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Doorways (1993)

 
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Pow
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PostPosted: Sun Sep 01, 2019 11:54 am    Post subject: Doorways (1993) Reply with quote

Doorways, April 21,1993 was a sci~fi TV movie that also served as a pilot.

Created by George R.R.Martin the premise for the potential TV series was about parallel Earths.

Cat, a mysterious woman suddenly appears on a freeway in the midst of traffic. She fires her unique looking weapon at an oncoming truck which then explodes. She is wounded by flying shrapnel & is taken into a hospital.

Treated by Dr. Thomas Mason who is most curious about her. F.B.I. agents sweep in and take Cat from the hospital and an outraged Dr. Mason.

F.B.I. agents take an interest in Cat by holding her prisoner at a secure facility where they have scientists examine her hand weapon. A device that is far advanced from our current technology.

They also are studying Cat's bio-organic bracelet.

Getting nowhere, the agents recruit Dr. Mason to help get answers from the defiant & mistrusting & frightened Cat. Thomas is given Cat's strange bracelet to ask her what is its purpose?

Cat is able to convince Thomas that she is indeed not of his Earth but from another Earth in a different dimension. She was a slave there by a Dark Lord before she escaped & was able to journey to another Earth. The bracelet begins to glow which tells Cat that her former captors are nearby.

She is being pursued by the Dark Lord and his bounty hunters who arrive at the F.B.I. facility.

During the battle between the agents & the bounty hunters Cat is able to grab both her weapon & bracelet & flee with Thomas in a stolen auto.

Cat's bracelet displays a hologram which indicates when & where the next doorway will open to another Earth.

Cat & Thomas arrive at the designated location just as the bounty hunters & Dark Lord arrive to capture her. After a firefight Cat & Thomas are able to escape through the vortex to another Earth.

Cat & Thomas appear on a world where all the oil has been consumed by genetically engineered creatures. Their purpose was to clean up an oil spill but they raged out of control,bred,and devoured all the oil.

This world has fallen into a savage world where people prey upon one another.

As a big fan of Sliders which was also a sci~fi TV show involving traveling to other Earths, I would have enjoyed this similar themed series.

Journeying to alternate Earths offers the same scope of possible stories as TV shows like Star Trek. On ST a brand new world had different and unknown civilizations that offered a new adventure for the star ship crew.

The same would apply to the various and unknown Earths on Doorways. These Earths developed differently and writers could take these Earths in any direction they could imagine.

The show could cover a plethora of issues & do so in various manners. The new Earths could range from tragic to comedic with their cultures. Humor, horror, sci~fi technology, pure adventure, could all be adapted for such a premise and keep it interesting and fresh.

ABC sadly did not pick up this compelling pilot and instead (and unfortunately) decide to go with Lois & Clark: The Adventures of Superman for their schedule that year.

I am hoping and praying that with Martin's enormous hit with his Game of Thrones TV show on HBO that interest in his Doorways could awaken & the concept be given another opportunity for television.
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Bud Brewster
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PostPosted: Sun Sep 01, 2019 3:01 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

________________________________

Thanks, Pow! This unsold pilot sounds cool! Cool

YouTube has a video of the movie, but it's one of those versions with the picture darkened way down, with a slightly brighter spot in the middle. Rolling Eyes

But they do have a short video of the opening scenes with a good picture (even though it's stretched horizontally to fill the screen, dammit . . . ), so at least we can enjoy the well-done promo from the beginning of the movie. Very Happy
________________________________


____________ George R R Martin's DOORWAYS


__________


Listen carefully to what the narrator says about the alternate universes.
________________________________

Perhaps this is not the only world. Perhaps for every world where the coin came up heads, there's another where it came up tails.

~ A world where Hitler won the second world war.

~ A world where Indian "Columbus" discover Europe in three tiny sailing ships.

~ A world where John Kennedy assassinated President Lee Harvey Oswald.

~ A world where Elvis is still singing . . . and Marilyn lived on to win a dozen Oscars!

