Will the BBC ever allow spec scripts?

[OmahaStar]

Well it did happen once on the old show, Andrew Smith wrote Full Circle but it took alot samples of his writing to let him for the show and it wasn't a spec script at any rate. Allyn's right a spec script isn't going to happen, but that doesn't mean a fan can't write for the show, just don't expect it to be an easy job of selling your writing to the professionals.

Are we thinking about the same person here? In the commentary and docs for Full Circle, Smith talks about having written and submitted two full scripts before submitting Full Circle, which was (at the time) a completed script. It went through one rewrite after another, and the story changed considerably, yes, but what he sent was a complete spec script.

 

[DWF]

Well it did happen once on the old show, Andrew Smith wrote Full Circle but it took alot samples of his writing to let him for the show and it wasn't a spec script at any rate. Allyn's right a spec script isn't going to happen, but that doesn't mean a fan can't write for the show, just don't expect it to be an easy job of selling your writing to the professionals.

Are we thinking about the same person here? In the commentary and docs for Full Circle, Smith talks about having written and submitted two full scripts before submitting Full Circle, which was (at the time) a completed script. It went through one rewrite after another, and the story changed considerably, yes, but what he sent was a complete spec script.

Yes however all Smith submitted was an outline the script came later on. That is that the script came after the outline was approved, Smith didn't sell the story in it's script form.

http://www.shannonsullivan.com/drwho/serials/5r.html

In Smith's original outline, the adventure involved the TARDIS landing on the planet Alzarius, where monstrous Marshmen rise from the swamps during the time of Mistfall. As the Doctor and Romana explore, a space freighter crashlands on Alzarius, and the time travellers must help its crew repair the ship while fending off the Marshmen and gigantic cave-dwelling spiders. They are aided by a young Marshchild, who has been rejected by the rest of her kind due to her pacifist nature. In the end, the Marshchild sacrifices herself to keep the Doctor and Romana safe until the mists vanish and the Marshmen retreat to the swamps.
Bidmead was impressed with the striking images that Smith conjured in “The Planet That Slept”, but asked him to make several changes as he fleshed the story out into script form. Bidmead wanted to give Doctor Who a much stronger scientific underpinning, and so he and Smith decided to make evolution an underlying theme of “The Planet That Slept”. The Marshmen, spiders and even the ship's crew would all be different evolutionary stages of the same creature. The space freighter had now become a passenger liner which crashlanded on Alzarius centuries before the start of the story.

Also part of the writing samples Smith submitted was some poetry which appeared in the novel of Full Circle.

 

[Australis]

This is an interesting thread.

I would put forward the view it's easier to write for an existing alien, like the Daleks or the Cybermen (either type) or the Borg. The reason - a lot of stuff you can shorthand. Creating a new alien, you HAVE to fill in a lot of background detail, whys, wherefores, evolution, culture, and so on, all of which is time, and therefore script, consuming. OTOH, if you do use an existing alien, you have to get it exactly right, and even then it may be overturned by a later TV script (the sort of thing we see in ST novels all the time, compare the Reeves-Stevens novel 'Federation' to 'First Contact').

But I digress.

I have to ask: do you only want to write for Who? Is that all you want to do? In effect that's fanfic, and the Beeb, as far as I can tell, wants to encourage writers who can do much more than that. Indeed, look at the other work of Cornell, Davies, Moffat, et al. They are not one trick ponies. They come up with marketable, interesting ideas for series and movies and adaptations. Which is what they want from new writers as well. Not necessarily because they'll work cheaper ( they might, but I think the Writers' Guild insists on standard rates), but because the Beeb, like an immortal vampire, constantly needs new blood (see if you can get that image out of your head later ). Davies and crew aren't always going to be around, or may grow stale (yes, I can hear the comments now ).

So ask yourself - what writer do you want to be?

I want to write for Who, but I'm on that slow boat. First script I sent was a family story, in the style of Poliakoff's 'Perfect Strangers' but set in Australia, which was rejected outright. The second script is based on a book of short stories (I got the author's permission), and it is going through the process. It's also required a reasonable amount of original input and research, which shows in the script compared to the original stories and the episode loglines.

I'm working on a third script, a murder mystery thing, which is grittier than, say, Marple, but not as gritty as, say, Cracker . I think there's a market, and it'll allow me to slip in some sly humour and a bunch of other stuff. And I still have to come up with some story ideas to round it out to a series, but I'll get there.

So maybe, around the time of the 12th Doctor, I can begin adding my own stories. Sounds like a plan to me!

 

[diankra]

This is an interesting thread.
[SNIPPED]
I have to ask: do you only want to write for Who? Is that all you want to do? In effect that's fanfic, and the Beeb, as far as I can tell, wants to encourage writers who can do much more than that. Indeed, look at the other work of Cornell, Davies, Moffat, et al. They are not one trick ponies. They come up with marketable, interesting ideas for series and movies and adaptations. Which is what they want from new writers as well.

Quite: Moffat and Davies both established themselves the hard way, working their way up the business (well, not quite in SM's case, at least as he tells it - Press Gang was a major gamble in terms of the freedom they gave him given his experience, but he quickly proved himself worthy of it), and then did a few bits of Who for the books out of affection for the show.
Cornell's the closest to the one who established himself through writing Who books, but he'd had a Debut on Two play and sketches for radio 4 comedy shows transmitted before he turned a bit of existing fanfic into the submission for Timewyrm: Revelation - and after that, he'd written for Corry and Casualty and for a Press Gang-alike he created (Wavelength) before TV who came along.

Spec scripts from fans? Never. Spec scripts from people who're already writing for TV and then pitch a Who idea? Could do, it is how it used to happen (eg: Ian Stuart Black was a bit of a name who called up to ask if he could write Who after watching it with his kids; ditto Philip Martin).

 

[Brendan Moody]

I would put forward the view it's easier to write for an existing alien, like the Daleks or the Cybermen (either type) or the Borg. The reason - a lot of stuff you can shorthand. Creating a new alien, you HAVE to fill in a lot of background detail, whys, wherefores, evolution, culture, and so on, all of which is time, and therefore script, consuming.

My issue with this logic, aside from the fact that it's perhaps overestimating the amount of "background detail, whys, wherefores, evolution, culture, and so on" that is created for a new Doctor Who alien, is that if you're not spending time on those elements, you're spending it on other elements that will appear in your novel or script. You're figuring out how to adapt established aliens to the setting and plot you've developed, or, in the unlikely event you can just drop them in, you're expanding the other characters or the milieu or the comedy or... If you as the writer can "shorthand" the details of the aliens, then that creates space for more content in the script or novel, and you have to provide that as well.

 

[USS KG5]

There are more established, professional writers who'd jump at the chance to write for the show then there are slots to fill.

Top of the class. Doctor Who makes 13 episodes a year and every year established writers get scripts rejected as there simply are not slots to fill.

In the USA with regularly 26 episodes to fill sometimes things are different, but even then they like to keep shows in staff.