Incidental Bits 2 - The Comebacks

[Labster]

OOC: A little something that I think belongs in our Writers' Guide. Assuming we ever put together a formal Writers' Guide.

But there is a limit, I tend to think, to the degree of dramatic tension which can be extracted from explosions. One bang after all is pretty much like another. But one human being is not.

Barry Morse, discussing Space: 1999 at Fanderson 82, October 1982

Barry Morse offers some harsh, but in my opinion very well deserved criticism on his show.  You can tell how hard he is trying to add personality to his character with the script that he's been given.  This bit reminded me of something else:

We hadn't succeeded, in my view, in creating the sort of quality of dramatic material, which the concept of the series deserved. It was my feeling, and these are just my opinions of course, that we had the possibility of creating not only the best science fiction series that there had ever been, but potentially if we examine everything that was potent in the format, we have the possibility of creating the greatest, or one of the greatest, dramatic series of any kind that there had ever been.

This is where fanfiction comes in.

I've for some time considered that one of the hallmarks of geeky media fandom is being tolerant of and even intrigued by the flaws of their particular favorite genre. Like… there are good kung fu movies. But it takes a fan to trawl through the middling ones, or to dig through the drek and go, "Yes, it's bad, but… this one scene." Anyone might go to the best sci-fi blockbusters, but the fans dig into the less-popular ones and go, "Actually, I think I like this one better, it's less technically-proficient but it has more heart." We're attracted to quirkiness. I think there's a lot in common there with the concept of wabi-sabi.

Flawed shows with promise enable you to create things from it more easily. Utena fanfics, for example, are almost always AUs or backstory or a quick vignette because there's just no room to insert your own take into it as it stands, whereas the original SM anime has lots of issues but infinite room to mix, meld, and dig into it.

That was from this thread.  The cracks in Lyrical Nanoha are what lets the light in.  And I have no doubt that if we tried, we could write better characterization for Space: 1999 than anything in the original series.