Talking at the Gem Saloon...

So, today is a year since Torn aired. It really doesn’t seem that long, and it’s been an up and down year, but I still love that episode so much. So many people worked hard to make it great, and it got nominated for awards (Damn you, Inspector George Gently! It should have been ours!), and I saw someone who liked a tweet of mine today had a line I wrote as part of their bio and that was fairly overwhelming.

Of course, it now seems like Wolfblood is done for the foreseeable future. It happens. I was told before we started writing S5 that it was probably the last one (though we did have plenty of threads we were going to pull on if it came back). And of course I wish there had been another series - not least because there was a good chance I'd have been asked back and I had two pretty good story pitches ready. But I’m so proud to have been part of S5. I hope we sent some good messages and thoughts out. Not to be afraid. To face down people who would try to change you into something you're not. To love and care for your friends, your family - your pack.

I started out as a WB fan back in 2012, and now I go back to being one - like all of you - for... forever, I guess. But we have DVDs, and downloads, and books, and tumblr, and Twitter. That will always be around. (As will hopefully occasional royalties when it repeats and sells around the world - I got my first ones last month, and I found out we’re actually on HBO in Bali!)

------------

Most of all, I'm so happy we were able to give you Robrina. We may have wanted it to be more, in amongst all the plot goings on, but my heart swells whenever I think we GOT. THAT. IN.  And now... they're yours. Fly free with the fanfic. Take them anywhere you want. Love them like we did and do. Just don't ever break them up or kill one of them because I WILL HUNT YOU DOWN.

So if you'll indulge me, I'm going to tell one last Robrina story myself, right now. It wouldn’t have made S6 if we made it, I’m sure, but it’s as much canon as any future you can imagine and write for them. It happened not long after the end of the series, as life slowly settled back to as much normal as WBs will ever enjoy. That's *pretty* normal - no-one's trying to hurt them now - but still filled with small adventures and massive moments, like all our lives are.

------------

So, one Saturday night, a couple of weeks post all the RECENT DRAMA, as Mr. Jeffries insists on calling it, Katrina & Robyn are going to hit the town. They invite Jana, who's still crashing on the sofa, but she declines to come. She's missed wayyyyyy too much on Netflix, what with being busy saving the WB world and all, and is using Katrina’s account like it’s a free trial about to expire (she’s confident her life out-stranges Stranger Things, but she sees a spark in that Steve Harrington guy and is convinced he’ll come good in the end). And they're kinda pleased, because really they only invited her out of politeness. It's their time. Their night.

So they go out. It's still winter. It's cold. Katrina's bundled up against the Newcastle chill, and Robyn's rocking the grey jacket. Yeah, that one. It's special to her now, not only because she looks uber-sharp in it, but because she was wearing it when she ...you know.

They grab something to eat - pizza, splitting the toppings - and move on, up onto the steeper streets and into the crowds. Casually, they realise they're walking arm-in-arm now (Katrina took Robyn's but it could have gone either way) And they find themselves outside one of the clubs Robyn used to go to on her own, in her isolation. Katrina hasn't been out dancing for ages, with the pressures of running the Kafe and everything. So it's a good pick. And they go inside, and drink a little, and shout a little, Katrina straining her voice over the music no matter how many times Robyn tries to tell her she can hear her perfectly at a whisper. And the night goes on. Eventually they give up on talking.

But they almost don't need words anymore - their codes are developing fast. And then Katrina wants to dance, and offers her hand, leads Robyn onto the dance floor. Back into that beat. It's relaxed, it's fun - Katrina is seriously wowed by Robyn's dancing... but despite the arm in arm, the closeness, something hasn't clicked yet. That last little link.

A pounding dance track ends, and then ... solo piano starts. Gorgeous, spare chords. And then a voice - delicate, crystal. And they both stop moving, and simply look at each other.

...We said goodbye, that's what you told me once So many times, we've made our peace But this is love, I'll never give you up I know you'll always come home to me...

