Paul Ruditis's Blog

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With the Klingon Khristmas holiday fast approaching, I’d like to share one of my favorite Khristmas carols…

Happy Holidays, everyone!

Frosty the Snowgon was a jolly, warrior soul

With a corncob pipe and D’k tahg nose and two eyes of burning coal.

Frosty the Snowgon is a legend they all say.

He was made of snow but the children know how he came to life one day.  

There must have been a parasite in that old bat’leth they found.

For when they placed it in his hands he attacked all those around.

Frosty the Snowgon, mercenary as can be.

And the children say he could fight all day just the same as you and me.

Thumpity-thump-thump! Thumpity-thump-thump!

Look at Frosty go!

Thumpity-thump-thump! Thumpity-thump-thump!

He throws a mean deathblow!

Frosty the Snowgon knew a fight was on the way.

So he said, “Let’s run and we’ll have some fun. A good day to die, today.”

Down to the village with the bat’leth in his hand.

Running here and there, searching everywhere for an enemy command.

He led them through the streets of town right to a Romulan.

And he only paused a moment to attack the rival clan.

Frosty the Snowgon met a tragic end that day.

But he had some fun, died with honor, son. And that’s the warrior’s way.

Thumpity-thump-thump! Thumpity-thump-thump!

Look at Frosty go!

Thumpity-thump-thump! Thumpity-thump-thump!

Over the hills of Sto…Vo-Kor!

A Very Klingon Khristmas recounts, in rhyming verse, the treasured children’s story of the birth of revered warrior Kahless and celebrates the rich Klingon Christmas traditions originating on Qo’noS and spreading across the Star Trek universe.

Arriving in time for the holidays!

By happy accident, my writing career has been dominated by witchcraft. With Charmed, Sabrina, The Teenage Witch, and a little bit of Buffy/Angel, I have written more about witches than any other topic. As a result, I have learned some important lessons on writing about the many, varied forms of magic that witches can call upon. But with all this power at my characters’ fingertips, none of their abilities are as interesting to me as what they can’t do.

But first, a disclaimer: I’m talking about writing for TV witches, not the Wiccan religion or anything regarding the spiritual aspects of witchcraft … although the concept of limitations on power is a universal subject.

Writing magic in Charmed is a delicate balance, especially since we all agree that the series is first and foremost about the family, not the magic. The biggest challenge comes in writing for “the most powerful witches the world has ever known” or “to have ever walked the earth” or whatever the proper phrase is.

Even with the most powerful witches ever, there have to be limits to their powers. They can’t just do anything the writer wants, otherwise there would be no drama. If your heroines become all powerful, then your villains have to grow exponentially as well. Their fight will then build to a point where the story becomes all about magic and power instead of the relationships of the characters.

The best part of writing for The Charmed Ones is that the rules were so clearly established in the beginning. Each sister has one primary ability. That ability will grow as they get older. They can do traditional spells and basic magic, but it’s their primary power that is the cornerstone of their strength. (Oh, and they can’t use magic for personal gain. We’ll get to that lousy rule in a second.)

The show didn’t always follow those rules, but I’ve done my best to stay within the parameters in the books and comic books that I’ve written. That’s why when people ask me about The Charmed Ones getting “new” powers I generally refer to an “evolution” of power. Paige’s orb shield is a more focused form of her telekinesis (or telekinetic orbing as many of you call it). The shield defensively—and in some cases, offensively—moves objects away from her. Piper can now manipulate molecules in a variety of ways, which she’s only starting to explore. And Phoebe … well, Phoebe’s always been a little different. I’m just working with what we’ve been given.

I like this rule about a primary power. It makes the writing more interesting for me and it generally makes the Charmed story more engaging. The magic of Charmed isn’t about a Charmed One learning how to propel a giant orb bubble through the air. The magic of Charmed is about three sisters coming together to: 1) create that orb, 2) lift it into the air, and 3) propel it across the room. Emphasis: together. And to join their powers in that unique way just before their other sister: 4) comes back to entirely throw off that new balance of power.

