United Worlds Entertainment has begun preproduction on the short science fiction film “Polaris” starring Paul R. Sieber (”Star Trek: Phase II,” “Law And Disorder”).

Set centuries in the future, Polaris tells the story of an interstellar starship lost in uncharted space. To get home again Captain Sam Fredericks, Valerie Young and the crew of the star cruiser Polaris must defeat an implacable enemy and solve the mystery of an impossible planet. Their discoveries will change humanity forever - if they survive.

United Worlds plans to begin production in Fall 2009. Principal photography will take place at studios in Maryland and on location in the Delaware/Maryland/Virginia region.

Welcome to the news blog for “Polaris.” First things first - if you’re one of the regular posters to the United Worlds forums, they haven’t gone anywhere. Click on the “forums” menu item near the top of this page, or here.

“Polaris” has been gestating for a long time - either since 2005 or 1960, depending on how you look at it. It was in 1960 that I got a library card for the Prince George’s County Library “Bookmobile” that stopped biweekly on Standish Drive. That was when I discovered Isaac Asimov’s science books, Willey Ley’s illustrated books for young folks on the subject of space travel, and science fiction juvenile novels by Heinlein and Wollheim (as well as, uh, the Grossett and Dunlap “Tom Corbett” novels. I’m just a hair too young to remember Tom’s video adventures on the Dumont network).

In 2005 I was working with Jimm Johnson on “Starship Exeter: The Tressaurian Intersection,” an ambitious fan film project (yeah, I know - the last act is coming, damn it. It’ll be released Real Soon!). That experience was and continues to be one of the most energizing and inspiring creative projects I’ve had the opportunity to contribute to (and I’ll write about that, another day). Wanting to continue doing films for the Internet and having some ideas of my own, I decided to start up a local production. “Starship Exeter” is based in Austin, Texas, see, and I live in the Washington DC metropolitan area. That commute sucks.

Making movies of this kind has at least one thing in common with “twelve step” meetings of groups like AA or Nicotine Anonymous: one person can’t do it alone. You need at least two sufferers to get a chapter/project off the ground (that, and accepting that your life will become unmanagable). So after putting out some feelers on the Internet I shortly found myself at the Silver Diner in Laurel, Maryland talking to an artist named D.J. Nielsen. His only apparent addiction, BTW, is to common sense and good organization. D.J. is a talented artist with a great interest and knowledge of science fiction and futurist ideas from times gone by. He has a secret identity and great reputation as a Trek artist on the Internet but I’m not going to out him here.

D.J. was the one who suggested that, instead of doing a fan film based directly on some existing property, we ought to explore creating something of our own that embodied the entertainment values and ideas of the movies and tv shows that we grew up with (he’s just a little younger than I am, but he does remember the days when you got two shots at seeing a “Star Trek” episode: once during its premiere on NBC and again - if you were lucky - during Summer reruns; home recording and replaying of broadcasts was as much science fiction as those little pocket communicators Kirk and Spock carried around).

Well gee, that sounded like a lot more fun. It has a number of advantages…and how hard could it be? So with D.J.’s continual input and encouragement I started writing a short movie called “Starship Defiance…”

…and just two years later, after several false starts and wrong turns we had a working draft of “Polaris” to use as the blueprint for a movie.

I’m an old guy, but I like what’s new. I adore Ron Moore’s version of “Battlestar Galactica.” I really really really (yeah, really) prefer Russell T. Davies’ take on “Doctor Who” to the older adventures of Doctors One through Eight.

That said, “Polaris” is not “what’s new”… nor is it intended as a parody or commentary on tv and movie space operas of the 1950s and 1960s. What we want to do, much as “Starship Exeter” does, is to recreate the “look and feel” of a style of show which time and mass tastes have passed by. “Forbidden Planet,” early episodes of “Voyage To The Bottom Of The Sea” and “Time Tunnel,” “Space 1999″ and even the 1978 “Battlestar Galactica” have influenced us a lot. Oh, and that “Star Trek” thing, that’s another one.

So here we go. We’ve begun casting the characters, designing and building the sets, looking at locations and I’ve mortgaged the farm.

I remain convinced, as I was after spending a week helping out on the set of “Starship Exeter” in 2004 that this new-fangled thang of Internet-distributed movies is one of the most exciting and challenging uses of new “desktop” technologies. Personal computers and software have put most of the traditionally expensive tools of the professional within reach of almost anyone who wants to try their hand at making movies and distributing them to a potentially huge audience.

I’m also convinced that the only good reason for doing so is that you’ll go nuts anyway if you don’t.

If you’re so inclined, wish us luck - and watch this space.