Because I was already thinking of doing this, and not because Chris Roberson beat me to it, or because our blogs are going to become a forum for a personal argument, I'm going to post some thoughts I shared with Roberson and Sean Williams in an email this morning on why I think NBC's Heroes is my favorite show on television currently and may emerge over time as my favorite show of all time. Note this is NOT a rebuttal to Chris - I long sense gave up on trying to get him to watch. This was a digression into what I think Heroes is doing that is notable in the history of evolving TV narrative:
What it's doing that is making it for me is that it seems to be leaving the episodic nature of television behind completely. Sometimes they'll run a "To be continued" and this just blows my mind, because in a show where everything seems to be carried forward and thru, I can't figure out when they decide something is "to be continued" and something isn't. I think it's just to give us a break from the horrid voice overs, since the TBC episodes don't have one at the end and
start. What Heroes is doing to me and my wife is showing us the absurdity of dramas that start out at the beginning of the hour with a problem and resolve it by the end.
I am actually very distrubed by this.
Because that's how most television has been written since the medium's inception.
I always prided myself on not being one of those people who can't watch black and white film or refuse to watch things because they are old or the special effects aren't up to today's standards. My excuse was always that it's the story that matters, not the set dressings. But Heroes is doing fundamentally different things with story. I know this began with St Elsewhere and Babylon 5 and a dozen other shows over the last decade, but the level of inter-connectivity, non-episodic format is to an entirely new degree. Rome does this too - they are really neck and neck for my affection and it's probably just that I'm more into comics than history that puts
Heroes ahead - but Rome feels just a touch more episodic.
What I'm realizing is that changes in the sophistication of narrative may forever remove me from the garden and I'm not sure I can go back.
Now, back on B5 - I started on season three and went back, having hated it when it first aired. [And the weaker] Season five's not Joe's fault. He thought he had to end the show on season four, so he hurried to do so, then got the extra year after all and had to stretch it out. Then a major cast member quit between seasons, and he'd planned to hang a huge arc on her. But I often wish B5 had been 5 books instead of 5 years of tv so that the story he meant to tell
from the beginning could get told.
Meanwhile, I am expecting the next truly brilliant, paradigm shifting SF epic to show up sometime in the next five years, not from US television at all, but from another corner - either Asian tv or YouTube or bittorrent or elsewhere. I'm expecting that whoever is behind it is working on it right now and that when it arrives it will be mind-charringly brilliant, as it is able to tell exactly the story it sets out to tell, in exactly however many segments that entails (and no more), without being beholden to the time and commercial constraints of tv, and that once it arrives the real era of SF filmmaking will be well and truly underway. Godspeed!
Showing posts with label Heroes. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Heroes. Show all posts
Thursday, March 08, 2007
Tuesday, February 06, 2007
Heroes Takes the Lead
Well, NBC's Heroes is now firmly in the lead with my three favorite televisions shows,
overtaking my other two favorites Battlestar Galactica and Rome due to its deft plotting and the clear evidence that they have worked their backstory out in much better detail than BG. Mind you - I love BG and maintain that it's cumulative effect on SF television and the wider perception of SF in the mainstream is overwhelmingly positive, but I'm losing paitence with the way they use the religious beliefs of both sides as a catch all for moving the plot without bothering to work out just what those beliefs are in any convincing detail. It's not good tv when the characters are working from information that is rote to them but vague to the audience and as much time as the crew of the Galactica has spent with "good Sharon", we ought to know a damn site more about the Cylon's core beliefs than we do. I mean, how can the Cylon's not know who the "final five" are? Were they built at the same time? Were they built first? Were they not build yet? For that matter, the Cylons treat the "bullet heads" like morons, but didn't the bullet heads build them? So, wouldn't the bullet heads know who the final five are? How do they even know there are a final five if they've never seen them, don't interact with them, don't receive orders from them, and didn't apparently hang with them back on whatever Cylon homeworld they were on for the last 50 years? It's all a big mess, and I'd like to see it untangled, but I still don't think the writers have an effing clue.
This doesn't mean BG's character work isn't amazing - it's what keeps me glued to the screen week after week, and god, I love Baltar under pressure - and this season's Rome is tremendous even if the 3 months forward jump didn't jar a little bit and undercut a little of the episode's potentia. But these three shows aren't just my favorite shows on TV now - they could easily be my favorite shows TO DATE when the dust settles. Now...
Back on Heroes - anyone not watching Christopher Eccelston's performance is really missing out. His delivery isn't far from what he did on my fourth favorite current show, Doctor Who, but I could watch him spew patronizing vitriol all night. But - and here's a minor spoiler warning for anyone who didn't see last night's episode - I was expecting that shove he gave Peter off the building. When Eccleston came on last week, his character - that of the vagabond mentor wandering the streets - really reminded me of something else - the homeless wizard Tom O'Bedlam of Grant Morrison's brilliant comic book series, The Invisibles,
who mentors the young boy Jack Frost, troubled youth who doesn't realize his true potential and all that. After wandering the streets as poor mad Tom's pupil for a while, their lessons culminate with a death defying leap off a London skyscraper. Coincidence? Not with comic scribe Jeff Loeb as co-executive producer. But need more proof that it isn't just synchronicity. Well, come on, just what is Eccelston's particular power anyway?
