Is Heroes going to get season 5

[Temis the Vorta]

season 1 was the best because it had a plan, a beginning middle and end.

S1 was a normal length season so you've just invalidated your own argument.

Not at all. What matters isn't the length, what matters is having a goal in mind.

The argument I was debating was the one I see bandied around a lot - that 13 episode seasons are somehow automatically better than longer ones. Never seen any evidence of that. Why should a staff of writers be capable of writing X number of good episodes per year vs. X + Y number of episodes? If the writers are overworked, hire more writers. With more episodes, you can afford a larger staff.

Having a goal in mind doesn't inherently have anything to do with length. And unlike length of the season, which I think is trivial, having a goal is a very useful idea (though not absolutely necessary).

The reason subsequent seasons fell apart is that they were artificially continuing character arcs that were never meant to continue past the first season

The solution to that is for the writers to recognize which characters have potential for extending their character arcs and which are hopeless. Focus on the former, kill off the latter.

 

[Agenda]

Some good series have no goals. Look at Star Trek: TNG. Went this way and that way. Almost completely non-episodic television. Worked out pretty good.

 

[Temis the Vorta]

The whole thing would be one giant retcon bomb with no need to pay too much attention to what has been said about the heroes' powers. That way we can give Peter his old power back but come up with sensible ways of limiting it - like the idea I had where Peter could duplicate powers of anyone close by but could only recall the powers of people he had an emotional connection with - say Claire or Nathan etc.

They already came up with a sensible way of limiting it -- replacing it permanently with a different power that only lets him borrow one ability at a time. That works fine at keeping him from becoming too powerful; I don't see any reason to replace it with something more convoluted.

The emotion limitation is hard to pull off in a visual medium like TV. How do we know Peter is feeling this or that emotion? Only through Milo's facial expressions and various shrugs, tics and other contortions. Even a highly talented actor would find that hard to pull off with dignity on a regular basis.

I like the notion they also started on in S1 - that using powers (or perhaps just gaining powers) harmed Peter's health. Have that threat hanging over him, and he'll think twice before using any power. I like the irony of a super-powerful character being afraid to use his powers, possibly being afraid to even be exposed to any more powers.

That is based on the assumption that Heroes characters are defined solely by what powers they have. That's a fundamental misreading of the entire series. Heroes isn't a show about superpowers, it's a show about people trying to cope with the consequences of superpowers.

The fundamental question the series should have asked: how can mere mortals make wise use of superpowers? Can they? That theme is enough to fuel the whole series.

What defines him is what he chooses to do with his life and how he chooses to relate to the people around him, regardless of which powers he has or whether he has any at all.

They were on the right track with Peter when they had him become a paramedic and start to use his healing power addictively, and semi-masochistically. On the surface, he was doing the "right thing." But really, he was just hurting himself and using his powers to avoid his personal troubles by turning his life over to his powers. It was even a form of cowardice or maybe just laziness - being a healer meant he was "automatically" good and could avoid feeling anxious or guilty about not doing the right thing at any given time.

The writers used the powers as a way of telling us something about the character - that's how all the powers should have been used, for everyone. Peter's powers were a crutch he used to avoid the hard work of growing the frak up. For him, maybe the right thing to do with his powers is to get rid of them. Maybe that's the right thing for all the heroes. A good series would have explored this idea for each major character and the end would be, what's the answer for each one?

 

[Christopher]

The argument I was debating was the one I see bandied around a lot - that 13 episode seasons are somehow automatically better than longer ones. Never seen any evidence of that. Why should a staff of writers be capable of writing X number of good episodes per year vs. X + Y number of episodes? If the writers are overworked, hire more writers. With more episodes, you can afford a larger staff.

It's not that linear. That staff still has to work as a unit under a single showrunner. That staff still has to break (i.e. outline) every episode as a group. So you can't just expect that twice as many people can get twice as much work done. Maybe in a British show where individual writers are given considerable autonomy, but that's not the way a Hollywood production works. If anything, too many staffers trying to break stories at once, all having to be coordinated by the showrunner, would probably be a less efficient and productive operation than a leaner staff.

Besides, it's not just about workload. In a longer season, there tend to be more "filler" episodes -- stories that don't contribute much to the arc (if it's arc-driven) or that aren't really top-quality material, but that have to be made anyway to meet the quota of episodes. With a tighter season, you can keep it to the essentials and weed out the weaker ideas.

The solution to that is for the writers to recognize which characters have potential for extending their character arcs and which are hopeless. Focus on the former, kill off the latter.

Which I believe was the original intent. However, television is a business, so they had to make decisions based on factors other than what was best for the story. The characters who had the least potential for continuation included some of the most popular characters -- particularly Sylar. Audiences liked those actors, so the network told the producers to keep those actors around. This is the reality of television. Story decisions are constantly being made for reasons that have nothing to do with story considerations. As long as the economic viability of a series is dependent on its popularity, then compromises will be made in the name of pleasing the crowd. So if story logic demands that a character die but the actor is wildly popular with viewers who buy the products advertised on the show, then story logic goes out the window. After all, if you don't pay the bills, you can't keep telling the stories anyway.

