It seems that more often than not, stories in popular media from novels to motion pictures spring fully formed from the heads of their creators. Like Athena emerging from the cranium of Zeus, except she’s a goddess and a lot of these stories are more likely to ride the short bus than a blazing chariot. The idea get into the writer’s head, they put it down on paper and immediately rush to get it published or made into a movie – and that, right there, is the problem.
It takes nine months to form a new human being. Good food takes upwards of half an hour to prepare properly. Carving a statue out of wood, painting a miniature for a game – see where I’m going with this? These things take time.
Natural diamonds are the result of hundreds if not thousands of years of pressure on something that doesn’t look anything like a diamond. A story properly developed is a bit like that, in that odd things stick out that prevent the overall product being smooth. You need to work it over and over again, smooth out the rough patches like water moving over a rock. The more time spent refining the ideas and plot points of the story, the smoother the overall result will be.
Internet criticism is certainly nothing new. In fact, just about anywhere you turn along the so-called “information superhighway” you will come across critics of one form or another, even if an argument made against a particular point only takes the form of a lolcat. However, some Internet critics have carved out niches for themselves either through focus, format or both. Three come to mind, for me, and act as something of an inspiration for my IT CAME FROM NETFLIX! reviews.
Chuck (again, not Magic Talking Beardman Chuck) has spent quite a lot of time assembling what he calls an ‘opinionated episode guide’ for Star Trek. Specifically, he started with Voyager. He later began to cover Enterprise as well as the British sci-fi comedy series Red Dwarf. He also wrote a sweeping fiction series crossing Star Trek with Star Wars, for which he won an award. No, really. And this was before he started his YouTube channel.
In addition to being comprehensive and funny, Chuck often reminds us that his criticism of a given episode, series or movie is just his opinion. He welcomes discussion and even opposition to his ideas. He, like my next critical exemplar, encourages the audience to think, rather than sit back & switch off higher brain functions in order to take in some shallow, pandering, distracting colors & sounds that call themselves ‘entertainment.’
Rather than focus on a particular series or even genre, Confused Matthew went about his video reviews of films with thoughts like “Why did people like this?” or “How did this movie even get greenlit?” While these lines of thought have caused him to add to the many critics pointing out the things that went wrong with the Star Wars prequels, the Matrix sequels and Star Trek: Generations, he’s also gone on the record as saying that The Lion King is a pretty terrible film and that Minority Report is awful despite the ringing praise of critical luminary Roger Ebert.
More often than not, when Matthew begins a review, he establishes a basic premise as to why the work is fundamentally flawed. As the premise continues to be referenced, he becomes more and more annoyed. While this drives home his point, it also makes the reviews more hilarious. He takes turns chewing out Lucas, the Wachowski Brothers and Ira Steven Behr, executive producer of Deep Space 9. “Come on!” Matthew pleads. “You’re better than this!” His confusion is our comedy.
I just recently was introduced to this critic, and all I can say is it needs to be experienced to be fully appreciated. Comprehensive, researched and merciless criticism of science fiction films is paired with an old man’s ramblings about pizza rolls and other less family-friendly subjects.
I don’t want to give away any more than that so, if you’ve the mind, head over in that direction. His Phantom Menace review stands out. It’s 70 minutes long, but worth every one.
In recent years, for one reason or another, many stories in speculative fiction have been ‘rebooted’. In most cases the ‘new’ versions of the stories have suffered from either not being very well executed, getting called out for disregarding the established histories and characterizations of the source material or both. Transformers, Star Wars and Flash Gordon appear to be the biggest offenders. It’s rare for a reboot or re-imagining to get the aforementioned sticking points right, or for a science fiction TV series to have a strong start. 2004’s Battlestar Galactica does both, and it began with a mini-series that is the subject of today’s review. The series stars Edward James Olmos, Mary McDonnell, Jamie Bamber, James Callis, Katee Sackhoff, Tricia Helfer, Grace Park, Michael Hogan, Tahmoh Penikett and Alessandro Juliani.
As far as the characters go, to keep track of who’s frakin’ who, you might need a flowchart.
Battlestar Galactica originally aired back in 1978 and was ambitious for its time. Despite being accused of ripping off Star Wars, the series seemed more interested in borrowing the ‘Wagon Train to the stars’ notion from Star Trek. The million dollar budgets the show required per episode and the slowly declining quality of the stories – within the show’s only season – both contributed to its cancellation in 1979. The coffin seemed nailed pretty securely shut with Galactica 1980, a spin-off so bad some Galactica fans don’t even acknowledge its existence. Creator Glen A. Larson would recycle the look & feel of the show for Buck Rodgers in the 25th Century, but as far as Galactica was concerned, it seemed the journey had ended once and for all, until more than two decades after the last episode aired.
Ronald D. Moore, veteran writer & producer for Star Trek series The Next Generation and Deep Space Nine, was approached by David Eick, who was having a little trouble getting a reboot of Battlestar Galactica off the ground. Ideas to restart or continue Galactica‘s story had been pitched by Tom DeSanto, Bryan Singer, and original series star Richard Hatch, but nothing had stuck. Ron & David not only constructed a mini-series that could stand on its own but could also serve as the launching point for a series on what was then called the Sci-Fi Channel, back before they re-branded themselves to gather more hits on Google since that’s what telling science fiction stories is all about. Anyway, the result of this reboot aired in 2004, and the response was overwhelming.
Arguably the most badass museum piece in the known galaxy.
Among the Twelve Colonies of Kobol, the Cylons were created by man as servants and laborers. Eventually, they got a little sick and tired of shoveling coal and giving massages, so they took up arms against their creators. The war was bloody, and ended in a draw. The Cylons left to make their own way on worlds far from the colonies, and a space station was established for communication purposes. 40 years have passed since the armistice, and the Galactica, one of the oldest battlestars remaining in the Colonial fleet, is due for retirement as a museum. Her commander, William Adama (Edward James Olmos), is also something of a relic, wary of computer networks and maintaining discipline aboard his ship despite its age and somewhat antiquated design.
His paranoia’s somewhat justified, though, as the Cylons have evolved and can masquerade as humans. One of the humanoid models, Number Six (Tricia Helfer), has managed to infect the Colonial defense network thanks to her relationship with resident genius Gaius Baltar (James Callis). Baltar, rather than being a cartoonish malevolent hand-wringing mustache-twirling villain as he was in the 70s is, here, an unwitting dupe in the Cylon plan to eradicate mankind in a surprise nuclear attack. When the attack happens, there’s no warning and absolutely nobody is prepared. The Cylons not only nuke the hell out of all 12 colonies, they hack the networked systems of the Colonial warships, from the mighty battlestars to the Viper fightercraft. Only one ship is immune to this form of attack, and Galactica becomes the shepherd of a fugitive fleet containing the remnants of the human race, on the run from their would-be exterminators and held together by the hope that the mythical 13th colony exists out in the darkness of unexplored space – a colony known as Earth.
Three hotter toasters you would be hard-pressed to find.
Overall, the mini-series was praised, and rightly so, for smart writing, good direction, multi-dimensional characters that gain our loyalty and sympathy relatively quickly, Bear McCreary’s haunting music and revitalizing an old premise in a new and interesting way. Any one of these aspects of the show is worthy of a full review in and of itself, so suffice it to say that all of them work together to create an experience that is, on the whole, absolutely astounding. It wasn’t without its detractors, however, most of whom said that this new vision of an old favorite had completely destroyed anything that had come before and was a travesty unworthy of the name of their beloved franchise. Wait. Does that seem familiar at all to anybody else? Gee, I wonder where I’ve heardthatbefore…
In any event, Battlestar Galactica is well worth the watching. The mini-series is the logical place to begin, and while it runs longer than most feature films, the time is not idly spent. Pick it up from Netflix, or Best Buy, or any place to you can pick it up – it’s definitely worth it. The series that follows is good on the whole, with some missteps here and there. I’ve been accused of universally loving this series and every single episode of it, but that really isn’t the case. Like all science fiction television series, it has episodes ranging from the very good to the very bad. I’ve played with the idea of doing episode reviews in the great tradition of sfdebris or Confused Matthew, but I wouldn’t want to waste everybody’s time.
Josh Loomis can’t always make it to the local megaplex, and thus must turn to alternative forms of cinematic entertainment. There might not be overpriced soda pop & over-buttered popcorn, and it’s unclear if this week’s film came in the mail or was delivered via the dark & mysterious tubes of the Internet. Only one thing is certain… IT CAME FROM NETFLIX.
This is, apparently, what George Lucas says to people who criticize his work. When they bring up Jar Jar Binks, nuking the fridge or the complete dehumanization of Star Wars, he tells them something along those lines. And somewhere between his lips and my ears, the words change to have the following meaning:
“I don’t care what you think. It’s my story and I can tell it any way I want, and people like you will pay for it, so you’re the dumbass here, not me.”
This seems to be almost common among storytellers & directors these days. Look no further than the likes of Michael Bay and Uwe Boll. There are people out there getting paid embarassing amounts of money to tell bad stories who don’t care about the people in those stories or their intended audience. This sort of ties back into my musings on what a story should be about, but it occured to me that a major problem with a lot of the productions out there is that the creators are concerned about their creation, and not the audience.
Chuck (not Magic Talking Beardman Chuck, but sfdebris Chuck) said once that “the worst feeling when doing comedy is when you tell a joke and nobody laughs.” Stand-up comedy can keep a performer honest because you get feedback, be it good or bad, right away. The same goes for music, especially when a band is first starting out. If you think you’re awesome and you get up to play only to find beer bottles getting thrown at your head, and it happens more than once, something is probably wrong on your side of the stage. This has been true for quite a long time, back when the folks in the cheap seats in a theater would toss raw or rotten veggies at somebody they didn’t like up on stage.
Stand-up comedians, musicians and stage actors are all entertainers. When you tell a story, be it in a verbal, written or audio/visual format, you are entertaining. And if that presentation is being put together to be seen by somebody other than yourself, you are intending to entertain an audience.
It makes sense, at least to me, that you should care about that audience.
It is illogical to assume that you are good at what you do if you get no feedback. In order to get that feedback, you need to show your work to others. The other people who witness you work are your audience. And you can’t just stop at family & close friends, either. That’s the problem with George Lucas from what I’ve seen, because during the production of the Star Wars prequels he was surrounded by people who are either his friends or were told by his friends not to challenge him.
People you haven’t met need to see your work, and tell you what they think. How else are you going to improve, and more to the point, know you’re improving? If you’re only going to show your product to someone who’s going to tell you it’s great no matter how much it might suck, you might as well show it to your dog. I’d say ‘show it to your cat,’ as I’m a cat owner at this point, but your cat will treat you with disdain despite the quality of your product and wonder when you’re going to feed them again.
I feel like I’m beating a dead horse, here, but I hope I’m being understood in how important I consider it for thought to go into your work, and to try and make it about something other that sex and violence. When you show it to others, and they don’t like it, don’t just dismiss them out of hand. Ask them why. Find the weaknesses in the work, and make them better. Not only will you be glad you did, your audience will too.
All right, nuggets, on your feet! We’re going to talk about something near and dear to my black little heart today, and I expect it’s a subject some of you have touched on before. I know I’ve been guilty of this, very recently in fact, so let me begin with an example.
In my current long-term writing project, there’s a reveal that happens at about the halfway mark. Our heroine’s been trotting along, doing her thing and generally being awesome, when she runs headlong into an adversarial brick wall and nearly gets herself killed. When she wakes up, she’s in an unfamiliar environment and made aware of some facts relevant to her situation that had previously been unknown to her. Once she gets over the shock, she’s pretty pissed about it.
When I originally envisioned the scene, it had about, oh, this much subtlety:
It’s an old familiar trap. I have a cool idea in my head, and I want to get it out in front of people as soon as possible to say “SEE, THIS IS COOL!” and have them all agree. But they might not, since their heads are throbbing from the abrupt noise and some of them are picking glass out of their faces. Apparently they ignored the notice about the people in the first couple rows possibly suffering grievous bodily harm.
Anyway, it should go without saying that you shouldn’t do this. How boring would it be if we knew right from the outset that the evil armor-wearing asthmatic overlord is really our hero’s father? Or that the quiet, patient and empathetic psychiatrist we’ve been following has been dead all along? Or the planet on which the hero’s crashed that’s populated by damn dirty apes isn’t an alien world, but our own Earth?
The aforementioned stories (now RUINED FOREVER for some I’m sure, sorry about that) work because the big reveal comes not only at the right time during the story but also in the right way. The secrets and cool moments of a story should, like the action and growth of characters, grow organically from the story’s plot and theme. As our characters grow and change, an earth-shaking revelation should be hard-hitting, but not blatant. It’s a balancing act, and will only come with practice.
While we’re on the subject of character growth, I’d like to touch on something while we’re discussing subtlety. Truly effective and lasting characters are ones that grow and change over time, rather than springing fully-formed of awesomeness from the head of the creator. I mean, sure, it’s cool to imagine yourself as the new kid on the block with killer guns akimbo skills and the sort of smile that’d make the opposite sex fall over themselves to get at you (or members of the same sex, or both) but how is that interesting for other people?
It’s something I’ve mentioned in the course of preparing myself for Star Trek Online, and Classholes Anonymous covered the subject better than I could. The only thing I have to add is this: Not only does a half-Vulcan, half-Romulan, half-Klingon, half-Caitian former Borg drone with powers of the Q who’s also Kirk’s half-grandchild piss people off, it’s thoroughly uninteresting. Not to mention there’s a failure at math somewhere in there.
Be subtle, nuggets. Maintain the mystery. The less you give away, the more people will want to get from you. And, ideally, they’ll be willing to pay for it.
