Doris Schwartz Time And Again Behind The Scenes Season 3

Spoiler Alert!

Well another Season of Doris Schwartz Time And Again has come to an end. For me it has been the most interesting and creatively fulfilling season so far. It's also been the most complicated to write.

At the end of the previous season I had a story arc running through multiple episodes and I was trying to incorporate more songs. I think I achieved this far more successfully in the latest season with songs and musical numbers in every episode. All the story runs throughout the whole season and not just a few episodes with lots of little things being referenced again in other episodes. We literally end up back where season 2 ended just from a different point of view and more clues to what was happening.  

Going into this season I knew I wanted end it focussed on a different character. Doris is great but I wanted to show how the events were seen from another point of view and how they affected that character. I had already decided that it was Leroy’s point of view I wanted to explore and that he would be the mysterious hooded figure suffocating Doris at the end of season 2. So, I began to plant the seeds for that storyline in season 2 and continued in the early episodes of season 3. Hopefully it didn't seem heavy handed and people didn't guess where it was going until the end. 

I originally thought that the final story would just be one episode and I mistakenly believed it would be easy just to cut and paste all the Leroy scenes from previous episodes and place them in some kind of order. How wrong I was everything needed to be rewritten from Leroy’s point of view and placed into a past tense. There was far more scenes than I thought there were. So  these episodes actually took longer to put together than a normal one. Eventually I realised that it was too long for just one episode and had to find a way to split the story into 2 parts. Even then if I could have found a way to split them further there was probably enough material for more episodes. 

People have often written and asked me to concentrate on other characters. That’s not an easy thing to do in this type of story because essentially it is all about Doris. However I was pleased that Nicole, Jesse, Dusty and Leroy had story arcs in this season. I will look to continue that in the 4th season.

I try to used as many characters and guests stars from the original show as possible, some work better than others. For all fans of Chris Donlon, I have to apologise because I really struggle to write for that character. He has been included throughout the seasons but he’s probably had the least to do. I don’t really see that changing any time soon but the other characters I work in as much as I can. I've already played a Bruno centred episode for next year. 

I'm glad to hear that people have been enjoying the story and am happy that people have found particular parts funny, emotional, creepy etc.. or it inspires people to go back and watch the original episodes referenced throughout the stories.  Hopefully that will all continue next year.

Next year sees us move into season 4, which will be the last season for this particular story. As much as I enjoy it I don;t see that I can make it any longer without just repeating the same story lines. So it fells better to end it. 

The first couple of episodes are already written and some to the plot lines are already in place. The final episode is already written in my head and I just need to find time to commit that to paper. I may actually write that next so I can see exactly where the story needs to get to and be able to plot the rest of the episodes. Anyway we will discover what has actually happened to Doris and why and also if she gets back home to her own time again or not!