As for the personal gain clause, it’s just so arbitrary. Anytime The Charmed Ones use magic, there’s some kind of personal gain involved. Even if it’s just to protect themselves. If Piper freezes a bullet about to kill her, that’s personal gain. If Paige uses a glamour to hide her identity for whatever reason, that’s also personal gain. Yes, we saw what happened when The Charmed Ones used their magic to punish someone who refused to clean up after his dog, but what if they just used it to clean up the mess after the dog owner left? Would that have been misusing their abilities? It’s really a matter of degrees. As long as they don’t do anything egregiously selfish, I prefer to go the Pirates of the Caribbean route and consider the personal gain rule as more of a guideline. But it is a necessary guideline because if they just did whatever they wanted it would lead to chaos … as a witch on another popular series learned. We’ll get to her in a moment…

But before we do… Sabrina, The Teenage Witch had similar rules about the limitation of power that perfectly fit in with a sitcom about the challenges of the teen years. Sabrina was just learning to use her powers, so she was going to make a lot of mistakes along the way and learn a lot of lessons. It was her ingenuity once she learned her lesson that usually won the day for her, not simply her access to magic. But no matter how strong she got, she was rarely able to use that power to make herself the one thing that most teens on TV want to be: Popular.

The absolute brilliance of this series was in how it established the rules of a teenage witch. Primary among those rules was that she couldn’t create name brand items. Her Rollerblades were Rollerblahs, for instance. She would never be able to use her magic to impress her friends by coming to school decked out in the latest trends. That idea carried through every spell she cast. Magic wasn’t there to make her life easier. In fact, it often complicated things … usually in humorous ways.

The Fairy Godmother of all TV witches has to be Samantha Stevens from Bewitched. I’m sure she wasn’t the first witch on TV, but she was the most mainstream. Samantha had very few magical limits on her powers. She really could do almost anything if she set her mind to it. Her limitations came from her human husband and his refusal for her to ever use her magic. Emphasis: ever. If Bewitched were on the air today, it would be a much darker show since it basically depicts a marriage based on a horribly oppressive husband and a wife forced to lie about her life on almost a daily basis. But let’s leave that deeper discussion for another time.

What’s interesting about Bewitched is that the entire concept of the show was based on that single limitation to Samantha’s power. How it affected her relationship with her husband. With her mother and the rest of her family. With her husband’s human coworkers and their neighbors. It is also the key component in another limitation on most TV witches: having to keep the magic a secret. That in itself requires a different kind of balance between who knows the secret and how long other characters can stay in the dark. (A concept The Vampire Diaries has turned upside down in its breakneck pacing in how the residents of Mystic Falls have come to know the truth about their neighbors.)

What happens when those limitations are completely ignored? We saw that answer in one of my other favorite TV witches: Willow Rosenberg. When Willow became all powerful on Buffy, The Vampire Slayer she had to go evil and be taken down. That’s just what happens when a witch loses her limitations. She was already bringing people back from the dead. What could stop her after that? If she remained good with all that power, the show would have become Willow, The Everything Slayer.

By making her Dark Willow and then redeeming her, she became self-policing in her magic. She was too concerned with getting that taste of evil again that she only tapped into the most powerful magic when it was absolutely necessary. By making her limits self-imposed after we saw the consequences of them going out of control, the writers added great depth to an already fascinating television character.

This rule about limiting power goes beyond TV witches, of course. It’s inherently the same problem you run into with characters like the Greek Gods, Dumbledore, Yoda, and Superman. When you’ve got an all powerful being, you need something to weaken that character or else every story will be so uneven there is no drama.

With Superman, we have kryptonite. But if that little green rock were to show up in every story, Superman would not have lasted as an icon for as long as he has. There would be no drama. That’s why Lex Luthor, when used correctly, is such a fascinating villain. His superior intellect is his weapon. So that even when a being is all powerful in one way, it requires other powerful characters to present a challenge in different ways. If a hero or heroine doesn’t have weaknesses for the villain to exploit, then what’s the point of creating a story about them in the first place?

