The year is 2070. Humans and androids cohabit. And although the franchise is Total Recall, word on set is that the new Alliance Communications tv movie pilot and series is reminiscent of Blade Runner and closer in spirit to the original Philip K. Dick short story We Can Remember It For You Wholesale, which inspired the 1990 Arnold Schwarzenegger blockbuster.

Total Recall: 2070 is a psychological thriller/cop show set in the technological future chronicling the everyday events of the police department, the people who work there and the city in which they live.

Supervising producer Jeff King says they are trying to restrict all the shooting to Toronto’s Downsview Airforce Base where elaborate wall-to-wall sets, designed by Taavo Soodor for the two-hour pilot and Peter Cosco for the series, are in a constant state of construction.

There are no plans to shoot on location. What won’t be shot at the soundstage will be created with special effects in the form of a virtual city.

‘There are so many things you don’t get to see until after it’s shot,’ says King. ‘There are a lot of effects and green screens or we are shooting plates and will put an effect in later. We’ve never really seen the whole city put together.’

Sets in perpetual construction

The 22-hour, $1.5-million per episode series started shooting June 29 and will continue to roll until March. The pilot, shot by Mario Azzopardi and scheduled to hit WIC Western International Communications airwaves this winter, contained more than 125 different effects shots and sequences by Gajdecki Visual Effects of Toronto and Vancouver.

While some of the sets remain for the duration, and others go up and come down in a matter of days, there is, at any given time, about $1 million worth of sets filling the studio. When they want a building they construct it themselves and shoot above or off it, using 3D graphics to fill in anything that can’t physically be added.

A large clock, for example, is ground level in the studio, but with some Gajdecki magic, on screen it appears many storeys above ground.

Much of the action takes place on two main sets. One is a modern Ikea-like apartment where Citizens Protection Bureau investigator David Hume, played by Michael Easton (Two, Ally McBeal), and his wife Olivia, played by Cynthia Preston (The Gift, Whale Music), live. The other is cpb headquarters, which has the dark and dingy appearance of a modern-day cop shop, with oversized plasma screens reminding us that it is 72 years into the future.

Sets with a more futuristic feel include Olan Chang’s crisp white lab, complete with cushiony plastic walls, an real mmr machine, petri dishes filled with bright-colored gels, and a narrow operating table down the middle.

The center of action for episode 103, ‘Self-Inflicted,’ directed by Jorge Montesi, is the cold, sparse, gray boardroom of Minacon, a mega-organization which runs the world.

Cameraman Derick Underschultz zooms in tight on the handles which form a capital ‘m’ between the heavy shut doors of the boardroom before Hume and partner Ian Farve, played by Karl Pruner (e.n.g., This Matter of Marriage), burst through with Minacon’s Maria Schviller (played by Sara Botsford) and Kurt Flat (Bruce Clayton). They stand around discussing the state of Dr. Violet Whims, who has been exposed to a disease and is now in quarantine.

2070 does 1940

Keeping everyone in 2070 fashion is costume designer Maxyne Baker, who has created a wide range of outfits from an outrageous latex gowns and bio-suits to conservative dark-colored ensembles for Minacon employees.

Easton and other members of the cpb are decked out in suits with a 1940s appeal.

Azzopardi, who was inspired by his past experience in the cop-show genre (Night Heat), shot the tv movie with many of the dark qualities of Blade Runner, and although he says it was shot on ‘a maddeningly tight schedule’ of only 20 days, he is very excited with the results.

King says he is pleased by the comparisons to Blade Runner and hopes they can match the visual texture and richness of that environment, not to mention the success of the 1982 Ridley Scott cult classic. But ‘at the same time, for us, Blade Runner is a little pessimistic; humanity is kind of lost in the possibility of getting beyond what we are whereas in Total Recall: 2070, that hasn’t happened yet and we are still on the upside.’

King, who picked up 10 Gemini awards for Due South, likes the relationship that has developed between the Hume and Farve duo. He says like Due South’s Frazer and Ray, they are two very different people with a lot of good chemistry.