People are moving all around them, on and off the floor, but suddenly, they're the only ones in the room. Katrina, Robyn, and the track.

Like a river always running I keep losing you

Like a fire always burning I'll be here for you

And it’s like, somehow, they know this voice* connects them. Inner thoughts expressed that just needed a push. They’re still just looking into one another, as the track begins to ramp.

If you're ready, heart is open I'll be waiting Come and find me If you're searching for forever I'll be waiting Come and find me I see you, here in the darkness Blinding light right where your heart is If you're ready, heart is open I'll be waiting Come and find me

And then the beat hits and that’s it. They grab each other, pulling in tight, and if there was a camera it would be twirling around them, little cuts grabbing details -  fingers pressing into arms, pressing into each other, just getting. so. close and -

the kiss.

Come and find me Come and find me I see you, here in the darkness Blinding light right where your heart is If you're ready, heart is open I'll be waiting Come and find me

No-one chasing them. No worries for the future, no worries of rejection or pain. It’s here at last and it’s real. And it lasts through the rest of the song. Holding each other in the middle of that floor, in the middle of the beat. And both feel they’re home.

We've lost our way that's what you told me last Tears, they come and go This is us, I'll never get enough It's taking losing you to know

If you're ready, heart is open I'll be waiting Come and find me If you're searching for forever I'll be waiting Come and find me I see you, here in the darkness Blinding light right where your heart is If you're ready -if you're ready- heart is open -heart is open- I'll be waiting Come and find me...

And as the song ends they pull back a little. Both teary, but smiling the instant they see that. It’s good, it’s okay. And you’re more than okay - you’re mine. And now there’s more music, and more dancing, and more holding until it’s late...

...and then it’s early, and time to go back to the flat.

I hoped.

I thought I’d first floated the idea of Jodie Whittaker as the Doctor in Feb 2016, but someone found out I’d actually said she was a pick of mine way back in 2013! What can I say? I cast well. I don’t think she’s even capable of a false move as an actor, and I saw it in her. That thing. That spark. The Doctor.

And as the announcement was coming this week, and the bookies caught on, I let myself hope more. And part of me thought “Nah, won’t happen. Would be great, but won’t” despite the obvious things like she’d worked closely with Chris Chibnall and FOR GOODNESS SAKE JUST WATCH HER WORK SHE’S A MARVEL. But this morning, I still somehow had a lot of hope, despite all logic telling me it would be another guy, no matter who, no matter how good, another guy.

As the promo finally started, I held my breath (luckily sensing in advance it would be a short promo)...

They were hiding the figure in a hoodie. Good sign. Mysterious. The green, calm atmosphere was just right. I felt ...calm? Things were right. They felt right. They felt like something good was coming. (I DON’T KNOW YET IT’S NOT HER BUT I CAN’T KNOW YET BUT I FEEL IT EVEN THOUGH I KNOW I CAN’T KNOW.)

The figure walks, slowly, but with purpose. Those boots, those steps (I AM 99% SURE NOW HOLY SHIT IT’S HER IT’S HER NO IT STILL WON’T BE DON’T HOPE TOO HARD IT WON’T BE HER BUT I’M SURE.)

The figure stops, holds up a hand. The palm opens. AND I SWEAR THAT’S WHEN I KNEW. I KNEW FOR SURE AND I FLIPPED. THE. FUCK. OUT. Those fingers, those nails, just the *way* it opened - I swear to you, and I don’t lie, I knew it was Jodie then.

And then the key, the close-up confirmation, and finally that glorious pulling down of the hood and HOLY SHIT -

JODIE

WHITTAKER

IS

THE

DOCTOR

I spent the next few hours in elation and joy I’ve not felt since Torn went out. Seriously. I didn’t even start feeling normal until almost three hours later. That reveal, that moment, got me high. Even if I hadn’t wanted it for years, it would have been amazing. But I did want it for years, and I felt like I was finally getting one perfect thing for me.

