Writing For TV Shows 101: How To Lose Your Audience

ID:32938
 
Jul 24 2007, 1:23 am (Edited on Jul 24 2007, 1:32 am)
You may have noticed that I'm a pretty tolerant guy, on the whole. I'll take a lot of crap without throwing it back in your face. In fact, I'm literally too tolerant for my own good; sometimes I even wear myself out being tolerant. (And a big shout out to the Help Vampires on BYOND! You're not getting anything more out of me, suckers.)

In particular, once I'm hooked on a TV show, it's practically impossible to make me stop watching it. Even if a show becomes so cheesy that you'd be forgiven for thinking it was a cheese pizza with extra cheese (e.g. the third new season of Doctor Who - please, please fire the writer who wrote Evolution of the Daleks), or earns me the eternal disdain of my fellows (e.g. Kim Possible - enough said), I'll soldier on through and enjoy the ride anyway.

But even my tolerance has limits. Push me far enough and I will push back, hard. Which brings me to Exhibit A.

Torchwood.

Torchwood starts out quite promisingly. An adult-oriented Doctor Who spinoff, featuring Captain Jack Harkness and set in a darker, moodier version of Cardiff, dealing with nasty alien nasties (as opposed to the cheesy alien sort-of-nasties of Doctor Who), full of reasonably strong characters with lots of potential for conflict and/or edgy love interest - what could go wrong? I mean, seriously, you'd have to be a moron to mess that up.

Episode #6 (Countrycide): Cue the morons.

Since when was Torchwood supposed to be a barbaric, pointless, C-grade slasher horror film? Since never, that's when.
  • First point: Slasher horror sucks. Take pornography and replace the sex with gore, and slasher horror is what you get. Maybe there are some sickos that enjoy rubbing off to de-skinned corpses; I'm not one of them.
  • Second point: Even on the level of a slasher horror film, this episode sucks. It uses every stupid horror cliche in the book. Help, help, I was running away from the baddie through the woods and I fell over and I can't get up! Help, help, the zombies cannibals are trying to bust down the barricaded doors! Help, help, we're in the middle of nowhere and there's nobody nearby to help us! Help, help, the bad guys are bad because they're bad and no other reason!
  • Third point: The character development is shot to hell in this episode. Jack spontaneously becomes a mean bastard; Gwen accumulates even more reasons to hate Owen's guts and then leaves her long-time boyfriend to start sleeping with him, because she can; and the cannibal villagers have no motivation for anything they do (see also: bad because they're bad).
Nice work, Torchwood. You just lost a viewer.

Edit: This article (language warning) sums the crappiness of this episode up nicely, if somewhat verbosely.
Jul 24 2007, 2:33 am
Yep, TV will screw you every time. Maybe you should go out and find some fan fiction. Odds are they've taken it in better directions than the legit writers. =P
Jul 24 2007, 2:37 am
Yeah, sure. I'll do that next time I'm looking for some hot Jack/Owen action (i.e. never). =P
Jul 24 2007, 3:06 am
Yeah, I wasn't a big fan of that episode either. All together, Torchwood was not as well produced as Doctor Who, and I was overall disappointed. But I nearly stopped watching that episode just because I was so bored during it. I wanted to scream "Robot goes crazy and kills everyone!"(Futurama) because it was so clearly just a bad remake of some random campfire horror story.

Also, season 3 of Doctor Who rocked. Your right when you say the "Evolution of the Daleks" was a little rough, but it wasn't too bad, although more attention should have been given to it considering it was a big change. But when you look at season three as a whole, they did a good job.

Also, you are only that far through Torchwood, or did they just replay an episode? I don't know where they are at in dingo land, but I watch it on the British schedule, because it hasn't even been shown in the States. I did go ahead and finish out the season, even after that crappy episode. It turns out alright, but they never really explain Jack. Season 3 of Doctor who does give some more clarification as to what Jack is, but I think that kind of character development should probably happen on the show that he stars in.
Jul 24 2007, 5:34 pm
Yes, we're only that far through Torchwood. That was Monday night's episode. And they haven't actually played Evolution of the Daleks here yet (it's scheduled for this Saturday) - I watched it online, plus about half of the next episode, Lazarus.

*Warning: Spoilers for Evolution of the Daleks below*

Also, season 3 of Doctor Who rocked.

Meh. I'll delay final judgement until I've seen the full season, but... meh. Evolution of the Daleks was so cheesy. I mean, Doctor Who has always been full of pseudoscience, so I realise a certain amount of suspension of disbelief is necessary. And that's OK. Sure, I can accept the premise that the Dalek mindset is exactly determined by their genes, since that's a core part of their character concept. And fine, it seems reasonable that in order to splice Dalek genes into an existing human body, you need a crapload of energy; and okay, the Daleks can have some magic tech that allows them to harvest the ion discharge of solar flares as energy, sure, why not.

But then they go and completely destroy any semblance of plausibility they have by making Time Lord DNA get conducted through an ion discharge. Gee, it's a good thing I don't use lab rats to connect my computer to the wall socket, 'cos if I did my computer might spontaneously metamorphose into a rat. Nice grasp of genetics there, guys.

Also: "I AM A HU-MAN DA-LEK!!!!11!11!!11!1eleventy"

The only good thing about the whole Human Dalek nonsense was that they killed it off before it had a chance to spread and infect the rest of the series.
Jul 24 2007, 6:00 pm
Come on now, your just being picky! I could spend all day pointing out plot devices in SciFi shows. They just couldn't think of another way to throw the Doctor into the mix(literally) while keeping the same basic script. So... plot device my dear Watson, plot device.
Jul 24 2007, 8:33 pm
When you have to resort to employing ridiculously implausible plot devices in order to gain your desired outcome, that's called "bad writing".
Jul 25 2007, 3:33 am
Meh, perhaps I'm just dulled by all the horrible technology related plot devices in todays SciFi that I'm not surprised nor saddened by the Doctor's use of old plotty.

"I have upgraded the plot device's hard-drive, soft-drive and squishy drive, and it is now being the world's most powerful super-computer!" -The Angry Scientist in "Sheep in the Big City"
Jul 26 2007, 4:16 am
The other episodes of season 3 are better than the dalek evolution episode. The shakespeare one is especially good.
Jul 26 2007, 9:14 pm
I guess it was okay, if you ignore the way they (badly) shoehorned witches into a sci-fi setting. (Words of power and "power of a name" and voodoo dolls and all that.)