It needs a Woman's Touch...?

[Guest ModernDayMoriarty]

This is a discussion about the presence (or rather lack of it) of female writers in 1013 shows. I wish to examine and compare with other shows, and try and identify some of the issues surrounding this.

As a company, 1013 had a rather miserable record in terms of hiring female writers. Now this may have been due to a lack of interest by said writers in 1013's products, or because of some kind of discrimination (I'll explain what I mean in a minute). Whatever the reason is though, the fact remains that pound for pound, both The X-Files and Millennium feature barely any episodes written by women. So the questions therefore are, why is this so and did the series miss out on an important voice?

Before we start, let's put things into perspective. Science fiction is undeniably a genre that appeals and is marketed towards the male population primarily. But we shouldn't imagine that this means women never write science fiction. Highly regarded shows like Star Trek's various incarnations, Lost, Carnivale etc have all featured numerous female writers. So why did 1013 productions have such little imput from women?

Indeed it is even stranger when you consider that of the two, The X-Files is the worst offender, considering that it features what was intended to be a strong female character as part of the major heroic duo. Of the 203 (approx) episodes of The X-Files, only 8 were written or co-written by women (and one of them was Gillian Anderson herself). That's less than one a season, and it's not even as if it was 8 seperate writers either.

Now I should really get into Chris Carters stated needs for his shows, and the conception of what female writers bring to a show. Basically, the stereotype is that if you want action. horror and 'high' science fcition concepts then you hire men. If you want warmth, melodrama, expanded characterisation etc then you hire women.

I am not saying that women cannot write the former and men cannot write the latter. However, it often seems the case that show creators will not hire women if they either don't want melodrama or feel that their current male writers can handle it. We must consider the difficulties facing the female writer in the science fiction genre.

As I have touched on, the conception is that for sci-fi, you need a male writer, because they 'understand'. With a collective love of Star Wars and shared experience of being the sci-fi geek, male writers are trusted to deliver the storylines that young men want to see. Female writers are often labelled as 'family matters writers' with no appreciation of or love for the genre, diluting pace and action with soppy love scenes etc.

Before we go on, let me make abundantly clear that I take each and every writer of every persuasion possbily entirely on their own merits. I am simply exploring the industry's stand on female writers. So to this end, let's examine a few examples (just brief ones for now):

The X-Files.

Chris Carter has stated time and time again that he wanted a serious show free whenever possibile from melodrama. To this end, the show's primary characters and their relationships changed very little over the 9 seasons, and families, friends etc were dispensed with early on (so after a few episodes, it appears Mulder and Scully are completely alone). There were fights over the cancer storyline out of fear it would inject too much whimsy and melodrama, and it is not uncommon for Carter to take direct control of the episode that call for highented personal emotion etc.

And yet over the years, it has taken much stick for its attitudes to Scully in particular. Female critics were continaully rattled by the 'Scully gets captured and Mulder saves her' format, and the general sense that she was simply the person who publicy announced they didn't understand what was going on, so the geek hero Mulder could fill us all in.

Buffy the Vampre Slayer.

Let's contrast this with the most pro female sci-fi show of recent years. In contrast to the smattering of female writers here and about in most shows, Buffy had several regular female writers, whose influence grew and grew throughout the show until tapering off towards the end. It's interesting because when it started, Buffy was a pretty ordinary 'sci-fi for guys' show. With a season and a half almost entirely written by men, it was a show of fairly standard monster of the week horror themed episodes.

This all changes about the mid point of season two when Marti Noxon starts writing. From there on, the season changes slowly but surely into a less horror inspired show, with much greater emphasis on comedy and teen romance. The numbers of episodes written by men and women grow closer until they are basically 50/50. At this point, the male vote seemed to waver somewhat as the sci-fi ideas got pushed further and further away. However, the show was by now tapping into the female vote to such an extent that it hardly mattered.

24.

One of the biggest shows of recent years, 24 represents the ultimate 'show for guys'. No real warmth or humour, relentless action, fighting, shooting, explosions etc. The romance sequences are kept short, women almost always turn out to be either evil or victims in some manner... it's a show that knows exactly what viewers it is trying to target. That doesn't mean there cannot be female viewers, merely that the show's writers are not actively trying very hard to win them over (preferring to lock up the male vote instead). To this end, it is grttier and edgier than you would expect, as it aggressivly pursues the interests of its target audience (i.e young men). To my knowledge therefore, 24 has to date had 1 episode written by a woman.