But the best thing is - she’s not for me. She’s for all of us.

Wynonna Earp returns to UK TV tonight and I am AAHHHHHHHHHHHHHH! The first series came from nowhere and hit me like a ton of bricks. Everything about it, the writing, the actors, the style and above all the wonderful, wonderful characters and their relationships. To me, it was perfect.

And now it’s back *heart eyes forever*

Just after I’d delivered the second draft of Torn - in the end there were three drafts plus two short “production drafts”, where only tiny changes in dialogue were asked for right before they locked it as a shooting script - I found myself emailing with our brilliant exec producer Juliet about the various processes writers have to get a draft done.

I told her that for me, it was imagining how the actors would look and sound doing and saying certain things, and music. Always music. I know some writers who prefer silence and they BAFFLE AND CONFUSE me. I can’t do it. To me, silence is just a huge void of “Why can’t you type anything? / Why have you just typed that load of shit?” That still happens regardless, but with my headphones blasting something, it’s not as crushing. I told Juliet that I had a long playlist to write to, and certain songs for specific characters and moments, including the one I listened to over and over and over again whilst crying at 2am trying to write one scene. (No, you don’t get a prize for guessing which scene yes obviously it was that one.) I’d like to share that playlist with you now, and talk a little about how it connected the characters for me along the way.

(Skip down to the first video below & play - it really kicks in after about 2 mins)

When I got the WB job, I started on a playlist almost straight away - if I recall, the night that Ep 1 of S4 had gone out. Now I’d met the new characters, and seen the new style of shooting, I went to my iTunes (30,000+ tracks all stored on an offline PC running on XP and iTunes 9 - FUK U APPLE MUSIC YOU ARE NEVER REPLACING MY RARE TRACKS) and started throwing in music that said this one thing to me -

- running through the city at night, surrouded by lights.

Didn’t have to be running as a wolf, just needed that rush, that feeling. This netted me 5 or 6 tracks. I tried to stick to recent-ish things (circa April 2016), and mainly British artists. Anything with energy, screaming “city!”. Then I got corny and searched every Wolfblood related word I could think of - moon, howl, wolf, run, teeth, etc - to see if that threw up anything good. (More on that below.) This was a start, and was what I took up to the writers room in Salford. (On that journey, I also played the hell out of Try Everything from Zootropolis, which I had seen the Friday before. I especially played it on the tram out to MediaCity basically so I could arrive there for the first time like Judy Hopps.)

When I got back from the room, I worked on the playlist, adding a few more tracks (the full Aurora album was out by now as well and was the kind of thing I buy & love anyway) over the next couple of months while I was waiting for the real work to start. So, by the time August rolled around, and my story outline was locked... I. WAS. READY.

I try to avoid too much existing film music on a playlist because generally it’s already got a strong connection to something visual, but an exception was the opening track on my list, from the 1979 movie The Warriors. I know a lot of people who grew up with this film, but I only saw in a couple of years ago, when the full score was released on limited CD, and that’s where this track is from.

When I made this my opening track, it was merely to set mood. Creepy city night moving into propulsive action. But when my story changed in July and my opening became the scenes of Emilia, Madoc and Hafren stalking the city... OHMYGOD can you imagine more perfect music to write that too? And when they filmed those scenes I was there and could hear this music in my mind as I watched them walk. Magic.

(There actually seems to be another nod to The Warriors in Ep 5, when Birdie taunts “Wolfbloods, come out to play...” I must ask Ed if it’s intentional.)

Then I had the 30 second title version of Running With The Wolves on my iPod, so it was essentially like listening to my episode start after the teaser (”They think so.”) and then away we go. And yes, my nerdery knows no bounds.

I may skip around the actual order of the playlist now to talk about it, but the playlist linked at the bottom of the post is the order of the tracks on my iPod, so go hit that and enjoy.

