I do not like conventional detective dramas. I've seen so many of them that new ones just seem like the same old seen-it-a-mllion-times. John Doe seems to be developing as a detective drama with the added twist that Doe can draw on such a huge amount of knowledge even more so than Jarod in The Pretender. But whereas Jarod is supposedly a genetically engineered (or bred? its not clear) savant Doe's source of knowledge is much more mysterious and is so great that one can't imagine how even the most brilliant super genius would even want to know a lot of the knowledge he draws up. The knowledge extends way into the realm of uninteresting trivia (like the model numbers of old biolers for heating buildings).
So what's up with John Doe? Can the writers move the show along in directions that make it into something more than a cop show with a super detective? Lets examine the second episode for signs of its future prospects.
At the end of the first ep John was yelled to and addressed as Tommy by a woman on a passing boat. In the second ep we learn that he couldn't find the woman but he was able to cut a piece of plastic from a boat window where he saw her touch it. He used the plastic on the ship as a source of fingerprint and of course knew how to use common chemicals found in a bar to bring out the pring and make it more visible.
John Doe has the fingerprint. But few people have complete fingerprints on file. So that was unlikely to work in the first place. Of course if he found the woman too rapidly the show would develop too rapidly. So it is best that as expected the fingerprint didn't match with anything in police files.
Okay, before you know it he's helping Detective Hayes figure out why some pool has blood a blood appearance in it. Should we stop to wonder why the police would take such an interest as to send so many people out to investigate? Its an implausibility but is it an important one? There are worse ones to come.
I have my own suggestions for how the blood could have gotten into the pool when the alarm was on:
- Put the blood in a pouch that could be thrown into the pool from a distance. Have the pouch be something that would slowly dissolve and release its contents. One would need a good throwing arm of course.
- Have the intruder wear a wet suit that makes their outer appearance look really cold (below 92.7F according to one character) and that way the infrared alarm wouldn't go off. But maybe it has motion detection too. But can such an outside detector even work wthout going off too often from birds, dogs, and other critters and even leaves blown into the area?
Okay, this is all less than total fun. But having some guy climb up on the roof in order to deliver the blood thru the storm gutter isn't that clever. And why was only the back yard surrounded by infrared sensors?
"Fell from the sky."
"Don't be so sure."
So far I'm not deeply intrigued. Plus, the tie-in from the house to the brother's house via a bit of a flower petal is very far-fetched. Why would the guy have a piece of a flower still on him from somewhere else? Why would the owner of the house come out just as they were talking about the type of the flower it is and why would he know to comment that such flowers are around his brother's bouse? This is the sort of thing that dulls my enthusiasm for detective shows.
Why go to the brother's house with a SWAT team? At that point it was just a routine trip to go question a potential suspect to see if he'd put blood into a pool. Er, who cares?
The barn: Why is the brother handing upside down in the barn dripping blood? Weird plot twist.
Doe: "This man has been embalmed by a professional."
Why would the murderer embalm a person if they just wanted to kill them? And why would the murderer, if they were that worked up to kill someone, make sure that person went thru a proper Buddhist burial ritual with their hands? I don't get it.
Okay, so we cut to John Doe trying to figure out who he is. He's out putting signs up. At the same time he's being cagey with various people about his inability to recall any knowledge of who he is.
Sign: "Have you seen me? I'm missing?" Why not: "Do you know me?" as a more pertinent caption on the sign? Heck, since he's so rich from currency trading why not just run ads in newspapers asking for people who know who he is to call some number?
Regarding his reeling off the number of DMV records with Tommy as a name: If he can hack into DMV records then he could narrow himself down by height combined with approximate age. He appears taller than average and so a fairly small percantage of the populace will have his height.
Doe: Detective Hayes, Karen, Karen, Detective Hayes.
Karen: Hey Five Oh.
Like the Hawaii Five Oh reference. I wonder how many people got it. Probably well less than half the audience.
Then Hayes refers to his boss as "Lieutenant Boss Lady".
Gotta establish Karen's basis for a continuing role in the series. Doe didn't respond to Karen's pitch for a job by hiring Karen right away. But you just know he's going to since she's a recurring character. Well, by the end of the show he'd hired her and demonstrated a realization that he needed to be emotionally connected to people. He had to have a sort of emotional battle with himself about a wedding ring in order to get to the point of hiring her.
How'd Doe know what password to use on the US Customs database? Does he simply just know passwords? What is the nature of his knowledge?
I like the way people ask Doe questions where he answers them in a way that is honest but since the question askers don't know just what secrets he's hiding they misunderstand and are satisfied. Example:
Who are you?
I'm John Doe
Does that make the wife Jane Doe?
In a matter of speaking yeah.
Okay, how and why did the shipper guy let the smuggled-in Vietnamese die? Did a Vietnamese guy kill is brother in retaliation? Is the shipper corrupt? Or just careless? Or vicious? How would the shipper cause an entire large container from a ship to fall into the water?
Anyway, here we are at the end of another episode. Lots of things happened in it that are not worth describing and just served to carry us to the next interesting twist. As purely a detective show with a know-it-all detective it doesn't quite rise to something interesting. Doe doesn't have the quirkiness of Monk and so far doesn't have the supernatural abilities of the Dead Zone main character.
At the end of the episode Doe is on the cover of a local newspaper as the savant that helped crack a terrible murder case. Some white guy sees his face in the internet and brings it to some business lady in her own office. There is a cut to the view out of her window and the surprise is that the view is of a city that could be in the Middle East, India or somewhere else in the Asian subcontinent. Here's our second connection to his past and its made to seem simultaneously exotic and either business or spy related.
The John Doe show is going to rise and fall on how well his secret origin works to make him more interesting. Super detective skills just aren't going to do it. Will there be people who know something about his past who will be spying on him or trying to kill or manipulate him? Will the writers be able to make that angle interesting?
Thinking more about the first episode entitled "Train Job".
Some people are comparing Firefly to Farscape. I can see some parallels but there is an important difference: Farscape was stranger and edgier.
Go back to the beginning of Farscape: Crichton got shot thru a worm hole and immediately had an accidental collision which killed Kreiss's brother and as a result of that Kreiss went on a hunt with the Peacekeepers under his control to capture and kill Crichton. Crichton immediately got up by an assortment of escaped convict aliens. After that all sorts of weirdness followed.
Farscape is (or, sadly, shall I say was) way stranger than Firefly promises to be. Whedon seems determined to place a Frontier Western in space. So far the tech in this future civilization is not at all promising. Perhaps that will change in future episodes. But there are other important differences with Farscape: In Firefly only human cultures are involved. The humans have a central administrative empire that the lead characters in the series don't exactly like. But the Alliance of Firefly is nothing like the pure brutal ruthlessness of the Farscape Peacekeepers or the menace of the even more powerful Scarens.
