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January 31, 2008
Draft Colors, Spec Scripts, Outcasts
On television shows, we use different colored paper to indicate revisions to scripts, production schedules, crew contact lists, basically all the paperwork. It helps us keep track of what's what. So when you're in a meeting, and everybody's looking at a pink paper, and yours is blue, you know you're the idiot in the room and you need to get the latest version. Scripts are often revised just a page at a time, and sometimes there are so many revisions (blue, pink, yellow, green, goldenrod, grey, tan) that a script starts to look like a pad of children's construction paper.
Here in the story department we get inundated with unsolicited spec scripts -- scripts by unrepresented writers, usually fans of the show, hoping that we'll read their scripts and hire them to become writers. Unfortunately for them, it doesn't ever happen that way. The reason: we're legally prohibited from reading spec Stargate scripts due to legal concerns. You see, if we did, and then we independently came up with a similar idea for an episode, we might get sued by that writer who would claim we stole his or her story. So, as a policy, we can't read them. We destroy them or send them back. It's sad, but that's what we have to do. Once, however, we were sent a spec Stargate script and it was printed on all sorts of different colored paper. You see, the writer had seen a production draft of a script for the show and decided to mimic it. She thought we did that just to make them look pretty.
Tomorrow on Atlantis you'll see "Outcast". This story was originally pitched by Joe Flanigan. He thought it would be cool if a replicator gets loose on Earth. And the producers agreed. Great idea. Alan McCullough fleshed out the story and wrote the teleplay. And I just spoke with Alan about the episode.
Alan explained that the writers had been wanting to do a story that exposes more of Sheppard's backstory for a while, and this proved to be the perfect vehicle. That being said, there was a lot of debate over what actually occurred in his past. There was also some general consensus, however -- he probably came from a wealthy family, and in the episode Sunday, we learned that Sheppard was previously married. So there you go - a couple of minor spoilers for you before you watch the episode.
Alan said there was a terrific guest cast in this one; he was particularly impressed with Kari Wuhrer (Sliders) who plays Sheppard's ex-wife. And because the replicator character was required to do a number of stunts and action scenes, the producers actually cast a stunt man, Adrian Hein, for that role. But ironically, because the biggest stunt had to be scheduled for early in the shoot, we had to hire another stuntman to do that one hair-raising stunt because we couldn't risk our guest star getting injured. The stuntman's stuntman? Our very own stunt coordinator and fight choreographer James "Bam Bam" Bamford. That guy is a stud. There's currently a campaign to get Bam Bam to be a contestant on MGM's new American Gladiator series. Trust me, that would be good TV. By the way, in that big stunt showpiece I just mentioned, see if you can spot executive producer N. John Smith (hint: he's on his boat).
Lastly, Alan want to put a shout out to Joel Goldsmith for a wonderful score in this one; a score Alan described as quite different than the typical Atlantis score.
Enjoy!
ATL
Posted by Alex Levine at January 31, 2008 11:43 PM
