Okay, so I have now sat through nine episodes of Dollhouse with good grace, trying to trust in the usually brilliant Joss Whedon. After all, he created the generally superb Buffy, the fun Angel (which actually managed to make the hitherto dull character of Angel likeable and played off David Boreanz's comic strengths, now used well in Bones), and the sublime Firefly. (Ah, Firefly and Serenity; I share xkcd's obsession with thee, even though I believe you were derivative of my beloved Farscape.) And it stars Faith my favourite Vampire Slayer and Helo (okay, so I try not to think about BSG too much since the appalling - hock, spit! - finale, but I'll always have a soft spot for Helo and Athena regardless of Ron Moore's tripe ending).
And yet here I am, nine episodes in, and Dollhouse shows no signs of... well, being any good. I hear Alan Tudyk is to appear in the last episodes of the season, so I'm holding on for that, but really, what I don't understand is this: how the hell did this get picked up for a second season by Fox while the excellent Sarah Connor Chronicles was cancelled? The first season of Sarah Connor walked all over Dollhouse with size five Terminator-ballerina boots, and more than earned my patience when I had to put up with a bit of a mediocre middle to the second season (more than pulling it back again for the end of the season). Dollhouse hasn't earned such patience; I'm merely giving it an extended chance because it comes after Firefly.
Does it get any better? It's difficult to care about "actives" who are essentially call girls, especially when all of the cast seem to be turning out to be actives. And yet an emotionless robot played by Summer Glau... Oy, Fox! Bring back TSCC!
And that is my Tuesday lament.
Tuesday 14 July 2009
Thursday 2 April 2009
Chasing the Pigeon
The catalyst that lead to my moving certain posts over to a non-Lit'n'Lat blog was my rant about the Battlestar Galactica finale. One reader of that rant has just contacted me to say that he is sorry to see it go, though, as he liked the term "chasing the pigeon". I will thus proffer and elaborate on the term here.
There are already two great terms with similar meanings that have become widespread:
• Jumping the shark (from Happy Days)
• Nuking the fridge (from Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull)
Both refer to the moment when a series completely loses the plot and the viewer suddenly realises that something he or she once loved, something once brilliant, has now, definitively, disappeared up its own backside. "Jumping the shark" refers to a TV series; "Nuking the fridge" refers to a film series.
I would like to propose another, a variation:
• Chasing the pigeon
For me, the moment I saw Lee Adama chasing a pigeon around his apartment in Battlestar Galactica, in a scene that was neither meaningful nor relevant (flashback scenes attempting to add depth of character in the final episode?), I knew that one of my favourite TV shows of all time had lost it. Not only was the scene irrelevant, it was also one of the most tired clichés ever... A bird representing someone or something (Kara) out of reach. It invited an unfavourable comparison to the dove at the end of Bladerunner (and also made me think back to Cavil's speech to Ellen about wanting to smell supernovas or whatever, and how that harked back to "teardrops in the rain" from Bladerunner too - not comparisons you want to invite).
Below is what Ron Moore, the show runner and writer of the finale, had to say about Lee Adama (and by extension the show itself) chasing a pigeon. This is following an explanation of how he was trying to tie up the plot, all the loose ends, and how he was finding breaking the plot "frustrating and annoying":
(Before going any further, yes, I know that writers often have images that come to them that they want to include; I know that writers make stuff up as they go along all the time. That is fine. What is not fine is if the writer includes the image for no reason other than that he likes it, or if the writer cannot tie up or explain within the rules he set up in his fictional universe the stuff he made up along the way. Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, of course, and I know that as many viewers loved the finale as hated it. By anyone's definition, it was not good storytelling, though. Whether the finale as a whole was good or bad is subjective; the way it changed the rules at the last minute and frustrated expectations of explanations is, objectively, bad storytelling. And let me just say that I watched BSG for the characters, primarily. I would have been happy without any of the great mysteries, with just the characters developing and surviving while looking for a new home. But it wasn't me who decided to introduce a lot of mysterious elements and conundrums - I was invited to ponder those questions by the writers; it's a bit late to say "it's about the characters" after you made an active decision to lead viewers down a different path. Well. I could go on parenthetically all day. Let us move on...)
The pigeon thus actually becomes a symbol for a writer making stuff up without knowing where it fits - which is exactly what the writers of Battlestar Galactica did with the opera house scene, Kara's death and resurrection, and Head-Six and Head-Baltar (all of this is well documented, not my personal opinion - search for interviews with Ron Moore; he is very open about how he made it all up and "felt" his way through the story). There is nothing wrong with making stuff up on the fly and later working out how it all fits together later, of course, but the pigeon seemed egregious (the perfect word in the circumstances), and in the end Moore couldn't come up with satisfying solutions to most of what he made up and instead threw up his hands and said, "It's about the characters and God did all the stuff I couldn't think of an explanation for."