~ A world where dinosaurs still rule the earth, and a world where magic works — and physic's doesn't!

~ A world where the Dodgers never left Brooklyn.

Worlds upon worlds, universe upon universe, lying as near to each other as pages in a book, yet each different, each telling its own story. An infinite number of worlds, all dimly dreaming of one another.

And between them . . . perhaps there are . . . Doorways!
________________________________

Some of the ideas are very different from the standard Sliders concepts, like an Earth where Germany got the atomic bomb first. I mean, who'd have ever thought to suggest a world that reversed the roles of Kennedy and Oswald, or the Native Americans and the crews of Columbus' ships! Shocked

Such concepts don't just suggest a small change in History which would lead to large consequences, like the German A-bomb. With differences like these we'd have to consider changes that went far back into history.

The dinosaur world idea, for example, would mean the asteroid missed Earth, and evolution ended up causing multiple sentient species on Earth . . . some of which are reptilian! Shocked

The Kennedy / Oswald concept would mean a drastically different history for both the entire Kennedy family and Oswald's ancestors, before we even got to the point where John shoots Lee, instead of vice shooting versa! Confused

My favorite idea is the one about the Native Americans discovering Europe. That one means the Indians developed a more advanced civilization than the one which occurred on this Earth. They actually became a sea-going culture who traveled by ships back and forth between the East and West coasts of North and South America.

But wait, the Aztecs and the Incas might well have done that eventually if the Spaniards hadn't destroyed them after they arrived in search of gold!

But what if those early American cultures had developed large sailing ships and begun to trade, cooperate, and advance long before the Spanish arrived? In that universe, they might have sent an expedition to the east well before Columbus set out towards the west!

With fleets of ships like those that were common in Europe during the Age of Discovery, starting in the 15th century —



— the united Native American cultures would have flourished along the expansize coastlines of both North and South America. Rather than battling with each other (which they frequently did), a robust trade would have made peace more profitable. The diverse cultures would have mixed and "standardized" to some degree, easing cultural conflicts.

Communications between the regions would have occurred more rapidly, making localized governments easier to manage.

So, where am I going with this?

If the Native America cultures were united, prosperous, and as technologically advanced as the Europeans before Columbus discovered the New World, history would be VERY different if they discovered Europe — instead of the other way 'round.

In that universe, the Native American's would be much less superstitious and easily deceived by the greedy Europeans. A hundred-plus years of travel, trade, and cultural exchange throughout the two American continents would have prepared them just as well as the Europeans for the culture shock which resulted.

And the Native Americans would have plenty of resources to trade with the Europeans . . . including an abundance of something highly valued in Europe.


Gold!

Yes, indeed, I can imagine a very different world history if the Native American's had developed a thriving sea-going civilization before the Europeans even showed up.

Interesting idea, eh? Very Happy

_________________
____________
Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)


Last edited by Bud Brewster on Mon Mar 28, 2022 1:24 pm; edited 2 times in total
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Krel
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PostPosted: Sun Sep 01, 2019 3:47 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

George Martin talked a little about it at convention. He said it fell apart during discussions with ABC. They wanted to do shows about truly different civilizations. ABC wanted to do shows like, it's just like here but the men wear dresses. They just couldn't agree.

I haven't seen the pilot, but supposedly, there are some suspicious resemblances to this show in "Sliders".

David.
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Bud Brewster
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PostPosted: Sun Sep 01, 2019 4:26 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Krel wrote:
ABC wanted to do shows like, it's just like here but the men wear dresses. They just couldn't agree.

Wow, that would be wild! Men wearing dresses! And to make it REALLY crazy, the men wouldn't be real MEN . . . they'd secretly be . . . women! Shocked

(Wait, that brings everything right back to normal! I did a 360° instead of a 180° . . . . )
Rolling Eyes
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Is there no man on Earth who has the wisdom and innocence of a child?
~ The Space Children (1958)


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Pow
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PostPosted: Mon Sep 02, 2019 1:20 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

George R.R.Martin first pitched "Doorways" in 1991. The movie/pilot was filmed in 1992.

