Tag: Show Notes

This month, we’re diving into the sixth Rogue Tyger serial “The End Run” and sharing show notes about the thought behind and making of that season two finale.

~Bjorn Munson, writer/director, Rogue Tyger

Season Finales and Payoff

At this point, I had been furiously writing scripts for about a year and a half, catching up to my outlines and notes in order to meet recording dates, so the urgency you hear 

The character’s snark, especially Aidan’s I credit to working on a less-than-desirable-yet-financially-necessary contract job. Working on this series has been a delight, but in this case, it was a vital creative outlet.

In any case, one of my goals for this finale –which if you recall was originally meant to be the final serial of a 30-episode season—was to give the audience payoff. So that meant having some of the intrigue we’d heard in “Flatrock,” some of the ship action we’d heard in “Uninvited Guests” and “Cat & Mouse” and some character arcs being fulfilled. 

I knew I had to have that scene between Reg and Aidan, for example. The nice thing was, on this side of time as it were, I now knew better how Brooks and Nick would and could play it. It was important to me that Aidan initiate the conversation, showing where he had come to at this part. It was also important to show that even though you see Reg through the serial get excited at actually winning rather than surviving, he still doesn’t quite know how to be comfortable being victorious. Both have grown, but still on their own trajectories.

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Originally Multiple Filmmaker Cameos Were Planned

Back when I was doing the high-level plotting for the 30-episode season, I thought it would be fun to involve a bunch of the indie filmmakers and others I had worked with. That’s why in episode two, you hear Reg talk about the different captains with some specificity. I had created backstories and personality traits for each of the captains you hear him reference. Originally, the serial was going to revolve around him playing the Zenocrate captains off one another to make his escape. The action would bounce between multiple ship bridges as the audience heard the disparity between what a particular ship thought was true and what was really happening.

As I was writing out the script — and certainly after recording “Uninvited Guests” — I decided that all the different ships and their subplots were going to be more complicated than we could pull off. There was both the limiting factor of the 15-minute episodes (which was what I was I was aiming for) as well as making sure audio listeners could distinguish between all the different bridges.

The Border Wars

One of the benefits of not trying to cram all the different maneuvering between the Zenocrate captains was that I was able to spend more time setting up both character backstories and the history of the Imperium.

One of these empire-wide events, and certainly a formative one for Reg Macorum was a series of conflicts that came to be known as “The Border Wars.”

You can read the next few notes and more behind-the-scenes extras as one of our Patrons on Patreon.

It may sound cliche, but it’s true: our shows are made possible by the continuing support of listeners like you.

If you’re able to help us —as little as a dollar a month helps— we share additional content and goodies via our Patreon site every month (with more bonus content as we get more patrons). Here’s a sample of this month’s entry.

Originally a 30-Episode Season

As I’ve mentioned elsewhere, the original idea for Rogue Tyger was to have 30-episode seasons, consisting of six five-part serials.

Having six serials matched one of the models for the Rogue Tyger format, that British show with the guy with the blue box. So when I went to writing, I was thinking of some season-long arcs for Aidan Vosky and Reg Macorum that would pay off by the sixth story. At the same time, I knew enough to suspect that we might want a natural spot to give ourselves more time with post-production, so I had the third serial, “Uninvited Guests” end on what I thought was an appropriate “mid-season cliffhanger” just in case we needed to use it.

As it turned out, this came in handy as a season cliffhanger.

As it happens, you’ll find the plot does kick into another gear with “Lost and Found,” so does work well as a whole new season. But looking forward, I am reworking some of the stories and story breaks for what had been a planned four seasons. I’m going to work to make sure there’s some satisfying arcs within a single three-story season (which I think will be easier as the individual episodes will be expanding to fit the half-hour format).

The Writing Process and Interrogating a Robot

You can read the next few notes and more behind-the-scenes extra as one of our Patrons on Patreon.