Alias

[Christopher]

I'm wondering if the red ball and stuff from here is how JJ got that into Star Trek in the 2009 movie all I could think of was Alias when they showed us the big red ball.

I've read that red orbs of one sort or another are a recurring theme in Abrams's works.

My blog review of both Alias and Fringe:

https://christopherlbennett.wordpress.com/2014/12/16/reflections-on-alias-and-fringe-spoilers/

My summation on the former:

So all in all, Alias was a deeply inconsistent series with parts that were very entertaining and parts that were frustrating and disappointing. Jennifer Garner herself was one of its weakest links, not nearly as versatile an actress as was called for by her master-of-disguises role or the emotional roller coaster her character routinely went through. The frequent retools and absurd plot twists that justified them were hard to swallow as well. I’m glad I got to see (and hear) the good parts again, but I had to wade through a lot of bad parts.

 

[Gingerbread Demon]

Interesting points........ Liked reading that

 

[Forbin]

The craziest thing I remember from Alias (and I'm not going to remember this clearly, but...) Sydney is in Los Angeles, and gets an emergency call for help from someone in Eastern Europe. She hops on a plane and arrives there in time to help. It seems like mere moments have passed at the site of the emergency.

Um. Whut?

 

[Gary Mitchell]

Well, it wouldn't have been much fun watching her check her luggage, get the Kosher meal, watch 13 Going On 30, pick up her luggage and have Enterprise® come pick her up. Meanwhile the person that needs rescuing keeps looking at their watch and wondering why they didn't call someone local.

 

[Forbin]

Well, it wouldn't have been much fun watching her check her luggage, get the Kosher meal, watch 13 Going On 30, pick up her luggage and have Enterprise® come pick her up. Meanwhile the person that needs rescuing keeps looking at their watch and wondering why they didn't call someone local.

The point being that she got from LA to eastern Europe in, apparently, mere moments.

 

[JirinPanthosa]

I can tolerate things like cutting time and storytelling conveniences like that far more than I can tolerate contradictory plot points or character motivation. Characters doing things that completely contradict things they've previously done is a much bigger deal than glazing over logistic details.

In Lost they may not have always had an end destination in mind, but it always seemed to me like whenever a person or thing is established in the universe they already know the story behind that thing.

 

[Gingerbread Demon]

Both shows seemed to make stuff up as they went. But I'll give Lost 10/10 for doing that the most. A lot of the time it just rambles along and in panels I think the writers pretty much said that themselves.

 

[JirinPanthosa]

If they really did that for Lost they did a much better job hiding it. There's a lot of stuff in Lost that when you go back and watch it again, makes more sense with things you learned later. For example,

Spoiler: Lost

everybody smokey physically impersonates outside of full on illusions is somebody who died off the island and whose body was brought there. Locke, Christian and Yemi. So either they knew those were the rules very early, or they noticed the pattern later and stuck with it.

In Alias things retroactively make less sense.

What happened to the actress from Firefly anyway? She was a great nemesis for Sydney and she just kind of vanished.

 

[Gingerbread Demon]

Sydney Bristow spent a lot of time crying on the show. There's even an Alias drinking game

http://www.ringthis.com/tv_drinking_games/alias.php