Less is more. That’s the thinking behind the special effects creations going into the highly anticipated new series from Atlantis, Gene Roddenberry’s Earth: Final Conflict, currently shooting in and around Toronto.

Executive producers Seaton McLean from Atlantis, David Kirschner, Rick Okie and Majel Barrett Roddenberry, widow of Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry, along with producers John Calvert and Stephen Roloff have undertaken the mission to go where no producers have gone before and deliver a Roddenberry series with a per episode budget of about $us1 million ­ roughly half of what Paramount pumps into each Star Trek show.

Adding to the pressure will be the watchful gaze of the legions of obsessive Star Trek fans who will no doubt be scrutinizing the series, based on a script penned by the late Star Trek creator, frame by frame.

Set in the year 2008, Earth: Final Conflict revolves around a group of seemingly benevolent aliens who are welcomed on Earth when they provide solutions to some of the world’s most pressing problems.

William Boone (played by Kevin Kilner) gets caught between two worlds when he is chosen to become the top security officer for one of the aliens while also being drafted to join a fledgling human underground who question the aliens’ true agenda.

Producer/production designer Roloff, whose past episodic credits include F/X: The Series, Tek War and Sinbad, admits the task is pretty daunting. ‘I deeply respect the Gene Roddenberry legacy, you don’t want to mess that up and come out with a cheesy rendition of something.’

The job of keeping the effects-intensive series on budget is being helped by Roloff’s philosophy of ‘trying to do a few things well instead of a lot of things mediocre. We’re not going to try and have an effect in every scene,’ says Roloff, ‘but when we do have an effect it’s got to be wondrous.’

Roloff has also created a game plan for the series which aims to develop a unique take on some traditional sci-fi effects and standards. The focus is on bi’engineering as the aliens’ vehicles and buildings are a combination of organic and kinetic materials.

‘We don’t have the money to redefine the filmmaking process,’ says Roloff, ‘but what we can do is say look, people have always done aliens this way, we’re gonna do aliens a little bit differently.’

The aliens on Earth: Final Conflict are perhaps the strongest example of Roloff and the show’s unique vision of sci-fi. Wanting a signature effect for the aliens and acquiescing to the legacy of Star Trek’s perfection of the latex forehead, Roloff designed creatures whose skin becomes translucent when they blush with an emotional reaction or talk amongst themselves.

‘The skin becomes transparent and we see into the head. The inner world is a translucent creature with luminous organs. The effect is that basically they’re not hiding themselves but they’re making themselves more presentable to us because we’d have a hard time relating to this amorphous mass of glowing lights and colors,’ says Roloff, who claims the creatures were inspired by a documentary on bioluminous jelly fish.

Neil Williamson at Calibre Digital Pictures is the series’ director of digital animation and special effects and agrees that the aliens will be a unique visual effect comprised of a combination of intricate animation, subtle and complex digital painting, compositing and innovative motion-capture techniques.

Williamson and his crew at Calibre are handling the cgi effects creation for the aliens, their shuttle vehicles and their bi’engineered buildings, which are grown instead of built.

‘I’ve never seen some of these effects anywhere, in features or television,’ says Williamson, who has spent the last three months preparing for the series to go into production. Williamson feels the innovative nature of some of the effects is due in large part to the willingness of Roloff to embrace the possibilities of new technology instead of fearing them as many production designers do.

One particularly challenging problem for Williamson was finding a way to match the alien’s head movements to the cgi effect of transparent blushing. Using traditional methods would have meant a particularly labor-intensive task ­ an undesirable situation on episodic television.

Williamson solved the problem by employing motion-capture sensors built right into the prosthetic headpiece and shoulders of the actor. ‘It d’es the 3D rotoscoping for us and we can also build a sensor into the camera so the directors don’t have to lock off shots.’

The short turnaround of episodic television presents a whole different set of challenges for Williamson and Calibre to overcome. Whenever possible they are logging effects sequences before the show needs them, because once things get rolling, they will be looking at a 10- to 14-day turnaround time for each episode.

‘The whole trick to this and why we get such a jump with preproduction is that you get everything done that you possibly can beforehand,’ says Williamson, who honed his skills designing digital effects for episodic television on Atlantis’ Sinbad, which has had up to 150 cgi effects per episode.

Williamson agrees with Roloff’s vision for the effects on Earth: Final Conflict. ‘The mandate for this show is less volume going with more unique high-quality effects,’ he says. ‘It’s not a fantasy show so we’ve got to be a lot more locked down to reality to sell a little more. It’s a particularly challenging project because it’s science-fiction but it’s not space.’

While Williamson and his crew at Calibre generate their high-end effects on an Onyx super computer and Inferno system, the show also employs a group of six in-house effects artists led by Anthony Paterson who are working on Macs. The in-house artists are responsible for the signature effect used when the alien shuttle g’es into the interdimensional travel mode that Roloff describes as a ‘2001 kaleidoscopic effect.’

Paterson and his crew will also be handling the laser gun-like ‘scrill blast’ effects from a creature that lives on the hero’s arm in what can only be described as a symbiotic relationship. ‘The creature is like the hero,’ says Roloff, ‘he’s some sucker the aliens have picked up on a planet and pressed into service.’

Through it all Roloff remains optimistic that the show will stand up to Star Trek and its scrutineers.

‘We’ve got a number of efficiencies in place and I believe we’ll have a show with production values much higher than the budget would imply,’ says Roloff. ‘We’re being very cautious that our effects simply embellish the visual world that the characters are involved with. Unless you’ve got believable characters, good acting, writing and stories it’s all just eye candy. You can’t base a show on eye candy.’