William Shatner’s TekWar

EviLore

EviLore

Expansive Ellipses
Staff Member


I enjoyed the shows and books well enough as a kid since it was quasi-cyberpunk, but phew, the series doesn't look all that watchable today. But maybe in a similar vein to the Highlander TV series or Hercules: The Legendary Journeys. You just had to be there.

Entertaining video essay on the franchise though. It's cool that largely forgotten media like this has a YouTuber or two bringing it back to the spotlight.

Remember TekWar?
 
I don't think I ever saw or read any of this. It looks like I didn't have access to the channel that aired it over here at the time. But I do enjoy these kinds of deep dives into stuff I'm not familiar with so I'll try and give this a watch when I get a chance.
 
The cyberpunk aspect was the hook for me as well. I'm kinda sad we never got more stuff in that genre other than the one Johnny Mnemonic movie and a couple of fairly low budget offerings (and Lawnmower man, I suppose). Why Shadowrun or Cyberpunk 2020 (until the recent game adaptation boosted it) lay fallow for so long, it's sad. The mixing of virtual reality, hacking, cybernetics, anti-corp sentiment, and oppressive government overreach layered in with punk pop culture seems too irresistable but dang if it wasn't hard to get.
 
Linking to a Canadian Youtube channel?

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majuular is dope. watched this over the last few days.
 
I'll go ahead and make the internet's first high res TekWar gif, of this guy who looks to be inspired by the dudes from AOL chatrooms in the '90s posing as women, but in real life!


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I didn't watch the Tekwar show but I recognize the main character actor from that Smokey and Bandit ripoff TV show, BJ and The Bear

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Majuular's great. I watched the intro to the video covering Shatner's TV career starring in a derivative '80s cop show and a little about his ghost written (and not well written) sci-fi books, but that's it. Will finish the video later.
 
I dunno man, Stargate SG1 is as bout as low budget as you can get and I got upto S3 on my rewatch (need to get back into it, just too many good new shows about at the mo) I loved the nostalgia, the simpler storylines and the characters, if you nail those it becomes timeless
 
As a kid I watched any sci-fi show I could get my hands on... but when this piece of shit would pop up on USA Network I was out. If they were showing MacGyver reruns or episodes of Wings... I was in.

It was almost an anti-body response; not sure I watched more then 60 seconds of the show. Same with Earth: Final Conflict.

Maybe part of it was the Trek greats having their names on such low budget television. Very sad. Many such cases.
 
EviLore said:
They nailed browsing the internet in the future at least

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I'd have honestly been stoked for Intergalactic if this was the vibe of the reveal trailer
 
EviLore said:
It looks frustrating and bad and half baked, but also seems to be one of the first ever proto-immersive sims. Interesting.
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That's why I always wanted to like it. The core ideas seemed solid, but Capstone weren't the devs to pull it off. Especially not on an early version of Build.
 
EviLore said:
Oh, that's Lexa Doig from Andromeda, cool
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The notion that the nerdy scientist guy from Stargate was banging her always seemed like a crossover opportunity missed.

Though maybe that did happen at some point. All those vancouver actors showed up on all the shows. The amount of actress hotness in that town must have been INSANE back in the day.
 
bitbydeath said:
I never watched the show but I played the game which had pretty incredible graphics for back then.

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Gotta love how there is no question over who's Tekwars they are
I never watched the show but I specifically remember an ad on the sci fi channel with the line "where the women are digital (woman begins to remove top) and deadly (cuts to guy poorly pantomiming being electrocuted)
 
EviLore said:
That one and the hologram unzipping one can definitely get meme usage on GAF

Oh, that's Lexa Doig from Andromeda, cool
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She's got cute chubby cheeks in that TekWar bit... Not exactly sure what she's doing with the Minority Report UI, but it's still not as bad as JMS on a low budget:


I think Lexa must've dropped a couple of pounds for Andromeda. Which was very much part of that same Earth Final Conflict Dead Gene Roddenberry Syndicated WGN Sci-fi Pipeline (tm). I thought the first season of that show was building up to be kinda decent... ya know... for a Kevin Sorbo-led show... Thought the S1 finale was really good... and by the end of the S2 premiere I had completely dropped the show. I need to dig up those episodes and review how it happened.

That Andromeda concept seemed pretty clearly meant for Trek. And then Discovery kind of tried it. But it just didn't make any sense with the crybaby/grimdark weirdo reboot universe before being flung into the future. It had so much potential if it was a TNG-era crew where Starfleet/The Federation were clearly at their zenith.

Picard rebuilding the Federation would work. Crying Michael Burnham?
Shame Facepalm GIF by MOODMAN
 
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Majuular is awesome, his retrospectives are well researched and entertaining. He's done deep dives on all the Ultimas up through 7 currently, plus some other weird niche stuff like 3DO rpgs and the Kingsfield series.
I cannot recommend his channel enough for older nerds like me.
 
Was William Shatner in any sort of creative capacity on this series, or was he just a marketing gimmick above the title? I never watched it, but I always remember seeing the commercials on tv.
 
Power Pro said:
Was William Shatner in any sort of creative capacity on this series, or was he just a marketing gimmick above the title? I never watched it, but I always remember seeing the commercials on tv.
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He came up with at least part of the story and characters for the books but they were all ghostwritten by Ron Goulart. Typical approach for celebrities, and it worked, since the TekWar books sold >500k copies thanks to Shatner marketing them heavily. As for the series, Shatner was executive producer and directed a couple episodes so he probably had a bit of input when he was around on set.
 
The trick worked on me for the Trek books at least, "Well who knows better about writing a Star Trek book than William Fucking Shatner", - kid me ~1995:
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Then I learned about ghost writers... and canon. Still liked it a lot better than what Berman and Braga did with the Borg. Looks like TekWar was a different ghost writer from the Trek stuff.
 
This takes me back to childhood when I discovered shareware/demo of the pc game on this peculiar "1000 game demos" type of CD. I still find myself thinking about it how fucking ugly but intriguing it looked even then.
 
I remember buying the first book and reading it back in the day. I think it had 'Soon To Be A Major Motion Picture' somewhere on the cover or the back. It was an easy read, but it wasn't interesting enough for me to ever read any of the other books. At the time, it was pretty much a given that Shatner had not written it. A few years later, the TV series came out and I never even watched an episode. Cyberpunk was in everything in the 90's and I hated that stuff with a passion, because it had become a trope.

When Final Fantasy VII was announced as a fantasy/cyberpunk themed mixture, it took me quite a while to pay it much attention. I was tricked by a rumor and some development art in Gamefan that it would be a more Godfather-esque style game with Cloud being the black sheep of the Shinra group with the Turks being his former gang ala Akira.
 
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"Well the kids have to learn about TekWar sooner or later."

Sure I remember it and it being advertised but never saw the show or ran across it any time during the TV era. I am familiar with the infamous Capstone videogame, which was notable for being the of the few pre-Duke3D Build Engine games and little else. TekWar is definitely one of those things like VR.5, which only people alive during a certain era could possibly be aware of. =P

I've actually had this video open in a tab for over a week waiting to be watched. Have to get around to it soon.
 
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