Plots that Go Askew

[Gamer Girl]

This seems to happen to me a lot. I'll sit down to watch a movie or TV show or read a book. Quite often something I've heard good things about. The story will star off OK and move along with a basic plot. And then suddenly, the plot goes askew and you sit back and have to wonder ''what the heck is going on?''. What was once a nice story with a plot, just suddenly goes the wrong way. Often it's quite simple, the characters just pick 'route B', but some times it's just down right crazy. And you can't help but think, if they would have just stuck to the basic plot the story would be much better.

Total Recall is a good example. You have the basic plot: Joe Nobody finds out he was a Secret Agent(based on a classic sci-fi story). The move quickly turns into an all out action flick with tons of bullets and explosions and fire...and that's all fine. But then the 'big secret' is giving Mars air? And your like: What? It ruins the whole 'action movie' with that lame sci-fi crap. Why not just have the bad guy be a 'normal' evil Mr. Burns type?

So any other people out there know this feeling?

[DigoDragon]

But then the 'big secret' is giving Mars air? And your like: What?

True, though I suppose there's a wee bit of justification if you interpret the film's ending as that he dreamed the whole thing up as part of the Recall package he bought. The movie certainly leaves you to decide for yourself.

One movie with a plot that totally went askew for me: X-Files Fight the Future.
It starts as the oddest way to kill a caveman and then picks up with some kind of conspiracy to cover up something, which then hints at the "illuminati" type group, then Running From Bees! and I forgot how it makes the jump to the UFO in Antartica. I've seen the movie twice and still head-scratch at places.

But I guess part of it is I hated the entirety of the Alien Colonist arc for the show.

[Serpentine]

For me, this happens most often with anime (and/or other indie/non-mainstream-western animation). You'll have a perfectly good beginning and middle, and then... not much of an end.
The examples of this that most readily come to my mind are:
Porco Rosso. There's just no resolution to a bunch of the problems in it (iirc).
Howl's Moving Castle. I felt, at the time, that this could be explained by the fact that it's based on a book, so a lot of the stuff that happened at the end that seemed so far out of left field may be explained by bits that were left out of the book or something. But still.
A movie I can't remember the name of, western, with a very important book and some sort of wolf and it's sort of Celtic or something. Really beautiful animation, but... that ending. Just went... Plthbt.

[shadow_archmagi]

Howl's Moving Castle. I felt, at the time, that this could be explained by the fact that it's based on a book, so a lot of the stuff that happened at the end that seemed so far out of left field may be explained by bits that were left out of the book or something. But still.

By the "at the time" addition, I assume you read the book and realized that no, the anime just made everything weird because why not

[Sunken Valley]

For me, this happens most often with anime (and/or other indie/non-mainstream-western animation). You'll have a perfectly good beginning and middle, and then... not much of an end.
The examples of this that most readily come to my mind are:
Porco Rosso. There's just no resolution to a bunch of the problems in it (iirc).
Howl's Moving Castle. I felt, at the time, that this could be explained by the fact that it's based on a book, so a lot of the stuff that happened at the end that seemed so far out of left field may be explained by bits that were left out of the book or something. But still.
A movie I can't remember the name of, western, with a very important book and some sort of wolf and it's sort of Celtic or something. Really beautiful animation, but... that ending. Just went... Plthbt.

What problems did Porco have? It resolved everything.
The book is very different from the film of Howl. There's no war for one thing and the black door goes here not to the future. So left field stuff is pure Miyasaki.
Secret of Kells is the Irish film you're looking for. I think the ending is very mature. The kid grows up and writes the book, the mentor dies peacefully and the abbot learns the error of his ways.

In terms of askew plots, Heroes. And movie adaption of golden compass.

[The Succubus]

Sluggy Freelance. While I really enjoyed the comic to begin with (and the latest Safehouse arc) the main plot makes my brain squeak. Hereti-corp, trnasdimensional evil dopplegangers, Crusheto...?

I have no idea what's going on in the main story line.

[Serpentine]

By the "at the time" addition, I assume you read the book and realized that no, the anime just made everything weird because why notNup, I've just bought the book but haven't read it yet.
What problems did Porco have? It resolved everything.Well, it's been a while so I can't remember exactly, but the biggest one is probably that he's still a pig. Maybe that's not a bad thing, but it's a long way from the sort of story I'm used to.

Secret of Kells is the Irish film you're looking for. I think the ending is very mature. The kid grows up and writes the book, the mentor dies peacefully and the abbot learns the error of his waysOkay, again, it's been a long time so maybe I missed something, but from my memory of it, it's
everyone dies, the abbey is burnt down, and the boy never sees the girl again (or only many years later). The "resolution" is that the book survives, and the kid grows up, and that's about it.

[Saph]

For me, Lost. Started out as a basic castaway story: okay, sounds fun. Then the island is populated by supernatural stuff: okay, that works too. Then there are weird conspiracies, and hidden messages, and codes, and inexplicable stuff, and inhabitants of the island, and people are betraying each other and then they're not actually on the island except they are and . . . what?

I spent the first half of Season 1 trying to figure out the plot. Somewhere around the second half of Season 1 I realised that the writers didn't have a plot. They were just throwing more and more confusing stuff in there with no plan for making it all make sense. So I quit watching.

On a similar theme, the new Battlestar Galactica. It's such an awesome premise: the battlestar with its fleet of civilian ships containing the remnants of the human race, fleeing the Cylons who are trying to wipe them out. All they had to do was play it straight and it would have been an awesome series. But instead we get told over and over again that the Cylons Have A Plan, and this gets used to justify all kinds of inconsistent behaviour until no-one has the faintest idea what these guys are actually doing anymore. Just like Lost, it never gets explained in any way that makes sense.

[The Succubus]

That was a very sensible decision Saph. I watched Lost all the way to the dreadful ending. My eyes then climbed out of their sockets and slapped me for having wasted their time.

[Sunken Valley]

Nup, I've just bought the book but haven't read it yet.Well, it's been a while so I can't remember exactly, but the biggest one is probably that he's still a pig. Maybe that's not a bad thing, but it's a long way from the sort of story I'm used to.
Okay, again, it's been a long time so maybe I missed something, but from my memory of it, it's
everyone dies, the abbey is burnt down, and the boy never sees the girl again (or only many years later). The "resolution" is that the book survives, and the kid grows up, and that's about it.

He's not a pig. You never see his face after he beats Carlos, who exclaims "your face!"

Secret of Kells
The stone tower is not burnt down and a few people did survive, including the really tall Abbot. The boy and the girl were not even the same species (boy +fey) and they accepted that (plus she saved his life). The book does not "survive", it gets made. Plus the kid goes back to the abbot, who apologises. But you ain't seen it for ages so fine.

Other disappointing endings! Avatar and The Incredibles.

[Fri]

probably that he's still a pig. Maybe that's not a bad thing, but it's a long way from the sort of story I'm used to.

Except that yeah, being a pig is never a problem in the story, and for the character himself. He's content on being a pig, that might even be his choice, and everyone simply has accepted that he's a pig, so really, it's never a problem from the beginning to the end. Unlike these other two examples.

Do you find shrek's ending where the princess stays as an ogre instead of being a beautiful woman problematic as well? That kinda surprises my mother anyway, eventhough I'm sure that she find it as a good ending.

Another story that end this way is Brother Bear. After spending the whole movie trying to turn himself back into human, at the end, the character stays a bear, though I forgot whether it's his choice or because there isn't actually a way to turn himself back into human. That kinda surprised us as well, but we decides that in the character's culture, I guess being a totem animal isn't a bad fate.

Mind that I don't find the plot of those two examples problematic! They're just examples about people who aren't transformed back into human.

[Soras Teva Gee]

I think we can ascribe this to a couple of factors:

1) Disconnect between the audience and the writer as to where things were going. Namely you as the audience expect certain things and begin to write the story yourself in advance then feel inherently disappointed when you brilliant idea is not taken up.

2) The writer changed their mind in the process of writing. This is both positive and negative. Sometimes an idea in the writer's head (or bullet point idea) doesn't work out on paper, or they think of something "better" later on. Or alternately writer's block, they legitly didn't know where they were going and ended struggling to put anything out.

3) External factors. An outside force interferes with the story, maybe executives demand action and/or romance in the story, or the director of the film doesn't agree with the script, or the script is a collective work that passed through multiple parties in the first place


Well, it's been a while so I can't remember exactly, but the biggest one is probably that he's still a pig. Maybe that's not a bad thing, but it's a long way from the sort of story I'm used to.

Interestingly Miyazaki wants to do a sequel to that one. I'd also point out that Porco's curse is not really the point of the movie and more of an underlying theme.

[irenicObserver]

For me it's film series. We have decent first movies like X-Men and Spider-man, but the sequels are so crappily done that by the time the third one limps out of the box office they see fit to reboot the whole thing. It just kind of grinds my gears and I'm not entirely sure why.

[Muz]

For me, Lost. Started out as a basic castaway story: okay, sounds fun. Then the island is populated by supernatural stuff: okay, that works too. Then there are weird conspiracies, and hidden messages, and codes, and inexplicable stuff, and inhabitants of the island, and people are betraying each other and then they're not actually on the island except they are and . . . what?

I spent the first half of Season 1 trying to figure out the plot. Somewhere around the second half of Season 1 I realised that the writers didn't have a plot. They were just throwing more and more confusing stuff in there with no plan for making it all make sense. So I quit watching.

On a similar theme, the new Battlestar Galactica. It's such an awesome premise: the battlestar with its fleet of civilian ships containing the remnants of the human race, fleeing the Cylons who are trying to wipe them out. All they had to do was play it straight and it would have been an awesome series. But instead we get told over and over again that the Cylons Have A Plan, and this gets used to justify all kinds of inconsistent behaviour until no-one has the faintest idea what these guys are actually doing anymore. Just like Lost, it never gets explained in any way that makes sense.

