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January Meme: A big lost opportunity in sci fi shows
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lightofdaye actually asked about "biggest", but I'm shying away from top accolades (or accusations), not least because there are a great many sci fi shows I still haven't watched. Also I'm aware one watcher's "lost opportunity" is another watchers "thank all the powers that be this never happened!" Case in point: Back in the Battlestar Galactica day, bnf JennyO had this theory that Laura Roslin would turn out not only to be a Cylon but the Cylon god, and "read" everything according to this. I, otoh, intensely disliked that theory; the two characters which I thought could not be revealed as Cylons without losing something quintessential to their story were Baltar and Roslin, though for different reasons, and I was incredibly glad these two did in fact remain human. Otoh a friend of mine who believed in JennyO's theory sees it certainly as a great lost opportunity to this day. Mind you, I have my own "lost opportunity" BSG opinions, of course. Featuring both smaller and larger scale aspects and decisions of the show, gong from "good lord, someone should have reigned Edward J. Olmos in from overacting in s4" to the more serious "I wish Ron Moore & Co. hadn't improvised Boomer's post s1 storyline (in as much as she had one), because that really, really showed in the worst way. Sometimes not having a fixed plan for a character and see where the story leads you can work beautifully, but not in this case. And Boomer, given her s1 story, could have been a compelling in character, an audience pov to explore the Cylons for more than just the s2 episode Downloaded - which I loved, btw - ; someone to parallel and contrast Athena's story on Galactica with, and not in a "Boomer is weak, Athena is strong" kind of way.
Another big lost opportunity for BSG for me is that Roslin in s4 basically has no story safe for her relationship with Adama, with the exception of her scenes with Baltar before and after she finally gets his confession. (Which were hands down my favourite Roslin scenes of the season, but I wish they'd had some competition.) That I'm opposed to the "Laura as the Cylon God" theory doesn't mean I didn't want her to continue to have a story, and well, I tried to do something creative about my frustrations in this regard here.
Almost as big: do something with Caprica Six on Galactica that is about her suddenly living among people who have the best reason of the world to hate her guts, and if you must have her in a relationship with Tigh, take the trouble to show why and what it is like. Tricia Helfer was so great as each incarnation of Six, and I wish she'd been given much more material to work with for Caprica. I wanted to see her fence with Roslin (in more than a deleted scene ending up as a DVD extra), I wanted her to get scenes with Gaeta (not just because of their mutual awareness of what it's like to be in love with Gaius Baltar despite seeing him very clearly; due to the occupation times and Gaeta's role in the Baltar Administration, he must have been the human Caprica Six saw most of, and conversely, she the Cylon he saw the most of. Given where Gaeta's arc was going, these scenes would have been fascinating to see, I'm sure. And what about more than two or so scenes with Athena, especially given that Caprica and Boomer had become friends and allies in Downloaded? And so forth, and so on.
It probably comes down to the old joke about the plan neither the Cylons nor the writers had. (Though I actually liked the retcon the former gets via Cavil in The Plan.) Again, I'm not saying that thoroughly mapped out stories are necessarily the best. Ask JMS (of Babylon 5 fame) - you need to be flexible enough to accomodate for actors leaving, for starters, and for finding out whether or not your show gets another season at the proverbial last second. And then there's such a thing as unexpected chemistry, or lack of same, or the discovery of talent. Famously, Spike wasn't supposed to make it beyond the first half of BTVS, season 2, the very season that introduced him, and undoubtedly it would have been a very different show if Joss Whedon & Co. had rigidly stuck to their original plan instead of changing their minds once they saw James Marsters' performance. (Please don't regard this as incentive to restart the Spike Wars.) Farscape came up with the neural clone story without which much of the subsequent show is unthinkable relatively late in s2. And so forth, and so on.
But. On the other end of the scale, you have Chris Carter and The X-Files trying to improvise an unplanned myth arc which kept getting worse and worse and worse. And BSG was produced at a point when longer storyarcs had just taken off. Moore wasn't the sole ST (and specifically, DS9) veteran among the scriptwriters; by and large, the Domion War story had shown the DS9 team could plan and execute a story that lasted esssentially over two seasons, using seeds laid in earlier seasons. Hence my conclusion that the big lost opportunity of BSG was for Moore, Eick & Co. once both the miniseries and the first season of BSG had been a success, thus giving them the chance to plan for a longer than one season show, to map out where they wanted their various characters to go, and what the endgame of the show was supposed to be. In short, to use an expression Laura Roslin the former teacher might approve of: to do their homework. They had the talent, they had the skill. They just didn't do it and relied on winging it instead. As a result we got a show I'm actually still very fond of in all its flaws, but which never quite reached the potential it had to the full.
The other days
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Yes! Not everything needs to be planned thoroughly, but some sort of idea for each character arc is useful. Though my personal response to this question would be different.
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If a tag line is repeated in the opening of a show every episode for five seasons, the fans can be forgiven for thinking it might have a reason for being there!
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Very much agreed with your conclusion about the writers doing their homework. I liked the show, even in later seasons. I even liked the ending! But it could have been much better with a bit more planning early on.
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And then, when you look at Caprica and realize the Colonies had polyamory, the fucked-up love quadrangle between Dee/Lee/Kara/Sam becomes meaningless. Why don't they just form a poly marriage instead of angsting over "who does Kara REALLY love, and what happens if she won't get a divorce?" It would at least have been an INTERESTING take on Kara's issues.
Also, I really liked the idea that Nicky was a Cylon hybrid. And the idea that Kara's Dad had been the seventh Cylon, "Daniel," the one that Cavil boxed.
And then ... in the last episode, they all chuck it to live as cave people, and the cycle starts again, and it just comes out of nowhere and sucks.
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I'm a bit more lenient on the polyamory vs love geometrics constellations, because for starters, polygamy doesn't solve everything. Dee and Sam give no indication of being attracted to each other, let alone to Kara and Lee, respectively, so the only reason why they would enter such a union would be to make life easier for Kara and Lee; for them, it would be a loveless marriage, and why should they do that? Also I'm biased because Kara/Lee were one of my few NOTPs, but I thought the show was pretty consistent about the fact that while they made good friends, whenever the relationship turned romantic/sexual it became toxic and not good for either of them.
All this said, I hear you on this: on the other hand there were a lot of other stories that got warped around Kara's Eternal Angst And Drama.
Good lord, yes.
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On the other end of the scale, you have Chris Carter and The X-Files trying to improvise an unplanned myth arc which kept getting worse and worse and worse.
Lol. Yes.
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