"Sliders"debuted on March 22,1995 & ran to February 04,2000 for 5 seasons & 88-episodes.

I'm a fan of "Sliders." Did the creators of the show, Robert K.Weiss & Tracy Torme, borrow some of Martin's concepts from "Doorways?" Who knows for certain?

Film and television does have a history of taking material from other sources and adapting it for their own productions without consulting the originators.

Gene Roddenberry said that CBS had him in for an interview regarding his idea for a science~fiction TV show called "Star Trek.'' The network said later they weren't interested in his series.
GR said that it later dawned on him that CBS was never really interested in doing Gene's show at all. They just wanted to hear about his concepts & story ideas so that they might later apply it to their sci~fi series "Lost In Space."
In other words Gene had been had.

Harlan Ellison successfully sued the producers of "The Terminator"because the idea was lifted from his sci~fi short story "Soldier"which was later done on The Outer Limits for an episode.

I always thought that creators for film or television projects would legally be sure that their ideas would make their projects untouchable by other producers.

I guess there are ways to get around that by some producers. Sometimes they get away with it,sometimes they are caught with their hand in the cookie jar.

I've no clue as to whether "Sliders"profited from "Doorways"in any manner.

Other than the premise of people journeying to alternate Earths,the shows were different enough to not be exact copycats.

As much as I enjoyed "Sliders"& the wonderful (original) cast, I found the "Doorways"concept stronger from the point of origin story.

On "Sliders"we have brilliant science student Quinn Mallory able to create a vortex to other worlds.
Quinn was actually investigating the force of gravity when he stumbled upon opening gateways to other Earths.
Some of science greatest discoveries are indeed accidental.

I always had to chuckle at this origin. A lone kid creates all of this without any other scientists or massive government or corporate funding.
Did it all by his lonesome in his basement.
Sounds more like a Disney movie.

"Doorways"had the technology for crossing over to other worlds come from just such a world.
It made much more sense to me.

Our Earth is incapable of scientifically creating such tech at this time...maybe ever.

But "Doorways" makes it feasible by not having such technology from our Earth. It comes from another Earth that one can make a case that it was able to be far in advance to our technology.

Sadly,both series never were able to fulfill their respective promise.

"Doorways" because it wasn't picked up for a series.
"Sliders" did have a number of strong episodes in its early season, but suffered with the FOX Network's mishandling of the show.
FOX interfered enough so that the show's creators walked away. Producers and writers came and went, and so did cast members.

All of those disruptions made for uneven seasons and episodes with variable quality.

It would be fantastic to see either "Doorways" or "Sliders"revived and their potential realized.


Last edited by Pow on Mon Nov 02, 2020 5:34 pm; edited 1 time in total
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PostPosted: Sat Sep 05, 2020 12:42 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

It has been interesting to read George R.R.Martin's original script for the "Doorways" TV movie/pilot and see just how different it was from the filmed TV movie.

In the TV movie we see Cat & Tom journey to an alternate Earth where oil and gas nor longer exist.

On this Earth, scientists had created an oil eating microbe in order to clean up the environment whenever there was a disastrous massive oil spill.

Thing went awry---as they always must for a plot---and the darn microbes not only consumed oil spills; they gobbled up all the existing oil on this Earth.

Now everyone was reduced to transportation via horses, bicycles or hot air balloons.

It was a compelling look at this other Earth and how their society had to adapt to a world without oil.

The script that was unused had a much different plot from the televised TV movie.

Now Tom & Cat arrive in a frozen wasteland on this other Earth.

It's Colorado.

Synopsis : The 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis on this Earth became hot and resulted in nuclear missile strikes by both the US & the Soviet Union.

The planet suffered from poison rains, crop failures, starvation.

There were food wars; the winters grew colder and longer.

