IF ONLY DOUGLAS WERE ALIVE TO SEE IT

Click pic to embiggen.

INSIDE THE LEVERAGE WRITER'S ROOM

Clearly, I'm going to have to go back to the drawing board on my Leverage spec, "The Whack Job."



Or perhaps not...

JOIN MY MERCENARY TASK FORCE

It's this simple. I'm gathering a team of ninjas, spies, acrobats, masters of disguise, a couple of indiscriminate killers, an economist and a well-trained marmoset.

Our mission will be to infiltrate the third world country of Zimbabwe and attempt to save some bits of television history...and maybe do something about human rights and shit. Mostly the TV.

Zimbabwe is of course ruled by Robert Mugabe who is, without a doubt, one of the biggest living dicks on the planet. Here's some greatest hits off the top of my head.

• Promoting violence toward homosexuals
• Total wreckage of the economy...
• Triggering hyperinflation to the point where $1 US is equal to $37fucking,000,000 Zimbabwean bones.
• Blatant manipulation of elections
• Deciding the results of said elections anyway
  
• Not allowing BBC employees into the country
• Contributed to lowering the average life span in his country to 35 years of age.
• Arresting and beating political opponents

I take issue with the fifth bullet point. Here's the thing. In an act of blatant stupidity, many years ago, the BBC erased huge chunks of the first several years of Doctor Who from their archives to save space or some shit. Apparently, they were very unclear on what the word "archive" means. As a result, there are currently over one hundred missing episodes of the longest running science fiction program ever. There used to be even more, but some have been found or reconstructed from people literally pointing a camera at their TV and recording them that way (because VCRs weren't around yet).

Now, many of the episodes that were recovered in their original state have been found in countries that had purchased early seasons of Doctor Who before the archive wipe. Nigeria, for instance, has had several eps found inside its borders. Another such country? Zimbabwe.

Except His Most Assholishness, Mugabe, holds the United Kingdom in utter contempt, blaming the colonisation of Zimbabwe (the former Rhodesia) for every crappy thing (including that which is his own doing) in the big Z. Despite that fact, he loved to vacay in London before the EU put a travel ban on him. Because he's a dick...who takes extravagant trips to a country he hates while the people in his country subsist on $15,120,805,200 a year (400 yankee dollars).

So, with his blaming of the UK, the BBC can't get anyone in to go rooting around for tapes. And even if they did, I imagine they'd probably be beaten, jailed and raped with tree branches by Mugabe's goons for the effort.

Thus, I shall lead* a strike force into the heart of Harare to recover whatever we can find. "The Tenth Planet" would be cool.

*By "lead a strike force" what I mean is "assign a special ringtone and wait for good news while I have pancakes at the IHOP."

HOUSE OF CARDS (AND DOLLS)

There's been a lot of reaction to the first episode of Dollhouse, which aired last Friday. A lot of that reaction is pretty negative. Another large portion is, let's call it concerned. Not much in the rave group. Including me. I'm more in the concerned group. The ratings were also not awesome.

Certainly the pilot (well, it's not the pilot, the pilot got scrapped so this is just "the first episode" and I liked the original pilot better) had it's difficulties both off screen and on. And it aptly demonstrated some of the inherent problems of the premise, namely that your main character is not your main character from week to week. At least, for now. And the fact that "Ghosts" is the first episode is indicative of another problem. Suits that just won't leave Whedon alone, something I just can't understand. The guy has a solid fanbase that's constantly growing and evangelizing. Did they really want to repeat the mistakes of Firefly, cancel it and then find out it was basically going to be huge.

Criticism have revolved around many things, for instance that the big action in the show seemed to be asthma attacks. I think that it just goes in the pile of criticism that the first episode just seemed watered down. The whole thing doesn't seem right and I don't think this is how Whedon really wanted to open the series. Reading between the lines in actor interviews bears this out. For example, Tahmoh Penikett said:

Speculation aside, the overall storyline and what the writers and Joss were aiming to do, is pretty much the same. Once we get about midseason, the fifth, sixth episode, it finds its feet again and the show really gets back on the path and the course that they wanted. I think it leaves the audience with something to look forward to. It’s a smarter choice.

Other criticism revolve around the creepiness of the organization that Echo is employed by. One commenter, I forgot where I saw it, said that it made him feel dirty. That he felt complicit in the pimping out of Echo. Here's my thing. Joss has always challenged the audience. This is one of the challenges of Dollhouse. Though we can be sure that the Dollhouse is likely the ultimate bad guys of the series, we still have to play along for now.

