Eden Rising/Trivia

This page features behind-the-scenes trivia from the hypothetical TV drama Eden Rising.

Season 1

 * The series was in development for a while - writing of the pilot started on July 20, 2010 - with an initial draft of the first fifteen pages finished by Steven Herrera on August 12 of the same year. After the project was shelved for a while, I adopted Steven's pitch to me and took off with it as a full series. Nothing was changed from Steve's original pitch, with the first fifteen pages of the pilot episode being his baby.
 * Steven's pitch was titled "The Living Dead", was changed when Comic-Con rolled around and we saw stuff for AMC's "The Walking Dead". And then we realized, wells hit,we're going to have to change the title and then we decided to really shape an idea for the series. To differentiate it from "The Walking Dead", we scoured for many ideas. The first was to focus on Glenley, the town featured in the first four episodes, and have it act as the centerpiece for the show and have our characters work toward building it as a metropolis city in a post-apocalyptic world. We toyed with that idea, but ultimately decided against it. Then, we devised the idea of a bio-dome trying to recreate society in a broken world, a goal for our average-joe survivors would work for. Steven's title then pitched to me was "Eden Rising", regarding the 'rise' of the bio-dome, named after the Biblical Garden of Eden.
 * My original outline for the pilot was going to introduce the idea of Glenley. And then the second half of the pilot would dive into what eventually turned into "Cutthroat Jugulators and Crying Little People", giving us pure chaos with The General's invasion. We jump from the tranquility to shit within two acts, and then in episode 2 we bring the group to New Venice where we'd introduce Gwen. Sammy and I in the end felt that we should spend more time in Glenley, so the season was re-mapped from a quick 6 episode season to a 10-episode season spending 3 episodes in Glenley and then having episode 4 where all the shit goes down.
 * The character of Becky was going to have a very different fate -- in fact, if I went with the original plan, she might still be alive to this episode. The original plan was in the attack on Glenley, soldiers would kidnap her because they'd find her to be attractive, and Ash would be forced to choose -- keep running with Darla or risk their lives to take on the soldiers. In the end, he'd choose to keep Darla safe, and leave Becky for the soldiers. Then, when arriving at The General's camp at the end of the season, Ash would rescue Becky and she'd be really animalistic and a bit whacked out due to her experiences there and how traumatic the events she's been through were. But then in the end, I decided that after this, there was nowhere to go with Becky's character. She was a last minute casualty, and I'm happy I axed her for the sake of not going through writing an annoying teenage relationship. Focusing Ash's first season storyline on Becky felt like a mistake, since the spotlight of Ash's revenge on The General should be on Ben, so that's how it ended up.
 * Ash and Ben originally had a very different relationship. Ash's family - father, mother and older brother, all abusive - would've been killed initially and he'd have been a lone wolf until he encountered a young boy who was abandoned at a KFC and holding out. Then, Ash and the boy - Ben - would team up and the episode would carry out much the same, they grow to trust each other as brothers and then Ben would die. At this stage, the episode would have been called "KFC" instead of "Birthday". Ultimately, the changes made Ash and Ben blood brothers and I think gave the episode much more depth in the end.
 * Kate was created from the beginning as a character who was meant to die. Her status as a character was meant to develop all the characters in the cast, she was definitely a catalyst. But I'm happy with how she turned out in the end, I definitely do miss writing for that weird relationship between her, Tom, Sidney and Darla, it was a fun dynamic but she was definitely planned to die from the beginning.
 * Declan was not originally planned to take off, but when I saw there was not much going on for him in the final episodes, I felt it would be a very natural reaction for him to take off on his own and leave it open to potentially bring him back if I felt there'd be potential for his character to return. So this was a VERY last minute change, but something I felt ended up true to his character.
 * Gareth originally died in the season 1 finale outline, killed by Tom after Gareth's failed attempt on his life at the waterfall. In the end I felt the death was a bit anticlimactic, and after such good reception on his character and how much I loved writing for him, those plans changed at the last minute and Gareth was spared.
 * Xander was also intended to die in the finale, heroically sacrificing himself for Kitty. I changed this in the end, and held his death off until season 2.
 * I changed this ultimately because I wanted to really show that not everyone in this group was likable or had good intentions, I inserted the affair storyline with Gwen in season 2 plans, which would lead to his ultimate demise; something I felt fit his character more in the end.
 * Manila and PJ were originally not even featured in the final episodes of season 1, they were intended to be introduced (as totally different characters) in the first episodes of season 2. More on that later.