I have come to the conclusion, Saph, that you are, in fact, me, but from some mirror universe where I live in London and have managed to get a publishing deal. :smallbiggrin: (I had the exact same reactions to both Lost and BSG, in precisely the way you describe.)

[Forum Explorer]

The third book of the golden compass series. The ending is so messed up it ruined the entire series for me.

A series which I can't remember by T. Hickman. I read the second book first and I was so confused that I didn't understand what was going on until I read the first book and then the second book again years later.

[Saph]

I have come to the conclusion, Saph, that you are, in fact, me, but from some mirror universe where I live in London and have managed to get a publishing deal. :smallbiggrin: (I had the exact same reactions to both Lost and BSG, in precisely the way you describe.)

Some of my friends actually watched all the way through both of them. I asked them a while later if they ever found out exactly what was going on. They said "no". :smallbiggrin:

[IrnBruAddict]

Bleach ...... :smallsigh:. So much potential.


Not me personaly but when my mum first watched From Dusk Till Dawn she thought it was a kidnapping movie for the first half because she didn't know anything about it before hand. Then all of a sudden the vampires showed up and she wondered if she was watching the same movie. She loved it but still found it wierd.


And Fable. The first game was amazing and had a brilliant plot and my favourite villain ever. The second one starts out good but the ending ............ :smallfrown:. Not good at all. You unite the 3 heroes then find out it was all pointless. Then when you come back from the dead and find the boss he dies in one hit then you get kicked out the plot. Cheers for getting rid of Lucian and getting me this tower, now bugger off. Your kid will need me in Fable 3 but I'm done with you.

[Bastian Weaver]

Terminator 3. Starts as a parody, rather funny. Ends... well, let me put it like this. Imagine the Joker from Batman Beyond: Return of the Joker in his first dying scene, when he mutters "This isn't funny... this isn't funny".
Well, like that, only not as cool.

[Weezer]

For me the biggest offender here is Heinlein's Cat Who Walks Through Walls. The first 3/4ths are quasi-hard sci-fi on an orbital habitat/the moon with the main character running from/fighting an unknown conspiracy. It's excellent sci fi. Then it turns into an incestuous space orgy. With time travel.

[Soras Teva Gee]

For me the biggest offender here is Heinlein's Cat Who Walks Through Walls. The first 3/4ths are quasi-hard sci-fi on an orbital habitat/the moon with the main character running from/fighting an unknown conspiracy. It's excellent sci fi. Then it turns into an incestuous space orgy. With time travel.

Doesn't that describe Heinlein's entire career?

[IrnBruAddict]

For me the biggest offender here is Heinlein's Cat Who Walks Through Walls. The first 3/4ths are quasi-hard sci-fi on an orbital habitat/the moon with the main character running from/fighting an unknown conspiracy. It's excellent sci fi. Then it turns into an incestuous space orgy. With time travel.

So, just skip to the end for the good stuff then? :smallwink:

[Weezer]

Doesn't that describe Heinlein's entire career?

Only the last bit of it, which I guess qualifies it for a career that went askew in this context, I suppose.

[Mordar]

This seems to happen to me a lot. I'll sit down to watch a movie or TV show or read a book. Quite often something I've heard good things about. The story will star off OK and move along with a basic plot. And then suddenly, the plot goes askew and you sit back and have to wonder ''what the heck is going on?''. What was once a nice story with a plot, just suddenly goes the wrong way. Often it's quite simple, the characters just pick 'route B', but some times it's just down right crazy. And you can't help but think, if they would have just stuck to the basic plot the story would be much better.

While I don't necessarily agree with the Total Recall example, I do think that you've hit on a couple of trends that are really disappointing:

"The Rugpuller" - There's probably something on tvtropes all about this, but for me it seemed to really blossom into a problem in the first couple of years following The Sixth Sense. Everybody (maybe every producer/production company, not every writer/director) felt the need to cram rugpulling reveals into every project just so the story might go from omg! to ZOMG!?!. Of course, that only works when (a) it is well-written and developed as part of the actual story devised by the writer/s; and (b) when the entire audience doesn't spend the first 75% of the story looking for the rugpuller.

"The X-Files Redux" - Every TV series should have a complex, multi-phasic overarching plot, rife with conspiracy, unknowable truths, and crazy plot turns, that takes X seasons to resolve, where X is unknown to everyone involved, thus can not possibly be written in a fashion that will have internal consistency or be comprehensible to anyone - even if they have the writers notes and a plot chart. Why is X unknown? Because that's how long the series will air on television, of course...

So instead of writting a good story, everyone's trying to land the next big thing, the next must-see-TV, the next "We're so clever we should get awards" script. That, and the power of the focus group with input, or the production meeting with network execs like those from Simpson's episode who suggest that "Upping the cool quotient by 17%" will make the main character a winner.

Yup, sometimes the basic plot, well written and acted, wins.

[Muz]

Yup, sometimes the basic plot, well written and acted, wins.

Unless it's on FOX.

:smallwink:

[irenicObserver]

I think the stories written just because someone wanted someone else to like it generally turn out the best. For the most part.

[Lord Seth]

Unless it's on FOX television.

:smallwink:I normally hate the "quote something and edit it" thing, but I had to do this one.

[Xondoure]

Is it bad to mention Buffy? Because man, going from season 3 to 4 was… well… Unpleasant to say the least.

[Dumbledore lives]

Is it bad to mention Buffy? Because man, going from season 3 to 4 was… well… Unpleasant to say the least.

I didn't think going from season 3 to 4 was that bad, some changes needed to be made and so the show changed. From season 5 to 6 was when it really went off, with an extremely anti-climactic big bad and an overal plot that was far too anvilicious.

One thing that i think most people can agree with, but Evangelion went wholly off the rails with both the series, End of Evangelion, and the most recent rebuild movie, though at least 2.0 did have an ending which made sense.

[KillianHawkeye]

Other disappointing endings! Avatar and The Incredibles.

How was the ending to The Incredibles disappointing? :smallconfused:

Did you expect a big fight scene against Syndrome? He was just a nerdy kid, not a super. The whole point of the ending was that the family overcame their problems and learned to work together.

Or wait, are you referring to the whole mole men fake sequel-bait cliffhanger ending? If I can get over the one from Super Mario Bros., then I can get over that.

[DigoDragon]

I think we can ascribe this to a couple of factors:

"Three sir." :smallsmile:
Though to prod upon #2, and agree with Mordar, I think the idea of authors changing their idea partway through the story for a "Rug Puller" is some kind of modern fad going around where an author has this idea come up to try their hand at making some kind of twist ending because "everyone is doing it".
Maybe that's why a lot of stories work well from beginning through the middle, but flop on us at the end.

For example, I think if LOST played it straight and kept the story as a conspiracy plot about crash-landing on an island inhabited by people who are spying on the world and doing odd experiments like in the early seasons it could probably turn out alright. But that's my opinion. A friend of mine thought it ended fine and I could only shrug about it.
I personally hoped the island would blow up.

[Mewtarthio]

I didn't think going from season 3 to 4 was that bad, some changes needed to be made and so the show changed. From season 5 to 6 was when it really went off, with an extremely anti-climactic big bad and an overal plot that was far too anvilicious.

I agree, it needed a bit of retooling to continue on past season 3. I just don't think the show needed to continue on past season 3 in the first place. Season 4 wasn't the worst season, but it was pretty bland. Speaking of plots going askew, a conflict between Buffy and The Initiative (which they'd been building towards for half the season) would've been far more interesting than the conflict between Buffy and some random demon cyborg that shows up out of nowhere.

[Prime32]

How was the ending to The Incredibles disappointing? :smallconfused:

Did you expect a big fight scene against Syndrome? He was just a nerdy kid, not a super. The whole point of the ending was that the family overcame their problems and learned to work together.

Or wait, are you referring to the whole mole men fake sequel-bait cliffhanger ending? If I can get over the one from Super Mario Bros., then I can get over that.I didn't take that as sequel bait (Underminer himself was barely focused on), I just took it as "look, they're committed to this now".

[KillianHawkeye]

I didn't take that as sequel bait (Underminer himself was barely focused on), I just took it as "look, they're committed to this now".

That's why I used the term "fake sequel-bait." :smallwink:

[Xondoure]

I agree, it needed a bit of retooling to continue on past season 3. I just don't think the show needed to continue on past season 3 in the first place. Season 4 wasn't the worst season, but it was pretty bland. Speaking of plots going askew, a conflict between Buffy and The Initiative (which they'd been building towards for half the season) would've been far more interesting than the conflict between Buffy and some random demon cyborg that shows up out of nowhere.

Agreed. The show just turned grimdark without any real reason. It would have been interesting to watch the scoobies move through college but instead they just threw away the whole balancing of a normal life along with the slayer stuff, and gave everyone an extra dose of angst because drama sells right?

Oh and Angel. 4th season. Time travelling baby plots. Just no.

[Soras Teva Gee]

That's why I used the term "fake sequel-bait." :smallwink:

Well in point of fact the Underminer thread was taken up... in a video game.

[Mystic Muse]

Oh and Angel. 4th season. Time travelling baby plots. Just no.

That wasn't the worst part in my opinion.

The worst part was Connor.

Sweet pony princessess how I hated that kid.

[TheAmishPirate]

For me, it's got to be Heroes. The first season is absolutely fantastic, with an incredible plot, incredible characters, and enough mystery left to promise many more seasons to come.

Then season two happened. I'm not really sure where to start with the trainwreck, so I'ma just dive into this mess. I lost count of the number of conflicts that could've been trivially resolved if characters had just talked to each other. Not even that! Talked intelligently to each other. Instead of saying "Oh, that guy you're traveling with? He's bad and I need to kill him so could you just move aside please?", maybe consider, "Oh, that guy you're traveling with? He's planning to end the world, I can show you all this irrefutable evidence we found, so maybe he's been lying to you? And we should stab him now?" On top of that, characters go through the exact same character arc they went through the previous season (or at least try to) while others hatch convoluted, poorly-explained, and poorly-planned schemes to get nebulous rewards that ultimately escape their grasp. To their credit, they did get one good reveal in, but that was just about the only redeeming factor of the entire season. I stopped watching after that, and I heard that it only got worse from there.

