Happy Boxing Day! I hope everyone's been letting nothing them dismay, and heart-shaped thanks to all who've said nice things thus far about the new Spanner. "VonBlade" expresses hope that in "the next one" (if that ever happens) I might "spend less-time setting the scene for those who foolishly missed ep1." and while you may have a point, VB, I thought I'd put up the following exchange from the very first draft written back in March to show just how much worse things could have been:
GABBIE Cool. But get some shoes. And not dinner lady shoes like you had.MARTIN Brilliant! Yes! See you at six.GABBIE (Cautiously) Cool. (Departing) Happy Birthday! Aww, thanks for stopping…MARTIN This is a good idea.ANGEL The shoes?MARTIN Well I need shoes ideally, but – I mean if it starts raining, say – No, buck up, Martin! I need shoes.ANGEL What happened to your shoes?MARTIN Okay, retrace my steps: I definitely had them on when I brought my boss his tea, then he forced me through a magic mirror at gunpoint to find out how to bring back the dead and I was in Heaven – although I don’t really believe in Heaven – and I met you and we stole the Time Spanner because you said I needed to bring stuff back from the Future because my world was dying and you gave me a robot helper which I didn’t really want, sorry, but apparently Heaven’s full of robots, oh and there was something about how you once gave the Spanner to Hitler –ANGEL Yes! Specifically that it wasn’t Hitler!MARTIN Or if it was, that it was an accident –ANGEL No! It was that it wasn’t Hitler.MARTIN Sure, but that came a bit out of nowhere. Anyway! Then you stuck the spanner up my nose, into my brain, which is how you’re talking to me now, sent me back to Earth –ANGEL The physical plane.MARTIN “Plane” yes, the plane, but then I used the Spanner to go round the Universe back in time, just to check… not change anything, just check Gabbie hadn’t heard me say… nice things about her, which she didn’t, so that all seems fine, and everything seems great!ANGEL And the shoes?Pause.MARTIN Oh, I took them off to go through the mirror! That's it.
I still like the joke. Ultimately though it was decided that this first draft was a bit... well Gareth used the word "glib", but I prefer "easy to write". And while I'm posting bonus material, here from that same draft is the fullest description of the Cat-In-The-Bag. I knew it would almost definitely have to be cut down, but sometimes writing's just fun:
LAIKA The Cat in the Bag: Found furniture, peeling leather seating banks, fish-finger sandwiches, Connect 4, Buckaroo, a single chandelier rescued from a Streatham bordello, “Crash Test Dummies” on the jukebox by the Speak-Your-Weight machine, actual crash test dummies propping up the specials, a bowl of pens in the toilet, and on the wall behind the stuffed lynx, a seven foot high monochrome mural of Ariana Grande in a hazmat suit.
(Actually, while it's an obvious stand-in for the Dogstar on Coldharbour Lane, the real inspiration for the Cat was the short-lived "The Rest Is Noise" which is now a TK Maxx, and more recently the Hob in Forest Hill which recently opened as the crushingly inorganic Signal a couple of years ago without a thought for... Christ, listen to me.)