Story Ideas 6: The Galactic Opera Series Triology

Working Title (codename): The Galactic Opera Series Trilogy (Romance of the Three Kingdoms in Space Trilogy)

Setting tagline: Earth, solar system, Galaxy, Space, planetary Colony

Expected media form factor: Novel Series, Movie, Multimedia Experiences.

Type: War / grand adventure / biopic / future human history

Maturity: Major Characters of many of the sub story plots developed, over all plot framework of one series completes, introduction written for one.

This project is a combination of Three Separate Epic Space Opera Series. However the all three can be traced to the famous Chinese Ming dynasty novel: Romance of the Three Kingdoms. It literarily began as a version of Romance of the Three Kingdoms in space for the first story of the Trilogy.

By Time line of initial development:
Solar Series  1993
Race Series  1997
Religion Series  2002

Solar Series (ideology):

It is called Solar Series because it took place only in our Solar System. It was about conflict of three politically divided fractions in a period of Earths future history where humans colonised the inner solar system planets. The three ideology  fractions are Neo Socialism of Planet Venus, Grand Capitalism of planet Earth and Militarism of Planet Mars. (Hence it can also be call the Ideology series)

Each fractions leaders believe they have the military might and political will to unite the people of the Solar system, hence war broke out between the three fractions.

This series was originally inspired by the famous Japanese novel Legends of the Galactic Heroes, but it draws heavily from Romance of the Three Kingdoms in character design also borrowed from Mobile Suit Gundam series in space colony and military setting.

One of the tragic event in the progression of the Earth bound human civilization to space colony world was developed in to a standalone movie story I labelled it ''Titanic in space''.

A sequel to the ideology series was scrapped for having too much resemblance to Legends of the Galactic Heroes in fraction setting.

Race Series

If the Solar series mark the creative process of mimicking famous prior works then Race Series is a natural progression in development of fresh ideas that has not been attempted before.

Started out as an excuse to use my own surname for the central character,  it grown from  the best elements already developed from the scrapped sequel to the Solar series in a totally different backdrop.  It evolved in to my first character driven plot that with an open ending.

It does carry loose continuity connection to the Solar series but the divided waring fraction in this time are based on the three major races of the human civilization: Caucasians, Asians and Africans.  

The world design still retain the Gundam like technology but on planetary scale. Battles still resemble closely with modern day war and world war two.

The main story focus on the reluctant younger son of a famous fleet commander in the Asian fraction where he must bear the weight of the family name and tradition to become as famous as his dad. Then he faces political infighting and on battlefield rivalry from allied culture such as Japan and Korea while battle the Caucasian forces.

The setting of the universe allow me to infuse political commentary of existing cultures and provide subjective and objective analyses to Asian, Caucasian and African cultures. It is way more complex than the political ideology set up in the Solar Series .

Religion Series

The bravest and most controversial of the three Galactic Epics, this plot draws no relation with the previous two what so ever. It bares much more western science fiction setup than Eastern culture stories for inspiration.

Just as the series title suggest this series' divided fractions are based on the major religion of the planet earth. The three fractions are: Christianity, Islam and multicultural Atheist.

Development began shortly after the war on terror period in early 2000s, it centres on three characters, two whom are moles sent to the religious fractions by the Atheist fraction that were once the unified galactic governing body of the human race across the galaxy.

Like the ideology series before it, each fraction believe they should be the dominant of the human race hence once again, wars of enormous scale ensures.

Unlike the previous two series where technology contain within the Gundam Robot as aircraft and tank, carrier task force, combine battle group framework in the last century. The technology in this universe has greater gap where each fraction, and they have unique weapons, strength and weakness.

Ultimately the plot was a self study of what damage it can cause with what I called 'human self-entric elevation': when a group of people believe their belief is the ultimate truth and everyone else should accept with no condition. Due to the controversial religious context, the difficulty of the research in both religions hinder plot development for the characters in the two religious cultures.

Summary:

The three Galactic Epic has covered ideology politics, race and religion conflict of the human race, I believe I have done enough incarnations of Romance of the Three Kingdoms in space.

