Bones, starring Emily Deschanel and David Boreanaz, has developed into one of the more consistent hits for the Fox network and it shows no signs of slowing down as it ended its third season last night with an eye already on the fourth. Bones is the kind of series that feels like it could be on for years to come because, unlike a lot of series ending their third seasons, it hasn’t faltered at all creatively with time. There’s nothing stale about Bones. In fact, it’s better than when it started. So, we were excited to be able to talk to one of the voices behind the camera. Creator (and regular writer) Hart Hanson took part in a conference call recently and The Deadbolt got a bit of time with the creator of one of the more intriguing shows on TV to talk about the plotlines that ended the third season last night and look to the next year.

THE DEADBOLT: You mentioned the Gormogon story worked out differently because of the strike. I was just curious, where did that original storyline come from? Are you a fan of the Freemasons?

HART HANSON: No, not at all. The original storyline came – you know, stories come from a million directions. You listen to your studio and you listen to your network, what they would like, and certainly they were interested in a recurring serial killer. When we talked about what kind of cases could recur, really there are only a couple of kinds that can recur on a murder show, and one is a serial killer.

Then we were thinking, at one time someone at the studio or the network was talking about tying into video games as a possibility, so something to think about. Well, the minute that was in my head I started thinking about the Gormogon vault, I mean before there was a Gormogon. It was what kind of killer would you have who had a complicated and mythological, many things to click on, layer. Lair’s the wrong word. The vault. Originally I thought, “Oh, it will be in a storage unit. We’ll open up a storage unit and there will be the Gormogon vault.” Instead we just went very literal and got the Gormogon vault. And that led us to the Gormogon.

Then we knew that we would want to suspect some of our own people of being in league with the Gormogon or the Gormogon, and the easiest leap there was, well, how do you make, for example, Hodgins look suspicious? Well, he’s a conspiracy theorist, and that led down the road to the Masons. And then once I found out that there was actually a secret society back in Dickensian London in the Victorian times that was against secret societies, that was actually called the Gormogons, and they got wiped out, they disappeared, I thought, “Oh, we’ll use that.” And that was sort of the groundwork for the Gormogon story.

THE DEADBOLT: Was the cannibalism always there from the beginning?

HANSON: No, that is a great example of – I’m admitting how you do things on the fly in television – that was as a result of writing the first piece in the Gormogon story, which had a skull coming through a windshield, and one of the clues on it was tooth marks, so it has been gnawed on. All we wanted was a good tease, and then that had to become part of the – when we came back to it. Again, I’d written that part, beaten out that story, and the network responded so much that they thought this would be a good serial killer. So those two things came together. And then I was stuck with a cannibalistic serial killer. It was my own fault.

THE DEADBOLT: I also read at the beginning of season four the team is investigating a case in London. Did you guys shoot on location for that?

HANSON: We haven’t gone yet. I’m doing a pass at the script right now. We hope to be shooting there starting in mid-June. David and Emily will go off to be Booth and Brennan in London. It’s going to be a two-parter in Fox’s week of two-hour premieres. We are August 26th. I think we’re up against the Democratic National Convention, so that’s going to go well. They’ll be watching in London, I hope.

Digging Through the Bones with Hart Hanson Page 2