24 - Day 8: 6:00AM - 8:00AM - Discussion and Spoilers

[Trekker4747]

Excellent, rate the movie R.

The only problem with this episode is the overall logic, but that's something that can be ignored while its playing.

In reality, if any President got tens of thousands of Americans killed to save a foreign head of state, she would be impeached (or assassinated) asap and replaced by some ranting, vengeance-fuled warmonger who would make George W. Bush look like Michael Moore. That scenario would be a gold-plated gift to the Palin/Beck ticket and Fox News.

And anyone who managed to get herself elected President would be politically savvy enough to know that. The Prez is being depicted as unrealistically idealistic and naive, but I guess the screenwriters like that particular little fantasy, and it's innocuous enough.

Be willing to sacrifice tens of thousands of American citizens in the hope your people can find the terrorists in time and for the first real chance of ending the Middle East Cold War while simultaneously making real headway in the never-ending Terror War.

OR

Hand over an allied head of state to the terrorists in the hope they won't kill those tens of thousands anyway, almost certainly torpedo the peace process when they execute Hassan and plunge the world into further decades of war, undermining your relationship with every other allied nation, who all now question whether they'd get thrown under the bus like the IRK if the terrorist threat was big enough.

Neither of those options look like they're the right one to me, really, but the first one feels more right.

Logan faced the very same question on Day 6, chose the second option and very nearly triggered World War III for it. I don't recall anyone defending his actions back in the day. Course, he was a Republican. And Republicans are evil.

Taylor is likely a Republican too. (The Palmers were Democrats and Taylor beat W. Palmer's VP for the presidency.)

 

[Trek4Ever]

Wow. Finally got around to watching it and for the first time in years I was riveted by 24. The ending as most people on this thread are saying was a real gut puncher even though I didn't think much of Hassan. Hopefully if they keep this up, the show won't go out with a whimper.

 

[Valandil]

What has Braga been smoking?

He couldn't write an emotional scene on Trek to save his life, and then he pulls out THAT ending?

Woah.

Brannon Braga can write a good script, even a good scene. To his credit he wrote some of the best TNG episodes. With the help of another wrtier, Cotto -a writer I liked on Enterprise, also wrote this episode.

I'm a big fan of Coto's. And I know Brannon has talent, but it's been a long time since he's written anything worthwhile. TATV was his idea of a 'Valentine', afterall. And the less said about Threshold the better.

Fair play for churning that episode out.

 

[Trekker4747]

As I said, Braga does his best work while either under a better writer or when his stuff is checked through another writer. When Braga writes on his own we get "Genisis", "Threshold" and "TATV." On TNG, for example, Michael Piller was insturmental as being a head writer and fine-tuning Braga's scripts. But when Braga was a/one of the EP and writers on Voyager and Enterprise, well... not good things happened. Simply because he's not a well-tuned writer and his writings can be a bit, well, immature.

So I think this episode of 24 was good because Braga and Cotto wrote it.