Dreamsongs - Volume II Read Online Free PDF Page A

‘winter world,’ a stark post-holocaust Earth locked in the
throes of a nuclear winter. My first draft, as usual, was too long and too
expensive, but Crocker seemed pleased with it, as was Columbia.
     
    ABC was pleased as
well ... with the first half of the script. Unfortunately, the network guys had
changed their minds about what should happen when Tom and Cat go through the
first door. Winter world was too grim, they now decided. If we went to series,
we could go there for an episode, certainly, but for the pilot ABC felt we
needed a less depressing scenario.
     
    It meant tearing up
the entire second half of my script and doing it all over, but I gnashed my
teeth, put in some late nights and long weekends, and got it done. In place of
winter world, I sent Tom and Cat to a timeline where all the petroleum on Earth
had been eaten some years earlier by a bioengineered virus designed to clean up
oil spills. Needless to say, this caused a rather major . . . ah, burp ... but
civilization recovered after a fashion, and the resulting world was far less
grim than winter world had been.
     
    In January 1992,
ABC gave us a production order for a ninety-minute pilot. To offset some of the
projected budget deficits (my script was too long and too expensive), Columbia
also decided to produce a two-hour version for European television. Academy
Award winner Peter Werner was hired to direct, and pre-production began.
Casting was a hell and a half, and actually caused us to delay the shoot (with
fateful consequences further down the road), but we finally found our regulars.
George Newbern was perfect as Tom, Rob Knepper made a splendid Thane, and
Kurtwood Smith was so good in his dual role as Trager that we would have
brought him back many times had we gone to series. For Cat, we had to go across
the ocean to Paris, where we discovered a brilliant and beautiful young Breton
stage actress named Anne LeGuernec. I remain convinced that if Doorways had
gone to series, Anne would have become a huge star. There was no one like her
on American television, then or now. We found some great people for our guest
roles too, adding Hoyt Axton as Jake and Tisha Putman as Cissy. Finally we were
go to roll.
     
    When we screened the
rough cut for ABC that summer, we got an enthusiastic reception and an order
for six back-up scripts, so we would be ready to go into production as a
mid-season replacement in 1993. I wrote one of the six scripts myself, hired
some terrific writers to do the other five, and spent the remainder of 1992 and
the first few months of 1993 doing rewrites, going over pattern budgets, and
getting ready to go to series.
     
    It never happened.
ABC passed. The why of that remains a matter of conjecture, though I
have my theories. Bad timing might have been a part of it. By the time we
finally found our Tom and Cat, we had missed the development window for the ‘92
fall season. We seemed to be a lock for the fall of ’93, but there was a
shakeup at ABC before that decision day rolled around, and both of the execs
who had supervised the pilot ended up leaving the network. We might also have
made a mistake when we agreed to scrap winter world, which would have given the
second half of the show a visual and visceral impact that no-oil world could
not match. The test audiences and focus groups would have gotten a much
different idea of the dramatic potential of the series from a world in more
desperate straits.
     
    Or maybe it was
something else entirely. No one will ever know for certain. After ABC pulled
the plug, Columbia screened the pilot for NBC, CBS, and Fox, but it is a rare
thing for one network to pick up a project developed for another. Heinlein said
it best: if you let them piss in the soup, they like the flavor better.
     
    Doorways died. I mourned a
while, and went on.
     
    You don’t forget,
though. Ten years have passed, but it still makes me sad to think what might
have been. It gives me great pleasure to include the