Yes, there are some parallels. After all, the crew on Farscape were all wanted escapees who took over a prison transport and there are people on the Firefly who are wanted by the Alliance. However even here Farscape went further. Crichton ended up being wanted by a couple of different races for the wormhole technology stored in his brain while the doctor's sister River on Firefly is wanted for her mild psychic abilities:
A borderline psychic, River can read most minds and tends to speak not only what is on her own mind, but others' as well. The Alliance is eager to “recover” their genius.
The sense I get from Firefly is that it will have less weird tech, less bizarre plots, and less strange characters than was Farscape standard fare. Firefly really is a Western placed 500 years into a not-so-advanced future. The characters are intentionally more mundane. There won't be a priestess with the ability to do something equivalent to a Vulcan mind meld (recall when Crichton helped Zhaan, the Delvian priestess regain her sanity by mind merging) or a character like Stark with his seemingly supernatural abilities.
Crichton was way more dramatic than Mal. Crichton went thru rapid fire spewing of pop culture references combined with pleas, demands and threats as appropriate. Of course, Crichton could do that because he was really from our time. He just happened to end up among a bunch of aliens.
Another sort of parallel: Kaylee "The Mechanic" in Firefly is a nice mild sort of engineering officer. Contrast her with the cutting, acerbic and rather more dramatic Seamus Zelazny (ref: late great science fiction writer Roger Zelazny) Harper on Andromeda Ascendant. Or compare her to anyone on the Farscape crew when they were repairing something. The Farscape people had lots of attitude yelling at each other while they fixed Moya. Kaylee is a milder character. The pilot on Firefly is an equally mild and unobtrusive character.
Farscape was on the Sci Fi Channel in America. Firefly is on more mainstream Fox channel.
Farscape was weird. Firefly is Western.
Farscape was harder core sci fi. Firefly has some tech but not as much and, again, not as strange.
Why?
Here's my thinking: most mainstream TV watchers don't want weird science fiction. Star Wars was far more successful than Blade Runner. Firefly represents the product of a Producer (Joss Whedon) who is proven to be well attuned to the wider public's tastes. He's giving them the kind of science fiction show they are more likely to accept.
Does this mean that really hard core science fiction can never appeal to a larger audience? Not necessarily. The key is to make a show that on the surface is a human drama while simutaneously offering something for those more discerning hard core science fiction fans. It is possible to satisfy these seemingly incompatible sets of tastes and expectations. But it requires very careful construction so that the show works on many levels in ways that do not require all the levels to be understood by every viewer in order for each fewer to achieve a sense of understanding of the show. If its done properly it allows some viewers to ignore some of the nuances of human relationships while other viewers ignore many of the rules of the scientific and technological setting in which the events unfold.
Making a science fiction show that simultaneously appeals to such different audiences is much harder to do and such shows have been rare. Most of the time hard core science fiction fans will have to content themselves with great shows that have limited runs and low budgets or mainstream shows that do not appeal as much to their tastes.
Hard core science fiction lovers are too few in number. So the best they can hope for are shows that can simultaneously appeal to them and to a mass audience. Can this be done? Yes. Here are some incomplete and preliminary thoughts on how to do it:
There has to be the full range of human personalities and conflicts. A high tech future does not have to be barren of the full range of human emotions and human intrigue. Relationships can be realistic and some types of relationships can be similar to relationships in our own era.
Do not let the tech crowd out the human interactions. You can put lots of tech into stories and into the structure of societies and still focus on the people. The tech should not be obtrusive. Every conflict should not be solved by a simple high tech equivalent of deus ex machina. Characters should have to puzzle out each other's motivations rather than just decide to kill each other with force lances.
Tech should be unobtrusively embedded into life. Embedded wall displays or holographic imagines make more sense than display panels that look like mission control command centers. Tech should be tucked away in cabinets or capable of popping up on a table when needed.
Tech should be fashionable. The tech should look like ergonomic and stylish products designed for consumers than products designed for the military or for engineers. For example, rather than wearing militaristic looking night time techie looking head gear people should wear sun glasses that just happen to have micro-miniature computers embedded and the ability to show them some fact they need to know. The camera view of the protagonist wearing such a super pair of sunglasses shouldn't show all sorts of live flowing charts and tables all around the edges. Stuff should just pop up briefly to tell the guy what he needs to know. An ordinary person should watch such a scene and think "hey, I'll buy and wear such a pair of super sunglasses when they are available some day".
Writers should ask scientists and engineers how to be more realistic. I'll watch some science fiction show and see some implausible device that is used to accomplish some objective. Often while watching I can imagine some other device or technical method that would be just as exciting to the scientifically illiterate audience but which would also be within the realm of what will some day be physically possible. The problem is that most writers just don't have the educational background that would allow them to think of these more plausible ideas. People who study physics or engineering in college tend not to try to become Hollywood writers and of those who do too many lack a feel for the human dimension of writing. What is needed are technical consultants who can provide more plausible tech ideas.
Consumer Tech Creates Cultural Niches. Skateboards, rollerskates, frisbees and assorted other seemingly simple products have created new hobbies, group identities and pastimes. A realistic future should contain new ways to pass the time and entertain oneself. There should be group identities evident among people who pursue activities built around these common products.
Inventions are often applied in ways unforeseen by their developers. Or as William Gibson famously put it "The streets find their own uses for technology". This means that future tech should be seen being used more by common people in their daily lives. Those common people should act in ways that make it clear that they don't even think that much about the tech they are using. Its what they grew up with and they take it for granted while they mostly dwell on themselves and each other. Too many TV shows are full of warriors, government agents, and a few heroes and villains using gadgets to pursue their conflicting goals. This does not resonate as well with everyday experience.
Viewers should not need to understand scientific principles to understand the plots. Someone with scientific or technological savvy should feel satisfied by the underlying science. But events should unfold in a way that doesn't rely on that understanding in order for the human drama to be comprehensible.
BIG ASIDE WARNING: I don't write these reviews to explain to a non-show-watcher what the shows and episodes are about. Unless you've seen what I'm writing about don't expect to understand it. These are not traditional style reviews. You can find those kinds of reviews in abundance elsewhere.
First: I hate the John Doe web site. Those little Flash pop-ups with small amounts of information in them are annoying. So little info per box. Splurge a little. Use whole pages to show information. Show multiple pictures and more paragraphs.
I think Flash is used because page designers like playing with it and not because it really helps any. Okay, there are probably pages where it adds something to the browsing experience. But I'm more often than not annoyed by it.
When he fell off the island (Horeshoe Island?) into the ocean why did he then immediately start swimming out away from the island? Whatever it takes to get the series going I guess.
When he was picked up by the Cambodian fishermen and was able to speak Khmer and didn't even realize that he was speaking or knew how to speak Khmer that was a nice touch. Pretty cool.
How's he supposed to be able to tell the time from the position of the sun? Unless he also knows the day and the latitude he can't calculate the information. Or does his brain have a running clock in it that he can just access?
Why would he be put onto a stretcher by paramedics but somehow in the next scene be trying to walk into a police station to report himself as a missing person. Why? Wouldn't he have been taken to the hospital with the doctors there deciding that he was an amnesia case?
