RECOMENDACIONES - Implementación de un sistema de gestion de almacén y su mejora en el control

137 ANDROMEDA

When Wolfe’s series bible was presented to him, Sorbo was immediately interested. After spending nine months resting from a grueling six and a half seasons on HERCULES, he was anxious to find another property that could propel him to even more success. "I’m not listed as one of the producers, but I will be in second season," says Sorbo. "I had hands-on with Robert from the very beginning. A major reason I’m working on this project is that it gives me a better working environment in terms of hours. I wasn’t going to be working 100 hour weeks as I did in HERCULES. I talk to the writers on a daily basis. Every script I read, I put in my two cents. I write extensive notes on what I believe doesn’t work. I told Robert, ‘When I send you the notes, I only say what I think doesn’t work.’ I love the scripts, but when things aren’t working, I have to understand why they don’t work."

As part of his creative contributions to the series, Sorbo played an instrumental role in casting six fellow actors to appear with him as regulars on the show. Almost all of them have strong stage or Shakespearean backgrounds. To cast Tyr Anasazi, the tall, brawny and genetically engineered Nietzschean warrior, Keith Hamilton Cobb, best known for a role in ALL MY CHILDREN, and a recipient of a Soap Opera Digest award as Best Newcomer, was chosen. Sorbo notes that Cobb is the only actor he did not personally choose. "It was a choice by Tribune who had worked with him before. All they had to do was show me a photo of him and some of his work on guest spots he’s done. Physically, of course, he’s the guy! He was Tyr. Keith is very much a thinker. He keeps to himself quite a bit. I don’t know where Keith comes from. He’s got his own style of working. He gets into his character and plays with it off-camera a little bit while we’re on the set. He’s very focused on his character."

characters of Beka Valentine, captain of the Eureka Maru, and Andromeda, the A.I. construct that personifies the ship’s computers, were cast together, says Sorbo. "Lisa Ryder, who plays Beka, and Lexa Doig, who plays Andromeda--I met with them and five other actresses in Los Angeles. Beka was the hardest person to cast in the show. It’s the one character that everyone had a different idea of what the character should look like or who she should be. There were a lot of fights in that one. She took forever to cast. At the screen-tests, where I do the scenes with the actresses to see if there’s any chemistry and what our working relationships might be like, I felt she was number one. They still wanted to look for others, as they weren’t convinced. I told Lisa, ‘I’ve been there. They called me seven times for HERCULES over a three month period!’

Ultimately, Lisa Ryder (most familiar to genre fans for the lead role in the FOREVER KNIGHT vampire series) captured the Valentine role, leaving the role of Andromeda to Lexa Doiga. "We all liked Lexa a lot, but she wasn’t right for Beka," Sorbo explains. "She wasn’t physically or old enough for the part. They were looking at other people that none of us were really crazy about. After talking to the studio people I think Lexa began looking at the Andromeda character in a completely different way," chuckles Sorbo. Coincidentally, Lexa Doig co-stars with Ryder in the upcoming New Line Cinema horror feature, JASON X; also, she’s had appearances in EARTH:

FINAL CONFLICT and FX: THE SERIES.

For the alien role of Rev Bem, a Magog scientist and philosopher, only one man had the part. "Brent Stait’s reading was so far superior to everyone else!" says Sorbo. "It was like ‘This guy’s the guy!’ Like Trance, he’s going to become one of those really favorite characters that audiences are going to love. There are going to be Rev Bem dolls. He’s such a good actor. When I see Brent in person, I keep forgetting that this is Rev Bem, the Magog!" Stait is the one who has the most genre credits, having been seen in episodes of OUTER LIMITS, FIRST WAVE, STARGATE SG-1, POLTERGEIST and X-FILES.