"Chasing the pigeon" is thus a nice variation on "jumping the shark": it is the point in a show at which the viewer becomes aware of the writer struggling with the plot to the extent that it becomes so clumsy it feels as though the writer has just given up. It is the point at which the viewer finally loses all faith in a writer who had previously gained his or her absolute trust. It is the point at which the viewer feels cheated by a cheap trick and starts shouting at the screen in disbelief at the hours of his or her life spent in awe at smoke and mirrors; hours that are never coming back.
As in:
Battlestar Galactica really chased the pigeon in its finale.
End of line.
There are already two great terms with similar meanings that have become widespread:
• Jumping the shark (from Happy Days)
• Nuking the fridge (from Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull)
Both refer to the moment when a series completely loses the plot and the viewer suddenly realises that something he or she once loved, something once brilliant, has now, definitively, disappeared up its own backside. "Jumping the shark" refers to a TV series; "Nuking the fridge" refers to a film series.
I would like to propose another, a variation:
• Chasing the pigeon
For me, the moment I saw Lee Adama chasing a pigeon around his apartment in Battlestar Galactica, in a scene that was neither meaningful nor relevant (flashback scenes attempting to add depth of character in the final episode?), I knew that one of my favourite TV shows of all time had lost it. Not only was the scene irrelevant, it was also one of the most tired clichés ever... A bird representing someone or something (Kara) out of reach. It invited an unfavourable comparison to the dove at the end of Bladerunner (and also made me think back to Cavil's speech to Ellen about wanting to smell supernovas or whatever, and how that harked back to "teardrops in the rain" from Bladerunner too - not comparisons you want to invite).
Below is what Ron Moore, the show runner and writer of the finale, had to say about Lee Adama (and by extension the show itself) chasing a pigeon. This is following an explanation of how he was trying to tie up the plot, all the loose ends, and how he was finding breaking the plot "frustrating and annoying":
I went home and had an epiphany in the shower and said, "It's the characters, stupid!" And it really always has been, and I went back the next day and said, "Let's forget about the plot for a moment and just trust that it will work itself out, because it always does. What do we want the characters to deal with; let's talk about the individual stories and resolutions." I just had an image of someone in their house chasing a bird from the room, I didn't know what it meant but it's an image and let's put it on the board.
(Before going any further, yes, I know that writers often have images that come to them that they want to include; I know that writers make stuff up as they go along all the time. That is fine. What is not fine is if the writer includes the image for no reason other than that he likes it, or if the writer cannot tie up or explain within the rules he set up in his fictional universe the stuff he made up along the way. Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, of course, and I know that as many viewers loved the finale as hated it. By anyone's definition, it was not good storytelling, though. Whether the finale as a whole was good or bad is subjective; the way it changed the rules at the last minute and frustrated expectations of explanations is, objectively, bad storytelling. And let me just say that I watched BSG for the characters, primarily. I would have been happy without any of the great mysteries, with just the characters developing and surviving while looking for a new home. But it wasn't me who decided to introduce a lot of mysterious elements and conundrums - I was invited to ponder those questions by the writers; it's a bit late to say "it's about the characters" after you made an active decision to lead viewers down a different path. Well. I could go on parenthetically all day. Let us move on...)
The pigeon thus actually becomes a symbol for a writer making stuff up without knowing where it fits - which is exactly what the writers of Battlestar Galactica did with the opera house scene, Kara's death and resurrection, and Head-Six and Head-Baltar (all of this is well documented, not my personal opinion - search for interviews with Ron Moore; he is very open about how he made it all up and "felt" his way through the story). There is nothing wrong with making stuff up on the fly and later working out how it all fits together later, of course, but the pigeon seemed egregious (the perfect word in the circumstances), and in the end Moore couldn't come up with satisfying solutions to most of what he made up and instead threw up his hands and said, "It's about the characters and God did all the stuff I couldn't think of an explanation for."
"Chasing the pigeon" is thus a nice variation on "jumping the shark": it is the point in a show at which the viewer becomes aware of the writer struggling with the plot to the extent that it becomes so clumsy it feels as though the writer has just given up. It is the point at which the viewer finally loses all faith in a writer who had previously gained his or her absolute trust. It is the point at which the viewer feels cheated by a cheap trick and starts shouting at the screen in disbelief at the hours of his or her life spent in awe at smoke and mirrors; hours that are never coming back.
As in:
Battlestar Galactica really chased the pigeon in its finale.
End of line.
Welcome to Machine Dreams
Much of what is on this blog so far was originally over on lit-n-lat.blogspot.com. I have moved all of the stuff that was not pertinent to Scrivener or Literature & Latte over here, to this new blog, because a few readers found it perturbing to see a developer talk about topics that had nothing to do with development. So this is me being all professional. It is a new and curious feeling.
Monday 5 January 2009
Life without walls
Windows: Life without walls.
"Turning off Windows Firewall might make your computer (and your network, if you have one) more vulnerable to damage from hackers and malicious software (such as worms)."
"Turning off Windows Firewall might make your computer (and your network, if you have one) more vulnerable to damage from hackers and malicious software (such as worms)."
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