You met J. Allen Williams yesterday. He's the guy up there second from the left, standing with Mystery Science Theatre alums -- from left to right -- Frank Conniff, Joel Hodgson, and Beez McKeever.

Today, find out some very specific stuff about Darkstar, the game he's been creating for the past ten years. Very specific stuff. Maybe too specific. And while you may know that the cast of Mystery Science Theatre 3000 is involved, the celebrity name dropping doesn't stop there.

The long strange saga of Darkstar continues after the jump.

Tom Chick: Let's talk about your premise then. At first, I assumed it was a sort of a haunted house story, where you're trapped on a spaceship. But to listen to you talk, it sounds like it ranges father than that. Explain to me the basic premise.

J. Allen Williams: Well, actually, I like your haunted house analogy. That's exactly what I wanted. I wanted it to be a starship that's been floating for several hundred years and you wake up on it with amnesia. You don't know what the hell is going on. So you're coming into it like the player would be, not knowing anything, and you've got to figure stuff out. You can't trust everybody. You run into logs from the other crew members. One of them is dead. Okay, well, I guess I'll start at the beginning.

You wake up. You've been told by the ship's computer you've been asleep for 312 years. There are three other crew members. One is missing. You don't know where he is. And a shuttle is gone. The pilot is a beautiful girl. That's Beez McKeaver from Mystery Science. She's still asleep in her chamber. You can't really get her out. But she does come out and attack you later. Because she's lost her memory, too. And then the last guy is dead. The glass on his chamber has been shattered and his left hand has been chopped off. And throughout the ship you find these hand bio locks, and you kind of surmise at some point that somebody chopped his hand off trying to use it on them. So, anyway, you gotta figure out what the hell has happened. And you find the other crew members' messages, but there's somebody who's not telling the truth. Something has gone horribly wrong.

And the back story cinema tells you the big picture. The mission and what the ship was doing. Basically, the Earth has been destroyed. It's actually destroyed in the first ten seconds of Darkstar, in the intro. What you find out later is that Earth had decided to go totally peaceful and start a prison colony on Mars so they could send all their human trash there. And they called it New Australia. Before they did that, they sent all their nuclear weapons out to space in freighters and they encountered an asteroid, exploded, and created this big chain reaction, and this artificial swirling cloud was created. When they went to explore it, the ship got sucked in and sent back in time to the instant that swirling cloud was created. So basically, Darkstar is a frozen moment in time. But what occurs on the prison colony is there's a revolt there. About 80 years later, they build up into their own civilization and decide they're going to come back to Earth and destroy it and take their water. With tankers. And they do that.

Well, in the six months they have to wait while the Mars armada is coming to Earth, they know they can't fight them, they can't beat them, so the only thing they can do is send a ship to Darkstar that'll go back to the instant Darkstar was created, which was before the mistake was made to make the prison colony.

TC: So did you just spoil the entire game?

JW: Not really. That just tells the back story. Actually the big twist to what I call the small story is--

TC: Wait, don't tell me the twist! You're going to give it away?

JW: Well, you just reprimanded me for giving you the twist to the big story.

TC: It sounds like you've got a lot of plot ideas. Your priority seems to be telling the player this story.

JW: Yes, absolutely. That is number one in the experience. Number two is the eye candy and the production values. Just being an immersive escapism kind of thing. It's done in a little bit of a campy tongue-in-cheek way in places. It's got some weird humor from some of my Mystery Science Theatre guys. There's a couple of robot characters in it that a lot of people could draw direct analogies from some of the stuff Joel [Hodgson] and Trace [Beaulieu] and those guys did.

TC: Before we talk about them, tell me where you get your inspiration. What science fiction movies or books have influenced you?

JW: Well, I mean Forrest Ackerman got me started with Famous Monsters of Filmland. I'm 50-years-old, so when I was a kid, that was on the newsstands. It was a big deal. So I started with the old bad horror movies and sci-fi. Forbidden Planet and then 2001. And of course Star Wars and Star Trek. I was just a sci-fi idiot. I read Ray Bradbury books. And Isaac Asimov. I read anything sci-fi I could get my hands on. I was a huge Richard Corben fan as a kid. He's a fellow Missourian. He worked on the movie Heavy Metal and he did [art for] Eerie, Creepy, and Vampirella. His own underground comics. He's a prolific storyteller. He's an animator as well. We managed to meet in the early 90s and start working together on some commercial projects. He and I got to work together, which is kind of cool. He was one of my big inspirations as a kid.

TC: Have you kept up with that genre? Have you seen any or many of the recent spaceship/haunted house movies like Pandorum or Sunshine or Event Horizon?

