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Highlander: The Raven: Bloodlines
Jul. 10th, 2006 05:10 pmHow lame is this episode? Let me count the ways...
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Jul. 10th, 2006
What makes a story
Jul. 10th, 2006 05:33 pmI've been thinking about my reaction to The Raven episodes, and why I'm finding them so inadequate as stories.
On one level they work fine - they're the right length, without resorting to musical interludes. They have the regular characters in. They have a bad guy to chase and talk to and challenge and kill. So the story goes bad guy does bad thing, good guys chase, good guys kill. Perfectly serviceable plot.
But the plot isn't adequate as a story. Because that's just the bones, the framework. The meat, the interesting parts, that is all characters. Emotions, reactions, who they are and who they become, how they think and how their lives change how they think.
And on another level the story needs to ask a question and then answer it. With detective stories thats usually whodunnit, with action stories... can be more of a revenge thing, how will they stop him? But with Highlander, the good episodes, it was always that *plus* a moral question. What price a promise? How long can an old code of honour be applicable to new situations? *That* level of question was what kept me watching.
On Buffy, or Supernatural, the monster of the week is a metaphor or representation of an emotion. What parents do to mess up their children, how loneliness changes kids, the responsibilities kids are left with that adults don't see. Vampires can be read as rapists, as the monster of sexual violence, and the Slayer is women fighting back. There's lots of other ways to read it, but you can read into it in layers. The story has a theme, and the monster supports that theme. There are layers, where the obvious 'fight the bad thing' layer is on top of a 'explore the issues around the badness of the thing' layer and the 'what does this say about our heroes' layer.
Raven maybe, possibly, has stuff going on in layers. We've got a guy newly introduced to Immortality, who decides that killing people is the right response. You can say that same thing about the good guy and the bad guy, so you've got an interesting parallel. With the assassin guy who got himself killed to keep the secret, that would be a contrast between him and Amanda. So the bad guys reveal stuff about the good guys. But I had to think about it real hard. And I'm about as sure of it as I usually am about reading meaning into clothes on Buffy.
There are some stories where things happen and more things happen and people win and thats the whole story. But that isn't what I'm looking for and calling a story any more. Needs plot, character, relationships, moral dilemmas, layers, themes, metaphor. All of that, all mixed together in the right ratios, to make a good story.
On one level they work fine - they're the right length, without resorting to musical interludes. They have the regular characters in. They have a bad guy to chase and talk to and challenge and kill. So the story goes bad guy does bad thing, good guys chase, good guys kill. Perfectly serviceable plot.
But the plot isn't adequate as a story. Because that's just the bones, the framework. The meat, the interesting parts, that is all characters. Emotions, reactions, who they are and who they become, how they think and how their lives change how they think.
And on another level the story needs to ask a question and then answer it. With detective stories thats usually whodunnit, with action stories... can be more of a revenge thing, how will they stop him? But with Highlander, the good episodes, it was always that *plus* a moral question. What price a promise? How long can an old code of honour be applicable to new situations? *That* level of question was what kept me watching.
On Buffy, or Supernatural, the monster of the week is a metaphor or representation of an emotion. What parents do to mess up their children, how loneliness changes kids, the responsibilities kids are left with that adults don't see. Vampires can be read as rapists, as the monster of sexual violence, and the Slayer is women fighting back. There's lots of other ways to read it, but you can read into it in layers. The story has a theme, and the monster supports that theme. There are layers, where the obvious 'fight the bad thing' layer is on top of a 'explore the issues around the badness of the thing' layer and the 'what does this say about our heroes' layer.
Raven maybe, possibly, has stuff going on in layers. We've got a guy newly introduced to Immortality, who decides that killing people is the right response. You can say that same thing about the good guy and the bad guy, so you've got an interesting parallel. With the assassin guy who got himself killed to keep the secret, that would be a contrast between him and Amanda. So the bad guys reveal stuff about the good guys. But I had to think about it real hard. And I'm about as sure of it as I usually am about reading meaning into clothes on Buffy.
There are some stories where things happen and more things happen and people win and thats the whole story. But that isn't what I'm looking for and calling a story any more. Needs plot, character, relationships, moral dilemmas, layers, themes, metaphor. All of that, all mixed together in the right ratios, to make a good story.