Despite the clear influence of the old west on popular science fiction stretching back to the listless Civil War veteran John Carter in Edgar Rice Burroughs’ A Princess of Mars, actually setting out to make a dedicated space Western – as opposed to a space opera influenced by Westerns – was altogether less common.
This dual heritage can now be seen running through the poncho-clad likes of The Mandolorian, Cowboy Bebop, Defiance, Obi-Wan Kenobi, and others, but 25 years ago – when Firefly was still a sepia glint in Joss Whedon’s eye – executive producer Richard C. Okie, a veteran of Quantum Leap and Earth: Final Conflict, and writer Herbert J. Wright, a regular contributor Star Trek: The Next Generation, birthed Martian Law.
The pilot episode, which never made it to series and – according to rumor – received a hastily edited TV movie treatment in 1998, gathered up a Magnificent Seven of talent both on and off-camera, took over the Old West set at Universal Studios, and dusted the heart of John Ford country in Utah with a deep red Martian glow. Every detail is wilder than the last as Kung Fu’s David Carradine and Candyman’s Tony Todd joined the future stars of Farscape and Roswell, under the watchful eye of a British wild child of cult horror.
As Told By
- Chris Zapara (visual effects supervisor)
- Jamais Casico (technical consultant
- Anthony Hickox (director)
- Kevin Farrell (illustrator/storyboard artist)
- Ben Browder (actor; the Deputy)
- Greg Edmonson (composer)
How Martian Law Began
Dubbed “Gunsmoke on Mars” by the trades (apparently a cursed description, as John Carpenter later used it for his critically panned 2001 movie Ghosts of Mars), the pilot of Martian Law went into production in 1997 at Universal Television and Rysher Entertainment for the UPN network.
In February 1998, the name was copyrighted by Rysher Entertainment and Martian Law Productions, Inc. Beyond that, the early stages of the show are a mystery and so we turn to some of our interviewees to follow the trail of their involvement.
Chris Zapara (visual effects supervisor): I was head of Digital Effects at Calico Entertainment at the time. While it sounds impressive, I had little experience in the industry. The company traditionally did hand-drawn animation, along with some motion control camera work. They wanted to get into digital effects, and I happened to have some film experience, and I knew some of the desktop VFX programs that were changing the industry at the time. Our team had done a few projects at Calico just before Martian Law (two features and a pitch for a series), and we had been literally learning techniques on the go while simultaneously building out a new department. My job was to be on set when they were shooting VFX scenes to ensure things get shot properly for us to do the effects later. After the shoot, I built some of the CG models and did much of the animation work on the show. I also managed our small team as we tackled the shots.
Jamais Casico (technical consultant): My backstory: I was (and am) a professional futurist, and in the mid-late 1990s I worked for a company called Global Business Network, based in the San Francisco area. One of the founders of GBN, an academic named Jay Ogilvy, had a habit of bringing over former students and friends to hang out and meet people. One of those students was a guy named Rick Okie, who was a TV writer. Rick — best known at that point as the showrunner for Renegade, with Lorenzo Lamas — had just been hired on as the showrunner for a science fiction production called Gene Roddenberry’s Earth: Final Conflict.
Part of the conceit of the show was that it was set in the very near future, so Rick needed some brainstorming about what a near-future Earth (with resident powerful aliens) could be like. Although a number of GBN folks contributed to the discussion, I really got into it. I exploded with ideas and plot concepts (to the degree that I was paid as a story consultant for one of the episodes) and worked well with Rick.