Carnivale.

A high concept show, this like Millennium, was never really going to be a mainstream hit. But they did try, by including several female writers, particuarly early on. Writers like Dawn Perstwich and Nicole Yorkin introduced the more expllicit romance and sexual scenes that female writers often produce (it was the same on Buffy for example). Male writers tend not to do this, because the conception is the sci-fi viewers do not respond well to it (not as stupid a statement as it sounds, as there is a well known superiority 'we're above all that romance stuff' attitude amongst said viewers).

Basically the sci-fi male audience tune in to see sci-fi and fantasy storylines. Sexual and romantic storylines are rarely tolerated for prolonged periods unless they first win over the fans hearts. The standard practice is to include vampy villaineses etc to suggest sexuality and leave it to their imaginations instead (which works for both writers and audiences it seems).

So it was the source of some friction when such explicit material started surfacing both in this and in Battlestar Galactica. It apparently lead to some rifts in the writing staff of Carnivale also, with Toni Graphia angered over the intense resistance to and eventual ditching of her propsed lesbian storyline for Clea Duvalls character.

Millennium.

So what can we infer from all this and where does Millennium fit in? Originally adhering to Carter's doctrines, the show focuses on intense horror and angst. Now, it has not been my experience in all fairness, that this is something female writers are very interested in, particulaly with the insistence on toning down melodrama etc. Yorkin and Prestwich on Carnivale for example stated they wrote their episodes purely about the characters and their relationships, going to Dan Knauf whenever they needed 'weird s***'.

And let's be fair about it. Women have legitimate causes and arguments that they want to make, aspects of characters that they wish to promote. If the series creator is either opposed to, or unintrested in exploring these themes, then it will lead to fricition.

But would (and did) Millennium benefit from such a woman's touch? Once Carter is out of the way in Season 2, Morgan and Wong show a more relaxed attitude and a greater willingness to explore character. This leads to the hiring of Maher and Reindl who along with M+W, introduce previously uncharacteristic episodes to the show (Midnight of the Century for example). With increased attention on Catherine Black and the introduction of a female hero (Lara Means), Season Two starts opening itself up to the female vote.

And with Carter's return in Season 3, the door seems to close once again. The first half of the season sees no female writers at all. Some late additions do start to swing things however, but we must consider that this may have been in a conscious effort to try and recapture a possible female vote. We simply don't know (and none of the female writers appear on the documentaries either to give us their views).

So what of it then? With the possible exception of Babylon 5 (a difficult comparison because it was largely written by one man), 1013's shows have little in the way of female authorship. Was this something that should have been addressed? What can we read into the fact that despite large numbers of episodes in both TXF and MLM, there is a large weighting towards the actions of white, straight, male people.

In my personal opinion, I think 1013 could have done more. Particularly after Millennium's Seasons 2 and 3 opened the door to female writers, it was disappointing to see the later seasons of The X-Files exclusively written by men (there is only Gillian Anderson writing after S5). 1013 were always careful to respect women by and large I think, not treating them in the appalling way CSI does for example, but neither did they try and engage with the kind of stories and moods that female writers could bring to the mix.

Again, if I have said anything to offend then it wasn't intended. Like I said, as long as they write good material, I like any writer. I don't hold with the 'this is for guys', 'this is for girls' attitude. I love the intensity of 24, I am awed by the imagery of Carnivale, I find the Willow/Tara relationship one of the most genuinely affecting pieces of romance ever filmed and I cannot ever state too much how much Frank Black means to my life.

So what do you think? Were 1013 right to return to their policy of 'never the twain shall meet' after Millennium? Could more have been done in Millennium, with Catherine or Lara's characters for example? Did the shows lack that woman's touch?

Interested to hear from you...

[Guest ZeusFaber]

I think they simply hired the best people available and interested at the time. I don't think there was any kind of agenda or policy towards gender.

I really don't think any of the above shows try to deliberately concern themselves with politics or equal opportunities when it comes to hiring staff writers. Telling a good story is what was important, not trying to consciously represent the world of men or women.

[Guest The Wicker Man]

I also believe there is no apparent gender descrimination in the staff. Maybe no one was interested or perhaps as with many jobs writters brought their friends in. I can understand your concern though. Good topic.