Do all golf balls have the same number of dimples? I think not. That seemed like a dumb question to answer with such exactitude.
No, he wouldn't have been able to predict which horse would win by such a simple formula. That was another bogus way to demonstrate how much he knew.
The library scene where he starts answering everyone's questions initially showed a crowd gathering a bit too quickly.
Why didn't he shout to the woman on the boat to ask her her name or his full name? Tommy who? Was she mistaken? Ah, the mystery.
"I don't know things I'm supposed to know but I do know things I'm not supposed to know."
Digger. Who is Digger? I missed it. When did the girl Karen get hired as his assistant? Was that shown? I like, missed stuff.
At first it seemed he just had a huge amount of knowledge dumped into his brain before he woke up. But then it began to seem as if his memory is getting updated all of the time.
Why wouldn't he just pay to rent the hotel room to get access to it? After all, at that point he'd done well at the races and in playing currency options.
John Doe sits at a computer and uses "Web Find It" to search on "Jenny Nichols" with a result of "no match". Come on. I just did a Google Seach on Jenny Nichols and it returned over 50,000 hits. What would he be searching for to find out about her? What sort of search engine?
The idea of more manganese building up in the bones of a vegetarian is a clever. Nuts have a lot more manganese in them than meat.
This guy is like a cross between Monk, Jarod from The Pretender and Johnnie from the Dead Zone.
Does he know about things that aren't yet in any book? Like, can he tell is what mutations in genes can cause cancers even more genes that haven't been named yet? Or does he just know the sum total of all the knowledge of what has been discovered so far by all of humanity? If so, does he believe false things that scientists think are true that they will eventually find out that they are wrong about?
Was he placed on the island by aliens for some purpose?
Is his knowledge supernaturally derived?
Is his knowledge constantly updated?
Is he a mutation into a new mind-reading future human?
He's always going to be helping the police in every episode? I hope there are episodes where he just goes out there and runs down some bizarre mystery that does not involve crime. It would be fun if he even got distracted by something that annoyed him and figured out why something in society (even a product that he wants to be able to use that is poorly designed) doesn't work right and he figures out a solution for it purely for personal esthetic satisfaction.
He ought to become sly and not demonstrate to everyone he meets how much he knows. He's better off if most do not know what a freak he is.
This is the Premiere Episode of Firefly but technically not the Pilot since the Pilot hasn't aired yet. You can find a character guide for the show here.
Lets examine some Firefly premises stated in the first few minutes:
Earth was all used up: No, that doesn't seem plausible. Earth won't run out of natural resources. Energy is the key resource. In the long term technological advances will make energy from nuclear fission, nuclear fusion, wind, photovoltaics and other sources. With energy fertilizer, building materials, and other resources can be made. So the Earth isn't going to become unlivable due to a depletion of natural resources.
Getting by with only the most basic technologies on the outer systems: Okay, first of all, there are spaceships flying around the galaxy. Trade is possible. Trade is happening. A civilization with enough technology to terraform and settle many planets ought to find it easy to build high tech societies. Information storage technologies are so cheap and small and destined to become much more so that a remote settlement will be able to have technological reference data banks that would have explanations for how to build all sorts of different technologies.
Hundreds of planets were terraformed: Incredible. In one star system? That would seem implausible. Where would the mass and the needed distribution of types of matter (gas giants wouldn't have enough heavier elements in their outer layers) come from? Plus, no planet would be all that remote from the core of the Alliance. So then in hundreds of star systems? Also, such a level of technological ability is unlikely to be achieved without the ability to, say, easily build large cities.
Gradually hint some other fate for Earth. Earth used up? Maybe in a war that wrecked the place and left it contaminated with deadly bioweapons.
Come up with some plausible reasons why the outer systems are so backward. Maybe the Alliance prevents them from getting tech and capital because they are full of disloyal people. That way there is the added benefit that the Firefly crew can smuggle tech into these planets.
A somewhat backward world still manages to have floating maglev trains. Also, the floating maglev trains look primitive inside. These seem like implausible combinations. Of course, the advantage of the levitating high speed train is that it makes for a more exciting interception for the Firefly.
Mining makes people get sick on the backward world. What, no automated robots to do the mining? Also, why couldn't the terraformers make a world that doesn't create human health problems? And why would drugs be so rare that they'd be worth stealing?
People grow old. We are 500 years in the future and there are old people. Why? Genetic engineering will make aging fully reversible in 50 years max. So why in the 26th century will there be old people walking around?
Also, where are the genetically engineered people? Or how about some genetically engineered pets?
Genetically engineered people. Have all sorts of weird people who have special genetically engineered talents and abilities. Such people could have quirky personalities. They could also enjoy things that normal humans don't enjoy. Their preferences for color schemes in their cabins or homes could be bizarre because they were genetically engineered to enjoy, say, purple worlds that have pink skies and yellow seas. Their clothes and wall art could reflect that.
Illegal hand held devices with big databases of useful tech knowledge. These devices could be smuggled as contraband to the remote planets.
Have the Serenity crew pay visits to illicit tech manufacturing facilities on worlds that are opposed to Alliance rule and that were part of the rebellion against the Alliance. The manufactured goods could be goods that the Alliance does not want the disloyal worlds to have.
Use tech, especially genetic tech, to make some of the crew members more interesting. For instance, make Zoe have much greater physical strength because she's been genetically engineered (perhaps illegally).
Inara should continue to be extremely self confident and self actualized. No matter what her past has been she should not doubt herself. She can question her choices. But she should know and accept who she is and find herself and her choices to be morally acceptable. Also, she should demonstrate extensive knowledge of history, literature, art, and even science. A useful parallel here is with the Japanese Geishas that are highly educated. Her education should be shown to be useful for advising on strategy and in human relations.
When Mal and Zoe were being held for questioning Inara's ability to waltz in and label Mal her manservant and waltz back out with them demonstrated what I hope becomes a pattern with her: Superior skills in dealing with other people. Its enjoyable to watch someone display such skills, especially to accomplish an outcome that the audience wants to see happen. To make such scenes even more fun its great if its done in a way that shows up others who failed while using less consideration of the feelings of others.
Mal is a likeable guy. He comes across as a friendly slightly rogueish leader whose choices are strictly constrained by his sense of honor and a personal moral code. I think the writers should continue to show him making sacrifices for that moral code and should show him recognzing and responding to those who also live by admireable moral codes. In an interview Joss Whedon claimed that the characters are just crooks:
Whedon: Yes, they're crooks. They definitely are criminals. But they're not the Mafia. They're not killers. There're people out there doing much worse things than they are, but when you're out on the frontier, the law is not the first thing on your mind. Your next meal and fuel to get to the next planet is the first thing on your mind.
