The Dotted Logline

Through a somewhat random series of events, I applied for and was accepted as the Firefox News series reviewer for Avatar: The Last Airbender.  My review for “The Day of Black Sun” two part episode has already been posted (it does contain spoilers if you haven’t seen the episodes.)  This seems like it will be a really fun gig.  Unfortunately, the show is on hiatus now for who knows how long.

For those not familiar with the series,  Avatar: The Last Airbender is an animated fantasy airing on Nickelodeon.  It’s a surprisingly complex and beautifully crafted show that has garnered a sizable (and well deserved) fanbase.  Season 1 and Season 2 (referred to as “books”) are available on DVD. I highly recommend checking them out.

As someone who hopes/plans to be a member of the WGA one day, I’ve been following the negotiations and the strike very closely. And the reaction of the public, which has certainly been mixed. There are plenty of wonderful articles and blogs out there about the issues (United Hollywood is a great place to start), but I thought I’d toss my hat into the ring as well.

There’s a misconception floating around that Hollywood writers all pull in six figure salaries. That seems to be one of the main arguments from people opposed to the strike, but there’s a significant flaw in the logic there; if this were the case, why would the writers put all those big bucks on indefinite hold to essentially nickel and dime the studios?

The fact is that being a working writer doesn’t always mean that you’re working. TV shows get canceled. Freelancers struggle to find gigs. Feature film projects get trapped in development hell. According to WGA reports, 46% of the current guild members in 2005 were considered unemployed. And that’s exactly why residuals are important.

If people don’t have a problem with a novelist or musician earning royalties while working on a new book or recording a new album, why are they so angry at screenwriters for needing residuals while they’re working to get their next project going? Just because television and film are collaborative arts designed to be palatable to the public doesn’t mean that the writing is any less strenuous or valuable. Those nickels and dimes the writers are fighting for can mean the difference between paying the bills and starving. Maybe not for the writers whose names you know, but those big earners are a very small minority.

And that’s the other big misconception about the strike. Writers aren’t fighting for more money. They’re fighting to keep their income from dropping off in the future. Already, there have been shows like Lost that have streamed episodes online as opposed to airing reruns on broadcast television. Writers (and actors) receive residuals for the latter but not for the former, even though both include the entire episode and paid advertisements.

The Internet is the direction the industry is going, and writers don’t want to make the same mistake they did with videotape/DVD: accepting a reduced residual rate (0.3%) on a new, unproven technology. DVD residuals, of course, are the other negotiation sticking point that has received a lot of attention in the media. And although new media is the biggest issue, the numbers related to DVD residuals are pretty painful.

* In 2006, WGA members received $56.6 million in DVD and VHS residuals. The same year, Tom Freston received a $60 million severance package when he resigned as chief of Viacom. That means that a single individual was paid $3.4 million more for leaving his job than 10,000 writers earned for the sale of their work. Figures taken from the L.A. Times.

* Pretty much anyone can go to Amazon.com and sign up for an Associate account to earn referral fees starting at 4%. That means any schmuck (and I include myself here) who can cut and paste a bit of text to a website or blog can earn more than 13 times the amount the actual screenwriter receives for the sale of a DVD. Members can now earn referrals on digital downloads, for which screenwriters currently receive nothing.

The problem is that concerns like respecting the contributions of workers and their ability to put food on the table don’t really factor into the corporate equation. It’s a numbers game, and the important thing is that bigger numbers are better than smaller numbers. Workers are human resources. It’s the age-old problem of the people with the money having a completely different world view than the people who do the work, and it’s exactly why unions and strikes are still relevant.

I wasn’t old enough to really care about the 1988 WGA strike and don’t really know what public opinion was like back then. However, it’s clear that technology has changed things in the last nineteen years. Thanks to the Internet, today’s audience has access to the screenwriters. Writers post to fan sites and forums. They write in personal blogs and show blogs. They connect to fans through MySpace and LiveJournal. They have fans now, fans who will follow them from project to project, who know their names. Fans who care. Fans who are angry (and if anyone is good at being angry, it’s fans.) And fans with a mission are a force to be reckoned with, especially when they get organized.

The first day of the strike, Joss Whedon devotees from the fan site Whedonesque delivered pizzas to the writers picketing Universal, including one with anchovies for Jane Espenson (yes, screenwriters have fans who are devoted enough to care about their favorite pizza topping.) Similar food deliveries from other fandom groups followed. By day four, a website had been launched to coordinate a wide range of fan efforts. It remains to be seen just how big an impact the fans’ actions will have on the strike. In all honesty, I hope negotiations resume before we’re given the opportunity to find out.