JW: You know, of the three you just mentioned, I own Event Horizon on a big laser disc. I was one of the fools who got sucked into that. So I've got that. It was a really cool movie. I liked the idea of it. It wasn't one of my favorites. Alien I like a lot better. I have been keeping up. You're going to laugh, but I'm one of the only people on the planet who hasn't seen Avatar yet. I own it. My kids have seen it. I'm sure I'm going to love it. I'm more into things that are not huge mainstream things. I like things that are kind of cool and under the radar. That's one of the things I was attracted to about Mystery Science. It felt a little more personal to me, a little more inside my head, and not tailored to fit all. I was really amazed at the new Terminator film. I didn't have any desire to see it. I was out in Hollywood working when they had the big building-sized posters and everything for that movie. But I had no desire to see it. And late one night I was decompressing and it was on. I thought it was just amazing. It was really good.

TC: Okay, well, let's get around to one of your huge selling points and what got me curious about Darkstar. And that's the talent you've managed to gather to tell this story. I guess the first thing I want to know is how on earth did you do this.

JW: Yeah. That's a good question. I was familiar with Trace. And it kind of started with him. I actually wanted Trace to help me write it. And then I asked him if he'd like to act in it, and he was like, "Sure". I mean Trace is one of those guys. Once this article comes out, just call Trace. He'll do anything. He's working on a children's book right now that's reminiscent of Edward Gorey that is just friggin' amazing. The guy is such a talented person.

So anyway, I got hooked up with him. And he recommended Beez to me, to do wardrobe. I was going to use local talent around here. There's a lot of great actors around here doing local theatre. I've got a lot of friends who do that. But I needed costumes. Well, Beez asked if she could play the role of the space pilot. She had this idea to turn her into a Barbarella kind of thing. I had already cast it, but when she asked, I asked the other person if they'd mind playing somebody else, and they were like, "No, I wouldn't mind, absolutely not". So that's how Beez got in.

Then I believe Mary Jo [Pehl] was next. And then Frank [Conniff]. And then Joel and Josh [Weinstein]. They were the last to say, "Yeah, I'd like to do it, too". I actually flew Beez, Mary Jo, and Trace here to film, here in Missouri. But a week before our day of shooting was 9/11. We were going to fly everybody out, but Joel and Josh and Frank kind of expressed a little bit of fear of flying. And I was actually going to cancel the whole thing. I said, "I'll actually just come to you guys later". But Trace and Bees and Mary Jo said, "No, we'll still come". So I said, "Okay". So we shot those three here. Then I went to Los Angeles and shot at the same sound stage where they do Cinematic Titanic. I shot Joel, Josh, and Frank there.

TC: It sound like they were a sort of package deal. But it doesn't stop there. Peter Graves?

JW: Now Peter Graves. This is what you do. You to William Morris, or whatever agent for who you want to use. The top two on my list were Shatner and Peter Graves. And Peter was kind of my top choice because of the Mystery Science Theatre connection with him. And I just love Peter Graves. He's such a cool guy. But from a commercial standpoint, I thought it might be better to have William Shatner. But then the guy at William Morris I was dealing with said Shatner had just had some big blow up with a lower echelon producer like myself, so the guy said, "You might want to go with Peter". So that was the deal-breaker that moved me over to Peter Graves. And he was just the most awesome guy to work with. He was so sweet.

And a strapping dude, too. I had just met Jimmy Doohan at some sci-fi convention that Trace and Frank and I went to, and it was just a few years before he died. And he just looked really bad, and it made me sad. And then right before I met Peter at this recording studio in Santa Monica, I had the little wave of fear. I thought, "Oh, I hope he looks good. I hope he sounds good."

And he did. He drove in in a convertible, driving himself. He came walking in. I think the guy is 6'4".

TC: Holy cats.

JW: Well, you know his brother is James Arness, from Gunsmoke.

TC: Ah, that's right. Big fellas.

JW: Both of those guys are huge. And I think Peter's skeleton had settled a little, but he was still a good six two, or three. Towering above me. He really got into the story. He loved the thick writing style, because I wrote it very Rod Serling-ish. "Picture, if you will..." You know, that kind of thing. And he really loved it. He'd be in the middle of it and he'd laugh and have to do another take. He was like, "This is meaty stuff. This is fun to read." We had a great time.

TC: Once all this talent started falling into your project - it sounds like it began with a pebble that became an avalanche - tell me what effect that had. This must have been incredibly encouraging to see this procession of talented people, and getting to work with them. Did you change the project at all? Did you write more parts, or make bigger parts? How did you adapt as these people started coming in to work with you?

JW: Actually, it was the opposite for me. When I started this, I figured it would be a two or three year project. About two years in, I woke up in the middle of the night, and realized, "Oh my god, there's no way I'm going to be done in another two years". Little did I know it would be another six years. So it was a really big wake-up call when I realized how huge I'd made this.

The truth of the matter on what you just asked me is that originally the main character was going to be a very small character. He wasn't going to have a bunch of onscreen presence. I was going to have it a little more first-person than it ended up. My original John O'Neil was Brad Pitt's brother, Doug.

