Author: Zach Zagranis Published
It was 1989 and Paramount had just released Star Trek V: The Final FrontierWilliam Shatner’s first and only Star Trek movie disappointed just about everyone. Many fans immediately dubbed it the worst Star Trek movie ever made.
How to follow up on such an unmitigated disaster? Well, if you were William Shatner, you would try to start your own science fiction series called Tekovo.
First conceived by William Shatner Tekovo during production final frontier. The series began as a series of novels outlined by Shatner and ghostwritten by Ron Goulart.
The series follows former police officer Jake Cardigan as he attempts to remove the illegal drug Tek from the streets of greater Los Angeles.
These novels somehow spawned TV shows, comic books, and even video games, despite the fact that no one knows it Tekovo Fans exist. That might be a bit of an exaggeration, but let’s put it this way: You won’t find any Jack Cardigan cosplay at your local Comic-Con.
I bet anyone reading this has either never heard of Tekovo Or forget it exists until they see the text on the screen. The reason is simple: it doesn’t work very well.
TekWar’s suspicious name
Speaking of William Shatner Tekovo Not very original. It starts with the name.
Tek and Trek look very similar, there’s no way this isn’t intentional. Statistically speaking, Tekovo At least one sale was attributed to a near-sighted Star Trek fan.
Even the addition of the word war feels calculated, as if Shatner was trying to trick Star Wars fans into buying the books.
William Shatner Enters the World of “Blade Walker”
From there, the world Tekovo Full of sci-fi clichés and highly derivative ideas. When William Shatner created TekWar, high-tech designer drugs and concepts like the Matrix that some could exploit had been a staple of the cyberpunk genre for years.
TekovoAutonomous robots nicknamed ‘Andies’ are actually from Do androids dream of electric sheep? novel blade runner is based on. I’m not the first to make this comparison. One review of the show actually used the term “Dullbladerrunner” to describe the show’s aesthetic. Ouch.
TekWar becomes a publishing franchise
Even a modest science fiction story will sell on a big name, and William Shatner’s name is big enough to guarantee Tekovoof moderate success. shortly after the first couple Tektronix After the novel was published, Marvel began publishing comic books based on the novel Tekovostrangely renamed Tek World.
The show ran for two years, from 1992 to 1994, before being canceled amid Marvel’s financial crisis in the mid-nineties.
The TekWar television series began airing the same year the comic was canceled and, like the comic, only lasted two years, ending in 1996. William Shatner himself co-stars in TekWar. Tekovo Cardigan’s employer, Walter Bascom.
The future of TekWar
An adult animated reboot of TekWar was announced for 2021, but nothing has been produced so far.
although TekovoWith what appears to be a rather large cultural footprint, almost no one talks about the series anymore. Maybe that’s for the best. William Shatner’s TekWar is a perfect example of a ’90s property best left in the ’90s.
