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TV

A documentary is aired (in the fictional story and as a teaser to the TV series) about a mysterious facility that has been discovered in Nevada. It is mostly found footage from a documentary maker who has disappeared. The person who edited and produced it has also disappeared.

“The Scar” is an abandoned mine with a strange structure built on top of it. Like a large concrete auditorium or gymnasium, it is featureless on the outside and inside except for four things: a 3-foot high door for entering it, and a massive mural on the ceiling. The mural is of what looks like a cauterised wound, a fissure or a scar.  And the roof is painted to match the surrounding desert. From above the structure is perfectly camouflaged. It is in a small low valley, where it is not visible from local known places. The fourth thing is a giant metal trap door in the floor with no visible means of opening it. An esoteric symbol is on the door.

Google Maps clearly shows how well disguised it is, but aerial photos from 1948 show what lies beneath the building, before it was built – a scar in the ground identical in shape and size as the mural.

Local (ranchers?) are interviewed, they all say it used to be a mine (and describe it with the same words, like what they heard came from the same source) and they have all heard various rumours:

It was a retreat for crazy artists
Survivalist bunker
Nuclear test site
Prison for domestic terrorists
Set for a movie about aliens that was never released
Hellmouth

THE TV SERIES

The first four episodes are each about people who saw the documentary and felt compelled to go find The Scar and solve the mystery. We see their background, why it interests them, what they are risking (family, friends, jobs, school) if they get caught or make fools of themselves. And see their visit to The Scar. Each discovers something new about the place, and each doesn’t return.

5. (Earlier) A scientist, high up in the military, decides to blackmail his superiors. He has abandoned his job and taken secret files with him.

6. (Earlier)  Military officials decide to call his bluff with a documentary where they control the information – disinformation. At the same time a massive manhunt is under way with orders to shoot to kill.

7. (Earlier) The scientist leaves copies of the files with his cousin, a young woman, asking her to release them if she never hears from him again. She never hears from him again.

And then….

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The Prisoner, from the 60s, is one of my all time favourite TV shows, and very prescient. However it has numerous flaws, including the stupid suffocating balloon.

It could do with a major reimagining, while keeping the core aspects:

  • everything is monitored
  • lead is a hero spy
  • they try to indoctrinate him
  • he relentlessly tries to escape

Whether you stage it in Portmeirion again, or some isolated village, or a city suburb… you need a believable mechanism that stops him escaping. Wayward Pines had monsters. It can’t be a bloody balloon.

Ideas:

  • an implant that doses you with heroin when you reach the perimeter
  • Robocops
  • demons or aliens – it would add a layer to things
  • retinal implants that make you blind (when you reach the perimeter)
  • incidents that play to your profile, like a woman in distress, or alluring temptations

Or everyone could just be conditioned using a combination of drugs in the water and propoganda

Or a multiple combination of the above, for an outlandish level of layers.

The tone could be incredulous exasperation. Ridiculously unbelievable but real.

And for an extra layer, people start dying, and people that the hero trust tell him it is a game of survivalism, dog eat dog, Battle Royale.

The propaganda could be made fun, with “Let’s Make X Great Again” catch-phrases, and guilty pleasure pop songs front and centre.

The original storyline needs to go. It shouldn’t be about politics, but rather are you part of society or not. Think your own mind, or not. Throw in big aspects of The Truman Show. And Big Brother.

Other ideas:

  • No cash. Everyone uses a card that is tracked
  • Only one type of phone / phone service. Run by a mysterious mega-corporation
  • When he escapes to the next town/suburb, it is the same situation all over again
  • No time. No news. How goods arrive is a mystery
  • Everyone has a service job. There is no manufacture
  • People worship a sigil that defines everything that is good
  • Children are unusually bright
  • People disappear when they turn 60

Actually, do a Stranger Things. Liberally steal from The Truman Show, Wayward Pines, Big Brother and The Prisoner.

Cast Matt Damon as the lead. He has done spy, and stranger in a strange land more the once.