Interestingly enough, Superman does have another weakness besides kryptonite. He is powerless against magic.

Now that the traditional TV season has come to an end, people are already talking about The Emmys and what shows should be nominated as the best of the best. I find that discussion a bit premature since most of us aren’t Emmy voters, but these “best of” lists have inspired me to compile my own list of favorite shows currently on television … or currently on hiatus.

Anyone can make a list of the highest quality shows currently airing, but I’m focusing on my personal best list. These are the shows I can’t miss. The ones I have to watch as soon as they air. Sure, there are many quality shows here, but that’s not the criteria for this list. What really matters is how “must see” they are to me.

10. Grey’s Anatomy I almost gave up on Grey’s Anatomy during the whole George and Izzie affair, but I stuck it out and am glad I did. The show has had a creative resurgence in the past couple years providing some of the best performances on television. And, yes, I’m even talking about the musical episode. But I love a good musical episode … or even a bad musical episode. Sometimes you just have to have some fun. The season finale plane crash was so perfectly over the top, that I’m hoping the next season opens with the stranded characters discussing which one of them they will eat first if their situation turns truly desperate. I’m voting for a McDreamy McMuffin.

9. Smash / Glee Okay, I’m cheating, but I’ve got to double up here or else I’ll never complete this list for being plagued with indecision.

Smash is the hit and miss show of the season. When it worked, it sang. When it didn’t, it put the bomb in Bombshell. With a new showrunner and several cast departures for next season I have a lot of hope for the show to soar… so long as Julia’s upset stomach from the finale is attributed to nerves and never ever mentioned again.

Why do I still watch Glee? The answer is simple: The moments of brilliance are worth slogging through whatever it takes to get to them.

8. Pretty Little Liars This show is the perfect example of how to produce a mystery that never solves the mystery. It has so many twists and turns, questions, answers, and red herrings that it doesn’t matter (to me) that the main questions the pilot haven’t been fully answered even with the (pseudo) reveal of A. I know this annoys some people, but the fact that the show transcends the mystery at its core is something a certain other mystery show could learn a thing or two from. The mystery is important, but it’s the character relationships and personal dramas that make the show.

7. Downton Abbey It may have gotten a little soapier this season but it’s still one of the most fascinating shows on television. Historical shows seem to be popping up on TV more and more these days with varying degrees of success. This one works for me because it is so steeped in the era in which it takes place. The time period is as important a character as the Dowager—to say nothing of how the setting introduced the mainstream public to the word “Dowager.” The more restrictive, oh-so-proper age leaves the audience wanting for a lingering glance, a clandestine kiss, or even a rare, scandalous coupling that ends in death. These are the benefits of a world that can turn a character like Mr. Bates into a sex symbol.

6. Hart of Dixie It was the surprise gem of the season for me. And not just for shirtless Wade. Or dripping wet Wade either. The quirky residents of this little wannabe Southern Star’s Hollow know how to be engaging without annoying. All the people that dismiss the idea of Rachel Bilson playing a doctor in her little short shorts completely misunderstand the audience for this show. And, quite frankly, are a little ignorant of the fact that a person’s appearance and how they present themselves have nothing to do with their abilities. Unless we’re talking about a wet, shirtless Wade.

5. Once Upon a Time: There be dragons on Sunday night. And not just the ones born to Daenerys on that other epic series. I love a good mythology and Once Upon a Time has a great fairy tale universe to build off. The modern world elements of the show can be uneven—and I am concerned about its message on adoption—but many of the fairy tale moments make me giggle in a manner not unlike Rumpelstiltskin. I’m very much looking forward to where the story goes from here with the major shift in the final moments of the season finale. But of all the questions that still remain open on this show, none bother me more than wondering why in the world they named the extra dwarf Stealthy instead of Sneaky.

