Buffy, STrek, other Whole Worlds - How important is the logic/continuity to you?

Cafe Society
21

OK, it wasn’t on my mind when I started the other thread, but the “no breath” thing has been a serious bug up my ass ever since I saw “Prophecy Girl” for the first time. Angel, who less than a minute earlier had been panting heavily after the big rush to save Buffy, tells Xander that he has to be the one to do CPR on Buffy because “I have no breath.” Hell, you’re freaking talking, aren’t you, and doesn’t that require air movingj over the larynx? And in “Lover’s Walk”, when Angel is trying to get Joyce to invite him into the house so he can stop her from giving Spike the little marshmallows, Spike says, “Not while I breathe. Well, actually, I don’t breathe”.Spike freaking *** SMOKES*** for Joss’s sake. Now there’s an activity that requires absolutely no movement of air into and out of the lungs. If anything, I think a vampire would be a better candidate to give someone mouth-to-mouth (drooly Spike thought) because they don’t actually use the oxygen, so there would be more available to the one being resecutated.

Oh, and pepperlandgirl, never really noticed it, I just figure he clutched his head with whatever hand was free. Actually, in quite a few episodes, he uses both hands. I really don’t think it’s an issue. Maybe since he got his soul back, the pain has become more of a right-brain thing.

I did notice that Spike seems less bothered by chip induced pain. Maybe he regards it as part of his karmic punishment, so he’s more willing to take it.

22

Yes, I want continuity. I love to nitpick. I live for the nitpicks. If the writers did their jobs and researched their characters, I’d just be forced to nitpick at a smaller level. Right now, I could run a wrecking ball right through some of the plot holes and inconsistencies without ever hitting anything. That’s how big they are.

Take George R.R. Martin’s fantasy series A song of Ice and Fire. While it’s a wonderful series on plot alone, the characters are meticulously detailed. Martin doesn’t forget a word said, an action taken, or a detail about their history. It’s wonderful not just for the richness, but also because he doesn’t take the intelligence down a level and say “remember when this and this happened? Well, to summarize…” He expects the reader to be able to follow along and we do.

The West Wing is pretty much the same way. You can count on continuity (for the most part) from week to week. When VP Holmes declined a friendly invitation from the President to have a beer, it took me until a few hours later to even realize that the reason he declined was because it had been established previously that he was a recovering alcoholic. It was such a minor, insignificant part of the story and yet it showed that Sorkin pays attention to the details and earns the audience’s trust that things won’t just change unexpectantly from week to week.

Now, you can say “but Martin wrote all his own books and Sorkin writes every episode of the West Wing. What about all these other shows where different writers write a different script every week?” Makes no difference, I say.
Your JOB as a writer is to write it well and if that requires research into the history of the show, so be it. “But someone else created X” doesn’t cut it as an excuse. It’s part of the story even if that’s not how you’d like it.

But the writers aren’t the only ones on the hook here. If the actors cared at all about the characters they played, they’d tell the writers and directors “look, you clearly established last year that I’m XXXX and have XXXX as a habit. I wouldn’t be doing what you’re having me do here.”

That it makes it to the television screen tells me that NO ONE along the way caught such a basic character oversight or, even worse, no one cared. If that’s the case, why should I?

23

This thread has made me realize that continuity is more important to me than I realized - particularly Tars Tarkas’ comment about ST:DS9. That was the recent ST spin-off I enjoyed the most, even though I probably found the characters and plots of ST:TNG a bit more enjoyable.

What is really important to me is not so much character continuity - it doesn’t bother me if suddenly a good character becomes eeeviiiil. What irritates me to no end is the “since when can they do that?” kind of discontinuity. Georgi LaForge’s discovery of new scientific principles every other week was annoying as hell.

To put it into the Buffyverse, I don’t care whether vampires can breathe or not (though I like catching such discontinuities), but I’d stop watching the show if Buffy suddenly sprouted gills so she could save Dawn from a watery grave.

Sua

24

First, a quick digression: there are at least three different types of “continuity.” In ascending order of importance, there’s continuity of cinematography, continuity of setting, and continuity of story. Continuity of cinematography is little stuff, like when a character is holding her drink in one hand in one shot and the other hand in the next. Incidental, mostly meaningless stuff. Continuity of setting covers background details or rules specific to the created world. The Prime Directive, the nature of a soul, and how fast Hyperspace is are all covered by continuity of setting. Lastly, continuity of story concerns things like character development, story arcs, and consistency of plot within individual episodes. Star Trek gets the most grief for violating continuity of setting, and mostly ignoring continuity of story. Buffy is best loved for the attention it pays to continuity of story, and does pretty good with continuity of setting. Probably Babylon 5 had the best continuity of setting, as far as television goes. Most television shows have really good continuity of cinematography, because it’s mostly a technical thing, and good technicians are easier to find than good writers.

