From bookshelves to the big as well as small screens, Mark A. Altman has always eagerly embraced his role as a producer, writer and/or director to flex his creative muscles and help entertain fellow genre fans. The Librarians, Agent X, Necessary Roughness and Castle are among the TV shows he has worked on, while his feature film credits include The Darkroom, The Thirst and Room 6. Altman has also coauthored the best-selling books, The Fifty Year Mission: The Next 25 Years; From The Next Generation to J.J. Abrams: The Complete , Uncensored, and Unauthorized Oral History of Star Trek and Nobody Does It Better: The Complete, Uncensored and Unauthorized Oral History of James Bond.
“Other than briefly dabbling with the idea of being an architect, I was fortunate to know at a very early age that I wanted to make film and television for a living, and it’s a privilege to get to do that every day,” says Altman, “I was an entertainment journalist for many years, which was my film school before making my first movie, Free Enterprise, with William Shatner and Eric McCormack. However, it wasn’t until working on the first season of Castle that I was able to break into television with my writing and producing partner Steve Kriozere, who is my collaborator and fellow executive producer on Pandora along with the brilliant Thomas P. Vitale, who has lived and breathed genre his whole life.”
Currently, Altman is serving as showrunner on the Sci-Fi action TV series Pandora, which he cocreated with Steve Kriozere. Airing on The CW Network, the show is set in the year 2199 and stars Priscilla Quintana as Jacqueline “Jax” Zhou a.k.a. Pandora, who finds a new lease on life when joining Earth’s Space Training Academy, where she and her friends are taught the skills necessary to defend their world against homegrown as well as extraterrestrial threats. When, however, Pandora’s past returns to haunt her, our heroine must find answers to questions that will determine if she is destined to save or destroy humanity. Everyone involved in making the show were thrilled to start work on season two, but in order to do that, they needed to overcome some once in a lifetime real world obstacles.
“We knew going into the new season that we wanted to deepen the characters and explore some unlikely relationships while also emphasizing outer space adventure and action,” says Altman. “We spent a lot of season one introducing our ensemble in future college, and this year it was our desire to leave Harry Potter and The Paper Chase behind and go full Star Trek/Star Wars while leaning into the mythology as well as serialization, and our writing staff really rose to the occasion. Obviously filming in the middle of a worldwide pandemic was a challenge, but safety was paramount and we put into place some intensive mitigation procedures that have helped us weather the storm, so to speak. Because we film in Sofia [Bulgaria] the European travel ban on Americans posed additional serious challenges as we got season two back on track after being delayed by the COVID outbreak. In fact, we were prepping to shoot in February when I had to leave Europe to come home at the very beginning of the pandemic.
“What I’m most proud of this season is the deepening of our character relationships. We’ll learn a lot more about Jax and the Pandora mythology as well as Xander [Oliver Dench] confronting the challenges of being a captain. He’ll have a brand new prototype ship, the Dauntless, and Xander isn’t sure he’s ready for that big chair, but he’ll have to confront these doubts head-on as the galaxy is thrust into a potential interstellar war. Meanwhile, Ralen [Ben Radcliffe] and Matta [Amy McPherson] will work on reconciling their relationship and what it’s like to be strangers in a strange land now that they’re estranged from Zatar. We’re lucky because the actors are such a gift and so invested in their characters and the ongoing story. I’m hoping with our new time slot this fall on Sunday nights, which is huge vote of confidence in the show, that we will reach an even larger audience. So our season premiere is almost a repilot in the sense suggesting where the show will go this year and introducing you to old and new friends alike.”
Can the executive producer reveal anything about the new faces that fans expect to see? “One of the new characters I’m most excited about is the return of Jet,” he says. “He did some really awful things in season one and it will be interesting to see if Jax and her friends can accept him or if he’s back to his old tricks. We were really impressed with Akshay Kumar [Jet] in episode six last year, so bringing him back was something we decided to do early on, and he has not disappointed. Akshay has been absolutely terrific and brings a whole new element to the ensemble. We’re also happy to welcome Nicole Castillo-Mavromatis as Jax’s new sophomore year roommate.
“It’s an opportunity of a lifetime to be working on a network Sci-Fi show. We’re really lucky to have this chance and I’m so grateful to everyone at The CW, who’s been incredibly supportive, and all the Boxers out there who have embraced the series so wholeheartedly.”
Steve Eramo
You can follow Mark on Twitter and Instagram at @markaaltman and Pandora at @pandorseries on Instagram or #pandoracw
