Announcer: As we approach the beginning of series 5, Zeitgeist : Allixis, we’re here for a special interview with the creator of the series, Kathris.

Q: What are we looking at for the fifth time around?

A: We’re looking at a starship show, but not just any starship show. We continue with the tradition of switching genders of the show leads, so we have a male captain this time. When I went into designing the show, I knew I wanted something different. I picked a captain that was a flirt, a screw up… In other words, not the clean cut Alliance captains that Kathris and Skylar were. This guy messed up, he had a wife and kids he never sees, things like that. The admiral that assigned him wanted him to fail, so he gave him this garbage pile of a ship leftover from when the Axis was reintegrated into the Alliance.

Q: What makes this ship such a garbage heap?

A: The Allixis was a Straw Man Class ship. It’s oval shaped, holding a crew complement of about 50 people. It’s fairly decently armored, but a lot of its technology is whatever the Axis could get their hands on. The transporters, for example, have only two transporter pads, rather than the usual 6-chambered pad around a central one. Rather than a conventional impulse drive, they have a solar sail system to travel at sub-light speeds. Most of their facilities are size restrictive, and most of the crew has two people per cabin.

Q: Tell us about who’s running this ship.

A: As I already hinted, the captain is a bit of a flirt. His name is Captain Jonathan Arahan. He’s got girlfriends on every planet he visits, and he has an estranged wife and daughter that he almost never sees. He’s been court martialed and disciplined several times for his hotshot attitude. Jonathan Arahan doesn’t always do what’s convenient, and enjoys thumbing his nose at admirals who really deserve it. He’s a human, and this is the first time I tried a human show runner. I thought it was about time, and he’s also the first show runner that I ever started with a running clock. I had decided from the outset of the series that Captain Arahan wouldn’t be on the show for all seven seasons. It was part of the plan from the start that at the end of season 4 he’d be written out of the show. It was pure luck that I managed to figure out both a way to keep his character active, as well as exactly who would be appropriate to replace him in season 5.

Arahan: Yeah, they said that I’d be on the show for a four year contract as a regular, and that after that they’d probably have some guest roles for me. When they approached me for the audition, I couldn’t pass it up. I mean, how many chances is one going to get to be a show runner for a Zeitgeist series? I knew if I declined, that there may never be another role for me, so I took it. It was an incredible opportunity, and we’ve just finished filming the pilot episode.

A: I decided I wanted an alien first officer for this show, so I created the character of Commander Gellik. I chose a Vahrain, because I thought there was more I could do with the character than with a Riglin officer, the only other alien species they had made friends with during Skylar’s show. For the most part, he’s very proud of his race, he’s a warrior, and he wears the uniform of the Vahrain, instead of the Alliance uniform. I felt it would make an interesting story arc to explore his integration into a crew full of Terrans.

A: Chief Of Security Lieutenant Kesra Sailey was invented because I wanted a woman as head of security this time. So far we’d done Rikan, Alex, and Ryan, and this time I wanted a woman as head of security. I made her a were skunk because I liked the species, and so the casting process began. I wanted someone sexy, who could handle a weapon and be able to deal with any threats that came in her direction. Kesra was the perfect choice.

A: Sabrina was a character placed there as a memorial to a friend of mine. After she was tragically struck by a car a few years ago, I created a character in her likeness to be the pilot of this ship. To give her character more depth and more stories that might take her away from the helm and give her things to do, I made her an Esper, but not just any Esper, a precognitive. In simpler terms, she can see the future, and in doing so, becomes a very rare commodity among the Espers. When such a rare talent is discovered, they often are taken and assigned to very specific tasks, and as such, Sabrina hid her talents, not wanting to be transferred anywhere else. She hides what she can do as much as possible, and it turned out to provide a great deal of layers for her character that we could explore.

A: Tori was an experiment of sorts. He’s half Esper, half anthro arctic fox, a combination I’d never tried before. His physical appearance is halfway between human and arctic fox, and he possesses all of the conventional Esper powers. His job on the ship is the ship’s counselor, and I thought that on such a small ship, it would be necessary to have one on board, especially during high stress assignments. Though the previous series haven’t had an official one yet, I figured this was a job I hadn’t done as a regular before, as with the pilot, so I gave it a try.

A: Tony Ringtail is based off of a friend’s character. I made him the Chief Engineer and created a cousin that would be working in his staff by the name of Patch Ringtail, so that he could be a big brother of sorts to her. For the most part, his character is the same as his player, I developed most of his details as the show developed, and it worked out fairly well in the long run. Though Tony’s name does violate my non furry name rule, it was acceptable enough to slide under the exceptions to the rule.

A: Lisa Corelli was invented for a few reasons. First, I wanted a new type of hybrid I hadn’t done before, so I settled on a lion/raccoon crossbreed. She was female because I wanted her and the captain to be constantly making fun of each other and having this odd relationship that no one else really understood. I didn’t want it to be sexual or anything like that, so I decided that she should be a former Axis doctor who had specialized in biological and viral weapons. It turned out that their relationship was a lot more complicated than anything sexual, and that gets explored in the pilot. We also made her Axis because this was supposed to be a few years after the Axis and the Alliance had come back together, and this ship was supposed to be one of the many that was intended to foster reunification with mixed crews. Since most of the others were Alliance, I knew at least one senior officer would have to be from the Axis.

Q: What is this ship’s basic mission?

A: Their first job is to investigate a distress signal and a mysterious ship that was reported by a starship that’s destroyed early on in the series. Afterwards, they’re given various assignments as they travel around the galaxy, taking their missions a they come. Some of the things they get assigned to doing is setting up new colonies, rescue missions, things of that nature.

Q: What are they going to run into?

A: By and large, the bulk of what they’re going to run into is the Agati. They’re a race we meet in the first episode, and they ended up being the bad guys for about the first two years of the show. They also come back in other formats on later series, and throughout the rest of this one. In order to find out more, you’ll just have to follow the adventures of Captain Arahan and his crew.

S: Thank you for your time.