 

[Temis the Vorta]

In a longer season, there tend to be more "filler" episodes -- stories that don't contribute much to the arc (if it's arc-driven) or that aren't really top-quality material, but that have to be made anyway to meet the quota of episodes. With a tighter season, you can keep it to the essentials and weed out the weaker ideas.

Or you can come up with a plotline that fills 20 episodes well. The real solution is to end the tyranny of season lengths. Seasons should last for the number of episodes needed to tell the story well.

The characters who had the least potential for continuation included some of the most popular characters -- particularly Sylar.

Even so, they could have done a much better job of shoehorning Sylar into the story. Ditto for Nicki/Tracey, Claire and Hiro. Maybe the writers were so annoyed having to keep those characters around that they deliberately sabotaged them and torpedoed the whole show?

After all, if you don't pay the bills, you can't keep telling the stories anyway.

The ever-plunging ratings suggest that for the Heroes audience, anyway, good writing actually does matter. Keeping popular characters at the expense of the story is just a different way of shooting yourself in the foot.

 

[Hermiod]

I'd say that description is a better fit to his original power. Back then, he automatically absorbed any power from anyone he was within several meters of, whether he knew them or not. He didn't even have to be aware of their existence in order to clone their powers. Now, he has to make direct physical contact with a person and choose to absorb their power in order to acquire it. That seems much more symbolic of empathy, because it requires a conscious choice to connect and skin-to-skin touching, and is one-on-one rather than generalized and impersonal. It's more intimate now, not less.

As I said, my way would leave him unable to recall the powers of random the individuals he meets, only those he has an emotional bond with.

Peter was able to recall powers by remembering how the "donor" made him feel. He would have such strong feelings about Claire, Nathan and maybe a few others but with some random guy like Knox or Flint, for instance, he would not be able to recall their powers once they weren't around anymore.

This would limit him to regenerative healing, flight, precognitive dreaming (from Angela) and possibly not much else while leaving him with the ability to temporarily duplicate powers from people when the situation requires it.

To use your Rogue analogy, for pretty much the bulk of her time as a superhero, Rogue had my Carol's old powers in addition to her own. That just meant that if she didn't have someone to conveniently duplicate she wasn't defenceless.

 

[ITL]

I'd like to see more slapping in S5, should it be made.

Every time Claire says "I just want to be normal!"....SLAP!
Every time HRG says "I just want to keep you safe..."....SLAP!
Every time Dumb Fuck Petrelli cuts someone off mid-sentence as they're explaining something of vital importance to him so that he can run off and do something Dumb Fucky....SLAP!
Every time Hiro uses the word "Destiny"...SLAP!

I think you get the picture.

 

[Christopher]

As I said, my way would leave him unable to recall the powers of random the individuals he meets, only those he has an emotional bond with.

Peter was able to recall powers by remembering how the "donor" made him feel. He would have such strong feelings about Claire, Nathan and maybe a few others but with some random guy like Knox or Flint, for instance, he would not be able to recall their powers once they weren't around anymore.

This would limit him to regenerative healing, flight, precognitive dreaming (from Angela) and possibly not much else while leaving him with the ability to temporarily duplicate powers from people when the situation requires it.

As I said, I find that too convoluted. And a good point was made above about how difficult it would be to depict such an internalized process visually on a television screen. Besides, there's nothing wrong with the power he has now, so I see no reason to change it.

To use your Rogue analogy, for pretty much the bulk of her time as a superhero, Rogue had my Carol's old powers in addition to her own. That just meant that if she didn't have someone to conveniently duplicate she wasn't defenceless.

But Peter is not Rogue. His power acquisition is not temporary. With his original power, he permanently kept every power he duplicated. With his current power, he keeps each power he absorbs indefinitely until he chooses to absorb a different one. So he's never "defenseless." He always has a power, even if it's not the best power for a given situation. There were cases where he kept a given power for weeks after his contact with the source of that power (the longest being the superspeed and strength he used as a paramedic between seasons, the healing ability he acquired later on, and the flight ability from faux-Nathan).

 

[Hermiod]

As I said, I find that too convoluted. And a good point was made above about how difficult it would be to depict such an internalized process visually on a television screen. Besides, there's nothing wrong with the power he has now, so I see no reason to change it.

It's easy enough to represent. He tries to recall a power from some random person, can't do it, and then our guest star Christopher Ecclestone appears and they figure it out.

Seeing as Peter's emotional connection to Claire was what allowed him to reproduce powers in the first place, this isn't too much of a stretch.

In my view, there was nothing wrong with his original power and removing it was just the same lazy, uncreative writing that caused Hiro to need a sword to use his powers.

