Right Place, Wrong Time
So there's this meme about fictional TV going around and I was stuck at my mothers house and both really bored and really annoyed. So ....
1. Ask and I'll assign you the basis of some show idea.
2. Create the characters you need, including the actors who'd play them. Photos optional but recommended.
3. Come up with a general synopsis of the premise.
melyanna gave me "Time traveler gets stuck in Berlin, after the Wall goes up." Which I might add probably makes this the most unlikely tv show ever to actually be made given the setting... but oh well.
Right Place, Wrong Time a dark comedy action story of a time traveling historian who ends up in East Germany, involved with people who are more important to the stream of time than they initially seem.
Dr. Emmett Stafford
Played by Tim Roth
A time traveling historian from the mid 22nd century, Stafford has written hundreds of grant proposals to various foundations in order to go back in time to study the founding of the modern German state. A specialist in the 19th century, he is dressed carefully and prepared for landing in 1868, but finds himself in 1968 instead, and with an obviously unreliable time machine. With his 19th century clothing at first he is mistaken for a Frederick Engels impersonator because he arrived on May 1st in East Berlin. Unable to get out of the city he decides to pose as a British communist who has defected to the Farmers and Workers Paradise and with some quick thinking he lands a job at a small university on the edge of the city teaching history. While trying to find an ally to help him get home, he discovers that the motivations of people in the German Democratic Republic are always colored by the system they live in, and are trying to protect themselves from. Emmett had never been very interested in the mid-20th century, so much of the events of the late 1968s including the Prague Spring are rather foggy to him.
Dr. Renate Mueller
Played by Torri Higginson
A well respected East German academic and writer, Reni Mueller has come to international attention with her works of socialist psychology and socialist feminist theory. Her most famous work is about how capitalism destroys the ability of exploited workers from fullfilling the most basic human need of group interaction. Originally from the province of Brandenberg in what is now Poland, Renate and her family were deported to East Germany with many east european ethnic germans after World War II. A true believer, and a party member, Renate takes an immediate interest in their comrade from England and decides to help introduce him to the wonders of life in the GDR. They become romantically involved and while everyone else calls her Reni, Emmett uses her full name because he thinks it sounds prettier. A few months into their relationship Emmett figures out that one of his students who wrote a mildly paper critical of the state was arrested and the only person who had access to the paper besides him was Mueller. Reni has an intense dislike of Dr. Haeusler, and goes out of her way to try and make life difficult for the former aristocrat.
Dr. Magdalena Haeusler
Played by Tricia Helfer
A Saxon baroness from Leipzig stripped of her title, lands, and status after the communist takeover, Dr. Magdalena Haeusler is a brilliant mathematician whose work has been noticed by many in the theoretical physics community. Her father was a German general captured at Stalingrad, who died in a Soviet prisoner of war camp in Siberia in 1952. She has less emotion invested in her dislike of Reni Meuller than Mueller has invested in hating her, the Baroness is a very careful person by nature who takes a long time to warm up to Emmett. At first she thinks he's crazy for defecting to the East, and later she thinks he's crazy for trusting (and sleeping with) Reni, and finally when he approaches her to help him get home she is sure he is insane for believing he is a time traveler from the future. The Baroness' work is fundamental to theories of time travel, and several of her students later in her life will become known as the founding mothers and fathers of time travel.
Dr. Karl Jaekle
Played by Stephen Fry
The chancelor of the university Emmett, Reni, and Magda all teach out. He is a party member but not all that interested in ideology, which in itself is strange given that he is a philosopher. He is oblivious to the strange goings on in his university and to the personal dislike between some of his faculty members. He particularly likes assigning Reni and Magda to work togeather on projects promoting the university.
Christa Kessler
Played by Julia Jentsch
An engineering student Emmett ropes in to help him fix his time machine. She is the first person in 1968 that he tells his secret to and they develope a father/daughter like relationship. He tries to help her learn to think for herself, with the help of West German television and many of the classics of German literature. Christa was raised in the communist youth organization, the Free German Youth, and is just starting to question the system. She distrusts the political pronouncements of many of her teachers after discovering news clippings of both Doctors Meuller and Haeusler in the BDM, the female arm of the Hitler Youth, and more ominously, finding that Professor Jaekle's doctoral thesis has been removed from the library.
"Susan Jones"
Played by Portia de Rossi
A member of the temporal police from some time in the distant future. The time cops have become something of a legend or a myth among the time travelers of earlier decades and initially Emmett is excited to actually meet one. Until she issues him a summons for deviating from his established temporal flight plan. In a currency he's never heard of. She continues to issue him citations for changing history, but refuses to help him fix his time machine because he comes from the past from her temporal point of view, and helping him would constitute a violation of the law against changing history. Jones appears only to Emmett, though she can move things in the physical world of 1968 because she is a second out of phase with the timeline and only through a mental brain implant meant to help Emmett with information to blend into society can he percieve her. Mostly she stands around giving highly unhelpful comments and generally mocking him. Eventually Emmett decides that at least half the things she says to him are her messing with him. Eventually it is revealed that Christa is an ancester of Susan, and she has an intersted in making sure he doesn't get the girl killed causing Susan herself to disappear into a paradox event. Because those are a mess to get undone, are really embarrassing, and causes a lot of paperwork.