 

 

 

 

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Many Sci-Fi authors have looked into the idea of humans “terraforming” other planets, changing the landscape and even climate to suit human habitation.

But what if aliens decided to terraform our planet, tomorrow?

What if some teen friends (ET, Goonies, Stranger Things) are at ground zero, witness the UFO, notice the gradual change in their environment?

Plants mutate, grow and spread everywhere, animals become more sentient, humans start acting weird, and it rains a lot.

Why aren’t our heroes affected? Well one of them has a conspiracy theory nut father, and they hide in his Faraday cage when they see the UFO. We never know the method of the terraforming (because the humans don’t either), but you could infer it was generated using electro-magnetic energy.

Every episode their world transforms more, and by the season’s end everywhere is a jungle, most humans are dead or mad, animals are starting to take control, and at the end of the last episode, a UFO returns.

Season 2 could be Predator meets Walking Dead meets Red Dawn.

 I’m aware of Defiance, but this is a completely different take…

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Many things that we accept as belonging to a particular culture are imported.

Italy didn’t used to have tomatoes
Arabic numerals are actually Indian
India didn’t use to have chillis
England didn’t used to have curries
American hamburgers are from… Hamburg

I could go on. Such a show would be interesting and spark lively debate, but also it is a reminder of how everything is in flux, including culture and history.

 

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youtube-kids

Autoplay is fine on Facebook, it is an active response to your scrolling through the feed. It wastes bandwidth, but provides additional revenue for Facebook, which means there is at least some value for someone attached to it. But is stops when you stop.

The story is quite different for YouTube, which these days plays the next video immediately after the one you chose to watch. Yes, there is value for Google, but when people stop watching, often the videos keep streaming.

While many grown ups might leave YouTube videos running in a browser tab, the chief culprit is children and Apple TV / ChromeCast. Children (and half of the adults out there) think that turning off the TV stops the streaming of the media they are watching. It doesn’t – the iPod, iPad or smartphone that is feeding ChromeCast keeps streaming youTube, even while the screen is off. For hours and days. When the TV is switched back on, the child is pleased that YouTube is still running, saves them a few steps.

Prediction: Internet providers will create advertisements pleading people to stop their app instead of switching off their TV.

 

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An intelligence chief is ranting about his needs. He says we need:

someone who has a fleet mind and lots of muscles….

His subordinates take this as an order and recruit Nickel Hayes, a flawed but talented quarterback with  a 3rd-tier team.

Nick becomes a spy for hire, as long as it fits in with his football schedule. Every episode is a different city.

Nick has a model girlfriend, but his female un-model agent helper slowly becomes his best friend 😉

The Chief was forced/tricked/unassumingly made Nick a big budget operative.

Every case is different, because Nick is the big buck $$$ superstar case-solver. Murder, corruption, and so on [Mentalist but gutsier… shhhh]

Nick is ultimately a nice guy with quick wits and athletic skills.

Slowly Nick evolves into an intelligence operative, and slowly he falls for his helper agent.

Meanwhile, he is so pumped by his off-field activities that on-field he is on fire. His team rises and he becomes a celeb…

 

He is one part Johnny English, one part James Bond, one part [put famous good looking quarterback here, I am not American]

 

The show offers:

  • a variety of USA locations – international in Season 2 when he becomes a kickboxer
  • action befitting a fit football star
  • morals befitting the ideal football star
  • high life lived
  • low-life of crimes investigated
  • cleverly having Nick involved but never implicated – the key point of difference!
  • PATRIOTISM
  • an inside look into the training and dedication – too often we see heroes with perfect abs and no explanation of how they developed them. Lets see the hard work for a change…
  • Nick’s family is not mentioned. Season 3 could involve a conspiracy to involve him because of X family reason (his Dad went AWOL for example)

 

A new Hart to Hart, a new Moonlighting, with the glitz of Vegas and the innocence of Joey from Friends.

 

FREE IDEA: Just credit me as a co-creator.

 

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This is a case of “just watch”, but I guarantee it will cause a WTF? moment for most folk. Video can be seen here:
http://anthillonline.com/banksy

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