Random thought of the day

[bktheirregular]

I still think that stuff like casual time travel was what killed the Star Trek juggernaut. Or, more precisely, treating things like time travel and alternate universes like it was just another day at the office.

Perhaps it should become a rule: when you're writing a sci-fi work, if you've got time travel or alternate universes involved, be sure you've got the appropriate atmosphere of We're In Deep Voodoo. 'Cos if your characters aren't thinking in terms of "we're doomed", then it won't be long before your fans are thinking in those terms, and no amount of clever writing is going to get you out of that.

Comments

[rheanna27.livejournal.com]

Voyager was terribly bad at abusing the reset button. I started watching a random episode a few days ago - "Course: Oblivion" (appalling title), in which the whole crew starts dying from what seems to be a plague but turns out to be molecular disintegration resulting from -- this is the twist -- the fact that they're NOT the 'real' Voyager crew but are in fact carbon copies created in a previous season's episode and conveniently forgotten about since. Apart from some really bad plotting and handwaving of story logic, the main problem with the episode is that it tries to have its cake and eat it, too: there are lots of touching death scenes, but in the last moments of the ep, we cut back to the 'real' Voyager where everyone is, of course, alive and well. It's an AU shoehorned into canon, but it doesn't work because that pesky reset button takes away the emotional oomph.

[bktheirregular]

Yeah, and now I think of it, perhaps that was part of what endeared DS9 to me - the consequences of one episode would carry over into others.