Does he really mean that? In the first aired epiode (there's another one coming in December that takes place before the premiere episode - go figure) Mal decided to return the stolen drugs once he found out what he was stealing. But up to that point he was willing to steal if it what was being stolen was from the Alliance government and if no regular people would be hurt by it. I think this creates a problem for the show's development. How can criminals be likeable? Or, even more to the point, why should they be portrayed as likeable? How or why should we admire them or enjoy their escapades?
In Whedon's interview he talks about wanting to give a texture to the show that makes you feel like you are there and that it is real and gritty and mundane. There were scenes in the first episode that worked in that regard. I liked the way the Serenity came up behind 3 of the characters just before they were going to either be shot or forced off a cliff. There was dirt. It felt fairly real.
One shot on the ship that does not seem real: the doctor and his sister were in a room in the Firefly and the ceiling looked like it had metal strips in a grid with a false ceiling of that foamy stuff in rectangles. Sorry, spaceships are not going to have a ceiling that looks like its used for office building cubicle space. Seeing that scene I was thinking they were down on a planet in a regular building. It took a while to clue in to the idea that they were on the Firefly.
Also, the lowering of Jayne into the travelling train seemed too unnatural. I would expect a drop of a human directly into the opening in the ceiling. Putting him on the roof of high speed train with nothing to hold onto seems like it wouldn't work in real life. The train seemed to be going over 100 mph. So why do it that way?
Here's my biggest concern with this show: I think it is fine to be inspired by Western movies and TV shows and real accounts of what life was like in the Wild West. But while frontiers in outer space will have some parallels with the American frontier development there are bound to be differences because people will go out to the space frontiers with more knowledge and more tech.
This show takes place 500 years in the future. I don't mind if Whedon wants to pretend (or maybe he doesn't know?) that humans 500 years from now will be like humans today. Lets pretend by then that they won't have all become genetically engineered 500 IQ geniuses who are in interfaces with massive computers. Really, I can pretend if the show is fun. But Western culture has changed quite a bit in the last 500 years. It will change a lot more in the next 500 years as well (assuming robots haven't wiped us out). A show set in the future ought to try to find ways to make it seem like the future. There ought to be norms and cultural practices that will spring up that will be quite different than society today or society in the Wild Wild West. I think the show could do a lot with subcultures on different planets that have arisen in response to the way tech changes how we think and live.
Witchblade has been cancelled.
Some speculate that her need to spend a month in alcohol rehab half way thru the second season might have made TNT jittery about gambling on a third season.
But this report claims a much shorter time for the rehab:
Shortly after this interview, Butler checked herself into an alcohol rehab facility. After undergoing treatment for about a week, she emerged and appeared ready to begin filming the remaining episodes for the second season of "Witchblade."
Anthony Cistaro appeals to fans to petition TNT to continue Witchblade. If you want to help try to save Witchblade then go here and follow one or more of the suggestions.
I personally think Witchblade is a great show. Petitions did help give Roswell extra seasons before it was finally cancelled. So its quite possible that WB and either TNT or another network could be persuaded to keep Witchblade going for another season.
In the US the new Joss Whedon (creator of Buffy The Vampire Slayer) science fiction show debuts Friday Sept 20. Its on 8 PM in Santa Barbara. My guess is that is the time for most US time zones except maybe Central.
This might be a good show. Suggest anyone who has an interest in science fiction should check it out.
Every question answered? That is what the ads said for this show. But it didn't happen. We were left with plenty of questions. What question was answered? Maybe we were told that Johnnie's destiny is to spend the rest of his life in politics (or at least the next few seasons) trying to prevent global thermonuclear war.
One thing that this episode does is to remind us that Johnnie actually suffered two head injuries. The first one happened when Johnnie originally fell on his head in the winter of 1976 while skating as a child. That gave him a limited ability to see the future. Then the second injury in the car accident (June 5, 1995) put him into a coma for years and on awakening his premonitional powers were much stronger.
I really liked the scene of James Stillson, the Bible salesman, telling his child Greg Stillson how to sell. Then they worked Johnnie's mother beautifully. It sets up the tone for both of their characters.
Cleaves Mills 1976. Johnnie has this flash of a city burning as he takes the Bible from Greg Stillson, the son of James Stillson the Bible saleman. Johnnie falls down. Johnnie' mother tells James Stillson that Johnnie fell on the ice two months ago. But in this scene wasn't it too warm and too green to be just two months since the ice was hard on lakes? The writers should have made the time period to be three or four months ago.
Okay, how can a large number of kids burn to death in Cathy's Steak House when a lightening bolt hits it?
Also, since the restaurant was going to stay open anyhow why didn't these happen:
• The sheriff could have stationed a deputy or two at the doors to keep the doors open.
• The sheriff could have gotten firemen to hang out there at the restaurant.
• Johnnie could have hung out near the restaurant ready to rush to the rescue.
After all, the lightening bolt was still coming. And why would the doors jam? How could the doors jam? There is a patio visible where kids are out on it and there are glass doors on to it that must be open. The choice of restaurant doesn't seem a good one for the purpose.
Also, as Walt pulls up the fire doesn't look like it is as far along as it did in an earlier scene. Granted the fire was being put out by the firemen. But more damage should have been showing. And why would a woman at that time be getting led away? It seems too late at that point for anyone still alive to be getting escorted out. Then the next day the amount of damage to the restaurant is total. That sequence visually just doesn't seem plausible.
And why would Sarah be there when Walt and Johnnie try to get the restaurant owner to shut down to avoid the deaths from the lightning strike?
This premise seems flawed. Some other way to make the bad opening events happen could have been done.
Greg Stillson on the bus: First the bus is shown going by and the windows on the right back of the bus look like blinds are drawn. But then when James Stillson enters the back of the bus we can see passing scenery out the window. This seems like an inconsistency.
The scenes of Greg Stillson at the farm with Charlotte the farm daughter are well done. He's a regular Elmer Gantry sounding sincere to those with closed eyes while he and Charlotte are exchanging looks that lead to her later seduction.
Greg Still to Charlotte in the car: "I got dreams, Powerful dreams that come to me at night. I don't know what they mean. but they come to me. I'll get there some day."
Greg Stillson: Okay, we already know that when Johnnie took the Bible from him when they were both kids that Johnnie saw an explosion. Stillson now is running for Congress. So one immediately thinks that Stillson will become President and start a nuclear war. Later Stillson tells a girl he's just seduced as they ride along in a car that he sees dreams that he doesn't understand but that they are big and involve his future.
Okay, this is a familiar theme. In how many movies and TV shows has one character had premonitions that another character was going to bring on nuclear apocalypse? Of course the original Dead Zone movie of course had this plot back in 1983 with Christopher Walken as Johnnie and Martin Sheen as Greg Stillson (I'm assuming this in turn came from The Dead Zone book). But there was another movie (Mindstorm with Michael Ironside?) where the leader of a cult switches bodies with a Senator as the cult leader lays dying. Then this other psychic (a rather attractive woman whose name escapes me) has to kill the politician before the politician can become President and start a nuclear war.
Those are just two I can think of off the top of my head. This has been done enough times that I'm really not eager to see The Dead Zone as a TV show to follow down this same well trod path.