Season 2

 * There were plenty of difficulties in the plotting of season 2.
 * Originally, the setting of the season was not an airport but an indoor water park/resort that was being holed up by other survivors. The finale was going to end with the group giving up hope on "Eden" and instead finding themselves making a sanctuary of their own, much like Glenley, with it failing and them turning back to "Eden" and having more motivation to keep going. A whole season was planned out featuring this storyline. In the end, I felt that would have been too repetitive and full of too much stalling.
 * Manila and PJ were going to be introduced in the season 2 premiere and not in the final episodes of season 1. And their roles were much different - as was the original idea for Rory. Rory was going to be a billionaire who was convicted for a drunk driving incident that ended in the death of a child, who was taking his younger brother - a man in his 20's named Josh - to the water park but had brought along a private security officer, Manila, to protect their lives as he feared they'd be targeted and wanted to be safe, rather than sorry. PJ would have been alone, and taken in as a surrogate of Josh's. PJ would be a rather creepy kid and then murders start to occur at the water park. In the end, PJ would be revealed to be the killer's protege, and then he'd become a victim himself. The killer would eventually be revealed solely to Tom, as Josh, who had gone crazy. Tom would end up killing Josh and not telling Rory about who his brother really was. Declan would return to the group after PJ was already dead, adding to the tragedy of it. Manila and Rory were going to be drawn together romantically after these tragic events.
 * Because this season 2 outline was created before the writing of the season 1 finale, it was in my head that Xander was already dead at the start of the season. So the Gwen/Xander storyline was never going to happen, but instead a similar storyline featuring Kitty and Kelvin was featured. These two would have started getting down and dirty, after hints in the first season. And then in episode 2, season 2, we spend an episode developing Kitty and making her get stronger, being separated from the group on a run for supplies, before fighting off zombies and returning in one piece. And then, at the end, Gwen would go looking for Kitty and discover her dead body, gutted and hung by meat hooks through the ceiling. Kitty's death would have been the shocking jump start to the water park murderer subplot mentioned above.
 * All of these storylines were changed when I felt that abandoning the idea of "Eden", even for a few episodes or half a season, would have been a bad idea and that the stories themselves didn't have enough depth and relied too much on shock value (examples: killing Kitty after developing her throughout an entire episode and wasting that development, and having the murderer train a child as his protege, and then eventually killing the kid). So these reasons led to the entire outline getting rewritten, and in the end, Manila and PJ were changed completely and introduced late into season 1, while Rory's role was completely flipped as well, and Kitty was spared, with the early season 2 death instead being her husband Xander.
 * There were further issues while developing season 2, after the airport storyline was solidifed, Michael and the soldiers' rebellion was intended to be a bigger storyline, with Manila and PJ, being military-trained outsiders to Tom's group, floating back and forth with their alliances, until finally siding with Tom and the others in the end. This storyline was cut short, however, in an "aborted arc" with all of the soldiers killed off in a single episode, allowing the season to move on to other storylines.
 * Sidney was not originally intended to die. In fact, she had a huge part in the initial outline for season 3. However, I felt having her die would be a huge gut-punch to Leigh's reveal as the saboteur. It also provided a lot of storyline potential without ruining things and relying on too much shock value. It was a last minute decision, but it proved helpful in the end.
 * Kelvin's death was originally much more blatant in its reference to Judas, one of Jesus's disciples. He originally died much more cowardly, realizing that his friends wouldn't take him back, he hung himself with no resolution. I felt having him take a dying leap, taking out one of the villains with him, leaving it ambiguous whether or not his intention was suicidal out of cowardice, was much more appropriate for his character.
 * In the season finale of the second season, there is a scene involving PJ. in the observatory tower, ready to make the ultimate sacrifice via pipe bomb. There was a lot of consideration here that this would be an exit for another character. It was going to be set up that PJ is ready to make this huge sacrifice. Declan has been mulling over his being unable to protect any of the children in his life throughout the whole season, so seeing this moment makes him charge up there and take over. We end the scene thinking they were taken out together, but in the end PJ shows up like in the final copy of the episode, alive and well. But Declan died, and PJ explains that he gave his life for him. In the end, Declan was going to get a nice wrap around of his arc and have a brief reunion with PJ before tragically dying to protect him.
 * At this point, I thought to myself "That's the third of the original cast I'd be writing off within the span of four episodes... that's too much, it's too soon." And I realized how much story potential there was to actually develop that relationship with PJ, and see the reactions of people around him to this relationship (like Manila, of course!). And not even that, Declan is just a character with so much potential to explore and I feel like I've barely scratched the surface of that character, so Declan was saved from death in the finale.
 * Gareth was also considered to die in the second season finale, in a full-circle redemptive arc to save the others, but I felt that'd be too cliche and once again, I felt there was still more to do with his character. As the final scene of the finale can vouch for him, the dude's still got some life in him ;) So that makes two finales Gareth was supposed to die in, but I decided to pull out at the last minute... question is, will he be so lucky next season?!