Blast from the Past #505: October 13, 2005: Re: Show 128 ("The Freaks Come Out at Night") Outline notes, 131 ("The Gaminator") Revised Beats, and Re: Show 130 ("The Journal") Beat Sheet

Subj: Re: Show 128 ("The Freaks Come Out at Night") Outline notes
Date: Thursday, October 13, 2005 1:19:46 AM
From: Peter Laird
To:   Lloyd Goldfine


In a message dated 10/12/05 11:23:01 PM, Lloyd writes:

"Hey Pete -


Umm... so, I thought that per our previous conversation (and the one before that too!), we had agreed that we were in fact going to go with a slightly altered variation of the sunlight thing.  We discussed that it's not necessarily the light that adversely affects his Kanabo-people, but perhaps something in our yellow sun's radiation that Sh'okanabo didn't account for.  We also discussed that the fact that he didn't account for our sun's unique properties didn't make him an idiot because this is all just another stage in his on going experimentation to see how best to ressurect his race.  And we discussed that the long-range plan for Sh'okanabo(seeded across the season so that nobody actually realized we've snuck an arc into the series!)  is that he is going to attempt to move our entire planet to a sun that is more conducive to his (and his brood's) needs.  This Sh'okanabo arc was also previously Laird-approved.  Hot sauce really won't help push Sh'okanabo to decide he needs to move the planet... at least I don't think it does?


We're pretty far along down this path, and you know how totally @#$%^& crazy this season has been. trying to create an entire new series without ANY development time.  That being said, I don't want you throwing up, so please let me know if the plan as stated above is no longer what we should be doing.


Thanks,


Lloyd"


Lloyd,


Thanks for reminding me of stuff I must have forgotten. This is why I prefer email to phone calls. However, I don't recall seeing anything in the outline about "something in our yellow sun's radiation that Sh'okanabo didn't account for" -- as far as I could tell, it's just the sunlight.
I hope we can come up with a good reason why he just doesn't find another solar system with an appropriate planet and sun instead of going to the garguantuan task of moving Earth to another star (!!!). Considering that the nearest star to Earth is (I think) 3 or 4 lightyears away, that's not going to be easy.
Sorry you didn't like the hot sauce thing... I thought it was kind of funny.


-- Pete

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Subj: 131("The Gaminator") Revised Beats
Date: Thursday, October 13, 2005 10:34:18 PM
From: Peter Laird
To:   Lloyd Goldfine

Lloyd,


Here are my notes on the Ep131 beat sheet.


("Beat sheet" -- is this a new way to describe a premise?)


There is probably a fun way to rip off or "homage" the movie "Fantastic Voyage", but for my money, this is not it. Even for peusdoscientific technobabble, the stuff in this "beat sheet" is over-the-top silly, much as it was in the original premise.
Not only that, but it's basically just a lot of action for no good reason, and as such, boring.
If we go forward with a story like this involving nanobots inside one of the Turtles' bodies, I would like to see something move imaginative and with a lot less goofy non-science.
I just had an idea which might work or maybe inspire a different direction -- the "Quantum Nanobot" (or "Pan-Dimensional Nanobot"). This relates to a thing called a tesseract, which Webster's defines as "the four-dimensional analogue of a cube". It was featured in the story "And He Built A Crooked House" by Robert Heinlein, and is sort of the basis for the idea of both Doctor Who's "TARDIS" and Felix the Cat's "bag of tricks" -- both structures that are MUCH bigger on the inside than they are on the outside. One way of looking at them is that -- for example, with Doctor Who's "TARDIS"  -- the external part (in the "TARDIS"'s case, the phone booth or call box) is just the part of the whole structure which protrudes into our universe... the rest of it resides in another dimension.
So... imagine nanobots, tiny little microscopic robots... but THESE nanobots are only a very small part of much LARGER robots which reside in another dimension -- these nanobots are the part of the larger whole which protrudes into our world.
Not sure how this would work in a story, but it might be interesting to play with it.


-- Pete

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Subj: Re: Show 130 ("The Journal") Beat Sheet
Date: Thursday, October 13, 2005 11:05:29 PM
From: Peter Laird
To:   Lloyd Goldfine

Lloyd,


Here is my one note on the Ep130 revised story beats. Otherwise, this is going to be a fun episode, I think.


1.) Re: the following:

"The guys are insanely curious to find out about their futures.  But before they can dive in, CODY and SPLINTER find them.  They convince the Turtles that knowledge of the future is dangerous, and the guys reluctantly agree and hand over the book for safe-keeping.


As they continue their daily routines, it’s clear that the guys are still obsessing.  Raph is distracted during training.  Mikey can’t eat.  Leo fidgets during meditation.  Don has trouble sleeping.


One night, Don can’t take it any more.  He slips out of bed and sneaks into the Trophy Room.  Just as he reaches for the journal Leo turns on the light – revealing Raph on the ceiling and Mikey coming in the window, both caught in the act of stealing the book for themselves.  Leo is forced to admit that’s why he’s there too.  Now partners-in-crime, the guys decide to go up to the rooftop garden to read the book together."

If the boys hand the journal over to Splinter for "safekeeping", why is it back in the trophy room when the boys go look for it again? That doesn't seem like "safekeeping" to me.
Even though it turns out that this is a phony journal made up by Spinter and Cody to teach the boys a lesson, I think that it should be kept in some other more secure location so that it helps to fool the boys into thinking it's the real thing.


-- Pete