GENE RODDENBERRY'S

"EARTH: FINAL CONFLICT"

One of the biggest surprises of the current television season is the syndicated series, Gene Roddenberry's Earth: Final Conflict, based on an unproduced 1976 Roddenberry script. Probably the most gratifying aspect of the show is the fact that it doesn't exist to exploit the Roddenberry name, but, instead, manages to capture his vision while simultaneously bringing it into the '90s.

The series' executive producers are Majel Barrett Roddenberry and David Kirschner, whose plate is pretty full these days with producing chores on Chucky Takes a Bride (a.k.a. Child's Play 4), the animated Ice Planet and the live-action version of Curious George, all of this while prepping the second season of E:FC. In the following interview, Kirschner discusses the series.

Q: I didn't know what to expect from this show. You really ought to be congratulated because I think the show has captured very much the Roddenberry vision. I'm actually amazed at how comfortable I am watching it.

A: Thank you, that means a great deal. There are people who I have spoken to who are very nice but they've said, "It just isn't Roddenberry if it isn't in space." Give the guy a break. In 1880 when Robert Louis Stevenson wrote Treasure Island, he was the toast of Europe, Then he turned around and wrote Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and the London Times said he should be banned from Victorian England. Then he turned around and wrote A Children's Garden of Verses. It's a pretty dangerous precedent to put blinders on the creative process or think that everybody should stamp out the same kind of material. I think that Star Trek was a blessing for what it did for his life, but also a curse in that it's the only thing that he was really known for. Through being fortunate enough to go through his archives, I was absolutely astounded at what this guy did. There were just so many things and thoughts and ideas, and he was not unlike Ray Bradbury, Steven Spielberg or creative people that can see beyond what the norm is. A couple of people were really upset that it wasn't constant spaceships and prosthetics. In actuality, and borrowing a little bit from Ray Bradbury, it's really the "Earth Chronicles"; the story of earth a couple of years in the future.

Q: An episode like "Miracle" is pretty gutsy where you're suggesting that many religious icons are connected with the Taelons.

A: Truth is, I took a lot of heat from guys that wear ties that are connected with the show who said that we would piss off a lot of people. Maybe we will, but I love putting something out there that suggests maybe all of this was a much larger plan. For the most part they're standalone episodes, although there's a thread that goes through them. There's a show called "The Secret of Strandhill" that takes place in Ireland. I'm very excited about it. We created kind of a different version of Stonehenge. When you and I were kids we'd watch Mission: Impossible, where they'd throw a red beret on a woman, put a cigarette in her mouth put some ditzy French music on in the background and we'd say, "Ooh, we're in France this week." Today with interesting computer graphics, we can go to Ireland and in this show what happens is a Taelon mosaic is found, and in the middle of the mosaic is a Taelon face. This mosaic is from right around the time of Christ. In one corner is Shiva, in one corner is Buddha, the other corner is Moses and in the other is the Virgin Mary and Christ. In the very center is this Taelon. It's really a very interesting show in that this Taelon was here about 2000 years ago and wandered the earth for quite a period of time. He was one of a great many explorers, if you will, that went down to different planets to find what would be the right place for the Taelons to come to. When he comes down, there are a great many people over a 1500 year period that he sits with. One is Buddha, Christ, Shiva, and what he beams back to his world is don't come here, this is not the right place. The reason for that is he fell in love with humanity and felt that despite its shortcomings and barbaric tendencies, it has an enormous potential. Of course in 2000 they decided to ignore his warnings and came down anyway. The character of Daan is very much enamoured with his teachings and feelings.

I grew up on Star Trek and of course loved it. I think if Majel said, "Here's another version of Star Trek that we want to make," I would have said I'll probably watch some episodes, but I don't want to spend a year away from my family just doing what's been done before and done well. But the idea of just trying to take what Mr. Roddenberry did and grow it into something else, that's what was really interesting.

