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"Behind the Script of In Adventu Dominae" by Jason Walsh
I came into the virtual season in the unique position of an outsider. I wasn't part of the writing staff and desperately wanted to be. I had missed the original call for writers. If I'm anything, it's persistent. I kept emailing Dan and finally I got a hopeful response. Apparently there were going to be vacancies. He asked me to send him some story ideas. I sent him about a half dozen and strangely he picked the one I developed the least and put down at the last minute. The germ of the story was simply: "Fearing for his daughter, James Hollis contacts Frank Black for help." That's all.
When I began to flesh it out I began seeing it as a conclusion to the gaping hole in the season three subplot of Emma's father. Months went by (I began in July and it was now October) and I hadn't finished the script. I had no time to work on it. Dan had completely forgotten about it. It didn't look like I was going to get a shot. I decided I had come this far, why not finish. Then, I get a slightly frantic email from Matt saying that the planned Emma/James Hollis Christmas episode would not be coming and they needed mine. Well, many changes had been made. In the many months I spent slowly chiseling away at the script the season had progressed quite a ways away from what I had originally wrote. Some major rewrites were necessary. I had originally wrote it as a standalone to close the James Hollis plot thread (and unlike Carter I closed it for certain) but was now going to be a key mythology piece.
I received the notes that Bunny Williams had sketched for the original story. Eventually, the only things that made it into my script was Emma's visions of her little sister and the title, "In Adventu Dominae." Another major thing that had to be added was Project Aounabara. Originally I had James Hollis as a research scientist working on genetic research that Mabius's faction took notice of and applied to their own ends. Other things added include an explanation for the palm trees and a connection between Emma's sister, Cass Doyle (from "Darwin's Eye"), and Lucas Barr (from "Via Dolorosa" and "Goodbye to All That").
My script was quite heavily edited. Matt and I made a lot of changes in the days before it aired. One rewrite that had to be made was the removal of McGreevey. He had died in the previous episode and that had to be addressed as well as Emma's new position as Assistant Director. Some of the edits I wasn't happy with. Some of the last minute changes caused some unfortunate awkward dialogue. The primary example of this is the scene between Frank and James Hollis, also the scene between Frank and Emma in the cafe. For the most part the changes improved it (the teaser was much better than the original) but at the expense of some good but non-critical scenes.
TRIVIA:
- The original title of the spec script was "Where the Heart Is" but it was changed to Bunny William's title "In Adventu Dominae" which translates to "coming of the lord." Since the episode took place during the Advent season, Responsorial Psalm were spread throughout.
- There was a scene wherein Emma burst into Millennium Group conference room and accused the Elder of murdering her father. Matt didn't think Emma would know their location and he eliminated the scene entirely. He also rewrote the ending so it took place at an abandoned warehouse instead of the Group headquarters.
- The address of the warehouse, 1616 Pandora Ave, is a reference to the X-Files first season finale "The Erlenmeyer Flask," in which Mulder discovers a cloning operation at that address.
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