Who is he? What's his background? Is he an average Joe, or is he someone important? Personally, I kind of like the idea of someone who's kind of important, simply because that fits with the idea of cryogenic technology being a fairly new technology which might be expensive and not readily available to just anyone. This also fits in line with the idea that me might have a military background. This idea appeals to me because of the part in the original show where Marlene and her group treat Yuji, the protagonist, like he's basically a child, and he gets frustrated, insisting that he should be able to help defend himself. Just think of how much more frustrating that might be for someone who actually had combat experience, even if it wasn't against giant bugs. What do you think? Disease: The whole reason the protagonist is put into cryo-sleep in the original show was because he had some mysterious disease the doctors didn't understand, and they needed to make sure he and others like him would survive long enough for them to study it and come up with a cure. Pretty basic premise for any use of cryo-sleep that doesn't involve a long trip through space. The problem is that in the original show, they never really worked out all that well what the disease was or did. There was a suggestion that it was somehow connected to the giant bugs, referred to as "The Blue," but it was never really worked out beyond some of Yuji's fellow sleepers being able to control the Blue in order to bring them to Second Earth to finish wiping out humanity. The compilation movie (which sucked) made this more implicit, as in the sleepers having this mysterious "B-cell" could psychically control the Blue, and even went a step further by saying the Blue came about through experimenting with the B-cells to find a cure. The movie has the distinction of actually spelling out what the final fate of humans infected with it was, which basically consisted of them going crazy, babbling about the end of the world, and dying. The series almost ignored it, which kind of made the reasoning for putting Yuji in cryo-sleep a little pointless as he seems not to be in any physical danger from it. The other angle to this is that there has to be some reason why the people infected with this disease (whatever we end up calling it), are of such interest to the Second Earth people that they'd risk their military assets to retrieve the sleepers. In the series, this essentially amounted to the sleepers somehow being able to be better mech pilots (because it it's nearly impossible to have an anime without mech suits of some kind ) This didn't make much sense to me, especially since they'd be losing perfectly good mech pilots in their attempt to retrieve these sleepers, and even if these B-cells somehow enabled the pilot 's nervous system to directly interact with the control systems of the mech, the mech would still have all the same vulnerabilities of their non-B-cell controlled counterparts, and the problem with the Blue is that they're bugs, so they swarm and overwhelm any attackers. The compilation movie suggested a direct connection to the Blue, as in Second Earth thought they could use the B-cell infectees to psychically control the Blue, so the Blue would just sit there and allow themselves to be slaughtered. Of course both the series and the movie glossed over the way the sleepers, including a teen-aged girl, were effectively drafted and made into soldiers, so there's also that. I like the idea that the infection could somehow be related to the Blue, but it doesn't necessarily have to be. It should probably be something they can use to fight the Blue with though, and with enough of an advantage that Second Earth is convinced they actually have a shot at defeating the Blue and reclaiming the planet once and for all. The hows and whys of this definitely need to be worked out before the story can be developed around it. Also important is what the disease does to the people it infects and how it spreads. This is not just important to the set-up of the protagonist's story and how it relates to the Blue, but in how Second Earth resolves it as a problem for those who are infected. There has to be an explanation for how the disease is dealt with in order to keep the people infected with it alive, and to keep the disease from spreading to Second Earth's population (or others on Earth), especially since the protagonist will be in close contact with other humans on the way to the space shuttle that eventually takes him there. The Origin and Spread of the Blue: The series hints at the origin of the Blue being the result of experimentation. Okay, actually it outright states that this was all Earth's secret evil plan, which depended on humans creating the Blue, because Earth is psychic and knew humanity would create them. The movie goes a step further and says that the experimentation was an attempt to find a cure for the disease the sleepers are infected with. I'd prefer something a bit more well thought out that that, as well as a plausible explanation for why the military was unable to deal with what amounted to giant bugs, which might pose a problem for infantry and possibly even armor, but would probably be pretty vulnerable to aircraft