Links and tv meme

[selenak]

Still on an unholy family trip, so here is a a great Darla/Angelus story I found, set in 1760 after that little visit to the Master. It captures my darling girl beautifully and gives her a wonderful punchline.

I've been watching vids as well. My favourite vid about Darla and Angel is either the sadly no longer online "Path" by Astarte or "Evil Angel" by Luminosity. Favourite Connor vid is "Anticipate" by Icsbanana, which I also can't find online anymore. But a new and excellent vid about all three of them would be "Counting Bodies".

Now, on to a meme:

So you're cleaning all the pollen off your TV screen and a genie pops out. In return for freeing her, she offers to grant you 5 changes to any TV show(s) you wish. With only 5 wishes, what do you wish for?

I suppose wishing Firefly, Crusade, American Gothic and Farscape all uncancelled is off, so...

Angel: No. Saint. Cordy. I wouldn't even have minded the A/C so much if only Cordelia hadn't gone the sanctification route in season 3. Give me any other incarnation of Cordelia, from early high school bitch queen to funny and tough Girl Friday to Possessed!Cordy - anything but the Saint.

DS9: One of the good guys (Dax, Bashir, Jake, don't care who) questions the morality and the rightness of the Prophets and sticks with it. Yes, other stuff would be nice, too (no madman Dukat, Garak/Bashir interaction after Our Man Bashir), but not as important as this. The fact we're supposed to buy into the wisdom and goodness of the Prophets was my biggest pet peeve with my favourite ST series.

Babylon 5: No Lorien. I don't care how Sheridan gets resurrected and away from Z'ha'dum (if at all - you could continue the saga without him, with Delenn and Ivanova finishing the Shadow and Earth Civil War respectively) as long as we're spared a literal deus ex machina just after the show has made the point you can't trust those at all. All the other blemishes, like Byron, can stay if we get rid of Lorien.

Blake's 7: Gareth Thomas changes his mind about leaving for the RSC and remains on board as Blake. Not that I don't appreciate the third and fourth season (yes, the fourth, too), but missed the Blake/Avon dynamic, and am of the minority opinion that Avon worked better as a character when playing off the leading man instead of being moved to leading man position himself. Also? I happen to like Blake.

Carnivale: Am with kradical here, sadly. Following Ron Moore's departure, either someone else takes over as co producer who keeps Daniel Knauf from losing all subtlety and throw out most moral ambiguity in favour of a stark good versus evil scenario, or the show gets cancelled, and we're left with the memory of a wonderful first season.

Comments

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

I am so with you on Babylon 5 and Blake's 7. As well as being pulled out of a hat, Lorien just did not make sense. That irritated me profoundly.

I don't think you're in a minority about Avon being better playing off Blake. Most agree that Paul Darrow ought to have been reined in severely for his S4 excesses. When I watched B7 in 2001, I knew Blake left after S2 and was looking forward to new blood. Oh, did I miss him! Yes, he got more and more obsessed and I disagreed with him about the whole Star One thing, but he held the crew together and gave them purpose.

[selenak.livejournal.com]

Plus the getting more and more obsessed was a psychologically realistic development, given the state of the Federation and his background. Robin Hood he was not. In a way, what happens with Blake prefigures what happens with John Crichton, only they get obsessive about different issues...

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

I can't comment about Crichton as I'm still watching S4. But he did just promise Scorpy wormholes in return for Aeryn.

[selenak.livejournal.com]

That would be the obsession I was referring to, and the willingness to go at any length.

(Actually, Rygel did a neat job of summing Crichton's obsesions up in one sentence in the season 4 opener: "Aeryn, wormholes, Scorpius, Earth, Aeryn, Scorpius, wormholes, and did I mention Aeryn?")

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

[grin] I found Rygel annoying in S1 but he's really grown on me.

[shezan.livejournal.com]

Am I with you on the Prophets! Bunch of sad officious meddlers, they are.

[selenak.livejournal.com]

Exactly. And what they did to Sisko's mother is rape, pure and simple, yet does anyone ever call them on this? No.

By the way - happy birthday, and I hope the sun shines in Paris as it does in Munich!

[cavendish.livejournal.com]

Two suggestions :-)

>I suppose wishing Firefly, Crusade, American Gothic and Farscape all uncancelled is off, so...

*gg*. But hey, you had five wishes: Why not also wishing for Enterprise not to be canceled, the last season was quite good. :-)

>Babylon 5: No Lorien. ...All the other blemishes, like Byron, can stay

For me, it would be the other way round: Lorien I ignored, but Byron I really hated. (as far as hate goes with TV characters ;-) )

[selenak.livejournal.com]

Sure, why not, as I am a Trekker of old, let's throw in Enterprise as well.

Lorien versus Byron is a tough call, but Lorien has more serious implications for the overall saga and is just bad storytelling. Byron, with another actor and the writing edited here and there, might have worked and in any case is consistent with the rest of the canon.

Hey!

