Brikar

So, I'm in this class, "Writing for Visual Media." The last half of the semester we have to write a TV script - be it a half-hour sitcom or one-hour drama, it doesn't matter.

So, we got an email saying that we should start now on working out the details of the story, and the first (full) week in October, we're all going to be reading our treatments to the class.

I can't really decide which to do for my project. I've narrowed it down to two choices:

Firstly, I can do "Star Trek." In fact, there's an entire unit in the class devoted to "Trek" because the prof is a big fan. But I have to do "Enterprise" if I decide to write a "Trek" script. Disappointing, I know.

So my first idea is an episode of ENT that goes something like this:

After his father died, Archer lost his faith. He was angry at a lot of things, not the least of which were the Vulcans and how they nearly wasted his father's life's work.

Over the course of the past three years, with all of the danger and strife the crew has seen, they've been shaken. Now, a number of Archer's crew have requested a ship's chaplain. Archer forwards the request to Admiral Forrest, who decides to send the Enterprise a chaplain.

Father Mulcahey (hehe, go MASH!) is exactly what Archer didn't want: a man of the faith who recognizes that Archer has lost his, and will stop at nothing to force Archer into restoring it. Archer, angry at Mulcahey's presumption, cuts off all contact with him - until the Enterprise comes across an alien race that refuses to speak with anyone not a Speaker of the Faith. After Mulcahey guides them through this important First Contact, Archer realizes that he doesn't have to participate Mulcahey's faith in order to accept Mulcahey into his crew.

The episode would deal with Archer's lingering feelings about the death of his father, mostly, with the alien contact very much in the background until the episode's climax, which is more of a cathartic moment for Archer than anything else.

The other script I can do is an episode of "Angel." It would be a much harder project, since I've never written "Angel" before, but I've done loads of "Trek." The Buffyverse is much, much different from Roddenberry's creations, both in style, tone and a number of other different ways.

This episode would start off with Angel suspiciously absent from a morning briefing at the team's new Wolfram & Hart lawfirm. After exhausting Angel's usual haunts, Wesley calls on the ghostly Spike to aid them. Spike finds Angel staring into the open pit that used to be Sunnydale, California, but the vampire with a soul has no recollection of what happened to the town, or what he's been doing for the past five years. When Wesley and the others show up, Angel steals their car and leaves them stranded on the outskirts of ex-Sunnydale.

Spike gets an odd feeling, and disappears.

Then, we see Angel stalking through a dank sewer with none other than Buffy, the Vampire Slayer. Avid viewers will recognize this as the scene from the third season of "Buffy" where Angel broke up with her just before her senior Prom. Right in the middle of it, Angel "comes to" and starts asking questions about where he is and what's happening. Buffy becomes upset and storms off.

Spike appears and explains to Angel what's happened - that his soul has been switched with an earlier version of himself. What will follow in the rest of the episode will be split in two: Angel must try to break up with Buffy and survive being struck by Faith's poison arrow, and Wesley and the gang must find the past-Angel and figure out a way to switch them back. I plan on implementing a number of "Quantum Leap" jokes, as Angel in the past will be the only one who can see Spike. But the whole point is for Angel to have a life-affirming adventure where he realizes that he HAD to leave Buffy, that he HAD to leave Sunnydale and go to LA, and that even given a second chance with her, he'd still leave, even though it's going to break his heart a second time.





So, suggestions?

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Stag

Do ENT. Let's see how an episode should be written, although they have been better lately.

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