ne of the most nagging unanswered modern-day mysteries—the disappearances of planes, boats and people in the Bermuda Triangle—is being explored in a six-hour SCI FI Channel original miniseries, The Triangle, which premieres Dec. 5 at 9 p.m. EST.
Dean Devlin (Independence Day) and Bryan Singer (X-Men) came up with the story idea, and Rockne S. O'Bannon (Farscape: The Peacekeeper Wars) joined in as the screenwriter and co-producer of the story, about a group of misfit experts who try to discover why more than 8,000 people have vanished over the last two centuries in a triangular area off the coast of Florida. Theories regarding the disappearances have included space-time warps, extraterrestrial activity, energy from the lost city of Atlantis, magnetic vortices and more.
Directed by Craig Baxley (Storm of the Century), the miniseries co-stars Eric Stoltz (Mask), Catherine Bell (Bruce Almighty), Michael Rodgers (Auto Focus), Bruce Davison (X-Men), Lou Diamond Phillips (Courage Under Fire) and Sam Neill (Jurassic Park).
The miniseries coincides with the 60th anniversary of the most infamous Bermuda Triangle mystery—the disappearance of Flight 19. On Dec. 5, 1945, five torpedo bombers disappeared after getting lost during a routine mission out of Fort Lauderdale, Fla. Then, a large twin-engine Mariner rescue plane, Flight 19, went out to find the missing aircraft, and it also disappeared. Even after the largest maritime search in history, no trace of the six planes or 27 crewmen was ever located.
"Over the years there've been lots and lots of theories, but clearly there are still no answers," Hammer said at the Television Critics Association's summer press tour, where she made the announcement of the documentary and showed some footage of The Triangle.
Devlin was in London shortly after the terrorist bombings and joined the interviews via satellite, saying, "Well, we're using a science-fiction technique; I'm crossing out into outer space and beaming into Los Angeles to be with you."
In The Triangle, billionaire Eric Benirall (Neill) gathers together a group of experts because he's losing cargo ships and a jetliner has disappeared. The experts include tabloid journalist Howard Thomas (Stoltz), ocean resource engineer Emily Patterson (Bell), scientist/adventurer Bruce Gellar (Rodgers) and psychic Stan Latham (Davison).
The cast and producers talked to Science Fiction Weekly while the miniseries was being made.
Rockne O'Bannon, why do you think science fiction is so hot right now in television?
O'Bannon: Television is kind of—I think—catching up with what feature films are doing. What I find particularly interesting in what television is doing right now with shows like Lost and Medium and Battlestar Galactica is they're really good drama. They're not just about the supernatural event themselves. It's about the characters.
Do you have any insight into that, Dean Devlin?
Devlin: I absolutely agree. While this production will have over 800 digital-effect shots, none of those effects would be meaningful if we didn't care about the people in those shots.
It is a cynical time. [Science fiction] gives us a platform to allow our minds to be more playful. It allows our minds to go maybe to choices that we wouldn't think about in real life. I think that's appealing. I think it's compelling.
What about the cast? Many of you have been in science-fiction projects before. What do you think is the appeal to the genre?
Stoltz: I think also it's fun. You look at the world now and things are awful, the world is a wreck. The world is a disaster, so it's nice to be able to lose yourself in a fun story about things that are beyond our—
Rodgers: Our own comprehension.
Stoltz: Yeah.
What does the cast think about the reality of the Bermuda Triangle?
Catherine Bell: I was always fascinated by it, but no, I'm not going there for sure. I have not been there. ... I was always very interested and curious in that, and now I have some new theories that we've come up in the script that just make you think even more. Until we actually find the real answer and reason behind it, I think you get to keep staying in that wonderment and that mystery that just makes you think.
Michael Rodgers: I think that science fiction leaves us sort of pondering and thinking about things beyond a definitive answer. I think that's what was interesting to me.
It comes back to not to knowing things. Isn't it OK not to sort of be able to say it's not one thing or another? I think that's what the journey for these characters has been. They want so badly to say it doesn't exist or it is this, it's methane, it's the weather, it's something. And they find that when they open that can of worms, their lives completely change and they have to change their whole belief system, which I think is what's fantastic about it.
Bruce Davison: I think the Bermuda Triangle is like a haunted house. It is a place that we can have an adventure, and it can be anything. As far as entertainment purposes, it can have a simple storyline. I mean, we can always scare things up with an ending that is pat, but that's the challenge, mixing some of it with the real stories.
Dean Devlin, how did you team up with Bryan Singer to come up with this story?
Devlin: Bryan Singer and I wanted to work together for a long time. Television is catching up with what feature films are doing. I know Bryan and I are most excited about the incredible performances by this incredible cast.
We were sitting around one day and I was telling him a story about when I was a kid listening to a radio program, and it was talking about a recording of a pilot who had disappeared in the Bermuda Triangle, and how he was very calm and then suddenly he got very panicked and then it was static. After static all they heard was the word "Stendec," and they didn't know what that meant. Then they never heard or saw from that person again. Later, they found out that was the name of a German watch.
