Another absolute nothing of an episode. I guess they were sort of trying to make mystery out of it but it was just terribly contrived and resolved in a completely meaningless way. I think we're also supposed to care about Tim Shaw from
Demtel episode one coming back, but, uh, why? He was basically the platonic ideal of "generic villain". The thing with him collecting a tooth from each of of his victims sounds like an interesting hook, but it's not actually relevant to anything and it ends up making him look pretty dumb a lot of the time.
 |
| I neither know nor care what their names are. |
Anyway, the episode starts with these two wizards on some holy quest. There's something about there only ever being two of their species alive at any one time, which doesn't make any sense and also isn't even remotely relevant to the plot. It's also yet another case of the writers clearly wanting to do a fantasy show but being stuck with a sci-fi premise and obviously hating it.
 |
| I don't know this guy's name either. I could look it up but why bother? |
It's not like space fantasy can't work - Farscape was great. The problem with this show isn't that they want to include magic, it's that they use magic as an excuse for lazy writing. You don't even need, as some people maintain, a fully established set of rules. That may make it easier, but it's not necessary. Again, look at Farscape. It didn't matter that no one knew exactly how everything worked because they didn't just pull solutions out of their arses. They made sure to establish whatever rules would be necessary ahead of actually using them.
 |
| The remains of a battle that we didn't get to see and which doesn't actually matter. |
Whereas, in this show, the writers paint themselves into corners and then just have the Doctor rattle off some nonsense and snap her fingers and the problem's solved. And this episode is particularly bad, because it's not just the resolution but most of the plot that's obfuscated by technobabble and convenient omissions.
 |
| I'm still not clear on why they actually felt it was necessary to get those crystals back. |
Like, they get to this planet and there's some psychic brain-scrambling field active. They have devices that block it though so it doesn't actually cause them any trouble - even later on when they need to remove the devices for a moment they're still perfectly fine - it's just an excuse to have the guy they meet drip-feed them information because his memory's scrambled. But again, it doesn't actually hamper them in any way, it just makes things more confusing for the audience so we'll be less likely to see how thin and meaningless the plot actually is.
 |
| Tim has a bunch of prisoners but I don't know why, and they're not relevant to anything. |
Basically there's a lot of padding around Tim because he's just not an interesting villain. He was fine in that first episode because that story had other stuff going on. But this one doesn't. It kind of seems like it does, but everything either revolves around Tim or leads nowhere. And even Tim's plans don't make any sense. Like, we're told that he convinced the space wizards that he was their god - but how? We're neither shown nor told that and it seems pretty implausible. And if he was so intent on getting revenge on the Doctor, what was he planning to do before she just randomly appeared in front of him? Everything just happens because the writers wanted it to and not because of any plausible actions by the characters.
 |
| Symbolism? |
That was the thing that made Farscape so good. Everything that happened was the result of characters taking believable actions in response to the information available to them. You had people with conflicting goals and limited information getting in each other's way. In contrast, in episodes like this one you never get the impression that anyone is or has been trying to do anything, they just wait for something to happen and then take credit for it. And it makes no sense. Nothing holds together.
 |
| Killing bad. Eternal solitary confinement good. |
No comments:
Post a Comment