Guardians: Outlook - Episode 101 by JJ Estes - Series, Sci Fi - The premier of the revamped Guardians series. This is a rewrite of the second episode of the original series. The crew selected to command the Outlook are brought aboard the ship for the first time to run some test trials, but things go to hell when control of the ship is rested from the crew. - pdf, format

Guardians: Outlook - Episode 102 by Lee A Chrimes - Series, Sci Fi - Taking off where Episode 101 left off, the Outlook is dead in the middle of empty space after a bad wrift jump, and the crew has to fix it while dealing with limited resources, an injured engineer, and a number of remaining terrorists. - pdf, format

Guardians: Outlook - Episode 103 by JJ Estes & George Willson - Series, Sci Fi - While the Outlook crew recovers from their losses, two new recruits are added to their ranks. Finishes off the opening three episode arc of the season by introducing the final members of the main crew. - pdf, format

Guardians: Outlook - Episode 104 by George Willson - Series, Sci Fi - The crew of the Outlook explores a planet with a population that is celebrating a great change. Members of the crew that stay on planet over night awake to find out exactly what that change is. - pdf, format

Guardians: Outlook - Episode 105 by Lee A Chrimes - Series, Sci Fi - When James gets the Outlook involved in the middle of an alien dispute, Anna tries desperately to keep him from screwing up and getting Earth into a lot more trouble. - pdf, format

Guardians: Outlook - Episode 106 by JJ Estes - Series, Sci Fi - When the Outlook comes across an abandoned but highly advanced station, the crew is faced with a choice: take the technology for Earth and risk destroying themselves with it, or let it be. - pdf, format

Guardians: Outlook - Episode 107 Troubled Minds by George Willson - Series, Sci Fi - Harrison and Stansen are hunted by a man who blames them for what the US government did to him. - pdf, format




Guardians: Outlook - Guardians by JJ Estes - Sci Fi - When aliens contact Earth and invite Humanity to join a diplomatic council, and a group of delegates is hastily assembled. Led by a reluctant Lieutenant, four Humans must keep their heads about them as they represent Earth to the rest of the Galaxy. All the while, the reason for Humanity's presence in the proceedings is still unknown. - pdf, format

Guardians: Passage by JJ Estes, Lee A Chrimes, and George Willson - Series, Sci Fi - The second of two features leading into the Guardians: Outlook series premier in September. The Galactic Council has been called together to deal with a spatial anomaly, and Humanity has no choice but to tag along if they wish to maintain their shaky status amongst the council. - pdf, format

Hey everybody. I just read the first episode and I think this is the best new Virtual Series that's come out since Star Trek: Renaissance. I really suggest you read this if you're at all interested in good science fiction. But start from episode one, not this one. You can find it from the host site.

Heck, this is so good that I'm going to review this to the next issue of Voice Over.

Up until this point, I've never been one to jump up and down with glee.

And so it begins . . . again.

That reply by Henrik actually reads as if it were staged, like he was the puppet to some entity with the strings or there hand up ones rectum.

The post doesn't even review the script, just says a bold statement that's definately one that some could object to.

The least that could have been posted with it was some type of review so that it didn't look as it does

I mean no offense but it reads that way.

After he wrote a review in Voice Over (for the episode he was talking about) I think he may have been reviewed out. That's an old post anyway, and has no bearing on the new version.

I didn't review that in the post above because it basically was just an encouraging reference to my Voice Over review that is, at least to my opinion, a very thorough review and not completely favourable either, since the original pilot did have faults. (Many of the faults reprise themselves in this version too.)

Then again, what could make it look like a framed post is that I am a staff writer. But I wasn't at the time I wrote the review.

So, just to make people happy, here is the review (so nobody can say again that there wouldn't be one):

It was just a stroke of luck that I stumbled on this script in the first place since I haven’t had time to read scripts in the past weeks. Guardians is a new virtual series with a very interesting premise and a talented writing team and I enjoyed the first episode so much that I can’t wait to get my hands on the others.

Humans are finally contacted by alien race that are the leaders of galactic alliance. The leaders are called Guardians. Guardians have been leading this alliance for ages, but made a mistake while exploring human race. A simple flu bacteria is about to kill the entire civilization of the Guardians. This is an old theme used by many writers, but still a believable and even a probable scenario. Therefore humans are the ones that have defeated this powerful race and according to the laws of the alliance, humans must now take their position as the leaders of the alliance. That of course causes a lot of work in the humankind and the series follows this development.

The script was properly formatted and it was easy and clear to read. Only technical imperfection was that every act is on a separate file so that it requires a bit of copying and pasting to get a complete script in one file, but that isn’t too much trouble.

The writer is really talented and especially the dialogue had several points of perfection. It was really enjoyable reading experience. It was like reading a good book in a script format. It’s really hard to find anything to say about the quality of the writing because it was so good. It wasn’t perfect, but I’ve never read anything perfect anywhere. This is as good as it can go. Only thing that I wondered was that ‘CUT TO:’ had been written to the end of every scene. I stopped paying attention to them, but it was kind of strange since it’s not necessary.

Of course I can find something to criticize. It seems that some of the characters were a bit one-dimensional. Some were a bit black and white in terms of who’s good and who’s bad. Some remained as empty shells. However, fortunately, the principal characters show signs of possible development and study and the writers will hopefully use in future episodes. Another thing to criticize was that the writer could have used something else than a flu virus as the tool for the extinction of the original Guardians. That’s been used already! But that’s just a minor inconvenience that doesn’t affect the story. Another thing is the ‘evil’ species and a fight with one of them in the end. Can’t we have even one scifi series dealing purely with exploration? Fortunately, future prospects show that the series will be heavily centred on exploration.

But enough of the flaws. This script was definitely the best stuff that I’ve read for awhile and I look forward to new episodes. It was really refreshing to read a great unproduced scifi script that wasn’t fan fiction. The rare occasion that unproduced writer creates an original and interesting storyline and premise has finally occurred. Of course there are a lot of things borrowed from known writers and existing series and the writer even doesn’t try to hide it. Quite the opposite since the script has several Star Trek references.

It’s clear that Star Trek is a major inspiration and what I understand, this will have a certain ‘boldly go where no-one has gone before’ feel while staying within the limits of the original universe created for the series. I truly hope that that will be the case. We’ve had enough of shoot-‘em-up’s in space. There is an ‘evil’ species in the series, but so had the best Star Treks in the past without loosing the exploration feel to all of it. I hope this series achieves the same.

If anyone is looking for a well written scifi series or a scifi story, I warmly recommend this one. Of course this is only the impression after reading the pilot, but the pilot suggests that this has the potential to be something great. Read it so they won’t quit the series!

To all who have not found this yet, it is a decent read. (Passage, I mean, although the pilot is good too) Yes, I did work on it, so that makes me automatically biased, but hey, I'm a writer. We have large heads and bang into things sometimes, but everyone loves us...and we believe that...because we tell you to do it...

Anyway, give us some constructive not destructive criticism, so we can grow and this series can too.

Enjoy!

I now have two of these episodes under my belt. 104 and 107. Just plugging.