New TV series project is adven­ture into unusual and ‘tran­scen­dent’ phe­nom­ena, say developers

Steve Ham­mons, August 05, 2008

Can a new TV series help improve com­mu­ni­ca­tion, edu­ca­tion, accli­ma­tion and under­stand­ing about unusual phenomena?

The devel­op­ment team work­ing on the pro­posed TV show hopes so.

The series, ten­ta­tively titled “Joint Recon Study Group,” fol­lows a small, spe­cial research and oper­a­tions team of mil­i­tary offi­cers and civil­ians as they inves­ti­gate emerg­ing anom­alous and “tran­scen­dent” developments.

Exec­u­tive pro­ducer Joseph McMonea­gle is deter­mined to make sure the TV series project is accu­rate regard­ing a wide range of mil­i­tary, intel­li­gence and para­nor­mal elements.

McMonea­gle, a retired U.S. Army intel­li­gence war­rant offi­cer, was “Remote Viewer #001″ of the mil­i­tary intel­li­gence Project STARGATE that researched and imple­mented a spe­cific ESP pro­to­col called “remote view­ing” in sup­port of numer­ous Depart­ment of Defense and national intel­li­gence agen­cies for twenty years.

His pre­vi­ous scriptwrit­ing expe­ri­ence on USA Network’s “The Dead Zone” and his mem­ber­ship in the Writer’s Guild of America-East (WGA-E) and the Amer­i­can Fed­er­a­tion of Tele­vi­sion and Radio Artists (AFTRA) will also be help­ful, the project devel­op­ment team says.

Joe says, “Few real­ize the extent to which the gov­ern­ment will go to use para­nor­mal abil­i­ties in solv­ing prob­lems with crit­i­cal national impli­ca­tions. We want to demon­strate this real­ity in authen­tic set­tings.”
Pro­ducer C.F. York noted that “Joe will bring a real-world feel to the new series so that view­ers can see how anom­alous phe­nom­ena some­times inter­act with cur­rent mil­i­tary and intel­li­gence applications.”

SMALL SCREEN AND EMERGING PHENOMENA

The TV series is based on the two nov­els and screen­play by exec­u­tive pro­ducer Steve Hammons.

The nov­els, MISSION INTO LIGHT and the sequel LIGHT’S HAND, fol­lowed the women and men of the Joint Recon Study Group and their involve­ment in sub­jects like ESP and remote view­ing, gov­ern­ment dol­phin research, DNA genet­ics mys­ter­ies, UFOs, crop cir­cles, ancient human cul­tures, Amer­i­can Indian leg­ends and prophe­cies, strange dis­cov­er­ies in mod­ern physics and other phe­nom­ena as they cur­rently exist on the cut­ting edge of reality.

The show’s sci­ence advi­sor is Harold E. (“Hal”) Puthoff, a respected the­o­ret­i­cal and exper­i­men­tal physi­cist. Puthoff, a for­mer Navy intel­li­gence offi­cer, is pres­i­dent and CEO of the Austin, Texas, research firm Earth­Tech Inter­na­tional, Inc.

Puthoff has pointed out that, “The inter­est­ing devel­op­ments going on in physics lately have brought us to where sci­ence fact is out­strip­ping sci­ence fic­tion. Worm­holes and warp dri­ves, quan­tum entan­gle­ment and tele­por­ta­tion, mul­ti­di­men­sional uni­verses – these are now stan­dard fare in main­stream sci­ence journals.”

“Based on this, phe­nom­ena that would have seemed out­ra­geous even just a decade or two ago can­not now be rejected out of hand with­out care­ful scrutiny. The play­ing field of real­ity has expanded,” Puthoff stated.

Pro­ducer York said, “Hav­ing peo­ple like Joe McMonea­gle and Hal Puthoff involved in the devel­op­ment of the series helps to place the show in a con­text of real­ism that many episodic shows deal­ing with anomolous phe­nom­ena often lack.”