And on a personal not, since I’ve been asked this several times, I will not be scabbing. I honestly never even considered it. I have far too much respect for my fellow writers and for my own work. I have no respect for anyone who would scab knowing that it could prolong this strike and cause further hardship for thousands of people aside from the writers themselves. I want to break into the industry by honest means and have an actual career doing what I love. And I want to be paid fairly, which is exactly what the writers of today are fighting for. I can never thank them enough for what they’re doing.

When it was announced that James Marsters will be making an appearance on the second series of Torchwood, there was plenty of discussion about the show by Joss Whedon devotees (the core/majority of Marsters’ fanbase), fitting for a show that was partially inspired by Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel.

While this blog on The Guardian raised some interesting points about Torchwood versus BtVS, I feel that AtS is a much more apt comparison. After all, they are both dark spinoffs of cult favorites. AtS was a hit with fans and critics, lasting for five years and canceled during what may have been its best season. It’s hard to say how Torchwood will compare in the long run, but after the first series, things don’t exactly look promising for the guys and gals in Cardiff. Considering the similarities between the shows, why hasn’t Torchwood worked as well as AtS?

Character Continuity: There’s no denying that Angel and Captain Jack Harkness have a few things in common. They’re both attractive, broody guys who favor long, dramatic coats.  They’re both much older and harder to kill than than they look. The thing is, Angel was always the broody guy. Other than the fact that he no longer has a petite blond monster killer to make angsty eyes at, he’s perfectly recognizable as the tormented vampire with a soul from BtVS, making it fairly easy for fans to follow the transition between the shows.

Jack? Not so much. Gone is the charming, wisecracking omnisexual adventurer that had such a fantastic rapport with the Doctor and Rose. Although there are good reasons for the abrupt personality shift, they aren’t really addressed at any point during the first series, which doesn’t give fans much to work with when trying to reconcile the two versions of the character.

Aside from personality is the mission. Though his methods have changed somewhat, Angel still fights the same good fight he did in Sunnydale, continuing his search for redemption. Jack, on the other hand, has given up conning and flirting his way through the cosmos to kill time underneath Cardiff. His true motivation is only hinted at during the series and has little to do with his day-to-day efforts as the leader of Torchwood Three.

Universe Continuity: While a spinoff doesn’t necessarily need to remain “true to the source” to be a quality show, the very nature of a spinoff entails at least some level of expectation regarding tone and themes. This is particularly true in the case of shows like AtS and Torchwood, which share characters and worlds with their predecessors.

While Torchwood was designed to be decidedly darker than the family-friendly Doctor Who, that darkness extends beyond the tone of the show and into the themes addressed. The show spent most of the first series wallowing in an ocean of existentialist rhetoric: life is meaningless and then there’s nothing. That message is so far removed from the universe full of beauty and hope in Doctor Who that it’s hard to see the two as being part of the same mythos. One could argue that Doctor Who is aimed at children while Torchwood is an adult show. But if growing up entails such a depressing shift in one’s world view, book me on the next flight to Neverland.

On the other hand, BtVS and AtS show a consistency in the way the universe (or at least Southern California) works. Both Buffy and Angel struggle to understand the darkness within themselves and how to relate to those around them. Both work to bend the rules and forge their own paths apart from what destiny tells them what they should be — a lonely slayer slaughtered in her prime and a soulless monster. By the time the shows draw to a close, both have chosen to take the fight against evil to the source at a time of their own choosing. The main difference between the shows isn’t the tone or themes, but the stage of life they focus on: adolescence vs early adulthood.

Another area where AtS and Torchwood differ is how closely they’re tied to the shows the main characters originated on. While Buffy only makes a handful of appearances on AtS, she does warrant plenty of mention on the show — appropriate, considering the role she played in motivating Angel to become the Champion he is. Jack’s encounter with the Doctor and Rose had just as profound effect on him, with the same being true for Torchwood itself. However, Torchwood doesn’t offer an explanation of where Jack or his organization came from, why he’s immortal, or who (no pun intended) he’s looking/waiting for. There are plenty of holes in the story that need to be filled — even fans of Jack from Doctor Who were left wondering how he got from Satellite 5 to Cardiff. If Torchwood had either discarded or embraced the Doctor Who backstory rather than sidestepping it, the show could have felt much more complete.

