Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!akgua!sdcsvax!sdcrdcf!hplabs!sri-unix!wmartin@BRL-TGR.ARPA From: wmartin@BRL-TGR.ARPA Newsgroups: net.sf-lovers Subject: Why we complain; a statement of principles Message-ID: <1095@sri-arpa.UUCP> Date: Tue, 22-May-84 16:39:53 EDT Article-I.D.: sri-arpa.1095 Posted: Tue May 22 16:39:53 1984 Date-Received: Sat, 26-May-84 11:58:51 EDT Lines: 79 From: Will Martin (Opening trumpet fanfare...) Regarding the comment by dartvax!johnc that "V" should be treated as entertainment and we shouldn't complain about the goofs, flaws, and defects, or pick at it: Since I was one of the earlier submitters of criticisms of "V", I shall take up this hurled gauntlet and fire it back... 1) It is also "entertaining" to mock and jeer at drivel. Talking back to the characters, catching the writers or producers in a flub, or otherwise picking at a show is about the same as yelling at the umpire. A grand American tradition which we have a duty to uphold. If you do it to the TV screen at home, or to a community of like-minded people on the net, this is totally harmless, as you bother no one else (unlike heckling at a movie showing). 2) {IMPORTANT POINT} It is just as easy to do something RIGHT as it is to do it WRONG. TV people just don't care! (Also some moviemakers.) This was explicitly discussed by several commentors. "V" could have been made with exactly the same cast, at exactly the same cost, employing exactly the same staff, and come out to be even more entertaining, if the science had been right, the motives valid, the characters believeable, and the plot logical. All it would have took for this to be the case is for the writer(s) to be more knowledgeable and better skilled, and the other personnel involved to have CARED if things were right! (Of course, this doesn't mean we have to explain FTL travel or get into elaborate technical detail. We can accept certain pseudoscientific elements as axioms to make SF possible, like interstellar travel, matter transmission, telepathy, or other SF standard features. But it doesn't cost anything to make better choices of plot elements that can have either rational explanations or good-sounding pseudo-reasoning behind them. For example, in "V", the aliens could have been grabbing some complex biological compound secreted in human pituitaries which could not be produced with recombinant DNA techniques, instead of water. Sure, we could probably poke holes in that idea (so what do you expect for off the top of my head, already?), but it isn't so OBVIOUSLY SILLY as interstellar water rustling! That would justify them grabbing and preserving humans as cargo, which could be an important plot element.) The problem is that having obvious stupidity presented as important-to- the-story justification spoils the entertainment value for people who have the training/intelligence/common sense to instantly recognize such nonsense as the crap it is. If you have to think about it, and then later realize that it just isn't right, that isn't so bad. A lot of fiction falls in that category. You can be entertained by it for the time being, because you are not doing deep analysis of the details. When you get something as blatantly incorrect as "the moon is made of green cheese" presented as something you have to accept in order to be entertained in continuing to watch or read the rest of the story, the writer has failed to do his job. If he presents something false as true which only one viewer in a thousand will catch, he's done a much better job. And if he presents something false as true, but you can only figure that out after taking a graduate course in astrophysics, he's done a pretty damn good job! "V" fell in category one. It is intuitively obvious to anyone with enough intelligence to balance a checkbook that a number of the basic premises upon which the structure of the story was based were nonsense. This required no training or advanced education on the part of the viewer. Yet this was not necessarily the case! It would not have taken much revision to move it to category two. If it had, it would have been a landmark in TV SF. It could have been just as much a soap opera in character development and behavior, and that wouldn't have mattered. (After all, all characters in drama, literature, or tv behave in an unreal manner -- if they didn't, there wouldn't be a story in most cases. We are used to this in everything from "I Love Lucy" to "Masterpiece Theatre".) There are serious objections to bad programming with an "SF" label, as it degrades the reputation of a field which we admire. But those are minor, as we don't really care too much what "they" think, anyway. Probably, we mainly hack at "V" out of disappointment. All that effort, money, and time could have been used to make something we would have liked a lot better. As soon as I rule the world, I'll see that it's done right... Will