Anyway, Johnnie's steak house premonition makes him seriously famous. I loved the letters they read off from people who want Johnnie to help them. But it would have been nice to go for another season with Johnnie just helping out obscure people in bizarre ways before he became a celebrity.
Dana wants Johnnie. That makes Sarah realize acutely just how much she still wants Johnnie too.
Reverend Purdy of the Faith-Heritage Alliance supports independent candidate Greg Stillson. This makes Purdy look worse. It hasn't been clear up to now just how sincere Purdy is in his religious beliefs and how much of a con man he is. This turn in the direction of the show makes him look more like he's probably a con man.
I've been wondering since the first episode whether Purdy got into Johnnie's money. So when Johnnie asked Purdy for his trust money so Johnnie can go on a trip I'm thinking maybe now Johnnie will learn that Purdy has drained a lot of his money.
Purdy to Johnnie: "It is your destiny to help people." Hey, I agree. Its a shame he has to go off rescuing the world from nuclear apocalypse instead. I hope this doesn't become the permanent theme of the show for many seasons to come. Also, if this thread of the show comes to an end it has to be done in a way that doesn't get Johnnie killed like it did in the movie (makes it hard to come back for the next season unless you have a witch who can summon your body back to life).
When Purdy touches Johnnie and once again Johnnie sees the explosion over what might be Washington DC one also immediately thinks that Purdy will be going along with Stillson as an advisor for his rise in politics.
Sarah's really having a hard time with the idea that Johnnie is involved with Dana. Sarah comes over at 10 PM. When she gives her speech to Johnnie I couldn't figure out whether his facial expressions were appropriate or what he was feeling. Johnnie and Sarah get together physically. Okay, this is a part I have to wonder about. It seems like this is speeding the show along too quickly. The tension between Walt, Johnnie and Sarah is helpful in the show. But if this comes out it should result in the end of the relationship between Sarah and Walt. That just seems like it messes with a valuable element of the show too soon, just at the end of the first season.
Charlie as the source of the Shady Pines article: Too many people saw Greg Stillson and the other guy go into see Charlie. So how can they get him up to the roof and credibly threaten to throw him off without all those people being able to tie them together and to make Stillson the prime suspect? The lobby going into his office should be empty except for Linda the secretary.
With the final scene between Greg Stillson and Charlie I like the fade into black and white and then starting in black and white in the next scene with Greg and then fade into color. Nice touch.
Johnnie decides not to go off on a trip. This takes Purdy off the hook for getting caught for taking Johnnie's money (assuming I'm right that Purdy did this). Of course, it makes sense for the development of the show's plot for that not to come out just yet. There is a lot that can be done between Johnnie and Purdy if they stay on good terms. This episode illustrates the possibilities in that regard.
Okay, at the end we see that it really was Washington DC that got blown up. Capitol Hill is sufficiently intact that the viewers can recognize it and the Washington Monument. But of course in a real nuclear blast that would not be the case. They could have shown that it was DC that got nuked using other methods:
• Show the city as it got nuked. Clearly show it was DC as the nuke went off.
• Show the city clearly getting nuked.
• Have some part of the Lincoln Memorial or perhaps a sign for a parking lot that shows its for Capitol Hill.
Okay, next season: Can we not have all Machiavellian Washington politics all the time? One reason some of us watch fantasy and science fiction TV shows is to escape from the never-ending coverage of politics on the news talk show. Yes producers, you could write tons of episodes of Johnnie dancing around Purdy and the Stillsons in Washington. But I'd rather see more of the Maine countryside mixed with Johnnie out saving runaway girls in trouble in small Maine cities.
I really like The Dead Zone. Shaman has got to be the trippiest episode so far. Wow. I thought it was great.
Johnnie is out in the country in Maine (beautiful country too, makes me want to go visit the place) and sees a premonition of a huge asteroid strike on a mountainside. He goes into the woods trying to figure out its angle of flight in order to be able to tell an astronomer where it was going to come from. His goal is to prove that the asteroid is coming so that people can evacuate. Along the way he meets an old man in a gas station, an astronomer, and a cop. He sees them disappear. We are led to believe that the coming asteroid strike will kill them and he starts acting like he's trying to save the lives of the people he meets in that areas.
Okay, but here's the science problem: the Earth spins around. Unless his premonition could tell him the exact date and time of the asteroid strike the angle of its incoming path is worthless knowledge. So how was he ever going to figure that out? He'd have to have a digital day/date watch to look at during the premonition.
His search for the asteroid's angle of impact eventually leads him into a forest in Maine walking up a mountain. He falls, becomes seriously injured, and in order to prevent himself from freezing that night (another premonition warns him of course) he makes his way into a cave.
The cave is where it starts to get weird. He picks up an ancient broken bone knife and suddenly sees an Indian Shaman guy from hundreds of years ago as that guy was in the cave way back then. But here's the twist: the Shaman sees him as well. And the Shaman's knife is the newer and unbroken version of the knife that Johnnie found in the cave. As long as they both hold their knives they can see each other.
But this consistency of knife holding to see the Shaman is not maintained. It gets to the point where they are no longer holding knives and they can see each other.
Johnnie says to the Shaman "I was a lousy Eagle Scout when I was a kid". Saying he was a lousy Boy Scout would have been more believeable. To get all the way to Eagle Scout requires accumulation of a large number of skills for dealing with the wilderness. So that line seems like a mistake.
He needs to stay warm. Thru hand motions he gets the Shaman to show him how to build a fire. But how can the small amount of fire wood he has be enough to keep him alive that night?
Another seeming mistake: the Shaman hands him things to hold and as Johnnie holds each one successively he has visions. But how can Johnnie touch things that the Shaman hands him? We already know that Johnnie can't feel the heat from the Shaman's fire. We get other indicators that they can't touch stuff from each other's time periods. But the need for them to touch each other's items is there. The writers just decided to ignore the inconsistency.
Was there another way to solve the need for them to touch the same items as a way to see into each other's lives? For Johnnie this could have been solved by having the Shaman leave various objects in the cave for him to find. Each successive ancient object that Johnnie picked up could have caused premonitions or flashbacks (post-monitions?). Its less clear how the Shaman could have managed to flash into Johnnie's past and futiure without being able to touch Johnnie's cane and hand.
Eventually, with Johnnie holdng the blue bird's egg, we see the Shaman as a kid falling down a hill hitting his head. The Shaman's head injury mirrors Johnnie's. He has the same capability as Johnnie. This idea of an ancient guy who has the same capability and the idea of them seeing other in each other's visions is what makes this episode unique. Its a clever idea.
In the vision Johnnie sees the Shaman as a kid seeing Johnnie in a vision after the Shaman kid suffers a head injury and Johnnie says to the shaman kid "There's still time". This becomes a key phrase that recurs in later scenes. We eventually see other scenes from the Shaman's earlier life when he saw visions of Johnnie. Finally the Shaman is coming to understand what those earlier visions meant.
