“Outcasts” scifi BBC America 8-part series

[Bob The Skutter]

It had promise and some good ideas, but dragged it's heels and didn't really go anywhere. Overall it gets a big fat "meh" from me.

How dare you, sir. It was a the best show to be made ever...

Nah, I can see why it wasn't well received, it certainly had it's problems. But I think it was actually pretty good once it got past the first few episodes.

Yeah, I hear that a lot when series get cancelled, and it's just not excusable anymore. There is so much media out there, if a story isn't interesting enough, and the production isn't good enough to grab me within the first episode or two, it probably doesn't deserve my time. I've never heard of a great movie or a classic book that was excellent "except for the first few chapters/40minutes ".

That doesn't mean there isn't room for average works of entertainment, but even an average series or movie should be able to get me interested from the beginning.

Yeah, that's obviously complete bollocks. Lots of books and films can seem uninteresting in their first few chapters or first act or whatever and become brilliant the further you get in to them. Plenty of great TV series have had shaky starts and gone on to be great.

 

[Deckerd]

And the reverse is true too. Something that grabs you from the start and keeps you gripped can suddenly lose form either temporarily or permanently. Battlestar anyone?

 

[ITL]

I do understand that, but I can think of plenty of shows over the years that had less than steller beginings. TNG, Babylon 5, DS9 to name three biggies, but I love em all now. It's hard for an opening episode, especially in sci-fi, because you've got to set so much up. That's not to say I haven't given up on shows, but I've always given them a few episodes assuming the premise is interesting enough.

As for the first 40 minutes thing...I can still remember finding the opening 20 minutes of Die Hard boring as hell the first time I saw it, and I've read plenty of novels that its taken me time to get into but which have turned out wonderful.

That's just it, though. I gave Outcasts the benefit of the doubt, but for me, it didn't deliver. When you have a slow-burn story that gradually builds, interesting things need to happen along the way - and you need a good payoff at the end of the season even if the main arc carries over to the next (not that it'll happen in this case, though). Both areas were lacking, IMO.

But having said that, a second season would have been a good idea - a chance to improve things.

 

[Bob The Skutter]

And the reverse is true too. Something that grabs you from the start and keeps you gripped can suddenly lose form either temporarily or permanently. Battlestar anyone?

Exactly, initial quality is no guarantee of ongoing quality.

 

[Pingfah]

And the reverse is true too. Something that grabs you from the start and keeps you gripped can suddenly lose form either temporarily or permanently. Battlestar anyone?

Exactly, initial quality is no guarantee of ongoing quality.

I don't know what you mean. I can only assume that Battlestar is some sort of code for Lost.

 

[Bob The Skutter]

I do understand that, but I can think of plenty of shows over the years that had less than steller beginings. TNG, Babylon 5, DS9 to name three biggies, but I love em all now. It's hard for an opening episode, especially in sci-fi, because you've got to set so much up. That's not to say I haven't given up on shows, but I've always given them a few episodes assuming the premise is interesting enough.

As for the first 40 minutes thing...I can still remember finding the opening 20 minutes of Die Hard boring as hell the first time I saw it, and I've read plenty of novels that its taken me time to get into but which have turned out wonderful.

That's just it, though. I gave Outcasts the benefit of the doubt, but for me, it didn't deliver. When you have a slow-burn story that gradually builds, interesting things need to happen along the way - and you need a good payoff at the end of the season even if the main arc carries over to the next (not that it'll happen in this case, though). Both areas were lacking, IMO.

But having said that, a second season would have been a good idea - a chance to improve things.

I thought from the third episode on Outcasts built and built to a good conclusion, and I was very interesting to see what came next. I don't buy when people say nothing happens because seemed to me by episode 4 more had happened than would happen in an entire season on a lot of US shows. I think the problem was the way it started, you spent an episode getting to know people who were nothing to do with the rest of the show, and that threw people some. Then the people you were left with seemed less interesting than the initial "protagonist".
Like I said earlier, it had it's flaws and there were mistakes made, but I think it had to potential to become a great show.

 

[Bob The Skutter]

And the reverse is true too. Something that grabs you from the start and keeps you gripped can suddenly lose form either temporarily or permanently. Battlestar anyone?

Exactly, initial quality is no guarantee of ongoing quality.

I don't know what you mean. I can only assume that Battlestar is some sort of code for Lost.

Lost, Battlestar Galactica, they, and many others, suffer the same problem. They come out strong and then peter out and somewhere along the way lose what they had.

 

[Sindatur]

I'd say it was a 7/10 series.

Certainly had potential, and some of the strands of the story were intruiging.

Sadly, there were certain other elements that were very predictable.

