Sunday, December 31, 2006
The Everpresent Now.
(Warning, spoiler for early episodes of season three of Battlestar Galactica)
If you've watched Lost you've seen it. If you're watching Heroes you're seeing it. I suspect that Twenty-Four may use that but I've never watched an episode since the first season ended (although I know enough to say 'dust to dust and fun to funky, we know Major Jack's a junkie!'). Continuity is a pain in the neck for TV shows. They would be happy if they don't have to worry about what happens in week 13 when writing and producing week 14. But continuity is in. If a viewer is expected to give up an hour of their time to watch some crummy show they generally like to feel that if they do this more than once they get more out of the experience than someone who only does it once. But that takes effort.
Shows that can't be bothered tend to operate in the Everpresent Now. Rather than the forty-five minutes being a self-enclosed little world it's that episode and the preceeding two or three that matter. Anything before that gets forgotten. It's then less obvious that nothing else has happened in the episode other than making some glasses for the redneck. Or, take Heroes . I'm currently about six episodes in. The slightly sleazy politician is still refusing to accept that he has the ability to fly, despite doing it at the end of the first episode or a few episodes later. This is because it didn't happen in the Everpresent Now but instead the Forgotten Past and thusly, never happened at all. Battlestar Galactica doesn't tend to fall into this trap in quite the same way, it instead consigns whole plot-threads that might have been active as recently as last week to The Forgotten Past only to return them to The Everpresent Now several weeks later. The wherabouts of Little Baby Hera was of paramount importance to Xena the Cylon during the Occupation and, by it's end, she'd got her claws on the little tyke. Hera is then not even mentioned for about six episodes, not even in some "hey, what did you do with baby Hera?" "Oh I gave her to the Cylon Granny Service", aside. But BSG scores over the other shows by not filling it's episodes with self-contained and often fairly pointless quests. More on this tomorrow maybe, when I've had time to think this through some more.
If you've watched Lost you've seen it. If you're watching Heroes you're seeing it. I suspect that Twenty-Four may use that but I've never watched an episode since the first season ended (although I know enough to say 'dust to dust and fun to funky, we know Major Jack's a junkie!'). Continuity is a pain in the neck for TV shows. They would be happy if they don't have to worry about what happens in week 13 when writing and producing week 14. But continuity is in. If a viewer is expected to give up an hour of their time to watch some crummy show they generally like to feel that if they do this more than once they get more out of the experience than someone who only does it once. But that takes effort.
Shows that can't be bothered tend to operate in the Everpresent Now. Rather than the forty-five minutes being a self-enclosed little world it's that episode and the preceeding two or three that matter. Anything before that gets forgotten. It's then less obvious that nothing else has happened in the episode other than making some glasses for the redneck. Or, take Heroes . I'm currently about six episodes in. The slightly sleazy politician is still refusing to accept that he has the ability to fly, despite doing it at the end of the first episode or a few episodes later. This is because it didn't happen in the Everpresent Now but instead the Forgotten Past and thusly, never happened at all. Battlestar Galactica doesn't tend to fall into this trap in quite the same way, it instead consigns whole plot-threads that might have been active as recently as last week to The Forgotten Past only to return them to The Everpresent Now several weeks later. The wherabouts of Little Baby Hera was of paramount importance to Xena the Cylon during the Occupation and, by it's end, she'd got her claws on the little tyke. Hera is then not even mentioned for about six episodes, not even in some "hey, what did you do with baby Hera?" "Oh I gave her to the Cylon Granny Service", aside. But BSG scores over the other shows by not filling it's episodes with self-contained and often fairly pointless quests. More on this tomorrow maybe, when I've had time to think this through some more.
Labels: Battlestar Galactica, continuity, Television
Sunday, December 03, 2006
Hello again my beautiful children. These are the words of your saviour. Read them. Devour them. Then go out and seek bloody beauty. Oh yes.
Things have been a-changin' recently and, like most of my blog buddies I've been going through some ennui and dissatisfaction. I've had a fairly fallow period in the last month or so in cultural terms, never did get round to seeing Children of Men while I'm hoping to find some time to see Pan's Labyrinth. The books I'm reading at the moment don't particularly inspire me to write about them or their themes (I'm currently slogging through The Shape of Things to Come by Greil Marcus and finding it not as fun as his mighty Lipstick Traces). I may try and write a post at some point to explain why I spent around four days depressed after reading A Christmas Carol but I suspect that would just depress me more.
I did take advantage of the weak American economy to get ahold of Alan Moore's Lost Girls but was eventually unimpressed. Moore's script is all right but I just did not enjoy the artwork of his partner Melinda Gebbie at all. The vast majority of her panels come off as flat and don't give any sense of depth at all, so much so that I'm still in two minds about whether it's actually supposed to look like that or whether it's some clever metatextual commentary on the one-dimensional nature of characters in pornography. But all the characters, with the exception of the plump Monsieur Rougeur, seem to be cut from the same body template, quite often it's only the hair colour that distinguishes between the three main characters, despite the fact that Dorothy is in her late teens, Wendy her late thirties and Alice somewhere past fifty.