[bloodtide]

How about that last Conan movie. It should have been soooo simple: make a movie about a barbarian warrior with action and drama and pure barbarianism. And Jason makes a good enough Conan(and heck he played a Conan character for 4 years on Stargate.)

It's hard to know where to start with the Conan train-wreck. As soon as daddy Conan dies, I knew it would be a bad movie. The 'orcs killed my parents' background story almost never works. I hate it when a writer feels that a character needs to be motivated but 'the greatest revenge in the world'. It's just so dull and boring.

And you sure did not get the feel that Conan was a 'barbarian'. He should have done much more 'hulk smash' type stuff then all the crazy ninja sword play. (Jason was a better Conan as Ronan then he was as Conan)

[Dumbledore lives]

Agreed. The show just turned grimdark without any real reason. It would have been interesting to watch the scoobies move through college but instead they just threw away the whole balancing of a normal life along with the slayer stuff, and gave everyone an extra dose of angst because drama sells right?


There was some unnecessary angst, some of it due to real life like Seth Green leaving the show, but I think on the whole it wasn't bad, and lead up to season 5 which worked well for finishing off the story, with suitable drama and angst. And yeah, I never really liked Adam, but I accepted him as a villain, even if his whole archetype was done much better with Glory in the next season.

And I had forgot about Heroes, yeah that went way off after Season 1, even reading the plot summaries for later seasons is an exercise in frustration.

[Xondoure]

That wasn't the worst part in my opinion.

The worst part was Connor.

Sweet pony princessess how I hated that kid.

Oh he was what I meant. I liked baby connor. A lot. As a whiny twerp… never.

[irenicObserver]

For me Connor just didn't go anywhere, I mean he just sucked up time and plot; couldn't they have found a different way to bring in Jasmine?

Don't get me started on Heroes, it's like that feeling you get that something is going wrong but you don't know what. It's like watching someone die, not even exaggerating.

[Tiki Snakes]

I knew I'd never need to watch another episode of Heroes when I learnt that somehow and for some reason they brought back Silar. I neither know or care why or how it happened, that was just it for me. All the guilt from having not managed to catch anything past the first couple of episodes of the second season just evaporated instantly.

[Caledonian]

TRON: Legacy.

The initial premise isn't bad, but the details of the Grid start not to make sense*, and then the plot dives right off a cliff. The movie ends up as a nonsensical Daft Punk music video (yay!) with surprisingly good performances and great special effects (yay!) but an absolutely incoherent story.

*by TRON standards, which aren't very high in the first place.

[irenicObserver]

I absolutely disagree with that hyperbole.

[MCerberus]

I think the steady gaining of insanity for sci-fi series is hilarious personally.

Anyone remember Andromeda? Started with the crew lost in time due to a black hole, then very quickly went insane. I think by the 3rd episode there was a civilization of children being poisoned by a nuclear bomb.

[Mx.Silver]

I think the steady gaining of insanity for sci-fi series is hilarious personally.

Anyone remember Andromeda? Started with the crew lost in time due to a black hole, then very quickly went insane. I think by the 3rd episode there was a civilization of children being poisoned by a nuclear bomb.

Honestly, Andromeda didn't really go off the deep end until about midway through series 2, when they kicked the lead-writer off the project, wrote-out one character completely re-wrote a second and mostly abandoned the main arc.

[DigoDragon]

TRON: Legacy.

Yeah, also how they seemed to just gloss over the one character that shares a name with the movie title.

[KillianHawkeye]

For me Connor just didn't go anywhere, I mean he just sucked up time and plot; couldn't they have found a different way to bring in Jasmine?

Really, the whole point of Connor was to make Angel's life kinda miserable (along with the audience). Also, to make Angel start acting more like an adult. Yes, he was angsty (but nothing compared to S6-S7 Buffy), but he basically had "plot device" written all over him from Day 1, before he was even born, so it's not that surprising.

[Xondoure]

Really, the whole point of Connor was to make Angel's life kinda miserable (along with the audience). Also, to make Angel start acting more like an adult. Yes, he was angsty (but nothing compared to S6-S7 Buffy), but he basically had "plot device" written all over him from Day 1, before he was even born, so it's not that surprising.

And Angel as a new dad was great. Connor as a teenager was just… a) saw it coming, b) was screaming "no no no you stupid writers do not do this it isn't worth it you're throwing away a perfectly sound- You did it. Well. At least you can not- now that's just plain creepy. Why would you do that? What was the point? Just. Agh!"

Sad part is the other four seasons are all pretty solid.

[pffh]

How about that last Conan movie. It should have been soooo simple: make a movie about a barbarian warrior with action and drama and pure barbarianism. And Jason makes a good enough Conan(and heck he played a Conan character for 4 years on Stargate.)

It's hard to know where to start with the Conan train-wreck. As soon as daddy Conan dies, I knew it would be a bad movie. The 'orcs killed my parents' background story almost never works. I hate it when a writer feels that a character needs to be motivated but 'the greatest revenge in the world'. It's just so dull and boring.

And you sure did not get the feel that Conan was a 'barbarian'. He should have done much more 'hulk smash' type stuff then all the crazy ninja sword play. (Jason was a better Conan as Ronan then he was as Conan)

Now I haven't seen the new movie (due to horrible reviews) so I don't know how bad it really is but you do know that both in the novels and in the Arnold movies Conan was much more a strong thief swordsman then a hulk smash type character and that the "Someone killed my parents" is also the start of the first Arnold Conan movie.

Hell the first Conan movie is a revenge story and the second is a "I love her so much I'll do anything to bring her back" story.


I think the steady gaining of insanity for sci-fi series is hilarious personally.

Anyone remember Andromeda? Started with the crew lost in time due to a black hole, then very quickly went insane. I think by the 3rd episode there was a civilization of children being poisoned by a nuclear bomb.

Ah Andromeda, so much potential and so crappy after the first season. Shame really, it had an interesting concept and main races but eugh so bad.

[MCerberus]

Ah Andromeda, so much potential and so crappy after the first season. Shame really, it had an interesting concept and main races but eugh so bad.

If I remember correctly it was originally planned to be a Trek spinoff.

[TheThan]

For me, Lost. Started out as a basic castaway story: okay, sounds fun. Then the island is populated by supernatural stuff: okay, that works too. Then there are weird conspiracies, and hidden messages, and codes, and inexplicable stuff, and inhabitants of the island, and people are betraying each other and then they're not actually on the island except they are and . . . what?

I spent the first half of Season 1 trying to figure out the plot. Somewhere around the second half of Season 1 I realised that the writers didn't have a plot. They were just throwing more and more confusing stuff in there with no plan for making it all make sense. So I quit watching.

On a similar theme, the new Battlestar Galactica. It's such an awesome premise: the battlestar with its fleet of civilian ships containing the remnants of the human race, fleeing the Cylons who are trying to wipe them out. All they had to do was play it straight and it would have been an awesome series. But instead we get told over and over again that the Cylons Have A Plan, and this gets used to justify all kinds of inconsistent behaviour until no-one has the faintest idea what these guys are actually doing anymore. Just like Lost, it never gets explained in any way that makes sense.


YES! YES! THANK YOU. FINALLY SOMEONE AGREES WITH ME!

oh sorry for the all caps. I've had far too many people heave undue praise for both of these series (and insult my intelligence for disagreeing with them) that I started to think I was the the only one in the world to see through all their crap at the core of both of these TV shows and see just how poor the show actually are.

[MammonAzrael]

For me, it's got to be Heroes. The first season is absolutely fantastic, with an incredible plot, incredible characters, and enough mystery left to promise many more seasons to come.

Then season two happened. I'm not really sure where to start with the trainwreck, so I'ma just dive into this mess. I lost count of the number of conflicts that could've been trivially resolved if characters had just talked to each other. Not even that! Talked intelligently to each other. Instead of saying "Oh, that guy you're traveling with? He's bad and I need to kill him so could you just move aside please?", maybe consider, "Oh, that guy you're traveling with? He's planning to end the world, I can show you all this irrefutable evidence we found, so maybe he's been lying to you? And we should stab him now?" On top of that, characters go through the exact same character arc they went through the previous season (or at least try to) while others hatch convoluted, poorly-explained, and poorly-planned schemes to get nebulous rewards that ultimately escape their grasp. To their credit, they did get one good reveal in, but that was just about the only redeeming factor of the entire season. I stopped watching after that, and I heard that it only got worse from there.

Season 2? I'm afraid you've been fooled, sir. Heroes was tragically canceled after a single season, there was no second season. :smallamused:

I'll join the Buffy (season 6), Angel, and Lost boats. I've only watched the first 2 seasons of BSG, but from what I hear I'm not sure I want to watch the rest.

As for Andromeda, I remember really enjoying that show, watching it whenever I caught it on air. And then I saw some really weird episodes that seemed to have nothing to do witht he plot and realised I had stumbled into season 4. Read Coda (http://www.cyberspace5.net/agentrichard07/coda.htm), Robert Hewitt Wolfe's original intentions for the show, some time later, sadly never came to fruition.

[Weezer]

I'll join the Buffy (season 6), Angel, and Lost boats. I've only watched the first 2 seasons of BSG, but from what I hear I'm not sure I want to watch the rest.


I think keeping it to season 2 is the best idea, the first two seasons were some of the best Sci-fi TV I've ever seen. The first bit of 3 was alright, but then it all went to hell after that.

[bloodtide]

Now I haven't seen the new movie (due to horrible reviews) so I don't know how bad it really is but you do know that both in the novels and in the Arnold movies Conan was much more a strong thief swordsman then a hulk smash type character and that the "Someone killed my parents" is also the start of the first Arnold Conan movie.

