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What is your favorite story arc? | Log In/Create an Account | Top | 170 comments | Search Discussion
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  • (Score: 2) by DannyB on Friday January 20 2017, @02:24PM

    by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Friday January 20 2017, @02:24PM (#456538) Journal

    I mentioned this in another reply. The utopia of Trek is the world I would really want to live in.

    I agree with you that some sci fi is too dark. I see enough bad news in reality. I like the escape of a nearly utopian future. It entertainment and escape. I'm just saying that as an adult, rather than when I was a teenager watching reruns of trek in syndication, I don't believe that the trek utopia is likely to happen. See other reply I wrote about human conflict. For that reason, I found B5 refreshing in that it seemed like a more realistic future. Brown sector. People come to B5 for opportunity, don't find it, and are too poor to return to Earth. That is very believable. In B5 even as you saw all of the various conflicts, corruption, etc, there was constantly believable hope that it would all get made right in the end.

    Here is an example of just the opposite.

    The Battlestar Galactica remake of a few years ago is an example of a show that I had the same type of feelings you describe. It was dark. Then got darker. And darker. And darker. It just got worse and worse. From bits I would hear, they had a plan for an ending. So I kept watching. When four of the final five cylons were revealed, I just couldn't believe they would do such a thing given the backstory of the characters. I began to think they were really just making it up as they went along. And indeed, in hindsight, they were. At that point, I watched the final season since I was already invested. And the ending was terribly disappointing. After all that depressing darkness, the ending didn't really fix much. I decided these clowns would not fool me again into watching anything they ever write.

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  • (Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Friday January 20 2017, @04:24PM

    by Grishnakh (2831) on Friday January 20 2017, @04:24PM (#456584)

    I'm just saying that as an adult, rather than when I was a teenager watching reruns of trek in syndication, I don't believe that the trek utopia is likely to happen.

    I completely agree. Instead, I think the future is going to look a lot like "The Walking Dead" in a decade or three. But that doesn't mean that I want to watch that.

    I just couldn't believe they would do such a thing given the backstory of the characters. I began to think they were really just making it up as they went along.

    That's how just about every TV show that has a "story arc" operates. There's not really a way around it. (Notable exceptions are B5 and Game of Thrones.) There's no way for the writers to know how long the network will keep ordering new seasons, so they constantly write it so they can end it at the end of that season, or come back for a new one. But yeah, it makes me now want to bother watching a lot of stuff too.

    • (Score: 2) by DannyB on Friday January 20 2017, @05:05PM

      by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Friday January 20 2017, @05:05PM (#456604) Journal

      What would be great: If new original content producers (Netflix, Amazon, HBO, etc) would produce a long form story arc in 2 or 3 seasons, all pre-ordered and paid for, that has a definitely planned ending. A logical ending that is highly satisfying.

      Yes, it might only have only 1, 2 or 3 seasons. You might not be able to drag it out for 5 or 6 years.

      But on the other hand, if it is immensely enjoyable like a great novel, then it might be watched over and over again. It might also be watched for several generations of people, just like a good book.

      I don't expect TV networks to be able to wake up to this fact. Even if they do, I don't think they can escape the trap they are in. They can't afford the risk to make a great show, several seasons long, and that it might not get high enough rating in its first run.

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    • (Score: 3, Insightful) by TheRaven on Monday January 23 2017, @02:15PM

      by TheRaven (270) on Monday January 23 2017, @02:15PM (#457631) Journal
      It's not like Babylon 5 had all of the episodes written before the start of the first season. JMS had a show bible that contained the big-picture events and the important bits of character development, but would just ask the episode writes to make sure that they included a couple of key exchanges for each one. And they had to shrink the timeline a bit when they thought they were being cancelled at the end of Season 4, to wrap up the main arcs. There's no excuse for something like Battlestar Galactica or Lost, where they obviously had no idea where they wanted to end up.
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