Dan said:
I don't really see people complaining about no character development, so that's a strawman. Saying the characters are uninteresting isn't saying there's no development.
Really? Did you read the thread? Plenty of people complained about the lack of character development. Here's some quotes...
NimbusD said:
Yeah there are still better ways to do that then pressing fast forward and throwing character developement (or set up) in the toilet.
Full Recovery said:
That was bad. Far too rushed and with that they missed out on a lot of character development.
Not going to watch this series.
Vyer said:
So far it was 'okay'. Ended on a nice note (except for the 'let's give away some spoilers!' preview) and you can see some potential. But yeah the pacing is bad, they didn't give much of a thought to fleshing out the characters and some of the ones they did work on were a little too generic.
needs work. But it's a pilot, so I'll give it a few episodes to come together.
Freyjadour said:
I'm not so sure a longer premiere would have been the answer, but I definitely think what was shown could have been introduced over several weeks of episodes and given the background and characters more development.
Seems like you missed the complaints about the lack of character development in this very thread.
Lost's Jack wasn't exactly 'developed' in the premiere, but he was interesting. I would argue there's absolutely nothing interesting about Erica, in part because she shows zero interest in the events of the world around her, which is sort of used as an excuse by the show to not develop the outside world at all. It's why I think Father Jack and Chad were the only interesting ones, since they were at least paying attention to the Visitors and thinking about them and how their futures might mix.
I think this is fairly valid even though a lot of the characters in Lost weren't interesting characters at first either. I think this needs to get developed over time, just like Lost did. You can't be interested in all the characters right away because there's not enough time to do that. I agree some of them aren't interesting now, but it's unrealistic to think they all should be interesting now.
It's not like developing the world requires the show to take a less intimate point of view either. Look at Children of Men. It revolves entirely around Clive Owen's character, but we still get to learn the basics of how the world and its population evolved after the universe's major event (the end of human births).
Children of Men is a two hour movie that was designed to have a beginning, middle and an end to the story. The V pilot is 40 minutes long and is a prolog of the story. Hardly a valid or fair comparison.
I also don't think revealing who the Visitors are necessitates rushing through so much plot. It'd be easy to give audiences that tantalizing tidbit without rushing to give not only that but two further twists to the characters.
But really what plot did we rush through. You complain about pacing, but if you drag out all the details, you would bore people and people wouldn't watch the show. The original was a huge hit and did similar things in the span of an hour.
I don't care what the original did or did not do. It's irrelevant. Something stupid doesn't become good just because the source material did it too.
It is pretty relevent because the original was a huge hit, and is fairly well loved. It's such a popular property that they of course are doing a remake of it. So you can't blame them for trying to stick to some of the themes and story points from the original.
People didn't think it was stupid then, and I still say the pacing is fine in the original. Why? Because the story isn't a huge focus all the social political things that happened from first contact and what happened right after. They glossed over it then too. Sure there are social and political commentary and parallels that pop in as it goes but that's well after the stuff that some of you wanted to see.
The show has always been about freedom fighters and the resistance. In fact the opening to the original states this "To the heorism of the Resistance Fighters --past, present, and future-- this work is respectfully dedicated". You're trying to take a show that is about the Resistance and cloud it up with all sorts of stuff before getting to the Resistance. That's not the focus here. They got the the seeds of the Resistance right away so they can focus on them.
What you want would be like taking Battlestar Galactica and having all the stuff that lead to the Cylon attack on Caprica and seeing the aftermath and all the stuff that happened during the attack. That's not the focus. The focus is on the survivors and the Battlestar Galactica and to have all of that would have lost focus and made the show worse.
I didn't say it won't delve into it in the future, but they failed to lay all the groundwork during the time such groundwork would naturally occur.
That sucks but I don't really care. If a show's willingness to pander to impatience and determined what I considered quality television, then I'd be watching CBS procedurals. We all know the first five episodes of Dollhouse were made with good intentions of attracting viewers and whatnot, but they were still almost exclusively the worst episodes the show has produced.
Uh Dollhouse took the slow approach that you wanted and failed and you even said it was boring. Thanks for proving my point.
Then it would have been really nice had the resistance formed in some sensible manner, rather than with a guy spouting crazy talk, some near-meaningless photos that magically confirm everything and suddenly our lead characters are on board. It's just *poof* the characters are in the resistance, which means about as much to me as it does to them: very little.
It's not even really formed yet. Just the seeds have been laid out. There's a lot to go just like in the original of how it just took a few people to start out but the full on Resistance doesn't start until about three hours into the original series which if you take the total run time, that's about 40% into it. There will be plenty to build on as they try to build the resistance in the new series.
At the end of the day, I think the interesting elements of this story would be best served in a longer, more deliberate method than the pilot demonstrates.
The more I write and talk about this show the more I hate it.
The more you're missing the point of the show. It's not about the details of how the world reacts. You just accept that people fall for the lure of what they're offering and only a few people can see what is really going on. That is how the original was, and that's how this is going to be most likely. There's a famous quote that states "The bigger the lie, the more people will believe it" and that certainly is a theme here in both the original and the new series.
Go watch the original if you don't believe what I'm saying. Again the original is well loved and was a huge hit, so you can't blame them for at least taking some of the core concepts and using it here such as the focus being on the resistance and not the overall world view. You want it to be something that it's not and never was going to be but that's not the fault of the show. Not focusing on the Resistance would be like not making the visitors lizards.
