When a wonder drug makes sleep obsolete, a morally conflicted TV hypnotist decides to help police investigations in a new world where criminals exploit a more fragile and easily manipulated human mind. (1 Hour Crime/SciFi TV Show)

>>>I guess I see it more that these waking dreams, Recals, are a side effect of not sleeping as apposed to the drug.

And that has happened in experiments where volunteers are deprived of sleep for days.? They start hallucinating; eventually their minds will automatically flip into R.E.M. mode.? Because? R.E.M. sleep is how the brain edits the contents of short term memory, organizes and files what's left into long term memory.

As I said earlier, I think the premise has interesting possibilities.? I suggest an alternate option might be to develop it as a film franchise.? Like the first film could be the origin story that sets up the premise and the story world, solves a dramatic question but leaves it open ended for further cases, further episodes. (Open ended in that the overarching problem of a 24/7/365 economic system that makes taking the drug a matter of Darwinian survival hasn't been solved.)

Whatever. Best wishes with your writing.

gilligaj:

You?ve obviously put a lot of thought and imagination into creating the story world for this story.?? I think the premise could be an allegorical critique of our modern 24/7/365 hive economy.

Unfortunately, it seems to me that as currently configured, it requires a lot of exposition? to boot up the story line. There are a lot of terms (?Recal?,? ?the Recal deal?. ?waking dreams?, ?prefrontal?) have to be defined,? a lot of backstory that has to be explained? before anyone can understand what is going on.? Perhaps too much.

I suggest not mentioning the term ?Recals? in the logline because there is no way you can adequately explain it in the same sentence.? The term will leave people puzzled rather than intrigued.

Here?s my meta issue:? my impression is that episode after episode the protagonist?s job is to deal with effects rather than causes.? To go after victims of the drug rather than the villains who are pushing and enabling it.? He?s treating symptons rather than the disease.

In? contemporary crime shows, the protagonist? doesn't go after the drug abuser who is only an exploited victim; rather the protagonist targets the drug maker and drug dealer.? Why?? Because that is true justice ? not faux justice.? The pursuit of true justice is more emotionally satisfying. It is not emotionally satisfying for an audience to watch someone go after the victims rather than the true villains.

As I understand the concept, the protagonist is a co-enabler of the central dramatic problem.? Now, he can start out that way.? But it seems to me that later or sooner he has to become truly ?woke?, stop being a morally compromised co-enabler and start being a righteous rebel whose objective goal is to take down the system that has created the problem and the people who use the drug? to exploit the problem for their profit and social dominance.

Consider why the 1984 Apple Ad ? which was only shown once ? is considered the most powerful, the most effective advertisement ever made.

My 2.5 cents worth.

In a world where a drug has eliminated sleep, when uncontrollable daydreams push people to murder, a delusional private investigator teams up with a washed-up TV hypnotist to solve a murder case.

But what is there to actually solve? Someone got the drug and killed someone while in a semi-awake state.

There is something disempowering about having common knowledge that people who operate under the drug's influence (while day-dreaming) get to kill others. If the drug's side-effects are known, there is not much for the private eye to discover. Then, I would think that more attention would be put to blaming the drug than blaming the half-unconscious perpetrators. Thus, you don't really have a crime film, but a sci-fi court drama, where a lawyer tries to win a case against the drug company.

Just a note: the private eye probably does not use the drug. Still, he may suffer from delusions.