Writer Commentary: Doctor’s Orders

Very early in the planning process of making the full lineup for Out of Sight, I knew that I wanted to have one episode that featured Wes as the main character. Partially because if we go on to future seasons, I knew that I would want a Wes episode at some point, so it would be best to introduce the possibility in the first season–start as you mean to go on and all. I also wanted people to see Wes in a more active capacity, instead of always being Roy’s second fiddle. It’s because of this episode that I really had to think about ghosts and their abilities to interact with the living, long before I wrote Family Dysfunctions. I had to decide then what ghosts could and couldn’t do, because those were rules I’d have to stick with for the entire rest of the series. Back in Family Dysfunctions I alluded to the fact that it takes a ‘pretty special kind’ of ghost to touch things, well. Three episodes later, we now know what Roy was referring to.

Let’s not understate what happens in this episode. Wes murders a man then lies to Roy about it. This is probably one of the most important moments in the entire season. We know by now what Wes is willing to do to help Roy–Wes has already vanquished a murderous ghost and come to Roy’s aid whenever Roy’s needed them most, but now we see that Wes has no issues with even more drastic actions. More than that, up until now we’ve also seen how much Roy trusts Wes and now we see that Wes’s side of the relationship might not be quite reciprocated. Wes clearly has no problems hiding things from Roy–something as big as murder, no less–and chances are, this isn’t the first time they’ve done it. Roy, of course, doesn’t suspect a thing because he doesn’t think that Wes would ever lie to him.

This episode is meant to contrast Sleep Well, My Darling, which has a very similar missing persons-turned-malpractice-murder resolution. While we don’t see it directly, Roy gets the main culprits arrested and has them face justice, and when he attempts to report the doctor in a similar way, he learns that the doctor is already dead and he’s not happy about it. Repeatedly, we’ve seen that Roy’s reaction even to the most horrific crimes is to use nonlethal methods–it’s not in his nature to hurt people and especially not to kill them, which shouldn’t be a surprise when we’ve seen his contempt for murderers time and time again. Wes, on the other hand, has no hesitation to kill. It’s not really about helping Roy or even reducing harm–Wes explicitly acknowledges that even without killing Salucci they’d be able to stop his experiments and that Roy wouldn’t approve. You can reasonably assume from Wes’s approach to the situation that they have done this before, maybe several times.

Which brings us to the direct comparison between Roy and Wes. While Roy is the private investigator protagonist of this hardboiled-inspired series, he’s not really the bitter and jaded noir private investigator that most people think of. He’s joyful and personable and a little silly and terrible in a fight. As much as he says he’s only in investigation for the money, he cares about helping people and finding the truth–to the reckless extent that Wes is often appalled by it. Wes, on the other hand, is more cynical and serious and self-serving and mean. It’s not as if they don’t care about other people at all–we’ve seen Wes push Roy to do the right thing at times, but Wes thinks it’s much less reasonable to stick their neck out for a stranger. Between the two of them, Wes much closer fits the mold of the hardboiled detective, and not just because they’re from that time period.

The other thing about this episode is that we get to learn more about the specifics of the apocalypse and the fact that Wes witnessed the whole thing. The whole apocalypse element of this series was largely added because I wanted the setting to be closed–so I wouldn’t have to worry about Roy or any culprits ever leaving the city because there was nowhere to go. Even from those early days, I had the vague understanding that there had been some kind of widespread nuclear disaster, hence the early references to radiation and the need for environment protection outside city limits. But I didn’t know if this was something I really wanted to discuss in the story, because in a lot of ways the circumstances of the apocalypse aren’t important except that it happened and it’s the reason why the city is a closed setting. Similar to how I was worried that introducing more psychics would end up eclipsing the main premise of the series, my concern was that dwelling on the circumstances of the apocalypse would obligate me to follow through and resolve that plot line in a satisfying way, which would likely be about “fixing” the apocalypse, whatever form that might take, and I don’t want Roy’s story to be about saving the world. Obviously, in the end I chose to officially open the topic of the apocalypse, which will be expanded upon as the series goes on. If you stick around, you’ll see how I handle that.

The other, other thing about this episode is that we learn a bit more about Roy’s past–he’s already alluded to the fact that he’s lost people close to him, but now we find out that those someones are almost certainly his parents and that they died from apocalypse disease. I think it’s a bit understated, especially in this first season, but Roy definitely has not had a very normal life, even if you ignore the part where he talks to ghosts. Part of that lack of emphasis is the fact that, again, Roy Kaplan the series is not really about Roy Kaplan the man–his past rarely ever comes up, and he never really discusses it in his narration. But of course as our protagonist it’s always interesting to learn a little more about him, even if it’s only in pieces like this.

I like this episode. It’s interesting to write for Wes and come up with a mystery that a ghost can reasonably solve largely on their own. It’s one of the main reasons why I chose to make this case missing persons in the first place–a case where the endpoint is to find a certain kind of information as opposed to retrieving an object or effect some kind of result the way that many of Roy’s cases are. Logistically, because Wes can’t talk to most of the characters, there’s a lot more eavesdropping and narration than in a typical episode. It’s been sprinkled throughout the series in Wes’s dialogue, but now we get to hear their somewhat antiquated speech patterns in more concentrated doses. When I write Wes, I’m mostly trying to emulate Raymond Chandler’s style, not just with the use of 40s vernacular but also the blunt tone and straightforward speech. I don’t know if it’s especially noticeable considering Roy’s narration is similar in a lot of ways (for reasons that should be fairly obvious), but the way I write Wes’s internal monologue is basically the way that I write the narration in my novel (The Crow’s Last Call, a hardboiled resurrection mystery if you haven’t heard me talk about that yet).

One thing I do want to point out, which I’m sure any listener would have noticed, is that Wes gets completely new music! I do really love Beacon’s work on the music for Roy Kaplan overall–having a custom soundtrack really helps set the mood and unify the feeling of the whole series (even if I do have to use Roy’s four tracks strategically so they don’t seem repetitive throughout the series). The themes for Wes are no different. I wanted Wes’s sound to be more jazz, less synths, a bit more melody since Wes’s narration sections go for much longer than Roy’s. I wanted the instrumentation to feel immediately different from Roy’s themes so people listening to this episode would hear the music kick in to go, hey, this is something different!

Giving Wes their own themes was something we kind of thought about for a while earlier on in production. It just makes sense, to give different narrators different music themes, but money constraints can make it a bit of a hard sell. Commissioning multiple tracks for a single episode out of the season just doesn’t seem like the most effective use of funds, so it wasn’t until I took over production for the project that I decided to go through with it. I figured, it’s my money so I can commission the tracks if I think it’ll be better (and I do), and at least for Wes in particular I know if I make future seasons, I’ll be able to reuse their themes. Personally, I think it was worth it, and Wes’s music helps build a different atmosphere to the episode that’s maybe a bit more noir than Roy’s episodes usually are.

If we go on to future seasons I expect to have a few more Wes episodes. Hopefully this is a good opening to that.