Update: While I'm thinking of it, it occurs to me that it's instructive to look at the way all four of the above mentioned shows - Battlestar Galactica, Heroes, Rome and Doctor Who - deal with Providence. I've blogged before about the fact that the world of Battlestar Galactica is clearly one in which the divine forces have some reality / influence on events, as we've seen multiple charactes experience prophecy that has come to fruition. And while the majority of Heroes' synchronicities can be explained simply by what happens when one character sees the future and shares that knowledge with another who can travel in time, they are racking up enough meaningful coincidence to suggest that other forces may be at work beyond their own self-generated domino effects. Doctor Who second season is interesting for the way it sets up the Doctor as a "lonely god," and remember the episode "New Earth" where he tells a Nun that there is "no higher authority" in the universe than himself. The running theme of that season is that the previous Godlike powers, the Time Lords, are now gone, and thus the Doctor is forced to step in and play God to a hitherto unattained (or at least unacknowledged) degree. So in this series, he is Providence, hence his really interesting decision to forgo sharing the details of his meeting with the devil in "The Satan Pit." I mean, keeping the fact from humanity that a, there was actually a devil and b, he's dead now is a pretty major card to hang onto. Now, what's really interesting to me are the recent developments in the fourth show, Rome. Up unto this point, and despite the widespread belief in the supernatural shared by its cast of characters, we haven't seen the presence of the supernatural at all in its story. But now, with episode 15, "These Being the Words of Marcus Tullius Cicero," we have Pullo, who left Rome several months ago and has only just returned, convinced he has been sent back by the gods to set things right with Vorenus, stumbling synchronistically upon Lyde, who tells him Vorenus' children are still alive. Can it be that the supernatural has finally reared its ugly head in ancient Italy too?
overtaking my other two favorites Battlestar Galactica and Rome due to its deft plotting and the clear evidence that they have worked their backstory out in much better detail than BG. Mind you - I love BG and maintain that it's cumulative effect on SF television and the wider perception of SF in the mainstream is overwhelmingly positive, but I'm losing paitence with the way they use the religious beliefs of both sides as a catch all for moving the plot without bothering to work out just what those beliefs are in any convincing detail. It's not good tv when the characters are working from information that is rote to them but vague to the audience and as much time as the crew of the Galactica has spent with "good Sharon", we ought to know a damn site more about the Cylon's core beliefs than we do. I mean, how can the Cylon's not know who the "final five" are? Were they built at the same time? Were they built first? Were they not build yet? For that matter, the Cylons treat the "bullet heads" like morons, but didn't the bullet heads build them? So, wouldn't the bullet heads know who the final five are? How do they even know there are a final five if they've never seen them, don't interact with them, don't receive orders from them, and didn't apparently hang with them back on whatever Cylon homeworld they were on for the last 50 years? It's all a big mess, and I'd like to see it untangled, but I still don't think the writers have an effing clue.This doesn't mean BG's character work isn't amazing - it's what keeps me glued to the screen week after week, and god, I love Baltar under pressure - and this season's Rome is tremendous even if the 3 months forward jump didn't jar a little bit and undercut a little of the episode's potentia. But these three shows aren't just my favorite shows on TV now - they could easily be my favorite shows TO DATE when the dust settles. Now...
Back on Heroes - anyone not watching Christopher Eccelston's performance is really missing out. His delivery isn't far from what he did on my fourth favorite current show, Doctor Who, but I could watch him spew patronizing vitriol all night. But - and here's a minor spoiler warning for anyone who didn't see last night's episode - I was expecting that shove he gave Peter off the building. When Eccleston came on last week, his character - that of the vagabond mentor wandering the streets - really reminded me of something else - the homeless wizard Tom O'Bedlam of Grant Morrison's brilliant comic book series, The Invisibles, who mentors the young boy Jack Frost, troubled youth who doesn't realize his true potential and all that. After wandering the streets as poor mad Tom's pupil for a while, their lessons culminate with a death defying leap off a London skyscraper. Coincidence? Not with comic scribe Jeff Loeb as co-executive producer. But need more proof that it isn't just synchronicity. Well, come on, just what is Eccelston's particular power anyway?Update: While I'm thinking of it, it occurs to me that it's instructive to look at the way all four of the above mentioned shows - Battlestar Galactica, Heroes, Rome and Doctor Who - deal with Providence. I've blogged before about the fact that the world of Battlestar Galactica is clearly one in which the divine forces have some reality / influence on events, as we've seen multiple charactes experience prophecy that has come to fruition. And while the majority of Heroes' synchronicities can be explained simply by what happens when one character sees the future and shares that knowledge with another who can travel in time, they are racking up enough meaningful coincidence to suggest that other forces may be at work beyond their own self-generated domino effects. Doctor Who second season is interesting for the way it sets up the Doctor as a "lonely god," and remember the episode "New Earth" where he tells a Nun that there is "no higher authority" in the universe than himself. The running theme of that season is that the previous Godlike powers, the Time Lords, are now gone, and thus the Doctor is forced to step in and play God to a hitherto unattained (or at least unacknowledged) degree. So in this series, he is Providence, hence his really interesting decision to forgo sharing the details of his meeting with the devil in "The Satan Pit." I mean, keeping the fact from humanity that a, there was actually a devil and b, he's dead now is a pretty major card to hang onto. Now, what's really interesting to me are the recent developments in the fourth show, Rome. Up unto this point, and despite the widespread belief in the supernatural shared by its cast of characters, we haven't seen the presence of the supernatural at all in its story. But now, with episode 15, "These Being the Words of Marcus Tullius Cicero," we have Pullo, who left Rome several months ago and has only just returned, convinced he has been sent back by the gods to set things right with Vorenus, stumbling synchronistically upon Lyde, who tells him Vorenus' children are still alive. Can it be that the supernatural has finally reared its ugly head in ancient Italy too?
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