The script for the EH pilot is online

[GreenEyesToo]

Here: leethomson.myzen.co.uk/Eleventh_Hour_1x01_-_Pilot.pdf

[wichiwoman]

Totally cool, GE2! What a find! Thank you!

"...dark unruly hair, tall, handsome, with the penetrating eyes of a Greek sage....." Yup, that's my Jacob!!

[judypatooty]

How cool!

[numbat]

Great find GE2 - very interesting!!!

I'm glad they changed the parts they did - i think i prefer the version that went to air.

[adina]

I wanted to use a certain pic (Rufus as Hood with freaked out Mariel Hemingway) and Google brought me the pic from Stephen Gallagher's blog. I thought I would read some recent posts (his blog was mentioned recently in a conversation as a good read and I like coincidences, so I went to read him a little. ) Well, Eleventh Hour still pops up here and there in his posts and I think this one can be interesting.

brooligan.blogspot.hu/2013/06/the-science-thriller.html

"This was a memo that I'd written at the request of the Bruckheimer people, spitballing a future direction for the show and reflecting on why our science thrillers could hold a unique place alongside the forensics and the procedurals elsewhere on the network."

This is the link to the PDF thingy: www.stephengallagher.com/bedlam/eleventhhourseasontwo.pdf

(You'll drop your jaw at the third page!!! There is a pissed off...)

Interesting read, isn't it?

[rueful]

, that's fascinating reading! The direction he was suggesting for the show had great possibilities! Mr Gallagher is such a smart writer (not just in his ideas for the next season, but in the way he tactfully criticizes elements of the show in a way designed not to offend others ). Thanks for posting that, Adina!

[Rachel]

Whoa!  Interesting sure is the word for it - fascinating also.  It would have been great to see him put his ideas into practice. 

My only quibble, and it isn't because of my own desires for the Hood/Rachel dynamic (really!), is the idea that Hood would have a 20 year old daughter.  In academia nothing, and I mean nothing, gets in the way of tenure.  Rufus/Jacob was simply to young (early 40's) to have a child this old.  This is my world and trust me, the 40-something professors (male and female) have children that are in the 5-12 year old range.  Even if you posit that Maggie wasn't an academic and would want to have children earlier in Jacob's career - I can't see it.  SG did get it mostly right about the timeline - in his 20's Jacob would have been a grad student, working hard to establish himself.  Even with a non-academic wife he/they wouldn't have had the time and/or money to have a baby.  We don't know much about Maggie but what we do know hints that she may also have been an academic - her best friend was a professor of psychiatry at Stanford and she was introduced to Jacob by Cal Rigdon, another scientist. 

What I can easily see thought - is Ian Hood, the original Dr. Hood from the British version of EH, having a pissed off 20 year old daughter.  That would fit the academic timeline perfectly. 

[kygal]

Thanks Adina! Most of us diehard EHers knew ideas for a season 2 existed but had not seen it. Very interesting. Agree with Rachel's quibble though. What a shame....well I wont get started on my rant, you have heard it before.

Mr. Gallagher is such a class act.

[francesca]

I was very interested to read Stephen Gallagher 's Comments on EH.
He is very well known on this side of the Atlantic for his high quality work for tv...'one off' , series etc.
Forgive me if I am wrong, but I got the impression that he was disappointed in the handling of 'EH'... that it became formulaic in later episodes.
Indeed I think too I got that impression from things Rufus himself has said and that was part of the reason he was glad to come out.

Eh lovers please don't think that I did not enjoy EH !! I did but I did feel that from a brilliant start , the standard of writing began to deteriorate and not be worthy of the calibre of the two stars and their guest stars

May 16, 2014 12:30:44 GMT Rachel said:

Whoa!  Interesting sure is the word for it - fascinating also.  It would have been great to see him put his ideas into practice. 

My only quibble, and it isn't because of my own desires for the Hood/Rachel dynamic (really!), is the idea that Hood would have a 20 year old daughter.  In academia nothing, and I mean nothing, gets in the way of tenure.  Rufus/Jacob was simply to young (early 40's) to have a child this old.  This is my world and trust me, the 40-something professors (male and female) have children that are in the 5-12 year old range.  Even if you posit that Maggie wasn't an academic and would want to have children earlier in Jacob's career - I can't see it.  SG did get it mostly right about the timeline - in his 20's Jacob would have been a grad student, working hard to establish himself.  Even with a non-academic wife he/they wouldn't have had the time and/or money to have a baby.  We don't know much about Maggie but what we do know hints that she may also have been an academic - her best friend was a professor of psychiatry at Stanford and she was introduced to Jacob by Cal Rigdon, another scientist. 

What I can easily see thought - is Ian Hood, the original Dr. Hood from the British version of EH, having a pissed off 20 year old daughter.  That would fit the academic timeline perfectly. 

Yes Rachel I agree with you about the Hood /Rachel dynamic was the right one for the series.

The original British one starred Patrick Stewart who is at least 15 years older than Rufus and therefore it would have been feasible to have a twenty year old daughter.

Rufus in his early forties would be too young to have a daughter that age.