4. Nikita / Fringe Cheating again, but this pairing of series is fitting since these two audience-challenged Friday night shows are accustomed to fighting for attention.

Nikita It’s the kind of kickass female-lead television show that falls nicely in line with my love of Buffy and Alias. The premise is simple, yet has so many deeper layers that new secret twists and turns are constantly being revealed. Also loving how literal it is with a division called Division, an oversight organization called Oversight, and Black Boxes that are literally … well, you get the picture.

Fringe Say what you will about Fox’s treatment of genre shows and the Friday Night Death Slot, but the network has redeemed itself considerably in my eyes by sticking with this show when common sense would tell others not to. This is another series that hinges on the spectacular performances of the cast in which an actor like John Noble can turn a simple announcement of a pee break into a great character moment full of humor and pathos.

3. Parenthood It’s the only show on the list that I can’t watch live. I need to work myself up emotionally to cope with this hour of television. It is not the light, easy viewing that you’ll notice in much of the rest of the list. It is the kind of show that fills the void left by Friday Night Lights, which is fitting since it’s produced by Jason Katims (Roswell shout out!). For me, the Braverman clan claims a spot the pantheon of all the great TV families alongside the Cosbys, Keatons, Bradys and even the Bundys.

2. Revenge You just know the producers wanted the word “revengenda” to go viral like “va-jay-jay” did for Grey’s Anatomy or Chrismukkah for The O.C., Alas, it wasn’t meant to be. That’s okay though since so many other elements of the show have taken off in popular culture. Revenge is juicy, twisty, gossipy fun. The show does not shy away from morally bankrupt heroes or sexually ambiguous villains … and heroes. Speaking of: Nolan, as superbly portrayed by Gabriel Mann, is the breakout character of the season out of all television shows currently on the air.

1. Scandal On the topic of juicy shows, the one at the top of my list is the juiciest. A lot of people were calling this a “surprise hit” but for me, the success is all perfectly encapsulated in the title. Just like Revenge, I don’t need to know anything more than that to get me watching. But it’s all the other components that have me hooked: written by the creator of Grey’s Anatomy; set in Washington; starring Kerry Washington; and it moves. Much like Vampire Diaries (another one that almost made the top ten) things happen. The story doesn’t drag. It races. The shortened season works for serialized stories as opposed to stretching it out for 22 episodes. Save that for shows like CSI or NCIS or any other acronym. For this kind of drama I want 13 episodes or less. Not since The West Wing (in which Liza Weil guest starred in an episode as another character embroiled in a Washington scandal) has a show set in the seat of the government captured my attention like this.

.5 Mad Men Okay, major cheat here, but I couldn’t do this list without including what I consider to be the highest quality show on television. But enough people are already writing about how great it is so it doesn’t need me pumping up its ego any further.

Honorable Mention: I left two of my other favorites –The Walking Dead and Bones–off this list because I’ve written books about these shows and I feel like my bias for them has already been clearly established.

So there you have it. My own, personal Top 10 … or 13 … or 13.5 with a couple extra tagged on.

When it comes to obsessions in my life, watching television is second only to reading. Growing up, my family called me the Walking TV Guide. They didn’t need to consult a magazine to know what was on; they just asked me. My interest in television has only deepened as I got older. I have loved many shows, but nothing has ever approached the devotion I felt towards a daytime soap opera that went off the air over a decade ago.

Another World followed the lives and loves of the residents of the fictional Bay City, Illinois. The series premiered eight years before I was born, but I didn’t get hooked into the show until my early teens. What I loved most about Another World was the continuing nature of the drama. The story didn’t end. It kept growing and building and moving in new and different directions. There was comedy and drama, romance and mystery. A serial killer storyline hooked me into the show, but love triangles and corporate takeovers kept me around long after the murderer was revealed. Not all the stories were winners. The acting was hit or miss. The production values weren’t impressive, until you considered that they filmed a new episode every single weekday. None of that mattered. I was invested in these characters and their lives. I wanted to know more about them and their world.