Story Idea 5: Mobile Suit Gundam R, project: Revolution

Working Title (codename): Mobile Suit Gundam R / project: Revolution

Setting / keyword: Gundam, Galaxy, War, Future, Mobile Suit, UC, Giant Robot, ZAKU, MS

Expected media formfactor: High production quality mini-series, Multimedia Experiences, Game, scale model series

Story Type: War / Action adventure / gundam

Maturity: Characters, 80% of the detailed plot framework for entire series completed, Season one story line well developed. Technical design features for season 1 / 2 developed.

Visual media Format: TV /OVA level animations

episode Length: 45 minutes

Projected Seasons: 4 , 12-15 Episode per season.

Season one budget: 15 million USD

Universe Settings:

Space Colony World where groups of O'Neil class space colonies were build around the earth orbits just as traditional UC Gundam universes. Human exploration has reached on Mars, Venus plus moons of Jupiter.

Back story:

It was the end of the space migration era, where 96% of human population were migrated to space, leaving the polluted earth behind to recover. To speed up the process, thousands of nuclear fusion reactors are to be build, aim to use energy to filter to convert earth back to the clean state, yet it was projected to require 300 years to finish the project even it was to run at maximum capacity.

An unexpected virus suddenly spread through the space colonies, reached pandemic level quickly.
The Solar Federation was caught off guard for such an event, its heavy handed tactics in treating millions of carriers of the virus resulted three dozen colonies declare independence from the Federation. Among these colonies, Side 2 whom was the oldest of the colony groups became the strongest of the resistance forces. Its invention: a true militarised Mobile SUIT call: Gundam was so far ahead of anything Federation had in their arsenal, it quickly became symbol of Rebel resistance. 

The virus crisis quickly escalated in to what was known as the 200 days war. Federation won the war by mass producing  and convert colony construction MS call ZAKU and build thousands of cheap destroyers. However, during the lasts days of the war, a majority of colonies in side 2 mounted powerful booster rockets on their colonies and accelerated them away from Earth colony orbit.

The Federation then rounded up all those supported and joined the resistance as well as tens of millions of carrier of the virus, exile them on to the polluted earth and force them to work on the Earth regeneration project. Turning the whole planet a prison camp.

Season one: Rebel (brief note)

17 years has passed since the 200 days war, the location of the escaped Rebel colonies has been found: they anchored around a gigantic asteroid near the Mars orbit.

The Federation has since built up a huge military to eliminate the rebels. Just as the biggest expedition fleet ever assembled set sail towards its target, an uprising suddenly occurred on Earth.

Four new generation Gundams secretly assembled on Earth became the arrow head of the uprise movement. Caught by surprise Federation forces on earth was quickly apprehended, the orbital ring structure lost to Earth Rebels.

Colony security force found the four Gundams are each equal in power to a hundred ZAKUs. These four Gundams alone was capable of turning the tide of battle, defeating the Federation's first large scale counter attack to retake Earth.

After a costly defeat on Earth, the Federation had to divert half of the expedition fleet back to Earth in a hurry. Prompting  the Rebel colonies: Anti-Federation Alliance to launch their offensive on the expedition fleet, leading the battle is Gundam MK-IX, the direct descendent of the Gundam design 17 years ago.

Outcome for this war will be unpredictable as military might clash on two very different battle fields at about the same time...

Development notes:

The story has been in development for well over ten years, initially based upon the multi gundam multi character model pioneered by Gundam Wing. More elements from real world events such as SARs epidemic inspire new ideas help evolve the story further. Female as central lead characters were established early on, the conflict on how she use her powers was always the central theme of the story since girls shouldn't like the massive killing business, a complex mystery plot was developed around her character that would last the whole four seasons.

The US style 45 minute version won over traditional 22 minute model because more story can be tell and more intense per episode just as the UC OVAs would achieve. Four seasons was needed to tell the whole story. The release format is to be on Bluray and show on Western TV as full on adult entertainment. There is really no need for a TV series as today's multi delivery medium ensures it will reach billions watch them fast and sell the models to make money instead.