The 'stereotypical' Conan in the media is the barbarian warrior. I doubt that Hollywood would ever be brave enough to show us the 'strong thief'. And while the 'you dirty rat, you killed my parents' is a classic...it has also been over done to death. I just hoped for something more and different.


How about Green Lantern. The movie starts off OK, you get the long and drawn out 'background/origin story'(and while I hate this part of all first super hero movies, that would be another post...). Then Hal finds the One Ring...and well, nothing happens. The 'bad guy' shows up and kidnaps the girl for no real reason and sort of fights Hal, again for no real reason. Then the Galatics-wnaabe shows up to eat the Earth and Hal flicks his wrist and saves the day. What?

[Soras Teva Gee]

YES! YES! THANK YOU. FINALLY SOMEONE AGREES WITH ME!

oh sorry for the all caps. I've had far too many people heave undue praise for both of these series (and insult my intelligence for disagreeing with them) that I started to think I was the the only one in the world to see through all their crap at the core of both of these TV shows and see just how poor the show actually are.

I actually thought that was a common reaction to at least be aware of.

[TheThan]

You’d be surprised.

I’ve known several people that had nothing but praise for those shows. They thought they were the best written and planned out shows ever. NOTHING could have persuaded them otherwise, despite mountains of evidence the support claims to the contrary. Their rebuttal was that I was an idiot. *sigh*

If they had simply said something like, “I like it despite it’s flaws.” It wouldn’t bother me so much. But apparently I'm insulting them personally for not liking their favorite show, or noticing the (gaping) plot holes.

When the writers of a show say "Even we don't know whats going to happen", that means they're figuring it out as they go. Its not that a good show can't be written that way, its just that there are more room for mistakes.

[Mordar]

The 'stereotypical' Conan in the media is the barbarian warrior. I doubt that Hollywood would ever be brave enough to show us the 'strong thief'. And while the 'you dirty rat, you killed my parents' is a classic...it has also been over done to death. I just hoped for something more and different.

Um...both CtB and CtD* were based on the "strong thief", almost exclusively (Edit: Training montage in CtB aside). There is no "frenzy" to the Howard barbarian...he uses the term reverently to mean someone who has not bowed to the expectations of a (decadent) civilization and remains staunch in their beliefs, independence and personal power. For all of the crap in CtD, at least in the end that holds true..."I will have my own kingdom...".

That being said, I do understand your dislike with the murdered-loved-one cliche...but it is tough to make Conan a hero in this day and age without something that everyone can immediatelly and viscerally agree with as validating a life based on blood-letting and taking things that might not really belong to you.

Save the world (like you mention in Green Lantern)? Not really an intentional Conan deal...it is usually directly the result of saving one of the handful of people he cares about, or him tripping over the plot by accident.

Get rich or die trying? Not going to be a very heroic tale there, even if I (and probably you) might really like that story...but that'd only work as a crappy TV series ala Hercules.

Explore the known world and see what mysteries it holds? Again, not really for a feature film any more...back in the days of Sinbad and Mr. Harryhausen, yes, but not in the era of return-on-investment and focus groups.

So, these are the four common Conan kick-offs I can recall, and really only the first works to initiate a movie (or, had it been successful, series of movies). At the end of the day, I didn't think the new film was as bad as I expected it to be, and as I saw it for free, I did get my money's worth. I just don't know how else to start it as an introduction to a whole lot of people who've never read Howard...or are old enough to have seen an R-rated movie in 1982, or the sequel in 1984.

- M

* - Why, oh why, did we have to suffer the fool Malak? Conan would have put up with him for about 7 seconds...and that's only if he needed 5 to finish his drink and move the wench from his lap.

[Soras Teva Gee]

You’d be surprised.

I’ve known several people that had nothing but praise for those shows. They thought they were the best written and planned out shows ever. NOTHING could have persuaded them otherwise, despite mountains of evidence the support claims to the contrary. Their rebuttal was that I was an idiot. *sigh*

If they had simply said something like, “I like it despite it’s flaws.” It wouldn’t bother me so much. But apparently I'm insulting them personally for not liking their favorite show, or noticing the (gaping) plot holes.

When the writers of a show say "Even we don't know whats going to happen", that means they're figuring it out as they go. Its not that a good show can't be written that way, its just that there are more room for mistakes.

Ugh horrible, I never got into lost but it was obvious for BSG that while still very good the Cylons had less of a plan and more "vague set of goals to establish a method to achieve" and whatever they had went off the rails entirely by New Caprica. Nevermind how they apparently lost interest in creating all the Cylons so decided to make up some nonsense.

[Aotrs Commander]

That wasn't the worst part in my opinion.

The worst part was Connor.

Sweet pony princessess how I hated that kid.

You and me both...

And yet, his final appearence after he'd become a more balanced person were tolerable; though generally the last few seasons of Angel weren't anything to write home about (with the sole exception of Smile Time, which made the entire series worth it for that one episode...)


Honestly, Andromeda didn't really go off the deep end until about midway through series 2, when they kicked the lead-writer off the project, wrote-out one character completely re-wrote a second and mostly abandoned the main arc.

Yeah, Andromeda's first season was awesome (how many starship battles did they have?!) and then sort of steadily deteriorated, before nose-diving in season 5.


As for Andromeda, I remember really enjoying that show, watching it whenever I caught it on air. And then I saw some really weird episodes that seemed to have nothing to do witht he plot and realised I had stumbled into season 4. Read Coda (http://www.cyberspace5.net/agentrichard07/coda.htm), Robert Hewitt Wolfe's original intentions for the show, some time later, sadly never came to fruition.

That was...interesting. It would probably have been better that what we got... Even if I'm not sure it's what I would have preferred.

Still, a fascinating glimpse into what might have been. Link much appreciated.



@ Nu BSG Never managed to even watch one episode. The original - a childhood favourite of mine - was too deeply ingrained, I didn't like the "no aliens" thing (I liked the alien Cylons). The entire concept of humans and Cylons and *yawn* "mankind has wrought teh evils with technology" and whatnot completely put me off. I consider the original BSG to a good framing device for some shooting and most importanly, some fighter combat. I do not want philosphy or social commentary (etc etc) ruining the pure sanctity of my starship combat, thank you; not now, not ever. Starships are by far the most important thing that can be included in any story; far more so than characters, if push really comes to shove and yes I am being completely serious for once.

And worst of all, the starship battles weren't even any good and that - from me - is the single most damning thing I could ever say.

Heck, the 1980s starship battles were pretty rubbish by modern standards, but at least I could see what was going on. And they had crappy 1980s computer displays and not models on a fragging table like it was World War II. (That was the point I abandoned my attempts to watch it, because there is no reason, no circumstances, no matter how contrived, no justifications or what have you, nothing excuses the writers and world builders and whoever from being that frag-damn STUPID.)

[The_Snark]

Hancock comes to mind. It started out as a comedy(?) about a bad-tempered superhero who's always screwing up and causing collateral damage, and then halfway through the movie it veers off into... a tragic love story with angels or immortals or something? I don't quite recall the details, but it was definitely not what the trailers had advertised. It was... odd.


You’d be surprised.

I’ve known several people that had nothing but praise for those shows. They thought they were the best written and planned out shows ever. NOTHING could have persuaded them otherwise, despite mountains of evidence the support claims to the contrary. Their rebuttal was that I was an idiot. *sigh*

If they had simply said something like, “I like it despite it’s flaws.” It wouldn’t bother me so much.

I liked that show despite its flaws. And it definitely does have them. Like you say, they were more or less making each season up as they went; plot elements and characters from earlier seasons sometimes got shunted off to the side, the writing varied in quality (though that's true of every TV show), some characters kept reliving the same arc over and over, and the Cylons totally didn't have a plan.

I think it helped that I watched the show well after it aired; I'd already heard all the complaints about how the show started out great and went downhill at the epilogue/final episode/last season/middle of the third season/right after the pilot. (Okay, maybe I'm exaggerating about that last one, but not the rest.) So I was pleasantly surprised to find myself enjoying it, more or less, all the way to the end. I sort of liked the blend of hard sci-fi and weird mysticism, though I know the latter bothers a lot of people. The finale had some plot holes and some off moments, but also some excellent scenes, so it averaged out to a pretty decent capstone in my mind.

And I'd basically accepted that there wasn't going to be a brilliant ending twist. They'd built up all these unanswered questions, and there was no way the answers was going to be as interesting as the mystery had been. (I haven't seen Lost, but from what I hear it suffered from the same issue.)


And worst of all, the starship battles weren't even any good and that - from me - is the single most damning thing I could ever say.

See, this is why I'm really glad they stopped focusing on the space dogfights: they got old quickly. I liked that they started delving into the day-to-day life and concerns of the refugee fleet: supply and logistics, civil rights and unrest, and of course dealing with all the issues you get when you stuff a bunch of traumatized people into tiny metal boxes drifting through space and force them to live like that for years on end while their race is slowly hunted to extinction.

It's not to everyone's taste, I'll grant you, but if all you want is cool CGI space battles there are plenty of movies and shows that do this, and not very many that take BSG's particular approach.

[Soras Teva Gee]

Heck, the 1980s starship battles were pretty rubbish by modern standards, but at least I could see what was going on. And they had crappy 1980s computer displays and not models on a fragging table like it was World War II. (That was the point I abandoned my attempts to watch it, because there is no reason, no circumstances, no matter how contrived, no justifications or what have you, nothing excuses the writers and world builders and whoever from being that frag-damn STUPID.)

Here I thought that when that started it wasn't going to be all ranting about shakey cam.

Anyways the little models make better then perfect sense to me. One the humans don't believe in networking very much for good reason. So where the hell is a computer display going to get its data. Second it can't break down and can be maintained by like one guy as a secondary duty. Third for what is essentially a vanity for the viewer anyways little models are more visually interesting and timeless then drawing blips on a screen or scribbles on a map.

