Okay, having had some time to think about these issues in relation to
various SF shows, I thought I'd start with B5. (Incidentally, another
offender I missed out when I was talking about bad acting because I
didn't see ST:Generations till last Sunday was William Shatner. He was
actually okay in some bits of the original series, but here he was
awful. Not helped by that uniform either.)
Anyway, the one thing that has struck me when watching B5 has been the
fact that 'magic' solutions are used with such depressing regularity. A
'magic' solution is one which produces something completely outside the
original limits of the problem. A good pointer as to whether or not
you've seen one is if it seems perfectly reasonable at the time, but
later you start thinking "Uh??? How did they get away with that???" or
you just feel generally cheated. An example of this imho is (spoiler
space for anyone who might be behind on S4 videos)
the end of the Shadow war. It was clever, but just too neat to be
convincing. The theatre practitioner Augusto Boal won't let anyone in
his workshops use this type of solution - the rest of his students have
to yell "STOP! That's magic!!" I think that perhaps JMS should get
somebody to do this with his scripts as it can be a major dramatic
weakness. 'Magic' solutions get used a lot in B5 and other US shows
because of the pressure of having to tell a complex story in an hour,
minus commercial breaks. It's a great shame, because this pressure can
lead to lazy writing.
Apart from this, though, B5 has a really intriguing dramatic structure
in that the more effort you put into learning about the background to
the world that JMS has created, the more rewarding it is. This, and the
five-year arc, make it pretty unique in current television, where the
vogue is for programmes which require minimum effort on the part of the
viewer.
There's been a lot written on this list about bad dialogue, though not
so much about that which occurs in B5. I'm not going to say anything on
the subject other than that imho anyone who writes the show should be
banned from using the words 'hell' or 'goddamn' because they just sounds
so naff. Especially when delivered by Bruce Boxleitner in bad acting
mode....
Mary-Jane
various SF shows, I thought I'd start with B5. (Incidentally, another
offender I missed out when I was talking about bad acting because I
didn't see ST:Generations till last Sunday was William Shatner. He was
actually okay in some bits of the original series, but here he was
awful. Not helped by that uniform either.)
Anyway, the one thing that has struck me when watching B5 has been the
fact that 'magic' solutions are used with such depressing regularity. A
'magic' solution is one which produces something completely outside the
original limits of the problem. A good pointer as to whether or not
you've seen one is if it seems perfectly reasonable at the time, but
later you start thinking "Uh??? How did they get away with that???" or
you just feel generally cheated. An example of this imho is (spoiler
space for anyone who might be behind on S4 videos)
the end of the Shadow war. It was clever, but just too neat to be
convincing. The theatre practitioner Augusto Boal won't let anyone in
his workshops use this type of solution - the rest of his students have
to yell "STOP! That's magic!!" I think that perhaps JMS should get
somebody to do this with his scripts as it can be a major dramatic
weakness. 'Magic' solutions get used a lot in B5 and other US shows
because of the pressure of having to tell a complex story in an hour,
minus commercial breaks. It's a great shame, because this pressure can
lead to lazy writing.
Apart from this, though, B5 has a really intriguing dramatic structure
in that the more effort you put into learning about the background to
the world that JMS has created, the more rewarding it is. This, and the
five-year arc, make it pretty unique in current television, where the
vogue is for programmes which require minimum effort on the part of the
viewer.
There's been a lot written on this list about bad dialogue, though not
so much about that which occurs in B5. I'm not going to say anything on
the subject other than that imho anyone who writes the show should be
banned from using the words 'hell' or 'goddamn' because they just sounds
so naff. Especially when delivered by Bruce Boxleitner in bad acting
mode....
Mary-Jane