The Starlost - Development and Production

Development and Production

Harlan Ellison was approached by Robert Kline, a 20th Century Fox television producer, to come up with an idea for a science fiction TV series consisting of eight episodes, to pitch to the BBC as a co-production in February 1973. The BBC rejected the idea. Unable to sell "The Starlost" for prime time, Kline decided to pursue a low budget approach and produce it for syndication. By May, Kline had sold the idea to 48 NBC stations and the Canadian CTV network.

To get Canadian government subsidies the production was shot in Canada and Canadian writers produced the scripts from story outlines by Ellison.

Before Ellison could begin work on the show's production bible, a writers' strike began, running from March 6 to June 24. Kline negotiated an exception with the Writer's Guild, on the grounds that the production was wholly Canadian — and Ellison went to work on a bible for the series.

Originally, the show was to be filmed with a special effects camera system developed by Doug Trumbull called Magicam. The system comprised two cameras whose motion was servo controlled. One camera would film actors against a blue screen, while the other would shoot a model background. The motion of both cameras was synchronized and scaled appropriately, allowing both the camera and the actors to move through model sets. The technology did not work reliably. In the end a simple blue screen effects were used forcing static camera shots.

The failure of the Magicam system was a major blow — as the Canadian studio space that had been rented was too small to build the required sets. In the end partial sets were built but the lack of space hampered production.

As the filming went on, Ellison grew disenchanted with the budget cuts, details that were changed, and what he characterized as the progressive dumbing down of the story. Ellison's dissatisfaction extended to the new title of the pilot episode; he had called it "Phoenix Without Ashes" but it was changed to "Voyage of Discovery".

Before the production of the pilot episode was completed, Ellison invoked a clause in his contract to force the producers to use his alternative registered writer's name of "Cordwainer Bird" on the end credits. This was a signal to anyone who knew him to show how disgusted he was with the whole business (see Alan Smithee for the motion picture industry equivalent).

Sixteen episodes were made. Fox decided not to pick up the options for the remainder of the series after seeing how badly it was doing in the ratings. Bova, frustrated that his advice was ignored, saw the first show when it was broadcast and quit. He asked the producers to take his name off the credits of all the shows but he did not have a clause like Ellison's in his contract, so he remained credited.

TV scriptwriter Norman Klenman stated that he was called in to work on The Starlost because the production team were unable to deal with Ellison. Klenman claims he rewrote the pilot script, hired the writers for the series, chose the themes of the episodes and wrote four and heavily rewrote eight more episodes.