Scene 3.05 - A Bad Dream
EST: INT. Eliza, Ensign Asimov’s Quarters
LS: EXT. Eliza, bobbing in water, upside down.
CUT TO:
INT: The SET is intentionally built upside-down.
MS: Inside the low-ceilinged room is a man, unconscious. Piles of laundry and replicator-made-fast-food trash litters the room in disarray.
(No, the mess is not so much from the crash, it’s because it’s ASIMOV’S quarters. ASIMOV is partially seen under a pile of laundry and soft things. We don’t see his head, but we know it’s him from the stuff in the room, like the Donny-and-Marie-Osmond dolls and the plastic model of a 1979 Corvette and the Farrah-Fawcett-on-a-towel poster hung respectably near an immaculate, original STAR WARS: Episode IV: A New Hope poster framed above a lit, plexiglass cabinet containing a complete, action-figure collection with all the memorabilia and toys from the 1977 Star Wars movie grandly displayed across an entire wall of the room, although now in disarray. Bean bags, bead dividers, lava lamps, toys and other 1970s memorabilia cover the rest of the domicile. We hear ASIMOV moaning under the pile of polyester.)
SOUND: Light harp, echo chamber
ASIMOV FLASHBACK MONTAGE
ECU: ASIMOV’S closed eyes, crossed lower brow, pursed lips; a sleeve of a fringed, brown, imitation-leather jacket drapes across his forehead.
ECU: VERNE 1
VERNE 1
Eliminate! Eliminate!
(ASIMOV is obviously having a bad dream on Tellusia, cuz he sure ain’t psychic. His arm moves over his eyes and only by his wincing and tossing do we know how disturbing it is to him for him to not be able to wake up. Dream-dissolve to scene where he bonks his head against the force field in the prison cell seen in THC 7734. Use footage shot from different angles than seen before, but use shots from the same take.)
WELLS
Okay, Isaac, that’s enough.
ASIMOV
It's ging tee breek sear.
EDIT HERE
VERNE
No more banging your head against that force-field, Ensign, and that’s an order.
ASIMOV
Bit Kiptin, het-binging is whit E do beast!
EDIT HERE
VERNE
...In the future, if I find there’s one nick on your scalp forward of your coronal suture, I’ll slap your zygomatic arch so far into your mastoid process that you will beg me for a lobotomy. Is that understood?
DREAM-DISSOLVE TO:
(In another scene, ASIMOV purposefully bonks his head against the force shield again to provoke the replicated crewmen. As before, use shots created from different angles, yet shot during the same take.)
VERNE
Ensign, you bruise one more cell in your prosencephalonic vesicle, I’ll take this lighter and make a fissure in your frontal squama so deep that you’ll beg me to pull it out from the other end. You got me?
LOSE ECHO CHAMBER
CUT TO: Groaning, tossing ASIMOV under pile of laundry.
(Do not show his forehead. Dissolve to new scene, in cargo bay of ship before it crashed on Tellusia. Alarms are sounding, men are getting in their coffins.)
SIMAK
Isaac, laddie, this way!
ASIMOV
Ivy ketchup vith user.
SIMAK
Where are you going, lad?
ASIMOV
The kiffin micks sich-a miss of me hear. E needz to get-sa me lucky comb!
(We get a neat tour of the ship as we follow a running ASIMOV, who, after a hallway turn or two slows to a walk, stops, and catches his breath with a pant or two, or three, or more-spaced-throughout the scene and he walks the rest of the way. He maybe jogged fifty yards and only really ran the first ten. ASIMOV stops, leans on a wall, pants, presses on. We slowly follow him down the tail section to his quarters. The computer is heard over the intercom. He reaches his quarters and fishes a large, 1970s, plastic, pocket-comb from his vanity drawer.)
FEMALE COMPUTER
Primary logic arrays re-established. Performing next function in command que. Attention: Self-destruct sequence activated. Blackstar coil circuits activated. Godspeed gentlemen, may you find more hope, guidance and acceptance in the afterlife. Dark matter implosion will commence in seven, six, five, four, three, two, one...
ASIMOV
Got it! My lucky comb!
(The ship crashes and ASIMOV is thrown across the room, hitting face-first against the wall. Trash follows and covers him. The room then inverts and he falls to the ceiling where gravity brings the formerly zero-g-compacted block of laundry and stuff shoved-under his bunk atop of him.)
FTB
POV: ASIMOV under laundry pile, repeat of scene open
FADE IN
VERNE 1
Eliminate! Eliminate!
DISSOLVE
POV: ASIMOV, feeling quite bleary
(Voice-over the following dialogue while, from ASIMOV’S perspective, we sit up, see the lucky comb, we pocket it, we climb over the pile of toys and stuff and we crawl to the full-length mirror on the floor, far below the bunk, bolted to the ceiling [now the floor]. We fall and see our hands and knees push aside trash and we finally look into the mirror. ASIMOV had a mirror over his bed, next to a now-defunct, disco ball. Shoot and edit carefully so we actually and seamlessly believe we are ASIMOV as we look into the mirror.)
ECHO CHAMBER
VERNE V.O.
No more banging your head against that force-field... if I find there’s one nick... you will beg me for a lobotomy... you bruise one more cell in your prosencephalonic vesicle, I’ll take this lighter and make a fissure in your frontal squama so deep that you’ll beg me to pull it out from the other end... No more banging your head... if I find there’s one nick... you’ll beg me to pull it out from the other end... one nick... the other end... bruise one more cell... the other end... the other end... you’ll beg me... the other end...
VERNE 1 V.O.
Eliminate! Eliminate!
POV: ASIMOV
POV: REVERSE ANGLE: Mirror on floor, ASIMOV above on hands and knees, looking at us.
(ASIMOV has a perfectly round, swollen, red, black-and-purple bruise high on his forehead, sustained from the crash. A single drop of blood has dripped from the bottom of the bruise and has stopped its trail to coagulate squarely between ASIMOV’S eyes. ASIMOV, wide-eyed and panicked, wipes some of the blood away and tests the tenderness of the bruise. It’s plenty sensitive, alright. For ASIMOV, dying in the crash would have been more merciful. For the young ensign, it is seemingly the end of the world.)
ASIMOV
Oh no! No! Ze Kiptin’s ging tee keel me!!!
FTB