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TRIUMVIRATE SE Documentary
By The Host
THE DEVELOPMENT OF TRIUMVIRATE
Some damn stories just won’t go away.
Sixth grade. I had a new computer – a swanky 486DX-33 with 4MB RAM and 256MB hard drive; no sound, no CD-ROM, thirteen-inch monitor showing 256 glorious colours in Windows 3.1 I became obsessed with that thing, playing games like Wolfenstein 3-D, Day of the Tentacle, The Incredible Machine, and later DOOM. I decided that I wanted to design computer games when I grew up in addition to making movies, the latter having been my ambition since seeing the film Jurassic Park the summer previous. But what, I wondered, would my game be about?
Perhaps I could combine elements of my favorite games at the time: Final Fantasy III, Civilization, DOOM, and X-Wing. Invent an ambitious game that begins as a first-person shooter, say on a star base. Then you hijack a fighter and it becomes a space sim. You attract people to your cause – just like an RPG. Once your army is big enough it becomes a Civilization-esque game, where the player controls armies and balances resources, whilst still allowing the option of jumping into a fighter or space station for some FPS or space sim action.
I was excited by the concept – started designing levels, starships, starbases, people, places, planets. I just needed a story.
I found it soon. I was thumbing through PC Gamer magazine the summer before seventh grade when I stumbled across a review of a game. I forget now what it was called. But it was about a soldier on a spacesation whose friend is murdered when he discovers some sort of conspiracy. The game was effectively a murder mystery in space. I took inspiration from that premise and quickly fashioned a plot: Jack Davies’s best friend, Robert Johnson, discovers a secret weapon the United Star Systems is creating and is murdered. Davies, fearing he might be next, flees the station. He is supposed to be stopped by General Dawson, but instead the General joins Jack’s cause. They travel together to the planet Delrian, where they convince an entire nation to join in war against the USS. They then push on toward earth, the seat of United Power, to destroy the evil USS once and for all.
I spent seventh grade designing vessels for this film. I created a starship design that I particularly liked – I called it the ‘Gemini’. I decided, in some way, to make it central to the story.
Another year passed. A friend of mine was designing an online multiplayer game for which he wanted me to script the story. He wanted a sci-fi RPG called ‘Rebels in Space;’ I presented him with a story I’d developed called ‘Gemini: Rebellion’. Even now it was significantly different from the story I’d originally concocted: it dealt with aliens, Al T’Har, and a secret biological weapon also called ‘Gemini’. The elements of Triumvirate were now in place.
In ninth grade I extended the story into a trilogy: Gemini: Rebellion, One Against the World, and Greater Cause. Basically, the first film would tell of Davies’s struggles to found a rebellion; the second would begin as the rebels secured Delrian support and continue until they had smashed the Human Alliance, and in the third it would be revealed that the Human Alliance had simply been a tool of an alien empire. The Gemini virus having been spread, the heroes in the final flick would travel to the alien empire to find a cure.
The plot grew increasingly complex. I decided, however, that three films would be unwieldy, and instead collapsed it into two films, which I outlined (after reading Sid Field’s book ‘Screenplay’) the summer before tenth grade. I made several abortive attempts at a screenplay between July and October of that year; in each case, the screenplay was simply growing too long. I finally eliminated some more elements, settling on a final storyline in November. The story was renamed ‘Gemini’s Redemption’ and focused on Dawson as a central character. Other elements that would later be familiar were here added -- the Black Aces, the Corporation, the President’s decision to join Dawson, Davies’s reunion with Johnson, and more. The main characters were here established. Although many would change significantly in future editions of Gemini’s Redemption, Triumvirate in many ways draws upon this early version of the story most heavily.
Unfortunately, the plot was simply too dense. I was fascinated with conspiracy and lies and surprises and politics and jammed the story with enough elements of each to justify a dozen movies. The screenplay once again grew out of control. I put it aside for a year.
In eleventh grade, finally, I sat down and did serious cutting. Finally I started again to write my screenplay. I finished the first two acts in 180 pages but still had much more to go – I was determined to end it, however; but I didn’t want to write a four-hour movie. So I finished it. In about four pages I wrote an impromptu ending. Incidentally, it’s pretty similar to the ending of Triumvirate.
The biggest change in this version, aside from eliminating much of the plot, several characters, and virtually all of the backstory, was the fact that Johnson was a traitor. I made him an alien in disguise, using Davies to use Dawson to use the President to use the CEO to use the Corporation to use humanity. It was all rather silly and unconvincing, and I realized, upon reading it later, that most of the film’s exposition occurred on the last page of the script. That was a problem. The action scenes were cool, but the characters weren’t. That was a problem.
I struggled for years with the story. I made perhaps a dozen attempts at rewriting it, fundamentally changing it – one minute it’s a Lawrence of Arabia style epic; the next it’s an artsy war film like Apocalypse Now; then it’s a swashbuckling adventure like Star Wars; finally a psychological thriller like The Game. None of this worked.
Four years later I hit upon an idea: go back to basics. I eliminated the entire backstory, the bit about the starship I had designed back in seventh grade, much of the complex conspiracy and several of the diversions in plot. I looked at some of my earliest ideas for the story and incorporated them – the first twenty minutes takes a scene I’d had for a couple of years (the battle in a gas giant) and combine it with a concept I’d abandoned years ago (having Davies kidnapped by the ‘enemy’) to integrate it into the story as a whole. I changed some characters from previous versions – in the case of some, like Steve and Johnson and Dawson, changing them back to what I had envisioned them as in junior high – and emphasized more the elements of character and theme (particularly themes of faith and choice). Finally, I very loosely based the politics of the story around those of Caesar’s rise to power in Rome, making it more believable. In all cases this reaffirmed the maxim: old ideas are best.
I wrote most of it over the summer, posting it on Dan’s page. Nobody, literally nobody, read it. I then went back to university and found myself too busy to continue. Finally, though, I decided to rerelease what I’d completed so far and then complete it over Christmas break. JPJunkee and Dark Hunter both read it all the way through as I posted it piecemeal, And to them I remain grateful. They are, I suppose, the first to people to have read my work (IRL I’m rather shy about letting others read what I write), and they were a great inspiration for me to continue writing it. Now, finally, it’s beginning to get some recognition and, after letting it sit dormant for some time, I am now releasing the reedited screenplay as this Special Edition. Hopefully more people will read and respond to this critically. Future plans? I might submit it to TriggerStreet.com for a lark. I’m writing the sequel, Second Triumvirate, which builds upon ideas I had for Triumvirate years ago that were scrapped in this version. And then I’m filing it away hopefully forever. I had a blast writing it, but it’s taken far too much of my life. I would like now finally to move on.
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4/12/2003 2:55:52 PM
(Updated: 4/12/2003 6:18:31 PM)
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