Tuesday 23 April 2013

Eve of Destitution

The destitution of TV that is! This is another two-part disaster series, and it is just as terrible as the last one I wrote about. In fact, just go read that again, it is, in many ways, a reskin of the basic plot, just as this is.

What I would like to see in a natural disaster plot is one where the lead scientist (who is usually male) doesn't have a kid that immediately gets into trouble and needs rescuing. (In this case, the kid joins up with the eco-terrorists to partly cause the destruction in the first place. They are really, painfully stupid.)

I'd also like for science not to be given as the cause of the disasters. We want to explore some new area, and guess what, IT GOES WRONG! Because we should never try for understanding anything at all, and go back to being cavemen hooting at the sky in fear whenever it rains! Fuck you, you lazy script writers that can't come up with anything more original than 'we should not try to extend our understanding'. While, yes, science is nominally name checked to come up with a solution, it is usually something involving explosives, or at least something that ends up with a big boom, because again that's the only thing script writers can put (and that's largely because people in charge think that's all people want, because that's all people have been given).

At least a threat from space idea can't be blamed on us (oh wait, unless we dared to probe the heavens, and then pissed off god??), so that's something we can turn to. Then all we need is the rest of the three hours not to spent on characterisation for the point of pretending that these people have lives that we are supposed to care about. You need better writers than disaster story script writers to be able to pull that off.

[END]

No comments: