sf/f TV development news - 2013

Discussion in 'Science Fiction & Fantasy' started by Temis the Vorta, Oct 10, 2011.

  1. Enterprise is Great

    Enterprise is Great Vice Admiral Admiral

    Joined:
    Oct 24, 2004
    Location:
    The Island
    Re: sf/f TV development news - 2012

    The CW Finds Its Beauty: ‘Smallville’s Kristin Kreuk To Star In ‘Beauty & The Beast’ Pilot

     
  2. Christopher

    Christopher Writer Admiral

    Joined:
    Mar 15, 2001
    Re: sf/f TV development news - 2012

    ^Oh, dang, now I may have to watch this if it goes to series...

    Well, they certainly got the "beauty" part right, anyway.
     
  3. Caliburn24

    Caliburn24 Commodore Commodore

    Joined:
    Apr 23, 2005
    Location:
    Gig Harbor, Washington
    Re: sf/f TV development news - 2012

    Well, that certainly covers the beauty part, but Kreuk playing a tough NYPD detective? Uh huh, sure. She could not pull off tough/dark convincingly on Smallville, I have my doubts she's changed that much as an actress.

    However, with Kreuk and Stana Katic both playing NYC detectives I obviously need to move to that city and start a life of crime.
     
  4. Jetfire

    Jetfire Guest

    Re: sf/f TV development news - 2012

    I wasn't interested in CW's Beauty & The Beast at all...but now Kristin Kreuk is involved I am gonna follow it's progress. I LOVED KK as Lana on SMALLVILLE. :D :adore:
     
  5. Icemizer

    Icemizer Commodore Commodore

    Joined:
    Dec 29, 2008
    Re: sf/f TV development news - 2012

    Well shes good at unfullfilled romance thats for sure.
     
  6. Temis the Vorta

    Temis the Vorta Fleet Admiral Admiral

    Joined:
    Oct 30, 1999
    Location:
    Tatoinne
    Re: sf/f TV development news - 2012

    WOW! Great news about Terry O'Quinn!!!

    There are more really good shows on now with a serialized format vs episodic. This could be because cable = better quality and cable = serialized format rather than quality = serialized format, but the correlation is unmistakable.

    If Justified had stuck with that format, it wouldn't have progressed to being the brilliant show it is now.
     
  7. Temis the Vorta

    Temis the Vorta Fleet Admiral Admiral

    Joined:
    Oct 30, 1999
    Location:
    Tatoinne
    Re: sf/f TV development news - 2012

    PS, I can't stand Kristen Kreuk, but I wasn't planning on watching that CW series anyhoo...
     
  8. jefferiestubes8

    jefferiestubes8 Commodore Commodore

    Joined:
    Mar 8, 2009
    Location:
    New York City
    'Darkover' novels to become TV series

    http://www.digitalspy.com/tv/news/a365710/darkover-novels-to-become-tv-series.html

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darkover

    Has anyone who has read the books comment on the series?
     
  9. RJDiogenes

    RJDiogenes Idealistic Cynic and Canon Champion Premium Member

    Joined:
    Jun 11, 2003
    Location:
    RJDiogenes of Boston
    Re: sf/f TV development news - 2012

    Well, the key word is "now." The serialized format is fashionable, so the odds are skewed. Throughout the history of television, most shows have been episodic, so that skews the odds over the long term. But in terms of storytelling in general, there is no qualitative difference between the short form and the serialized form.
     
  10. Temis the Vorta

    Temis the Vorta Fleet Admiral Admiral

    Joined:
    Oct 30, 1999
    Location:
    Tatoinne
    Re: sf/f TV development news - 2012

    I doubt we'll ever return to a TV environment where the episodic format predominates. All the trends are towards greater niche-ization of TV (and whatever you call it when "TV" is predominantly streamed thru the internet), which favors serialized formats for being better able to grab niche audiences while the episodic format is better for the casual viewer/mass audience environment. This isn't "fashion," it's a long-term trend being driven largely by technology.
    Not in the abstract, no. But in reality, yeah.
     
