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| 2x22 - Wake |
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| Total Votes : 8 |
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gorramshiny
Crew Member
Joined: 08 Oct 2006
Posts: 1354
Location: wandering the 'Verse
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 Posted: Sat Dec 20, 2008 9:33 am |
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2x22: Wake
Written by George W. Krubski
Plot, scenes and text from the Shooting and Original Draft Scripts of the “Serenity” Motion Picture by Joss Whedon
Crew and Alliance alike deal with the aftermath of the Miranda Wave.
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Last edited by gorramshiny on Sat Dec 20, 2008 6:24 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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gwek
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| Posted: Sat Dec 20, 2008 4:48 pm |
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Thanks for starting the thread!
"Crew and Alliance alike deal with the aftermath of the Miranda Wave."
Enjoy! |
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L0ngsh0t
Alliance Gridrunner
Joined: 22 Aug 2006
Posts: 38
Location: Colorado
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| Posted: Mon Dec 22, 2008 5:10 pm |
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Best. Christmas. Present. Ever!
Thanks everyone!
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pizmobeach
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Joined: 24 Apr 2006
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Location: Earth That Is
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| Posted: Mon Dec 22, 2008 6:04 pm |
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Great stuff George, and all who helped on this ep. Of course, first thing I want to do is read it again even though some of it is painful. 
Lot of great lines, my fav:
OPERATIVE
Are you really that anxious to follow your captain?
ZOE
To hell and back already. What’s one more trip?
and River's "Do you know what your sin is?" Tasty.
Any critical thoughts would be around the Ops motivations for helping the crew on their way - another reason for wanting to read it again, I feel like I missed something.
I was sorry to see Jayne and Zoe get into it physically. I understand that they were pushed to all kinds of breaking points, but I would like to have seen them push it to that line HARD without going over.
Otherwise, voices were so clear, I think especially Inara and the Operative - they were all good, including ole Ben Hicks. His departure worked too, nicely handled.
Jayne staying behind and referencing Book twice, was *gulp* a great move.
Thx again! Merry Christmas VFF people!
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yancy
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Joined: 29 May 2006
Posts: 421
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| Posted: Tue Dec 23, 2008 2:32 pm |
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Great episode, a bit misplaced. It's all well and good that Serenity was "Season 2" of Firefly, but I think it would've flowed better if 2x22 was actually 3x01. Or if the season break came right at the end of the teaser of 2x22.
But it doesn't really matter what the episode number was on top. Still awesome.
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You
Joss Whedon's Minion
Joined: 04 Jun 2006
Posts: 1102
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| Posted: Tue Dec 23, 2008 9:41 pm |
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Brilliant!
The Operative was well written as a sort of broken shell. I did not think that would have been pulled off with as much aplomb.
Congrats to the team for a brilliant series of episodes.
@ yancy - maybe, but then there would be the issue of not havng finished the movie in this season. That may not have been as much of a problem, but it would be something to consider. Besides it is occasionally nice to have a season to end on NOT a cliff hanger. (but there still sort of is... what next? where do they go? what do they do? can they make new friends knowing that the chances they would also end up dead at some point...)
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gwek
Site Admin
Joined: 09 Apr 2006
Posts: 713
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| Posted: Wed Dec 24, 2008 5:56 am |
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PLEASE NOTE THAT SPOILERS ARE INCLUDED IN THIS POST!
| pizmobeach wrote: | | Great stuff George, and all who helped on this ep. |
Thanks! Most of the writing staff was involved in this episode in one way or another, given how long ago we began discussing it. Maer, in particular, has been invaluable during the past few weeks.
| Quote: | Lot of great lines, my fav:
OPERATIVE
Are you really that anxious to follow your captain?
ZOE
To hell and back already. What’s one more trip? |
Although the focus is often elsewhere, this episode is a pretty pivotal one for Zoe (with respect to Wash), so we wanted to make sure that she had a few excellent moments and lines.
| Quote: | | ...and River's "Do you know what your sin is?" Tasty. |
Once we decided we were going to do an "aftermath" episode as the finale, one of the first points of discussion was how to resolve the Operative-River dynamic. A number of different options were discussed, and I forget who it was who first suggested River turning the Op's signature line against him, but it was so perfect that I felt we could take the "less is more" approach with their meeting. Glad you enjoyed! 
| Quote: | | Any critical thoughts would be around the Ops motivations for helping the crew on their way - another reason for wanting to read it again, I feel like I missed something. |
The Operative's motives were, again, an early point of discussion. Lots of folk on the writing staff had lots of viewpoints, with lots of good ideas. Not only was his motivation the one of the first things discussed, but also one of the last (as late as, yes, the release date of the episode!).
My take (and I'm not sure how well this came off) is that with the Miranda Wave, the Operative fails, and with that failure, he ultimately loses, well, everything. What we see throughout the episode is a man who is fighting tooth and nail against the nihilism that was once Mal's and his now his. We see this in power plays (some of them surprisingly petty), the desperation of trying to make peace with Inara, and the process of trying to understand his enemies (especially Mal, who was once where he is today).