First up after the titles, TURN THE MUSIC LOUDER (RUMBLE). This is everything I said above. This is running through a loud, lit city at night. This track gets me so fired up, and though I love love love Katy B & Tinie Tempah’s voices, the extended instrumental was the best one to get my blood going - especially when it was 1am and I’d just cued the playlist for the fourth time that night. When that beat kicks in at 46 seconds <3

Chaleur Humaine was such an important album to me last year. It was an album I got a few weeks before getting the job, which was also the week my grandma had a fall and went to hospital and... all that’s on my instagram, go look. Point being, I *needed* this album last year. So it was obvious some songs would make their way onto the list, and TILTED is just... It’s audio heaven to me. And while I was still finishing Torn, they’d started shooting Block 1, and a video went up of Jack dancing to this in the green room. So when you’re listening to the same thing the cast is, you kind of know you’ve chosen well. “But I'm actually good / Can't help it if we're tilted” could almost be a WB motto. We’re not human, but that doesn’t make us bad - just tilted. Later, iT was a song for Jana, “I’m a man now” becoming a stand-in for “I’m an Alpha now”.

Raleigh Ritchie, aka Jacob Anderson, aka Grey Worm on GoT. How talented can one guy be? (Plus he used to follow me on Twitter when he had a seperate Jacob account and we’d talk movies and trade puns a bit.) If you haven’t heard You’re A Man Now, Boy, do it right now (or when you’ve finished reading this). Anyway, these songs keyed me *straight* into TJ. “This is a blue town / And I feel a Gene Kelly moment comin' on” is sooooooooo TJ. That boundless optimism, even when the world is falling down, that sense of play and fun and joy about being a Wolfblood - more than that, being Terence Cipriani, the one and only. But he still can’t *quite* get it together with Selina, even though he *totally* should, so BLOODSPORT ‘15 got me into their scenes** together, and then when Raleigh is joined on THE CHASED by his real life partner, the amazing Aisling Loftus, that basically became TJ and Selina singing together.

**There’s not a lot of TJ and Selina in Torn, which is a regret, because I love them so much. I did write them some other scenes (while they’re waiting for Hartington, and in the Den at the end) but they were cut for time before shooting. They were nice in isolation, with Selina supporting TJ (he’s still worried about the chip having been in him), then him supporting her after her parents are taken, but they didn’t really contribute to the story, and as you saw, we had quite a few events to blast through in 27 minutes as it was.

ROMAN HOLIDAY by Halsey is almost an odd one out - one of only 2 American tracks on the list, but something about it struck me as right for Torn. “We’ll be looking for sunrise”, and “for now let’s get away” maybe? But it always felt like it belonged there.

The Wolf Alice tracks were the one of two results from my Wolfblood-related word search. Full disclosure - I had the Wolf Alice album and EP but they hadn’t grown on me yet when I put these on the list. That all changed as these songs became essential to the writing. STORMS seemed to fit for both Jana and Matei, as both are being told things by people and wonder the refrain over and over again “Who are your friends, your friends, your friends...”. By the third draft this always put me in Matei’s head. FREAZY became a big Jana song, as she tries to navigate ties and deals throughout the show, but always open to hope “You can join us if you think you're wild / You can join us if you're a feral child / Our love is cool”. “You can hate us all you want but it don't mean nothing at all”, Jana just keeps Jana’ing, like a fucking boss. YOUR LOVES WHORE was kind of an all purpose track to again serve that big city tone, but the more I listened to it, the more the insistent beat and heavy guitars felt like Selina. She could be talking to TJ (”I could be your perfect girl”?) or she could be taking on the world, because she is Selina Khan and she will kick you in the face whilst delivering a cutting comment, then one minute later come out with the sweetest gesture you’ve ever seen.

