history – Page 21 – On Screenwriting and Media with Dr. Rosanne Welch

02 My Interest In Torchwood from Why Torchwood Still Matters with Dr. Rosanne Welch, San Diego Who Con 2021 [Video]

I recently presented a talk on Torchwood (Why Torchwood Still Matters) where I highlighted a few ways in which the show (airing from 2006 to 2011) came up with progressive and innovative ideas that are being used by other franchises today.

I always enjoy attending the SD (San Diego) WhoCon because the audiences are so well-informed on the Whoniverse and Whovians love Captain Jack and the crew that made this spinoff program so engaging.

RMW Rosanne Signature for Web

Transcript:

So we’ll get into Torchwood which is what we’re here to talk about. This whole – my interest in Torchwood bled into another academic friend of mine – a guy named Martin Griffin he was on my Ph.D. committee and he knew I liked both Doctor Who and Torchwood. He was actually from Scotland and he would talk about the show. He knew it as a child and so he was – thought it was interesting there was an American who knew it as well as he did. So we got along really well even though my dissertation had nothing to do with Doctor Who. It should have now that I think about it, but when the show aired – when Children of Earth aired – I had an argument with the ending and he and I had this long watercooler conversation about it and about – I don’t know – six months later he called me and he said you know I just saw a call for papers, which you get in academia a lot is people are putting together book collections about different things and they want people to write a chapter on whatever the topic is. So for instance what I did yesterday was a chapter on the new female Doctor and how it was to write her and that was a chapter in one book. Well, he called me and said this book called Torchwood Declassified was being put together and he thought the two of us could write a chapter based on my argument with the ending of Children of Earth and I was like really? We could write something? They said well there’s going to be a symposium in Cardiff but since I live in the UK, I will go and present the paper. You don’t have to be there but you’ll get credit. You’re supposed to get that you know credit on your resume and when you go to conferences. So I was like okay I’ll write the thing because that’ll be fun and then when they accepted it and they invited him to the event I was like well why shouldn’t we go to Cardiff? Why am I not taking a vacation to Cardiff If I can? I can write it a little bit off my taxes because it’s business. So in fact, we went – we presented at the thing. So this whole thing all started with a conversation.

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19 Conclusion From Women in Early TV for the American Women Writers National Museum [Video]

Many thanks to Janice Law of the American Women Writers National Museum who invited me to give a short talk on The Women of Early TV.

I enjoyed sharing the names and careers of women like Peg Lynch, Gertrude Berg, Selma Diamond, and D.C. Fontana to the members who gathered on Zoom last Wednesday morning. There are so many more I could have talked about whose names don’t appear in mainstream books about the history of television so we have to learn who they are and carry those names forward ourselves. It’s one of the missions of the Stephens College MFA in TV and Screenwriting – and has been one of my missions all my life.

Transcript:

…But we can say it took from Treva in the 60s and early 70s, it takes until 2017 for an African-American woman to win an Emmy for writing again a comedy and that’s Lena Waithe who was writing on Master of None. She won the Emmy in 2017. She was also a performer on the show so much like Molly Goldberg she was in the show. She wrote an episode for her character and that episode was so honest and so beautiful that she won the Emmy award for it. So this is where we have come to right? This is where we have come to in our world. I am happy again to say that I work for Stephens College and we are all about bringing out these stories of women. We want more people to read about women, read books like Phantom Lady, who read books like my book on the Women of Early Hollywood, and know more of the names of these important women. For my world that’s pretty much what I’m here to say this morning. So we have I see 10 minutes on the clock here, so that if we would like to have any questions or chatting that’s totally optional. I’ve unshared my screen and I’m going to remake Janice the host again so I am no longer in charge of the screen. So that Janice can go from there.

Janice: Thank you very much Dr. Welch. It was just lovely. A wonderful, wonderful, wonderful program. You do so much to illuminate women and to rescue them from oblivion. As many of our women speakers have said women in various fields, we’ll do our part.

Many thanks to Janice Law of the American Women Writers National Museum who invited me to give a short talk on The Women of Early TV.