[un-crayon-rouge.livejournal.com]

I beg your pardon? No resurrected Sheridan? I can sort of see you point, you know, and Ivanova and Delenn saving the day without him is a neat idea, but- NO SHERIDAN?? C'mon, it's one of the most beautiful love stories ontv, one that is actually mostly angst-free. A

nd besides *insert fangirl squeal here*

*there, there*

[selenak.livejournal.com]

Well, my Sheridan theory is that his development as a character actually ended with Z'ha'dum. He's static from that point onwards, which on a show where everyone else is busy developing and changing is noticable. As opposed to, say, Londo and G'Kar, or even Delenn (the only three characters JMS said he couldn't have done without if the actors had quit), he was expendable to the otherall story afterwards.

Not that I dislike him, mind. I have some minor complaints (it would be nice if a non-evil and/or non-brainwashed person had opposed him in season 4, when Sheridan was presented as pretty much infallible - not in season 5 anymore, though) but by and large, he was a good and convincing leading man for the show. But the above still holds.

Lastly: it would have been possible to resurrect him sans Lorien. Via Kosh's fragment, for example. That still would have left us with a transportation problem, but I'm sure something could have come up. In any case, my big request wasn't for Sheridan to stay dead, it was for Lorien to not exist. Sheridan could be alive or dead, whatever, just no Lorien.

Re: *there, there*

[un-crayon-rouge.livejournal.com]

Well, I don't care for Mr. Deaus-Ex-Machina that much either. So ok, resurrect him without Lorien. But DO resurrect him!!

And yeah, the stroy-writer and reader in me knows all that you say about Sheridan's development is true, but he's so friggin' *cute*!! Ah, sorry, can't help it, I'll go look up some Boxleitner-damaged help-groups now :-))

[kathyh]

I wouldn't actually have minded Saint!Cordy if they'd shown more clearly that it was all false and her idea of herself as special was leading her to make wrong decisions i.e that Saint Cordy wasn't really who she was, but it was who she *thought* she was at that particular stage, and it was leading her to act accordingly. Just a bit more ambiguity about her sanctity would have been nice and made more character sense as just another way for Cordy to see herself as special.

Agree completely about DS9, B7 and B5. Haven't seen Carnivale :(

[meganinhiding.livejournal.com]

I can't agree with you more regarding Saint Cordy. It's almost as if writers, in their mission to replicate the success of the Angel/Buffy pairing, felt they had to make her more like Buffy or Angel. I actually stopped watching the show until season 4. I've got to hand it to Denisoff; Wesley went through even more twists and turns but he made every step believable even when you wanted to slap the character. I think that sanctifying a character can be even worse than turning them bwahaha evil. Sheridan, who was my favorite human character before Z'ha'dum, became Messiah!Sheridan. If you disagreed or opposed you were under mind control or you're eeeeeevil. I actually found myself wanting him to be colossally wrong about Earth in a way similiar to Delenn being wrong about disbanding the Gray Council. Where DS9 is concerned I think Sisko's storyline began to resemble The Prophecy/Omen/insert movie or book based on the Book of Revelations; every Messiah needs an Antichrist and if the Prophets aren't the Forces of Good than Sisko can't be the messiah. Overall I wish DS9 had kept closer to Roddenbury's rational, humanist focus.

[selenak.livejournal.com]

I think that sanctifying a character can be even worse than turning them bwahaha evil.

Tough choice. Now I wonder about some meta in which season 3 Cordy and Dukat argue who had it worse.*g*

Sheridan, who was my favorite human character before Z'ha'dum, became Messiah!Sheridan. If you disagreed or opposed you were under mind control or you're eeeeeevil.

Alas, yes. At least as far as season 4 was concerned; in season 5 Sheridan was allowed to screw up (with the way he handled, or rather, didn't, the telepath situation), be too late (Centauri Prime) and reap the results of long-term bad behaviour (Lyta, and the way Sheridan - well, everyone save Zack, but especially Sheridan - treated her in season 4 and 5 was meant to be dissapproved by the viewer). But in season 4, he was the Messiah.

Another thing about Sheridan was that basically, his personal development stopped with Z'ha'dum. Subsequently, all the major emotional conflicts in his life - Anna, Delenn, separating from Earth - were solved. As this wasn't the case for anyone else (not even for Delenn who as you said was haunted by her decision to break up the Grey Council, and I think this is why she was willing to die in Moments of Transition, and there was the relationship with Lennier in which she acted somewhat ambiguously), it jarred, and he became static. Hence my theory that the saga could have gone on without Sheridan...

[harriet-spy.livejournal.com]

Also? I happen to like Blake.

*gasp*! You radical, you!

I never really got the fannish Blake-hatred. He's not a character who particularly resonates with me, and he's easy to make fun of, but he's not despicable, unless you've worked your way into a world-view where it's All About Avon.

I know *g*

[selenak.livejournal.com]

I never really got the fannish Blake-hatred.

Me neither. He was a flawed good guy, and those are usually interesting to me. When I first started to read fanfic and found story after story in which Blake basically apologizes to Avon for having gotten shot by Avon on Gauda Prime, I had strong feelings of deja vue (my fandom before B7 had bene Highlander).