#tekwar

[theactioneer]

TekWar (William Shatner, 1994)

[hellotailor]

impressed to discover that william shatner's notorious vanity project TekWar is such a cultural nonentity that it has ZERO works on ao3.

[countesspetofi]

Last post of scans from the TV Guide issue from the week of the premiere of Star Trek: Voyager (previous posts here, here, and here). continuing the exploration of the Star Trek Box.

Most of these are miscellaneous Star Trek items from the same issue; only one of them is directly related to the Voyager premiere. Still, I couldn't resist including them.

I didn't watch this PBS special, but I did go to a traveling exhibit that visited the local science museum right about that same time, all about the science of Star Trek. So, maybe the special and the exhibit were produced in conjunction. I'm sick to my stomach all over again at the defunding of PBS.

These are the episodes of The Outer Limits I wrote about in my "Before They Were Star Trek Stars" posts here and here.

I never got around to screencapping Nimoy's 1960 episode of the original Bonanza series for "Before They Were Star Trek Stars."

I remember once my sister and I saw William Shatner promoting this series on a talk show, and he said Greg Evigan's name in a slightly eccentric manner, pronouncing it "Evi-gaahn." And that's how we've pronounced it between ourselves ever since.

[grayrazor]

Power Rangers: Time Force is kind of the swan song of a particular 1990s grungy cyberpunk sub-aesthetic.

[thesparkwhowalks]

When I was a teen, I read TekWar by William Shatner, his dip into cyberpunk detective fiction. At one point, he described something as a "Plaschair". Which I took to be a portmanteau of "plastic chair", the thing I was sitting in while reading it.

It's been twenty years and that stands out to me as the stupidest bit of future speak I have ever read in sci-fi.

[tamara-kama]

Ezri Dax was in TekWar!! 💜😻🖖🏻👍🏻

(Watching an episode right now)

[zippocreed501]

The Cross-Fertilization of SF TV:

(36) Lexa Doig

TekWar, Earth: Final Conflict, The 4400, Andromeda, Stargate SG-1, Eureka, V, Smallville, Continuum and Arrow.

She also appeared in The Hidden Room, TekWar: TekLords, Second Sight, Code Name Pheonix, Ba'al: The Storm God, Supernatural, Primeval: New World, Saving Hope, Chucky and Goosebumps.

[it-crowd-unexpected-reboot]

Of all the media mentioned on Moss' Lonely Hearts profile, the only one I'm unfamiliar with is Tek Wars (as I've actually watched the first few episodes of the original He-Man and the Masters of the Universe animated series).

So, because I'm a longtime lover of media history, I did a not-so-deep dive and found out that TekWar (Moss misspells it) is a whole media franchise, beginning in 1989 with a book series, created by William Shatner.

That's right. Fucking William Shatner.

On the set of Star Trek V: The Final Frontier, Wiliam Shatner started writing notes for a novel series that would blend elements of both Star Trek and an early eighties police procedural called T.J. Hooker, which is a show he happened to play the titular role on.

So on the set of Star Trek, he was basically writing a fanfiction of...himself? His own shows? Where he was the star? But you know, every hugely successful actor needs some fantasy fulfillment.

So anyway, he wants to write this book, so he does what anyone who wants to write a book would do...he doesn't. Instead he hires a ghostwriter, Ron Goulart, who also ghostwrote for Flash Gordon, The Phantom, Vampirella, and...Groucho Marx? A series of novels about Groucho Marx I guess?

But what's the premise of TekWar?

Basically, "Tek" is an illegal drug in the form of a microchip, which creates a simulated reality.

The protagonist, Jake Cardigan is a former cop framed for dealing Tek who has been sentenced to 15 years of cryo-imprisonment. He has been summoned by a guy named Walter Bascom to solve Tek-related crimes. But Jake's also a recovering Tek user, so he's a bit hard-boiled.

And then he gets a sidekick named Sid Gomez, who Wikipedia oddly refers to as a "good-natured and charismatic Mexican" as of writing this. I have a lot of questions about that phrasing. I am also going to guess no one ever looks at the TekWar Wikipedia page except me. But anyway, they have a buddy cop dynamic going on I guess.

So it's basically a self-insert of William Shatner, who plays T.J. Hooker, but this T.J. Hooker got Han Solo'd (or, alternatively, Austin Powers'd) in cryo-sleep, and is now a Blade Runner for Tek in a society that's basically the DUNE universe.