It's a shame that they didn't get another series to hone the story further, but ultimately, given its performance cancellation was always going to be a formality.

Heh, that's another problem deeply arc'ed, mythology heavy, or ongoing mystery/questions SciFi has these days. If the Arc and the questions are well laid out, and you get what you expected to happen or theorized would happen, it's called predictable. If the questions/twists are so mysterious that you never could've guessed the answer, then the show is accused of lazy writing, and it's said the answer came out of nowhere. You just can't win in that environment.

 

[Temis the Vorta]

Exactly, initial quality is no guarantee of ongoing quality.

I don't know what you mean. I can only assume that Battlestar is some sort of code for Lost.

Lost, Battlestar Galactica, they, and many others, suffer the same problem. They come out strong and then peter out and somewhere along the way lose what they had.

I'd be happy if there was anything on that was as good as either of those shows, flaws and all.

 

[Bob The Skutter]

I don't know what you mean. I can only assume that Battlestar is some sort of code for Lost.

Lost, Battlestar Galactica, they, and many others, suffer the same problem. They come out strong and then peter out and somewhere along the way lose what they had.

I'd be happy if there was anything on that was as good as either of those shows, flaws and all.

I dunno, if the pay off isn't worth it or the quality drops low mid way through then you'd done nothing but waste time on it because it never actually lives up to the early promises it made.

 

[Angel4576]

I was happy enough with the BSG payoff - I certainly wouldn't have minded more.

Sometimes it's just our own fault for setting unrealistically high expectations.

Lost - I thought was going to be ok, but then, with two episodes to go, they introduced the 'magic cave'......

 

[Deckerd]

Yeah I found myself watching BSG slavishly even although it never again approached anything like its intial brilliance after 2.5 seasons. The overall feeling after watching it all is like losing a close friend to brain damage.

 

[Starkers]

I do understand that, but I can think of plenty of shows over the years that had less than steller beginings. TNG, Babylon 5, DS9 to name three biggies, but I love em all now. It's hard for an opening episode, especially in sci-fi, because you've got to set so much up. That's not to say I haven't given up on shows, but I've always given them a few episodes assuming the premise is interesting enough.

As for the first 40 minutes thing...I can still remember finding the opening 20 minutes of Die Hard boring as hell the first time I saw it, and I've read plenty of novels that its taken me time to get into but which have turned out wonderful.

That's just it, though. I gave Outcasts the benefit of the doubt, but for me, it didn't deliver. When you have a slow-burn story that gradually builds, interesting things need to happen along the way - and you need a good payoff at the end of the season even if the main arc carries over to the next (not that it'll happen in this case, though). Both areas were lacking, IMO.

But having said that, a second season would have been a good idea - a chance to improve things.

I thought from the third episode on Outcasts built and built to a good conclusion, and I was very interesting to see what came next. I don't buy when people say nothing happens because seemed to me by episode 4 more had happened than would happen in an entire season on a lot of US shows. I think the problem was the way it started, you spent an episode getting to know people who were nothing to do with the rest of the show, and that threw people some. Then the people you were left with seemed less interesting than the initial "protagonist".
Like I said earlier, it had it's flaws and there were mistakes made, but I think it had to potential to become a great show.

Yeah its amazing how much stuff actually happened! But you're right, focusing the first episode on a character we weren't going to see again probably wasn't the sharpest move. You can go too far the other way though, having a brilliant opening doesn't mean you can sustain it, and I'd take a slow burning series over another The Event any day of the week (The shadow Line currently on BBC2 is abosolutely bloody brilliant for example) but you have to hook people in in some way. I guess the idea is that if you hook enough people early on, most of them will stick with it even if the quality then goes down the tubes. It shouldn't work that way but obviously it does.

I actually loved the end of Lost, though I can see why some people didn't, but it made me bawl my eyes out and that's a good thing!

BSG on the other hand I had a very odd relationship with. Took me a while to really start to like it, but my faith was dented when they pulled that crap in

Spoiler: BSG spoiler just in case!

curing Roslin of cancer

and I also got annoyed that Moore just seemed to be remaking DS9 but different at times. I really think if it had ended in the middle of series 4 I'd have been happy, but the eventual ending...sorry, can't help but hate a show that proclaimed the Cylons had a plan (no they didn't) and in the finale ended up with one of the most obvious endings I'd been hoping from the start they wouldn't go with.

Spoiler: and again

Seriously, ah it's Earth of the past is as lame as Ah it's Earth now would have been. It's Earth but not our Earth and it's destroyed would have been cool...also the notion of "Let's make sure this never happens again...by giving up our technology and history and bascially forgetting what happened before made me want to track down RDM and punch him...several times