Schedule Update: The Timestamps Project
WGA/SAG-AFTRA Strike Edition
The Timestamps Project is on hiatus in solidarity with the Writers Guild of America.
I recognize that Doctor Who is guided primarily by Equity UK, formerly known as the British Actors’ Equity Association, but the show also holds a production number with the Screen Actors Guild because they pay pension and healthcare contributions for any SAG members of the cast. Technically, Doctor Who is a SAG signatory. But that’s not important to this discussion.
I stand with the WGA and SAG-AFTRA because I am a writer and creative. I come from a family of creatives. Many members of my close-knit geek family are creatives, some of whom make their livings in film and television because of their passion for telling stories that mean something to all of us. Creativity lives in us, and it deserves to thrive with us.
I’m not being asked to do this. In fact, the strike rules don’t apply to me because I’m not a member of the unions and Creative Criticality falls more under the journalism rules than anything else. I am choosing this action because I feel that strongly about it.
The WGA strike started on May 2, 2023, and is based on the evolution of the streaming environment. The WGA has minimums for writers, but unlike the normal American worker who is nominally employed on a permanent basis, a writer works 35-40 weeks a year on a standard network show and 20-24 weeks a year in the streaming environment (where seasons are far shorter). In a city like Los Angeles, writers are fighting with the incredibly high cost of living and inflation. To compete against that, writers need a raise of about 10 percent.
Along with increased minimum compensation across all media, writers are also looking for increased residuals (which have been notoriously tough with streamers), appropriate compensations for writing television series across all stages of production, larger contributions to pension and health plans, the strengthening of professional standards and the overall protections for writers, and other terms.
Writers have talked about toxic environments in production, and it’s pretty obvious from the plans by studio execs to wait out the strike until writers “go broke“. These studio execs are on display as embodiments of late-stage capitalism: Success being defined by how much wealth can be banked while paying those who create the actual products as little as possible. They’d rather see crews destitute on the street rather than pay more in fair compensation and cut into their million- and billion-dollar comforts. It’s despicable, and it’s part of a pattern in corporate America of continually undervaluing the creative class.
It’s also pretty obvious on the SAG-AFTRA front. Consider the proposal that background actors – the lowest paid in the industry – get scanned for a single day’s pay with the intent of using their likenesses for any project at any time in perpetuity. It’s actually funny when you look at the Hollywood anti-piracy efforts over the last couple of decades that focused on how wrong it was to pay for something, transform it from the original format, and then share it over and over without due compensation.
As a producer friend of mine told me, this action would eliminate most working actors, the ones who never “make it” but still pay the bills just fine. It would domino across the industry: Current rules dictate one assistant director per every 100 background actors, so as background actor jobs diminish, jobs for ADs are eliminated. That cascades by eliminating jobs among all of the guilds.
All of it so that studio executives can pocket more cash as the industry burns around them.
During my lifetime, I have watched time and again as creatives have been treated like garbage. They’re treated like they don’t have real jobs or that their work is in the public domain because it exists in the internet era. Creatives aren’t valued until they don’t produce, and then they are replaced as if they were ultimately disposable.
Creatives are the lifeblood of the entertainment industry and the history of human storytelling, from film and television to books, video games, comics, art, podcasts, and beyond. Without creatives, we have nothing for actors, directors, producers, and publishers to translate to their chosen media. In turn, the studio executives have nothing without the hard work of all those people.
I stand with creatives. I stand against the continued devaluing of creatives and hard-working individuals. It’s not because I’m some sort of influencer (though, wouldn’t it be nice to have that many eyes on my work?), but because it’s the right thing to do when creators more powerful than me are fighting for what they believe in.
The Timestamps Project will remain on hiatus until the strike has ended. I hope you understand.
The Timestamps Project is an adventure through the televised universe of Doctor Who, story by story, from the beginning of the franchise. For more reviews like this one, please visit the project’s page at Creative Criticality.
The Timestamps Supplementals are episodes of podcasts in which I discuss Doctor Who. These can be episode reviews, roundtable discussions, and live events. They are presented here in reverse chronological order – the most recent appearance is first – with links to the episodes so you can listen as well.
Creative Criticality 