But Peter is not Rogue. His power acquisition is not temporary. With his original power, he permanently kept every power he duplicated. With his current power, he keeps each power he absorbs indefinitely until he chooses to absorb a different one. So he's never "defenseless." He always has a power, even if it's not the best power for a given situation. There were cases where he kept a given power for weeks after his contact with the source of that power (the longest being the superspeed and strength he used as a paramedic between seasons, the healing ability he acquired later on, and the flight ability from faux-Nathan).

Yes, I'm aware of that difference, my suggestion would make Peter more like Rogue in that he would have a basic, core power set that's not overly powerful but keep him as the "Superman" of the team.

 

[Christopher]

It's easy enough to represent. He tries to recall a power from some random person, can't do it, and then our guest star Christopher Ecclestone appears and they figure it out.

Which would be a pointless distraction from the events of the story. Not to mention the added expense of hiring a guest star for no other reason than to jumpstart Peter's powers.

In my view, there was nothing wrong with his original power and removing it was just the same lazy, uncreative writing that caused Hiro to need a sword to use his powers.

If there were nothing wrong with his original power, it wouldn't have been necessary to hobble his power in various contrived ways for a season and a half. He was far too powerful. By the end of season 1, he could do anything, and given the opportunity he could've fixed any crisis far too quickly. That is definitely something wrong from a storytelling standpoint. You just can't do anything with a character that powerful, not if you need to keep the crisis going for a whole season (or at least half a season). So you're stuck with either hobbling his power in a contrived way or replacing it permanently with a more reasonable power set.

Yes, I'm aware of that difference, my suggestion would make Peter more like Rogue in that he would have a basic, core power set that's not overly powerful but keep him as the "Superman" of the team.

Why does the team need a "Superman" at all? And if it does, Peter's hardly the only overpowered character here. Hiro's abilities are almost godlike at full strength, and if Sylar's permanently a good guy now, then that makes him the heavy hitter power-wise. So why is there anything wrong with Peter having his current power set?

 

[Hermiod]

^Okay, let's not go round and round in circles on this.

In short, I think that removing his powers in the first place was lazy writing. I think creating any powerful character and then taking that power away every week is similarly lazy. Even with Peter's early season three power set he wasn't invincible, you just have to have similarly powerful villains like his father for him to go up against.

 

[Christopher]

I think that giving Peter amnesia, sending him into the future, etc. was lazy writing. By comparison, giving his powers a permanent reboot free of the earlier problems strikes me as an intelligent solution. Yes, there was an element of contrivance to it, but the root problem is his original power set, which simply became untenable from the perspective of a storyteller. And however contrived the actual power change may have been, what matters is what happens going forward from that point. I consider the problem to be adequately solved.

Pitting an untenably powerful hero against untenably powerful villains isn't a good solution from a storytelling perspective either, because it just compounds the problem. The whole thing becomes about those two people and the other characters become irrelevant. If you were doing, say, Superman vs. Zod, then that approach makes sense. But that's not Heroes. Heroes is an ensemble series. No one character or pair of characters should overshadow the others that completely.

And again, what you seem to be missing is that Heroes is not a show about superpowers, it's a show about people. Making the powers too extreme overshadows what the stories should be about. It's good to limit the characters' powers because then their stories can be shaped more by their relationships, beliefs, agendas, willpower, courage, etc. The show is called Heroes, and it's not superpowers that make a hero, it's personal courage, commitment, and nobility. The less powerful the characters are, the more heroic they are when they put themselves on the line to help others.

 

[Temis the Vorta]

I think that giving Peter amnesia, sending him into the future, etc. was lazy writing. By comparison, giving his powers a permanent reboot free of the earlier problems strikes me as an intelligent solution.

It's a necessary solution - or, it's necessary to have a solution - but it's not the best they could have devised. Limiting him to one power at a time really doesn't say anything about the character. Making his powers dependent on emotions does synch with the character, but may be beyond the actors' ability to pull off well.

That's why I like the crippling-his-health option. It doesn't say anything about Peter in and of itself, but introduces possible scenarios in which Peter will behave in ways that do tell us a lot about him (eg, when he ignores his limitations).

 

[scnj]

I hope it doesn't. I promised myself I'd watch it to the end, but it's become almost unbearable. I keep supporting the show in the hopes that someone will take the same concept and make something great out of it. But after the ratings of recent Heroes, I'd be surprised if any network touched a superhero show for the near future.

 

[Temis the Vorta]

I'd be surprised if any network touched a superhero show for the near future.

ABC is likely to do just that. No Ordinary Family appears to be one of their favorite new pilots for the coming season. At NBC, The Cape isn't out of the running yet. On the contrary, it seems to be gaining heat.

 

[Christopher]

^And there's Syfy's Metadocs show about a hospital for superheroes, being discussed in another thread on this forum.

 

[PlainSimpleJoel]

Part of me doesn't really care that there will be a fifth and final season, as 6 or 7 episodes I just gave up on downloading, as it wasn't worth my time to download, plus there was a problem missing some episodes with the broadcaster here.

Hopefully it can go out of a bang, but I'll probably wait until the DVD is released here.

 

[startrekrcks]

why not what harm would a fifth season do will it fail just like the the last couple?