Lost, Battlestar Galactica and the shame of science fiction

[mightyfastpig]

I haven't been a Lost watcher in a long time, but I felt compelled to watch the ending and see how the writers would wrap up this ungainly mess, or not.

My interest in Lost peaked when they were exploring the various DHARMA initiative stations and the scattered backstory of the Hanso foundation settling the Island. I was intrigued by the idea of

Comments

[mightyfastpig]

I think people who run these things are reluctant to take risks.

Take the 2007 version of I am Legend. The theatrical release had an ending in which the protagonist's blood becomes a way of immunizing the other human survivors, becoming the "legendary" savior. The was the same ending as in the Omega Man version with Charlton Heston.

The alternate ending was closer to the original novel and the Vincent Price film adaptation. It shows that the mutated humans the protagonist have been fighting throughout the story are slowly developing a culture and society, instead of being animalistic. He realizes that they will develop a culture in which he is the monster who can live in the daylight that kills them. He is their Dracula, their "legend

[jordan179]

TV shows try to appeal to a wide audience, and it is rare that a single producer or writer has much creative control independent of the studio executives who "know better" and are only too eager to "improve upon" the creator's ideas. Needless to say, fiction by committee is rarely very insightful or interesting, especially when the committee is mostly ignorant of the fiction's central concepts. Science fiction is very concept-based, and hence tends to be done poorly on TV.

One problem that they have compared to movies is that they attract a steady audience who likes the continuing situations in which the characters are embedded, and so said executives are very leery of doing anything to change that situation: that's why you get so many "quest" shows in which the object of the quest is never realized. This gets in the way of character and plot development, and can ultimately make the whole show rather pointless as, no matter what anyone does, everything gets "reset" to the show's base situation by the end of the season

[mightyfastpig]

I think serial storytelling, on TV or in comics or other media, naturally tends towards soap opera. Or rather, soap opera is the most extreme example of that tendency.

You're right about the beliefs of media executives being conservative (not in the usual political sense). I had an "aha!" moment when I watched the movie The Player. The lead character, a film studio exec, was defending the way he makes movies, and he says, "My studio only gets to say, 'Yes,' to making a movie twelve times a year." Most of those have to make money or the company doesn't work. So, they take fewer risks.