Post by Ripley on Apr 22, 2016 17:24:24 GMT -5
Great idea and comparisons with Star Trek, Firefly and Farscape.
"...But Fear isn’t based on a pre-existing storyline, and as such isn’t limited the types of stories it can tell; it is free to function first and foremost as a television show. And as was demonstrated when it set sail for the high seas in the season 2 premiere, that freedom might just be what the series needs to make the transition from slow-paced zombie drama to weekly adventure program that just happens to take place in a zombie-infested world.
Think of how FTWD might become a more engaging show on a week-to-week basis if it embraced the episodic structure of certain sci-fi series like Star Trek (original, TNG, Voyager – take your pick), Firefly, or even Farscape. There’re certainly more comparisons to be made, but you get the point: Toss a handful of characters onto a ship, push the ship out into the unknown, give them a basic plot to circle back to every so often, and you have a recipe for an exciting adventure series that can easily sustain itself because the one fixed location is the characters’ means of entry into every new story – the Enterprise, Serenity, Moya, and now, the Abigail. This particular device is also guaranteed to keep the show moving at a decent clip (something The Walking Dead has struggled with at various points in each of its six seasons). Putting the cast on a boat and having them travel the California coastline (and beyond), encountering survivors and becoming temporarily involved in the plots of those equally transitory characters frees the show from a reliance on lengthy storylines spent repetitively discovering, inhabiting, and losing control of a particular setting (e.g., Hershel’s farm, the prison, Alexandria.
...This works to the series’ benefit in two ways: 1) It gives the characters something to do week in and week out, a little adventure to have and maybe develop from, something that may one day go beyond the normal Walking Dead plot of simply not dying, and 2) it gives those watching the sense that anything could happen. Granted that falls within the relative real-life parameters the series normally works in (aside from, you know, zombies), but as with the core characters’ ability to move from place to place, the most important thing is freedom; and that freedom may very well inspire the writers’ room to explore, to be adventurous, and to take risks they otherwise might not normally take..."
link
"...But Fear isn’t based on a pre-existing storyline, and as such isn’t limited the types of stories it can tell; it is free to function first and foremost as a television show. And as was demonstrated when it set sail for the high seas in the season 2 premiere, that freedom might just be what the series needs to make the transition from slow-paced zombie drama to weekly adventure program that just happens to take place in a zombie-infested world.
Think of how FTWD might become a more engaging show on a week-to-week basis if it embraced the episodic structure of certain sci-fi series like Star Trek (original, TNG, Voyager – take your pick), Firefly, or even Farscape. There’re certainly more comparisons to be made, but you get the point: Toss a handful of characters onto a ship, push the ship out into the unknown, give them a basic plot to circle back to every so often, and you have a recipe for an exciting adventure series that can easily sustain itself because the one fixed location is the characters’ means of entry into every new story – the Enterprise, Serenity, Moya, and now, the Abigail. This particular device is also guaranteed to keep the show moving at a decent clip (something The Walking Dead has struggled with at various points in each of its six seasons). Putting the cast on a boat and having them travel the California coastline (and beyond), encountering survivors and becoming temporarily involved in the plots of those equally transitory characters frees the show from a reliance on lengthy storylines spent repetitively discovering, inhabiting, and losing control of a particular setting (e.g., Hershel’s farm, the prison, Alexandria.
...This works to the series’ benefit in two ways: 1) It gives the characters something to do week in and week out, a little adventure to have and maybe develop from, something that may one day go beyond the normal Walking Dead plot of simply not dying, and 2) it gives those watching the sense that anything could happen. Granted that falls within the relative real-life parameters the series normally works in (aside from, you know, zombies), but as with the core characters’ ability to move from place to place, the most important thing is freedom; and that freedom may very well inspire the writers’ room to explore, to be adventurous, and to take risks they otherwise might not normally take..."
link