This is why television is my favorite form of entertainment, beside reading. I’m a much bigger TV fan than moviegoer. My interest in music doesn’t even come close. TV series, with their multiple episodes over (hopefully) many years provide the longer form of storytelling that I enjoy. It allows for a deeper connection to the characters as their world expands far beyond the confines of my own.

Prime-time television was a bit different when I was a child than it is today. Most series consisted of self-contained episodes with a beginning, middle, and end that wrapped up the drama and cleared the way for an entirely new story the following week. Sure there were soap operas with serialized stories that carried over from episodes to episode, but those were in the minority. With most shows you could tune into any episode over the course of a season and pick up on what was happening. Today there are a lot more shows outside of the soap world that have intricate mythologies like Lost or Fringe or most anything J.J. Abrams produces. These shows require a deeper immersion into their world than, say C.S.I. But while the serialized structure is tailor-made for me, I still enjoy episodic television because even the most self-contained episodes of a show tell the ongoing story of that series.

Episodic television may not be as rich in the development of a mythology, but a show like The Golden Girls—as just one of many, many examples—still had a serialized element to it. Every episode was its own story, but the tale of these four roommates built off earlier episodes and explored more interesting facets of the characters the longer the series was on the air. As the audience became more familiar with “the girls” and the way they behaved it was easier to anticipate their reactions to a given situation. This is the point where Rose will tell a story about St. Olaf or Sophia will start to picture Sicily. Blanche’s southern accent is going to intensify as she gets more flirtatious. It’s time for Dorothy to provide the voice of reason. We knew these characters so well because we’d invited them into our homes week after week for years on end.

The thing I like most about writing media tie-in novels like the Sabrina, The Teenage Witch or Alias books is that it gives me a chance to get to know the characters from my favorite shows more intimately and expand on their stories. It is especially true with the Charmed comic book. Building and growing the lives of The Charmed Ones—lives that I thought were over six years ago—has been an immensely exciting opportunity. But even the shows I haven’t had the chance to write about have stayed with me. The first eleven years of my life were spent watching, and not quite understanding, the racy humor of Hawkeye Pierce. Memories of Fame helped inspire me to try out for the school show years later and eventually study theatre in college. When I moved to Los Angeles the dark drama of My So-Called Life and the light comedy of The Adventures of Lois and Clark kept me company as my own world expanded. Buffy taught me about writing, The West Wing got me interested in politics, and Revenge has become the new, juicy soap opera that has me hooked on mystery, romance, and corporate espionage.

Another World ended in 1999, after 35 years on the air. I’d only been a fan for the last 13 of those years, but that was longer than any other scripted TV show I’ve ever watched. (Sorry. Never been into The Simpsons.) Considering it was on most every weekday, I’d sat through probably thousands of episodes. It got me through college when there were days I was so busy working on a theatre production I’d forget to eat unless I took forty-five minutes to watch the recorded episode (minus commercials). There are popular nighttimes TV shows from the early nineties that I missed out on entirely because I was too busy to watch them, but I hardly skipped an episode of Another World.

What I love most about television is that it allows me to invest in lives that are nothing like mine and expand my own world through the experience. It’s something the creators of Another World said best with the original words that opened their show: We do not live in this world alone, but in a thousand other worlds. 

The book that changed my life wasn’t Catcher in the Rye or Lord of the Flies or any of the classics that are supposed to have an effect on a young man. It wasn’t even The Chocolate War, though I do love that book and all of Robert Cormier’s work. The book that changed my life was one that I’ve never seen on any school reading list. I can’t even find it in a bookstore these days. It’s called Eyes of the Tarot and it was written by Bruce Coville.

The story follows a girl named Bonnie who stumbles upon an ancient pack of tarot cards with a mysterious connection to her family. Bonnie immediately understands how to read these cards and becomes consumed by her newfound ability to foretell the future… “even if it means facing a horror beyond death itself…” I know, right? Pretty awesome.