When the episode nears its climax Johnnie has managed to convince the Shaman to move his tribe across the river. But then the Shaman starts showing up with the ability to speak English:
Shaman: "When we die we all sound the same"
Johnnie: "Who's dying"
Shaman: "You have to go. There's something for you to do. I've seen it."
But if the Shaman isn't dead yet and has just come back from leading his tribe across the river how can he already talk in English? We see him at the end standing at the door as the asteroid blast kills him. I guess its the point where he has gotten his tribe going across the river to flee the asteroid and he decides to return to Johnnie to convince Johnnie to wake up. At that point he's returning to a place that guarantees he'll die from the asteroid blast. So he's made the decision that will kill him and that decision could have been what gave him the ability to talk in English.
Well, he convinces Johnnie to wake and Johnnie wakes to stoke the fire to make the smoke that will cause him to be spotted by a search helicopter.
One final problem: The smoke plume is too large.
Still, a great episode in spite of its inconsistencies and weaknesses.
Being a science fiction TV show fan means never having to say you aren't disappointed. Farscape is (or shall I say was) my favorite science fiction TV show. Of course this means that it has to go thru periods where its not shown at all and at least one season got delayed for months (how else to assure that it experiences some loss of the audience that has built up). With the Sci Fi Channel supposedly committed to both a 4th and 5th seaons and with the 4th season recently completed airing and with talk of the events of the next season showing up on on-line chats a casual observer might have been optimistic about the 5th season.
There was a reason for pessimism: Farscape got bumped out to 10 PM after Stargate SG-1. When shows move to Friday from other nights or move to later times its usually a reason to get suspicious. So I certainly was concerned. The concern turns out to be justified: The Sci Fi Channel has decided to cancel Farscape. This is just no fun.
Anyone know whether the Jim Henson Company has any chance of putting together a syndication distribution for a new season of Farscape? Perhaps on USA Network or TNT? After all, Stargate SG-1 was distributed in some other fashion before coming to the Sci Fi Channel.
So will we ever know whether the Scarens will attack the Peacekeepers? What about John and Aeryn? What about John's getting back to planet Earth?
Hey, lets get swallowed by a giant planet-eating space whale. What a neat plot premise. While watching it I kept hearing Star Trek TOS suspense theme music and saw Kirk waiting to get beamed off the other starship by Scotty before Kirk sent the other starship into the planet-eating funnel monster. Of course both the Star Trek episode and this Andromeda episode owe their inspiration to the Jonah and the Whale story.
Dylan: Eat your cake and have it too.
Yeah, I agree with the writers: "Have your cake and eat it too" never made much sense. But why not tie the cake eating into the whale's appetite for ships and planets?
Trance: You can even say we had our cake outside of the box and ate it too.
Oh come on. Once Dylan pointed out the problem with the original formulation if they wanted to throw the "out of the box" line back in couldn't it have been something more like one of these:
Trance: You can even say we took our cake outside of the box and then ate the box.
Trance: You can even say we made the box choke on the cake.
Trance: You can even say we saved our cake from the cake box.
Trance: You can even say we saved two cakes from the box and we still have both of them.
Trance: You can even say we got our cake out of the box and then blew up the box.
One other thing: Once they ejected the Andromeda's slipstream drive then how did they leave the star system they were in? Where exactly could they go to get another slipstream drive for such a powerful ship?
Here's a more conventional description of the episode.
First time I saw the Harper 2.0 episode of Andromeda Ascendant there were a couple of lines of dialog whose significance I totally missed. But a friend who rarely watches the series was watching it and called me up asking if I'd seen the episode and if he'd heard these lines correctly. Some quick google searching quickly turned up the lines in multiple copies of the episode's transcript:
Harper: It's a bird, it's plane, it's ah...I don't know, you tell and we'll both know. Meanwhile (Speaks in Gaelic)
Rommie: Irish Gaelic, earth based, an adaptive form. You're making seductive overtures to me in a dead language?
Harper: Hey, it's not dead the way I speak it baby! (Speaks in French)
Rommie: And now French, Harper, what's gotten in to you?
Harper: (Speaks another language)
Rommie: Persiat. Harper I had no idea you were such a cunning linguist.
Harper: (Really fast) Love speaks in all tongues baby.
Cunning linguist? I totally missed that the first time the episode was aired. And Harper's rejoinder certainly drives home the point.
Anyway, wonder what Harper was saying in Gaelic, French, and Persiad. Anyone know?
O'Neil likes The Simpsons. But does he like South Park? Just wondering. Hope so.
What is the name of the actress who was the frozen ancient woman Ianna found in Antarctica? She's beautiful.
I think it would have been a lot of fun to have the 3 (or more?) million year old frozen woman survive. Of course, that would cause a huge plot problem: She might know too much about the ancient past and too many mysteries about the ancient past would be solved just by her saying what she knows. Well, I still think the writers should have found a way to keep her alive longer. After all, she supposedly couldn't remember anything from the past. Or she could have fallen into a coma and then she could have gotten up when no one was looking and walked thru the Stargate. The Stargate could have magically dialed itself when she approached. It could have been tuned to recognize her kind. Then she'd have still been out there somewhere for the crew to once again run into in some future episode. Or she could have run off into the snow and disappeared and they wouldn't have been able to find her for a seaons or so.
However, this brings up another problem I have with the plausibility of a lot of science fiction shows involving ancient species: That they would be such a mystery for those who came later. Look at our ability to make high density storage media. Look at the projections for future storage media that are literally orders of magnitude more dense. Well, storing informaton is cheap and getting cheaper. Some methods of storage are very durable. Some ancient spacefaring civilization would have the ability to make recordings that would last for millions of years.
Jonas Quinn: What reason should she have for hiding anything?
Me: The whole point of hiding something is because you don't want someone else to know.
One problem with this episode: Okay, so Ianna gives them a disease. They get really sick and are going to die. Ianna lays on the hands. They get better. Well, why don't they each immediately get infected again and sick again? A member of the cast speculated that maybe Ianna invoked an immune response in them that allows them to fight off the disease. So maybe reinfection isn't a possibility.
Also, Carter was on an upper bunk when Ianna came into the room to heal her. Why would someone who is sick be placed on an upper bunk? There were empty bunks in the room. The director probably wanted to be able to pan down from one sick woman to the other. But seems like an implausibility.
A species called the Valakians send some people in a sublight ship out into the interstellar lanes of travel to try to find more advanced civilizations that can help them. The Valakians are battling a disease that is threatening to wipe out their species and it is making each successive generation smaller. Enterprise finds the Valakians and brings them back to their planet. Archer orders Phlox to try to figure out what is causing the disease. Along the way the Enterprise crew discover that another humanoid species called the Menk is working under the Valakians. The Menk are showing signs of evolving to a higher level (how? what are the selective pressures that is causing this evolution?).