Also I have the exact opposite opinion of 1980s BSG. Battles? Try starship battle, singular. Even the best SW era effects get old when you only have five of them for the entire series. And characters and stories, yeesh almost as cheesy as Star Trek TOS but at the same time not nearly cheesy enough. And while rebelled against their masters IS ridiculously overdone if one must have robots then at least its better then For Teh Evulz because you've already... rebelled and killed your lizard masters.

80s BSG has its fun to be sure but I threw that toaster in the junk-heap 15 minutes into the real series.

[Aotrs Commander]

See, this is why I'm really glad they stopped focusing on the space dogfights: they got old quickly. I liked that they started delving into the day-to-day life and concerns of the refugee fleet: supply and logistics, civil rights and unrest, and of course dealing with all the issues you get when you stuff a bunch of traumatized people into tiny metal boxes drifting through space and force them to live like that for years on end while their race is slowly hunted to extinction.

It's not to everyone's taste, I'll grant you, but if all you want is cool CGI space battles there are plenty of movies and shows that do this, and not very many that take BSG's particular approach.

Actually, there really aren't; and certainly not since sci-fi shows have fallen out of popularity with the movie companises and networks; even less that do it well.

But at the end of the day, I have never been interested in stories about "the human condition" (sic); especially when they go into "edgy" and "gritty" as I inevitable find them to be simultaneously tiresome and monumentally unrealistic.


Here I thought that when that started it wasn't going to be all ranting about shakey cam.

Shaky cam is dreadful invention that does nothing but subtract from the viewing experience and needs to unilaterally go die in a fire, but that's not really a topic for this thread.


Anyways the little models make better then perfect sense to me. One the humans don't believe in networking very much for good reason. So where the hell is a computer display going to get its data. Second it can't break down and can be maintained by like one guy as a secondary duty. Third for what is essentially a vanity for the viewer anyways little models are more visually interesting and timeless then drawing blips on a screen or scribbles on a map.

And I think it is still utterly indefensible - for one thing, it an extension of, and is as indefensible, as the whole "technology is teh evuls" philosphy (which as I understand it, ended up as the theme in the last - apparently, from what I've been told, rather lower quality seasons), which has been so done to to death so much it's more Undead than I am. It was a moribund concept when it was first done and time has not improved it. All it does is cause me to say, "wait, hang on, without technology, there would be no medical technology, medicines or hygiene" then remember that there are places in the world without such things, and convince me the writer has never actually seen the news, or a film clip or something from them.

"The robots are rebelling", while not nearly as damning, is also the single most over-used cliche in al of sci-fi (even freaking Mass Effect uses it, for crying ot loud; but that at least had the decency to do it well.) I tend to find it at worst, frankly humanocentric arrogance when it boils down to just technologicals and humans in isolation, or at best a poor approximation of dealing with discrimination and marginalisation (and if I want that, I'll read X-Men.)


Also I have the exact opposite opinion of 1980s BSG. Battles? Try starship battle, singular. Even the best SW era effects get old when you only have five of them for the entire series. And characters and stories, yeesh almost as cheesy as Star Trek TOS but at the same time not nearly cheesy enough. And while rebelled against their masters IS ridiculously overdone if one must have robots then at least its better then For Teh Evulz because you've already... rebelled and killed your lizard masters.

80s BSG has its fun to be sure but I threw that toaster in the junk-heap 15 minutes into the real series.

My impression of the show are biased, I'll grant you, since aside from the movie and one or two epsiodes, I remember little of it; but I've never bothered to go look it up on DVD, which should tell you something. No, it probably wasn't very good when viewed as not a child, and not a patch on more modern sci-fi (or for that matter the original Star Trek or Buck Rogers - the latter of which was camp enough to hilarious in an Adam West Batman kind of way (not that TOS wasn't camp as well, just microscopically less).)

But anyway, I've said all I can say about BSG (as I can't claim to have watched it, as I say; normally I try and give a show one or two episodes before judging it, but I just couldn't force myself even to watch to the end of an episode I caught half-way through during "exciting bit"), so I'll shall be quiet on that subject now.



I'll also take black and white morality over dreary grey any day of the week, at least nowadays where the latter is held as being "better." Perhaps much of my ire is due to the cantankerousness of age, but I'm growing increasingly tired of modern media's inability to create anything with a positive spin (My Little Pony excepted), and I find myself increasingly drawn to older stuff like Lensman or Biggles (despite the sometimes astonishing level of unthinking sexism and/or racism that was acceptable in the times, which I view a bit tongue in cheek), because at least they're FUN. I watch/read/play media to be entertained, not to be philosphised/preached at, and as I've said before, I am not remotely entertained by people being miserable. Imperilled, yes, but the two are entirely not related, something that a lot of modern writers seem to have forgotten.

So, to bring this rant to relevance, I guess I can say I think there is a general tendancy to many plots these days which has gone askew; drama for the sake of drama, as opposed to when necessary. The comic industry is particularly bad for this, as is TV and a lot of the movies. (The fact that movies are now almost entirely derivative of something else that has gone before is a topic for another time.)



You know, I honestly thought people were going to take more umbridge with me saying starships were more important than characters in my last post! I had a rant about how you can tell stories without characters (at least, with a definition of "character" as more than "thing the story is about", so perhaps it would be better to say "without characterisation") and everything. I don't know whether I should be pleased or put-out...!

[Weezer]

@ Nu BSG Never managed to even watch one episode. The original - a childhood favourite of mine - was too deeply ingrained, I didn't like the "no aliens" thing (I liked the alien Cylons). The entire concept of humans and Cylons and *yawn* "mankind has wrought teh evils with technology" and whatnot completely put me off. I consider the original BSG to a good framing device for some shooting and most importanly, some fighter combat. I do not want philosphy or social commentary (etc etc) ruining the pure sanctity of my starship combat, thank you; not now, not ever. Starships are by far the most important thing that can be included in any story; far more so than characters, if push really comes to shove and yes I am being completely serious for once.

And worst of all, the starship battles weren't even any good and that - from me - is the single most damning thing I could ever say.

Heck, the 1980s starship battles were pretty rubbish by modern standards, but at least I could see what was going on. And they had crappy 1980s computer displays and not models on a fragging table like it was World War II. (That was the point I abandoned my attempts to watch it, because there is no reason, no circumstances, no matter how contrived, no justifications or what have you, nothing excuses the writers and world builders and whoever from being that frag-damn STUPID.)

Actually, there is a lot more in common between old and new BSG than the first few episodes of either would indicate, just finished watching old-BSG a few weeks ago and I was surprised at some similarities. Both incorporate religious stuff, with old-BSG going so far as to explicitely encounter a Devil-analogue and the corresponding Angel-analogues (who, like the ones in new-BSG, can only be seen by some people), there was the whole 'disappearing Starbuck' thing, conflict between the military and civilian governments, conflict between the Pegasus and Galactica, the list goes on. The original also delves in some grey morality and contemporary political commentary when they arrive at Earth and find what is obviously a cold war analogue that had been going on so long that both sides were fighting just because one was "East" and the other was "West", a bit heavy handed, yes. A lot of this stuff was only dealt with in one or two episodes in the old show where the new one would've had a drawn out story arch, but that's due to differences in length and how TV shows have changed in the past 40+ years. It's actually impressive the depth that the original went to, and very obvious why it became a classic.

[Aotrs Commander]

Actually, there is a lot more in common between old and new BSG than the first few episodes of either would indicate, just finished watching old-BSG a few weeks ago and I was surprised at some similarities. Both incorporate religious stuff, with old-BSG going so far as to explicitely encounter a Devil-analogue and the corresponding Angel-analogues (who, like the ones in new-BSG, can only be seen by some people), there was the whole 'disappearing Starbuck' thing, conflict between the military and civilian governments, conflict between the Pegasus and Galactica, the list goes on. The original also delves in some grey morality and contemporary political commentary when they arrive at Earth and find what is obviously a cold war analogue that had been going on so long that both sides were fighting just because one was "East" and the other was "West", a bit heavy handed, yes. A lot of this stuff was only dealt with in one or two episodes in the old show where the new one would've had a drawn out story arch, but that's due to differences in length and how TV shows have changed in the past 40+ years. It's actually impressive the depth that the original went to, and very obvious why it became a classic.

I shall take your word for it. As I say, I remember little about the original save that was in the movie, and that was portrayed in the two early novels I have and that one episode where the Galactica was really badly on fire. I was, after all, fairly young at the time, and nuances would have passed me by (watching B5 again for the first time sine it's came out last year was informative, as I realised how much subtext I'd missed, and I was in my mid-late teens at the time, so by no means oblivious). Especially since my appreciation of characters and plots as it stands is a relatively new thing; in those days, my interests was only in the vehicle (combat).

I suspect that my biggest issue with new BSG was that I found it literally and figuratively unwatchable - the fact it delved into a subject matter I also dislike (which to be fair I have only gathered from hearsay) merely puts me off further.

I also suspect, though, even if some of the themes were present in the old series, I would have found more them paletable in small doses (doubly so if sandwiched between starship battles - I'll put up with a significant amount of anything, even general crappiness, if there's a big starship battle involved at the end...)

...

...

Yeah, I think I also just need to say one last thing, and you probably could surmise this must be coming, so I apologise for treading territory that new BSG fans must had heard time and time again, so I'll do this as fast as I can:*metaphoical deep breath* theykilledJollyFaceisnotagirlandneitherisBoomerand he'snotaCylon! *gasp*

Sorry, sorry...! I...just needed to get that off my chest... I'll be quiet now...

New BSG did ONE thing right, though; no crappy Boxey and his frag-awful robodog. (Well, I don't know about the former, in truth, but I'm pretty sure the latter didn't exist.)