Why does he let the crew go? Again, one could come up with a dozen different answers, like trying to figure out Othello's Iago. If you ask me, I'd say he does it either because doing otherwise would shatter chance for redemption with Inara or just because he still can.
Or maybe something else entirely.
| Quote: | | I was sorry to see Jayne and Zoe get into it physically. I understand that they were pushed to all kinds of breaking points, but I would like to have seen them push it to that line HARD without going over. |
Check out the scene carefully. It ain't anger that drives them to "fight," but calculation. It's a variation on the old "Oh no, the prisoner is sick! Better send someone into the prison cell!" (A Western classic!)
| Quote: | | Otherwise, voices were so clear, I think especially Inara and the Operative - they were all good, including ole Ben Hicks. His departure worked too, nicely handled. |
Thanks! Obivously, we had a pretty good start because of some of Whedon's scripting. We also had a season's worth of material to pull on, and a lot of the character moments here are a resolution of sorts (or at least a temporary conclusion, as we end the season).
Ben was another point of discussion from early on. In many ways Ben, more than any other character, represents the "virtual" part of our Virtual Firefly project. If any character is our "mascot," it's him. He's been around since our first episode, for example, and when we knew we'd be strongly mirroring the movie sequences near the end of the season, we made a very intentional choice to bring him along to FORCE us to be a little creative.
So as we discussed the end of Season Two and the transition to Season Three, it's no surprise that some members of the writing staff assumed that Ben would eventually join the crew while others were equally adamant in their belief that he should die. I think where we settled with him is a little more interesting than either of the more obvious choices.
And, of course, despite his intentions, its possible he might find is stay on Serenity a little longer than anticipated. We'll see what Season Three brings.
| Quote: | | Jayne staying behind and referencing Book twice, was *gulp* a great move. |
Jayne leaving was something that, again, came up pretty early in our discussions about the season. Because of the roles that they played in our season, we wanted Book and Haven to have a greater impact on the finale than they do in the movie (where they're glossed over a bit). Having Jayne stay behind was a good way, I thought, to pay tribute to Book and Haven while also showing a bit of deepening of Jayne's character.
If I may toot my own writing horn for a moment, I think that the final scene between Jayne and Mal shows that Jayne is growing and evolving as a person YET can still be the exact same lunk we know and love!
Another point to note with Jayne is that this is yet another example of a crew member leaving Serenity, which is a theme throughout the season. We begin with Book and Inara gone, Wash and Zoe leave (temporarily) to settle on Haven, and the Tams strike off on their own in the middle of the season.
In fact, with Jayne leaving (however well-intentioned), just about everyone except Kaylee has taken their leave of Mal and Serenity at one point or another. Ponder the ramifications of that for a few seconds.
| yancy wrote: | Great episode, a bit misplaced. It's all well and good that Serenity was "Season 2" of Firefly, but I think it would've flowed better if 2x22 was actually 3x01. Or if the season break came right at the end of the teaser of 2x22.
But it doesn't really matter what the episode number was on top. Still awesome. |
I understand what you're saying about placement, but must respectfully disagree. One of Joss Whedon's stated rules of television writing is "Write each season as if you're going to be cancelled." While he DOES periodically end a season with a cliffhanger (and also typically ends with some teasers and hits of what's to come), a true cliffhanger is the exception rather than the rule.
With only one possible exception that I can think of, Joss's seasons end rather neatly, at least with respect to the main story arc. Although the Miranda Broadwave is the culmination of the season, there's still a LOT of clean-up, and I wouldn't have wanted to fall prey to "Smallville"-style pacing (early seasons of "Smallville" occur roughly in "real time", matching the both the TV season and the school year, with the summer not fully documented. Since most seasons end with a cliffhanger, this creates an odd bit of pacing where the first episode of the new season follows directly from the previous season... and then there's a in-story gap of two or three months before the second episode takes place).
Another thing to keep in mind with respect to this episode is amount of sheer action that takes place in the episodes leading up to it. After 3-4 episodes of pure adrenaline, we wanted to change pace and sort of end with something a little more pensive, if only to mix it up a bit. If you read, say, the last four episodes of the season as a unit, I think you'll appreciate the breather you're allowed to take a "viewer" by keeping this episde where it is.
(Sorry if I've gone on a bit... I'm enjoying the opportunity to share some of the writing staff thinking and process.)
| You wrote: | | The Operative was well written as a sort of broken shell. I did not think that would have been pulled off with as much aplomb. |
Thanks so much! As previously indicated, the Operative's motives and actions were one of the toughest parts of the episode.
| Quote: | | Congrats to the team for a brilliant series of episodes. |
Again, thank you very much. Wait until you see what we have in store for NEXT season. |
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willowfan21
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Joined: 12 Apr 2006
Posts: 96
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| Posted: Fri Dec 26, 2008 6:28 am |
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Another note about the finale that Gwek didn't cover: 'Wake' was conceived of and intended to be very much in the vein of 'Restless', the fourth season finale of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. The biggest difference between the two episodes is that 'Wake' has much more to do with the previous episode and with the overall arc for the season than 'Restless' did.