As the ship’s engineer, Seamus Harper, another Canadian actor, the blond-haired Gordon Michael Woolvett, fit the mold. "We had our eyes set on someone else, but we hadn’t met Gordon Woolvett yet," says Sorbo. "We saw one Canadian guy about eight months ago, who was doing a show in Toronto. I actually called him and asked him, ‘Do you want to do the series? It will give you a movie career.’ He wasn’t interested. Then they found Gordon. I saw his tape about two weeks before I moved up here. I said, ‘This guy’s a freaking phenomenon! He’s great!’ Gordon has a very strong personality, and he works hard. We had to believe that he was a genius, yet he was in a surfer dude’s body! He was a Malibu California guy. [Harper] can turn a toaster into a Jaguar. He can make anything happen for you." Woolvett is best remembered as one of the survivors aboard another starship DEEPWATER BLACK (a.k.a. MISSION GENESIS).

The final cast member of the series was for the mysterious role of Trance Gemini, a "lavender skinned" young pixie of a girl with a pointed tail. Sorbo recalls that Laura Bertram was the first actress that he met upon arriving in Vancouver to begin the series. "By consensus, everyone loved her right off the bat when we looked at the [audition] tapes. She was great. She was just like how she is on the show. She came in and said, ‘Oh, I’m so excited to work with you!’ She’s like a little kid on the set. She’s only 22 years old. She’s wonderful." Winner of two Gemini awards (the Canadian Emmys), Bertram brings a versatility to the cast from appearances in ARE YOU AFRAID OF THE DARK on Nickelodeon, NIGHT OF THE TWISTERS, a MOW, and the lead role in "Cinderella" on stage.

After spending years on a fantasy TV series that primarily focused on him, Sorbo was anxious to assemble an ensemble cast. "My mantra to Robert, as the show was being put together, was ‘Share the wealth!’ I want everyone to be important in their own way," says Sorbo.

"Make it interesting to watch each characters for different reasons. I want a viewer that tunes in--if they’re not turned on by me, maybe they’re turned on by Tyr. That’s what we watch TV for. We watch for characters. ‘I like him or her. There’s something that attracts me to this person.’ And here, we have seven times the opportunity which I think will be good for the show." But Sorbo laughs and cringes recalling that when it came time to put this into practice. It wasn’t quite what he had expected. "You’ve got seven egos and seven insecurities! You’ve got seven people wanting the camera. It’s weird to share the spotlight at all."

Although only a handful of episodes have aired at press time, ANDROMEDA’s final episodes will be shot by December. Sorbo is very candid in assessing the series’ progress. "I still think we’re going through teething pains," he admits. "Season two will be great. I think all of us actors on the show are still trying to find our feet. We’ve come a long way. I think shows have gotten better. I think there’s a couple here that didn’t turn out as expected. It’s interesting when you’re reading scripts and you say, ‘This is going to be awesome!’ but when you shoot it and look at it, you go, ‘Oh my god!’ Of the 17 [filmed] we have three right now that I’m not crazy about. I think we can save one of them. All the shows coming up for the November sweeps are going to be unbelievable. I’m happy with about 70 percent. That’s pretty good odds. On HERCULES I’d be happy with about 50 percent or 40 percent.

"Right now we’re still trying to figure out where the characters are going," Sorbo continues. "The writing is excellent. I think we need to get back to some of the basics of what Capt. Hunt is trying to do. What he’s trying to reestablish with the Commonwealth. I think we need to go out there and explore strange new worlds and not stay on the ship so much. The writers are trying to lighten the view on who’s Capt. Hunt. Who’s Trance? Who’s Harper? Give them back stories. That will come in time. I really believe this series will go five or seven years. We’ve created a very interesting, logical SF series that not only the STAR TREK people will like but those who have never seen [TREK] before. You’ve got seven very interesting characters who all bring something different to the table. If someone doesn’t like Capt. Hunt maybe they’ll like Beka. Or Tyr. There’s something for everyone."

When the assistant director steps up for Kevin, there`s time for one final question: Wasn`t Sorbo the runner-up for LOIS AND CLARK?

The actor kicks his head back in laughter. "Dean Cain and I were the last two guys for that part! I would have made a great Superman. I

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was a pretty good Clark Kent. With the suit on and the glasses, I looked pretty damn good! In the suit and with the hair, he made a better Superman so they made the right choice. It’s funny how the business is. It ended up being better for me because six months later I got HERCULES. And it runs for six and a half seasons. And it could have gone on for another three. I decided to walk away from it.