Frag, I hated those tiresome child characters even as a child myself. They can go along with Scott Trakker and T-Bob (and maybe Snarf and Slimer) and go... to a really bad place as politeness prevents me from describing their fate in detail. (Chip and Spike Witwickey were only microscopically less bad because at least they weren't actually children, and before long weren't very central to the plot, though still more or less unecessary...)

[Avilan the Grey]

And you sure did not get the feel that Conan was a 'barbarian'. He should have done much more 'hulk smash' type stuff

Which is absolutely and totally wrong. Conan, unlike the stereotypical barbarian, is very intelligent, extremely crafty, and equally sneaky as he is brutal.

[Velaryon]

Not me personaly but when my mum first watched From Dusk Till Dawn she thought it was a kidnapping movie for the first half because she didn't know anything about it before hand. Then all of a sudden the vampires showed up and she wondered if she was watching the same movie. She loved it but still found it wierd.

That's how I felt about it. From Dusk Til Dawn had the makings of a pretty great kidnapping film, then it takes a sudden turn into the bizarre halfway through the film. The final product was alright I guess, but honestly if you dumped the whole vampire thing and just extended the original plotline I think it would have been a better movie.



That wasn't the worst part in my opinion.

The worst part was Connor.

Sweet pony princessess how I hated that kid.

The only good thing about Connor was that he provided a nice excuse for Darla to be around before he was born. But yeah, once he actually showed up, he pretty much ruined the show until they got rid of him.

[bloodtide]

Which is absolutely and totally wrong. Conan, unlike the stereotypical barbarian, is very intelligent, extremely crafty, and equally sneaky as he is brutal.


My point was more that Hollywood would never make a very intelligent, extremely crafty, and equally sneaky as he is brutal type Conan. Hollywood can never go buy-the-book. They will always feel the must 'change' a character. After all just look at every single character based on something. Some guy in Hollywood said 'oh, we need to change this and that.

So accepting that, I would have at least liked to have seen an intelligent, crafty hulk smash type Conan. And I would have loved more brutality, but then they could not have it pg-13 and try and get all the kid money.

[The_Snark]

But at the end of the day, I have never been interested in stories about "the human condition" (sic); especially when they go into "edgy" and "gritty" as I inevitable find them to be simultaneously tiresome and monumentally unrealistic.

*shrug* Like I said, not to everyone's taste. I get bored when people focus too much on the laser guns and rocket ships. Different strokes for different folks, y'know?


And I think it is still utterly indefensible - for one thing, it an extension of, and is as indefensible, as the whole "technology is teh evuls" philosphy (which as I understand it, ended up as the theme in the last - apparently, from what I've been told, rather lower quality seasons), which has been so done to to death so much it's more Undead than I am. It was a moribund concept when it was first done and time has not improved it. All it does is cause me to say, "wait, hang on, without technology, there would be no medical technology, medicines or hygiene" then remember that there are places in the world without such things, and convince me the writer has never actually seen the news, or a film clip or something from them.

I never thought the show was trying to preach the evils of technology. I feel like people who interpret it that way are missing the real point, which is Be Nice To Your Robots. Sometimes it's subtle, sometimes it's blunt, but it's pretty clear that the Cylons only rose up because they were, you know, enslaved; some of the human characters in the show may blame the evil robots for everything, but the writers generally undermine them. The Cylons are shown to be very human over the course of the show—which doesn't necessarily make them good, because humans are perfectly capable of doing horrible things, and from an AI storytelling perspective you could criticize it as unimaginative (why are robots exactly like humans again?)... But the point is, it's a standard-issue cycle of violence thing, not a claim that Robots Are Intrinsically Evil And Will Always Rebel.

There's one plot point in the finale that could be interpreted as saying technology=bad, but I'm pretty sure that it was included for a different reason, and it's promptly followed by the most ham-handed Be Nice To Your Robots moment in the whole series (bleh).

There are plenty of valid reasons to criticize the show, but I don't think this is one of them.


That's how I felt about it. From Dusk Til Dawn had the makings of a pretty great kidnapping film, then it takes a sudden turn into the bizarre halfway through the film. The final product was alright I guess, but honestly if you dumped the whole vampire thing and just extended the original plotline I think it would have been a better movie.

Reminds me of The Forgotten. My friends and I rented that movie thinking it was a psychological thriller; the main character is a woman in mourning for her deceased son, who's told that she never had a son, that she is in fact delusional. And of course she resists the idea, but as the film goes on and she can't find any evidence (outside of her memories) that he existed, she starts wondering whether she really is crazy... Then a bunch of sinister-looking MIB-types show up, and it turns out that her son a) definitely existed, b) isn't dead, and c) was kidnapped by aliens. Who want to remove him from existence because... because... you know, I don't think the movie ever answered that question? A plot summary I found on the Internet informs me it was all an experiment to see if the emotional bond between parent and child could be broken, but apparently there's no motive beyond "because we can."

It was disappointing. It could have been a good psychological drama; it could have even pulled off the alien angle, cliche as that is, if the aliens and their government conspiracy minions hadn't been so pointless and generic and incompetent.

[pffh]

My point was more that Hollywood would never make a very intelligent, extremely crafty, and equally sneaky as he is brutal type Conan. Hollywood can never go buy-the-book. They will always feel the must 'change' a character. After all just look at every single character based on something. Some guy in Hollywood said 'oh, we need to change this and that.

So accepting that, I would have at least liked to have seen an intelligent, crafty hulk smash type Conan. And I would have loved more brutality, but then they could not have it pg-13 and try and get all the kid money.

But they did. Have you even seen the old Conan movies?

[pita]

Not me personaly but when my mum first watched From Dusk Till Dawn she thought it was a kidnapping movie for the first half because she didn't know anything about it before hand. Then all of a sudden the vampires showed up and she wondered if she was watching the same movie. She loved it but still found it wierd.

A friend of mine described From Dusk Till Dawn as "Rodriguez proves he has a really good movie in him until he gets bored."

[Kjata]

I think the anime No. 6 is a good example. I'm gpoing to spoil it, because it isn't worth watching.

So the story begins in a fairly distopian future. Everyone is happy, or else. This kid takes care of an injured kid wandering around, who was a fugitive. The kid loses a lot of his rights, and ends up being a park keeper instead of going to college. There is also this girl, who is am implied love interest.

The kid finds a dried up husk of a dead body, and a bee flies out of its neck. Apparently, this is a government conspiracy, because the kid is thrown out of the city into a shanty town outside of giant walls. There he meets the fugitive.

So, they discuss figuring out what the bees are, but instead end up developing a homsexual relationship. Eventually, the girl is in trouble, so they go to save her. But it turns out, she is the Goddess of Bees reincarnated into a prison host, and she can only be freed by the girl dying. So the fugitive blows the girl up, and the Bee Goddess releases a swarm of killer bees on the city.

There is also this rebellion sub plot involving the kids mom. But the rebels decided to beging their rebellion as the bee Goddess releases her swarm, and they are killed by angry bees. Seriously, the entire rebellion subplot had NO EFFECT whatsoever. They weren't even killed by the governent to show the audience that the government is too powerful, they die as collateral damage with the government to the freaking bees.

So the main kid and the fugitive decide that being butt buddies forever is too happy for the ending of an anime, and part ways. Seriously, the kid isn't pissed that his childhood friend died, he's kinda just like "Well, good luck. Who needs love anyway?"

Seriously, the entire thing seemed like it was leading up to a sweet rebellion, but it got deus ex machina'd to hell, and all the plots had no relevance whatsoever.

[The Glyphstone]

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/EverythingsWorseWithBees

[Kato]

Oh my god, yes... No. 6 was.. oh my god... it wasn't a perfect recollection, e.g. Nezumi helped... whatever his name was to leave the city and some other things... but really, it was one of the worst wastes of my time ever... no ides why I watched it all the way through.


To be honest, I think this is something that happens in nine out of ten works, to a bigger or smaller degree... But often enough i can ignore/enjoy it anyway.

[Yora]

As pretty much everyone who played the game agrees: Mass Effect 3.
If you played it, you know exactly at what moment everything goes downhill. Everything pretty much makes sense, is well paced, and fun. And the moment you get hit in the chest by a giant laser from a spaceship, nothing makes any sense anymore. From that point the rest of the game is just random sequence of scenes that fail to mention what happened in between, new characters are introduced, never before seen powers are taken for granted, and some things should be impossible. It's as if the game was written to continue for three more hours, but then someone droped the last section of the game and all they could save from the pile was 15 minutes of content that was just glued together without any system, and they called it a day.

There's actually the theory that the giant laser knocked you out and everything that happened after that was a hallucination while you were burried under a pile of concrete. Because you are also shown under a pile of concrete after blowing up with a space station. Which is in space!

[Kjata]

Oh my god, yes... No. 6 was.. oh my god... it wasn't a perfect recollection, e.g. Nezumi helped... whatever his name was to leave the city and some other things... but really, it was one of the worst wastes of my time ever... no ides why I watched it all the way through.


To be honest, I think this is something that happens in nine out of ten works, to a bigger or smaller degree... But often enough i can ignore/enjoy it anyway.

I watched the whole thing because the first few episodes were really intriguing, then as the plot started to deepen i thought it was cool. I thought it was interesting to have the main character forgo the obvious girlfriend and be gay. It was the last 2 episodes that annoyed me. It was like the people making it set up a really elaborate troll.

I mean, it had the makings of a good series. But instead of exploring the government conspiracy, they went "ARGH BEEEEEEES! HAHAHA!"

[Ozfer]

What about the Robin Hood BBC series? It was great, and funny... But my god, it slowly deteriorated into this beast of poorly thought out story-lines and terrible characters.

It could have been so great :\.

