DRAMA: Pilot Episode
Act One
Map of Penelope
In near darkness, a hotel concierge desk. In the dimness, we can see the slight form of a concierge behind it. Above the desk, there hangs a huge bison skull, which is, in fact, attached to the bisonās entire skeleton, which is nailed into the Blackfoot Moss stone wall.
From the shadows:
SAGE: Imagine a map. A satellite map in green and black and turquoise blue.
A man is revealed in a Rod Serlingāstyle Twilight Zone shaft of light. He is the Sage.
Imagine this map framed over the Americas and, to the west, a rugged domain: big sky, fertile soil, chinook winds ā¦
Alberta, since roughly 1882.
Named by the Marquis of Lorne for his cheating wife, the Princess Alberta. Little tail-wagger. A land of freedom and beauty named for love, some kind of love, this place was wild, even then.
Zoom in now on the core of this territory: an intersection of emerald rivers. A stylish frontier town laid down over bubbling crude. Oil men, oil women, monster houses, tiny jeans ā¦
Gradually, a stylish hotel lobby is revealed. People with suitcases checking phones, drifting.
Now zoom down through the zen-scaped rooftop of one sleek boutique hotel, down through the terry-cloth-clad bodies of the travel-worn guests and into one blackstone-and-glass poolside lobby ā
A telephone rings. Light reveals the concierge. She looks to be fifteen.
CONCIERGE: (into phone) Good afternoon, Hotel Nakwaga ā¦
SAGE: ā and tunnel inside the pearl-grey coils of the high-end brain of one very eastern psychiatrist.
Enter Penelope Douglas: chic trench coat, apple-red Heys suitcase on wheels.
SAGE: Eastern born. Eastern bred.
CONCIERGE: (under) ā¦ yes ā¦
SAGE: Bright mind. Dim spirit.
CONCIERGE: (under) ā¦ yes ā¦
SAGE: Penelope Douglas, M.D., Ph.D.
Penelope slips off her sunglasses, looks around. She is cool, poised.
Forensic psychiatry was Dr. Douglasās specialty, back east. Forensic psychiatry: typically the assessment of an individualās fitness to plead in a court of law.
In Penelopeās case, the science involved the retroactive psychiatric analysis of persons. Usually dead ones. That was Penelopeās āthing.ā
CONCIERGE: (whispering) ā¦ yes.
SAGE: Penelope Douglas was known for a time as the āit girlā of the Toronto morgue. Foxy shrink with ice in her veins and an unearthly capacity to think the thoughts of the newly dead. Not afraid of bodies, this one.
CONCIERGE: (hanging up) Checking in?
Penelope breezes to the desk.
PENELOPE: Douglas.
CONCIERGE: Youāre the new doctor.
PENELOPE: (nodding) Psychiatrist.
SAGE: Historically, people move west more than east. People go east only when invited. When opportunity knocks.
People go west when all bets are off: a reputation in ruins, a love gone wrong. When they need to save their sorry souls, folks head for the frontier.
CONCIERGE: Welcome to the Nak.
SAGE: Mini-bar. Small shampoos. Clean slate.
PENELOPE: And Iād like a taxi, please.
The other guests stop whatever they are doing.
SAGE: Taxi and a soul ā¦
CONCIERGE: Oh, we donāt have taxis any more.
PENELOPE: You donāt ...