Westeros Blog: Jane Espenson - Game of Thrones Writer

[Westeros]

The big news today is that Jane Espenson—a writer best known, perhaps, for her work on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, but also with significant writing and producing credits on Battlestar Galactica and Caprica—will be joining HBO’s Game of Thrones as a freelancer writing the sixth episode. The news was broken by Maureen Ryan of the Chicago Tribune.

In the course of it, she also confirmed previous reports that Bryan Cogman would write the fourth episode and that George R.R. Martin would write an episode in the series. She added an additional piece of new(ish) information, as well: Benioff and Weiss will write the remainder of the episodes in the ten-episode season. While the original plan seems to have been Benioff and Weiss to write all the episodes but the one GRRM wrote, when the news of Cogman’s writing chores were announced this cast into doubt just how many more scripts they would personally pen. Now we know.

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[DizoakiusMaximus]

This is really great news!

Jane has done some of the best TV writing I've ever had the privilege to enjoy, and I'm ecstatic that she's going to be involved with this project.

[Ninepenny]

This is really great news!

Jane has done some of the best TV writing I've ever had the privilege to enjoy, and I'm ecstatic that she's going to be involved with this project.

I agree, some of the best episodes of Buffy were written by Jane, and she's done a stellar job on various other shows. She's probably my favourite TV script writer behind Joss Whedon and has shown she can be more serious if needed with her work on BSG and Caprica.

[The Pita]

I actually think that Joss Whedon shows aren't as good when they're scripted by Joss Whedon. I like Maurissa Tancharoen/Jed Whedon more, as well as Tim Minear. the name Jane Espenson seems familiar, but I can't put my finger on where exactly I heard it before, anyhoo.

[Wouter]

I didn't like her writing in BSG at all - especially not the final "webisode" series before S4.5, which made no sense plotwise (characters had no decent motivation for what they were doing) and were inconsistent in characterisation with the rest of the series. I hope that she will keep relatively rigid to GRRM's work and not change characters on-the-fly like BSG did, also in some of her episodes, late in its run.

[Ser Greguh]

Don't lynch me if I'm wrong, but I believe she is on the commentary track on the DVD box set for Firefly on the episode Shindig, which she wrote.

[The Pita]

Shindig is the most average episode of Firefly I saw. All of them were good, but that episode is squarely in the middle of their quality range (Best is either "Jaynestown" or "Our Mrs Reynolds", worst is "Heart of Gold" and "The Message")

EDIT - For those of you with a life, Shindig is the episode where Mal duels a rich guy because he called Inara a whore. It features the awesome line "Mercy is the mark of a great man. *stab* I'm just a good man. *stab* I'm alright."

[Seanathin]

I didn't like her writing in BSG at all - especially not the final "webisode" series before S4.5, which made no sense plotwise (characters had no decent motivation for what they were doing) and were inconsistent in characterisation with the rest of the series. I hope that she will keep relatively rigid to GRRM's work and not change characters on-the-fly like BSG did, also in some of her episodes, late in its run.

Amen Deadlock managed to replace Black market as the worst BSG episode, and none of her others were really that much better. It just feel that she would make things a bit to kitschy and Weddenesq, which doesn't work outside of his shows.

[Humble Asskicker]

For those of you with a life, Shindig is the episode where Mal duels a rich guy because he called Inara a whore. It features the awesome line "Mercy is the mark of a great man. *stab* I'm just a good man. *stab* I'm alright."

That was a great episode, and that's one of my favorite Firefly quotes ever (although I believe it was attributed to Whedon).

That said, Whedon humor has no place at all in Game. In fact, any sort of a Buffy/Firefly tone wouldn't mesh well at all.

Let's hope she can adapt.

Really, though, if Dan and David are confident in this selection, they probably are better judges than any one of us. The pilot script has won my confidence enough that I'm of the wait and see attitude.

[Enteril]

I'm not a big Firefly fan, but I'm a huge Battlestar Galactica fan and this worries me because Espenson's episodes there were uniformly the weakest and worst.

[Lord Varys]

Actually, Espenson even succeeded in writing the worst Buffy episodes ever, as well. At least for my taste her debut in the 5th season with that stupid troll hammer episode, and gay Willow in a healthy relationship getting at odds with Anya over Xander was (and is) totally unwatchable.

The fact that Buffy was a fun show still doesn't mean you can ignore how the characters work.

[Werthead]

A fuller list of Espenson's credits:

She co-created Warehouse 13 and wrote the first episode.

She wrote two episodes of Dollhouse, Haunted and the well-received Briar Rose.

She wrote the Face of the Enemy webisodes for BSG which answered several important questions. However, she also wrote The Plan, which was extremely weak. However, she did give Cavil several of his best-ever lines and scenes.

She wrote The Passage (good), Dirty Hands (okay), Escape Velocity (meh), The Hub (good) and Deadlock (utter shit).

She wrote Shindig for Firefly (excellent).

She wrote Room w/a Vu (decent, introduction of the Phantom Dennis) and Guise Will Be Guise (awesome, the one where Wesley has to impersonate Angel) for Angel.

For Buffy she wrote Band Candy (classic), Gingerbread (okay), Earshot (very good), The Harsh Light of Day (okay), Pangs (meh), Doomed (decent), A New Man (excellent), Superstar (brilliance incarnate), The Replacement (meh), Triangle (meh), Checkpoint (meh), I Was Made to Love You (decent, especially in the sub-par fifth season), Intervention (meh), After Life, Flooded and Life Serial (all three a bit meh, co-written during a period of rushed confusion on S6 whilst Whedon was prepping Firefly), Doublemeat Palace (bad), Same Time Same Place (okay), Conversations with Dead People (classic), Sleeper (meh), First Date (good), Storyteller (very good) and End of Days (decent).

She also wrote Accession, one of the cleverer Emissary-centric episodes of Deep Space Nine and a vital one in the development of Sisko (it's the one where a 'second Emissary' arrives, Sisko gives up his position and then realises how much it means to him and finally accepts his destiny).

Overall: She's a good writer. She's had her share of subpar episodes, but it should be noted that in both BSG and Buffy the bulk of these lower-quality episodes came during periods of creative issues on both shows when they both had fallow periods.

But if people are going to bring up Doublemeat Palace they should at least be honest and bring up Superstar, Conversations with Dead People and Band Candy as well, all of them classic episodes. And of the six episodes she actually wrote for BSG, two were quite bad and one was dull but the other three were decent.

[The Pita]

She wrote Briar Rose... and The Plan...

I may forgive her.

[Wouter]

She wrote the Face of the Enemy webisodes for BSG which answered several important questions. However, she also wrote The Plan, which was extremely weak. However, she did give Cavil several of his best-ever lines and scenes.

"Face of the enemy" is the webisode series I was referring to earlier. It was a disaster, IMO. Piss-poor characterisation, characters acting without any motivation. Not any that would make sense, even remotely. Granted, part of the blame must go on Ron Moore, also for "The Plan". Hard to write something good when there never was a plan, nor even a vague idea of where the series was going. It's too much to ask to write all around that in a retcon attempt of such magnitude as "The plan" was.

[Brude]

Have to disagree on a few Buffy points: "Double Meat Palace" was a good episode of Buffy in what was otherwise probably my least favorite season of the show (except "Once More With Feeling," of course). I especially liked the Double Meat Palace jingle:

Get the double treat

that's so double sweet

oh it's hard to beat

when the meat meets the meat

Also, I think Season 5 was very good, but I guess it all depends on if you like Glory or not; I did. To me it was Season 6 and the second half of Season 4 (except "Hush") that were the real problems.