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gorramshiny
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Joined: 08 Oct 2006
Posts: 1354
Location: wandering the 'Verse
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| Posted: Fri Dec 26, 2008 7:55 am |
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"I wear the cheese, it does not wear me."
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taimdala
Big Damn Hero
Joined: 29 Aug 2006
Posts: 930
Location: Raleigh, NC, USA
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| Posted: Sat Dec 27, 2008 4:12 am |
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Cheese? Did somebody say cheese? Can we have some pepperoni sticks with that? 
I didn't want to post immediately on this ep, because I didn't want to go over all fangirly squeee-my. Which I did, when I finally got the final version from gwek. For the record, both gwek and I are inveterate (and unapologetic, I suspect) night owls and we're both working on one bit of writing or another at 2AM as a rule. So when he pinged my inbox with the copy, I thought, "Oh, I'll just open it, give it a look-see, and then go back to editing this fic I'm working on....".
Big mistake.
I opened the doc and couldn't read two pages without going back to read it in depth from the top. And then after two more pages, I went back to the top and turned on track changes to comment on it.
I didn't see my bed til 5AM. I was dogmeat the next day and it was worth every minute of dogmeatiness. I thought the episode was brilliant. There were so many many plot threads and themes and issues that we'd discussed for going on a year that we had to tie up and resolve or further define for use later, that I really despaired shoehorning all of them in. Somehow, by some voodoo that only gwek can do, it got done. And done brilliantly.
I couldn't find anything to take exception to beyond a point here and there that gwek made clear to me (and which I would have understood immediately had I encountered the ep at a more reasonable hour, LOL). In fact, unlike every other ep I've been involved in, I couldn't even visualize a scene that I could illustrate. There was nothing to drive me to draw something I wanted clarified through the visual medium, nothing I could find that would work better as an image instead of the written word. Nothing that had to be coaxed out into the light of day. Gwek did it all with just the power of his pen.
And that's why there is no illustration for "Wake", in case anyone's wondering. Gwek's episode just rendered me speechless, both verbally and visually. Ask anyone who knows me--gobsmacking me on both fronts is rare.
Very. Rare.
Now THAT'S good writing.
And that's it, before I kill Gwek with embarrassment.
(What? You think I can't hear you blushing, George? Dude, you deserve everything I've said about your ep. It's that good. So cut it out and believe me, already. Sheesh!)
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willowfan21
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Joined: 12 Apr 2006
Posts: 96
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| Posted: Mon Dec 29, 2008 6:43 am |
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Just in case Maer hasn't given Gwek enough reason to be proud already, I'm gonna continue the trend. For the first time since I started this project (and, in fact, for the first time since I got involved with virtual series in general), I couldn't find a single thing in the episode that needed to be commented on or addressed in any way. That's how spot-on Gwek's writing was. I had originally been assigned to work on this ep, but couldn't find my muse no matter how much I tried, so it eventually ended up in Gwek's hands. An episode that has this much going on needs to be handled by a mastermind, and that's what Gwek is. We've joked in the past about him being our version of 'The Joss', but this episode just proves that it's more than a joke.
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gorramshiny
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Joined: 08 Oct 2006
Posts: 1354
Location: wandering the 'Verse
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| Posted: Mon Dec 29, 2008 7:06 am |
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well said.
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gwek
Site Admin
Joined: 09 Apr 2006
Posts: 713
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| Posted: Mon Dec 29, 2008 2:59 pm |
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I appreciate all the compliments, guys, but, c'mon! It's gonna go to my head! (Or is this just everyone's way of pushing to start Season Three as soon as possible?)
Seriously, though, I'm not sure that the episode (or I) deserve all that many kudos. Even without thanking Joss and his gang for the movie, many staff members (and even a few non-staff) contributed ideas to this episode. Further, it's the (in my mind, logical and inevitable) conclusion of all that we've been working toward throughout Season Two (not to mention our seven episodes of Season One). No way 2x22 could have existed without 2x01 through 2x21.
So thanks to EVERYONE who contributed to this season! This one's for all of us! |
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taimdala
Big Damn Hero
Joined: 29 Aug 2006
Posts: 930
Location: Raleigh, NC, USA
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| Posted: Wed Dec 31, 2008 5:04 am |
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Don't sell yourself short, George. Your ep is truly solid gold solid.
As for Season Three, I think we all want it as soon as possible but what we're doing here can't be rushed--not if we want to do the story justice. With 2 x 22 in front of us as an example, we have proof that it's going to be worth the wait.
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