Re: How about "The door un-dilated" moments?

On Sat, 30 Jun 2007 02:35:03 GMT, djheydt@xxxxxxxxxxx (Dorothy J Heydt)
wrote:

In article <H0jhi.1025$3a.253@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
Ted Nolan <tednolan> <tednolan> wrote:

Then during all that , the door un-dialates: The husband has devised a
plan to rescue his wife, but can't carry it out yet. He sits down,
paces, tries to read the paper etc, finally deciding to take in a new
comedy show his peers have told him is really funny. VV is
giving the character's sort of highbrow-snob reaction to the show and
suddenly mentions that it's on the _radio_. It's a real monkey-wrench
momement that completely throws you out of the weird flow...

Compare the (radio? TV? Heinlein doesn't specify) serial _Scourge
of the Spaceways,_ which Roger Stone has been writing (all by
himself) for years and e-mailing each episode off to New York to be
produced. He gets tired of it; Hazel offers to take it over and
kill the hero off; she kills off the hero in four or five
episodes, coinciding with the end of the contract. Then later on
she is asked why she picked it up again: "Because they waved too
much money under my nose." And when she catches an episode on
Martian TV, months later, she notes that they've rewritten
everything as usual but she can still recognize most of the plot
and some of the dialogue.

Really. *One* scriptwriter, sending in episodes from another
planet, to be rewritten by the staffers in New York? Why did the
network offer Hazel a new contract; why didn't they just fire her
and write it themselves?

Because the Stone name has value to the target audience for a
_Scourge of the Spaceways_ revival, I suspect. Rather like, e.g.,
Arthur C Clarke's name has value to the target audience for a
"Rama" sequel, even if it's cheaper to just buy the IP and hire
Gentry Lee alone to write the damn thing.


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