Phlox discovers that the Valakians have a genetic disease that is causing their genomes to degenerate. Phlox eventually discovers a cure. Archer agonizes over supposed moral dilemma of whether to give the cure to the Valakians. Archer eventually orders Phlox to keep the cure secret from the Valakians so that the natural evolution of the Valakians and Menk is not disturbed.
The scientific premise of the episode is absurd. The ethical premise is abhorrent.
Well, first of all natural selection isn't going to select for a genetic disease that will cause all of a species to gradually get sick and die. No way, no how. Why would a harmful mutation propagate throughout an entire species? Why wouldn't those who didn't have the mutation have more progeny than those who did have the mutation? A species can go extinct because its environmental niche shrinks or because a predator develops a better way to hunt it. It is conceivable that a species could go extinct because a pathogen mutates into an extremely lethal and virulent form or a pathogen that the species has never encountered before jumps into it from another environment. But a species doesn't just up and mutate itself into oblivion.
Enterprise is supposed to be a science fiction show. Its writers therefore should try to choose plausible scientific premises. Were the writers aware of the flaw in their premise? Did they believe that the morality play the premise made possible was more important than the flaw? The motive for the pseudoscientific premise in this episode is unclear. Are the writers arguing for the environmentalist Precautionary Principle? (which seems like an enormous dogmatic extension of the Hippocratic Oath's "First Do No Harm" - which wasn't really in the Hippocratic Oath anyway).
The writers appear to want to argue that if we fail to respect what the process of evolution produces we may create a worse outcome by intervening. The writers seem to be trying to invoke evolution in order to bolster a very politically correct argument for respecting nature. But by creating a premise that is inconsistent with how natural selection works (and evolution works by natural selection after all) the writers have ended up undermining their own argument. Surely there are many viewers who do not understand evolution by natural selection and so for them the story still works. But come on guys, enough viewers do understand enough about natural selection to recognize the absurdity of this story's scientific premise.
In what is supposed to be representative of the early thinking that eventually led to the formation of the Prime Directive Archer decides that the use of more advanced science to improve the health of a less advanced civilization could cause more harm than good. In a nutshell we are supposed to accept that since the Valakians are not advanced enough to build a Warp Drive they should be disqualified from being saved from extinction by a more advanced civlization that is capable of faster than light travel. Lets apply this to planet Earth in the 21st century. Some countries are capable of launching people into space and others are not. Some are capable of building aircraft that can travel between continents and some are not. Some are capable of building a complex industrialized economy and some (so far) are not. So then should the more advanced countries decide to implement a Prime Directive not to interfere in the economies and health care of less developed countries? Should international agencies be banned from bringing First World vaccines, antibiotics, and medical textbooks to Third World countries?
The Prime Directive is dogma. Its a one-size-fit-all rule that attempts to allow people to escape from having to examine the ethical pros and cons for making decisions in each situation. There are certainly reasons why some technologies shouldn't be allowed to fall into some hands in some situations. But it simply is unethical to elevate this concern into a simple rule that is as all-encompassing as the Prime Directive. It precludes sentient beings from voluntarily helping other sentient beings in situations where the net long term effects of the assistance can scarcely be guessed at while the short term benefits for the recipients of the help are easy to understand.
Enterprise in theory takes place before the original Star Trek series. But it has a sensibility that makes it feel like it comes after the original series. Jonathan Archer is infected with the same lack of moral confidence that afflicts left-liberalism in our present era. By contrast, James Tiberius Kirk was the living embodiment of confidence whether moral, political, sexual, or as a leader. Perhaps it is inevitable and unavoidable that any science fiction show set in the future will still reflect the intellectual currents of the time period in which it is made. But I think a greater effort could be made to portray the moral and philosophical assumptions of a future civilization as being more different from that of our own.
I've seen every episode of Buffy The Vampire Slayer. For the first 5 seasons I've seen each episode at least twice. But in the last couple of years my enthusiasm for the show has seriously waned and I don't try to catch the re-runs. I keep tuning in hopng it gets better and that it regains some of the things I loved about the earlier years.
So what has gone wrong? BVS has lost good cast members, moved to progressively worse settings (high school to college to the local chicken sandwich joint) which provided less of the raw material needed to drive plots, and has become too weighed down with a painful joyless view of life.
At the start the show had a very strong and interesting cast. Buffy just wanted to be a teenager and left Giles baffled. Angel showed up as a mysterious cool figure in the first episode. Darla was a great sophisticated evil vampire. The high school was a great setting because it made it easy to bring on lots of other figures both youthful and adult. Since it was on the hell mouth it was also a great setting for all sorts of supernatural goings-on The high school setting was especially great because Buffy could be saving the kids and the school while almost all the adults were either oblivious or trying to hide what was going in. Plus, since teens in real life feel like what they are going thru is incredibly serious and important the ability of teens to actually fight total evil rather than just fight for better positions in their social groups allowed teen and former teen viewers to fantasize about a youth lived where what one did really mattered.
Since the kids almost all had parents that they lived with (a few maladjusted kids like Faith were exceptions) the parents were always available for great humour about the proverbial generation gap and the gap in understanding and in priorities. On this theme the show demonstrated a great deal of irreverence. It had no problem with showing how parents in modern suburbia can get whipped up into a frenzy of fear about some non-existent danger (South Park does this too) while the parents were simultaneously oblivious to real threats that Buffy's gang were fighting. Joyce Summers mouthed platitudes from pop psychology in her lectures to her daughter while Buffy was putting her life at risk saving the world and experiencing personal tragedies. When Buffy had to kill her boyfriend just after he got his soul back it was a tragedy of classical dimensions.
Of course Buffy's gang had to graduate from high school eventually. The events leading up to the graduation culminating with the destruction of the school (necessitated by the need to kill the mayor after he ascended and became a dragon) were very well orchestrated. But Angel had to leave in order to start his own TV series. So there went one great character. Plus, Faith went into a coma and the mayor and the school principal died.
Buffy went off to college. College wasn't as funny as high school. Riley wasn't as interesting as Angel. The show became a little more serious but still had its irreverent moments. Buffy's soulless roommate from another universe as the roommate from hell was quite well done. Faith did come out of her coma and spice things up for a while. There was even a great moment where Faith was in Buffy's body and was in the airport and became inspired to try to be like Buffy and returned to fight the bad guys in the church. Buffy's mom died (bad idea). The Initiative made for good opportunities to make fun of out-of-control secret government. But other opportunities were lost here. The various college subjects and the politically correct pablum spewed by stereotypical professors in each subject could have been grist for the humour mill. Buffy could have gotten off many seemingly ignorant but common sensical and funny replies to what professors told her. Student political group leaders motivated more by the desire to be important than an understanding of their causes could have provided a great contrast to our hero Buffy who was really battling something worth fighting about.
The climax of The Initiative was well done. But the show seemed to lack a driving force after that. Glory showed up and she was a great character who was incredibly well cast. The idea of a narcisstic ("What about me?!") Goddess who was hip to modern culture while at the same time being an ancient threat to the existence of our universe was brilliant. She was funny. She was cutting. She was easy to like and loath at the same time. But the death of Buffy's mom, the departure of Riley, and Buffy's withdrawal from college were all causing a decay of the larger context of the show.
