What happens when geeks join forces?
In this case, the result is a three-part, six-hour mini-series for Sci Fi Channel called “The Triangle,” airing Monday through Wednesday, which explores the mysterious disappearances and phenomena in the Caribbean region known as the Bermuda Triangle.
In real life, Bermuda, Miami and San Juan, Puerto Rico, form the three points of the triangle. In the fictional world, the mini-series is the creation of three people very familiar to the science-fiction world: Bryan Singer (“X-Men”), Dean Devlin (“Stargate”) and Rockne S. O’Bannon (“Farscape”).
Directed by Craig R. Baxley (“Storm of the Century”), “The Triangle” stars Sam Neill as an eccentric shipping magnate who hires a motley crew to find out why his ships are vanishing. It includes a tabloid journalist (Eric Stoltz), a deep-ocean resource engineer (Catherine Bell), a meteorologist/adventurer (Michael Rodgers) and a psychic (Bruce Davison).
Meanwhile, the lone survivor (Lou Diamond Phillips) of a Greenpeace expedition that witnessed the bizarre destruction of a whaling ship returns home to find that the world is not as he remembers it.
Like any good tale of the fantastic, the story of “The Triangle” begins long, long ago — when Devlin was a teenager — with the scene of the Greenpeace boat watching the whaler sucked down into a boiling ocean.
“Bryan and I have been friends for a long time,” Devlin says. “We met at the Sundance Film Festival when he did ‘The Usual Suspects.’ We’d always been looking for a project to do together. He was in my office one day, and I pitched him a scene that I had written when I was in high school, that took place in the Bermuda Triangle.
“I always remembered this scene, and I never knew where to go with it. Bryan is so brilliant that, within two seconds, he had a whole story flood out of his mind. We started working on this treatment together.”
The two soon realized that the story was too large for a feature film, so they decided to take it to Sci Fi Channel, which has had great success with mini-series such as “Dune” and “Earthsea.” At that point, in came O’Bannon, whose “Farscape” series had launched Sci Fi’s Friday series lineup — ironically now anchored by “Stargate SG-1” and “Stargate Atlantis,” TV spinoffs of Devlin’s movie.
“Rockne has a long history with this type of material,” Devlin says, “and he has a loyal audience, the same way Bryan and I do. We thought he would get the sensibility. Bryan and I wrote a 60-page treatment that was basically the bible for the whole show. We gave it to Rockne, he added an enormous amount, and then wrote the six hours.”
“I did a four-hour version,” O’Bannon says. “At the end of January, they said, ‘Make it six, and get it on in December.’ It also wasn’t just a matter of writing another two hours at the back end. I had to deconstruct it, obviously. It was a bit hairy, and it continues to be.”
According to Devlin, “The Triangle” — shot entirely in high-definition video — has more than 850 digital effects shots, so he brought in a big gun.
“The effects are being supervised by Volker Engel,” he says, “who won the Oscar for me on ‘Independence Day.’ So the level of special effects will be far beyond what you see on television.”