Cat & Thomas come across a ragtag military group attempting to survive.

This sounds intriguing too, perhaps had "Doorways" been picked up as a weekly s-f TV series they would have utilized this completed script.

This script would have required a snow covered location, a small military encampment, some military vehicles.

It also had a futuristic hovercraft-tank.

At the finale of this script there is a battle between the hovercraft-tank and the evil Dark Lords (who continue to pursue their former slave, Cat) in their futuristic palanquin vehicle.

My guess is that while this would have been exciting, it would have been much more costly to produce then the world without oil story.

Creating a winter environment, hovercraft-tank & then having the battle between the tank and palanquin with their respective energy weapons would have been expensive in 1992.

CGI existed and would see its first extensive utilization by "SeaQuest DSV,'' and "Babylon 5 " within a few years.

Both series were the first to employ CGI on a weekly basis for a television show.

However, "Doorways" did not appear to be using any CGI in their movie/pilot. It did offer a matte painting.

So "Doorways" would have had to construct practical sets for this arctic-like Earth.

The snowbound military camp could have been built on a studio sound stage.

The hovercraft would have to be an original creation.
Unless the production could rent some kind of futuristic looking vehicle to use that was previously used in a s-f film or television show.

Futuristic terrain vehicles have certainly been built specifically for various s-f television series over the years.

"Ark II'' created the huge ark of the title for their Saturday morning TV show.

The "Logan's Run" TV show had our heroes travelling via a futuristic car.

The original "Battlestar Galactica" had advanced looking land trucks they used from time-to-time.

"Terra Nova" had some fantastic looking armored vehicles especially built for the colony on that interesting TV show.

A hovercraft-tank would have to be a large vehicle to create.
So that would cost $$$.

The battle scene at the end between the opposing vehicles would have also been very costly back at the time "Doorways" was filmed.

Nowadays, thanks to CGI, Virtual Environments and now the revolutionary LED Wall technology available, shooting "Doorways" would be vastly easier given a good budget.

The current state-of-the-art special/visual FX technology would tremendously enhance s-f TV pilot/movies that were done in the past and were not picked up by a network.

I would love to see someone try to reboot "Doorways.''

The production could really tackle elaborate and compelling visuals that it could not have twenty years ago.

As always of course a series has to have excellent writing as its foundation.

Other productions I would love to see rebooted with today's awesome visuals would be : "The Starlost,'' "Genesis II,'' "UFO," "Star Command," "The Osiris Chronicles."

If only.
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PostPosted: Sat Sep 05, 2020 11:09 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

The vehicle battle would probably have been done with miniatures, which still would have been expensive.

"The Osiris Chronicles" had been picked up as a TV show. A joke at the World Con that probably had more than a grain of truth, is that Paramount was looking for a SF space show franchise where they wouldn't have to pay the Gene Roddenberry estate royalties. The sci-fi channel used to have a good TV talk show SF or Sci-Fi Vortex which got canceled because of "Mission Genesis". On one episode they had a couple of writers for the show. But I've never read why the show got dumped.

David.
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PostPosted: Sun Sep 06, 2020 1:42 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I thought that "The Osiris Chronicles" had plenty of potential as a weekly s-f TV show.

"Mission Genesis" was the Sci Fy Channel's very first original weekly series and well done on a tight budget.

I have read that the executives at the network were enthused about "Doorways" and were going to pick it up as a weekly series.

However, these execs left and a new wave of execs swept. And as often happens, the new regime wants nothing to do with the former regime's productions, including pilots, at all.

The new boys on the block want to establish their mark and only promote their own projects.

I've read that scenario happens regularly and that is how we see shows that were doing well in the ratings being "mysteriously cancelled."
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PostPosted: Thu Jan 14, 2021 11:05 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

More data on Cat's amazing hand gun.

In George R.R. Martin's script, a government weapons specialist named Matsumoto ( Asian, forty) gives a report on his findings from his examination of Cat's hand cannon from another Earth civilization.

