The Master Plan

Though there are several differences between heroes and villains, I think one of the most compelling ones to be the presence of a master plan. The villain carefully pulls the strings while the hero franticly climbs them. It’s easy to have a hero zigzag his or her way through a series of orchestrated events, but the real challenge in writing is having a villain who can create that plan.

Danielle Parsons and Eveleigh Dawn are central to the plot in this sense. Both characters were created before the formulation of the story-arc – though both went through several stages of development. Eveleigh Dawn was originally a force of energy negation but evolved to one of energy creation. Danielle Parsons was always a politician with precognition. The struggle to create a narrative for Soundtrack to exist in was to use these elements to formulate a plan for the villain to mastermind and the heroes to navigate. A plan can’t just exist out of nothing, though. There must be a problem – to which the plan is the solution. When writing the main arc for the miniseries, the main problem was coming up with, well, a problem.

Eveleigh Dawn’s evolution as a character was somewhat parallel with the plot narrative. Danielle Parsons was always evil – but she never had a goal or objective. In fact, her dialogue in the pilot’s opening scene was left intentionally ambiguous so that I could develop her plan without stalling the development of Episode 1. Eve’s role as a creator of energy fit perfectly into that ambiguity.

One of the greatest concerns in today’s age is the energy crisis – the fear that oil will become more scare, that it and coal are destructive pollutants, furthermore, the uncertainty of nuclear fission. These are the kind of things that drive the scientific wheels of progress. Canada’s vast untapped natural resources are what secure its future in this world, however, even the presence of these resources aren’t enough to entirely quash our fears.

An important issue Canada is currently facing on the international stage is the refining of fossil fuels from the tar sands near Fort McCurry, Alberta. It’s probably one of the greatest reserves of oil found in recent decades – but it’s also what some might call ‘dirty’. I’m no scientist, or environmentalist, but my understanding of the situation is that the oil is mixed with several minerals that must be removed during the refining process. This process creates pollutants on its own, thus doubling the negative effect that using petroleum has in the first place.

This case study served as my problem.  Eve’s powers served as a solution. Like any politician, Danielle Parsons wants to solve the problems of her electorate. Painting her as evil was as easy as making her methods radical.

If in the real world there existed a person whose own body could create enormous amounts of useable energy – would it be evil to exploit that person, even to the extent of causing physical and mental trauma,  to provide for the energy needs of the world? As a precognitive, Parsons never has to ask herself if the means will justify the ends because she concerns herself more with the future than the present. Providing clean energy to the world at the cost of a single person’s livelihood is an argument that she has already weighed out in her head and already put considerable effort into accomplishing.

Like any good show should, I hope Soundtrack manages to addresses ethical questions such as these. The true power and allure of science-fiction for me has always been to postulate hypothetical ethical dilemmas. With Eve posing as the potential solution to much of the world`s problems, I get to ask the audience how far they would go to make the world a better place. As I mentioned before, Parsons, for me, has always been the antagonist and symbol of evil – but it`s my sincere hope that others don`t see her as this. Not that I`d classify those people as evil – but I know there are people out there that see the ends as justification for the means. A good television show shouldn`t have just one character that the audience can identify with – it should have an entire cast of identifiable characters. Leaving Danielle Parsons out of that mix would be lazy writing and through mixing science-fiction with a real-world problem, I hope I`ve succeeded in allowing the audience to, at the very least, empathize with her goals.

In development news, I’m over half-way into Episode 4 and its still flowing with style. I unfortunately haven’t had the chance to read it over in its entirety yet – I’m saving that until I’m done. When that happens, I’ll go through and tweak things as I see fit, but as for now, this isn’t a plot heavy episode. I’m hoping I can stay on track with keeping this episode character-centric and highlighting the emotional journey that these characters are taking. One of the things I’m not exactly satisfied with is conveying the feeling of reluctance that Eddie and Riley have with joining Derek. I’m going to make a point of having these two get some alone time by the end of the episode to address some of these issues.

Not much else to say at the moment that wouldn’t seem like a complete digression from the rest of the post so I’ll try to wrap it up here. Hope you’re all having killer weeks, and you’ll be hearing from me soon!

Dustin