I enjoyed sharing the names and careers of women like Peg Lynch, Gertrude Berg, Selma Diamond, and D.C. Fontana to the members who gathered on Zoom last Wednesday morning. There are so many more I could have talked about whose names don’t appear in mainstream books about the history of television so we have to learn who they are and carry those names forward ourselves. It’s one of the missions of the Stephens College MFA in TV and Screenwriting – and has been one of my missions all my life.

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Women pioneers who created, produced, or shepherded many of America’s most wildly popular, early television programs will be profiled by Dr. Rosanne Welch.

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Ranking TV Shows by Percentage of Female Writers

What wonderful work journalist Hope Lasater did for BuzzFeed in ranking 50 famous TV shows, from fewest to most episodes written by women. Episodes co-written by a woman and episodes with a woman on a “story by” credit were counted. I Love Lucy ranks 1st with 95% written by a woman – most all the work of the marvelous Madeline Pugh. Other shows that are fun to see on the list are The Mary Tyler Moore Show (since I was able to interview Treva Silverman for my book on The Monkees so we also talked about the 2 Emmy Awards she won while writing on the MTM show). See how your favorite TV shows past and present ranked (or if they made the list at all). – Rosanne

Here are 50 famous TV shows, ranked from fewest to most episodes written by women.
Episodes co-written by a woman and episodes with a woman on a “story by” credit are being counted.

Read 50 Famous TV Shows Ranked By What Percentage Of Their Episodes Were Written By Women

10 Previous Hints At A Female Doctor …from The Difficulties and Delicacies of Writing the First Female Doctor in 50+ years [Video] [Doctor Who]

It was great to be able to attend this year’s SD WhoCon in San Diego and present this lecture on “The Difficulties and Delicacies of Writing the First Female Doctor in 50+ years” in which I discuss how successful I think showrunner Christopher Chibnall was in making that transition.

It gave me a chance to talk about the creative work of a showrunner/screenwriter while also reconnecting to some friends we had met at this same convention some 3 years ago – and to talk about one of my favorite subjects – Doctor Who!

Transcript:

Even Steven toyed with it between Matt and Peter, And I love Peter Capaldi. He’s an excellent actor, but there was a moment there and he just kind of went no…not yet, right? So I think that Chris had the guts so we have to give him credit for that. And it’s important that Jody recognized it was going to be a little shocking to people and, again, love Peter but Peter was like well, I think boys are losing a role model and then somebody said, Dude, women can be role models to men. It’s ok. Right? And boys can see strong women in the world. That’s actually going to be good for them later in life. So, it was a little delicate and he took the shot.

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44 More On Your Personality Is Your Writing… from Worry and Wonder | The Courier Thirteen Podcast [Video]

Watch the entire presentation – Worry and Wonder | The Courier Thirteen Podcast | Episode # 29 here

Transcript:

Host:-Obviously, like the fantasy of the shoe but actually like, you know, incorporating it into a day that I had with my friends. That I went out with. So…

Rosanne: so that tells me all about you, right? The friendship means something to you. So think about all the TV shows built around – hello – Friends – and the importance of friends and if you look back at TV history Most earlier comics and all the way up through for a long time even in the 90’s shows are built around families and then we have kids flying farther away to college and all of that and then getting a job in another state which really wasn’t a normal thing for a long time. People might have gone away to college. They’d come home and find a job in their hometown. but now we have more of this stay away – stay farther away – so your friends become your family and learning how to make a friend–family to be a group that always want to be together like that – that was a new lifestyle and so the message of how you be a good friend – hello – that’ behind a ton of TV shows, right? So that’s the theme that somebody like you would be working with and you discover it that way.

It’s always fun to sit down with students and share stories about entering the television industry and how things work at all stages and I had that opportunity the other day.

Daniela Torres, a just-graduated (Congratulations!) student of the Columbia College Semester in LA program asked me to guest on a podcast she had recently begun hosting with another college student she met during her internship (good example of networking in action!).

We could have talked all morning (the benefit of a 3 hour class session) but we held it to about an hour and fifteen minutes or so. Hopefully, along the way I answered some questions you might have about how the business works. So often it amounts to working hard at being a better writer and gathering a group of other talented, hard-working people around you so you can all rise together.

