Joe Kuhr’s name should be familiar to viewers of The Zeta Project. While a freelance writer in the first season, he became more involved in the show’s second, and final, season. He would play a large role in the fate of the main characters, Zeta and Ro, and would help guide their adventures. Kuhr’s work has also appeared in Justice League, The Batman, and Krypto the Superdog to name a few. Here, he discusses his work on The Zeta Project. What attracted you to this series? Several things. A) The opportunity to work with Bob Goodman, whom I had known for years but had never worked with (well, we had crewed the same student film years earlier, but that’s really not the same thing). B) The opportunity to work in the animated DCU, of which I had been a long-time fan. C) The opportunity to work. On the purely creative side, of course the show itself was intriguing for many reasons. Action shows are fun and challenging, but a show set forty-or-so years in the future meant that on top of the normal action show challenges, we had to constantly push ourselves to figure out how things might turn out in the near future — or at least how they might turn out in the future of our fictional DCU. Coming up with believable and interesting future-tech, terminology, locations, etc., that could serve as backdrop and play into the stories was HARD. But fun. And of course the stories must both serve the characters and make entertaining use of Zeta’s abilities. Put it all together and you have just the kind of mind-warping exercise I enjoy. Was Zeta ever a tough sell to the networks? With the lead character a robot, I’m sure it must have been hard to get the go ahead from the network execs? Is that were Ro, Wouldn’t know. I only came in as a freelance writer part-way through the first season, then was invited on as staff writer during second season. I had nothing to do with selling the show to the network. Did you find difficulty in writing for a series where the main character was a robot? Does that present any challenge, or does the robot have to be approached like any other character to make it relatable? I’ll take the second part of your question first. No two characters are alike — or at least they shouldn’t be. So approaching Zeta "like any other character" actually means approaching him like no other character. As I said above, making good use of Zeta’s powers was always a challenge, but, aside from a little inconsistency regarding whether his hologram was solid or intangible, I think we (the collective "we" meaning all the folks who worked on the show before and during my time on it) rose to the challenge, working from Bob’s strong concept for the character and the show. Spiritually and emotionally, Zeta was an innocent — okay, a really powerful innocent who regularly assassinated people for his government handlers, but an innocent nonetheless — and that’s really where the fun of putting him together with Ro comes in. She’s fairly tough and streetwise, but put her in a situation where she can take complete advantage of a naive government infiltration unit — and she just can’t bring herself to grab what she wants and walk away. Okay, maybe she could have at first, but once she realized that Zeta was really good, and what the odds against him were, she started to care about him. As the series progressed, the driving force behind it was I believe the real trick to keeping any show from getting stale is to mix up the stories so that it’s not always about the same thing — in Zee’s case, having to dodge Bennet while looking for Were there any ideas dropped because they may be too far fetched for a series taking place 40 years in the future? I don’t know. From what I recall, the challenge was in coming up with new cool things, not in having to dial back on the good stuff. But I wasn’t there at the beginning and I may not have perfect recall of the time I was there, so ask Bob. Among other episodes you are credited for "Taffy Time" as well as "Ro’s Gift," on which you have a teleplay and co-story credit. Take us through the process of the creation of these episodes. I originally pitched "Taffy Time" as a hunter-hunted story (e.g., Most Dangerous Game) where Zeta and Agent Lee were captured and hunted by a big game hunter for sport on his private reserve. Then Bob Goodman, Rich Fogel and I met and one of them came up with the idea of using the Stalker from Batman I have a sole teleplay credit, but I am proud to share a co-story credit with the late Hilary Bader on "Ro’s Gift," although we didn’t technically work on the story together. Now we have to know – who’s hand was that in "Hologram Man" (Episode #26)? That regenerating robotic hand — in case you couldn’t tell, that’s what it was — at the end of episode 26 belonged to (drum roll) Andrea Donoso, Dr. Selig’s assistant. If you want to know more about where that story was headed, ask Bob. I think he’d be willing to discuss it at this point. And, to top it off for now, what are some of your favorite episodes/moments from THE ZETA PROJECT? I love the pilot episode, "The Accomplice." It really set up the characters, situations and tone for the show nicely. I’m proud of the fake out where Zeta has switched places with I love that Ro’s nickname when she was a kid was "Little I like the Dark Owl and Squirrel Girl bit from the beginning of I love how cranked the action is in the second season ender, The World’s Finest would like to thank Joseph Kuhr for this interview! |
