In December 2011 the six episodes first season of sci-fi web series “Pioneer One” (Original ‘Cosmonaut’ logo by Claudio Oliverio) ended. This is a show created thanks to viewers donations released under the Creative Commons license and distributed on the Internet.
The episodes are legally streamed but you can also download them in the standard Xvid definition version, in the high definition version or in the Mobile / iPhone version via BitTorrent or from various file hosting sites. The distribution and donations are made in collaboration with the VODO circuit making it even easier to find the links to download the episodes.
The first season of “Pioneer One” was produced starting with the pilot in June 2010 then moved forward with the later episodes when funds were sufficient, hence not on a regular basis, between December 2010 and December 2011. The pilot won the award in the category “Best Drama Pilot” of the Independent Pilot Competition at the New York Television Festival.
A spacecraft enters Earth’s atmosphere scattering a radioactive trail over some U.S.A. areas then falls down in Canada. Initially there’s the fear that it’s a terrorist attack but it struck a rural area, which makes that hypothesis unlikely.
Near the wreck, a surviving boy is found wearing a Soviet spacesuit. Homeland Security agents who are investigating in collaboration with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police are trying to establish the identity of the survivor, who is gravely ill. Some clues point to think that he’s the son of cosmonauts who live in a secret base on Mars implanted by the USSR many years ago. What’s truth and how to prove it?
The cast of “Pioneer One” consists of:
- James Rich as Tom Taylor
- Alexandra Blatt as Sofie Larson
- Aleksandr Evtushenko as Yuri
- Jack Haley as Dr. Zachary Walzer
- Guy Wegener as Vernon
- E. James Ford as DiLeo
- Laurence Cantor as Norton
- Einar Gunn as McClellan
- Laura Graham as Jane Campbell
- Joshua Wynter as Benton
The style of the first season of “Pioneer One” is heavily influenced by budget constraints. If you’re looking for a series with a lot of action, “Pioneer One” is a totally wrong choice because the story takes place mostly indoors and is developed through the conversations among the characters.
Today we’re used to science fiction shows full of special effects but these often serve to mask the plots shortcomings. The producers of “Pioneer One” have turned budget limitations into the show’s strength putting the characters really at the center of the story.
In the various sets used in “Pioneer One” even the amount of furniture is limited and this does nothing but make the viewer focus on the characters and their interactions. The sense-of-wonder isn’t created by starships or images of Mars, rather by characters who discuss the elements available to try to understand if the boy found near the mysterious wreck really comes from Mars.
Thus in the course of the episodes we imagine all the things that happen outside through what the characters say. Thus we discover the problems of Homeland Security agent Tom Taylor, who is in charge of an operation far outside the usual: he must establish the identity of the mysterious boy and at the same time withstand the pressures that come from his government but also from the Canadians.
We also discover the hopes of Dr. Zachary Walker, who has written books on the possibility of living on Mars, who is convinced that the boy really comes from a secret base planted by the Soviets.
At the center of all there’s Yuri, who is very ill and struggling to communicate, also because of the language barrier. His fate is out of his control but he doesn’t even know if he can survive.
It’s not easy to keep the tension and the sense-of-wonder high with very little action and the conversations don’t always succeed but generally in “Pioneer One” the level is good.
The VODO circuit recorded over three and a half million downloads of the episodes so let’s say an average of around six hundred thousand per episode. It’s impossible to determine how many other people have watched the episodes streamed or downloaded outside the VODO circuit but it’s plausible to think that over a million people have seen in one way or another the whole season, a really good result for a production of that kind.
Now the producers want to go ahead with a second season but they want to find a way to get more funding to have higher production values and release the episodes on a regular basis. The announced production of DVDs and Blu-Rays and the sale of T-shirts and posters offer a funding opportunity but the producers are also exploring other possibilities in conjunction with the existing ones.
“Pioneer One” is really a good example of Internet-based independent production so I hope that its second season has the means to turn a successful experiment into a solid reality.
