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selenakA supernatural glitch in your DVR occurs. At first you panic, hitting lots of random buttons on your remote control, but then are RELIEVED to discover that no, your entire series recording of Golden Girls has not been deleted! But then, just as things appear to be back to normal, there's a puff of smoke, and a fairy appears! You have apparently freed the TV fairy from a televised hell in which she was made to watch endless reruns of Are You Hot?, and as fairies tend to be when freed, she is very grateful and wants to grant you magic wishes.
Now, the fairy has only TV-related powerz, and so she offers you the chance to go back in time and retroactively CHANGE the history of your favorite TV shows with 3.5 wishes!
You can go back in time and erase from the fabric of TV history THREE individual episodes of any TV show you want! The rest of the series(es) will not be altered. What do you choose?
1) A View from the Gallery, Babylon 5, season 5. The annoying thing is that the concept - grunts' view on an avarage day of the station - could have been done very well (see also: TNG, Lower Decks) and entertainingly. The thing that makes me want to wipe this from my memory is thet self congratulatory smugness and the horrible mistake of letting our pov characters be such fawning toads to the main characters. You know which alternate pov on B5 works wonderfully well, in the very same season? The Corps is Mother, the Corps is Father. You know why? Because the the pov brings in something new, intriguing and NOT self congratulatory.
2) Harvest of Kairos or Power, which Blake's 7 atrocity by the horrible Ben Steed to choose? I think I'll go with Harvest of Kairos, because while both are horrible and sexist, at least Power is in character for Avon whereas the "I Tarzan/Jarvis, you Servalan" subplot in Kairos is completely ooc for Servalan before or after, and everyone on the Liberator is just so dumb in this episode.... take it away!
3) Covenant, DS9, season 7. Aside from disliking the ZOMG EVIL!Dukat development in general (with the one caveat that I like what it brings to Winn's story line in late s7), this one, featuring him as an evil cult leader as well as kidnapped!Kira is especially cringe worthy, and can be erased without a problem for the rest of the season.
You can go back in time and revive ONE unfairly cancelled television show and return it to the annals of TV history!* *CHOOSE WISELY, because if you attempt to revive more than one show, the wish will backfire and you'll instead be treated to a whole bunch of crappy made-for-TV "reunion" movies full of replacement actors.
It's basically Farscape versus Firefly here. One got a tv miniseries and one got a movie that both wrap up some storylines and give an indication of what the broad outline of another season would have been. I'm going to go with Farscape for two reasons: firstly, a fifth season hopefully would have made me look at some of the more annoying things about season 4 (to wit, Pod!Aeryn and the handling of the John/Aeryn relationship, from gratious angst to lazy unearned reconciliation) more kindly, as well as allow character arcs for the rest of the ensemble (I'm looking at you, Chiana, and you, Sikozu), and secondly, I love Astonishing X-Men, and if Joss were still producing Firefly, he wouldn't be writing it.
Sidenote: the reason why I'm not choosing the unfairly cancelled wonderful American Gothic is simple. They got told they'd get cancelled early enough for Shaun Cassidy to come up with a great season and series finale.
To balance out the historical TV viewing schedule, you now have the power to retroactively CANCEL, at any point during the series, any one show! Alternately, you can wield your destructive might and DELETE one whole entire series from ever having been made.
It's a tough call between Alias and Carnivale and their respective last seasons. Cancelling Carnivale after season 1 would leave me with a wonderful first season, a powerful finale of same, and the memory of a lot of intriguing, ambiguous characters instead of a bitter taste in the mouth. But I think I'll go with Alias after the fourth season though I liked a lot more individual characters and developments of the fifth season than I ever liked of Carnivale, season 2. The thing is, the season 4 finale of Alias can easily work as a great show finale with two adjustments - no tag scene, obviously, and the fate of one character would have to be permanent instead of a coma, because coma spells "we get another season". The actions of all characters make sense, and yes, of course I especially prefer how it leaves the First Gen Spies.
