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Pissing into the Wind


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To avoid doing actual work, I've decided to just toss out some of my ideas I'm kicking around, should I ever be invited to pitch to the SGA producers. Generally you impress them with spec scripts (written for other shows, which makes total sense if you're from the twilight zone) and then they meet with you so you can stand in front of three or four of them and tell them your ideas, one at a time, in less than a couple of minutes each.

First what's in my brain: So I'm sitting here thinking about how quickly and easily they took the stealth/cloaking technology from the jumpers and used it to cloak the entire city, and it worked the first time with no side effects. Personally I think that's an awfully tall building they just leapt over, and how much of a gimme that is given the zero amount of effort put into it...but anyway..

It seems logical that at some point someone would have the bright idea of trying to adapt the technology to the Daedalus. Henceforth, a pitch is born.

"You know how in episode 'whatever' they adapted a jumper cloak to cover the entire city? So McKay or Caldwell or whoever wants one on the Daedalus, which opens all sorts of cool story lines, but we focus this time on the patchwork of technology not working so smoothly this time. In fact, it leads to one disaster after another for McKay, constantly pressured to solve them before time runs out--on what I don't know off the top of my head. Maybe the test run into Wraith territory goes all wrong when it stops working or whatever. The pressure builds and builds on McKay until he reaches a breaking point. That's the genesis of the story, the clutch, but I don't have an ending yet. It's all about McKay not being able to pull off a miracle this time, and the team learning a less in not leaning so heavily on him. Call it 'Breaking Point'."

Not bad. I made up 90% of that typing it right now. I didn't slow down or edit it at all, it just came blurting out based on the idea just above here that I already had, I just gave it legs.

"Then there is another idea where a mysterious signal is detected from the bottom of the ocean, and the team discovers that the pedestal that the city was anchored to is actually much more -- it's an entire complex/outpost in it's own right -- and it's calling the city for help."

I don't have very much to go on with that one, so naturally I'd want to expand on it before I took it in to pitch, either that or keep it in my back pocket as an emergency in case the producers weren't buying into the other ideas. Here's one for SG-1.

"The SG1 team has been through a hell of a lot over the past XX seasons/10 years. Eventually you'd expect them to reach a moment where they'd have to do some serious thinking, take a serious look at their lives up until this point, reflect a bit if you will on the choices they've made, and decide how they want to go about their futures. Center this on Daniel, who has arguably gone through the most of anyone, and who has almost always been the most 'heady' person of them all, somebody who would be *the guy* to be all introspective on his life. He lost his wife, died, ascended and came back. Helped beat the Goa'uld only to have another enemy -- the replicators show up -- beat them -- they just keep coming. Has he made the right choices? Is the world better for it? Have they actually accomplished anything at all?

Start it with a dream, late at night his dreams mix with repressed and stolen memories of his ascension. Just before, we see and experience his discussions with Oma that we never saw before -- he wakes up and goes to the SGC where he is hard pressed to find anything they've done that made a real difference in the grand scheme -- a classic 'question thy self' moment, but not just for him, through his eyes but also through his conversations with SG1 and the SGC staff.

End it with a strong yet plain and in-your-face bit of 'duh' logic that we'd typically get from Jack -- he would be in the very end to set us all straight in the way that only he can. Call it 'Reflections'."

I know, that's a huge one, but it's the most intriguing to me because it's pure drama, you get to explore how these great adventures and staggering losses have effected these people in a way you just don't get to see, and it can all be done with less than half a dozen flashbacks, because they just get the ball rolling in the first act, and maybe they kick the ball into the air again at the top of the fourth act to sustain it. I just made up -- again -- 90% of that last one on the spot, based on what I have kicking around my head.

Important thing to remember here though if you aren't familiar with how this works (and I am by no means an expert): these are just ideas with a hint of implementation, just enough to get them interested enough so they will either let me do it, or give me an assignment. I am not selling the idea, I am selling myself as the person who can turn ideas into a scripts -- on time and with as few problems as possible. Not all ideas are good and pan out, but they might like them enough to see what I can do with *their* ideas. And beyond that, just because I went down path A with my idea doesn't mean I can't go down path B, path B being something they want to do with the idea, or another staff writer wants to do, or a series star. Nor need they be the A story for the episode at all. The idea for "Reflections" might be better as the B story for something else, something they ask me to come up with on the fly, or maybe something they'll give me to work with. It doesn't really matter just so long as they don't kick me out the door for being more useless than a grip in a writing room.

So I had the idea, and I just made the pitch. Do I get the job?

We'll see, if I ever get the chance.

(note: these are for pitching only, I will never write these as spec episodes. I only need, and you only really ever do one spec for a particular show, then do that for two or three shows, and that's it. Then you find an agent, who will get you interviews, who will set you up to make pitches.)
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The text of this article is Copyright © 2006,2007 Paul William Tenny. All rights reserved. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License. Attribution by: full name and original URL. Comments are copyrighted by their authors and are not subject to the Creative Commons license of the article itself.