My MZP Origins: Part I

I was recently re-listening to the excellent second episode of the MZPtv podcast in which Lee Chrimes and Tony Black talk about their relative stories and experiences that led to them finding MZPtv.  It was a fascinating podcast about the history of the site  as well as it was a great way for people to delve a little into the history of MZPtv.

I always said I wanted to get my story on the road to the site across, as I started in the VS game all the way back in 2001 when I was fifteen years old and it was such a different time back then. So this first edition of The Matt Blog will be the first part of a completely self-involved ego-trip. This is like the beginning of an auto-biography, I just hope I don’t bore you. But what I aim to try and give you, as well as self-indulgence, is a look into what the world of Virtual Series was like before MZPtv.

Yes, that’s my justification for this: this will delve into Virtual Series History in subsequent parts…this is a little personal background leading to my experiences in the Virtual Series arena. Hopefully, in the future, this may encourage other community members to speak out on their experiences in VS prior to finding MZPtv, or how they found it.

And most importantly, I’m doing it here instead of a podcast because I ramble like mad when my mouth is given permission to talk. Though that doesn’t really mean I don’t exactly ramble in text either…

So here we go…

PART I – MY FIRST VIRTUAL SERIES

I.I — IN THE BEGINNING…

Skip through the few million years and you’ll get to me being born. A few years later and I started to grow a fascination with television/stories/movies (though I forgot to actually watch the movies). This then led me to start to think of ideas of my own stories. I can’t remember why exactly, but I always loved how TV had characters doing different things each week. I always, always, loved stories with more than one part as well. Cartoons that had a ‘to be continued’ at the end of an episode got me really excited, and I really wanted to wait to get to the next week.

So I started to have ideas for movies, TV series e.t.c. I remember during primary school I managed to craft a character called ‘Detective Matthew’ who had a long brown trenchcoat, claws, fired ropes and had a jet pack. In fact, I know who influenced the look of this character: Larcen Tyler from Eternal Champions. Though he didn’t have a jet-pack, and in retrospect it was slightly redundant to have a wall scaling, rope-carrying guy have a jet-pack…but it was my imagination dammit!

I had several movie ideas I still remember as well. There was the obvious ‘Detective Matthew’ movie involving a floating island (a mixture of Sonic and Gulliver’s Travels), one idea I had about a scientist who transferred to a monster (it was called The Grandelion) and Warzone was based on a video game I played about two guys sent to blow up some baddies. I still remember this one set-piece where one of the main characters basically fights off a bunch of guys with a bazooka attached to some rope. I was ten. I had dozens and dozens of ideas for movies.

I grew up a little, and started to come up with some TV series ideas. The first real attempt at a script I wrote was a transcript series called School Work. It was a rip-off influenced a little from Buffy, about a young boy who gained powers from these special stones and becoming possessed by an ancient spirit (something Yu-Gi-Oh I think would explore) and had to battle the spirit of this deceased American Army General (Eric Lytion) that was trapped in the confides of the school grounds. I still have the plans for the first season scribbled down on paper, with 22 episodes roughly planned out and an arc plot figured out. Two-part season one finale that involved a spiritual train carrying spirits of the dead was actually planned out. But anyway – the pilot was about this British school kid who saw his school becoming Americanised and automatically assumed something supernatural happened. With the aid of two friends (one girl, one boy) and an IT Teacher-slash-Librarian with a past history with Army General (shoot me now) lead character gets possessed by ancient spirit of the stones and tries to stop Army General’s ghost from getting the stones himself. Only to get trapped in the school. Each week would see him cause trouble for the main characters, whilst other arcs involving the FBI trying to capture the general would unfold and collide in the finale. It was the start of my love of layered plotting I think…it was crap. I really wish I’d kept it though. There was an arc developing with another student which would have revealed him to be an alien from the species that created said stones…(*Matt gets stopped via punch in the back of the head*)

I still have notes for other TV series around that time. There was one called The Time Detectives about time periods colliding in on itself. There was no formula or premise just some people trying to stop evil entities from colliding time together. A FIVE PART PILOT planned. And Season six’s last fourteen episodes was one multi-part story.

Yeah.

I then discovered The Internet.

I.II — MATT FOUGHT THE INTERNET. THEY DREW.

