Stargate Creator Is Making A New Show Set On A Nearby Planet
He's back with a new story.
Robert C. Cooper, who has been running the Stargate universe for the last seventeen years, is taking his creative juices back to space: specifically, to Mars. The writer, producer, and director is set to adapt Douglas D. Meredith’s Generation Mars books to a live-action sci-fi series set on the red planet. Cooper will direct the ten-episode, hour-long series, which is currently in development, according to The Hollywood Reporter. Where or when the series will air has not been announced.
Cooper has worked in the Stargate universe in 1997, when he joined the Stargate SG-1 writing staff and stayed throughout the series’ ten-year run for MGM Television, which ended in 2007. He then created two spinoffs, Stargate: Atlantis and Stargate Universe, and the mini-series SGU: Stargate Universe Kino. He served as showrunner, executive producer, and writer on those series, which now have their own channel on the Pluto streaming app.
Generation Mars is set in the year 2053, in a near-future where Mars has been colonized. The story will focus on 12-year-old Cas, the first human being born on Mars and the first true Martian. Cas and her sister Ori have to learn how to survive on Mars, and the stories will be based on the basic needs of survival. The series should be right in Cooper’s narrative wheelhouse, having spent the last few decades with the Stargate franchise connecting the human experience to the technical aspects of science fiction.
Douglas D. Meredith is a software developer who turned to science fiction writing. Although he considers his writing recreational, his first book, Generation Mars, was self-published in 2019 and was a hit. It kicked off a series that has seen two follow-up books, with two more planned. The four sequels each have a theme based on the basic needs for life on Mars: air, shelter, water, and food. Unlike the Stargate franchise, Meredith’s approach to sci-fi is based in the real-world, instead of a fantasy-like setting with multiple alien races. His biography notes that after seeing the dystopian tone of so many sci-fi and fantasy books for young readers, he wondered what sort of future was being built for his children. He decided to write Generation Mars as an optimistic, near-future story that was heavy on the sci-fi.
A.J. Trauth, who perhaps best known for playing Alan Twitty on the Disney Channel series Even Stevens, is shifting from acting to producing the series, alongside Toronto-based marblemedia and MEZO Entertainment, Cooper’s production company formed during his Stargate days. Cooper has also recruited astronaut trainee Alyssa Carson to the series, where she will serve as a consultant. Following his work leading the Stargate universe, Cooper has stayed busy with multiple TV series. His latest series, Unspeakable, is a four-episode miniseries for CBC and Sundance TV. It tells the true story of the Canadian tainted blood tragedy of the 1980s, in which thousands of Canadians were given blood tainte with HIV and Hepatitus C. He also served as showrunner on Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency for BBCAmerica, Netflix and AMC Studios. That series starred Samuel Barnett and Elijah Wood as investigators of supernatural cases. His other writing credits include Dark Matter, The Incredible Elephant, Flash Forward, and PSI Factor: Chronicles of the Paranormal.