How To Save The World: There’s no denying that the Torchwood Three isn’t the most competent group of people around, especially when compared to the staff and resources that Torchwood One had as seen on Doctor Who. Whether the operatives are lying to each other, shooting each other, or getting pwned by a bunch of Welsh hicks, they don’t exactly inspire confidence as the last line of defense against aliens. Personal drama is all well and good, but it’s hard to like or care about characters who so gloriously muck up their responsibility of “arming the human race.”

The members of Angel Investigations seem equally unsuitable for saving the world, at least in the beginning. Angel’s crack team originally includes a struggling actress, a rather cowardly half-demon, and (after the latter’s death) a failure of a Watcher. Not a particularly impressive organization. However, the original purpose of the group is merely to “help the helpless” as private investigators who know a little something about monsters. The show allows the characters to find their mission and grow into their roles, rather than plunging them right into the apocalypse.

Granted, Torchwood hasn’t really been on long enough for the characters to experience the same kind of growth as those on Angel. But other than Gwen, the audience hasn’t really seem where the members of the team came from or how they came on board. They start out as a team, they screw up as a team, and the audience doesn’t really know why. Or, by extension, know why to care.

In the end, Torchwood still has a long way to go to match the 110 episodes that Angel had to develop the characters and world. Personally, I was happy to hear the rumors of a lighter tone for the second series and have hopes that the show will find its footing and continue to improve. After all, even though Torchwood has already attracted a dedicated core audience, Whedon fans can tell you that a show, well written or not, needs more.

Where to begin. Paul Cornell, a writer who (among many other things) scripted a two-parter for Series 3 of Doctor Who (which I’m waiting on pins and needles for) posted a blog about canonicity in Doctor Who, mentioning that fans of BtVS are much more willing to accept things outside of the TV show, such as the upcoming Season 8 comic (which I’m waiting on pins and needles for), as being part of the series canon. This lead to a debate of epic proportions on Whedonesque about canon vs continuity vs interpretation, if Eurasia is located on Pluto and/or evil, and if color-blind people are considered valuable members of reality. The debate is still ongoing and has prompted Paul Cornell to to issue an apology for instigating a “row” (an argument that can be traced back to someone British) and to make the strange assumption that all Joss Whedon fans like rye bread.

Since I have been in the thick of things writing some long quasi-intelligent posts (and some short, stupid, not terribly funny ones), I thought I’d try and compile my thoughts into one semi-coherent blog entry.

Canon vs. Interpretation

Pretty much every single fan in any fandom will have a slightly different view of the meaning of the events in any creative work. I’ve always been a strong believer in Reader-response theory. Authorial intent can only go so far when your work is being read by someone who brings an entirely different perspective/set of beliefs and life experiences to the table. In fact, as long as it doesn’t degenerate into nonsense like shipping wars, I’ve always loved debates about different perspectives of a creative work.

But at the same time, it does get ridiculous when people get so wrapped up in their own view of a fictional world that they’ll disregard something that is blatantly official canon just because they don’t agree with it. I think it’s fine to disagree with the direction a creator chooses to steer their creation (say, the Star Wars prequels), but if your solution is to close your eyes, plug your ears, and hum the Sesame Street theme in an attempt to pretend it doesn’t exist, you’re delving a bit too close to delusion. As much as these fictional worlds can mean to us, if we can’t accept the fact that they have flaws, we’re doing them and their creators a grave disservice.

The thing to keep in mind is that canon, as established by an authority (often the creators or owners of the property) stands separate from readers/viewers/fans. How we interpret a story can alter our view of the story, certainly, perhaps even the view of others if we can convince them to join our way of thinking, but it doesn’t alter the existence of the story itself. A reader saying “I don’t think _____ is canon” is like a person saying “Pluto really IS a planet.” They can say it all they want. The can even believe it. But they aren’t the authority that has been established to make such decisions for the general public. Canon isn’t necessarily set in stone for the rest of history, but can only be changed by those with the authoritative power to do so.

Canon vs. Continuity

Canon generally supersedes continuity (continuity in the comic book sense), since events in canon can alter the story’s continuity, not to mention the fact that different characters can have personal continuities. For example, in the first season of Angel, the events of “I Will Remember You” were erased from history by the Oracles, though Angel retained his memories of them. So they’d be part of Angel’s continuity but not Buffy’s, since for her they literally never happened.