For now. That's my big concern of the series. Network interference or not, it disheartens me to hear the Whedon faithful lose their religion so quickly. Have they no faith? I do. I have a certain amount of faith. I see a potential in the show and it's not unlike something I've seen before.

We know that Echo's going to start remembering who she was. Even if you didn't read the interviews with Joss where he's said that, it's plain enough to see in the first episode that who Echo was is important and it's going to come to the fore one way or another. And eventually, I think, Whedon will have the building blocks of a great series and fantastic stories. The problem is that he's got to make those blocks by hand. Slowly. One at a time. To get to that story, we have to get though the somewhat lacking "Ghosts" and maybe some other things that don't live up to past Whedon works (which, by the way, Dollhouse is so completely unlike. And for that, I can also be a little forgiving. He's earned it, but there were certainly some dialogue moments that made me wonder).

It just may be that this is the story that must be told to get the story we really want.

It makes me think of Babylon 5. Those who enjoyed did so for it's extremely rich continuity and thought-provoking storylines. It was a show that rewarded it's viewers well for their loyalty. It's fans also like to evangelize and convert others the fold (yeah, lots of religious references in this post). The problem though is that the first season is painful to watch. There are huge chunks of it that are just bad. The main character isn't even the same guy as in the following four seasons. But all of it has to happen and if you watch it, you will have primed your mind to have it blown in the following four years. There's nothing like them.

That fact that B5 got all five of it's seasons made is a miracle (see?) and it nearly fell apart several times. It even required a cable network to step in and take over the final year after it's syndication deal evaporated after the fourth season.

Anyway, my point is, even if we don't love it...even if we don't like it, if we're Whedon fans, I think we should watch the full season anyway. I think Whedon has earned a little latitude from his fanbase. Some of the reaction is starting remind me of the blunders of that fanbase back in 2002, when the reaction to "The Train Job" was lacking and those same people who were turned off by the space/western combo and the network-mandated new first episode (sound familiar?) were the same one's who were snapping up the DVDs, converting their friends and lamenting the cancellation of a show they scarcely gave the time of day when they had the chance. His work has always been challenging, this is the most challenging yet. I want the chance for that second season to give me the goods.

Of course, there's the possibility that the second season might suck ass, but there's no knowing until it hits a screen.

Let me repeat that, because I know I'm sounding like a worshipper here...it could still suck. But it might not, and if it doesn't...it's going to rawk and I don't want to miss it.

And they damn well better put the original pilot on the DVDs.

I CALL UPON THE LAZYWEB

Research assistance is required. So, if anyone knows a Chicago Police officer, active or retired, that I can ask a question (maybe three) of, I'd be grateful. And as long as this post exists, it means I still need the assistance. Once I'm connected with a Chicago cop, I'll delete this post.

While I'm at it,if anybody's got mp3s from the 1985 Nile Rodgers album "B-Movie Matinee," that's be cool too.

THE AREAS OF THEIR EXPERTISE

Last night's Battlestar had my rapt attention. I was very excited by the many and rapid revelations flung my way regarding, essentially, the genesis of the Cylon race and how they got to be where they are.

But...

Waking up this morning, I considered watching it again and that's when I realized that (despite Dean Stockwell's excellent performance which led me to finally understand Cavill and not regard him as two-dimensionally as I had since he broke off with his own redeye faction) I probably wouldn't dig it quite so much the second time around. It was this morning that I realized the missed opportunities that "No Exit" represented. It was this morning I realized that Galactica launched an exposition nuke at me.

"No Exit," looking back, seems very much a case of "tell, don't show." I congratulate writer Ryan Mottesheard for doing so deftly and entertainingly. Aside from Cavill's performance, I also got very into Sam's aphasia and his palpable panic at trying to get out as much information as he can and being hobbled in doing so while Starbuck's worried over the bullet in his brain, the show was extremely well-paced. It's no easy task to just hurl information out for the bulk of the A and B plots and still keep me leaning into the LCD eager for more.

