Tek War (TV Series) - Development and Production

Development and Production

TekWar was based on the series of Tek novels written by William Shatner. The initial idea for the novels occurred to Shatner in the 1980s. He said, "In the beginning I planned TekWar as a screenplay for myself to star in. I had this idea of putting T.J. Hooker into a futuristic milieu." But it was not until the 1988 Writers Guild of America strike stalled production on Star Trek V: The Final Frontier that he found time to write. Shatner said "I'd doodle with a paragraph and it would grow into two pages. Then I'd fiddle with the two pages and that would become 20 pages. Eventually the book sort of evolved by itself."

While the novels and the later television series follow the same general storyline, setting the story 200 years in the future almost derailed any film or television adaptation. When Shatner approached networks and studios to pitch the idea of a TekWar project, he was told that it would be too expensive to produce. Marvel Comics eventually approached Shatner with the idea of launching a series of TekWar comic books. William Shatner sold the rights to Marvel for a comic book series under the condition that it be set only 50 years in the future.

Following the first TekWar comic book, Shatner was approached by studios interested in a film. Shatner's own production company, Lemli Productions, took a deal with Atlantis Films. Shortly thereafter, Steven Roloff was hired to develop the series for television. Roloff explained his role by saying "I was just supposed to sit around and think about how we would actually try to create the future for television on a television budget with those restrictions, knowing that we wouldn't be financed like Star Trek, and to put together a pitch book. So, I did that over a period of a few months and put together a pitch document which included a series of images and a kind of written description of our world. That went out and, after a little bit of wheeling and dealing, Atlantis Films struck a deal with Universal."

Shatner began to have second thoughts about the project when both studios insisted that his name be attached for marketing reasons. He thought "How would it be received? If it's a failure, it's awful because my name is right there. In fact, they advertised it as William Shatner's TekWar. My God, the responsibility!" Universal and Atlantis green-lit production on four two-hour TV movies for the show's first season. If they proved successful, an hour-long series would be commissioned to air in both Canada and the United States. Filming took place at Cinevillage Studios in Toronto, Canada and on locations in Toronto including Eaton Centre to Ontario Place.