I thought that was the only name the show kept from the book. Are there others?
And from what I gather about the book's Simcoe, he was nothing like the show's version -- Canadian rather than English, unmarried, older.
join save-FlashForward blackout on June 10
- Thread starter Temis the Vorta
- Start date
I thought that was the only name the show kept from the book. Are there others?
And from what I gather about the book's Simcoe, he was nothing like the show's version -- Canadian rather than English, unmarried, older.
Cool. The Terminal Experiment would make a fantastic thriller, if it's done right. I can't help but feel someone like Duncan Jones could do a good job with that story, especially if Source Code turns out to be a good movie.
And Temis, all I can say is that the novel's characters were good because they're one of Sawyer's strengths. Half the reason I find his books to be pageturners is because I inevitably start caring about the characters very early in the stories. Flashforward is no exception.
But that's a problem with the show, not the book. The book was far more interesting than then TV show would have you think. The only thing they kept was the basic concept, the name, as like Christopher points out, only the name of one of the characters. And sorry Chris, I did mean only one. There aren't any others as far as I know. Dimitri would be parallel to the other scientist, Theo Procopides in the novel. In the book, there is a Dimitri, but it's Theo's brother who later blames Theo for ruining his future and kills himself.
But I felt that change of location detracted largely from an interesting concept. Sawyer's books always have scientific locations as its main setting, and changing it probably changed the dynamic. I don't even think any of the story threads were the same. The fact that they even had an FBI agent as a main character while the original story didn't shows you how much of a change they made. I'd say the TV show had more in common with LOST than the novel did.
As for why those changes would make it more interesting? Well, the there was a lot more philosophical searching. The characters didn't just care about themselves; rather they had to have the whole world to think about, and if they were to blame for what happened.
Last edited:
The brother of Simcoe's partner at the lab was named Demitrios (instead of Demitri Noh). That's about it as far as I recall namewise, though there were several characters with similar backgrounds or shared events to some of the TV characters.
Yes, the Simcoe in the book was 47, Canadian (though he had lived in the US for half his life and lived in New England in his FF), and was engaged to a colleague named Michiko, though he sees himself married to another woman in his FF. So the same relationship angst is still there to a degree (Simcoe believes the future can not be changed) just in reverse from Benford's situation on the show.
Well, that explains why Cho's character had a Greek first name.
It sounds like they took some of the main character arcs from the book and came up with their own versions: person trying to prevent his death, person seeing themselves with a different lover, scientist wondering if he's culpable for the blackout.
I should probably read the book sometime. Though maybe I'd rather wait until my memories of the show have faded. I avoided reading the book before the show because I wanted to approach the show on its own terms; now that the show turned out so disappointingly, I'd rather wait a while until I can approach the book on its own terms.
It sounds like they took some of the main character arcs from the book and came up with their own versions: person trying to prevent his death, person seeing themselves with a different lover, scientist wondering if he's culpable for the blackout.
I should probably read the book sometime. Though maybe I'd rather wait until my memories of the show have faded. I avoided reading the book before the show because I wanted to approach the show on its own terms; now that the show turned out so disappointingly, I'd rather wait a while until I can approach the book on its own terms.
Before David Goyer got pushed out/moved on, he was throwing in music videos at the five minute mark, as I recall.
The whole notion of building a Dark Knight-ish action/intrigue plot has zero thematic relevance to the basic FlashForward conundrum, what to do you do when you get new information about the future? We got a lot of Goyer huggermugger and I suppose it was tolerable enough but what did the Bad Guys' nefarious schemes have to do with individual dilemmas or the wider ramifications?
Part of the problem with the series is that a flashforward to a future that is not the real future has no dramatic meaning at all. By the end, they'd tried to come up with some sort of waffle about how seeing the flashforward made it almost inevitable but too late to give the characters' meaningful choices. The problem was imported from the novel, but adapting it to a longer form demanded fixing it, pronto.
As to the notion that the biggest problem in popularity was Mark Benford, that seems to be true. The caveat is that it's not a whiff of self-pity. The ludicrous Starbuck on the new BSG oozed self-pity like perspiration, and people ate it up. Even well written characters like Walter White and Jesse Pinkman on Breaking Bad, and even (in his own emotionally stultified way,) Dexter Morgan on Dexter give off more than a whiff of self-pity. Mark Benford was unforgivable because he was indecisive. For all the nonsense about flawed heroes being more interesting, flawed heroes are almost always detested by audiences.