[Jan Mattys]

As pretty much everyone who played the game agrees: Mass Effect 3.
If you played it, you know exactly at what moment everything goes downhill. Everything pretty much makes sense, is well paced, and fun. And the moment you get hit in the chest by a giant laser from a spaceship, nothing makes any sense anymore. From that point the rest of the game is just random sequence of scenes that fail to mention what happened in between, new characters are introduced, never before seen powers are taken for granted, and some things should be impossible. It's as if the game was written to continue for three more hours, but then someone droped the last section of the game and all they could save from the pile was 15 minutes of content that was just glued together without any system, and they called it a day.

There's actually the theory that the giant laser knocked you out and everything that happened after that was a hallucination while you were burried under a pile of concrete. Because you are also shown under a pile of concrete after blowing up with a space station. Which is in space!

It's more of a failed ending than a plot going askew.

Until the very last 4 minutes of a 60 hours long journey, it's just magnificent.

[Ninjadeadbeard]

And Fable. The first game was amazing and had a brilliant plot and my favourite villain ever. The second one starts out good but the ending ............ :smallfrown:. Not good at all. You unite the 3 heroes then find out it was all pointless. Then when you come back from the dead and find the boss he dies in one hit then you get kicked out the plot. Cheers for getting rid of Lucian and getting me this tower, now bugger off. Your kid will need me in Fable 3 but I'm done with you.

I...actually didn't mind Fable 2's ending. I thought it was an awfully mature/audacious way to end a game. Your quest for vengeance really was meaningless, because revenge is meaningless. In the end, the object of your hatred was just a sad old man, and yet look at all the bodies you had to step over to get him. But Fable 3's plot? That was unforgivable schlock.

And just to add my own contribution, Dragonball Z. Don't get me wrong, I loved watching it as a kid, and I still watch it if I find it on somewhere. But I lost track somewhere around the point where there were three parallel time-travel plots going, and I still didn't know what was going on until that...pink thing...showed up. But that wasn't the moment I went, “What the heck?” That was when it looked like the whole series was about to end with Gohan vs Buu...and then it just kept going. And going. And going. And going.

[Moofaa]

Like others, I have endless rage at the direction of the BSG series. The pseudo-religous themes, terribly predictable love stories, and hippy-lets-go-green-and-forgoe-evil-technology ending was crappy, boring, and just lazy.

It made me really miss Babylon 5. All BSG had going for it was the all-too-few space battles, tactics, and some of the episodes/scenes on dealing with limited resources and damaged/aging equipment.

I really wish we could get a hard sci-fi series with aliens, space battles, politics, adventure and a nice believable plot with real progression (and not just random episodes where the heroes deal with random incidents in 45 minutes for 15 episodes a season, although some of that is perfectly fine). No "force", no telepaths, no time travel, no gods/demons/ghosts/religion. No rubbing my face in comparisons to "real world" society/politics/climate change to deliver some retarded message or to "make people think".

Firefly was the closest thing I can think of recently to what I want.

Lost was another show with a terrible chance in direction. If they had kept things moving as they had been early on, I would have really enjoyed it.

[Yora]

I really wish we could get a hard sci-fi series with aliens, space battles, politics, adventure and a nice believable plot with real progression (and not just random episodes where the heroes deal with random incidents in 45 minutes for 15 episodes a season, although some of that is perfectly fine). No "force", no telepaths, no time travel, no gods/demons/ghosts/religion. No rubbing my face in comparisons to "real world" society/politics/climate change to deliver some retarded message or to "make people think".
But that requires some actual effort in writing and a plan where the plot goint to.

[Saph]

Have any other sci-fi series tried out the Babylon 5 "plan out the story from the start" model? If not, I wonder why . . .

[Yora]

I assume flexibility. After each season, you can decide what characters to kill of, what new elements to introduce, and so on. On Babylon 5 it worked, because it was written in a way that made every single character replaceable and would provide a logical explaination why the character is gone. Which is a lot of work.
It also is less accesible to new viewers who didn't see the first seasons or don't watch every episode.

Also, I assume it's cheaper to hire screenplay writers only for a couple of episodes instead of having one doing it all.

Yes, it's a tall order, but the reason why I watch so few TV shows. You don't get the same quality in storytelling.

[Axolotl]

Have any other sci-fi series tried out the Babylon 5 "plan out the story from the start" model? If not, I wonder why . . .Deep Space Nine did it and I've been told the new Battlestar Galactica did it (although I've never seen it).

[Yora]

Though DS9 looks a lot like they decided to drastically change everything at the end of the second season. Until that point there wasn't any plot at all.

But the season 2 finale and the season 3 opener were the best episodes of the show. And the two-parter that is a direct continuation of it (and doesn't even tell you it's a two parter until the end, which again lulls you in a false sense of being a generic mid-season episode), as well as the Fake-Chancelor/Dominion Prison plot where also excelent.
And as I just now notice that all my favorite episodes are two- or three-parters, it appears that they did indeed have a very strong main storyline, just with more single-episode plots between them than B5.

[DigoDragon]

Have any other sci-fi series tried out the Babylon 5 "plan out the story from the start" model? If not, I wonder why . . .

Because only the good writers do that and they cost money?

(I've heard there is a large field of inexperienced writers who do work for nickels on the dollar. If true, it explains the decline of good story telling on TV).

[Weezer]

Another difficulty with planning out full show archs from the very beginning is that you have no way of knowing how long your show will last. Let's say you have a 4 season arch, the show is largely ruined if it's canceled any time before the end of the 4th season or if it's pushed longer than those 4 seasons. It really restricts you in a way that doesn't work well with the unstable nature of TV. The best shows I can think of, though not sci-fi (The Wire, Mad Men, a few others) tended to have largely one season story archs, but multi-season character archs. I think this is a nice middle ground to hit.

[Gnoman]

There's also the insurmountable problem that network executives don't like whole-show story arcs due to the Continuity Lockout problem. This is, in fact, why BSG got so much less coherent in season three. SciFi executives demanded that they make more stand-alone episodes to draw in new viewers.

[Mewtarthio]

tl;dr The American TV system is screwed up. :smallannoyed:

[Yora]

Another difficulty with planning out full show archs from the very beginning is that you have no way of knowing how long your show will last. Let's say you have a 4 season arch, the show is largely ruined if it's canceled any time before the end of the 4th season or if it's pushed longer than those 4 seasons. It really restricts you in a way that doesn't work well with the unstable nature of TV. The best shows I can think of, though not sci-fi (The Wire, Mad Men, a few others) tended to have largely one season story archs, but multi-season character archs. I think this is a nice middle ground to hit.
And that's why big budget art is bad. If you have something to say or a story to tell, chose a medium that doesn't require hundreds of thousands of dollars.

[Lord Seth]

But the season 2 finale and the season 3 opener were the best episodes of the show.I don't think those episodes come close to episodes like "Duet" or "In the Pale Moonlight."
Another difficulty with planning out full show archs from the very beginning is that you have no way of knowing how long your show will last. Let's say you have a 4 season arch, the show is largely ruined if it's canceled any time before the end of the 4th season or if it's pushed longer than those 4 seasons.This is why you should be flexible. By all means have your full show arc planned out, but make sure you can adjust it if necessary if your series doesn't last that long. And for the love of all things, don't end your season on a cliffhanger if there's a reasonable chance you won't be getting another one.

[hamishspence]

I kinda liked DS9's "Trials & Tribble-ations"

[nyarlathotep]

And that's why big budget art is bad. If you have something to say or a story to tell, chose a medium that doesn't require hundreds of thousands of dollars.

On the other hand small budget productions that are working in a big budget environment are just as bad.

"Why is this anime using shot-reverse-shot in inverse more than Lucas uses it normally?"

"So they don't have to animate the mouths."

[Yora]

I don't think those episodes come close to episodes like "Duet" or "In the Pale Moonlight."
Those are also extremely well. I think my love for The Jem'Hadar is because it comes completely unexpected. But these ones you mentioned are also very important parts of the main story line.

Something I noticed recently, that shows and games really get me invested when they build up a complex world with a variety of details that allow for episodes and moments in which just a few sentences can make everything in your mind fall into place and you realize all the complex implications just from drawing from your knowledge of the world. Which you only get when you have a solid main storyline. In the Pale Moonlight is a stand alone episode, but it only really works because you already have a huge amount of background information about the involved parties. Just knowing "the Romulans are important for the war" and "Garak lies" doesn't work as it does when you have all the backstory on them. Star Trek has the advantage of being able to look back at 15 seasons of Lore when that episode was made. If you only have 4 like Babylon 5, you need to put a lot more work into it.

[Avilan the Grey]

Speaking of Plot Arcs. First of all, if you are going to have a serious overarching plot, please make a Mini Series instead of a "X seasons" where "X" is dependent on rating.
You can still have a semi-overarching plot, but you will have to have it run in the background AND you will have to be prepared to REPLACE it with a new one after it has properly run it's course. Do not do a Prison Break.

Also, for the love of Glod, if you have planned a 3 season plot and you get cancelled early season 2, just run full speed into the wall. A sharp cut off mid plot is far better than trying to rewrite 1.8 seasons (what is that? About 40 episodes?) of plot into 2 episodes.

[Lord Seth]

Also, for the love of Glod, if you have planned a 3 season plot and you get cancelled early season 2, just run full speed into the wall. A sharp cut off mid plot is far better than trying to rewrite 1.8 seasons (what is that? About 40 episodes?) of plot into 2 episodes.I disagree. A rushed ending is still going to be preferable to not having any real ending at all. I can make a bit of an exception for anime strongly based on manga as you can just read the manga to see how it continued, but in other cases an actual conclusion is better than just...stopping.

[Gamer Girl]

Have any other sci-fi series tried out the Babylon 5 "plan out the story from the start" model? If not, I wonder why . . .

One of the big problems is how TV shows are made. Someone comes up with the basic show idea: the pilot episode. But then, when the show gets picked up as a regular series, they go to the grab bad of random writers. You can see this on every show. Some episodes just 'don't make sense' or a just 'odd' or it's just down right 'silly'.

