Change is as Good as a Holiday?

If you’ve been a follower of either of my science fiction blogs (Space 2049 and Star Trek: Sentinel), you would have noticed both have been pretty quiet of late.

That’s because life, as it often does for all of us, got in the way.  Suddenly, maintaining two websites became a bit too much and I took an unintended break from both.  That work/life balance thing people harp on about?  I’m obviously a long way from mastering it.

In addition to all the ‘stuff’ whirling about in my life like some kind of steroid enhanced tsunami, I discovered, while daydreaming one day in a desperate attempt to take a mental break from the stress of it all, that there were other TV shows from “back in the day” that I also thought deserved a second chance.

Frustrated by the corner I’d accidentally painted myself into by creating a couple of sites that really only focused on one subject each, I decided to merge both together, do a rename and rebrand, and open up the playground just a bit.

Over the next few weeks you’ll see this new site slowly start to take shape as I do that.  So, please accept my apologies for the absence of posts these last few months, and for the lack of updates to the Space: 2049 script – and for the slight mess everything will be in as I roll the rebrand out.

What can you expect?

Well, there’s a little bit of a story there.  As I mentioned above, in an attempt to keep myself sane through moving houses, losing a beloved dog, changing jobs, and dealing with a sudden elephant sized dump of general life-crap, I played an ongoing mental game/imaginative exercise with myself to keep from slipping over the edge.

That game?  If a studio exec came up to me and said “hey, random guy, we want you to reboot a classic TV show, you can choose any one” what show would I want to invest my time in?

It turned out there were a few.  Some I couldn’t play with, like V (because I believe the awesome Kenneth Johnson is working on re-birthing his 1980s invasion epic), and Babylon 5 (because I live in hope that J.M. Straczynski will get around to that soonish), but there were others that I loved just as much.

After a lot of musing, I settled on four that I knew I would really enjoy sinking my teeth into and reimagining.  Before I list them, I should point something out.  This site does feature a sizeable Star Trek section, but Star Trek on TV doesn’t need a reboot any more thanks to Star Trek: Discovery (which I love).  So why is Star Trek included?

At the time I created Star Trek: Sentinel back in 2014, there hadn’t been any new episodes of Star Trek on TV for a long time, and the new show was still months off being announced.  We had no idea when or even if Star Trek would return to television… which sounds silly now!  Back then I had an idea that I wanted to share with other fans, and did, because that’s what Trek fans do.  When we don’t get new content, we create our own and share it because we love Trek.  A lot.  I did think about leaving Star Trek out of this new site, but it’s such an important part of my life that I couldn’t, and besides, there was and still is one character that deserves greater exploration, Saavik, and she was the central figure in my reboot idea.

Hopefully that explains Star Trek‘s inclusion on this site.

Okay!  With that out of the way, the shows I believe deserve a second chance right now are Space: 1999 (Space 2049), which I’ve been working on for many many years, seaQuest DSV (the first season), Gene Roddenberry’s Andromeda, and that old classic campy 80s series, Buck Rogers in the 25th Century (again, only the first season with a character or two from the second).

As this site evolves, it will focus on each of those shows while continuing to provide science fiction news updates and information on scientific advances that relate to space exploration, and it will continue to advocate for a reboot of Space: 1999, while also telling the story of Saavik in the 24th Century (the Next Gen era).  Each of the shows I’ve chosen hold a special place in my heart and helped define my childhood and early adult years, or were shows, like Gene Roddenberry’s Andromeda, that I fell in love with along the way.

I hope visitors to SciFi Regen will enjoy my reboot ideas, or at the very least find them worth discussing.

Thanks for your patience and for all of the kind words (and excited encouragement) I’ve received from Space: 1999 and Star Trek fans these last few years.

Science fiction fans are AWESOME!

I hope SciFi Regen can honour each of you and the kindness you’ve shown me, as we continue to collect and aggregate science fiction news for your information, and dream up new beginnings for a few classic shows many of us have loved since childhood – and many of you have taught your kids to love.

As everyone’s favourite bald captain from Star Trek would say…

“Let’s see what’s out there.  Engage!”