And with the sidekick storyline it might also be kind of like a hard-boiled detective novel plus In the Heat of the Night?.

Well, whatever it is, it's a whole fucking franchise.

They wrote 9 novels of this. TekWar (1989), TekLords (1991), TekLab (1991), Tek Vengeance (1993), Tek Secret (1993), Tek Power (1994), Tek Money (1995), Tek Kill (1996) , and Tek Net (1997).

I'm absolutely amazed at the creativity of these titles. I mean, literally all of them have "Tek" in them. I'm also really interested in the choice to make "Tek" and the word that follows separate words beginning in 1993.

In 1992, after the release of TekLab, the third TekWar novel, they adapt TekWar into a comic book series called TekWorld.

But they do this with Marvel comics. The principal artist of this series was Lee Sullivan (who's worked on Doctor Who, Robocop, and Judge Dredd comics) and Fabian Nicieza, the comic book writer/editor who created Deadpool.

In 1993, they release TekWar trading cards. Here's somebody selling them on eBay for $12.99 (as of time of writing).

In 1994, it becomes a TV franchise with 4 television movies--TekWar, TekLords, TekWar: TekLab and TekWar: TekJustice (again, the creativity of these names!).

You may be confused why they didn't choose to go from TekLab to Tek Vengeance. Beats me. TekWar: TekJustice is apparently an original movie not based on an existing TekWar property.

And after the 4 TV movies comes an 18-episode TV series, broadcast in Canada between 1994 and 1996. And the episodes are hourlong.

You can find all of the TV movies and the entire TV series very very easily, on the website where most free videos are viewed. So if you're interested in watching all of TekWar, I encourage you to.

In 1995, they even make a first-person shooter video game called William Shatner's TekWar (an especially funny title that I feel implies William Shatner himself was the in-universe instigator of the Tek-related conflicts).

Now, it's worth noting that William Shatner appears in basically all of the TekWar media, but he doesn't play Jake Cardigan. Which is really interesting, because I feel like even from a superficial look at the summary, and the fact that this is a sci-fi novel written by William Shatner, I can infer that Jake Cardigan might be a little self-inserty.

But no, William Shatner plays Walter Bascom, the summoner of Jake Cardigan. The wise mentor who guides him through the Tek investigations or whatever. Which I suppose is fitting for the actual author of the series to play. Kinda cheeky, I guess.

So the TekWar FPS also includes voiceover of William Shatner as Walter Bascom, apparently.

I didn't want to include the entire walkthrough of the game that's available on YouTube but here's a short clip of the gameplay (since I love the 90s graphics). I think you can hear William Shatner groan sadly when the player dies at the very end, but unfortunately it doesn't include the voiceover.

Sounds like you need to tell the insurance company you mean business. Call Hupy & Abraham, right now.

Where the fuck is TekWar

Whenever somebody self-funds a vanity project like this, I feel like it's always hard to tell whether sales are actually good and people are watching this, or if the rich person moneypool and star power is what keeps this going.

Apparently TekWar did sell for a period, because schlocky sci-fi TV was so big in the 90s. But the TekWorld comic series was discontinued in August 1994, even after they'd tied the comics into the TV show. Marvel was going through financial issues at the time, but it still makes me think that the comics probably weren't selling all that well even then.

And the entire film/TV franchise being super easy to bootleg, means the studio that made it probably doesn't super care about it.

Most bizarrely, however, there's not a single AO3 fanfiction about TekWar. Not even of Jake Cardigan and Sid!

There's a single 859-word fanfiction on Fanfiction.net, a heartwarming Jake Cardigan father-son story. Set after the Betrayal episode for those who want to avoid spoilers. That is all I found. And I'm happy to plug it here so this person gets reads.

So, is TekWar dead?

Maybe not? They actually did greenlight an adult animated series of TekWar in September 2021, but we haven't heard anything. It's been almost 4 years which I guess you could say is a bad sign, but film/TV is a slow-moving industry, so we won't know for sure until they tell us.

TekWar in the style of Invincible would be a wild combination. Just a thought.

I'm not sure if TekWar fell off, or could fall off considering how low the bar was. So if you know anything about TekWar or are a fan please let me know.