Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles 2.05 Goodbye to All That

What is it with titles in my shows this week that are allusive as hell? This one is the title of Robert Graves' memoirs of his youth, a significant portion of which deals with World War I (which made said book into a modern classic. The other thing it's famous for are the early chapters dealing with life at a public school (that's a private one for you Americans), which he frankly hated. (I read Goodbye to All That for the first time shortly before reading C.S. Lewis' autobiography Surprised by Joy - in which he hated his public school so much he called it "Belsen", and a short time after I found a Neil Gaiman quote in which he called the section in Seasons of Mist in which a boy is tortured to death at a public school autobiographical. Conclusion: English writers through the ages really, really hated their time in school.

Aaaaanyway. Despite the school setting of one plot in this episode, I assume the title was chosen because of the World War I classic status. Books and memories and the stories we tell being a major theme of the episode.

( Will you help me with my book report? )

Russel T Davies and Benjamin Cook: The Writer’s Tale.

In short: well worth reading, especially if you’re interested in scriptwriting and the development stages from idea to filmed scene. In parts entertaining and witty, in parts doubtlessly infuriating or frustrating (feeling of choice depending on your temper and fannish loyalties), much like the man himself. In addition to the main text, it offers much content for its money in terms not just of many season 4 script excerpts but drawings (turns out Rusty is a very gifted cartoonist and amuses himself with drawing sketches of characters a lot). Since I think it’s a pity most of the attention so has gone to only two particular excerpts (RTD’s endless rewrites and frustrations with the 4.13 beach scene – which he never was quite content with - , and the outburst about the website Outpost Gallifrey and internet criticism vis a vis Helen Raynor’s Dalek episodes), you won’t find much about either in my post, so if you want to discuss these in particular, try other reviews.

( Of scripts and writers, companions and actors he sings )