When news broke yesterday that Amazon MGM Studios was moving ahead with its long-dormant Mass Effect TV series, I had one wistful thought: Wow. I wonder what Mass Effect even is without Commander Shepard.

(If you’re running to the comments to say “BioWare did that, it was called Mass Effect: Andromeda!” Come on. Amazon is not going to make a show based on the most ill-received game in the franchise. Be real.)

But then, just as suddenly, I realized the fundamental flaw in my assumption. Oh god, I thought, Please don’t let them just make a show about Shepard.

See, the main character of the Mass Effect trilogy, though customizable, is still miles more specifically realized than, say, the leads of the games that inspired Amazon’s latest video game hit, Fallout. Forget the Broshep-vs.-Femshep argument; how do you condense the multiple romance options and the Paragon/Renegade alignments down to a single depiction? While it would be very funny to have Shepard show up in a Mass Effect TV series the same way adults appear in Charlie Brown specials — just to the left of frame, and every time they speak they’re drowned out by a Reaper blast and you have to read a subtitle — I don’t know if it would make great television.

The thing is, Shepard........

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