Ground Control
Written by Colin Bytheway
Directed by Sally Avens
Episode 1
Narrative
The narrative is about an astronaut who is on his 100th day in space and his wife (Tess) is
sick and tired of people knowing her as the “astronaut's wife”. Tess wants to be recognized
as her own person as she is a Doctor and hates being in the press constantly. Her husband
doesn't pay any notice of her career. He is only bothered about him and expects his wife to
be in the press constantly speaking about his achievements but she is tired of it and just
wants her life back. Tess tries to speak to her about the situation but it fails because people
believe that she is being dramatic. The drama is an open narrative because it ends with her
saying that she wants to find her husband's identity. This shows that next episode she will go
on a hunt to find what her husband is really like because she has lost her identity. It is a
single strand narrative because the only storyline is about Tess and how she is not coping
with being in the press all the time and her husband not caring about her career. There isn't
another storyline other than this because it is only focusing about Tess’ career and the
situation that she is in now. The drama is linear because it is in chronological order and we
don't get any flashbacks about what has happened in the past.
Sound effects
At the beginning of the drama there is a voice recording that plays about space that allows
the audience to know about the genre of the series and gives information about Scott Carter
who is the astronaut in the show. The opening scene is of Tess being interviewed by the
press and there is a camera flashing this shows allows the audience to know what is
happening in the scene. Alos when they finish their interview in the background you can hear
the sound of camera’s being dropped on the [Link] an alarm goes off. This gives us an
indication that Tess is busy and we get early indications that she isn’t just an ‘astronauts
wife’. In the next scene when Tess arrives back home there is a sound of her dropping her
phone on the desk. She then gets a phone call from her husband but as she is speaking to
him there is a sound effect of the phone breaking up. This just represents her connection
with her husband because she doesn't get any time to speak to him unless it's just about his
work. Then the morning after she returns to work and there is a sound effect of a text
message, it says that she needs to read a book to the infants called “to the moon and back”
because it sounds better coming from an astronauts wife. This frustrates Tess because she
is a Doctor and she believes that she should be left alone to live her own life, not in her
husband's shadow.
Atmospheric sounds
After the press interviews Tess she speaks to her mother but in the background you can
hear people speaking this allows the audience to know where they are and they aren't
speaking in privacy. This links with Tess’ life because she can’t have any privacy at all, as
everything she does ends up in the paper or somewhere on the internet. When Tess is on
the phone to her husband, we hear in the background the sound of electricity from space.
This creates an image for the audience because we can create a picture of where he is
sitting and what is around him. Tess then later arrives back in work and she is sitting next to
a patient, we can tell she is next to him because there is a sound of a heart monitor that is
constantly beeping. This adds to how important Tess’s job is because she is trying to save
somebody's life and people just think that she is an ‘astronaut's wife’. As an audience you
can feel her frustration throughout the drama, as people expect her to do anything that is
related to her husband's job.
Characters
The main character in the drama is Tess Carter. She is a surgeon at a hospital and she is
known as the ‘astronauts wife’ to the majority of people, she is sick and tired of being in her
husband's shadow and believes that people should appreciate her work more. She is very
humorous and tries to make a light of the situations that happen between her and the press,
as she knows she isn't good with those situations. She is sick of being ‘perfect’ and wants a
life where no one knows her business or for people to know her as Doctor Carter, not Scott
Carter’s wife. Her mother is very similar to Tess in some ways, as she has the same
personality because they both try to make light of situations. She always tries to encourage
Tess even when she has done bad but she does believe that Tess has to be in the press if
her husband is an astronaut. Scott Carter comes across as a selfish person, as when he
and Tess Speak he only talks about his work and how the press conference went. However,
to the public he is shown as a hero and what he says is motivational to other people. At
Tess’ workplace she has a colleague called Amir he is very bubbly when he is speaking and
we learn that he is gay. Overall, the characters in the drama are all upper class, we get this
impression because they all are very well spoken and sound like they are all from Down
South.
Music
At the beginning of the drama there is dramatic space music that fades in over people
speaking. The people speaking are old famous clips of astronauts when they have landed on
the moon, this introduces the audience to what the drama will be about. There is a piece of
music that is played just before Scott goes on a call from space, it sounds like it is the
newsflash theme tune because he then addresses the world about what being in space is
like. At the end of the drama there is slow music that fades out over Tess speaking when
she addresses that she will find what her husbands really like.