He looks just like Brad. He's a year or two older. Brad went to high school right down the street from me. I graduated before he did. Brad's from Springfield, Missouri. So I know his brother Doug. Doug owns a computer store, called Computer World, I believe it is. I asked Doug if he'd like to be Captain O'Neil. At that point, I don't even think he had any speaking parts. I was going to have him walking around, looking. And Doug had a pretty face. Like I say, he could be Brad. A little darker hair.

So we were going to do that. And then, as the story goes, Doug had to back out, because Brad sent him an email saying, "Listen, bro, you don't act. I won't sell computers."

So I lost my first John O'Neil. So I thought I'd go to William Morris like I did for Peter, and they tried to sell me Erik Estrada and a few crazy ones. What was the crazy one? Oh, Chuck Berry. And I asked "Why would you think Chuck Berry would be good for sci-fi?" And they were like, "Well, he lives in Missouri".

TC: Chuck Berry or Chuck Barris?

JW: Chuck Berry. The black guitar player. I was like, "Are you insane?" And I had to kind of spell it out again. So some other choices came out that were a little more what I was thinking. They suggested Emilio Estevez. And he had said he wanted to do it because he thought it was animated. He thought his character would be animated. He didn't want to be on camera. So he passed. We were going to do Chris Lambert. The Highlander. But he got some kind of thing that he was going to be gone for nine months, I think with Russell Mulcahy again. That's what I heard. And I didn't want to wait. So I passed on that. And let's see. Who else came up? I used to have a list of the people we almost got.

And then Clive Robertson came up. At the time, he was being considered for Bond. He ended up, if I understand properly, making it down to the last six before they picked the guy that's in Quantum of Solace et cetera. But he's got that real Timothy Dalton look. Real good looking guy. And he looked great scruffy. When he didn't shave. He was the guy I wanted. He was in a show called Starhunter which ran for three seasons. It was with Michael Pare. It wasn't that bad. It was like something you'd see on the Sci Fi Channel. The level of production you see on Farscape and some of the things they produced. I thought it was fairly good. I went on Amazon and bought the boxed set and checked it out.

Clive was the best thing that could have happened to the project. He's become one of my best friends. When I go out to LA, I stay at his house. He's got a guest house up in the Hollywood Hills. We hang out together. We went and saw a movie together when I was out there last. But he was a great choice. He is that guy.

[NOTE: My first reaction was to assume Williams was confusing Clive Robertson with Clive Owen. Owen was a potential Bond replacement back in 2005. It's also worth noting that Owen has his own history with sci-fi videogames as the live action lead character in the 1996 game Privateer 2. However, Williams later sourced Robertson's prospects as a Bond replacement to a specific producer close to the Bond franchise at the time.]

TC: You've assembled around him quite an ensemble. Because of the participation of the Mystery Science Theatre folks, I assume there's a lot of humor. Is he basically a straight man with a bunch of comic stuff around him, or do you do much serious stuff with the ensemble cast?

JW: Both. He's definitely not the comic. He's the straight man. It's all very dark comedy. The robots are one example. One of the robots is voiced by Frank, who is the one guy on Mystery Science who never did a robot, so I thought, "He's going to be my robot voice". Frank is my robot voice, and his character is called Simon. It's Semi Intelligent Motorized Observation Network. The robot's been sitting around waiting for the humans to do something for 312 years. He doesn't like them anymore. He's kind of pissed off. He's very sarcastic. Very much like Crow, but really gone over the edge. Simon doesn't like his name. He doesn't like the "semi intelligent" part. So when he walks into a room, he throws another acronym at you that he's come up with that's bizarre and off the wall.

He just screws around with O'Neil constantly. One of the first times you meet him, he says "I've been looking all over for Burke's hand. Oh I see you've found it!" It's sitting on a table in a box. Of course, O'Neil is disgusted and horrified by it, and Simon's cavalier nature about everything - he doesn't care about anything - is a source of amusement for the viewer.

TC: Tell me what you did with Joel and Trace?

JW: Trace, actually, is nothing like what you've seen. There's one scene, and I'm not going to tell you what it is, where he gets a little bit like Dr. F. But for the most part, he's playing a totally different role. I had him grow a beard so he would look nothing like his Mystery Science look. Same with Joel. Actually Joel requested, "Can I have a Fu Manchu mustache?" So his character has a Fu Manchu mustache. Joel's supposed to be this really evil awful guy. Now Joel, and he talks about this in the bloopers, he only has one face he can do on camera. And that's that sleepy-eyed guy. So it's kind of funny to have him talk on his crew logs about what he's doing to destroy his own mothership, and he's just all Joel Robinson about it.

TC: I love the idea of having such a good-natured fellow as a villain.

JW: And he picked that role. I actually let Josh, Joel, and Frank pick their roles. I said, "Here's the three guys I have left". And Joel, hands down, wanted to be the bad guy.

Tomorrow: things really go wrong