LIFE AND DEATH! You can now bring ONE character back from the dead... and, to restore the balance, you must also kill off a character! They don't have to be from the same fandom.
I'm not going to play favourites or dislikes here, but "what would be most interesting and would work within the show". So, Sheridan stays dead after Z'ha'Dum, the season 3 Babylon 5 finale. Not because I dislike Sheridan, which I don't, but because I think his inner development ends there, and his outer functions - in the Shadow War, the Earth Civil War and later leading the Alliance - could have been carried by Delenn and Ivanova without big changes in the overall arcs. Moreover, it would have given us two women leading - and coming to terms with a shared loss, of course - which I'm always for.
Resurrected: hmmmm. The problem with picking someone from the Jossverse is that in most cases, those deaths really worked for me, and in cases like Cordelia's the writing problems predate the actual death by several seasons, which means resurrecting the character would probably result in more problematic writing. I wouldn't have killed off Jadzia Dax to begin with (though I like Ezri), but then we're going for resurrections, i.e. the death would have happened, and bringing back Jadzia is impossible due to the symbiont surviving. Then there's the entire population of Gallifrey to choose from, cruelly killed off by Rusty when he started New Who, but a) it's impossible to imagine the Who reboot without Nine's "Last of the Timelords" angst, and b) RTD might still bring back you-know-who in the future anyway on the actual show. But talking of Mr. Davies has reminded me of a good candidate: Suzie, from Torchwood. Interesting, competent, and well-acted, plus her (second) return would be a continuing challenge to the ethics of the regulars.
Bonus tradeoff: you can delete a single scene, relationship pairing or plot arc from any series that gave you hives... AND you can plug in any one [scene, pairing, plot arc] that you never got to see!
EVIL!Dukat and any arc connected with same goes, except for Winn's theological struggle, but that can be triggered differently. Either kill Dukat in Sacrifice of Angels together with Ziyal or give him Damar's subsequent storyline. As for the arc that we never got to see, Gareth Thomas does return full time for the fourth season of Blake's 7, and not just for the finale, and we get to see how Blake developed into finale!Blake in tandem with Avon going bonkers on Scorpio.
Now, the fairy has only TV-related powerz, and so she offers you the chance to go back in time and retroactively CHANGE the history of your favorite TV shows with 3.5 wishes!
You can go back in time and erase from the fabric of TV history THREE individual episodes of any TV show you want! The rest of the series(es) will not be altered. What do you choose?
1) A View from the Gallery, Babylon 5, season 5. The annoying thing is that the concept - grunts' view on an avarage day of the station - could have been done very well (see also: TNG, Lower Decks) and entertainingly. The thing that makes me want to wipe this from my memory is thet self congratulatory smugness and the horrible mistake of letting our pov characters be such fawning toads to the main characters. You know which alternate pov on B5 works wonderfully well, in the very same season? The Corps is Mother, the Corps is Father. You know why? Because the the pov brings in something new, intriguing and NOT self congratulatory.
2) Harvest of Kairos or Power, which Blake's 7 atrocity by the horrible Ben Steed to choose? I think I'll go with Harvest of Kairos, because while both are horrible and sexist, at least Power is in character for Avon whereas the "I Tarzan/Jarvis, you Servalan" subplot in Kairos is completely ooc for Servalan before or after, and everyone on the Liberator is just so dumb in this episode.... take it away!
3) Covenant, DS9, season 7. Aside from disliking the ZOMG EVIL!Dukat development in general (with the one caveat that I like what it brings to Winn's story line in late s7), this one, featuring him as an evil cult leader as well as kidnapped!Kira is especially cringe worthy, and can be erased without a problem for the rest of the season.
You can go back in time and revive ONE unfairly cancelled television show and return it to the annals of TV history!* *CHOOSE WISELY, because if you attempt to revive more than one show, the wish will backfire and you'll instead be treated to a whole bunch of crappy made-for-TV "reunion" movies full of replacement actors.