COMMUNICATING WITH AUDIENCES

Lead­ing edge dis­cov­er­ies about sub­jects like time travel, ESP, tele­por­ta­tion, UFOs and sim­i­lar amaz­ing ideas are now being seri­ously inves­ti­gated by sci­en­tific researchers. And, mil­lions of peo­ple of all ages around the world are very inter­ested in these kinds of top­ics, say the show’s developers.

As a result, they will reach out to a demo­graph­i­cally wide audi­ence of TV view­ers who may not be inter­ested in sci­ence fic­tion, but will be fas­ci­nated by “sci­ence fact” and the char­ac­ters por­trayed within the series.

The show is planned to be an excit­ing and thought-provoking adven­ture for view­ers of many ages, back­grounds and interests.

“We feel it is impor­tant to strike a bal­ance between chal­leng­ing the audi­ence with story ques­tions while at the same time avoid­ing audi­ence frus­tra­tion which can some­times set in when ques­tions out­weigh answers,” York pointed out. “It is impor­tant to give the audi­ence a pay­off when they are tuned in to the sto­ries you are telling.”

York also said, “One chal­lenge for any con­tem­po­rary series is to bal­ance the more episodic ori­ented shows with those shows deal­ing with a longer term plot arc. We want to sat­isfy both types of view­ers and some­times that is dif­fi­cult to do.”

“How­ever, by focus­ing on longer term plot ele­ments that view­ers are aware of in the real world, it becomes much eas­ier to tune in to an indi­vid­ual episode and under­stand what is going on, despite the fact it may be a longer term plot arc,” York explained.

York added, “We envi­sion a series that includes ele­ments of sev­eral very suc­cess­ful pro­grams, yet is a dis­tinctly new con­cept in the way these ideas are brought together.”

“The series con­cept com­bines an excit­ing syn­ergy involv­ing U.S. mil­i­tary and intel­li­gence peo­ple, who show them­selves to be very human, with emerg­ing and mys­te­ri­ous phe­nom­ena that fas­ci­nate mil­lions of peo­ple around the world,” accord­ing to pro­ducer Robert M. Caruso.

These char­ac­ters are ded­i­cated to get­ting answers and under­stand­ing unusual things going on. They meet adver­saries who don’t want them to suc­ceed and pose dan­ger­ous threats,” said Caruso.

The show’s devel­op­ment team is cur­rently work­ing on the con­cept, sto­ry­lines, char­ac­ter devel­op­ment and related materials.

When the devel­op­ment phase of the project is com­pleted, planned to be by end of sum­mer, the show devel­op­ers will begin approach­ing TV net­works and oth­ers about the series.

(Read the full arti­cle here…)

ABOUT STEVE HAMMONS:

Ham­mons was born and raised in the Cincin­nati area and south­west­ern Ohio’s Indiana-Kentucky bor­der region. He grad­u­ated from Ohio Uni­ver­sity, Athens, with dual majors in health edu­ca­tion (psy­chol­ogy focus) and com­mu­ni­ca­tions (jour­nal­ism focus), a minor in pre-law as well as graduate-level stud­ies in guid­ance coun­sel­ing. Ohio U. is home of the pres­ti­gious Scripps Col­lege of Com­mu­ni­ca­tion and E.W. Scripps School of Jour­nal­ism. He has worked as a jour­nal­ist, coun­selor, juve­nile pro­ba­tion peace offi­cer, pub­lic safety urgent response spe­cial­ist, teacher, instruc­tor and researcher. Ham­mons’ first novel, MISSION INTO LIGHT, intro­duced read­ers to the women and men of the Joint Recon­nais­sance Study Group, their adven­tures explor­ing the unknown, and their mis­sions to help cre­ate a bet­ter world. The sequel, LIGHT’S HAND, con­tin­ues the adven­tures of this group. His arti­cles are posted on many diverse Web sites and he has appeared on sev­eral radio shows. His e-mail is hammons55@gmail.com.

NOTE TO READERS: For more infor­ma­tion, visit the online site of the Joint Recon Study Group.

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