Dr. Rosanne Welch is a television writer with credits that include Beverly Hills 90210, Picket Fences, ABCNEWS: Nightline and Touched by an Angel. She also teaches Television Writing and the Art of Film at San Jose State University.

Rosanne discusses what made shows like Beverly Hills 90210 compelling, what to do and not to do when attempting to pitch a show to broadcast or streaming, what most young writers neglect in their writing process, and much more!

The Courier Thirteen Podcast is available on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, SoundCloud, and Audible.

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01 Introduction from Why Torchwood Still Matters with Dr. Rosanne Welch, San Diego Who Con 2021 [Video]

I always enjoy attending the SD (San Diego) WhoCon because the audiences are so well-informed on the Whoniverse and Whovians love Captain Jack and the crew that made this spinoff program so engaging.

RMW Rosanne Signature for Web

Transcript:

All Right. Welcome, everybody. It’s so interesting to me because I mean, hello, Doctor Who is gorgeous and I also really love Torchwood. I mean who thought you could get a spin-off off this show and then gee that was a great idea. There was a great character and then it’s really lovely how they sort of seeded it in right and we’re gonna talk a little bit about Martha cause you know Martha belonged in this show except then she got the other gig on Law and Order which was like okay good for the actress but you belong in this world. I know you can’t really like me too. Me too. You can’t cosplay Law & Order. It’s really not that interesting. It’s just not the same exactly. So we are gonna chat about Why Torchwood Still Matters to me. This is me. You’ve seen me. It’s just a fun picture my college took of me. I did this – I’ll do this really fast. I did this yesterday. I work for a college called Stephens College. We teach an MFA in Screenwriting and I believe representation is just so important. This gets us back to Martha right. The fact that Doctor Who was thinking about representation and how well they’ve been doing that over the years. I was a TV writer before I got into academia. So these are all shows that I worked on. So I’m very interested in things from the writing standpoint not really directing or anything else. Written By Magazine – this magazine the Writer’s Guild – got a sample over there because I was able to interview Russell when he came to town to be doing Miracle Day because I knew I was the only person on the editorial board who knew the show. They’re like would you like to go talk to him and he was great because like other journalists don’t always know his work as well. I’m gonna go talk to this guy and they were discussing little details and it was very fun. Of course, I wanted to go can I write on the show but he’d already hired really cool people who we will talk about in a little bit. This is the article that was so fun to do and just to be sitting in the same room and thinking about what it was like to throw ideas around with him was very cool and there’s a bunch of books that I’ve done.

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18 Joanna Lee & Madeline Anderson From Women in Early TV for the American Women Writers National Museum [Video]

Many thanks to Janice Law of the American Women Writers National Museum who invited me to give a short talk on The Women of Early TV.

Transcript:

Then we have to think about who’s getting recognized. In this case, Joanna Lee – in the early mid-1970s – is the first female to win her Emmy Award for a drama right? We have Treva winning for a comedy. Just about eight years later, Joanna Lee is going to win for the Thanksgiving episode of The Waltons. She had been an actress in the 40s and had sadly a car accident which made it difficult for her to perform and be on set for long hours. So she turned to writing. She became a television writer working on all of these many shows right? All the way through and it’s interesting to see how she went from comedies – we always think girls have to be funny first – and then she started to do dramas right? The Mod Squad and then moved into Dynasty but she got her Emmy award for The Waltons. So this is a huge moment – again a female winning this award on her own. That’s a big deal. Outside of that are there women of color in early television. Not as many as we would like as is always the case however Madeleine Anderson came up through the news business right? She started doing a black journal out of Chicago originally and then she got jobs on Sesame Street. So through the PBS network, she started working for them doing children’s programming and The Electric Company. Always things with an educational bent. She’s the first African-American woman who ever produced a nationally aired television series, also on PBS, and also an educational series. So Madeleine Anderson’s someone whose name does not appear in most of our history books. That’s always been a problem for me.

