sf/f TV development news - 2013

[Bob The Skutter]

RJDiogenes wrote:

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Exactly. The second definition. Unusual means:

In other words, it happens all the time, but it's still weird.

If Weird means unusual and unusual means rare then how can it happen all the time and still be weird? You make no sense.

[Kegg]

Temis the Vorta wrote:

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The Sleepy Hollow pilots on NBC and CW are the latest example. Why not at least go for a historical setting? Because its a harder sell for the audience.

Also: Cheaper.

Movies are the worst. Even the good movies are dumbed down popcorn fodder, which is all Abrams Star Trek and The Avengers really are.

To the extent that's true it's only true of big blockbuster (usually Hollywood, Amercan) films. There's still plenty of movies being made every year that aren't really that.

[Christopher]

The Avengers is not dumbed down in any way, and neither is Abrams' Star Trek. Well, okay, the science is pretty dumb in both cases, but the character writing certainly isn't, and that's infinitely more important. Some viewers just mistake style for substance. Insisting that anything in a popular style is automatically stupid and unworthy is just elitist rubbish. Hell, the original Star Trek tacked on a fistfight in every episode to conform to network expectations for action-adventure shows, and put the women in miniskirts and constantly tore Kirk's shirt off to throw in the requisite levels of sex appeal, but that doesn't mean the stories had no intelligence or the characters no depth. So it's an incompetent criticism. A single work can combine lowbrow and intelligent aspects, so the presence of the former does not prove the absence of the latter.

[JD]

stj wrote:

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Yes, comic books are possibly the best example of the perpetual reinvention of characters under the same name. They are also a very convincing argument against the practice, because it leads to low quality work.

Yeah, because Batman: Year One, Batman: The Dark Knight Returns, Batman: The Animated Series, and Batman Begins were all horrible, low quality works.

[Christopher]

People who say "the low-quality work in category X proves that category X shouldn't be tried" are forgetting Sturgeon's Law: ninety percent of everything is garbage. Every category of storytelling in the world is dominated by a great quantity of poor to mediocre work. But the corollary is that ten percent of everything is good. Great work can be done in any category of storytelling, even if it usually isn't. So it's missing the point altogether to blame the category. The existence of bad work in a particular category is not a reason to avoid creating anything in that category. On the contrary, it's the best possible reason to keep trying to get it right, because sometimes something great happens and it makes up for all the lame stuff.

[Harvey]

Kegg wrote:

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On the subject of Alien Nation: Isn't Tim Minear now one of the executive producers or something of American Horror Story? I kind of assumed his role in that show is confirmation that the idea never got anywhere.

It's been three years since it was announced without any news. It seems pretty likely to be dead.

[Christopher]

^On the other hand, the original Alien Nation was "dead" for four years before it got revived as a series of TV movies. So you never know...

(I miss TV movies. You never seem to see them anymore, at least not on the networks. I guess direct-to-DVD movies replaced them. But I think there should still be a place for them on TV, especially for ongoing series of the sort we used to have sometimes.)

[stj]

Sturgeon's Law is not actually a law. The graphic novel has had a few excellent works. None to my knowledge are the xth reinvention of A. Reinvention has its charms but it's a more intellectual kind of pleasure, largely limited to the cognoscenti of the originals. Or to put it another way, the better art says something in its own right, rather than editing someone else's words.

[DWF]

Christopher wrote:

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^On the other hand, the original Alien Nation was "dead" for four years before it got revived as a series of TV movies. So you never know...

(I miss TV movies. You never seem to see them anymore, at least not on the networks. I guess direct-to-DVD movies replaced them. But I think there should still be a place for them on TV, especially for ongoing series of the sort we used to have sometimes.)

There's been plenty of them on TV over the years but the stars of the old TV shows got old and the stories got worse and worse in some cases. But I think the idea has burned itself out for right now. Still the two Stargate DVD movies were shown in syndication with the rest of SG1.

[RJDiogenes]

Christopher wrote:

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Of course the characters are being changed, but it's nonsense to claim that makes them completely new characters.

Dude, stop overreacting and listen to yourself. New versions of the characters are new characters. Not the same. Different. New.

stj wrote:

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But I really doubt it is what he would do if he had the power and I think it's vaguely insulting to him to imply this.

Yeah, this is exactly what I think.

Temis the Vorta wrote:

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My hunch is that the TV biz is significantly crasser than the book biz, since the financial stakes are higher, and movies are likely to be the crassest of them all.

Just compare sci fi novels as a group to sci fi TV or movies. Of those groups, the novels are where you find the genuine works of art that reflect an artist's uncompromising vision, not to mention a far greater range of approaches.

On TV, everything needs to fit some pigeonhole. The Sleepy Hollow pilots on NBC and CW are the latest example. Why not at least go for a historical setting? Because its a harder sell for the audience. So, instead, they're just aping a familiar formula of a modern day cop show, with genre window dressing, with a female sherrif just to make sure we have the added insurance of unresolved sexual tension.

Movies are the worst. Even the good movies are dumbed down popcorn fodder, which is all Abrams Star Trek and The Avengers really are. They're competent and fun, but hardly great, ground breaking works of art.

Fuller might genuinely love what he's doing, but if he hadn't paid attention to pleasing his corporate masters, he'd never have gotten a green light to start with. The parallel between him using Universal's stable of movie monsters and Once Upon A Time using Disney movie characters is obvious me-too-ism. Universal owns NBC just as Disney owns ABC.

if crass motives didn't govern TV and movies, especially as you go more mass market, meaning network and blockbuster respectively, I'd expect to see a far greater range of creative approaches and genuine originality, instead of the depressing me-too-ism which characterizes both industries.

And that about sums it up.

Bob the Skutter wrote:

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If Weird means unusual and unusual means rare then how can it happen all the time and still be weird? You make no sense.

Because unusual means rare and weird means strange. These are not exactly subtle nuances.

[Bob The Skutter]

RJDiogenes wrote:

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Because unusual means rare and weird means strange. These are not exactly subtle nuances.

And strange means unusual.

[RJDiogenes]

^^ You're just punkin' me now, right?

[Bob The Skutter]

RJDiogenes wrote:

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^^ You're just punkin' me now, right?

strange

[streynj]   Example Sentences Origin
strange

   [streynj] Show IPA adjective, strang·er, strang·est, adverb
adjective 1. unusual, extraordinary, or curious; odd; queer: a strange remark to make.

You're the one who loves playing semantics with words and enjoy saying "Words have meanings". In this case I'm pointing out that you're playing semantics doesn't work with the words you're using.

[Christopher]

RJDiogenes wrote:

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Dude, stop overreacting and listen to yourself. New versions of the characters are new characters. Not the same. Different. New.

No, they're really, really not, but you're not willing to think enough to understand why not. You're just stubbornly defending your narrow-minded preconceptions rather than opening your mind to a learning opportunity, and that's very sad. As long as you assume you're always right, you will never stop being so completely wrong.

[Sindatur]

stj wrote:

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Fuller is talented, but the Munsters are not really a suitable setting for his demonstrated preferred themes of life and death; unrequitable love; destiny as character. But his shows are mostly failures, so he does what work he can, and will likely do it to the best of his ability. But I really doubt it is what he would do if he had the power and I think it's vaguely insulting to him to imply this.

Huh? Herman is a reanimated corpse, and his wife Lily and Father in Law Grandpa are Vampires, what could possibly be a suitable setting for Fuller's preferred themes of Life and Death if this doesn't qualify as suitable? Marilyn can't get a second date, because her family scares the men off, sounds like a very suitable setting for unrequited love to me