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Pick posted:I mean people think of Babylon 5 as having ushered in "other shows like it", but what it ushered in was other shows that sold the line that you could expect things from former episodes to show up again later, not that the writers had any loving idea where things were going. That's also part of why Babylon 5's best episode is the last episode because it so neatly capstones all its content and themes, whereas for most shows, the last episode is the episode where you realize you've been lied to for 3-7 years. Some shows try it but use up their material too fast or get canned early, like Carnivale. Fringe was sold with a five-season plan but burned through the series bible by like the middle of the third season. The big difference seems to be whether there’s a complete story with a definite middle or whether the show starts out with some threads heading to specific events and then just goes wherever while they wait for it to become unprofitable. Lost had a few beats they wanted for the last season but were improvising outside of that, and even the X-Files had some season-two things laid during the first season, but no idea of how all episodes would fit together as a story, so they don’t.
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Dec 5, 2018 18:26
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Pick posted:*When I say written I don't mean line-for-line, but outlined on, iirc, over ten thousand index cards with contingency plans for any character leaving at any stage (which happened three times to major characters, including the MAIN CHARACTER, so good drat thing!) That being said, JMS didn't like much improvisation on the set because he'd put so much care into his scripts. I recall one story Jurasik had at a convention about the episode where Londo and G'Kar are trapped together in the lift and Londo is bricking it but G'Kar starts laughing at him; laughing was Katsulas's idea and JMS had to be persuaded that it was the right decision because it hadn't been in the teleplay. Antifa Turkeesian posted:Some shows try it but use up their material too fast or get canned early, like Carnivale. Fringe was sold with a five-season plan but burned through the series bible by like the middle of the third season. Yeah, I think Fringe wasn't going to introduce the other universe (i.e. the lynchpin of its whole "mythology") until season three, but they accelerated it as soon as they realised it wasn't going to be a Lost-sized hit. That's definitely something that has already aged poorly: shows trying to cash-in on the Lost phenomenon by kicking off with a bunch of questions they had no answers for and then leaving them cruelly unresolved when they didn't give people enough to latch onto and actually watch the show. Wheat Loaf has a new favorite as of 18:40 on Dec 5, 2018 |
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Dec 5, 2018 18:37
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Pick posted:Those are not even remotely similar in terms of what Babylon 5 was doing. If you're referring to "Having an entire multi-season series planned out from the very beginning with backup ends to plotlines" as being a persistent narrative... isn't Babylon 5 the only series to do that? And even then, they still had one eventuality come up that wasn't planned for (they were being cancelled after the fourth season, so they wrapped up the main storyline as best they could, then near the end were told that the series was getting the last season, so had to stretch the post-war arc to fit a whole season.) Don't get me wrong, Babylon 5 is a great series that has a terrible spinoff, but there were older sci-fi series that did consistant ongoing narratives before it.
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Dec 5, 2018 19:35
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Ghost Leviathan posted:You had a bit of that implied with the Breen in DS9. They kind of took that in a weird direction: DAMAR: I had no idea the Breen could mobilize such a large fleet so quickly. WEYOUN: Our new allies are full of surprises, aren't they? You know those refrigeration suits they wear? DAMAR: What about them? WEYOUN: I'm sure you've read the intelligence reports that say that their home world is a frozen wasteland. Well, it's not. The climate on their planet is quite comfortable. DAMAR: Then why do they wear refrigeration suits? WEYOUN: They won't say.
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Dec 5, 2018 20:12
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It's because they're snowmen. The long snout protects the fragile carrot nose. ⛄️
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Dec 5, 2018 20:22
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Pick posted:It's because they're snowmen. The long snout protects the fragile carrot nose. ⛄️ Attack of the Killer Monster Snow
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Dec 5, 2018 20:38
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Now I want some space combat game where the enemies are snowmen, just so I can call them "frosties" as a speciest slur.
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Dec 5, 2018 20:52
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Iron Crowned posted:Now I want some space combat game where the enemies are snowmen, just so I can call them "frosties" as a speciest slur. https://www.somethingawful.com/dungeons-and-dragons/wtf-street-fighter/2/
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Dec 5, 2018 21:01
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I remember watching Heroes and also regretting watching Heroes. Not even the later seasons where it totally derailed, just the first season where the first like, 10 episodes all ended with "BUT WHO'S THE GUY WITH THE GLASSES? FIND OUT NEXT WEEK" amongst other mysteries being teased that were almost all resolved many, many episodes later.
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Dec 5, 2018 23:04
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Antifa Turkeesian posted:Some shows try it but use up their material too fast or get canned early, like Carnivale. Fringe was sold with a five-season plan but burned through the series bible by like the middle of the third season. Breaking Bad was still improvising things into the last season. When they introduced the machine gun they had no real idea where it would be used.
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Dec 5, 2018 23:09
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I dropped Heroes when they built up the big Sylar/Peter fight and it happened off screen.