I agree too with your comments on academia :---

" This is my world and trust me, the 40-something professors (male and female) have children that are in the 5-12 year old range.  Even if you posit that Maggie wasn't an academic and would want to have children earlier in Jacob's career - I can't see it.  SG did get it mostly right about the timeline - in his 20's Jacob would have been a grad student, working hard to establish himself.  Even with a non-academic wife he/they wouldn't have had the time and/or money to have a baby"


All my working life, I have worked in a university hospital and believe me, brilliant young medics are working too hard and no money , to have babies in their early twenties.



Sorry ... I appear to have had another rant.

[kygal]

Drunken, one night stand to blow off steam during/after finals. Certainly not planned by eighter participant. Could happen. Think of Numbats Jacob...lol.


I agree that some of the episodes of EH were not the best. I can say the same thing about EVERY series on TV that has a full season of episodes. I still thought it was a good enough show to have been renewed another season to see how it developed.

[Rachel]

Frannie - no problems from this EH fan. I think you are absolutely right, both Stephen Gallagher and Rufus were disappointed in what happened to EH, mostly because of network meddling in scripts, etc. I know, from what SG posted on his blog at the time that he was opposed to the addition of Felix to the cast. And Rufus was quite frank when EH was cancelled saying he wasn't totally disappointed.

I've always said that of the 18 episodes of EH, 6 were brilliant, 3 were dreck, and the rest were pretty good. Not a bad average for an American TV show. I think British TV has it right, only 7 to 10 episodes a season.

And to continue on with mine and Frannie's mini-rant on the pressures of academia - I don't know if people on the outside of the system realize exactly why tenure is so important. First off, jobs are incredibly scarce (we once had 100 applicants for one faculty slot). Then you are given X number of years to "make tenure". If you don't make tenure - that's it, you're out of a job. After that it's almost impossible to get another job in academia since you are viewed as damaged goods.

Even say kygal hit it on the head - an drunken undergrad Jacob ends up with an unplanned pregnancy - the chances are he would have alienated both wife/child long before she hit twenty. Think of Dr. Mark Green on the early episodes of ER. His marriage fell apart since his wife, who had her own career to think about, got sick of essentially being a single mother.

[kygal]

I agree with your thoughts on the pressures of academia. My father was a professor and later a school administrator. He took early retirement...haha.

I like the idea of a shorter episode season for TV. I really get tired of the same thing week after week. They become to predictable. I also think a series runs its course after so many years. I stopped watching CSI and NCIS years ago. Not bad shows but just tired of them.

I like the direction of your fanfics Rachel. Not sure I like the idea of an adult daughter out there. Still... would have welcomed a season 2 with open arms...daughter or not.

[francesca]

I think that the pilot and first couple of EH were brilliant and the series would have been too if they had continued in the same vein and I have to say too that I found even the worst were entertaining,just not very good.
I agree with you Kygal, every series has its lower levels.
But yes EH did deserve a second series and I would have welcomed a second one too, because Rufus gives of his best whatever he does.
I seem to remember a interview Rufus gave in what looked like an office of the studio when he made it quite clear he was doing said interview because he had to. He has said things too which implied that he was not getting on well with what he called 'the suits'.
So perhaps it was for the best that things finished.


on the subject of Felix ... I could never make out why he was brought in.
Was he supposed to be the comedy item?
no reflection on the actor but Felix was a bit leaden.



Hood's daughter .... I could at a pinch accept that Hood might have had a child at a young age, but I don't think Hood would have lost touch with his child especially when his wife had died.
I could not accept that the humane warm caring character developed in the series, would do that.

Again Hood was portrayed as a sad lonely man grieving for his wife, with no-one in his life.

Rachel and Kygal, what do you think ?

Kygal thanks for the memory of our lamented lost Numbat, I remember that story of hers.

[GreenEyesToo]

Great find, Adina, thank you! I think maybe the series would have stood a better chance of being renewed if Stephen Gallagher had had more input to the episodes - certainly (in my opinion), the best were the ones he scripted. The difference in quality between his and others' episodes (notably Olfactus) was huge.

I actually like the idea of Hood having a 20 year old daughter, but agree with Frannie - assuming Maggie hadn't been her mother (if she was, presumably Gallagher would have had the daughter at least mentioned before), he would have sought her out once his wife died. Adding her in the second series would have seemed more like a plot device than anything else.

(I think Felix worked better than I expected, but would have been better if he'd been there from the start)

[kygal]

I agree GE2. The SG written EH episodes were the best. I cant remember if he wrote H20 though. Help me out on that one Rachel or Rueful.

Yes Frannie. I think Rufus and SG were upset about the "politics" of network TV. If things had been different I think it would have been a better experience for Rufus and all involved. I do remember Rufus saying in one interview that the show should have been renewed, but he was relieved it was over for said reasons.

I also doubt Hood would abandon a child had he known about her, just based on the insight we had of him. He did mention in an epi that he was a big fan of kids. Would have been interesting to see how she was introduced to the show. My guess is he didn't know about her.

I think SG did mention that the addition of Felix was to lighten things up a bit. He gave me the impression he was not to pleased about it. Its a shame that the creator and the actors have such little say, but that's network TV in the US.

On a brighter note, the series did introduce me to the brilliant Rufus Sewell...and Rufus Sewell brought me to the enjoyable Rooftop....so Yay to those 18 (good or bad) episodes of EH!