Buffy's sister showed up too. I don't think the relationship between them has been very well developed. Once Buffy's mom died I think our hero should have done a better job of emotionally supporting Dawn. That Buffy is capable of understanding and more importantly empathising with her sister is demonstrated in a very moving sequence in Dawn's bedroom after Buffy has has discovered who Dawn really is and Buffy accepts Dawn's emotional need to make Buffy a janitor in an imaginary club where Dawn is President:
Buffy: I just had a bad day.
Dawn: Well, join the club.
Buffy: Can I be president?
Dawn: I'm president. You can be the janitor.
Buffy: Okay.
When Buffy then brushes Dawn's hair it seems to me an act of understanding and compassion for her emotionally less mature little sister. Buffy does this sort of thing too rarely. She is close enough to Dawn in age and yet at the same time so much richer in experience. Buffy should demonstrate a lot more understanding and emotional skill in her handling of her little sister.
Buffy had to die in her fight to stop Glory in order to fix the hole in the fabric of the universe. But why? If people can be dead for months and be brought back to life then at some point it begins to seem that no event or struggle has permanent effects and no battles are ever really won or lost. BVS is in danger of becoming another X Files. Also, the episode that shows Buffy as a schizophrenic living in a mental hospital imagining that she is a Vampire Slayer was a BAD idea. Hey Joss Whedon, hey Marti Noxon, do you want us to take the show seriously? Do you want us to imagine that it is possible for there to be such a thing as a vampire slayer? To get sucked into the fantasy and root for the characters? Well then don't pop the bubble.
So anyway, a new season started and then Buffy got brought back to life. At this point the show was so tired (and Buffy so unhappy) that an affair between Buffy and Spike became a logical next step. Now, I know that Gwen Stefani sings "Why do the good girls always go for the bad boys?" but blech! Being a heterosexual male I can't say how the female viewers see Spike. I think he does a great job playing his role (and even as a sleezy Jaguar Pride leader in Andromeda Ascendant). But what did this relationship do for this show? It showed that a girl who is feeling down can stuck in a bad relationship. Well, yeah, okay. But it just wasn't that interesting.
The show became too inwardly focused on the three pairs of relationships of its major characters: Willow and Tara, Buffy and Spike, and Xander and Anya. Buffy's job in a fast food joint just didn't provide much context to inspire the writers. Okay, one old lady working there was some kind of monster. So what.
One other complaint: Making magic into something addictive provided an opportunity to portray Willow as essentially a dangerous substance abuser who became a threat to herself and her friends. Certainly there are obvious parallels with conventional drug substance abuse in the real world. So the writers were able to do a lot with it. But the end result was that Willow had to kick the magic habit. Therefore good witches lending support to Buffy in her fight against evil are no longer in the cards. This sort of plot development can limit the longer term possibilities for the show.
The show has become less witty, too serious, with too small a cast of interesting recurring characters, and too ingrown.
But wait, there is hope. Here we are in the end of the summer of 2002 and the previews for the new season are hinting that Buffy is going back to college. Well, good idea. Buffy needs to be in social settings with lots of other people and with reasons to interact with them. Putting her in college at least creates the potential for plotlines as good as the earlier years of the show. Lets hope the producers and writers can come up with some good ways to play off of the college setting.
The show should make some plots out of something she hears in an ancient Mesopotamian history class or in an aberrant psychology class. There are many different types of personality types that could be portrayed in demons or vampires. How about an evil vampire with an obsessive compulsive disorder? Or a good demon with Tourette's Syndrome?
Buffy could be sitting in an English literature or Middle Ages mythology class where the professor and students are making fun of the fears that the people of the Middle Ages about supernatural creatures and Buffy could rush to defend the reasonableness of their fears and then could she get made fun of by her classmates. At some later point in an episode Buffy could save the prof or some of the students from one of those Middle Ages creatures that were supposedly all just one big myth. A great twist would be for Buffy to save only the Prof when no students are around to see it and then the next day in class when the students start making fun of Buffy (expecting the Prof to join in) the Prof could switch and come up with some lame rationalisation for taking Buffy's side.
So college could easily be made a great springboard for countless excellent Buffy plots. As a long time Buffy fan I sincerely hope that this turns out to be the case.
I don't get this. The SG-1 team shoot the Goa'uld with conventional bullets (at least I assume that is what they are shooting) and it takes several shots to knock one down because the bullets can't penetrate the Goa'uld armor. But after multiple bullet hits all over the armor when the Goa'uld finally fall their armor still looks flawless. Why do they eventually fall down if the armour looks like the bullets never penetrated?
Also, its not even like two bullets are made to hit the same place to finally penetrate. Why should bullets which hit at a different location each time finally penetrate? Is realism too much to ask for?
I'm guessing this lameness is the result of a limited special effects budget. But couldn't the Stargate producers have come up with a cheap way to show that the armor had been penetrated? They make the sparks show where the bullets hit. How about one of these ways to show why they fall?
- Put something seamlessly in the armor shell and have it change color where the final bullet hits.
- When the final bullet hits explode out a hole with blood.
- Do head and extremity shots so the armor isn't involved.
- When the bullets hit show the armor lighting up electrically as if its reactive armor that has a force field. Then show the field light up progressively less well after each shot so that the final one can pierce it. Then have a hole show up after the final shot.
I have all sorts of thoughts when watching TV shows and movies. I'd like to share them here. Complaint and criticism are only too easy to do in life and so what I'd like to do here is to try to match every criticism and every dissatisfaction with hopefully constructive and useful suggestions about how my favorite shows could be made better.
I'd like to find out if any other viewers out there find these views agreeable and whether perhaps they even share some of the same reactions. Are my usual dissatisfactions with TV shows a result of having basically esoteric tastes in entertainment? Or are there large legions of dissatisfied all out there grumbling at the TV set with a similar set of dissatisfactions? It would also be great to get the attention of some the show producers to see if they might find some of my suggestions for improvements to be useful.
As for my tastes: expect to find posts here on science fiction and fantasy shows including Buffy, Angel, Farscape, Stargate SG-1, Andromeda Ascendant, Witchblade, Dead Zone, and even Enterprise. Outside of science fiction and fantasy I watch a few shows because they are either sufficiently peculiar (Monk) or have cutting humour that I absolutely agree with (South Park).
Most of my criticisms will be aimed at TV shows for two reasons: First of all, I spend more hours watching TV shows than watching movies. Secondly, TV shows are recurring. Whereas its too late after a movie has been made and released to tell them how they might have made it better. So comments will be made here in the hopes that some of the suggestions may eventually have some influence on how some TV shows get made.
The types of comments to be offered will range from how to make the special effects or fight scenes more convincing to how to develop a particular character to make the character more interesting or authentic to problems with the general plot trend of a series.