Rodgers: You've got this amazing background of the Bermuda Triangle, but you've got these characters who are very fractured and flawed as people, and it's how they deal with this journey, thinking it's going into it for one reason and at the end coming out very different people.
How does science fiction differ in television from film?
Devlin: Television, in the last couple of years, has really been a place where the writing has been allowed to go in more interesting places than film has. Feature films, I think, to some degree, have become much more predictable, and television has become much less predictable and much more character-driven. I think to combine the spectacle with strong characters is what can make something like this the event that it's supposed to be.
What is it about science-fiction fans that creates such extreme dedication to their shows?
O'Bannon: Audiences kind of embrace science-fiction shows because they haven't traditionally been real successful on television, and [they] feel very protective of them. It's an opportunity to really express their views to like minds.
Dean Devlin, what inspired you to create a miniseries on the Bermuda Triangle?
Devlin: I just remember hearing [a] story as a little kid and being enthralled [by] it. I was listening to [a] radio program, and it was talking about a recording of a pilot who had disappeared in the Bermuda Triangle and how he was very calm and then suddenly he got very panicked and then it was static. Then they never heard or saw from that person again. We were sitting around one day [and] I told it to Bryan.
I said, "I think there's something really fascinating about the Bermuda Triangle that we should explore." We started throwing ideas around. We got very excited about it. And quickly, we had a storyline worked out.
You have been criticized in your own movies for paying too much attention to special effects where the visuals get to be too much.
Devlin: I wouldn't say it's that the visuals got to be too much. I think it's that we didn't pay enough attention to characters. I've said before and I'll say again, I think the thing that was wrong with Godzilla was the script I wrote. We became a little obsessed with what we could do with these new toys, and we didn't give the attention that we should [to] the characters. And it was a lesson—I don't want to ever make that mistake again.
For the cast, what inspired you to take on this project?
Davidson: It's very interesting to be able to find something that's character-driven like this piece. If it's just special effects, it's not going to fly. What attracted me to this piece more than anything else is the characters' journey through it. It's an adventure.
Bell: I do like the genre. I mean, obviously it depends on the project. This is a fantastic script that I was drawn to immediately. It's science fiction, it's action, it's adventure and with a strong intelligent woman. Science fiction is exciting. It's mystery, it's "what if," and it's being able to be a child again for a few hours while you're watching it and putting yourself in it.
With all of this discussion and focus on the drama and character development, have the special effects taken a back seat?
O'Bannon: We're using the effects team that Dean used for Independence Day and Godzilla. In several instances we were talking about a particular effect for [The Triangle] and they said, "Well, we've never done this before." I was thrilled, because if we've got these incredible feature-film effects people who were faced with questions they've never faced before, you know, we might be doing something really very special.
Michael Rogers, you play a thrill-seeking, often reckless professor with a sometimes questionable moral fiber. What makes this role interesting to you?
Rogers: Rockne has created characters with fractured architecture in who they are. And they base things either on a cynical point of view or [on] a scientific basis. You've got this amazing backdrop of the Bermuda Triangle, but you've got these characters who are very flawed, and it's how they deal with this journey—going into it for one reason and at the end coming out very different people.
Some people are not impressed with supernatural or science-fiction explanations of the Bermuda Triangle. What do you think?
Rodgers: I think the Bermuda Triangle is something, in this day and age, that's the modern phenomenon of our world, and we've still not come up with what has happened to all these people that have disappeared. Where are they? What about these ships? What about these planes? Where are they?
Bell: Still—to this day, with our technology, we cannot figure out what happened to 8,000 people that have disappeared and countless ships and planes?
Does the series reach any new conclusions, or any conclusions, about what causes the Bermuda Triangle?
Stoltz: I think what helps us in this thing is because Bruce was in the X-Men, when we get to the end of The Triangle, the X-Men appear—but let's keep that hush-hush. I probably shouldn't have said it out loud. [Laughter.] Seriously, you have to watch it to find out.
Rodgers: By the end of it—not to tell you too much—but by the end of it, you're still thinking to yourself, "What is this all about? What happened here?"
Devlin: What we were hoping [to] do was to really try and explore every theory about the Bermuda Triangle and at some point lead the audience down that path, until we came up with our own conclusions. But our hope was to look at the alien ideas about it, about the methane gas, about time [and] about wormholes.
There have been so many programs and books written about the Bermuda Triangle. What makes your film original?
O'Bannon: When you talk about the Bermuda Triangle initially, there's so many kind of extant theories—methane gas is one; pilot disorientation is another—but not one of those single answers applies to everything. So we started with that premise. We obviously touch on the classic [events], because you really need to [include] Flight 19.
We actually hearken back to Christopher Columbus, because there's evidence that he had a Bermuda Triangle in the Sargasso Sea just before finding land. We use those iconic things that everyone would expect from a Bermuda Triangle story, but then the fun for us was to come up with images and events that were incredibly new.
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