Q: Another nice moment in "Miracle" is when it's discussed that what humanity deifies today, it could turn against tomorrow. There's a really sad look to Daan, who says that this has, indeed, happened before. I'm actually amazed that they let you put that on the air. Did you get any negative reaction to it?

A: There wasn't much negative feedback on the Internet. But I did get a ton of calls, including from my Rabbi, who loved what it said. I didn't know if I would get my seat bounced for the High Holidays, but he loved it.

Honestly, a lot of hard work goes into this thing. If this is the first series that I'm doing in my life, even if it fails it's a failure that people really looked up to.

Q: How did you come to be involved with this show?

A: Mrs. Roddenberry went to a couple of the agencies and decided that CAA would be the place for her. They put together a list of six top producers, and I was the only one who hadn't done television. It's funny, because I kind of stayed away from television. I won quite a few Emmys that I'm proud of, but they haven't been for series. They've been for specials, nothing on-going. I said that to Mrs. Roddenberry in our meeting, but we just hit it off.

Q: She said that you were more Gene than Gene.

A: Kind of from that a real friendship was born and she's the one that keeps the torch alive and kind of smacks me when she thinks I'm moving away from that in any way. What's great is that if I am, we have really good conversations for her to understand why I'm doing this and why I'm going in this direction. She really didn't like the concept of "Miracle." She said that Gene never touched on religion, but I said what about, "Bread and Circuses," which speaks about Christ in all sorts of interesting and esoteric ways? There are so many episodes that touch on things like that. Her point to me was that Gene was a humanist, and as a result of that he wouldn't touch religion. I said, "How can you talk about someone being a humanist and ignore the fact that man has needed to believe -- because of our insecurity -- in something much greater than ourselves from the time we climbed out of the primal ooze?" We went back and forth on that and she said, "If you feel it, I want you to do it. I don't agree with it." But we did it and the response has just been fantastic. What she's saying is, "Are you talking about your God, because you're not talking about my God?" I'm not sure what she means by that, because, quite frankly, all I'm talking about is adulation with the fact that overnight this little two-bit organization called the Church of the Companions has hundreds of thousands of members. It's the way that Christianity grew, it is what we are. Yet there are no new religions today because they've kind of become the tradition for us. Yet here is an opportunity with miracles, with a young girl's misplaced belief in seeing something that was never there, and the world so hungry to believe in something that they line up in back of her. That, to me, is what's fascinating and what I think was fascinating to D.C. Fontana [the writer behind this episode].

Q: Did you retain a lot of Gene's concept?

A: I would say the essence is absolutely there. The fact that it takes place a number of years after the Taelons arrived, that it had an impact on our society and one man, William Boone, must walk this razor's edge, if you will. In the drafts that I looked at, Boone's wife is alive. We thought it was important to make him unencumbered, so to speak. He had a child, which we didn't want. We wanted this guy to be able to travel the world and, in time, have relationships.

If you look at any of the shows that have ever been important television, they are shows that go against convention. I've used the X-Files argument -- be true to the vision of the show and let the audience discover it on their own -- but they say the X-Files is not syndication. They see the commonality in syndication is males between 18 and 34, and action.

Q: I think the early feeling was that this would be a rip-off of "V".

A: Actually on the Internet there's a "V" fan club and apparently they just love the show. There, too, before the show was on a lot of people kept saying to me, "This just feels like a 'V' rip-off." Well, Gene Roddenberry created this show before "V" was ever made.

Q: Do you see this as a limitless landscape you can paint on?

A: I really do, because there is a thread that moves through this thing as to why they are here and how it reveals itself; there is the thread of Daan going from being a very liberal member of the Taelons to becoming completely enamoured with humanity; to the individual stories and how our lives are affected by the Taelons.

The New York Post referred to us as Sci-Spy, and that's really what it is. There' a lot of Mission: Impossible kind of stuff going on in the course of this. What they said they loved about it was that not all the bad guys were so bad and not all the good guys were so good.

Q: Believe it or not, it reminds me of Wiseguy.

A: When I pitched it to Tribune, I said it was Mission: Impossible meets Wiseguy with aliens.