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Ok, so, I've had fun on this board voicing my cack-handed(mouthed?) opinions with regards to some of the other scripts that people have been brave enough to post, so I thought I'd better stop being a smelly hypocrite and unveil some of my own work for a quick round of savaging on the internet.

This is one of (several) comedy pilots I've written over the past few years that has got as far as a few re-drafts and then...sort of just sat there. But I'm endeavouring to build up some renewed focus to polishing one or two of them up to the point that I might try submitting it to someone, somewhere (this is a well-crafted plan as you can tell), so I'm eager to see if this is one I might consider polishing, or if it's too flawed to continue with.

This particular script started as just a bit of fun, but evolved into a full-length comedy pilot, the essential premise being "What if Doctor Who, but he was a bit of a prick?". I should point out I've watched maybe five Doctor Who episodes in my life, and I didn't massively care for it, which could be considered poor research, but I like to think of it as me keeping my distance from the source material, to avoid sliding too close to just being a straight-up rip-off (I hope). And, just to mention, I imagine this as an animated show for logistical reasons, as will probably quickly become obvious.

Oh, and I'm not entirely sure on the correct etiquette when it comes to posting scripts here. I know others have just copy and pasted 10 or so pages into a new topic, but then a lot of the comments they got (from me, amongst others) have been about how hard it is to read in that format. So I'll link to the whole thing in a neat and tidy pdf format, and feel free to just read as much as you want*. In fact, if your feedback is "I only managed 5 pages", that's actually some of the most telling feedback I could get.

So, I'll stop rambling now, and here we are: https://www.dropbox.com/s/tldnsdqpzq4stbv/Pilot_v2.pdf?dl=0

Edit: Or here we are, maybe: https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B_Qc9tmYLfalYXAzTzhyTnMtcms

* - There is a pretty darkly comic twist at the end, which is one of my main areas of concern, but don't let this come across as some sort of pathetic attempt to get you to read the whole thing!

It's gone into another dimension and can't be opened.

Eek. Everything seems fine with the link here . Or have I fluffed my lines?

I can't open it either.

Ok, I've added a Google Drive link. Maybe that helps? Feel like there's more plot twists in the thread than in the script now...

It opens automatically in Dropbox for me. I'm halfway through it, and enjoying it. Will report back later 'Captain Drippy Dick'

Glad to hear you're enjoying it! And that the link actually works for someone. Look forward to reading any feedback you might have!

(And yeah, I'm hoping that line justified the amount of research into syphilis there now is in my internet history...)

Hey Crindy,

Overall I enjoyed this. It started off well and I got he premise by the action. I liked most of the dialogue but I just couldn't reconcile Herman's professor description with what he was saying. I just couldn't picture him as a professor. It seemed to fade off towards the ends . But hey, what do I know? It kept my interest and made me want to read more.

Hi Will,

Thanks for reading it through, and thanks for the feedback! Particularly glad to hear the bit about the start, this is a bit of an outlier pilot in my limited portfolio, being one where I really made the effort to get things moving from the off, instead of falling into the usual 'first ten pages of a pilot' trap of the plot just moving too slowly and aimlessly (as happens in most of the other, slightly more grounded things I've written!).

If I can just ask: Was it just the description/name of the Professor that felt off, or did the character read inconsistently in the script? Suspect the latter is less easily fixable! And do you mean the story tailed off towards the end, or the comedy? It's an area of concern in my own thoughts on the script, so I just wanted to clarify!

I'm glad it kept your interest though! I did rattle off a few early drafts of other possible episodes for this idea, so there is some further reading in theory, but I suspect that none of the others are far enough along the drafting process to make you want to read much more.

Thanks again for the read, and the notes. Let me know if I can repay the favour with any of your writing!

Hi Crindy,

The professor remained consistent it's just that if you hadn't given his profession and asked me what it was I would never have guessed. The tailing off was a bit of both to be honest. I forgot to say I enjoyed the exchanges between the aliens.

Hi,

I can see your point with the Professor name. I mean, his profession really is that he's a time-travelling prick, and I just wanted a 'clever person' title for him that made him sound important, but clearly that's not quite setting the character up right!

And, fair enough, some real work needed on the third act. I guess that's a step up from needing some real work on the first, second AND third acts!

Thanks again for coming back to me, this has been very helpful.

Evening, Crindy

Just managed to find the time to read this, because I wanted to read it all, and it has certainly confirmed that you're easily one of the most talented writers to be found in the dingy Critique basement. There are some very good jokes (That wasn't a question; quilters guild; quadrants), and a couple of well turned old classics (poop deck; same word in an alien language), and there's a nice bouncy flow to it, whilst still having 3 recognisable acts. So, loads of top marks.

I think my only real issue is...well, I'm not sure "imagine if Dr Who was a dick" is the right angle, because a LOT of people REALLY love Dr Who. And those who don't might not want to watch a show about someone who resembles the Dr travelling in time and talking aout cause and effect. And, if that *is* the concept, I think you have to make is less like Dr Who. You might not know this having watched, and not enjoyed, a small amount of Who, but a lot of what you've written is very good (reboot) Who material! Which is great, but it then jars when he says "f**k".

The little exchange whilst walking the plank that goes, loosely

-Is this one fo those times where you say there's no plan but really there's a plan?
-Heh heh, I do do that. But no.
-Oh. hey, wait, is this a triple bluff?

