Marc Scott Zicree is an accomplished writer, director, and, producer. In 1982, he wrote The Twilight Zone Companion, one of the first (and still one of the best) television show episode guide/companion books. He has written scripts for some of televisions biggest sci-fi shows– Star Trek:The Next Generation, Sliders, Babylon 5, and well as animated shows like Smurfs, The Real Ghostbusters and Super Friends.
Now Zicree, along with his wife Elaine, has created his own sci-fi franchise–Space Command— which they finance and produce independently without any type of studio interference.
Cherry the Geek TV met with Zicree at this year’s San Diego Comic Con to talk Space Command, The Twilight Zone, and more.
Zicree said he created Space Command after noticing that modern sci-fi shows were getting too dystopic in their visions of the future. “I was seeing that all the science fiction tended to be extremely negative. Battlestar Galactica was great, but you never had a birthday party on it, for instance. I wanted to do something that was hopeful and inspiring like Star Trek had inspired me when I was a kid,” he said. “Let’s do a space-going show that says we can come together across boundaries and barriers. We can create a future worth living in–but it comes from compassion, it comes from action.”
Zicree, having dealt with studios and studio interference on past projects, decided to raise money through crowdfunding and selling investment shares for $7500 each. He ended up with $4 million and opened his own studio. “Space Command is a 12 hour series. We completed the first hour called Space Command: Redemption, and we finished shooting the sixth hour called Space Command: Forgiveness, and now we’re shooting the next two-hour story which is called Space Command: The Great Solar War.”
Zicree has assembled an all-star cast made up on many sci-fi notables from series he had previously written on– Mira Furlan from Babylon 5, Robert Picardo from Star Trek:Voyager, Bill Mumy from Lost in Space/Babylon 5, Doug Jones from Star Trek:Discovery, and Bruce Boxleitner from Babylon 5, just to name a few.
The cast isn’t just made up of famous friends, though. “Since I was casting so many famous actors–fan favorites, my favorites– I thought, for the two leads, why don’t we have a worldwide talent search? Anyone, anywhere in the world could audition for the two leads roles–Captain Kemmer and Cadet Bradbury. So we put out that they could download the audition sides and make their own audition, and we would look at it and seriously consider it. We got 7000 inquiries, 1200 videos–and we cast nine of our leads from those auditions,” Zicree said.
There is another Kickstarter to raise funds for the next Space Command film —The Great Solar War. You can read about it and pre-order the episode in various formats, along with other perks by clicking here: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/spacecommand/space-command-great-solar-war
We also talked with Zicree about The Twilight Zone Companion, which is still in print forty years later–now in it’s Third Edition. “It’s one hundred pages longer. It’s got 500 new photographs and links to audio and video rarities,” Zicree said. “The reason I wanted to do a new edition is because after I finished the book, people kept telling me stories from when they were making The Twilight Zone–the directors, the actors. I said ‘Why didn’t you tell me when I was doing the first book?’ And it’s like–well, I’ve got to put this in the book somehow.”
Zicree feels blessed that the book is beloved and still in print four decades later. “I wrote the book partially because I wanted to learn about the show. I knew I wanted to be a writer and producer on TV, and I wanted to make great shows. And so the way you learn how to write great shows or make great shows is you study how a great show was made. And The Twilight Zone was one of my favorite shows, and it was two years after Rod Serling died prematurely in 1975 of heart of open heart surgery. You know, his heart failed him, and so his house was still there. His wife was still in the house. The dog, his dog was still there. There was one room with just all the awards, the Emmys and the Golden Globes and all of that. And his attic was still there with all of his scrapbooks. And so I literally crawled through Rod Serling’s attic to research that book. And the interesting thing you weren’t the only person who read it and loved it. A whole generation of teenagers read that book and decided that they would become writer producers in television. And so there’s a whole generation of showrunners–from Damon Lindelof (Lost, Watchmen) to Ronald D. Moore (Star Trek, For All Mankind), on and on and on. David Chase (The Sopranos) is a huge fan of The Twilight Zone. Almost all of them–their icon, their role model–is Rod Serling, and it came from reading The Twilight Zone Companion, because I was in my early 20s when I wrote it, so the teenagers reading the book were not much older than me.”
Zicree says Rod Serling is THE reason that the original Twilight Zone had such a cultural impact while later iterations did not. “Most of the great science fiction shows have a visionary at the top, whether it’s Rod Serling or Gene Roddenberry (Star Trek) or J. Michael Straczynski (Babylon 5) or Chris Carter with The X-Files–there’s someone at the top who has the vision and has the power to see it through. And I think Rod was the first of that breed. That’s why we all model ourselves after Rod, because he was the first writer to say ‘I’m going to run the show and I’m going to be–the buck stops with him’. Prior to that, in television, the producers ran TV–and the writers were subordinate to them. Rod was the first one to say, ‘No, no, I’m in charge.’ And so he got a terrific producer, Buck Houghton, and he had great taste in actors and in composers, Bernard Herrmann and Jerry Goldsmith for God’s sake, and Franz Waxman and everything. It started with the writing, because Rod was so brilliant, such an amazing writer. And then he got this whole team of people around him and and it just, you know, it was phenomenal. Week after week after week. And so the later versions, later incarnations of Twilight Zone, one of which I wrote for, they just didn’t have that–that guy at the top–really, and it’s lightning in a bottle. You know, you can’t plan for that. You can hope for it, but you can never actually design it, because it’ll happen or it won’t,” he said.
What is Zicree’s favorite Twilight Zone episode? “Walking Distance. I love Walking Distance. It was Rod’s favorite. It’s about a man who goes back to his hometown and he finds himself in the past of his childhood. And the interesting thing about that episode was, when Rod Serling was in World War II as a paratrooper, he learned that his father had died, and he asked to be excused to go to his father’s funeral. He loved his dad, and he was not allowed to, so he never got to say goodbye. And so that episode, he goes back into his past and gets to sit down with his father and talk to him and bid him farewell. That was Rod’s farewell to his father. So it was a deeply personal episode, and it’s gorgeous in every way.”
You can watch the full interview with Marc Scott Zicree by clicking on the link below:
Space Command: Redemption is available to rent or buy on Google Play and Amazon Prime, or watch for free with ads on Tubi.
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