Universal wanted a few more years, but I didn’t want to." With that, actor Kevin Sorbo leaves. Offstage sounds and lights leak into the Command center; that surreal ambiance returns. It’s time for the Captain to go back and save the galaxy.

ANDROMEDA: Robert Hewitt Wolfe and Allan Eastman Interview The producers on building Gene Roddenberry’s new universe.

Author: Frank Garcia Date: 11/20/00

"Space...the final frontier, these are the voyages of the Starship Andromeda Ascendant, its two-year mission: to streak across the universe, rebuild the Commonwealth, to seek out new allies and new civilizations. To boldly go where Star Trek has never gone before!"

With apologies to Gene Roddenberry

Even with crib notes, building a fictional, futuristic universe isn’t an easy task. Just ask Andromeda co-executive producer Robert Hewitt Wolfe and executive producer Allan Eastman. To begin a TV series from scratch can be a Herculean task. All aspects of a series the universe, characters, rules, special effects, costumes, plots right down to the design of the props, have to be thought out and realized. J.

Michael Straczynski showed us that when it took him roughly five years to find backers interested in supporting Babylon 5.

Unlike B5, though, Andromeda didn’t take five years to launch. The name Gene Roddenberry the revered creator of Star Trek, Star Trek:

The Next Generation and the show that bears it, Earth: Final Conflict, now in its fourth season convinced Tribune Entertainment that lightning can strike four times. All it took was for Majel Barrett-Roddenberry to hand over a large stack of papers, rescued from her late husband’s archives, and give them to Wolfe to see if he could craft a coherent TV series out of the materials.

"A lot of it was premises and scripts for shows that he was developing," says Robert Wolfe, who wrote 30 Star Trek: Deep Space Nine episodes and served as a producer during the series’ last two seasons. "[It was] different story proposals and things like that. It was diverse elements, including ideas for another starship show. There were a million ways you could have gone with the material. But I was developing specifically for a starship-based show. What did come out of it was the concept of an artificial intelligence-driven starship with full sentience and personality. The character Dylan Hunt was a guy who came from a civilization who basically sleeps through the fall of a civilization and tries to restore civilization. Those were the principal elements." Executive producer Allan Eastman grins, "It began sitting around a table and sketching ideas out for each other, throwing cocktail napkins at each other with little drawings on them."

If certain elements and ideas in Andromeda appear familiar, that’s because there are echoes from Roddenberry’s unsold 1973 TV movie Genesis II, which starred Alex Cord and Mariette Hartley. In that film, NASA scientist Dylan Hunt was accidentally frozen in an underground chamber and revived in a post-apocalyptic future world where civilization had crumbled and a group of scientists were determined to rebuild it.

Ultimately, in sifting through Roddenberry’s materials, Wolfe melded elements from three different sources to conjure up Andromeda.

He brought in the Dylan Hunt name, which was a favorite of Roddenberry’s, and the loose concept of Hunt being frozen and revived only to discover that civilization had fallen. He also brought in elements from a second series concept titled Starship now being developed with Stan Lee Media and filled out the remaining aspects of the series from his own original ideas.

"The bottom line is that there is less of Gene’s original material in this than, say, Earth," says Wolfe. "In the case of Earth he had written two pilot scripts and a bible. So it says ‘Created by Gene Roddenberry.’ In the case of DS9, it was a totally different premise developed in a universe that he created. That’s why it said ‘Created by Rick Berman and Michael Piller. Based on Star Trek created by Gene Roddenberry.’ This one is in the middle! He developed the universe, and the peripheral characters he did not develop. But the basic situation and the character Dylan Hunt are Gene’s. So the crediting is ‘Created by Gene Roddenberry. Developed by Robert Hewitt Wolfe.’ "

Eastman recalls deciding that the Andromeda Ascendant’s propulsion system would generate gravity waves. "We also wanted a ship that had ‘Transformer’ elements. It’s a warship. As it would go into battle, it would take on more aggressive form." An "aggressive" looking starship was actually the early model of the ship, as illustrated by a painting hanging on Eastman’s office wall. Appearing very similar to the final design, the early version had a different "texture map" on its surface and had a green tinge to it. The general shape of the craft was familiar, but the ships’ contours were more curved or sloped.