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Dec 5, 2018 23:09
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John Murdoch posted:I remember watching Heroes and also regretting watching Heroes. Not even the later seasons where it totally derailed, just the first season where the first like, 10 episodes all ended with "BUT WHO'S THE GUY WITH THE GLASSES? FIND OUT NEXT WEEK" amongst other mysteries being teased that were almost all resolved many, many episodes later. I remember the two-part story where a solar eclipse causes everyone to lose their powers, then the eclipse ends and they all get their powers back being particularly confusing. Tim Kring, who created the show, once had this whole tirade about how TiVo was ruining serialised television because it meant people could store everything up and watch it in one go, which meant they weren't seeing it week to week as the creators intended. But Heroes is one example of a serialised drama where you didn't need to binge it to notice the splits in the seams, because they were pretty clear if you were watching it week on week. At the very least, I think it's the first time I noticed it.
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Dec 5, 2018 23:25
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Push El Burrito posted:I dropped Heroes when they built up the big Sylar/Peter fight and it happened off screen. Which episode was it where one guy who sketches prophecies has them thinking they go back in time to fight dinosaurs with swords and then just end up in a museum just wrecking the place for no reason?
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Dec 5, 2018 23:25
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Remember when they had to take away the main character’s powers so they didn’t have to keep writing him as a dumbass? (Like seriously, the moment he lost his powers Peter’s IQ basically doubled)
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Dec 5, 2018 23:47
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Why would an eclipse affect powers? There was an eclipse in episode 1 and it didn't do that. Immortal weeb dude was locked underground for centuries, right? Sunlight doesn't affect powers. You know what, gently caress it, forget I asked.
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Dec 6, 2018 01:19
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I watched Heroes the entire way through and posted about it on these blessed forums and not a god drat bit of the show has stuck in my mind. did you know they rebooted it a few years ago to abysmal failure? bet you forgot
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Dec 6, 2018 01:27
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Every good idea Heroes had, it squandered. The show was a masterclass in failing to deliver. Plots and characters were just unceremoniously dropped constantly. Veronica Mars having an ethical crisis, that could lead somewhere interesti- oops brain eaten. Eartha Kitt's grand daughter has Taskmaster powers. She uses them to learn gymnatics and save people from a fire. She's never on the show again. A character gets left in a hellish alternate future - is never mentioned again. Not even a shred of pathos or guilt from the idiot who left her there. I don't remember what happened to the speedster, but she's stuck in my head so I'm sure it was stupid as gently caress. Throughout all this, they decided to give Ali Larter six characters to play despite the fact that she didn't seem a good enough actor to handle the first one. I know one of these seasons would have been hit by the writer's strike, but I'd love to know why the rest was such a mess. It felt like it was written by twenty different writers who all had big ideas for the show, and no ability to contact one another. e: I can't believe I'm getting riled up about Heroes in 2018.
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Dec 6, 2018 02:00
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The main thing I remember about Heroes is the serial killer villain being by far the most charismatic character on the show. The protagonists were pretty much dipshits to a man.
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Dec 6, 2018 02:03
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I loving love Adrian Pasdar and David Anders and I'll watch them in anything, but holy gently caress did season 2 of Heroes destroy my interest in watching any more of it. And now when I watch season 1 I can see all the problems lurking there. Uggh.
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Dec 6, 2018 02:12
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Not Operator posted:I don't remember what happened to the speedster, but she's stuck in my head so I'm sure it was stupid as gently caress. She died failing to outrun a nuclear explosion. She was killed off so mind reader could hook back up with his ex-wife without baggage. The writers wanted a storyline about them raising their super-powered child, completely ignoring the super-powered child the mind reader adopted in an earlier season. This reminds me that the mind reader was given future sight powers around that time. He could only remember the visions by painting them, exactly like the previous future sight character that had been killed off in season 1. Not a single one of the two dozen writers working on this series could come up with an original idea of their own. EDIT: OMG, all these horrible memories about Heroes writing are now flooding back into my mind! At the end of season 1 Ali's character's boyfriend had been shot and his fate of whether or not he'd live was one of the cliffhangers. Season 2 begins and the character is dead. It's not until midway through the season, in a flashback, you see that the boyfriend survived the gunshot only to be killed by a separate and completely unrelated gunshot a few months later! Why would you write that he survived, but still died in the exact same way if it has absolutely no bearing on the storyline?! GODDAMNIT HEROES WRITERS! Not Operator posted:e: I can't believe I'm getting riled up about Heroes in 2018. Doggles has a new favorite as of 02:24 on Dec 6, 2018 |
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Dec 6, 2018 02:15
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Occasionally the creators would clarify things somewhere, online I think. Anyway the girl who dumped in the alternate future does get addressed–she was erased from existence when that timeline was. Lol gently caress you lady
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Dec 6, 2018 02:43
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Doggles posted:She died failing to outrun a nuclear explosion. She was killed off so mind reader could hook back up with his ex-wife without baggage. The writers wanted a storyline about them raising their super-powered child, completely ignoring the super-powered child the mind reader adopted in an earlier season. Let's not forget that this guy's power was literally being intangible and he got shot twice.