Televisionwise I'm finding Heroes to be entertaining and fun, after a strangely unengaging pilot. It's great to see a show that can support a large cast, even if it means that individual stories run as slowly as a typical episode of Lost . I'm only up to the fourth or fifth episode so am hoping that as I watch the rest and catch up that we'll actually get some backstory and explanation for exactly what is going on, that we're not in for another Lost -style 'going round in circles'-jerk. But of course it's Battlestar Galactica that is front and centre in my affections at the moment. For the first and early parts of the second season I was insistent that there needed to be an overarching plan for the entire show or else it would be rubbish. Since then it's become obvious that they are making things up as they go along and, strangely, I'm prefering that. The free-form approach does have some drawbacks, namely in those middle-block standalone episodes, but I'm coming to realise that having a five year or seven year show bible that details exactly what happens when is no more a guarantee of good stuff than doing it on the fly. For more BSG-related discussion, check out the Read Less, More BSG vlog. Show-related critique and gender theory through fluffy animals.
Things have been a-changin' recently and, like most of my blog buddies I've been going through some ennui and dissatisfaction. I've had a fairly fallow period in the last month or so in cultural terms, never did get round to seeing Children of Men while I'm hoping to find some time to see Pan's Labyrinth. The books I'm reading at the moment don't particularly inspire me to write about them or their themes (I'm currently slogging through The Shape of Things to Come by Greil Marcus and finding it not as fun as his mighty Lipstick Traces). I may try and write a post at some point to explain why I spent around four days depressed after reading A Christmas Carol but I suspect that would just depress me more.
I did take advantage of the weak American economy to get ahold of Alan Moore's Lost Girls but was eventually unimpressed. Moore's script is all right but I just did not enjoy the artwork of his partner Melinda Gebbie at all. The vast majority of her panels come off as flat and don't give any sense of depth at all, so much so that I'm still in two minds about whether it's actually supposed to look like that or whether it's some clever metatextual commentary on the one-dimensional nature of characters in pornography. But all the characters, with the exception of the plump Monsieur Rougeur, seem to be cut from the same body template, quite often it's only the hair colour that distinguishes between the three main characters, despite the fact that Dorothy is in her late teens, Wendy her late thirties and Alice somewhere past fifty.
Televisionwise I'm finding Heroes to be entertaining and fun, after a strangely unengaging pilot. It's great to see a show that can support a large cast, even if it means that individual stories run as slowly as a typical episode of Lost . I'm only up to the fourth or fifth episode so am hoping that as I watch the rest and catch up that we'll actually get some backstory and explanation for exactly what is going on, that we're not in for another Lost -style 'going round in circles'-jerk. But of course it's Battlestar Galactica that is front and centre in my affections at the moment. For the first and early parts of the second season I was insistent that there needed to be an overarching plan for the entire show or else it would be rubbish. Since then it's become obvious that they are making things up as they go along and, strangely, I'm prefering that. The free-form approach does have some drawbacks, namely in those middle-block standalone episodes, but I'm coming to realise that having a five year or seven year show bible that details exactly what happens when is no more a guarantee of good stuff than doing it on the fly. For more BSG-related discussion, check out the Read Less, More BSG vlog. Show-related critique and gender theory through fluffy animals.
Labels: Alan Moore, Battlestar Galactica, fiction, Heroes, pornography, Television
Tuesday, October 10, 2006
Ten years ago Babylon 5 had a tyrannical Earth President who had illegally captured the position and kept it by inciting his people to hate those that were different and insisting aliens wanted to destroy their way of life.
Watching the first episode of the third season of Battlestar Galactica and it seems they've gone one better, they're basing it on the US/UK invasion of Iraq. BG lost a lot of fans with the decision to have the 'rag-tag fleet' settle down on a new planet and then jump forward a year, but after a Cylon invasion in the last minutes of the second season this looks like it'll be a great story-telling idea. We're now three or four months into the Cylon invasion and, while Adama and son spin their wheels in deep space, Colonel Tigh has gone all Al Zarqawi on us, a one-eyed, white-bearded Resistance leader, sending men to suicide-bomb Cylons in the hopes that this will drive them away.
It would be easy, because we know the Cylons are evil, to whitewash the humans actions. But the Cylons have themselves been humanised, they're bringing 'the word of God' to the humans and we also know they can't be killed while humans can, for a show that tends to look at the consequences of people's actions I suspect Tigh is going to be in some deep shit later on.
This is excellent.
Watching the first episode of the third season of Battlestar Galactica and it seems they've gone one better, they're basing it on the US/UK invasion of Iraq. BG lost a lot of fans with the decision to have the 'rag-tag fleet' settle down on a new planet and then jump forward a year, but after a Cylon invasion in the last minutes of the second season this looks like it'll be a great story-telling idea. We're now three or four months into the Cylon invasion and, while Adama and son spin their wheels in deep space, Colonel Tigh has gone all Al Zarqawi on us, a one-eyed, white-bearded Resistance leader, sending men to suicide-bomb Cylons in the hopes that this will drive them away.
It would be easy, because we know the Cylons are evil, to whitewash the humans actions. But the Cylons have themselves been humanised, they're bringing 'the word of God' to the humans and we also know they can't be killed while humans can, for a show that tends to look at the consequences of people's actions I suspect Tigh is going to be in some deep shit later on.
This is excellent.
Labels: Battlestar Galactica, The War Against Terror
