Proposal for 44 min. sci-fi dramedy serial
Title – Tina Tomorrow
Basic concept – A young woman from 2015 mysteriously finds herself running a ski lodge in 2252, and through her, we discover a new world with many of the same basic human drama as our familiar world and time. The main draw of the show is the character interplay and relationships, with the setting discovery, and the slow reveal of how Tina managed to get into the future, serving as a return incentive. The pilot episode reveals only part of the mystery of how Tina arrived in the future. Further episodes develop the mystery slowly through flashbacks and investigations.
Setting – The Colorado Mountains – 2252 A.D. – Mostly within a ski lodge and its surroundings. Some episodes will have scenes in downtown Boulder.
The United States in 2252 is surprisingly familiar to the audience, visually. This is not a wicked, destroyed Dystopia, an alien-invaded warscape, nor a zombie-wrecked wilderness. For the most part, people are still people, and the world carries on with its own everyday. The society itself has moved on, of course, as it always does. Civil Rights debates have changed, but have not disappeared; political conflict between conservatives and progressives continues, but their arguments and positions have shifted to meet the new times, sometimes ironically or humorously. In fact, most of the social and political issues of 2252 will serve as allegories for discussion of the issues of our own time, just exaggerated, or at least progressed, into the future.
Persona – The main cast consists of four major characters plus guest and recurring characters as needed. The ski lodge clientele and staff offer lots of opportunities for celebrity guests and occasionals.
Tina VanWinkle (Protagonist and POV character) – educated, shy, easily scandalized
Tina takes ownership of and runs the ski lodge after finding that it belongs to her when she wakes up almost two and a half centuries into her future. Most of the other characters are her friends, employees, or the clientele at the lodge. Much of the conflict of the episodes step from Tina’s unfamiliarity or intolerance of some aspect of the future. Being from our own time, Tina offers us the best point of view into this world. A young College student from Boulder, Tina was considered a liberal progressive in her own time, but is often shocked and taken aback by revelations in her new home-time, and, despite her education, she frequently needs fundamental aspects of the world and times explained to her by the other characters. Often she resents or resists these explanations, often needing to “learn the hard way” that her friends are right. The pilot episode shows her arriving in what looks like a hospital room for an undisclosed surgery. She’s given a anesthesia which knocks her out, and when she awakes, it’s 2252, she’s in a hospital bed, unaged. no one seems to know how she got there. After some intense, scenes of Tina out of her element, she learns of her ski lodge (originally opened by her grand nephew), and she decides it would be a good place to escape to for a time.
Willam Ford (best friend, sounding board) – history buff, stoner, ‘old fashioned‘
Willam is the manager of the lodge, running its day-to-day operations, and has already been doing this job for some time when Tina arrives. Willam is not from 2015, but he wishes he was. He yearns to live in a “simpler time” of cars, air travel, cellular communications networks, and human manual labor. He doesn’t believe that the social and technological advances of his time are wrong, only that they are boring, and that to have lived in the early 21st century would have been ideal. He envys Tina for having gotten to live there, while she envys his ease with handling the future, while seeming so much like herself. They get along well, and frequently get into mishaps together. Much of the explanations about how this world is different from our own will come from Willam. His frequent pot use is a source of humor in the early episodes since Tina sees his open use of the drug as progressive, while other characters consider it an eccentricity, part of his obsession with the past.
Shae Mars (moral compass, love interest) – overtly pleasant, diplomatic, socially awkward
Shae works at the front desk of the lodge, serving as receptionist, clerk, and concierge. He always knows exactly what to say to lodge guests to appease them when ruffled, and is incredibly resourceful. However, one-on-one social interactions are strained and difficult for him. Shae is a Martian. His people are descended from Humans, but have been genetically engineered for planetary colonization. There are cosmetic differences (these can be decided by artists later), but the biggest difference is their sexual-fluidity. To better survive the possibility of massive population loss, Martians are engineered with a constantly fluctuating sex. They are not hermaphroditic, they are only one sex at a time, but they do change back and forth (roughly every six months to a year. On Mars, the colonists raise children communally, and do not take surnames, the few who have emigrated to Earth usually take up the last name “Mars” for Earth’s record-keeping purposes, though they rarely use the name. Shae’s sexual fluidity is not revealed to the audience or to Tina until mid-way through the first season, after she has been dating him for a time. Shae’s change is no surprise to the other characters, who take it, and the resulting pronoun changes in stride. Often when other characters get in trouble, it is Shae who they turn to, and who usually has an answer. Throughout the series, when complex social issues come up which Willam cannot explain to Tina, Shae fills in as guide.
Terrence Harper (comic relief) – oblivious, intelligent, flaky
Terrence keeps the lodge’s robots and other machines running. He is frequently seen engaging in diagnosis and repair work. His humor stems from the classic absent-minded intellectual role. He’s socially unreliable and quiet, but prone to bouts of passionate excitement, especially regarding technology. He spends much of his time nursing a crush on Tina. When a future technology needs explaining, and Willam can’t handle it, Terrence is called upon to explain.
The remaining cast of recurring characters can be filled out with lodge guests, mostly stereotypes, like a flirty snow bunny and a snobby socialite guy, etc.