That is perfect for Matt Smith's Dr and Clara. I mean, bang on. As is the opening concept of "I know a quiet place we can talk, the Mary Celeste because they've all disappeared - oh blimey, they've not disappeared yet", that would be a brilliant pre-credit teaser for an episode. "It's all part of the job - actually, it's not a job", there's another great Who line. I mean this as a big compliment, although as you don't care for Dr Who perhaps you won't see it that way. But, I do think you should make him *less* like the Dr right from the start. Like, maybe he's a time travelling debt collector, or something grubby like that, and you get it out in the open in the very first scene. I mean, try to think of something better than that, obviously. Or make it clear that his desire not to mess with important points in history is not because of anything noble, but self-interest on some level.

The other thing I'd point out is that everything happens *to* the main pair, they don't really instigate much of the action after Hastings. That's fine, but perhaps for a pilot they need a bit more agency. I dunno, maybe that's one of the "rules" people tell you that don't really matter, but I noticed it - and, if they controlled the action more, it might be more obvious to me that this isn't Dr Who with post-watershed language, but a new, fresh creation.

Sorry if that reads a little brutally. The dialogue and the jokes are very very good, and it's well paced, so no complaints in that department, which already makes it better than just about any script that gets put up here, I'm just not sure I go for it as a premise.

But - and this is paramount - I don't know what I'm talking about and have never sent a screenplay to anyone, so do feel free to ignore me entirely.

Oh yeah, one tiny thing; "re" is a latin word that means "referring to", "R.E." is religious education.

Hi gappy

Thanks so much for the read and the detailed feedback. Particularly the kinder words, which do wonders for the ego.

As for the criticisms (which are less good for the ego, but let's face it, are the most important part of this process, and certainly weren't brutal at all), they've given me a lot to think about.

Chiefly, perhaps I should actually watch a bit more of the show I'm trying to riff off! (I should add that when I say I didn't care for Dr Who, it wasn't that I disliked it, more that there's a lot of TV to watch these days, and it just never really stuck on my radar). I think if, as you've suggested, the show itself is already happy to use meta-jokes about the tropes of these sorts of shows (a la the 'plank bit'), then a fair bit of what I was aiming for with this concept as it stands might be fatally holed below the water line before it even really got going, which is a shame, but there you go.

In fact, I got a friend to read one of the other, less heavily drafted episodes I wrote for this, and their big note was pretty much the same, that if you stripped out the swearing and the sex and the opium abuse (it was a weird episode), it just read too much like a Dr Who episode. I was hoping that the tone, and establishing that his fix for resetting the timeline is to just casually murder a king, was setting it apart, but evidently not. I'll have a think. The self-interest angle does come up in other drafted scenes/episodes, maybe that's crucially missing from the pilot.

Oddly enough, this originally started as a short about a time traveller who was just wantonly trying to change history for the hell of it, and the first version of this pilot was along the same vein. Problem was, when you're a guy with a time machine and a ray gun, turns out it's a piece of piss to change history, so it didn't really have much legs as a concept. But I take your point that maybe he needs a bit more about him to really differentiate him from the show I'm riffing on.

Also take your point about a lack of instigating matters from the main characters, which is annoying because I'm usually the first to call that out in other people's work. It's a fair cop, and I can only imagine I got carried away with so much instigation in the teaser that I sort of let it slide for the rest!

I may try another draft pass through just to deal with some of the minor structural points raised by yourself and others, but after that I might have to park it pending a more fundamental reappraisal (and some research).

(And I genuinely had no idea re 're/r.e.' Consider those edited! In my defence, I never did latin at school. Or R.E.)

Thanks again for reading, and for your thorough notes. As with Will Cam, let me know if I can repay the favour in the future!

What you have to remember is that C21 Who is *already* a meta-show, because it always has trailling behind it the logic/history/expectations/lunacy of 30 years of C20 material. Plus, it's also very definitely post-Buffy. So, yes, they do a lot of the jokes or twists you've done off their own back (on some episodes; some of them are serious throughout).

I was wondering whether your protagonist could actually be deliberately trying to change history for his own ends - like, maybe it's all a convoluted attempt to twist the whole of history so that Tranmere Rovers win the Euros, or something - but no matter how hard he tries history always "rights" itself. That would definitely be a clear opposite of Dr Who, and would allow for some really fun twists and logic games...OK, thinking of them wouldn't be fun, it would be hell, but watching them would be

Another tiny thing I just remembered: you spell the ship Marie on the front page but use Mary throughout.

Hmm. Food for thought. There was a sort of 'story arc' set up in an earlier draft that he was going through time either fixing or breaking stuff to try and correct some massive problem he'd caused in the future, although we were never told what that was, and again the plan would be in other episodes to explore the idea that he's sort of ok with messing time up if there's something in it for him, or whatever (there's an episode outlined which revolves around finding the perfect point in history to kill Hitler without messing up the future too much to try and impress his ex-wife, which ends with them killing Hitler and permanently changing history at the end of the episode, for example). Beginning to suspect the pilot script's making him out to be too much of a nice guy. So there's a possible fix to be made.

(And you'll be pleased to hear/see that I corrected that typo in the title by the time I posted the Google Drive link. Apparently in favour of letting Writerduet screw up the formatting on the final action lines).