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Dec 6, 2018 03:02
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In some other thread I was mentioning that before the MCU/Dark Knight/Avengers comic book movie that Heroes felt like the first time the 'superhero' concept was being taken a bit seriously by mainstream pop culture. Prior to that I think the closest a TV 'people with superpowers'-show got to being taken seriously was, what, USA's The Dead Zone and 4400? It's a bit odd to even start thinking along these lines, but I can't help but think The Dead Zone might actually be way more successful with new remake on something like the modern AMC.
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Dec 6, 2018 03:03
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One of the streaming services I have has the V remake series on it, I think, and I need to give that a modern rewatch and take notes because even when it was airing it was bad in all 'secret mystery plot' ways. I don't know if ABC pushed that style harder than every other channel or not after Lost. They did V, Flashforward, Defying Gravity, and probably God only knows how many others. NBC had The Event. I can't recall anything of real note that CBS did that lasted too long. Fox? I can't think of anything that attempted to be that way, either except maybe Dollhouse.
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Dec 6, 2018 03:12
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Samuringa posted:Let's not forget that this guy's power was literally being intangible and he got shot twice. Apparently the actor and Ali Larter really hated each other and they decided to keep the pretty blonde lady.
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Dec 6, 2018 03:24
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I didn’t wat h heroes but my wife told me one of the stars was dating the cheerleader but she under 18 so it was all denied and then she turned 18 and like a day later it was announced they were dating. Welp that’s my story bye
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Dec 6, 2018 03:27
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It was the guy who played Peter, the character with vague powers who kept on changing them throughout the series.
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Dec 6, 2018 03:30
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I'd love to see a version of the Dead Zone if it had started about a decade later. I was really into it as a kid, and supposedly the original show runner had a lot of cool ideas that basically all disappear around the end of the first season/start of the second after he died. There's still glimpses of plotlines on alternative universes and Johnny communicating through time as a more regular thing. I think I heard similar things about Journeyman too.
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Dec 6, 2018 03:37
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muscles like this! posted:It was the guy who played Peter, the character with vague powers who kept on changing them throughout the series. He also played her uncle, which made for some weird chemistry on screen. And his powers didn’t seem that vague. They were just very unbalanced. His first power was “copies the power of everyone he meets and can use them all” and then got nerfed to “can touch someone and copy their power but can only hold one at a time”
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Dec 6, 2018 03:49
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JediTalentAgent posted:Prior to that I think the closest a TV 'people with superpowers'-show got to being taken seriously was, what, USA's The Dead Zone and 4400? Smallville wasn't entirely terrible in the first few seasons, right?
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Dec 6, 2018 03:51
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there was The Cape and that one with the family that gets superpowers together but both were horrible
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Dec 6, 2018 04:06
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I think Fox had that show where every just forgets two minutes of a particular day. Who the gently caress cares? How did they think they could squeeze more than one season from that?
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Dec 6, 2018 04:12
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Not Operator posted:Every good idea Heroes had, it squandered. The show was a masterclass in failing to deliver. Plots and characters were just unceremoniously dropped constantly. Heroes needed a porn parody. gently caress the cheerleader, save the world. JediTalentAgent posted:One of the streaming services I have has the V remake series on it, I think, and I need to give that a modern rewatch and take notes because even when it was airing it was bad in all 'secret mystery plot' ways. The 2009 remake with Morena Baccarin ? That was so bad that ABC had to put it on hiatus after 4 episodes and change showrunners. Te-ri-bul. Naturally I watched the whole thing because Morena Baccarin as a sexy lizard lady was impossible to pass up, but no. Archive.org has the original series, watch that instead. Also, early Smallville was ok at worst. It just took a long drat time to get anywhere; when I realized that I realized that I was expecting it to "get somewhere", and that wasn't the show they were making.
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Dec 6, 2018 04:17
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Alphas was the only good special powers people show, so naturally syfy killed it without resolution
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Dec 6, 2018 04:17
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How did that Playstation exclusive superhero show turn out?
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Dec 6, 2018 04:19
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Samuringa posted:and that one with the family that gets superpowers together https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x20poue ?
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Dec 6, 2018 04:20
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Factor Mystic posted:Alphas was the only good special powers people show, so naturally syfy killed it without resolution I’m the black ex-cop with super strength, anger issues, and heart disease
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Dec 6, 2018 04:21
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mllaneza posted:Heroes needed a porn parody. gently caress the cheerleader, save the world. Yeah, that one. I do seem to recall the TVIV thread we had on the show was pretty active for a while because people were just hate-watching it because they needed to see what happened next.
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Dec 6, 2018 04:32
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Detective No. 27 posted:I think Fox had that show where every just forgets two minutes of a particular day. Who the gently caress cares? How did they think they could squeeze more than one season from that? i vaguely remember advertising for that during football, i want to say it was called THE EVENT or something and you could tell they wanted it to be a mystery for the ages but it was cancelled after like 5 episodes because nobody gave a poo poo
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Dec 6, 2018 04:47
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Alphas cliffhanger had the main characters getting their powers enhanced in a huge terrorist attack. Did any writers come out and say what they had planned?
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Dec 6, 2018 05:25
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