The weapon is essentially an air gun. It uses a high-velocity jet of pressured air to spit out needles with the explosive power of a bazooka round.

One magazine holds 144 of these needles.

The gun has its own power cell. So it recharges every time you reload.

The metal is a superconductive alloy. Matsumato...nor anyone else on "our Earth"...had never seen anything like it before.

Inside was solid microcircuitry and very "odd" microcircuitry at that. Parts of it seem almost organic.

Matsumoto thought that it could detect unusual subatomic particles.

So this is from the script. They did have a scene in the TV-movie where a scientist does give his report on the weapon.

I do not recall exactly how much of the scripted dialogue makes it into the filmed scene.

I remember they discussed the needles and that the weapon is organic in a scene that was shot.

The scientist was not Asian in the movie. I think he was the actor who played Quark's brother Nom on "Star Trek: Deep Space Nine."

At the end of the pilot, Cat loses her hand cannon prior to she & Daniel escaping through a new doorway and onto another Earth.

I'm assuming that the production would not go the trouble and expense of creating this nifty looking device, only to never see it again.

It certainly could be useful for Cat & Daniel as they try to survive unknown & dangerous alternate Earths.

My thought would be that Cat's pursuers from her Earth would also carry these hand cannons, since they were the ones from whom Cat stole the weapon in the first place.

So if "Doorways" had been picked up as a weekly TV show, Martin could have penned an episode where Cat or Daniel were able to obtain another hand cannon & magazines for it from the group hunting Cat.

I wonder if Martin intended for all 144 needles to perform the same powerful lethal function?

Could some needles be some form of tranquilizing dart? That way it could render someone unconscious as opposed to being blown to smithereens.

Could another needle cause an individual to become susceptible to Cat & Daniel's suggestions?

What other possible properties could these needles from another world possess?

Having the team hunting down Cat...and now Daniel...would have given the series a nice suspenseful element.

However, if it became a weekly plot device that would have gotten tired over time.

The show could have employed the same technique as the classic chase TV series "The Fugitive."

On that show, Dr. Richard Kimble (David Janssen) was fleeing from a crime he did not commit.

All law enforcement agencies were on the alert for Kimble; so he had to be eternally vigilant.

His chief pursuer was Lt. Phillip Gerrard (Barry Morse) from whom Kimble escaped in the first place.

Over the course of the four-year run of TF, Gerrard shows up in only a handful of episodes, but not all the time.

The gimmick was not overused and that was smart of the producers.

They realized it could become a cliche if utilized too much.

They also realized another important aspect to having Gerrard appear a great deal on the show.

It would make him appear as incompetent & dumb.

The producers wanted to present Gerrard as a very shrewd and capable detective. As a real threat to Kimble and not as a joke.

The same idea would have to be applied to the other worldly group hunting down Cat & Daniel.

In order to be a legitimate threat and a force to be feared and reckoned with; you cannot have them show up every week, only to lose Cat & Daniel each and every single time.

As I wrote on a previous post, given George R.R. Martin's enormous success with his HBO's "Game of Thrones" TV series, it would be wonderful to see some network revive his "Doorways" show.

It has been 28-years since the pilot for "Doorways."

That's nearly 3 decades of significant advancements in the field of special & visual effects.

The latest being the huge game changer with the revolutionary Unreal Engine's LED Wall created on "The Mandolorian."

This astonishing technology can create photo realistic artificial environments. Be it outdoor locales, indoor settings, or entire cities.

It would allow a production like "Doorways" to truly create wild and bizarre alternate Earths in a way that was not available to them in 1993.

Other advances in CGI, animatronics, make-up, body suits, stunt work, drone cameras could make "Doorways" seem much more like an epic movie instead of just a weekly TV show.

This has been proved over and over again with such stunning looking TV shows today such as "Star Trek: Discovery," "Lost in Space," "Star Trek: Picard," and the aforementioned "Game of Thrones."

C'mon George, what are you waiting for?






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