[HighPlainsDrifter]

i know Marjorie David-Kay Reindel-Erin Maher have written fo the the MM series

[Libby]

I believe that CC was asked at one of the XF conventions why there weren't more female writers on the show and his answer was that he hadn't seen many scripts that he liked, pretty much indicating that it was the writing that was the issue rather than the gender of the scriptwriter.

Of course, we can't know how many agents pitched female writers to 1013, so we can't gauge the male/female rejection ratio. However, I do find it interesting that there were female writers during the first few seasons, despite the show being, at least in the early days, very unusual for TV. And that does indicate that the 1013 boys were not biased against female writers. Quite why there were no others beyond season 5 is a bit of a mystery. But maybe by then, XF's reputation for being a tough show to write for put many potential writers off – male and female.

For what it's worth, this female wouldn't have wanted the stereotypical "woman's touch" whatever the gender of the writer, and in my opinion there were some sappy episodes in XF – all written by men.

Anyway, an interesting topic, MDM.

[Raven Wolf]

Moriarty,

It's good to see you back with us!!!

This is a great topic, as this sort of thing has frustrated me for years as well. I'm not saying 1013 is solely to blame for the lack of women writers. It seems to be the entire culture that has warped the minds of both men and women into thinking that these sorts of programs... (Sci Fi, and crime-drama horror) are "Guy" shows.

Here's something funny for you..... When I was writing for the Millennium - Apocalypse movie, a great deal of what I wrote was actually rejected for being "TOO DARK" or being more action-based than he wanted to try to film! (I think I said... "Too dark??? Isn't that what they called Millennium?")

Yes, I think the entire society is to blame, for the stereotypes that keep women from writing violent/action based stories, men from writing emotion filled dramas, and every writer being judged by the value of her/his work, rather than for their sex. Where is the balance in the world?

[Guest ModernDayMoriarty]

Whilst I would like to think there was no gender bias, it is hard to argue against the evidence. We would all like to believe that we live in a more tolerant and free society, but Toni Graphia's comments on her time on Carnivale for example are very disturbing.

I can understand that you want to accept the best scripts, but honestly... 200+ episodes and only 8 by women. That is a shocking statistic as far as I'm concerned. And given that there was always plenty of rumblings about the show repeating itself, was there really never any new directions, could the scripts sent in by women really have been so bad that it was worth putting in stuff like 'The Rain King' instead of them for example?

1013 consistently played it safe, but whether because they wanted to or had to, is a different story. How many episodes deal with issues of race, sexuality etc. I remember that Chip J was frustrated at being told to rewrite Millennium's 'Sense and Antisense' because it dealt too much with racial issues.

I think it's just wrong to assume that female writers are going to produce soppy or less worthy work. Some of Carnivale's best episodes were written by its female staff. The episode 'Raod to Damascus' for example, is almost entirely free of the usual apocalyptic visions and prophcies, but the character work is just so good, you want to weep. It helps ground the show in reality.

But as Raven correctly pointed out, it's a mistake to think women can't write action or darkly fantastic episodes as well as the guys. Prestwich and Yorkin also wrote 'Babylon' for Carnivale, which is a truly chilling episode with some incredible imgery and ideas.

But it doesn't usually work out that way like she said. Guys get more chances to write melodrama and warmer storylines, simply because they wield more power in the industry. So writers like ER's John Wells and Buffy's Joss Whedon can release their 'inner woman' at times. But female writers almost never get given the reins to do action episodes and horror episodes.

Again, we simply don't know what was going on with the lack of female writers at 1013. I say again though that 8 for 200 is a very damning stat to try and explain away, especially in the light of the fact that under different show runners (M+W in MLM S2 and Chip J in S3), women got far more of a shout than they ever seemed to under Carter.

Remember that S5 is when the core writing team crytallises (Carter, Gilligan, Shiban and Spotnitz). They were all big mates and write togther and did teleplays for each other. Breaking into that circle of sci-fi guys... wouldn't have been easy I'd have thought.

And also, we must consider that years and years of programming have made the biases subconscious to a large extent. The media from TV to Hollywood still operates under the Men = Good, Women = Bad policy. 'Strong' women are usually not strong at all, just objects of desire that display masculine power and strength or manipulative hellions that exemplify the biblical 'weapons' of womankind against Men (guile, seduction etc). Men are almost always given something to explain their crimes on some level, whereas women are frequently evil 'because they are just bad'.

