“You must have the
best job in the world,”my sister-in-law once marveled. “You just
sit around all day making stuff up.” Yes, I’m sure this is how some
envision the writing process: the writer, furiously tapping away at his
or her laptop, turning the ideas on and off like tap water. But the
reality is scriptwriting can be a long and arduous process replete with
delays, disappointments, and dispiriting setbacks. And the very first
step in this difficult (yet wholly satisfying!) exercise is that kernel
of an idea, that brilliant notion that makes you sit bolt upright in bed
at three in the morning and shout “That’s it!”, scaring the beejeebers
out of your sleeping wife. But coming up with the brilliant ideas
is only half the battle. Sooner or later, you’re going to have to
share these magnificent concepts with the rest of the writing department.
Sooner or later, you’re going to have to…“Pitch to The Room”.
The
writing team: Robert C. Cooper, Peter DeLuise, Damian Kindler, Paul Mullie
and Joseph Mallozzi
By “The Room”, I mean the writing
department. In this case, the season 7 writing department that gathered
in Robert’s office over the hiatus: Robert Cooper, Peter DeLuise, Damian
Kindler, Paul Mullie, and myself. The nice thing about being on staff
is that you don’t have to go it alone. If the premise you are pitching
happens to possess even the littlest something that connects with someone,
you can count on everyone helping to “spin” it into a workable idea.
Brad Wright, our former Executive Producer, was a master at this.
He’d always joke: “You want to do a story about a monkey and dog?
Okay. Let’s go!” If you felt passionate enough about an idea,
he’d find a way to make it work. And that’s really the beauty of
working on Stargate. You can always count on your fellow writers
to help you flesh out a concept. (The same, of course, does not apply
to freelancers. No half-baked ideas or vague notions for these outsiders.
They must come in and prove their worth with fully developed, well-researched
story ideas. Sometimes, they succeed – as in the case of Damian Kindler
whose pitches for “The Other Guys” and “Cure” earned him a staff position.
Other times…well, I remember a freelance pitch in season 5 that went something
like this: “SG-i visit a planet and are separated from Tee-alc.”
SG-i?
Tee-alc??
But I digress.)
B
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The
Time: Hiatus. Sometime between seasons 6 and 7.
The
Place: The Bridge Studios.
Bridge
Studios in Burnaby, Vancouver, where Stargate SG-1 is filmed
We gather, armed with our ideas
for the upcoming season. Robert, the show’s exec-producer, starts
off with a general overview of where we’re headed in season 7 and where
we want to end up. We’ve got a big bad uber-goa’uld to tackle, the
character of Daniel Jackson to bring back, and a now symbiote-less Teal’c
to deal with. We then address some production considerations.
Amanda will be directing an episode this season, so we will have to come
up with two storylines that can be Carter-light to allow her the time to
prep and shoot (Check out “Prodigy” and “Double Jeopardy” when we were
faced with a similar situation re: Michael directing). Given Rick’s
tight shooting schedule, we are going to have to come up with some stories
in which the character of Jack O’Neill is present but not necessarily the
driving force (a la “Smoke and Mirrors” and “Forsaken”).
(One of the best things about
these initial pitch sessions is the ridiculous place-holder titles we’ll
often come up with to remind ourselves of a given story. “Black
Widow Carter”, “Young O’Neill”, “Bubble World”, and “Felger Gate Screw-Up” are
just a few of the episode titles, worthy of America’s Funniest Home Videos,
you’ll never get to see. Remember Season 4’s “Ad Infinitum”?
Season 5’s “Teal’c Interrupted”? Season 6’s “Ice Woman”? Didn’t
think so. Suffice it to say we eventually come up with a proper title
for the episode. Often this can be one of the most frustrating aspects
of the script-writing process. But more on that in the next installment.)
And on we go.
Season
4's "Ad Infinitum" aka "Window of Opportunity"
So we sit in the room for hours,
the five of us, tossing, turfing, and transforming ideas. Robert
is the master-spinner. No one is his equal. He has the incredible
ability to come up with plot developments that will send the simplest story
into wild, new directions. Everyone else in the room will be in the
midst of discussing when Robert, silent up to this point, will suddenly
interrupt with: “What if…?” What if the wonder-drug these people
are using is actually made of ground goa’uld symbiotes? What if O’Neill
can’t trust the former Black-Ops buddy who is supposed to be watching his
back? What if Daniel does try to stop Anubis, but gets “taken away”
before he can act?
If Robert is The Master-Spinner,
then Paul earns the title of Commander Logic. If the story makes
sense to him, then it’s as good as “go”, for Paul is extremely adept at
picking out the potential story flaws and iffy science that can make or
break a prospective episode. Nothing puts the brakes on a spinning
session like Paul suddenly interjecting with his trademark foreboding:
“I just realized something…”
Peter, meanwhile, is our SG-1
oracle, a font of Stargate mythology. As we build on the idea, he’ll
offer up backstory elements that neatly tie the story into existing canon.
Maybe the goa’uld who first started the research was Imhotep from season
5’s “The Warrior”. Perhaps the queen supplying symbiotes for the
tetronin turns out to be Egeria. Damian and I, meanwhile, adopt a
similar low-key “pitch room” tact – carefully picking our spots and throwing
out ideas, objections, or tearful recriminations when warranted.
I pitch an idea about SG-1 visiting
a planet where the people live under the rule of a benevolent goa’uld.
As it turns out, the only reason he’s benevolent is because his memory
has been wiped and he is unaware of his true nature. But when the
planet comes under threat from another goa’uld, the only way to save its
inhabitants is by reawakening his long dormant memories. – Sadly
(for me), the pitch doesn’t engender much interest. Crash and burn.
On and on we go, through lunch
and into late afternoon – pitching, spinning, rejecting, and proposing
over salted dry ribs and spicy dynamite rolls until, finally, we look at
the list. We have twelve episodes! Well, twelve titles at least.
We divvy up the spoils.
So there you have it.
The idea has been approved, everyone has had their say, and now all that’s
left to do is write the script. Right?
Wrong!
Going from pitch to first draft is a license granted to the privileged
few – the ballsy, the brash, the - Brad Wright. Time and again, this
fearless individual, has thrown caution to the wind, tempting fate by foregoing
the all-important next step in the process and coming back, weeks later,
with a top-notch script. For the rest of us mere mortals, however,
it’s back to our offices to hammer out a blueprint for our respective scripts,
a document we affectionately refer to as “the outline”.
NOW it gets interesting!
Unfortunately, NOW is when we’re
going to have to end things for the time being.
In my next installment, I’ll
focus on how the story is built, from a lowly idea into a lofty précis,
like an architectural marvel meticulously constructed to weather the test
of time (or occasionally come down like a house of cards).