December 2000. I know that’s when we got the Internet. Because the timings of TV shows that aired started around that time. Mainly because of Buffy Season Five was airing in the US at the time, and January would be when it would’ve aired (because in those days the internet didn’t allow for people to download episodes, and thus UK channels showed new episodes when they bloody well wanted to!). I became a member of The BuffyGuide forums. Discovering chat rooms for the first time. Like-minded people! I made friends online, became a part of a community.

In a side-note in researching this article, I went back to BuffyGuide.com to find the forums were down temporarily…in 2008 and the temp board has been attacked by spam bots and has slowly died a death. Shame, as that was the place I used to be completed addicted to.

It was here I’d become part of a small clique of British fans. There was myself, the crazy yet funny Cherry, the strong-willed duo of PlatinumBaby and Spordelia and the fifth member was a young lad known as ‘Badger’. A guy who I would eventually become good friends with.

This is where I must add and stress that my long term memory and recalling specific details of certain memories is really really strong. I can recall a lot of detail and moments of things I remember. My long term memory has always surprised a lot of people with how accurate and with how much detail it can hold. Shame my short-term memory is absolutely rubbish.

With Badger going to do some Buffy fan fiction writing, I also decided to do a little dabbling as well, because let’s face it – anything based on someone else’s work is fan-fiction no matter what terms or justification you try to slap on it. The first was a little bit about a young Watcher with mysterious abilities who first joins the Watcher’s Council. Didn’t get that far into it. I dabbled a little in Final Fantasy VIII fan fic (which has vanished from the internet. Thankfully). Throughout all this, I was beginning to teach myself HTML and started to look through the dodgy old Buffy fan-sites that were on the internet, trying to get all the information I could get on the latest seasons. This led me to create my own attempt at a Buffy fan-site, Gift From the Powers. It’s gone. I’ve tried to find it but found nothing.

Whilst I was doing that, I was trying to figure out my own fan-fiction story again. But one day, I found this series of fan-fiction transcripts based on Buffy which was the premise of Mystery Science Theatre 3000. But instead it was Spike and Dru taking Buffy, Xander, Giles and Willow and dumping them on a satellite and forcing them to read bad Buffy fan-fiction. Only they’d comment on it throughout the story. It lasted 70 editions, the introduction of Cordelia, Oz and a few guest spots of Angel/Angelus. It was really funny and had slight arcs running through it. This introduced me to the transcript format…and how easy it looked to write. Then it clicked…my idea could have this episodic nature — and thus the sparks of Hartley was born.

I.III — ENTER WILLIAM

I’m not going to go into massive detail of the behind the scenes aspects of my first ever Virtual Series. It lasted eleven episodes. I wrote ten. It was about the Watcher with abilities called William Hartley, who had help fighting evil in the village of ‘Freedom’. He had help from a ‘sensor’ called Catherine Geonni, a scientist called Lydia Marshall (remember that name), a reformed Ethan Rayne and the ghost of Riley Finn. Yes – the ghost of Riley Finn. There were several episodes planned, with an arc that involved the character of Weatherby (he appeared in Buffy and Angel in that trio who were after Faith) turning into a Vampire and declaring war on the Council. Other episodes involved a mysterious spell locking people indoors, Catherine’s family being terrorised by mafia-demons, Ethan being caught and tortured and an episode where Hartley quantum-leaped through Riley’s life. I wish I had these. I would love to revisit them and I would release them for people to laugh and mock.

The most important aspect of this, however, was that Badger (now called Stripe) wrote the fourth episode. And would not stop moaning about the fact it was transcript (he still moans til this day!). But something in the experience clicked within, and the series aspect was something he now considered for his own original idea. One day, he sent me a word file through MSN Messenger with a fifteen page story he’d wrote. The first part of a two-part story…he was half way through the second part. Had no real plans to go any further, but wanted my opinion. I loved it. He’d finished the second episode. I loved it. We randomly started to talk about other episodes in the season…and then things started to develop.

The word file’s creation date was 29th March 2002.

It was a prose pilot for a series called Ravenshill…

And thus the next stage of my VS life would begin…

TO BE CONTINUED…

And that’s that for now. Part II would delve in the creation of the Ravenshill site, the attempts to advertise it and the discovery that we were not alone in the medium…

So — the genesis of my creativity is before you. But before I go, I ask you this related question:

Do you remember any ideas for stories you made/wrote when you were young? And by young, I mean 4-11. If you do – why not share what the youthful minds were capable of conjuring back then? If you want to, comment!

Hope to see you soon!

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