Doris Schwartz Time and Again Season 1 Ep 4 Commentary

The title "Lost In Yesterday" comes from the season 4 song "Don't Throw Away Your Dreams" and refers to how lost Doris is feeling in the past. It started out quite fun but suddenly she is having to deal with all these difficult emotions and the confusion over what is happening to her. She is in the past to escape from her unhappiness but actually she is having to confront it head on. 

Initially disappointed that her Mother is no longer there, the idea of being able to phone her means she finally gets to say what she feels she needs to say to her mother. The fact it is out of context for her mother makes no difference. It actually comes as a weight off Doris' mind that after 9 years she had finally got her opportunity.

I also wanted to highlight to the reader that I wasn't just going to set up a situation in an episode then have Doris move in time leaving the previous events unresolved, like I had when Doris is caught by Mrs Berg at the end of episode 2. Some would be resolved others would be stored for future episodes.

The move in time again highlights how little control she has over her current situation and adds to her feeling lost. 

Initially when I wrote the Mrs Berg Scenes in this and previous episodes I had no idea how important Mrs Berg would become to the story. I thought it would be a way of adding a little mystery so the scene here is just to add to that with no intention of it going anywhere else.

From the beginning I wanted to include as many of the characters as possible. The Leroy scene at the start of this episode with him noticing Doris was again throwaway and I had no intention of it coming to anything. Later on I was glad I included it as I would expand Leroy's story in future episodes. 

The one character I struggle to write is Chris. Here he has a nice little scene but in future episodes he becomes the hardest character to write so for the most part I didn't bother as other characters seemed to have plenty more potential.

The reference to the last time Doris was in the Make up room when she graduated was obviously something we never saw in an episode. However my very first attempt at fan fiction was to write a story showing Doris and Leroy graduating from the school so I decided to stick with that continuity and reference it.Doris' disguise means she can start to interact with the other characters more which I realised was going to be essential to take the story forward.

We then had the mysterious voice calling her name. Again at the time of writing I wasn't sure what it would be. I just felt it indicated that her future may be bleeding through to the past. In future episodes I would actually have characters calling her in exactly the same way so  any of them could be what she is hearing here. Maybe she is hearing it because it is an amalgamation of all the times it is used.

Read "Lost In Yesterday"