I used the other Aurora songs to mainly access Emilia and Hafren. CONQUEROR is basically Hafren’s entire mission statement. Despite being swayed in method by Madoc, Hafren is a pure WB, just like Emilia tells her. That was a really important scene to me - one that never changed from the first draft. I wanted to have a scene that showed just what a good Alpha Emilia has been when she’s not trying to start a fight. Hafren may deploy her aggression very easily, but she’s doing it for very clear - almost innocent, really - reasons. She really believes, and when she howls and raises her fist on the castle, it should be that pure moment of triumph (along with an “oooooohhhh shit” moment equivilant to shutting down the grid in Ghostbusters in terms of WB/human relations). Laura G was amazing, coming to those short scenes with brilliant notes on what they meant to Hafren that completely chimed with my thinking, and I really can’t explain to you just how amazing it was to be up there and see and hear her howl like that.

TILL THE END by Lucy Rose was almost a chillout section in the middle of writing for me. It feels very fresh and optimistic, and can work for any number of characters, including Katrina. And if you want to take the lyrics “'Cause I want to believe / That I will keep fighting 'till the end / And I should have believed / That you were much more than just a friend” and apply it to what Katrina is feeling after she hears what she does in this episode, I’m not going to stop you...

Katrina is a segue into what I always thought of as the Kafe section of songs, from Florrie through Karen Harding & Little Mix to Hailee Steinfeld. All great modern pop songs that I love and could imagine playing on the radio in the Kafe, backgrounding the long talk the pack have at the beginning. If there’s going to be a day when BLACK MAGIC doesn’t get me feeling upbeat and happy, I don’t want to know about it. Hailee Steinfeld is also the only other invading American song on the list, but the Kafe is a place where that doesn’t feel strange.

After the Kafe section and before Bloodsport ;15, I had another song I can’t add on Spotify -

I have the proper studio version of this, on a sampler for Chlöe Howl’s album that never came out, which is a fucking tragedy because wow. I love her, I loved every song she put out, and this song was sooooo important to the script. It works for Jana and Emilia and Matei... it takes them a long time to trust someone. And now some of those trusts are breaking down, and some are building again. (Howl was the other result from my wolf word searching, but I can’t imagine I’d have gone into battle without at least one Chlöe song regardless.)

The only other song on the playlist I can’t include here is SLOWDIVE by Gemma Hayes, which is an exclusive song I got for putting in an amount of £ to back the album that became Bones + Longing. It’s a really beautiful song - it sounds like audio sunlight and green fields, and I used it mainly to write Emilia teaching Matei Eolas. Nothing on the album sounds exactly like it, but check out Bones + Longing and Gemma’s previous album Let It Break for a taste, and because they’re amazing.

For the longest time - before the July story change that landed the Kafe Escape scene into Torn, HEY NOW (BONOBO REMIX) was the only song on the list that represented Robyn. It’s *very* city at night music, and I kind of imagined it being something she’d listen to on headphones in her room, laying awake and thinking of a person sleeping not very far away, and what she was starting to mean to her. It’s one for looking at the rain streaming down your window and hugging your covers tighter.

Another song like that is HEARTLESS. Oh my musical god. Really. This is one of the songs that went on the list that first night. I can listen to it endlessly. It represents everyone, in every space we go to. Kafe, Den, streets, wild. I can even access *Madoc* with this song (And it was important to understand Madoc and his reasons, but I can’t go into that now for spoilers. But I get why he’s doing what he does.) This is simply a key song in the creation of Torn.

Believe it or not, in my first draft, we had a car chase! I know!! Basically Hartington was somewhere else than the gym, and they all piled into Jones’s vehicle to track him on the roads before cornering him. Then everything went down the way it does in the ep now, but still, car chase! Then of course production said we could spend the enormous amount of money the chase would cost on better things, so can they just ambush him as he leaves the gym? But for the time the chase existed, the theme from The Warriors returned in BASEBALL FURIES CHASE to go with it.