Some shows, like B5 and DS9 have people on and part of the show that are doing the writing. However, most shows do the grab bag. There are hundreds of writers out there, and they just pick a couple to write the episodes. but, of course, with picking at random, you get random quality. Not ever writer is equal. It's easy to find this type of episode for a sci-fi show, as the writer won't understand the plot or tech of the show, or worse won't care. And they often have 'that one odd event' in the whole history of the show.

And just to make things worse, much of TV Production land hates sci-fi. Even today, sci-fi is seen as 'the dumb stuff and weirdos and kids like'. So when a writer is 'forced' to do a sci-fi episode, you can tell by the horrible episode. The writer just tossed some things together with that attitude: "Whatever! Sure! You want a dumb sci-fi episode? Sure! Waste my time! scribble..scribble..There aliens and ray guns and crap! "

Though some of the grab bag writers are good, of course.

[Velaryon]

I disagree. A rushed ending is still going to be preferable to not having any real ending at all. I can make a bit of an exception for anime strongly based on manga as you can just read the manga to see how it continued, but in other cases an actual conclusion is better than just...stopping.

I don't agree, and I will point to Dollhouse as an example of why. Joss Whedon said he had five seasons' worth of plot arcs planned out (which he really should have known better since he was working with Fox), and when he found out midway through season 2 that he wasn't getting a season 3, he tried to cram all of it into the last half dozen episodes. The result was a train wreck of nonsensical plot twists that came out of nowhere because there was no time to properly set them up. It would have been better to just finish out the season and leave all of that for comics or hope for a movie or something.

[TheFallenOne]

If they had simply said something like, “I like it despite it’s flaws.” It wouldn’t bother me so much. But apparently I'm insulting them personally for not liking their favorite show, or noticing the (gaping) plot holes.

Perhaps they wouldn't have felt insulted if you didn't go with 'criticism' like this.


I started to think I was the the only one in the world to see through all their crap at the core of both of these TV shows and see just how poor the show actually are.

I liked BSG and Lost, the characters, plot, mystery... Sadly they didn't have a plan from the start and wrote themselves in a corner unable to answer all questions, but it was still a fun ride.
We can discuss plot holes and flaws. But you're not doing that. You're saying "This show is crap and you just fail to see it"(and when you say it like that people will see it to imply the reason for the supposed blindness is lacking intelligence).

Perhaps people felt insulted because you did insult them.

[Lord Seth]

One of the big problems is how TV shows are made. Someone comes up with the basic show idea: the pilot episode. But then, when the show gets picked up as a regular series, they go to the grab bad of random writers. You can see this on every show. Some episodes just 'don't make sense' or a just 'odd' or it's just down right 'silly'.Which can be just as common, if not more common, with the showrunners. Seriously, some of the goofiest episodes of Voyager and Enterprise were penned by their creator(s) (see: Threshold or A Night in Sickbay), and the two episodes usually considered the worst of DS9--"Let He Who Is Without Sin..." and "Profit and Lace"--were both written by the showrunners.


Some shows, like B5 and DS9 have people on and part of the show that are doing the writing. However, most shows do the grab bag. There are hundreds of writers out there, and they just pick a couple to write the episodes. but, of course, with picking at random, you get random quality. Not from what I see. From what I can tell, most shows do have a regular team of staff writers who meet, think up ideas, and then go and write them. Now, it is my understanding that the Writers Guild requires shows to have like three episodes per season written by an outside author (main reason, presumably, is to give people an opportunity to break in), but it's not really that "random": People pitch ideas and/or send in sample scripts and then the ones that look the best get picked. Of course, it also bears mentioning that the scripts can be rewritten afterwards by the regular staff writers if they don't turn out that good...
I don't agree, and I will point to Dollhouse as an example of why. Joss Whedon said he had five seasons' worth of plot arcs planned out (which he really should have known better since he was working with Fox),I'm tired of this "should have known better since he was working with Fox" kind of comments. The situation would've been the same with any of the other networks. Quite frankly, Fox may have been more generous to the series than other networks would have been.
and when he found out midway through season 2 that he wasn't getting a season 3, he tried to cram all of it into the last half dozen episodes. The result was a train wreck of nonsensical plot twists that came out of nowhere because there was no time to properly set them up. It would have been better to just finish out the season and leave all of that for comics or hope for a movie or something.Still better to get a real conclusion if you ask me. Though I've heard from a number of people that the fact they sped up so much in the final episodes made the show a heck of a lot better.

[Avilan the Grey]

I disagree. A rushed ending is still going to be preferable to not having any real ending at all

It's a matter of degree. If you lose 3 seasons? Just stop it. If you are cut short 5 episodes from the end? Try to write it out.

Edit: As for Wedon and Fox... It has more to do with the fact that he isn't as popular as he, or his fans, thinks he is. Buffy was the exception. Most people just didn't think Dollhouse or Firefly all that interesting.

[Mordar]

I disagree. A rushed ending is still going to be preferable to not having any real ending at all. I can make a bit of an exception for anime strongly based on manga as you can just read the manga to see how it continued, but in other cases an actual conclusion is better than just...stopping.


I don't agree, and I will point to Dollhouse as an example of why. Joss Whedon said he had five seasons' worth of plot arcs planned out (which he really should have known better since he was working with Fox), and when he found out midway through season 2 that he wasn't getting a season 3, he tried to cram all of it into the last half dozen episodes. The result was a train wreck of nonsensical plot twists that came out of nowhere because there was no time to properly set them up. It would have been better to just finish out the season and leave all of that for comics or hope for a movie or something.


Still better to get a real conclusion if you ask me. Though I've heard from a number of people that the fact they sped up so much in the final episodes made the show a heck of a lot better.

For what it's worth, I believe that in this era of multi-multi-media, Mr. Wheadon should certainly have known better than to cram the closure into an abridged second season. Though I generally am opposed to related materials marketing (buy the comic to go along with the TV series spawned from a movie that was based on a book...all of which are contemporaneously available), I do think that a series of books ala Star Trek would be a nice fit, and he's got the resources/clout to make at least a few happen. Not big "novels" of the 450+ page variety, but the nice episodic neo-pulp that you can consume in a quiet weekend.

The final episodes could have provided a cliffhanger with a little immediate closure while setting up the alternative media run, leaving the opportunity for a re-launch on TV later instead of scuttling the whole shebang by rushing to the finish.

- M

[Gamer Girl]

Which can be just as common, if not more common, with the showrunners. Seriously, some of the goofiest episodes of Voyager and Enterprise were penned by their creator(s) (see: Threshold or A Night in Sickbay), and the two episodes usually considered the worst of DS9--"Let He Who Is Without Sin..." and "Profit and Lace"--were both written by the showrunners.

I'm not saying that showrunners or staff writers are always better or anything. Brandon Braaga has written more bad Star Trek episodes then anyone else and he is part of the in crowd.






Not from what I see. From what I can tell, most shows do have a regular team of staff writers who meet, think up ideas, and then go and write them. Now, it is my understanding that the Writers Guild requires shows to have like three episodes per season written by an outside author (main reason, presumably, is to give people an opportunity to break in), but it's not really that "random": People pitch ideas and/or send in sample scripts and then the ones that look the best get picked. Of course, it also bears mentioning that the scripts can be rewritten afterwards by the regular staff writers if they don't turn out that good...

Every network and show does it a bit differently, of course. And wrting and Tv shows is a lot of politics. And it's not that an ''outsider'' writer can't write a good show. And think of how 'sounds good' and 'reality' are....I'm sure most of the horrible episodes 'sounded great' in the writing room, but when they were written out: Yikes!


I guess my point might be that a good show as a good, strong production team that cares about the show. And most important is the Top Dog that can over see everything and step in to change things. So if writer Joe put something down they can say, nope, wait, change that. You can tell when this does not happen, just look at half of the Star Trek shows.

[Gnoman]

Also keep in mind that shows that aren't Star Trek have a much bigger problem with outside writers. Some of the best Star Trek episodes were written by authors who are prolific in the licensed novels and other EU material. Though non-canon, that means that they are much more "in tune" with the universe than a "cold" writer would be. Shows like Dollhouse or Lost don't have a large-scale expanded universe, so they lack this advantage.

[bloodtide]

Which can be just as common, if not more common, with the showrunners. Seriously, some of the goofiest episodes of Voyager and Enterprise were penned by their creator(s) (see: Threshold or A Night in Sickbay), and the two episodes usually considered the worst of DS9--"Let He Who Is Without Sin..." and "Profit and Lace"--were both written by the showrunners.

This is so true. Almost all of the worst Star Trek episodes were written by people that were part of the show. Take ''Threshold'':Paris and Janeway go past warp 10 and turn into lizards and mate? How in the world did that ever gt made? You'd think someone could say ''oh my god that is the worst idea ever!''.






Not from what I see. From what I can tell, most shows do have a regular team of staff writers who meet, think up ideas, and then go and write them. Now, it is my understanding that the Writers Guild requires shows to have like three episodes per season written by an outside author (main reason, presumably, is to give people an opportunity to break in), but it's not really that "random": People pitch ideas and/or send in sample scripts and then the ones that look the best get picked.

It can get more complex. For example, the shows writers meet and agree on a bunch of story arcs, plots and such. The basic problem is though that the staff writers only have enough time to do about half of the shows season. So the other half of the shows need to be done by the guest writers, right out of that grab bag. And if the person is a bad writer, it does not even matter if you give them a perfect, golden idea, as they will ruin it.

It's easy to spot 'outside' episodes. And Star Trek gives some very bad examples. Remember the 'warp 5 speed limit' from force of nature: outside writer. When the Enterprise gets transformed into a old temple by a probe: outside writer.

But as said even the staff writers put out some bad stuff: Most of the Next Generation from season five and up is full of bad episodes. As is most of Voyager. Voyager is the odd one as the outside writers are far, far better then the staff writers.