Stories that could have been
Over the weekend I was re-watching SGA episodes from season 1 while moving furniture, and remembered all over again how likable it was in those early days. McKay's lovable-asshole routine was a novelty still, and he really was an asshole, an aspect which got toned down as the show went on. Sheppard was still a charming blank, and it was still possible to project onto him something resembling a personality or even depth, which became impossible later. Teyla had bad wigs, but she had her snarky moments, and she got to move. And there were other characters, secondaries who recurred, who argued and were fractious and even mean, and when they died it was a big deal. Also, I mean, SGA had that one thing going for it in that first season: the isolation of the Atlantis team made for harebrained, no-holds-barred generativity and a real sense of danger.
What a mistake it was, narratively, to re-establish contact with Earth. I know there were a bunch of reasons to do it, but from the story perspective, it was a horrible blow. Immediately the show became less interesting, became a franchise show, became predictable.
I mean, also, the show would have needed for Sheppard to develop a personality once the mystery wore off, and would have needed for McKay to get walloped upside the head with the side-effects of being an asshole in small group dynamics, and would have needed for Teyla ever to learn contractions. But instead of the one Ronon, we could have had ten of them, a hundred extras, all adopted into the new tribe as earth-born members died off or their actors quit. And there would be no miraculous last-minute rescues.
(I coined the phrase "uprising of the ordinary" once, to describe the narrative arc I wanted to see on Supernatural -- and never did --, but really, that's the overarching template for most of my stories. Even when it's a suprize rescue, it's always a rescue from somebody who was there all along, and didn't know she had it in her till it was Time.)
The other thing I had on for furniture-moving was BSG (the beginning of season 3, because I'd missed the great battlestar maneuvers somehow, though I heard about them later). And the great thing about moving furniture is, you can have something else to pay attention to whenever the story cuts foolishly to Baltar! Wow did I hate that character. BSG was another text that I thought had a lot of potential, often wasted. Sometimes, when they were both on at the same time, I would day-dream that BSG, instead of finding Earth, would find an Atlantis team on some random Pegasus planet. And they would be totally overwhelmed, full of exhausted optimism, only to discover that they were still impossibly far away from their target, with no quickie way across, recontact never having been established.
Maybe they would move into Atlantis, all 40,000 some-odd of them. Maybe they'd forget all about earth, and build the city anew, and fill up all those empty towers with life. Maybe they'd get on with the business of making a home in the place they're at, instead of always looking for that other place that's just out of reach. Maybe someday, at the end of the story, Earth-contact would return, and everyone in Atlantis would wonder at how foreign and strange that place seemed, even the people who had been born there.
Also, that would mean I could sic one of those horrible foot-long cockroaches on Baltar. Win!
This entry was originally posted at http://vehemently.dreamwidth.org/19437.html. Comment wherever you like.
What a mistake it was, narratively, to re-establish contact with Earth. I know there were a bunch of reasons to do it, but from the story perspective, it was a horrible blow. Immediately the show became less interesting, became a franchise show, became predictable.
I mean, also, the show would have needed for Sheppard to develop a personality once the mystery wore off, and would have needed for McKay to get walloped upside the head with the side-effects of being an asshole in small group dynamics, and would have needed for Teyla ever to learn contractions. But instead of the one Ronon, we could have had ten of them, a hundred extras, all adopted into the new tribe as earth-born members died off or their actors quit. And there would be no miraculous last-minute rescues.
(I coined the phrase "uprising of the ordinary" once, to describe the narrative arc I wanted to see on Supernatural -- and never did --, but really, that's the overarching template for most of my stories. Even when it's a suprize rescue, it's always a rescue from somebody who was there all along, and didn't know she had it in her till it was Time.)
The other thing I had on for furniture-moving was BSG (the beginning of season 3, because I'd missed the great battlestar maneuvers somehow, though I heard about them later). And the great thing about moving furniture is, you can have something else to pay attention to whenever the story cuts foolishly to Baltar! Wow did I hate that character. BSG was another text that I thought had a lot of potential, often wasted. Sometimes, when they were both on at the same time, I would day-dream that BSG, instead of finding Earth, would find an Atlantis team on some random Pegasus planet. And they would be totally overwhelmed, full of exhausted optimism, only to discover that they were still impossibly far away from their target, with no quickie way across, recontact never having been established.
Maybe they would move into Atlantis, all 40,000 some-odd of them. Maybe they'd forget all about earth, and build the city anew, and fill up all those empty towers with life. Maybe they'd get on with the business of making a home in the place they're at, instead of always looking for that other place that's just out of reach. Maybe someday, at the end of the story, Earth-contact would return, and everyone in Atlantis would wonder at how foreign and strange that place seemed, even the people who had been born there.
Also, that would mean I could sic one of those horrible foot-long cockroaches on Baltar. Win!
This entry was originally posted at http://vehemently.dreamwidth.org/19437.html. Comment wherever you like.