Captain Alister Underhill
Played by Jamie Bamber
An SAS officer stationed in East Germany as part of the British Commanders'-in-Chief Mission to the Soviet Forces in Germany, Alister Underhill's job is to use his position in a post that is a relic of the World War II occupation agreements to gather intelligence in East Germany. His latest assignment is to determine exactly who Emmett Stafford really is, as MI-6 can find no record of him. He pokes around the university, coming close on a number of occasions to discovering the truth but is never prepared to believe the outlandish. Officer Jones finds Underhill terribly amusing because in his later years he will write a series of time travel themed books which become popular as a basis for practical time travel.
Capitaine Philippe Chevalier
Played by John Barrowman
Underhill's only friend in the limited community of western officers living full time in East Germany. A pilot who served in both the wars in Algeria and Indo-China, many think Chevalier is crazy, and he is certainly willing to fly a plane into any place at any time. He makes Underhill's life quite a bit more complicated than it might otherwise be if he weren't helping him.
Major Grigori Negodiaev
Played by Richard Armitage
Captain Underhill's Red Army minder, Major Negodiaev has an annoying habit of showing up whenever Alister thinks he is being sneaky and offering him coffee and being friendly. Negodiaev has a strong personal dislike of Germans stemming from his childhood war experiances and feels a closer comradeship with Underhill.
Hauptmann Gerhardt Rösslar
Played by Adam Baldwin
A member of the East German Ministry for State Security, the infamous secret police known better as the Stasi. Rösslar is Dr. Meuller's case officer as an informant, and although he is diligent in his job, he is bored and suspects that Reni is attempting to use him to settle political scores.
Some previous examples are:
melyanna's No Sheep for You - (heartwarming family drama set in New Zealand)
havocthecat's The Lonely Sky - (space pirates)
aj's Gotham - (comic book movie)
grav_ity's Donor - (superhero TV show)
lizardbeth_j's Central East - (Secret Agents)
mari4212's The Adventure of the Student Society - (students living on a haunted college campus)
tenacious_err's The Institute - (Victorian-era vampire hunters.)
ffutures's Jellystone! - (Crime Fighting Park Ranger)
1. Ask and I'll assign you the basis of some show idea.
2. Create the characters you need, including the actors who'd play them. Photos optional but recommended.
3. Come up with a general synopsis of the premise.
melyanna gave me "Time traveler gets stuck in Berlin, after the Wall goes up." Which I might add probably makes this the most unlikely tv show ever to actually be made given the setting... but oh well.
Right Place, Wrong Time a dark comedy action story of a time traveling historian who ends up in East Germany, involved with people who are more important to the stream of time than they initially seem.
Dr. Emmett Stafford
Played by Tim Roth
A time traveling historian from the mid 22nd century, Stafford has written hundreds of grant proposals to various foundations in order to go back in time to study the founding of the modern German state. A specialist in the 19th century, he is dressed carefully and prepared for landing in 1868, but finds himself in 1968 instead, and with an obviously unreliable time machine. With his 19th century clothing at first he is mistaken for a Frederick Engels impersonator because he arrived on May 1st in East Berlin. Unable to get out of the city he decides to pose as a British communist who has defected to the Farmers and Workers Paradise and with some quick thinking he lands a job at a small university on the edge of the city teaching history. While trying to find an ally to help him get home, he discovers that the motivations of people in the German Democratic Republic are always colored by the system they live in, and are trying to protect themselves from. Emmett had never been very interested in the mid-20th century, so much of the events of the late 1968s including the Prague Spring are rather foggy to him.
Dr. Renate Mueller
Played by Torri Higginson
A well respected East German academic and writer, Reni Mueller has come to international attention with her works of socialist psychology and socialist feminist theory. Her most famous work is about how capitalism destroys the ability of exploited workers from fullfilling the most basic human need of group interaction. Originally from the province of Brandenberg in what is now Poland, Renate and her family were deported to East Germany with many east european ethnic germans after World War II. A true believer, and a party member, Renate takes an immediate interest in their comrade from England and decides to help introduce him to the wonders of life in the GDR. They become romantically involved and while everyone else calls her Reni, Emmett uses her full name because he thinks it sounds prettier. A few months into their relationship Emmett figures out that one of his students who wrote a mildly paper critical of the state was arrested and the only person who had access to the paper besides him was Mueller. Reni has an intense dislike of Dr. Haeusler, and goes out of her way to try and make life difficult for the former aristocrat.
