• Welcome! The TrekBBS is the number one place to chat about Star Trek with like-minded fans.
    If you are not already a member then please register an account and join in the discussion!

and the #1 top illegally downloaded show in the world is...

I'm not on a bandwagon. I have a very specific reason for my change of opinion on the show that most people I've come across don't agree with and even think is a good thing.

Worrying about that stuff with Peter is like worrying about unswept carpets when the house is burning down. :rommie:

Why ? It's indicative of the show's number one problem - its writers inability to be imaginative when they're writing a show about superheroes.

The writers actually show a fair amount of imagination, with all the crazy shit they come up with. I can think of shows where lack of imagination is a much bigger problem. But they don't know how to shape their imaginativeness into a coherent, satisfying plotline that has an overall direction and theme. In fact, imagination is just about the only thing Heroes' writing has going for it.

Heroes' #1 writing problem is incoherence. It's a rudderless boat, veering all over the place. The writers have different ideas about who the characters are, and what (if anything) the story is trying to accomplish. Plotlines are started and then abruptly dropped before a satisfying resolution that tells us why those plotlines existed in the first place. There's no sense of an underying story direction to all the dissonant elements. It's a crazy, frustrating mess. Kring has let the whole thing get out of control.
 
^It's always the same old same old. They have a villain, they need him to not be stopped until the end of the chapter so they cripple the person most likely to do it. All four chapters so far have done this.
 
They come up with new angles all the time - Matt's baby having powers, Peter deciding for whatever reason that he needed to glom Sylar's powers, Sylar and Elle playing Bonnie & Clyde, Danko's vendetta against the superpowered people, the return of Arthur Petrelli and the intriguing notion that he's a Godfather-type figure (X-Men meets The Sopranos), Sylar's quest to find his true father and what it might mean for his self-identity, the entire subplot with Matt and Daphne, and of course their worst idea to date, pussyfooting pointlessly around with Sylar being a Petrelli, which in retrospect they did only for shock value.

Those are also all examples of plotlines that haven't paid off, and maybe never will, or that have already fizzled. They need to stop trying everything under the sun and just come up with ideas that they have the discipline to stick with for some kind of useful payoff.
 
They come up with new angles all the time - Matt's baby having powers, Peter deciding for whatever reason that he needed to glom Sylar's powers, Sylar and Elle playing Bonnie & Clyde, Danko's vendetta against the superpowered people, the return of Arthur Petrelli and the intriguing notion that he's a Godfather-type figure (X-Men meets The Sopranos), Sylar's quest to find his true father and what it might mean for his self-identity, the entire subplot with Matt and Daphne, and of course their worst idea to date, pussyfooting pointlessly around with Sylar being a Petrelli, which in retrospect they did only for shock value.

Those are also all examples of plotlines that haven't paid off, and maybe never will, or that have already fizzled. They need to stop trying everything under the sun and just come up with ideas that they have the discipline to stick with for some kind of useful payoff.

New ideas are worthless if you waste them by going back to your old standbys.

Hiro didn't stop Sylar half way through Genesis because he inexplicably lost his powers.

Peter didn't stop Adam Monroe two episodes in to Generations because he lost his memory, and thus couldn't use his powers. Sylar, who probably wouldn't have liked the virus very much, lost his powers too as did Niki.

Peter didn't stop Arthur less than half way through Villains because Arthur took his powers. He then took Hiro's as well.

Peter didn't stop Danko one episode in to Villains because they ballsed up his powers. Hiro couldn't stop him either because, when he finally got his powers back, they nearly killed him.

You mark my words, there will be some power disabling person in the next season to explain why Peter and this new Company can't do anything to stop the new villains.
 
What is pretty sad about illegally downloading Heroes is that the episodes are available to watch instantly via streaming on Netflix. Not to mention the episodes available to watch for free on www.hulu.com/heroes and www.nbc.com/heroes

Hulu is not available to users outside of the United States, or at least North America.

Heroes airs on the BBC (and thus BBC iPlayer) very shortly after the NBC airing but it has a severe chipmunking (a term for the pitch increase caused by a poor NTSC to PAL transfer) problem making it unwatchable. This is especially unforgivable as the show was produced for HD which shouldn't have this problem anymore.
 
New ideas are worthless if you waste them by going back to your old standbys.
Yeah that's what I mean about them not paying off their ideas well. They either drop the ideas or the payoff is dopey and makes you wonder why they bothered. They need someone who can channel their ideas into a competently structured story.

The fun part of writing is coming up with ideas, but the important part is the boring work of structuring and organizing those ideas. The Heroes writers have come up with lots of ideas - I'm trying to think of what they haven't come up with yet (one thing: a splitting-in-two hero) but they've been using them so poorly that my main prescription for them would be a big do-over. Go back to the Generations, Villains and Fugitives ideas and do them right this time.

You're right that the Heroes writers use too many contrived crutches to make their badly-thought-through plotlines work out. One of their favorite crutches is making their characters lose powers. Another is simply making their characters stupid, and forget they have powers that they could use to solve the problem in about ten seconds. To me, that's even worse than the losing-powers crutch because it creates contempt for the characters that really undermines everything. But the crutches are a symptom of their larger problem of not thinking plotlines through to their conclusion and making sure the writing is reasonably tight and free from stupidities.

You mark my words, there will be some power disabling person in the next season to explain why Peter and this new Company can't do anything to stop the new villains.
It's frustrating that they have the perfect kryptonite for Peter right under their stupid noses, yet they won't use it. They introduced the notion that Peter glomming more and more powers harms his health, particularly when he uses those powers, that his seeming super-duper-power of getting powers inadvertently is actually a huge handicap.

That's a good notion because it taps into the mythological basis of hero stories. In this case, the idea that the gods will give the hero a power, but only if he can use it wisely. If he uses it unwisely, it will destroy him.

Peter's challenge is not to get more and more powers, it's to gain wisdom so that he is not destroyed by his powers. It's the Luke Skywalker myth. Luke's kryptonite is the Dark Side; Peter's is the fact that he cannot control obtaining powers, and each new one makes the situation less controllable and more dangerous. By introducing a kryptonite that is character-based and has the force of ancient myth behind it, the writers could make Peter's story seem cool, epic and never stupid and contrived.

I think the writers have all the solutions to their problems already set up and ready to go. They just need to see those solutions.
 
Last edited:
What is pretty sad about illegally downloading Heroes is that the episodes are available to watch instantly via streaming on Netflix. Not to mention the episodes available to watch for free on www.hulu.com/heroes and www.nbc.com/heroes

Hulu is not available to users outside of the United States, or at least North America.

Heroes airs on the BBC (and thus BBC iPlayer) very shortly after the NBC airing but it has a severe chipmunking (a term for the pitch increase caused by a poor NTSC to PAL transfer) problem making it unwatchable. This is especially unforgivable as the show was produced for HD which shouldn't have this problem anymore.

Consider yourself lucky you don't live in Australia. Here it will probably be around sometime in October or November, before we get to see it, and it will be a crap timeslot.
 
If you are not already a member then please register an account and join in the discussion!

Sign up / Register


Back
Top