attacking them, at least if they were as presented in the series and the compilation movie. Something else that was kind of glossed over in the series and movie was how humanity had enough time to construct Second Earth and how they were able to select the people who would populate it, since Marlene's backstory narration suggested it was all very sudden. There are a number of thoughts that come to mind as to the origin of the Blue. 1) The Blue are extra-terrestrial life forms. a) They arrived directly through some means, either as a vanguard to invasion, or by chance, much like the arachnids from Starship Troopers spreading themselves throughout the galaxy and establishing nests on habitable planets. b) They are a mutation created through an infection of some kind on local fauna, which could potentially connect to what the protagonist is infected with. 2) The Blue are the result of a biological weapons program. a) The giant bugs themselves were the end goal and meant to be weapons themselves. This could be the reason why they are so difficult to beat using conventional weapons. b) The giant bugs are the result of local fauna being exposed to the biological agent, either through intentional infection, or accidental release. This could also serve as a potential connection back to what the protagonist and the other sleepers are infected with. 3) The Blue are a fluke of nature, and actually developed on their own in some remote jungle, like the Congo or Amazon. The problem with this is that there isn't an apparent connection to the disease humans are being infected with, unless it's something resulting from being bitten by a kind of proto-Blue, which are more normal-sized at the time people are being infected, but grow into giants by the time the show picks up the story. This leaves the other problem in that there's no apparent reason why the Blue would go from being jungle dwellers to eating and using human-made materials in cities for nesting material. Another problem to work out is how the Blue spread. I don't have as much thought on that yet, though, other than I imagine they should probably be seen as something that isn't that big of a problem at first, like maybe they're geographically isolated somehow and/or it's still seen as possible for the military to kill them fairly easily. Then maybe they can spread by getting aboard ships or aircraft. Or something like that. Setting: This applies as much to when as where. Cryo-sleep is something we seem to be on the cusp of achieving, though to be frank we seem to have been just on the cusp of it for many decades now. Still, it seems somewhat plausible for the protagonist's story to start in the near future, giving the overall story a kind of grounding for the audience. Of course this then leads to the question of where the protagonist is from, and where he ends up when the soldiers from Second Earth give him his rude awakening. That also leads into the question of how long he's been asleep, and when the majority of the story takes place. I suppose it could be argued that Second Earth was the result of some forward thinking people, who might have been akin to the survivalist types you hear about living out in the woods, except they want to live in space. That might have given them something of a head start when the Blue threat first makes itself known, but it still takes a long time to build space stations like that. It also leads to the question as to whether part of the reason the humans living there might not be so disconnected from humanity is because they've been living in space stations their whole lives. The alternative to that is that most of the people there actually do have some memory of Earth, which is why they might still be fighting so hard to get it back. Could go either way, really. So the question would be, is 20 years long enough to build space stations and to develop the various other bits of hardware necessary not only for extended life in space (artificial gravity, sustainable hydroponics or potential partial terraforming of the Moon to grow crops, advanced recycling, water and air production and/or recycling etc.) as well as for repeated trips to and from Earth for their various missions combating the Blue, or in the case of the main storyline, retrieving sleepers. As an aside, I do like the idea that the existence of the sleepers and their disease having a potential for combating the Blue being something that was just recently discovered in relation to when the series takes place. Something else to consider would be competing factions on Earth. They made a point of saying the Blue couldn't swim, so it's plausible for there to be a rag-tag fleet or an underwater colony that could be none too fond of Second Earth, and there could be a conflict between the two of them even as both try to fight the Blue. Of course, this might complicate things too much, and the idea of a rag-tag fleet or even an underwater colony might actually serve as an alternative to space stations for Second Earth, it that's what we even end up calling it. So, what do you think? Do you like any of the things I proposed and could perhaps add to them? Do you have any other ideas you think might improve this series? Sound off and let me know.