The show will last four seasons, roughly four years run time. The first season was set to be action pack to set the conflicts of the universe and with 2nd and 3rd season deepens the mysteries and conflicts between rival political camps and subsequently build up for a final conclusion season that again feature battle in a massive scale.

Temporary title for rest of the seasons:

• ·         Season 2: Reclaim
• ·         Season 3: Revelation
• ·         Season 4: Requiem

Note on character development:

This story is conceived as a Gundam Animation to be watched by first generation fans together with their children and the Seed generation fans would connect with.

The four pilots of the four Super gundams were two girls and two boys, age from 14-17. Among the four, the two girls are the key to the entire plot:

• ·         Primary Lead girl: age 14, Drive a Close Combat Energy weapon Gundam
• ·         Secondary Lead girl: age 17, Pilot the Ballistic weapon Gundam
• ·         Lead boy: age 15, Use Zeta like Gundam
• ·         Secondary Lead boy: age 16, operate Cannon Gundam

The four pilot's amazing skills to drive these machines will be properly explained and how they use their unique ability to drive these machines would be a central part of their character developments (i am very realistic on this front, so no kid that has not touch anything or training in episode one can be super pilots in my story, all of them will have a back-story.)

Since the aim is to include UC Fans who would be in their 30s and early 40s, there will be secondary adult lead characters in their late 30s, some will be the guardian to the children. Their parental / teacher relationship to the lead kids would be part of the interconnected character plot.  Then there is the character conflicts from the first War, which was visioned as Char and Ray rivalry / archenemies on the battle field. A few set of characters: two MS designers, two ace hero pilots, two tacticians would continue their conflicts in a personal level.

Character growth is key to the plot, all the four kid characters will grow up in the course of the war, their views on war, world, human equality, love and life will change. For the adult characters, they face decisions that affect the kids and their own battles with their past and present demons. Many of these character plot are set to occurred in the 2nd and 3rd seasons which has lesser large scale battles and more about mysteries and personal level plot twists.

Note on Gundam Design:

At one stage, there were five gundams, later on was modified to four. It bears some similarities to the concepts in 00 by coincident.

• The lead Gundam which is to be pilot by the 14 year old girl is an energy weapons centric close combat Gundam with femme features (one likely resemblance is that Evolved QuanT). 
• The next gundam pilot by the 17 year old girl is a projectile centric model akin to the two used by the lockon brothers in 00. 
• Then there is a Zeta inspired transformable delta wing gundam, 
• A Cannon weapon centric semi transformable ZZ like unit. 
• The originally planned   Strike / Impulse like multi role model was lifted to appear in the second season.

A lot of commercial factors are in-cooperated into the plot for model development. The gundams would go for face lifts and redesigns in every subsequence seasons. Hence there will be at least 4 versions for each of them.

Federations would develop more and more powerful machines that are not gundam like to counter them and shorten the technology gap (unlike what happen in 00).

The battles in this story are serious military type heavy with tactics and use of various types weapons and hardware, as the adult characters play key roles in these battles as they continue their rivalry.

The four Super Gundams are like a regiment of Tiger Tanks in WW2, which can obtain massive localised battlefield superiority  yet not enough to win strategically in the overall battle.

Note on other designs:

• ·         There would be no odd ball particles that can bend physics in different areas as the GN particle did, but will have some SF elements that is more believable and in-cooperate as much real science as possible.

Political Factions:

• ·         United Federation of Colonies, (UFC) the official bad guy of the Story
• ·         Anti Federation Alliance (AFA), the good guys, formed by Side 2 nation: ZEON after 200 days war.
• ·         Earth Liberation Front (ELF), The Earth fraction of the upraising
• ·         Mars Exploration Territory (MET), a supposed Neutral organisation  
• ·         Venus Energy Gathering Automated Networks (VEGAN), a supposed Neutral organisation
• ·         Utopic Colony Experiment (UCE), a Federation colony for 'advanced' and 'evolved' humans.
• ·         Fringe Resource Exploration Co (FREC), a mysterious company