Sonya Walger didn't get across that Mark was on permanent probation because of the alcoholism, which makes her fears of giving into temptation perfectly comprehensible. I don't think she was helped by the writing, but it also seems to me the actress deliberately undercut the role for her personal image.
Demetri was actually pretty boring. His big thing was life or death, which is a nobrainer. Nobrainers are not dramatic.
The whole notion of building a Dark Knight-ish action/intrigue plot has zero thematic relevance to the basic FlashForward conundrum, what to do you do when you get new information about the future? We got a lot of Goyer huggermugger and I suppose it was tolerable enough but what did the Bad Guys' nefarious schemes have to do with individual dilemmas or the wider ramifications?
Part of the problem with the series is that a flashforward to a future that is not the real future has no dramatic meaning at all. By the end, they'd tried to come up with some sort of waffle about how seeing the flashforward made it almost inevitable but too late to give the characters' meaningful choices. The problem was imported from the novel, but adapting it to a longer form demanded fixing it, pronto.
As to the notion that the biggest problem in popularity was Mark Benford, that seems to be true. The caveat is that it's not a whiff of self-pity. The ludicrous Starbuck on the new BSG oozed self-pity like perspiration, and people ate it up. Even well written characters like Walter White and Jesse Pinkman on Breaking Bad, and even (in his own emotionally stultified way,) Dexter Morgan on Dexter give off more than a whiff of self-pity. Mark Benford was unforgivable because he was indecisive. For all the nonsense about flawed heroes being more interesting, flawed heroes are almost always detested by audiences.
Sonya Walger didn't get across that Mark was on permanent probation because of the alcoholism, which makes her fears of giving into temptation perfectly comprehensible. I don't think she was helped by the writing, but it also seems to me the actress deliberately undercut the role for her personal image.
Demetri was actually pretty boring. His big thing was life or death, which is a nobrainer. Nobrainers are not dramatic.
I guess the big difference was amount of time jumped during the flashforward. In the book, it was 20 years, which would of made the TV series more interesting, but they had set it at 2 weeks, right? Still, 20 years would of made for a more interesting series as a long-term scenario. As it is, they kind of wrote themselves into a corner by not being far enough into the future to be interesting enough. In the book, you could see the changes in technology that the world had undergone.
Nearly seven months, actually. October 6, 2009 to April 29, 2010. Just long enough for the date of the flashforwards to arrive in the season finale.
In the book, if I remember correctly, it was April 20, 2030. I still kind of feel that 7 months isn't much of a future jump. Might as well happen in the present in that case as there isn't really much of a future to see.
Well, it makes sense in the context of a TV series with a season-long arc building to a climax. For instance, the main character sees in his flashforward that there are gunmen coming to kill him at 10 PM on April 29th. His wife sees herself in bed with another man she's never met, who turns out to be the father of her new patient. Another character sees that he'll be with the daughter he's believed to be dead. And so on. And then it all comes to a head in the season finale, and then there's
another blackout right at the end in which the flashforwards seem to be different lengths of time for different people, ranging from one to five years and possibly more, setting up various stuff for the rest of the series (which now will never be made).
Maybe ABC will see the light and retool FlashForward to include musical segments that erupt out of nowhere.
Actually, that date was chosen because it was Rob Sawyer's 50th birthday.
So, did anyone go to any of the flash mob events? I went to the one here in Toronto, and we staged it three times - once in a public square, once in a mall, and once in a bookstore (I grabbed a copy of the novel off the shelf to hold during the event
). We had about 20 people - including Rob Sawyer's wife and her brother. (Unfortunately, Rob is in Montreal as part of a nationwide book tour, but he posted a message of support on the Facebook group.)
^^ That's great. Good for you. Who knows, maybe they'll be inspired to do a mini-series or something to tie up loose ends. 
Yeah, the Robert Sawyer novel was more interesting than the TV show, despite the fact that the novel had no evil conspiracies behind the flashforward. I think that says something about the series.
Sorry, but a couple dozen people each lying on the ground in various places isn't going to convince a network to bring back the show in any form. You need millions of viewers to make a show profitable. If anything, the small turnout at these events will probably just underline how unsuccessful the show was at building a fanbase. And let's face it, lying motionless on the ground for a couple of minutes isn't really the kind of image that demonstrates passion for a cause.
Yeah, but each one of those people represents the many thousands who couldn't get away from work or school, and....
Okay, never mind.
Okay, never mind.
No, but I did get drunk, designed a Rube Goldbergian scheme to shoot Sulu, and impregnated a lesbian in a sushi bar out of solidarity.
