There must be a class at scriptwriting school. Where you get to write a “super secret government agency has a committee meeting where they shut down a disastrously failed super secret project” scene.
I wanna take that class.
Buffy Season 4: Primeval
CLOSE ON WARD (the “suit” from the Ep. 20 teaser) sitting at the head of the conference table. He reports to an assemblage of SHADOWY SUIT HIGHER-UPS. Everything is quiet, no movement – in contrast to the intercut images of carnage and such.
WARD
This was an experiment. The Initiative represented the government’s interest in not only controlling the Otherworldly Menace, but in harnessing its power for our own military purposes. It is the considered opinion of this council that the experiment has failed.
Maggie Walsh’s vision was brilliant, but ultimately insupportable. The demons cannot be harnessed, cannot be controlled.
It is therefore our recommendation that this project be terminated, and all records concerning it expunged. The soldiers will be debriefed, standard confidentiality clause. Civilians will be monitored, and we have the usual measures prepared should they try to go public. We don’t think they will.
The Initiative itself will be filled in with concrete. Burn it down, gentlemen. Burn it down and salt the earth.
Bourne Identity
MARSHALL at the head of the table. A cadre of INTEL HONCHOS.
ABBOTT
The Treadstone project has actually already been terminated. It was designed primarily as a sort of advanced game program…
ABBOTT in the hot seat. ZORN right there beside him.
ABBOTT
…We’d hoped it might build into a good training platform, but quite honestly, for a strictly theoretical exercise, we thought it was far too expensive. The cost-benefit ratio was just too high. It’s been all but decommissioned at this point.