Personal Space is a new
Science fiction webseries making its world premiere at the Boston
Science Fiction Film Festival on February 10thand on Amazon Video on March 2nd. It will also screen at the 2018 Philip K. Dick
Science Fiction Festival and Vancouver Web Fest. The show features and is dedicated to the memory of Battlestar Galactica's Richard Hatch, who died in February 2017, shortly after his scenes were filmed.
The series is a sci-fi dramedy that takes place in an alternate timeline where the American space program has been decades ahead of actual history. Generation ship Overture was launched on a very long journey in the early 90s to a distant star. The crew serves in 25 year shifts, with each shift passing the torch to
THE ONE after. The audience watches current events aboard the ship unfold in 2017, as the second shift is supposed to take command, while the crew of Overture speak in confidence to the ship's therapy computer. The key phrase here is "supposed to."
The ensemble cast also features Nicki Clyne of Battlestar Galactica, Kurt Yaeger of Sons of Anarchy, Cliff Simon of Stargate SG-1, Tim Russ of Star Trek: Voyager, Brent Bailey of Emma Approved, and Sean Persaud of Edgar Allen Poe's Murder Mystery Dinner Party.Mark Tierno, the star of SyFy's The Mercury Men, has an appearance as Wernher von Braun. The creative team is led by Tom R. Pike, withZack Wallnau & Dana Luery Shaw, who are known as the creators of the hit webseries Echo Chamber, as well as producer Jeff Hammer.
Personal Space came out of years of discussions and abortive plans between Pike, Wallnau, and Shaw to create a
Science fiction show set in space. Previous attempts had been too expensive, or if made cheaper, would have looked cheap. When they hit upon the idea of using the fixed perspective of a therapy computer, the team realized they had a way to tell a story with expansive scope without needing a TV-sized budget.
Using Kickstarter, the series was funded by 703 backers who raised $49,000 to bring the series to life. Shooting commenced in June, and again in September. 191 pages of script were shot in 11 days, including three scenes where Clyne, Hatch, and Persaud performed their own zero-g wirework stunts. Post-production on all 28 episodes took another year to complete. Now, more than three years after setting out to create the show, the series is finally set to premiere on March 2nd via Amazon Video and other streaming platforms.