  11. Christopher

    Christopher Writer Admiral

    Joined:
    Mar 15, 2001
    Re: sf/f TV development news - 2012

    I'd call it a classic example of a spurious correlation. There are more good serialized shows today because there are more serialized shows today period. Serialized shows are more commonly made today, more fashionable, so naturally there will be more good serialized shows, more bad serialized shows, and more mediocre serialized shows. So it's a useless thing to point out unless you can show that the ratio of good serialized shows to good episodic shows is high.

    But I don't see how it's possible to prove that, given that it's hard to find any show that's purely serialized or purely episodic. Most of the shows that are actually on television today are a mix of episodic and serialized elements, combining weekly "client stories" with ongoing character or mythology arcs tying a given season together into an overarching tale, and having consequences carry forward serially from season to season. Indeed, the closest thing I've seen in the past decade to a pure episodic format was Law & Order -- a generally acclaimed franchise, by the way -- and even that had increasing amounts of serialization mixed in as it went on. So it's a dichotomy that doesn't really exist.
     
  12. Temis the Vorta

    Temis the Vorta Fleet Admiral Admiral

    Joined:
    Oct 30, 1999
    Location:
    Tatoinne
    Re: sf/f TV development news - 2012

    I don't need to "prove" anything. It's obvious to me that looking at serialized shows, I see a lot of stuff like The Wire and Breaking Bad, while I can't think of a single wholly or chiefly episodic show of similar quality. It's just a bunch of boring cop show shit.

    If it's not obvious to you, so be it. I'm just using this debate to keep my thread bumped anyway. :rommie:

    It doesn't matter if a show is "generally acclaimed" if it puts me to sleep.
     
  13. Caliburn24

    Caliburn24 Commodore Commodore

    Joined:
    Apr 23, 2005
    Location:
    Gig Harbor, Washington
    Re: sf/f TV development news - 2012

    Many individual TV critics put together top ten lists every year. And Metacritic has taken the trouble to tally them together.

    1. Breaking Bad
    2. Homeland
    3. Downton Abbey
    4. Parks and Recreation
    5. Game of Thrones
    6. Louie
    7. Justified
    8. Community
    9. The Good Wife
    10. Modern Family

    http://www.metacritic.com/feature/tv-critic-top-10-best-shows-of-2011?page_comment=3

    If you set aside the half hour comedies, every show on that list is fairly heavily serialized. Heck even the comedies are more heavily serialized than almost anything before the late 1990s. You might disagree with the critics, but there is more or less agreement in the field that serialized is better.
     
  14. Christopher

    Christopher Writer Admiral

    Joined:
    Mar 15, 2001
    Re: sf/f TV development news - 2012

    Statistics are meaningless when taken out of context. In order to reach that conclusion, you'd have to show not only that the top-ranked shows are serialized, but that the lowest-ranked shows aren't. Otherwise you haven't demonstrated a meaningful correlation at all.

    And that's definitely not the case, since there have been plenty of serialized shows that were just awful, such as Heroes seasons 2-4 and the V remake, or that audiences haven't found interesting enough to keep on the air for more than a few weeks, like Threshold or DayBreak. Serialization is preferred among most shows these days, so it's just as prevalent among the duds and disasters as it is among the hits.

    Serialization isn't a magic bullet; like any other storytelling technique, it works when it's done well and fails when it's done badly. Too often, serialization is an excuse for lazy, unfocused storytelling with no direction in mind, or for dragging out a finite amount of story with huge amounts of padding, or for constantly baiting the audience with mysteries and questions but never giving them any satisfying answers. Format doesn't determine quality; execution does.
     
  15. Caliburn24

    Caliburn24 Commodore Commodore

    Joined:
    Apr 23, 2005
    Location:
    Gig Harbor, Washington
    Re: sf/f TV development news - 2012

    Agreed, a hundred percent.

    But here is where we disagree. I could care less if on average episodic shows are as good as serialized shows. Because I am not watching every show on television. I only want to watch the best stuff. And episodic shows aren't even trying to be the best, they are rarely ambitious at all. Serialized shows are often disasters, but when they work, they are better than anything in the episodic format.

    The comedy genre is excluded mind you that is a different beast, I'm just talking dramas.

    I don't want to spend twenty hours a week watching shows that are good. I want to speed four or five hours a week watching shows that are superb.

    I think it would be really hard for me to find a single friend who if pressed to list their top five TV dramas of all time would include any purely episodic shows.
     
