Is it just me, or do shows where the crew is stranded or lost drag on tirelessly.
Is it just me, or do shows where the crew is stranded or lost drag on tirelessly.
I mean shows where the main characters spend each episode obsessing on how to get home always seems so boring. When Farscape first came out it had this problem. In my opinion the story didn't begin to become interesting until Crichton accepted that he might never get home. Crichton accepted that he might never get home and instead decided to make the most of his new life. This made the show so much more refreshing and so much more interesting. Suddenly the focus of the story moved away from Crichton getting home and shifted to the hunt to acquire the wormhole tech data stored in his head.
Gilligan's Island is a glaring example of how obsessing on how to get home can hurt a series. As popular as Gilligan's Island was, the way they used to jerk the audience around, causing you to think they might one day find a way off the island was annoying. The only reason Lost is so good is because the characters don't obsess on finding a way to get off the island. They only address the possibility of getting off the island when theirs a viable way off. Even more surprising is they actually find a way off the island and despite this they find ways to still make the story even more interesting.
Two of the worst examples of stories that dragged on because the main characters did not accept the nature of their circumstances was Sliders and Voyager.
There were times in Voyager when I wondered why they didn't just settle down on some planet (inhabited or not). It was the most viable choice considering the circumstances they were in. And if they weren't gonna settle down I wondered why the writers never just wrote an episode where they finally got home (before the series finale). To find their way home in the middle of the series would have been so refreshing. Then they could have spent a season or two developing the story about the aftermath revolving around their return home. Instead they waited to the very last episode to get home. As good as that episode was, it was also really annoying. BSG is a perfect example of a series that takes advantage of the things that Voyager and DS9 avoided like the plague. BSG takes advantage of things like portraying the hardships of not having access to adequate resources and ship yards etc. On a side note, BSG also takes advantage of addressing religious concepts in relation to earth religion, not in spite of it.
The problem with Sliders was, like Voyager, they never accepted the nature of their circumstances. This always made me uncomfortable. Just because they settle doesn't mean the story has to end there. Lost demonstrates that. Another problem with Sliders was they visited so many great places with great technologies, but they never took anything with them. Because of the way the universe was written they had to abandon things as quickly as they discovered them. I always thought it would have been better if the Sliders traveled in some kind of hovership when they slid. It would have allowed them to carry and use the numerous forms of tech they discovered in their travels.
What hurt these stories so much is that they never stayed in any place long enough to develop it adequately. TPTB should forget about the castaways trying to get home and show adventurers who eventually accept their circumstances and instead go with the flow diving head first into the greater adventure that's right in front of them. Personally, I think that instead of getting stranded on the Destiny, the SGU team should deliberately chose to stay on the Destiny because of some larger more important agenda the ship exposes them to. Maybe each member is given a chance to go home, but each chose to stay on the ship because of loyalty to the team. Maybe you might have an extra team member or two who must or chose to go home. They rest stay behind.
I mean shows where the main characters spend each episode obsessing on how to get home always seems so boring. When Farscape first came out it had this problem. In my opinion the story didn't begin to become interesting until Crichton accepted that he might never get home. Crichton accepted that he might never get home and instead decided to make the most of his new life. This made the show so much more refreshing and so much more interesting. Suddenly the focus of the story moved away from Crichton getting home and shifted to the hunt to acquire the wormhole tech data stored in his head.
Gilligan's Island is a glaring example of how obsessing on how to get home can hurt a series. As popular as Gilligan's Island was, the way they used to jerk the audience around, causing you to think they might one day find a way off the island was annoying. The only reason Lost is so good is because the characters don't obsess on finding a way to get off the island. They only address the possibility of getting off the island when theirs a viable way off. Even more surprising is they actually find a way off the island and despite this they find ways to still make the story even more interesting.
Two of the worst examples of stories that dragged on because the main characters did not accept the nature of their circumstances was Sliders and Voyager.
There were times in Voyager when I wondered why they didn't just settle down on some planet (inhabited or not). It was the most viable choice considering the circumstances they were in. And if they weren't gonna settle down I wondered why the writers never just wrote an episode where they finally got home (before the series finale). To find their way home in the middle of the series would have been so refreshing. Then they could have spent a season or two developing the story about the aftermath revolving around their return home. Instead they waited to the very last episode to get home. As good as that episode was, it was also really annoying. BSG is a perfect example of a series that takes advantage of the things that Voyager and DS9 avoided like the plague. BSG takes advantage of things like portraying the hardships of not having access to adequate resources and ship yards etc. On a side note, BSG also takes advantage of addressing religious concepts in relation to earth religion, not in spite of it.
The problem with Sliders was, like Voyager, they never accepted the nature of their circumstances. This always made me uncomfortable. Just because they settle doesn't mean the story has to end there. Lost demonstrates that. Another problem with Sliders was they visited so many great places with great technologies, but they never took anything with them. Because of the way the universe was written they had to abandon things as quickly as they discovered them. I always thought it would have been better if the Sliders traveled in some kind of hovership when they slid. It would have allowed them to carry and use the numerous forms of tech they discovered in their travels.
What hurt these stories so much is that they never stayed in any place long enough to develop it adequately. TPTB should forget about the castaways trying to get home and show adventurers who eventually accept their circumstances and instead go with the flow diving head first into the greater adventure that's right in front of them. Personally, I think that instead of getting stranded on the Destiny, the SGU team should deliberately chose to stay on the Destiny because of some larger more important agenda the ship exposes them to. Maybe each member is given a chance to go home, but each chose to stay on the ship because of loyalty to the team. Maybe you might have an extra team member or two who must or chose to go home. They rest stay behind.
, and then they had that dumb cop-out ending. 
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