After the original creators of the short film departed, the producers brought two veterans from Fox’s Mad TV to weave intelligent humor into the sex jokes.

“Getting the look and lighting technique was another area that we worked hard on. With the newer version of 3ds max, we had more lighting character, and we added a film grain to the look. All these technologies are relatively new, there’s not that many series that have been put out with these softwares, so that was one of the main things going into it.”

The team at CinéGroupe agreed that sticking with the creator’s original choice of using 3ds max — a cartoon-friendly software, which seemed most suited the task in hand — made more sense in the long run than going with anything too sophisticated. Even though all the characters had to be reconstructed in a newer version of Discreet’s 3D animation tool.

“There was a huge question as to whether or not to go with motion capture. But for the sake of the show and the cartoon aspect, we found we could get more life and vitality with keyframe technology. Once you step over that line and make it more human, everything else has to follow suit. So we had to find that balance and set a level of animation for the human characters that didn’t make it feel strange with the cartoon characters. It was a fine line. There was a lot of development work on Six to establish how she moves and stands… and how much she bounces,” says Lemire.

In fact, he says, that’s something they’ve copped some flak for — how much the voluminous, unsupported assets of the ship’s first officer (voiced by Gina Gershon) move, seemingly independently of the rest of her body. Both Lemire and Vitale agree that Six was the most difficult character to get right. She’s the one they’re most proud of.

Darph Bobo, the Supreme Dark clown, has plans to take over the universe.

“I think everyone on the production would agree,” says Lemire. “There are probably several hundred versions of her. After episode one, we went back and changed her face. We also had problems with her torso; it wasn’t clean enough for us. So we redid episode one with the new one. We’re using a software that doesn't do Final Fantasy; it does a lot of things, but not that. We didn't want to be too bogged down to make her realistic. She’s still very sexy.

“Every detail, the size of the ship, the color of the ship… there was a lot of research,” he adds. “Being a 3D show it’s a different staging process. The 2D designers work very closely with the 3D designers to make sure what they were proposing was feasible from a 3D perspective. Normally we design and send and it’s done; on this it was designed with 3D in mind. The bridge of the ship was changed and tested countless times.”

Lemire also points out that the scripts were above and beyond what CinéGroupe had encountered before. And that meant a long process of getting them cleared from a legal perspective. “We removed 50% of the script as far as jokes and connotations and insinuations,” he laughs. “It seems people are enjoying it. It’s witty and smart. In the second season hopefully they’ll allow us to go further.” As far as the Sci Fi Channel is concerned, the show is a success. Its premiere was the top cable telecast of the day among the 18–49 demographic, and it set records for the channel.

“What’s special about the show, is it works on many levels,” explains Vitale. “On the simplest of level it’s sex jokes and gross-out humor, but on a second level, every episode is about something and makes a satirical comment on the world we live in. It's not just about mindless laughs. The humor part of it is very topical — there are Martha Stewart jokes and references to current events. Some of it is referential to classic science fiction, and there are certain in-jokes. There’s a lot of it that will offend and there’s some shocking stuff, but in every episode there'll be stuff that’ll make you think and stuff that’ll make you laugh.”

Sam Molineaux is a Los Angeles-based freelance journalist. Her writing on film, music and technology has appeared in Variety, Below the Line, BPM, Installation Europe and the New Times, among other publications. She is currently writing a pair of books for publisher McGraw-Hill on digital music on the Mac OSX, to be published later this year.