‘Space’ Blasts Off With Good Story And Action

In the year 2063, in the distant Epsilon Eridani star system, the Earthmen and women of the small Vesta Colony of settlers prepare for a quiet night under the vast umbrella of unfamiliar stars.

Though so far from home, they can sleep securely on alien soil, knowing that, after nearly a century of space exploration, in the words of their team leader, “Life is unique. We are alone.”

So, what’s that ghastly shadow on the wall of the tent that has started their dogs barking? And what are those fast-moving, glowing streaks of fire coming from the alien sky?

That’s the stunning opening of “Space: Above and Beyond,” the bigbudget, space action series from Fox that rockets and blasts its way into our homes tonight with a mighty roar and the big booster force of the network’s Sunday football game pushing for all it’s worth.

Created by the writer-producer team of Glen Morgan and James Wong, two of the creative minds behind “The X-Files,” the sci-fi series is probably the most valiant effort Fox has yet made to capture the young adults coming out of the football game, leading them into the network’s revamped Sunday night lineup.

It’s probably also an invitation for the older crowd to leave, but they’re likely to anyway for CBS’s perennial time-period champion, “60 Minutes.” However, the intended audience is likely to savor “Space: Above and Beyond,” based on the range and scope of tonight’s two-hour premiere.

The series poses an interesting scenario: How prepared would the Earth be to fight an interplanetary war if it believed intelligent life existed nowhere else in the universe?

The apparent answer: The Vesta Colony massacre is to 21st-century Earth what Pearl Harbor was to 1941 United States. And who would our descendants expect to hold off the aliens until Earth was ready to fight? You guessed it: the Marines.

That’s why the bulk of the action in tonight’s show revolves around the quick buildup of a new team of Marine recruits to replace the ones already dying by the thousands in space.

Among the characters we follow are Nathan West (Morgan Weisser), who was training as a colonist when he was suddenly replaced by an “in vitro,” a despised race of genetically engineered humans bred as workers but now exerting political power. Furious, he vows to take the only chance he has to rejoin his love in deep space - by joining the Marines.

He finds a new friend in the Corps - Shane Vansen (Kristen Cloke), a troubled young woman with much to prove - and perhaps someone new to vent his hostility upon: Cooper Hawkes (Rodney Rowland), an “in vitro” or “Tank” (that’s the racial epithet of 2063) who has been sentenced to serve in the Marines after years of rebellion.

Leading their company is the mysterious McQueen (James Morrison), one of the legends of the 127th attack wing, known as “The Angry Angels.”

Tonight’s two hours are loaded with mind-bending effects for network television, including a climactic space battle; an intense segment at the Corpus Christi, Texas, training camp for the Marines (dominated by the bravura cameo performance of Lee Ermey, the real-life former Marine drill instructor from Stanley Kubrick’s “Full Metal Jacket”), and the first close-up look at an alien warrior, a horrifying moment best left to speak for itself.

If “Space: Above and Beyond” can hold up the quality of the opener, it may be the first big sci-fi hit for network television, even despite the awesome challenge of the 7-8 Sunday time period, ruled for 15 years by CBS with blow-away ratings power.

Naturally, this is another Fox gamble on its young adult audience - and a big dice roll for Morgan and Wong, who gave up their comfy gig with “The X-Files” in order to do their own show, which they thought was going to be the new “X-Files” lead-in on Friday nights.

“I don’t think we have any expectations, so to speak,” says Wong, who doesn’t like making predictions about what viewers will go for. “We only expect to make a great show and that people will come see it.”

Morgan and Wong are thought of as sci-fi people even though they hadn’t really done anything in that genre before “X-Files.”

That may work to their advantage because they’re writing this one as a wartime action drama, not a space opera, which may make it more accessible to a larger audience.

It also liberates them from the dictates of sci-fi hard heads who may hold them responsible for every scientific error they make in their scripts. As Morgan says, “The reality of science is that it takes four years to get to Jupiter and that’s a dull show.”

Instead, they say their model for the series is the “Star Wars” trilogy, but with the more serious overlay of the classic World War II films such as “Guadalcanal Diary” and “Twelve O’Clock High.”

Those aren’t bad models, so if the characters develop as nicely as they start out in tonight’s show and the budget for action remains high, “Space: Above and Beyond” may be the one that goes where no show has gone before, at least in the Sunday night Nielsens opposite “60 Minutes.”

MEMO: This sidebar appeared with the story: PREMIERE “Space: Above and Beyond” premieres tonight at 7 on Fox, KAYU-Channel 28 from Spokane (Channel 3 on Cox Cable).