That would be a more interesting and imaginative twist, but that just makes it all the less likely that these writers will go that way. No, I think they're being very literal about the whole thing. It does lend credence to Arthur Petrelli's claim that Sylar never needed to open anyone's skulls to gain powers. Maybe the only reason he ever latched onto that habit is because of a messed-up need to imitate Dad? Otherwise, it's one hell of a coincidence. It's never made a whole lot of sense to me that he needs to actually look at someone's brain to gain powers - what is he seeing? Does he have microscopic vision? Why doesn't he have the same type of vision towards other things? But what does make sense: he gains powers via proximity and doesn't realize it. When he starts trying to gain powers, he convinces himself that he needs to imitate his two Dads to be effective - the skull cutting of bio-dad, and the observation skills of watchmaker dad. Those were never necessary - just an outgrowth of his mangled psyche. If these writers want to start trying to stitch together all the dangling threads of Sylar's characterization, they could start by establishing that he never actually needed to kill anyone, and his mimickry powers really do happen through proximity or "empathy" or something. And the rest is due to his messed up personality. Plus his powers really do drive him to kill on top of it all. Gah, he's still a mess.
Their strategy for characterizing Sylar is to splatter the canvas with random dots. Some of them will inevitably end up connected other dots. Screenwriting a la Jackson Pollack.
Well, these guys don't have UPN breathing down their neck all the time or producers (coughJeriTaylor) who make certain characters their Mary Sues...
The Insaneway phenomenon was unrelated to the Mary Sue issue - it came from writers who couldn't agree on how to write Janeway, so that one week she's willing to sacrifice her crew to safeguard Federation ideals and the next she's willing to sacrifice Federation ideals to safeguard her crew, giving the impression that the captain is insane and the crew are idiots for not seeing it and mutinying. It's definitely the same sickness as is afflicting Heroes - who the hell are these people anymore?
That was more probably due to the constantly changing producers and the such. As contrasted to TNG and DS9, both of which mostly the same people in charge all the way through. Course, I had issues with Sisko's changing attitude on stuff in DS9 as well but to each his own...
Musical producers will do it, sure. The problem is not so much writers per se but the lack of someone in charge. That's also apparently the problem with Heroes - Kring must be asleep. There's nobody reading scripts and making sure they are consistent in characterization and that they built a story that goes somewhere. Sisko's attitude on DS9 didn't ping pong so much as it evolved, from straightforward Starfleet officer to a guy with very divided loyalties. I wanted them to take that further than they did - he didn't change enough. If you want to complain about a DS9 character, I heartily recommend Gul Dukat.
What I meant with Sisko was the zigzaging he did in "Far beyond the Stars" and "Pale Moonlight". I mean he has this whole hallucination that prompts him to go off on how "the dream must never die!" and then in Pale Moonlight he destroys that dream all on his own.