Many thanks to Janice Law of the American Women Writers National Museum who invited me to give a short talk on The Women of Early TV.

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Women pioneers who created, produced, or shepherded many of America’s most wildly popular, early television programs will be profiled by Dr. Rosanne Welch.

Get your copy today!

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09 In TV, The Showrunner is in Charge…from The Difficulties and Delicacies of Writing the First Female Doctor in 50+ years [Video] [Doctor Who]

Transcript:

So I think Chibnall was set up to do this. So when I think about the job of a head writer in the states we call that a showrunner and they’re using that term a little bit in England not so much but a little they’re sort of getting into that. So the showrunner’s job is everything. You’re really truly in television the writer is in charge. You’re producing the whole thing. In film, a director comes in after a script has been bought. They can hire other writers. They can make changes. By the time it’s done sometimes you don’t even recognize it as your own work. In tv – you know if you know about Shonda Rhimes and the other big showrunners – they’re in charge all the way through and it’s the directors who come and go episode to episode. So, in this case, I’m looking at him as a showrunner and what he provided to the show. In the very beginning of course he’s the first guy that had the guts to change the character into a female. It had been hinted at, chatted about since Tom Baker’s day. We knew that it could happen. We heard about other Time Lords who changed genders. Nobody quite had the guts to do it.

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43 Your Personality Is Your Writing… from Worry and Wonder | The Courier Thirteen Podcast [Video]

Watch the entire presentation – Worry and Wonder | The Courier Thirteen Podcast | Episode # 29 here

Transcript:

Host: You put your personality into your own writing as well.

Rosanne: Exactly you can only really tell the world from your perspective and that’s the only thing you have different. You can learn all the structure and all the rules about writing. You can be really good with dialogue and all those things. The only thing that makes you different is you have a way that you look at the world and you’re going — your characters are going to see the world that way and that’s interesting. That’s what we haven’t seen yet right? That’s what you can bring to the table and I think that really — the shoe thing. That’s the trick of it. Everyone thinks what am I writing about my shoes but really you’re telling me the story of who you are.

Host: So is the exercise you literally describing your shoes and like what kind of person would wear such a shoe like —

Rosanne: You don’t want too tight a prompt, It’s literally telling me the story of your shoes. Some people will tell it from the point of view of the shoes — as if they picked the person. Some people will talk about the shoes because — I had a guy in a different class once. He was wearing a pair of shoes — I forget the style even now — but they were the same style his father had worn and his father left when he was like 10 and he realized he was still trying to become the person that he didn’t know and that’s where he picked those shoes from. So we learned all about the baggage he’s carrying right and the message he’s really got for the world is being a father is a really important job don’t screw it up right? I want people to really think about the obligation they’ve made when they have a kid. So he was all wrapped up in that as a theme in the body of work that he put together. Yeah, you never know. Some people tell — make it funny and they go so you’re the comic right? Everything’s funny to you, Even shoes can be funny because your perspective is looking at the world with that warped funny sense of humor. You just accidentally your personality comes out in however you write it.

It’s always fun to sit down with students and share stories about entering the television industry and how things work at all stages and I had that opportunity the other day.

The Courier Thirteen Podcast is available on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, SoundCloud, and Audible.

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34 Conclusion from Concord Days: Margaret Fuller in Italy [Video]

In researching and writing my book on Giuseppe and Anita Garibaldi and the unification of Italy (A Man Of Action Saving Liberty: A Novel Based On The Life Of Giuseppe Garibaldi) I re-discovered the first American female war correspondent – Margaret Fuller — who I had first met in a college course on the Transcendentalists. I was once again fascinated by a life lived purposefully.

Then I found Tammy Rose’s podcast on the Transcendentalists – Concord Days – and was delighted when she asked me to guest for a discussion of Fuller’s work in Italy as both a journalist – and a nurse. — Rosanne

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Concord Days sends love to Margaret Fuller on the anniversary of her death in 1850.

The conversation focuses on Margaret’s exciting days in ITALY!

Dr. Rosanne Welch takes us through her adventures and enthusiastically reminds us what she was like when she was living her best life!

Transcript:

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