  16. AviTrek

    AviTrek Fleet Captain Fleet Captain

    Joined:
    Jan 31, 2006
    Re: sf/f TV development news - 2012

    Given the board you're posting on, I think you'd be hard pressed to find someone who didn't include TOS or TNG on that list.
     
  17. Caliburn24

    Caliburn24 Commodore Commodore

    Joined:
    Apr 23, 2005
    Location:
    Gig Harbor, Washington
    Re: sf/f TV development news - 2012

    I've watched and enjoyed all the Trek shows, but I consider DS9 by far the best, due to being to build better characters thanks to stuff mattering for more than one episode at a time. DS9 and maybe Enterprise are the only Treks I would want to rewatch that is for sure.

    But that is a topic that has been argued endlessly around here, no need to go there again.
     
  18. RJDiogenes

    RJDiogenes Idealistic Cynic and Canon Champion Premium Member

    Joined:
    Jun 11, 2003
    Location:
    RJDiogenes of Boston
    Re: sf/f TV development news - 2012

    ^^ Most of my all-time favorite shows are episodic. Two of them are anthologies.

    No, it's definitely fashion and it's not driven by technology. In the publishing business, multi-volume novel series are more fashionable than short-story anthologies or magazines. In comic books, huge crossover epics have become the norm. Even movies focus on franchises over standalones. Not only does that trend carry over to TV, but it's also a matter of the option being available; up until relatively recently, it was a requirement that TV shows be episodic, with some rare exceptions. I find it hard to believe that after umpteen thousand years of storytelling, short stories will suddenly become extinct.
     
  19. Out Of My Vulcan Mind

    Out Of My Vulcan Mind Vice Admiral Admiral

    Joined:
    Dec 27, 2002
    Location:
    Wherever you go, there you are.
    Re: sf/f TV development news - 2012

    More Syfy development news from Deadline Hollywood:

     
  20. Christopher

    Christopher Writer Admiral

    Joined:
    Mar 15, 2001
    Re: sf/f TV development news - 2012

    But that dichotomy does not exist anymore. There are no pure episodic shows on prime-time television, and very few pure serial shows. Every episodic show these days has serialized elements, and most serialized shows have episodic elements. The majority of shows are both episodic and serial at the same time, with the cases of the week reflecting and supporting the ongoing arc of the characters and the mythology.


    And there is absolutely no reason why a self-contained story can't be superb. Most of Shakespeare's plays didn't have sequels. Twelve Angry Men wasn't a yearlong serial about a trial that dragged on forever. It's absurd to claim that short-form storytelling is incapable of brilliance, when we have thousands of years' worth of brilliant self-contained stories making up the bulk of our cultural heritage.

    Back in the early days of television, in the '50s and '60s, the shows that set the standards for class and intelligence were the anthologies that presented adaptations of stage plays and original plays written for television. The most gifted and admired TV writers were playwrights like Paddy Chayefsky, Norman Corwin, Reginald Rose, and Rod Serling, people known for their ability to create brilliant self-contained plays. So anthologies came to be considered as the epitome of intelligent, quality television -- whereas serialization was seen as the stuff of lowbrow soap operas and old-time kiddie adventure serials. So even shows that had continuing characters, like Wagon Train or The Fugitive or Mission: Impossible, strove to be as much like anthologies as possible, having their regulars get involved in different guest stars' stories or adopt different identities every week, with no references to anything that had come before. Now, this was partly because they didn't have home video or the Internet back then, didn't have our easy access to ways of getting an overview of an entire series, so their experience with television was more on a week-by-week basis, and their priority was therefore to get the most they could out of each individual story, to have each hour be complete and satisfying in itself with no dependence on anything outside of it. But partly it was just because anthologies had a better reputation than serials, so everyone "knew" that episodic, anthology-style shows were better than anything in the serial format. Now we simply have the opposite prejudice, and some are clinging to that prejudice even though most TV producers these days have decided that the best approach is to balance both episodic and serial elements.

    That's because there aren't any. They don't make them anymore, not outside of animation. The closest thing I can think of to a purely episodic show of recent vintage that I've watched was Batman: The Brave and the Bold, and even that had continuing character arcs.