Buy, yeah, missed opportunity indeed. Should not Sam's vocabulous vomit been a framing device for flashback's. Rather than be told of how the final five arrived at their decisions and their escape from Earth's destruction, could we not have seen it? Could we not have lived on the 13th colony as it was thousands of years ago? Could we not have seen Ellen's instrumental role in the design of the Cylons and wondered who this Daniel guy was until the act out reveal that he was the 13th model (which by the way, I'd always thought there should have been 13, being so prevalent a number in Colonial society). We'd see Ellen's interim fate and Galactica's osteoporosis next week.

And I consider the possibility that my enjoyment is not objective. It also occurs to me that objective enjoyment of Battlestar is, at this point, moot. In this final run up to the end, these last 10 episodes, there doesn't really seem to be any need other that to gives the existing fanbase the best episodes they would like. There is no need to try and engage new viewers. I would think the ratings are going to be in a solidly predictable range of 1.3-1.6, with probably a surge for the finale. The people who were gonna watch are gonna watch it and screw the people that aren't. They'll discover it on DVD one day. We're deep in continuity and there's no turning back.

So in that way, I'm just so invested that perhaps I can just sit there and have any random Galactica character just sit and talk directly into the camera and as long as their revealing consistently new information, I just might enjoy it for a solid 42 minutes plus commercials.

But I can't help thinking that instead of "No Exit," there should have been a two-hour special episode. It should have been written by Jane Espenson. It should be called "The Plan."

OBLIQUE STRATEGIES

Last week was largely "teh suck." Owing primarily to respiratory congestion, a sore throat, and a failed bid to take over the country of Switzerland by means of military force (lesson learned, don't fuck with the Swiss, they keep their gear in their closets). Also, my scripts were being read by an individual who will remain unnamed. Things went swimmingly in the early part of the week. My specs were well-received indeed. The pilots - not so much.

Usually it's the pilots that grab the attention, but it was apparent that there were clearly some issues of personal taste at work. There was an interest in seeing something more grounded, mainstream, mayhaps even procedural. My pilots are usually where I tend to push things pretty far. See that dot on the horizon? Yeah, that's where I pushed things.

I've had ideas for something a little more...shall we say "marketable?" I usually backburner them, then take them off and wrap them in tin foil and put them in the freezer. Then when it's time to move and I'm cleaning out the freezer they become those things that you don't remember what they are and just throw away with out unwrapping them. Should I just go ahead and write one of these? Might it be a bad idea if I'm not totally feeling it?

I did at this point what one usually does when in need of advice. I consulted avant garde musician Brian Eno. In 1975 he co-published a set of cards called Oblique Strategies. On each card was a reasonably cryptic phrase. The idea being that when you have a problem and the solution is eluding you not unlike a fly that won't land anywhere you can swat it, you can draw one of these cards at random and the cryptic phrase will aid you in approaching your problem from a new angle.

As with anything worthwhile, there is an online version. So I clicked (first edition version) and I got this:

"Make a blank valuable by putting it in an exquisite frame."*

It seems so obvious. If I'm not thrilled with the prospect of a procedural or a cop/doctor/lawyer show, it's because I'm not thinking about it properly. Don't just make it a cop show. Make it my cop show.

So with some thought, I took an idea I've had rolling around for a while for a cop show and really started thinking about it seriously. The scenes started coming to me rapidly. There's some procedural elements I need to break, but I know what I want them to do and I'm confident I can take the puzzle apart and recognize the individual pieces. Fortunately, I'd done some of the leg-though before, as I'm drawing on my abortive web series Area Five, using elements of what would have become the arc of the series (of which the one episode that was shot was the only one without a piece of the arc in it).

So that's where I'm going next. Well, that and a Leverage spec...probably...given its recent renewal and the fact that there's not a lot to choose from in the spec landscape.

My question to you TV writerly-types. What are you specing and why?

*Yeah, I got advice from basically a cookieless fortune cookie.

JUMP FROM EVERY ROOFTOP

I've been yucky this week. My head hurts to much to write much of anything, so here's a video of Nine Inch Nails performing "1,000,000".

Here's the interesting thing about it, for you non-NIN folk.

The plan was to film the last few concerts of last year's tour and put out a DVD. Plans fell though, so Renzor called upon fans to bring their cameras to the shows and shoot whatever they wanted. So they did. And then everybody uploaded their stuff and started editing everybody's footage together, so there will be a DVD of the concert. Made by and released by the fans that shot it, all with the aid (he put up a big chunk of raw footage for use) and blessing of Reznor. And it's looking good. They're calling it "What You've Become."