The Buffyverse is rife with continuity changes due to timeline alterations. However, there seems to be a difference between actual changes in the timeline (the Oracles erasing a day, Anyanka creating the Wishverse, Illyria slaughtering Team Angel in her time jumps) versus perceived changes due to altered memories and such (the monks creating Dawn, Cyvus Vail changing Conner’s history.) The first case seems to result in altered continuity where events cease to exist or are relegated to an alternate universe, though some characters (especially Angel) sometimes remember that they did in fact occur at one point. The second has an odd doubling effect where the original continuity is known and understood by the characters once the truth is revealed, yet the existence of the “false” continuity still has an effect on events (Dawn knowing Angel even though she was actually created after he left town, Conner’s thankfully permanent personality change.) Although all of these events generally involve altering continuity, they only add to the canon. Nothing else in the canon is rewritten or removed.

Some might argue that retcons alter the canon, but they generally just offer a deeper truth/different perspective, which would go back to interpretation. Plus, it isn’t required for canon to have flawless continuity.

You Gave Me A Headache With That Continuity/Timeline Nonsense

Sorry. I’ve always looked at it this way. There is a universal continuity/timeline and a personal continuity/timeline. The universal timeline is a single set of linear events that is generally shown to be self-repairing (conflicting events erased or considered an “alternate universe”) with the occasional instance of circular causality (as in the first Terminator movie.) A personal timeline is also a series of linear events as seen from the perspective of any particular person.

In the real world (and in most fiction), the universal and personal timelines are identical. When you get into stories involving time travel and alternate dimensions and such, the two timelines differ. Take Angel, for example. In the episode of Angel mentioned above, the events the Oracles erased are no longer a part of the universal timeline or Buffy’s timeline, but they are still a part of Angel’s. To much of the universe, Angel may appear to be a certain age, but that doesn’t take into account the time he spent in that hell dimension, his day with Buffy, his minutes or hours timejumping with Illyria, etc. In this case, his personal timeline from his birth to the present is quite a bit longer than the universe’s for that same period of time.

This past weekend, I watched Children Of Men, one of the most powerful films I’ve seen in a long time. I also caught up on a number of Series 2 Doctor Who eps that I had missed when they aired on Sci-Fi. Despite the vast difference in tone, I found there to be an interesting resonance between the two.  And not just because of the British-ness.

The pre-apocalyptic world of Children Of Men is an example of my favorite type of speculative fiction: a high concept “what if” used as a springboard to explore human nature. What if there were no more children born to the human race? What if the last generation of humanity knew they were the last? The answer isn’t pretty. Governments and nations collapsed. Today’s Bagdad spread to every corner of the Earth. Denial, despair, death. And perhaps most frightening of all, as seen in Clive Owen’s Theo early in the film, utter apathy. It’s a good day when you don’t die. But what good is escaping the bomb when there’s nothing else left for you, for anyone? What’s the use of crying over the murder of a young man when, alive or dead, he is just the symbol of the end?

How does this dark, gritty tale relate to the continuation of a campy sci-fi TV series that features an alien ship permanently “disguised” as an outdated police call box, a terrifying alien menace that looks like a sex toy add-on, and the ultimate all-purpose sonic-powered tool good for obtaining pocket money or committing genocide? Quite simply, the new Who asks the same what if. What if you were the last?

In contrast to the old series, the current Doctor (or Doctors–we’ve already seen the Ninth and the Tenth incarnations of the character) is the lone survivor of an ancient, wise, and powerful alien race, a restless wander whose gleefully carefree mask conceals a loneliness that stretches to the farthest reaches of time and space. It’s a good day when everyone lives, but it can never erase the knowledge that countless numbers, evil or not, intended or not, have already died at your hands. What good is the power of a lonely god when it means that your mistakes have catastrophic consequences for whole races, whole planets? What good is time travel when all it does is show you an infinite variety of quiet, perfectly mundane lives, the one thing you can never have?

“And now these three remain: faith, hope, and love.” But for human and alien alike, even the most beautiful of intangible concepts need to be embodied in something real to be more than just words. A pregnant womb contains more than the seed of survival. A Companion is more than someone to sightsee with. Whether it is an infant or a shop girl, watching someone take her first steps into a larger world that you know to be both beautiful and terrifying, realizing that you have the chance to see it all as new again through their eyes, accepting that you have a duty to guide them and protect them, that is what allows both Theo and the Doctor to go on and strive for more than simple survival. Protecting something smaller than ourselves, granting it the opportunity to blossom into something bigger than we can ever be, finding out that faith, hope, and love are still alive and well in the universe: that is the true adventure. Trigger-happy terrorists, corrupt cat nun nurses, bloody war zones, and emotionless cyborgs are just proof that wallowing selfish desires, convincing ourselves it is all for the greater good, only leads to stagnation at best, complete disaster more often. The beauty of the universe lies outside of ourselves.

So what if you were the last? What if it were the end? The answer is simple. Find a beginning.

For those who haven’t seen House, your typical episode goes a lot like this: Patient is admitted with mysterious symptoms which multiply and befuddle as the show progresses. House snarks at everyone, Holmeses out everyone’s dirty personal life issues, and identifies the mystery ailment or ailments right around the last commercial break, just in time to save the patient (except when the ailment is fatal.)

The Ailment of the Week tonight was Celiac Disease, a gluten intolerance that I’m VERY familiar with. My mother has had it since I was three, my dad’s cousin has it, and at least one good friend of mine has it, possibly two. I’m at high risk for developing it someday. Even if the 1 in 130 people ratio I heard is correct, that’s a lot of people. Luckily, the symptoms generally aren’t nearly as dramatic as on House.

Me: My mom has Celiac Disease.

Random Person: What’s that?

Me: Remember that episode of House where the woman had a niacin deficiency that made her go crazy and kill her baby? It was because she was an undiagnosed Celiac and wasn’t on a proper gluten-free diet.

R.P.: …So you’re mom’s insane?

Me: No, but she used to be really thin.

Part of me is glad to see Celiac mentioned in pop culture, as it is very common but often misdiagnosed.  The symptoms vary and, in the past, it seemed like many medical professionals knew little or nothing about it. But the episode did much to further the public’s understanding of the disease itself.

It you had told me right after I saw the pilot for the new Doctor Who that the show would make me cry at one point, I wouldn’t have believed you. Heck, I might not have believed that I would still be watching it two months later.

It’s nice to be surprised sometimes.

I’ve caught myself using the word “frack” quite a bit as of late, that being the expletive of choice in the new Battlestar Galactica TV series. Seeing as how I’m the type of person who still apologizes to the parental units for including profanity in my writing even though they really don’t care, I’m glad that science fiction and fantasy exist to introduce us to new, interesting, and non-offensive (in our reality) curses. Calvin from L’Engle’s Time Quartet understood this too: in A Wind In The Door, his favorite new curse was fewmets (dragon crap) Personally, I find fewmets to be a bit awkward to say, but to each their own.

Per a Yahoo news article:

“We’ve seen a tremendous response to Desperate Housewives products made available to date, so expanding the franchise into the world of fragrance makes perfect sense.”

(I’d comment on the Oscars, but for the first time in a number of years, I have yet to see a single one of the big contenders)

One of my most anticipated Christmas presents of 2005 was the Battlestar Galactica season one DVD set. I started watching the show (very reluctantly) about halfway through the first season. Having missed the very beginning, I was interested in seeing how the whole shebang started out.

Now I can handle marathon viewing sessions longer than most people (probably due to ten years of watching far too many addictive anime series.) And to be honest, I tend to multitask during marathons of shows that I’ve seen previously, which makes my having gotten through most of the BtVS and Angel season sets in two days much less impressive (if that sort of thing impresses you, which it really shouldn’t.)

But I’ve found I can only watch two, maybe three episodes of Battlestar Galactica at a time. It’s beautifully filmed and well acted and has (with the exception of several recent episodes) some very strong writing. But it’s SUCH a damn depressing show.

It’s not the genocide of the human race or the ongoing war or even that the older episodes are full of characters that have since died in tragic and often painful ways. It’s the fact that the majority of the tiny surviving remnant of the human race seem to be complete douchebags. All the infighting and betrayal and sheer arrogance and stupidity and utter disregard for life when it has become such a precious commodity really makes me think that the Cylons are the ones we should be cheering for. The fact that the humans are pagan followers of the Greek pantheon of gods while the Cylons believe in the more traditional (to us) Judeo-Christian-type God makes me wonder if that is what the writers are actually going for. I suppose it all depends on what the true cause of the first war really was.

As much as I was looking forward to getting these DVDs, I’m seriously considering putting the set on eBay after I finish watching it. It’s a fantastic show, but not one I see myself really digging into again.

(I almost didn’t use the word douchebag because this is a “serious” journal. But the effect was too good to pass up. Plus, I ruined the whole thing with “shebang” right off the bat.)