It's only right that women be given the chance to challenge these conceptions, answer them in some way. Part of what made Carnivale and Buffy such landmark series was the greater scope, the extra avenues that having regular female writers afforded them, in a genre that is dominated by men. Take the time to watch Buffy again, and see how it changes over the years as the female writers exert their influence. It may not be to your taste all the time, but it does change what had been a pretty standard X-Files monster of the week show, into something undeniably new in the genre.

I'm not saying that male imput into the sci-fi genre should diminish of course. We do have a vested interest in and love for the genre. But diversity is the spice of life. When S3 of Millennium ended, it was opening up new kinds of stories, new possiblities with its female staff (I am unsure of Jordan Hawley's gender, but from the episode she? co-writes - 'Saturn dreaming of Mercury' - I am inclined to believe female). How can that have been a bad thing?

[Guest knightvalinn]

Okay: While I too think that the lack of ' female' input in Writing for Millennium could be construed as bias,

I'd also like to say what does it matter? I personally don't care about the gender of the person writing the story, after all, isn't it the story itself that's supposed to move us? In narrowing it down to how many episodes were writtten by female authors, I wonder what the cross industry percentage is . I think it might not be that much better. Buffy definitely had more input from female writers, and KUDOS to Joss Whedon for stepping back and letting them be done. My problem with Millennium was that Megan Gallagher was criminally underused, that was brought forth in no uncertain terms by ' The Well Worn Lock', a story about family incest and abuse and its repercussions, written by.........CHRIS CARTER. I really wish they had counterbalanced some of the eps with more on Catherine's side of things. That Episode was refreshing in the way that Henricksen almost ' mirrored' some of the scenes Gallagher played ( I.E. the early morning phone call not for Frank, him going looking for her, her risking her life to stop the father by ramming his van) Ms. Gallagher was and is a talented actress, and she and Lance definitely had a rapport on screen. However, I can also understand that if they had went this way and featured both characters equally, what kind of show would you have? Given that they were writing a series , I'm sure that , due to economics, that if they had a particular well of writers they used, they would return to them repeatedly, just because said writers already knew the format and the show's ' bible' and could deliver the goods on time, and on budget. Is this correct? Yes, and No . Yes, because it allows you to preplan the show's production schedule, Keep the writing ' in house' so that there's no arguements on set about characters actions and motivations, and the writers know how to craft episodes that will fit the format of the show's creator.

NO, because, that said writing staff becomes insular, stops being creative, writes only ' please' the creator, and dismisses any outside contributions ( male or female) and when they run out of ideas, as Chip Johennsen said, they were hamstrung. But enough of this. To me, it shouldn't matter what gender a person writing scripts is, more like what they're trying to tell you through the characters, situations, etc, and whether or not they can craft a moving story is paramount.

[Guest ModernDayMoriarty]

The question isn't really about quality. Good writers come from both genders obviously. The point is that in a genre that is so heavily dominated by men, it is refreshing to see what women can bring to the mix. Male writers can be expected on the whole to deliver episodes about Frank, his battles with darkness etc etc. Because men (writers and viewers) tend to identify most strongly (understandably) with the main male characters.

But it isn't as simple as getting women on board to flesh out the female characters (although, it is generally preferable I would have thought to have such writers about to make said characters more believeable). Female writers are likely to be coming from a different place than male writers. They can offer new ideas, bring in influences that male writers won't have had. Even in such a genre, 1013's track record is exceptionally poor on women writers.

It all leads to a charge that has often been laid against Chris Carter - that he kept playing the same tune. Without variety, people will fall away. To continue the Joss Whedon angle, I read that he stopped watching the X-Files in S5 because he couldn't stand how the characters were staying exactly the same despite all that was happenning to them (specifically Scully's lack of advancement). Carter was adamant though, that the characters being who they were was the vehicle to tell the shows stories. They told the kind of stories that he wanted to hear about, and changing the characters would change the stories that would be told.

So whilst S1 of Millennium is a tremendous accomplishment, it really only appeals if you really like that particular world view, and care about the same things Carter cares about. S2 and S3 show how you can develop the idea into a more rounded show. I (and some others, Carter among them I suspect) believe that to do so does interfere with the 'soul' of the show. But I think S3 particularly with its slowly growing numbers of female writers, showed that Millennium could be made into a bigger tent. Writers like Majorie David and Jordan Hawley were showing that women did have things they felt they could say on a show like Millennium, that it could speak to women too.

[Raven Wolf]

This is just my opinion............

........but I think you should include some of these observations on Graham's tribute site. This is all just too great for words!