There's not much sense performing a post mortem on a thing you yourself have written, especially if you're as sloppy as writer as me. Don't get me wrong, I like my writing, but I only seem to put the hours in on the bits I find fun – the big splurges and resultant problem-solving – rather than sorting out the structure beforehand, and playing within that. It's quite an actor-y, hand-to-mouth, gig-economy approach, and while this unstructuredness feels freeing at the time, in the long run it probably provides less actual freedom than working with all the resources available to someone with an actual plan (this is why I found it so rewarding to write for Shunt, whose shows already had a structure in place by the time I'd join the devising). Specifically, the fantastic exhileration felt when a last minute tweak helps me suddenly understand what I've written, is offset by the powerlessness felt re-encountering all the other bits that go nowhere written before this understanding dawned. But this isn't a post-mortem.
Rainbow over Vauxhall, February, 2020
Today was a day for applause and thanks, so let me here assert that writing
The Dan In the High Castle was a far from lonely experience. Seven months before the recording, a first draft was read out at John Finnemore's flat. This had Martin and Gabbie travel two years into the future to discover a dystopia they thought was the work of Kraken, just as in the episode that aired, but ended with them escaping into a mysteriously optimistic 2019, and also their relationship didn't develop beyond Martin finally getting to do something fun with his excellent new friend, all of which might have made good on the promises offered by the pilot. But what it didn't do, as my sister Susy pointed out, was provide any possible closure if this was to be not just a sequel, but the finale. It was London Hughes who suggested Gabbie should punch Martin in the face, so I put that in, and went off to redraft. I'd also had a new idea about octopuses, which didn't make it in, but anyway months passed and, as with the pilot, it was producer Gareth Edwards who paid for coffee after coffee
while trying to convince me that, as much fun as I was having penning
screwball wise-cracks, the threats should be real, and "Martin should
care". It was then ancient friend and collaborator Tom Lyall who pointed out, over another coffee, that Gabbie should be also be returned to 2016, as missing two years of one's life is obviously huge, and when I suggested Martin should nevertheless still stay in 2018, it was again Tom who said, crucially, "Yes, and Gabbie should rescue him."
Eschewing coffee for pints, David Mitchell simply said he loved it, which was highly encouraging, but otherwise useless, but really encouraging, but otherwise no use, but great.
Maida Vale studios, November, 2018.
These improvements made, I sent the possibly final draft to John Finnemore, because he's always lovely with notes, and he replied – as nicely as any intelligence could – that, actually, he prefered the version at the read-through. This is how his reply ended:
"I loved the last draft, and
the biggest problem with that one – Gabbie's
passivity – is now fixed. So it's in great shape. I just miss Martin as
my life-line of fundamentally understanding what the story is about,
because it's someone who wants something simple and human. More even
than
Arthur Dent wanting a cup of tea. More like The Dude wanting his rug
back. Maybe it's his shoes. It's almost his shoes now, but not quite,
because he doesn't really try. And anyway, it's not his shoes, it's Gabbie. It's got to be Gabbie.
Does that help? I cannot imagine it does."
Of course, it helped. So I threw out the pair travelling to 2018 in order to get Martin "future shoes", and instead made their motivation Martin's investigation of the future in which he gives up Gabbie and the Spanner. And I added Gabbie quitting. And, finally, one week before the script was recorded at Maida Vale in November 2018, I added Martin offering Gabbie the Spanner at the end. And I remain very happy with that ending, and as I say, wish I'd thought of it a little earlier, so I wouldn't have wasted all that time giving Bridget a load of exposition about "The Usual" which goes nowhere.
I'm not going to soul search here. I'm just going to report the facts. I bought Mondo and Sky Blue when I lived at Clapham Junction, to serve as a surrogate couple we could take with us on holiday and photograph in case we didn't work out as a couple ourselves. Mondo had one eye, and a goofy grin across his belly. Sky Blue's face was clear apart from the sun. These two vinyl figures came with us everywhere for six and a half years, and they stayed with me in the flat in Forest Hill when the time came for me to live there on my own. That's them, above. The night before my first night alone, I wrote the following in the notes app on my phone at 3am:
