Flash Forward.

Ugh... Thanks to the glory of on demand Television for the internet I have been able to keep up with Flash Forward. The latest in the US stable of painfully plot-less, over blown and long winded mystery shows. Please shoot me now. Like Lost, Heroes and 2003's Battlestar I am left with a deep feeling of despair at every plot development.

The forgotten ancestor of this "new" trend of sweeping arc plots and adult mystery is, believe it or not, Babylon 5.



I adore B5 and still think it's one of the best shows ever made and as a work of fiction belongs along side Asimov's Foundation Books and J.R.R. Tolken's work. There are reviews all over the internet of Babylon 5, trying to remind people just how epic this show was. It's scale was galactic, spanning more than a thousand years. Vast war's where giants would stride across the stars, and personal battles with addiction. All this took place on and around a single Space station over five years. With a small set cast we came to know and love.

Babylon 5 worked for two reasons. They are simple and missed by all these new up and comers. The first is that EVERY mystery had an answer and that answer not only made sense but had been written and decided before the question was asked and the bred crumbs made. There are no plot holes, no solutions pulled out of thin air. Everything was carefully structured and put together carefully in an intricate web. You don't get that these days, often even when you do get an answer that makes a lick of sense it doesn't fit with what we already know. Then they pull out the "Oh it's sci-fi, it's not supposed to make sense" card. Just because it says "what if" doesn't mean you can out right ignore common sense and reality. It's called suspension of disbelief, not down right killing it and then dancing an Irish jig on it's corpse to Scottish bagpipes playing Waltzing Matilda!

The second part was characters. You got the impression you were watching people. They had highs and lows, friendships were forged and tested. They had flaws, hopes, dreams, pasts and loves. You felt sorry for them, feared for them. You watched them develop from who they were into who they became.

This spate of shows recently don't have characters, just a random mash of personalities. There are so many of these half formed identities running around. You can't relate to any of them and only remember a handful of names. You don't get lines or acting like this:-


That comes from the character, not the story line. That's how you write drama. Babylon 5 has a lot to answer for, it still over shadows everything that comes after it. Like Doctor Who in British Sci-fi or Star Wars.

In summery Lost makes NO SENSE WHATSOEVER. The mystery can never be explained to anyone's full satisfaction. From this we learn that we should have a sensible answer to a mystery before writing it.
Heroes has such a large cast they can't develop any of them and flitter about like the editor has ATD. From this we learn to write for charicters and connect with your audience.
Battlestar Galactica pulled plot developments out of it's arse. Never explaining plot holes and going out of it's way to introduce more. Ending the series by throwing everything on Deux ex Machina. No seriously they just said a God like creature arranged the whole thing and pissed off down the pub. What we learnt from this was stretching out a plot line artificially and not having the time to finish it is extremely annoying and alienates the Audience.

Flash Forward seems to have learnt none of this and is treading the same path all the others have.

This is a dark time for TV, soap opera story lines and pointless, aimless, stories that develop nothing. I'm so glad I can watch DVDs and Cartoons...