"We had a symmetrical kind of form that didn’t have a ‘front to back,’" says Eastman, who has directed a wide variety of episodic sci-fi TV as a freelance director. "We went through many evolutions and played with many permutations. The last thing to do is make it beautiful." Executive Producer on the superhero Nightman series, Eastman’s name is stamped on episodes of Sliders, Star Trek: Voyager and The Outer Limits. Notably, he helmed the series pilot for Earth: Final Conflict, and directed the first Andromeda episode, as well.

"The other thing that I felt strongly about was that [sci-fi author] Arthur Clarke had said, ‘Any suitably advanced technology would appear to be magic’ from the less advanced technology," continues Eastman. "We took that approach to separate the Andromeda from the Eureka Maru, [the ship that rescues the stuck-in-time Commonwealth starship]. This is a couple of hundred years after the Commonwealth had fallen. A great deal of technology had been lost. It’s like what happened in the middle ages. Technology fell backwards for a period of time in human history. Technology and advanced ideas disappeared for a while. That’s essentially what happens to the Commonwealth."

An interesting but discarded idea, reveals Eastman, was that the "Slipstream" chair the navigational console that a pilot uses to steer the ship in "Slipstream sub-space" was originally conceived as a 360-degree steel ball, the kind that you might see at NASA or at science museums. A pilot would step into the ball, arms and legs stretched outwards and standing, manipulate the ball every which way he could since to navigate in space there is no "up or down."

"We tried to make that work," says Eastman. "We tried to adapt it as something we would put right at the center of the bridge.

Technologically, that didn’t work out. It was also a practical consideration of shooting a television show. We tried really hard and had to come up with something on the short term." The idea was also abandoned when the filmmakers realized that "We were imagining how the lead actors really wouldn’t want to go into it after lunch!"

To cast the lead role of Captain Dylan Hunt, the decision came down to Barrett-Roddenberry, who had long admired former Hercules star Kevin Sorbo. Once on board, Sorbo in turn had the luxury of choosing between the two premises that were in development:

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Andromeda and Starship. Once that choice was made, Wolfe’s next task was to fill the universe with characters that would surround and interact with Sorbo’s Hunt.

"Relationship is pretty easy to infer from the material," says Wolfe. "It’s surrounding Dylan with foils, people who represent opposite or drastic personalities and approaches to life. For example, if [Dylan] is motivated by the restoration of civilization, you don’t want to surround him with six people who are also motivated by the restoration of civilization or you have a show where everyone agrees with each other! It was basically figuring out Dylan’s character and finding characters that would complement him. I came up with a couple of different takes on characters.

"There was a point where Tribune approached me and they wanted to use Keith Hamilton Cobb on the show. He’s very great looking, has presence and they asked, ‘Can you develop a character for him?’ And I had already gone through Gene’s stuff and came up with my own ideas for bad guys. Originally, I had the idea

The starship Andromeda Ascendant.

that his character would be one of [the bad guys]. But, given the opportunity to incorporate him into the show, I split the Beka character into the human female salvage captain [still called Beka Valentine] and this Nietzschean mercernary [named Tyr Anasazi]. So now we have development of those two characters."

As work continued, Wolfe had the unusual circumstance of having his lead actor assist and have a say in what actors would be joining the show. Casting can be a tricky game. Because it’s not always possible to have chosen candidates rehearse scenes with each other, Wolfe says, "Sometimes you have to do it in your head. ‘Well, is his style of acting going to complement or contrast sufficiently with this actor’s style of acting?’ Sometimes it get to the point where you say, ‘Well, Keith and Kevin are both really tall! Do we want Rev Bem

In document Implementación de un sistema de gestion de almacén y su mejora en el control de inventarios de la Empresa Kiaratel SAC, San Juan de Lurigancho, 2021 (página 115-123)