rewrite an episode: The Doctor's Daughter
Sep. 6th, 2008 08:05 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dbskylerI don't know if I'm the only one who does this, but sometimes I see an episode and think of ways to make it just a little bit better (well, better in my opinion, at least). This is true even of episodes that I liked, which brings me to my proposal for a rewrite-an-episode meme.
The idea: Take an episode from "Doctor Who" that you think could have been better if it had been written slightly differently. Try to keep within the overall structure of the episode as broadcast -- in other words, create a rewrite, not an AU. Think in terms of being the story editor -- if you were editing the script, what notes would you have given back to the writer?
Episode: The Doctor's Daughter
Why it needs rewriting: Although the central story of the Doctor getting an instant adult, biological daughter was compelling, the framing story didn't make a whole lot of sense. The idea of the war lasting only 7 days but for "generations" was great, but everything else about the war felt thrown together. Why would the humans and the Hath, who had set out to colonize a world, go to all-out war upon arrival because the original leader had died? If these two groups of people were that volatile with each other, and held together by just one person, would they have gotten on the spaceship together in the first place? Then there's the whole getting-to-the-spaceship part of the episode, which felt like a great big video game. There's a map that's not a full map until the Doctor sonics it -- why are parts of the map initially hidden? There's the random corridor full of laser beams -- why? What was it doing there, what use did the original colonists (from a week ago) have for a corridor full of laser beams? (It reminded me of that scene in "Galaxy Quest" where Sigourney Weaver's character questions why the ship has a random barrier of "chompers" and says, "Whoever wrote this episode should die!") And the whole race-to-the-Source -- without anyone knowing what the Source actually is -- was also very similar to an arbitrary video-game-type goal.
How to improve it: Go with the video game. Embrace the video game. Live the video game. Make the whole point of the race-to-the-Source an actual game, with game-like barriers thrown in (hidden maps, laser corridors). Make the whole point of the war not a war per se, but yet another barrier as the two groups vie to see who gets to the Source first. And make the point of getting to the Source not just getting to the Source, but deciding which group -- human or Hath -- gets to be in charge of the colony. And here's how I would make it just that much more interesting, and tied in to the whole Doctor/Jenny part of the story: let the original colonists still be there at the ship when the armies arrive. In other words, the "real" people (both human and Hath) are hanging out in safety and comfort, and they've created a completely fake war with fake barriers and a made-up goal merely as a mechanism for deciding which group gets to lead the colony (i.e., it's more interesting to watch than an election). As far as the "real" people are concerned, the made-by-machine individuals in the armies are unimportant and can be killed off in huge numbers without any more fuss than one would make over killing off virtual soldiers in a video game. The Doctor, of course, would be horrified when he finds out what's been going on, and that would have to cause him to re-evaluate his own reaction to Jenny and the extent to which she, too, is his "real" daughter or not.
Lingering issues: I'm not sure how to handle the General-Cobb-shoots-at-the-Doctor scene in this rewrite. Perhaps Cobb is actually an original colonist who was directing things from the field? If each side secretly had one original colonist leading the armies, then that could explain why Cobb gets so angry at the Doctor (not to mention why he looks so much older than everyone else).
So, there's my rewrite. As I said, I don't know if anyone else likes to do this, but feel free to take the idea and run with it (or change it however you like) if you want to do something similar yourself. Hope you enjoyed!
The idea: Take an episode from "Doctor Who" that you think could have been better if it had been written slightly differently. Try to keep within the overall structure of the episode as broadcast -- in other words, create a rewrite, not an AU. Think in terms of being the story editor -- if you were editing the script, what notes would you have given back to the writer?
Episode: The Doctor's Daughter
Why it needs rewriting: Although the central story of the Doctor getting an instant adult, biological daughter was compelling, the framing story didn't make a whole lot of sense. The idea of the war lasting only 7 days but for "generations" was great, but everything else about the war felt thrown together. Why would the humans and the Hath, who had set out to colonize a world, go to all-out war upon arrival because the original leader had died? If these two groups of people were that volatile with each other, and held together by just one person, would they have gotten on the spaceship together in the first place? Then there's the whole getting-to-the-spaceship part of the episode, which felt like a great big video game. There's a map that's not a full map until the Doctor sonics it -- why are parts of the map initially hidden? There's the random corridor full of laser beams -- why? What was it doing there, what use did the original colonists (from a week ago) have for a corridor full of laser beams? (It reminded me of that scene in "Galaxy Quest" where Sigourney Weaver's character questions why the ship has a random barrier of "chompers" and says, "Whoever wrote this episode should die!") And the whole race-to-the-Source -- without anyone knowing what the Source actually is -- was also very similar to an arbitrary video-game-type goal.
How to improve it: Go with the video game. Embrace the video game. Live the video game. Make the whole point of the race-to-the-Source an actual game, with game-like barriers thrown in (hidden maps, laser corridors). Make the whole point of the war not a war per se, but yet another barrier as the two groups vie to see who gets to the Source first. And make the point of getting to the Source not just getting to the Source, but deciding which group -- human or Hath -- gets to be in charge of the colony. And here's how I would make it just that much more interesting, and tied in to the whole Doctor/Jenny part of the story: let the original colonists still be there at the ship when the armies arrive. In other words, the "real" people (both human and Hath) are hanging out in safety and comfort, and they've created a completely fake war with fake barriers and a made-up goal merely as a mechanism for deciding which group gets to lead the colony (i.e., it's more interesting to watch than an election). As far as the "real" people are concerned, the made-by-machine individuals in the armies are unimportant and can be killed off in huge numbers without any more fuss than one would make over killing off virtual soldiers in a video game. The Doctor, of course, would be horrified when he finds out what's been going on, and that would have to cause him to re-evaluate his own reaction to Jenny and the extent to which she, too, is his "real" daughter or not.
Lingering issues: I'm not sure how to handle the General-Cobb-shoots-at-the-Doctor scene in this rewrite. Perhaps Cobb is actually an original colonist who was directing things from the field? If each side secretly had one original colonist leading the armies, then that could explain why Cobb gets so angry at the Doctor (not to mention why he looks so much older than everyone else).
So, there's my rewrite. As I said, I don't know if anyone else likes to do this, but feel free to take the idea and run with it (or change it however you like) if you want to do something similar yourself. Hope you enjoyed!