I devoured this book. Decades later I still recall the sensation of sitting on my grandparents’ couch on a sunny afternoon completely enthralled. I was already an avid reader. I’d solved mysteries with Encyclopedia Brown, stalked the celery at midnight with Bunnicula, and commiserated with the Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing. But this was different. I was voracious for this young adult book set in that exciting age I was approaching at roller coaster speed. For a sheltered kid with a father who didn’t want him on a ride as dangerous as a Ferris wheel stories with teenage characters fighting demons and monsters was exactly the kind of excitement I craved.

Up until then, I couldn’t sit through Halloween. Didn’t even attempt Poltergeist. Jaws was manageable, but I can’t tell you the number of nights I spent trying to convince myself that there was no way a shark could attack me in bed a hundred miles from the ocean. Even Ghostbusters gave me nightmares. But there was something about Eyes of the Tarot that inspired my imagination without overwhelming it. Reading the story allowed me to control the horrors in my mind’s eye. Please don’t think it was about the search for depth in genre fiction that used figurative monsters to expose ugly truths in the human condition. These were not those kinds of books. I was in it purely for the adrenaline rush.

Another draw of the book was that it was part of a series. Eyes of the Tarot was book 9 in a collection of Bantam books called Dark Forces. Different writers wrote the various books in the series. The books were not linked in any way beyond the subject matter. They didn’t need to be read in order, but most conveniently had a number on the spine so I knew what was missing from my collection. The series was similar in concept to the Simon Pulse Romantic Comedies I would contribute to decades later (minus the numbers on the spines).

I can’t properly explain the disappointment I felt when I saw book 15 on store shelves and came to the slow realization that no matter where I looked I would never find 16. This was long before the internet where a simple Google search would tell me that my passion had come to an end.

Getting these books replaced collecting Star Wars action figures in my life. I was no longer visiting the toy store with pockets empty just so I could plot out which figure to buy with my next allowance. My new toy store was Waldenbooks and each week brought a new kind of figure with imagination-action and edge-of-my-seat grip. Did Swamp Witch look scarier than The Ashton Horror? Did I want to read about a rock band that sold their souls to the devil or a gymnastic cult of impossibly attractive teens? What kind of horrors did these characters have in store for them? What kind of excitement did these writers hold for me?

Not only did these books inspire my reading, they inspired my writing. They made me want to write. They made me want to write for teens, because these were the exciting characters to write about.

In ninth grade my English teacher gave the class the most incredible assignment ever: to make a book. We were to come up with the story, write it, and bind it together in cardboard covers decorated with contact paper so that we each had our own hand-crafted work. I wrote a horror story about a group of kids terrorized by a demon in the New Jersey beach community (a.k.a. The Jersey Shore) where I most feared running into the shark from Jaws. When it came time to bind the book, I was the only kid in the class that cut up a manila file folder instead of cardboard. To me, books weren’t hardcover. They were paperbacks.

Here I am writing that book. My first book.

From the Dark Forces books I moved onto Christopher Pike and then grew into Dean R. Koontz (he’s since dropped the “R”) and Anne Rice. Each step an evolution of the person I was becoming. But it wasn’t just about horror. The subject matter grew into fantasy and action, techno-thrillers and mysteries. Stories about lives so much more thrilling than mine. Genres that had their own sections in the bookstore beyond just “fiction” or “literature.”

I admit, I became a bit of a mass market snob. That’s harder to be these days since the mass market has changed so much in the past decade. Unlike literary snobs, I don’t judge the books that others choose to read. I also don’t rush out to buy the next great work of literary genius. But I would never think less of a person who gravitates towards books that challenge the intellect. Just don’t try to engage me in a conversation over the symbolism of Gatsby’s green light. I’ll most likely annoy you by saying that I believe Daisy just ran out of bulbs and stuck a Christmas light in there until she could find a replacement.