Sci-fi Sit com 8008 - 2nd draft

[paulmackie]

Hi guys, here's the completed 2nd draft of the first episode of my sitcom, 8008. It's a 23 page script but with only the main characters and limited locations. Hoping to shoot this with friends as a kind of pilot but having a lot of reservations about, well basically if it's funny or not. Any advice or feedback about it would be greatly appreciated so feel free to rip it apart and let me know what you think.

Thanks in advance
Paul

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[supermikhail]

Hey, first off, about formatting. I understand you don't intend to send this script to an outside director, however, consider writing more lively and readable (the things I'm going to say I picked up about two weeks ago on this very forum, actually, I think).
Get rid of all forms of "to be" unless absolutely necessary, especially present continuous. Also, consider dividing your action parts into real action paragraphs (like Wall-e, but not so extreme), where almost each action takes a paragraph. It makes reading easier. Let me illustrate:

INT. CANBERRA, CAPTAIN DECK

Control console of the prisoner transport ship Canberra. Bovine, feet up on the console, playing a video game.

Cough.

Bovine switches the game off and puts his feet down in one movement. He starts furiously studying the console monitor, now displaying space charts.

Drum sits down next to him.

However, avoid gerund in dialogue, sounds clunky, esp. here

You're not still worried about the solar flares after the sun being hit by those meteors last quarter are you?

Beyond that, I didn't find it funny. I think that generally comedy doesn't benefit from long dialogues. They say a good joke needs only 3 lines. Your dialogues are unnecessarily long, more in the vein of quirkiness than real comedy.

[supermikhail]

I'm not a native English speaker, and I have had to deal with gerund for some time, so now it rolls off my tongue quite easily.

For the sake of constructivity, to make your script better, edit it to cut as much as you can. You've got a plot, and maybe you try to follow it too much and it interferes with the comedic effect. The long dialogues could be bearable, but then the jokes need to be hilarious, while with present version I barely smiled (although I admit that I'm not the smiliest person ever). So, edit it and leave the jokes that you think are strongest.