Doris Schwartz Time and Again Season 2 Ep 10 Commentary

The Title "All Gone But The Memories" comes from the Season 1 song "It's Gonna Be A Long Night" and refers to Doris losing Danny and only having her memories of him left. Also this episode has lots of references to episodes of the TV series which are all memories to us even though the show has been over for years.

At the time of writing my creative juices were really flowing. I'd planned this second season to be 10 episodes but had already added one extra episode when I stretched "If Tomorrow Never Comes" to two parts. My original intention was to move Doris in time to end the season but ideas were flying around in my head and when I came up with the idea of Doris now having to kill Nicole to correct the time line and avoid lots of horrible things happening to other people I knew I had to do it and add another episode.

The original plan was that even though I'd killed Danny off in 1987 he would still be there for events prior to that so I would still be able to use him even though the reader might have thought that was the end of him. However as I worked out how to plot things to accommodate the new ideas I knew I wanted a scene to take place between Doris and Danny where she tried to apologise. Danny's cancer story from season 3 of the original series seemed perfect and here's Doris trying to apologise to him and make him understand something that hadn't happened to him yet when she had been so instrumental in making him fight the cancer. It all seemed to add to her guilt perfectly, that and Gina Amatullo's reaction.

Personally I can't imagine how someone in real life could cope with that amount of guilt and I have to say I felt a little worried for Doris as a character that all this guilt would throw her over the edge.

Most of the episode is filled with placing the other Fame characters into hospital situations from the different time lines. It's amazing when you sit down and start to think about it how many times the show put the characters into hospital situations and these made it really easy for me to work in different people.

I have to say I loved the ending to this episode. I don't know how Mrs Berg knew all the things she was telling Doris about how Nicole living would affect peoples futures, but I did know I had no intention of trying to explain it. So just wallowed in cranking up the drama!

For a moment Doris has some hope that she has a way out of all the guilt she is feeling only for that hope to be dashed, once again, when she discovers what she has to do.

One thing I didn't realise at the time was how I ended the last few episodes with Doris saying "Oh my God...." as she learns the shocking events that are happening around her. Had I realised I might have changed at least one of them but hey it's too late now.