Dr. Magdalena Haeusler
Played by Tricia Helfer
A Saxon baroness from Leipzig stripped of her title, lands, and status after the communist takeover, Dr. Magdalena Haeusler is a brilliant mathematician whose work has been noticed by many in the theoretical physics community. Her father was a German general captured at Stalingrad, who died in a Soviet prisoner of war camp in Siberia in 1952. She has less emotion invested in her dislike of Reni Meuller than Mueller has invested in hating her, the Baroness is a very careful person by nature who takes a long time to warm up to Emmett. At first she thinks he's crazy for defecting to the East, and later she thinks he's crazy for trusting (and sleeping with) Reni, and finally when he approaches her to help him get home she is sure he is insane for believing he is a time traveler from the future. The Baroness' work is fundamental to theories of time travel, and several of her students later in her life will become known as the founding mothers and fathers of time travel.
Dr. Karl Jaekle
Played by Stephen Fry
The chancelor of the university Emmett, Reni, and Magda all teach out. He is a party member but not all that interested in ideology, which in itself is strange given that he is a philosopher. He is oblivious to the strange goings on in his university and to the personal dislike between some of his faculty members. He particularly likes assigning Reni and Magda to work togeather on projects promoting the university.
Christa Kessler
Played by Julia Jentsch
An engineering student Emmett ropes in to help him fix his time machine. She is the first person in 1968 that he tells his secret to and they develope a father/daughter like relationship. He tries to help her learn to think for herself, with the help of West German television and many of the classics of German literature. Christa was raised in the communist youth organization, the Free German Youth, and is just starting to question the system. She distrusts the political pronouncements of many of her teachers after discovering news clippings of both Doctors Meuller and Haeusler in the BDM, the female arm of the Hitler Youth, and more ominously, finding that Professor Jaekle's doctoral thesis has been removed from the library.
"Susan Jones"
Played by Portia de Rossi
A member of the temporal police from some time in the distant future. The time cops have become something of a legend or a myth among the time travelers of earlier decades and initially Emmett is excited to actually meet one. Until she issues him a summons for deviating from his established temporal flight plan. In a currency he's never heard of. She continues to issue him citations for changing history, but refuses to help him fix his time machine because he comes from the past from her temporal point of view, and helping him would constitute a violation of the law against changing history. Jones appears only to Emmett, though she can move things in the physical world of 1968 because she is a second out of phase with the timeline and only through a mental brain implant meant to help Emmett with information to blend into society can he percieve her. Mostly she stands around giving highly unhelpful comments and generally mocking him. Eventually Emmett decides that at least half the things she says to him are her messing with him. Eventually it is revealed that Christa is an ancester of Susan, and she has an intersted in making sure he doesn't get the girl killed causing Susan herself to disappear into a paradox event. Because those are a mess to get undone, are really embarrassing, and causes a lot of paperwork.
Captain Alister Underhill
Played by Jamie Bamber
An SAS officer stationed in East Germany as part of the British Commanders'-in-Chief Mission to the Soviet Forces in Germany, Alister Underhill's job is to use his position in a post that is a relic of the World War II occupation agreements to gather intelligence in East Germany. His latest assignment is to determine exactly who Emmett Stafford really is, as MI-6 can find no record of him. He pokes around the university, coming close on a number of occasions to discovering the truth but is never prepared to believe the outlandish. Officer Jones finds Underhill terribly amusing because in his later years he will write a series of time travel themed books which become popular as a basis for practical time travel.
Capitaine Philippe Chevalier
Played by John Barrowman
Underhill's only friend in the limited community of western officers living full time in East Germany. A pilot who served in both the wars in Algeria and Indo-China, many think Chevalier is crazy, and he is certainly willing to fly a plane into any place at any time. He makes Underhill's life quite a bit more complicated than it might otherwise be if he weren't helping him.
Major Grigori Negodiaev
Played by Richard Armitage
Captain Underhill's Red Army minder, Major Negodiaev has an annoying habit of showing up whenever Alister thinks he is being sneaky and offering him coffee and being friendly. Negodiaev has a strong personal dislike of Germans stemming from his childhood war experiances and feels a closer comradeship with Underhill.
Hauptmann Gerhardt Rösslar
Played by Adam Baldwin
A member of the East German Ministry for State Security, the infamous secret police known better as the Stasi. Rösslar is Dr. Meuller's case officer as an informant, and although he is diligent in his job, he is bored and suspects that Reni is attempting to use him to settle political scores.
Some previous examples are:
melyanna's No Sheep for You - (heartwarming family drama set in New Zealand)
havocthecat's The Lonely Sky - (space pirates)
aj's Gotham - (comic book movie)
grav_ity's Donor - (superhero TV show)
lizardbeth_j's Central East - (Secret Agents)
mari4212's The Adventure of the Student Society - (students living on a haunted college campus)
tenacious_err's The Institute - (Victorian-era vampire hunters.)
ffutures's Jellystone! - (Crime Fighting Park Ranger)