The third Aurora song, I WENT TOO FAR was always Emilia to me. Perhaps not in lyrics, but in voice and feel. Has she gone too far? Maybe in some part of her mind. But she can relate to the “Crying 'give me some love, give me some love and hold me” part. For all the strength she takes in her pack, she’s so happy to get Matei back. It was a joy to write those scenes reuniting the siblings, and I am so so so happy with the Eolas scene. That’s been the same - bar literally changing one single word - since my first draft, and Sydney blew me away with how beautifully she delivered it. I hadn’t seen anything of that scene until Monday, and ... yeah, it’s so so beautiful. Sydney, Jack, the look, the music. <3

The last Christine and the Queens song, NIGHT 52, I used to track the deleted Den scene, which came inbetween Madoc slipping away from the party and his call. Not much happened - it was really Jana, Imara, TJ & Selina trying to figure out a way to do... anything... to help the situation they’re in now. So it was sombre and quiet and though I’m now glad it’s gone (aside from missing the TJ & Selina beat mentioned above), this beautiful track gave it life.

So, it’s late July, and my story now includes a certain scene, and yeeaaahhhhh, gonna need some specific music for this one. Thankfully a couple more albums had come out recently. First, Nothing’s Real, by Shura. How good? Is it even measurable how good it is? And it gave me two songs in particular that seemed really Robyn, who was now so much more important to the episode. MAKE IT UP, with all the talk of waking up in the night, was like a companion to the London Grammar song, but 2SHY? That might as well be the narrative in Robyn’s head in the days leading up to Torn. “It's taken me so long / Maybe I'm just too shy to say it / We could be more than friends / Maybe I'm just too shy / Too shy.” Wanting desperately to say something but too professional and maybe even hesitant to say it, until one awful event leads them to a very specific set of circumstances. They weren’t outside at the time. They weren’t downstairs, where Robyn could have quickly bolted out of the back door. No. They were up in the flat. One terrible moment, as brutish men crash into their lives, leads them to the only exit - to that window - and that moment, that perhaps could not have happened at any other time. And suddenly something terrible becomes something beautiful...

And that’s where HEAR YOU CALLING by Birdy comes in. It just hit me in the heart. In the music, in the lyrics (“I could take my make-up and put a brave face on” could be a mantra for Katrina during recent events), in Birdy’s beautiful voice. *This* was the song for that moment, and I played it and played it and played it. I left this scene to almost the last in my first draft, as I basically knew what I wanted to do with it, it just needed to be done right. So it was about 2am on the second night of writing when I cued the track for the first time. (I wrote the first draft over two nights in a 24 hour cafe, which is a useful thing Plymouth has for writers. And hey, a few months later I was reading Lucy Sutcliffe’s amazing Girl <3 Girl AND GUESS WHICH CAFE SHE MENTIONS HANGING OUT IN!!111!!)

And then I wrote the scene, over and over. Every line of description, every line of dialogue read and re-read and changed until it flowed with the music, and we reach that moment where Robyn stops herself from leaving, and the chorus kicks in on her declaration to Katrina...

And because Katrina is just a glorious wonderful beating heart of a human being she responds to Robyn with love and *that* **Alpha** ***headtouch*** and that human red red kiss that says come back to me and then Robyn’s gone until they meet again...

Every night when the sun goes down And I'm left in this lonely town I hear you calling me, hear you calling me, yeah Every time that I say goodbye Every night when I close my eyes I hear you calling me, hear you calling me Take me home, take me home, don't know this place Are you there wondering if I'm lying awake Thinking of you? Take me home, take me home, don't know this place Are you there wondering if I'm lying awake Thinking of you? Oh, my beautiful summer How the winter makes me wonder Where you've gone

And then a few weeks later they started using Hear You Calling for the opening titles of Our Girl, but they cut if off before the best bit anyway, so I’m planting the flag in it for us.

And finally, we’re back to the city, literally, with IN THE CITY, the end credits song from The Warriors, that just feels like the end of a very long day - but one where you have hope for the future, which is exactly what our pack need at the end of Torn, and what I needed because hearing this song meant I’d been writing for a couple of hours, and probably had loads left to do, and was about to start the music all over again...

Anyway, here’s the music that helped me with Torn - I hope you enjoy at least some of it!