It's basically Farscape versus Firefly here. One got a tv miniseries and one got a movie that both wrap up some storylines and give an indication of what the broad outline of another season would have been. I'm going to go with Farscape for two reasons: firstly, a fifth season hopefully would have made me look at some of the more annoying things about season 4 (to wit, Pod!Aeryn and the handling of the John/Aeryn relationship, from gratious angst to lazy unearned reconciliation) more kindly, as well as allow character arcs for the rest of the ensemble (I'm looking at you, Chiana, and you, Sikozu), and secondly, I love Astonishing X-Men, and if Joss were still producing Firefly, he wouldn't be writing it.
Sidenote: the reason why I'm not choosing the unfairly cancelled wonderful American Gothic is simple. They got told they'd get cancelled early enough for Shaun Cassidy to come up with a great season and series finale.
To balance out the historical TV viewing schedule, you now have the power to retroactively CANCEL, at any point during the series, any one show! Alternately, you can wield your destructive might and DELETE one whole entire series from ever having been made.
It's a tough call between Alias and Carnivale and their respective last seasons. Cancelling Carnivale after season 1 would leave me with a wonderful first season, a powerful finale of same, and the memory of a lot of intriguing, ambiguous characters instead of a bitter taste in the mouth. But I think I'll go with Alias after the fourth season though I liked a lot more individual characters and developments of the fifth season than I ever liked of Carnivale, season 2. The thing is, the season 4 finale of Alias can easily work as a great show finale with two adjustments - no tag scene, obviously, and the fate of one character would have to be permanent instead of a coma, because coma spells "we get another season". The actions of all characters make sense, and yes, of course I especially prefer how it leaves the First Gen Spies.
LIFE AND DEATH! You can now bring ONE character back from the dead... and, to restore the balance, you must also kill off a character! They don't have to be from the same fandom.
I'm not going to play favourites or dislikes here, but "what would be most interesting and would work within the show". So, Sheridan stays dead after Z'ha'Dum, the season 3 Babylon 5 finale. Not because I dislike Sheridan, which I don't, but because I think his inner development ends there, and his outer functions - in the Shadow War, the Earth Civil War and later leading the Alliance - could have been carried by Delenn and Ivanova without big changes in the overall arcs. Moreover, it would have given us two women leading - and coming to terms with a shared loss, of course - which I'm always for.
Resurrected: hmmmm. The problem with picking someone from the Jossverse is that in most cases, those deaths really worked for me, and in cases like Cordelia's the writing problems predate the actual death by several seasons, which means resurrecting the character would probably result in more problematic writing. I wouldn't have killed off Jadzia Dax to begin with (though I like Ezri), but then we're going for resurrections, i.e. the death would have happened, and bringing back Jadzia is impossible due to the symbiont surviving. Then there's the entire population of Gallifrey to choose from, cruelly killed off by Rusty when he started New Who, but a) it's impossible to imagine the Who reboot without Nine's "Last of the Timelords" angst, and b) RTD might still bring back you-know-who in the future anyway on the actual show. But talking of Mr. Davies has reminded me of a good candidate: Suzie, from Torchwood. Interesting, competent, and well-acted, plus her (second) return would be a continuing challenge to the ethics of the regulars.
Bonus tradeoff: you can delete a single scene, relationship pairing or plot arc from any series that gave you hives... AND you can plug in any one [scene, pairing, plot arc] that you never got to see!
EVIL!Dukat and any arc connected with same goes, except for Winn's theological struggle, but that can be triggered differently. Either kill Dukat in Sacrifice of Angels together with Ziyal or give him Damar's subsequent storyline. As for the arc that we never got to see, Gareth Thomas does return full time for the fourth season of Blake's 7, and not just for the finale, and we get to see how Blake developed into finale!Blake in tandem with Avon going bonkers on Scorpio.
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Date: 2007-03-19 11:56 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-03-19 12:06 pm (UTC)