South Sound folks might see a neighbor or two by tuning in to these Amazon offerings

Looking for a sci-fi series to binge-watch? “Dead Drift” is a proudly cheesy homegrown alternative to the likes of “Doctor Who” and “Red Dwarf.”

Streaming on Amazon, the series — created by Ken Carlson of Tumwater and Matty Burdick of Olympia — follows the adventures of space-traveling odd couple Captain Banks (Burdick) and ship’s mechanic Maurice Morris (Carlson).

Filmed on hand-built sets in the garages of cast and crew members, the show also features Seattle actress and Harlequin Productions regular Alyssa Kay, who plays H.A.N.N.A.H. (Highly Adaptive Neural Network Anthropomorphic Hologram).

“They get into all sorts of wacky high jinks,” said Carlson, a longtime producer of independent TV shows, including TCTV’s 1996-2003 “Dammit This is Stupid.”

“And it delves a bit into the evolution of humanity. … I’m kind of an armchair anthropologist.”

Mostly, though, it’s “Dead Drift’s” jokes and references to sci-fi classics that have attracted the attention of sci-fi bloggers and other geeky types. It screened at Indianapolis’ GenCon, the nation’s largest gaming convention, and has racked up about 60,000 unique views since it was released on Amazon in January.

The Heroes Podcast’s Indie Spotlight summed it up as “a great little show: funny, crisp and sharp in its unique sci-fi brand of comedy.”

Plot points include the uptight Banks’ unsuccessful attempt to replicate “tea, Earl Grey, hot” a la “Star Trek: The Next Generation’s” Picard, and the slovenly Morris’ use of a technical manual (on tablet) as toilet paper.

After wrapping up production of “Dead Drift” in 2016, Carlson teamed up with graphic novelist James Willard of Monterey, California, to film a movie of Willard’s “Penny Palabras,” also streaming on Amazon.

“Penny,” about a young woman (Deena Ingley of Olympia) trying to connect with her estranged father in between battling demons, also has attracted nearly 60,000 views and screened at GenCon.

And Carlson is in pre-production for another series, “Roscoe the Junkyard Cat,” about a down-on-his-luck feline hoping for a better life.

Both “Dead Drift” and “Penny” have made small sums on Amazon but not nearly enough to recoup production costs, Carlson said. But he is hoping “Roscoe” will be a paying venture.

“We’re just going to shoot the pilot episode, and then we’re going to shop it around and see if we can get someone to finance the rest of the episodes,” he said. “If that doesn’t work, we’ll do a crowd funding campaign.”

If he can’t find funding, he’ll move on to another project.

“The dream is obviously to be able to pay your mortgage doing this stuff, and we’re not there yet, or even close,” he said. (Meanwhile, he pays the bills by working in hotel maintenance.)

What he won’t do is give up.

“This need to create and tell stories comes from a place deep inside,” he said. “One of the oldest parts of being human is gathering around and telling stories. There’s this drive to do it.”

This story was originally published August 23, 2018 at 6:46 AM.