Wednesday 26 December 2018

TIMESPANNER BONUS MATERIAL: How not to recap.




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.)

6 comments:

  1. Now I feel awful. That wasn't my intent at all. I understand that paymasters/commissioners and indeed that all important casual audience require some bringing up to speed. Equally that many MANY great series reminded their viewers/listeners of the events so far on a regular basis.

    All I meant was that for me, who has heard TS1 plenty of times, it was nice to get on with the plotting and, perhaps, you as the writer who understands the characters and knows where to go would like to get them doing things rather than constantly stating the premise.

    But you DID handle it beautifully. It wasn't at all a "gosh that's a lot of exposition". Just a "gosh wouldn't it be nice if the next episode was so much sooner and thus could play to an audience who knew the people :)

    Sorry if any of my previous message came across as anything other than loving and happy, Simon. (and indeed if yours was only meant as such and my catholic school-girl levels of guilt made me read it otherwise).

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  2. Loving and happy is exactly how your message came across. Ta.

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  3. Out of curiosity, is the new episode meant to take place on a specific day, or just at any point during 2018? And is this the same script you were working on back around May this year?

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  4. It is the same, yes. And no date specified as yet, unless the presence of hail in South London specifies a date.

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  5. May I ask if you could confirm/correct the following spellings:

    - Yellowcoats
    - Qualmian (?) Needle Beam
    - (you look like a) Brigit

    Also, happy Two Years of the first Time Spanner being broadcast on Radio 4, which is - a thing?

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  6. "Bridget", but apart form that spot on. (And "Gay" yes.)

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