Continuity, of any kind, is far from the most important aspect of a TV show for me; character trumps everything else, everytime. If a series (or film, or book, or play, or whathaveyou) doesn’t have interesting or compelling characters, it doesn’t matter what else they do have. They’ve already lost me. Plot and acting are also both more important than continuity. However, that doesn’t mean you can ignore it. Good continuity is what makes the difference between a show I’ll watch if it happens to be on, and a show I go out of my way to make sure I catch every new episode.

When it comes to arguing over continuity, I love it. It gives a discussion some focus beyond, “I like Buffy!”, “Hey, I like Buffy too!” Even when the show’s creator clearly doesn’t give a crap (Hellooooo Rick Berman!), I enjoy trying to paper over the glaring plot holes. And in that spirit:

About the breathing vampires: Spike’s line, “Not while I breathe. Well, actually, I don’t breathe.” works fine for me, because while he can breathe when he wants to, he doesn’t do it all the time. So “not while I still breathe” as an oath doesn’t work for him, because (unlike humans) he can stop breathing whenever he wants.

Angel’s “I have no breath,” is more annoying, and clearly a major gaffe, but I’ve gained some comfort from the idea that Angel actually knew very well that he could have performed CPR, but got Xander to do it instead because Angel was all conflicted and angsty about his burgeoning feelings towards Buffy. Either that, or he’s an ignorant, superstious doofus from the 18th century who doesn’t understand a damned thing about basic human biology.

Legomancer, Faith wasn’t necessarily killing vampires before she became a Slayer. She became a Slayer the moment Kendra died right at the end of season two. She shows up on Buffy three episodes into the next season. That gives her three to four months of slaying before she’s introduced. Plus, it was established earlier (with Kendra, if not before that) that there is some method of predicting what girls are likely to become Slayers, and that they are sought out at a young age and trained against the day that they might be Chosen. It’s not a stretch to assume that some of that training might be in the field, especially given the headstrong nature of the sort of girls who end up becoming Slayers. What I always wondered was, what do they do with the girls who are trained but never Chosen? Do they become Watchers? Council operatives? Are they sacrificed to some sort of tweed demon that dwells beneath Watcher HQ?

Finally, as to the effects of electro-shock on vampires, I know enough about electricity to know that I don’t know enough about electricity to say if what happened on last week’s Angel is a major continuity break or not. Lightnin’ girl might run at a different voltage, or wattage, or whatever, than your standard store-bought taser. The kiss bothered me more, as it seemed badly out of character for him, especially seeing as he was in the middle of a quest to find his latest One True Love. Sure, it was all very poetic and symbolic: the pretty girl starts his heart and he gets all passionate, except that A) Angel has been plenty passionate without a soul, let alone without a heartbeat, and B) the heart has nothing to do with passion; it’s just a pump.

25

Tweed demon?

Could this be what TETDITB is?

26

Well, first of all, I recognize that any given show is produced by human beings who might get ideas that they like better than the initial stuff they put out. So typically anything from a show’s first season isn’t even worth thinking about when it’s contradicted later. :slight_smile:

There are two things that I demand consistancy in at all times: actions have consequences and characters that lack stupidity as a character trait don’t act stupid to provide a conflict in the story. So I guess that’s a kind of continuity and logic that I demand and without it I’m not going to watch the show; if the creators can’t care enough to do that much right then I’m not watching. When the Enterprise can take actions that should logically start an interstellar war without the entire bridge crew being hauled off by starfleet (or whatever authorities exist) then I’m giving up.

Seconary to that because it gets on my nerves is continuity within a movie/episode/book/issue/whatever. Different directors and writers can have different takes on a subject; it’s okay for them to disagree. However, when the episode (to keep this on the level of a television series) cannot maintain an internal consistancy with itself it demonstrates a lack of craftsmanship in the creators of it. If they can’t care enough to maintain consistancy on that level where there shouldn’t be any trouble at all then I don’t care enough to watch.

27

Thea

What she says is that the demons who walk the earth are “tainted, or demon/human hybrids like vampires.” So no real breakdown of which demons are “tainted” and which other than vampires are hybrid species (as opposed to individual hybrids like Doyle and artificial hybrids like Adam and Cordelia).

28

WordMan, now that I’ve vented on the “no breath” thing, I’m going to answer your question.

Yes, I do have a “fudge factor”. I’m willing to accept that plot and continuity holes might have to be wallpapered over. How well I demand this to be done depends. On a more SF oriented show, they better have a damn good explanation, but on a fantasy show like Buffy, where the supernatural is such a major factor, thus allowing more ways around rules that in a SF show would be more hard and fast, I would accept a flimsier explanation, up to and including *pepperlandgirl’s statement that the CoW doesn’t know as much about demons as it thinks it does, or, alternately, it knows a lot more (especially in relation to vampires) than it’s letting on, and is withholding information that it doesn’t feel the Slayer “needs to know”. So, in a case like that, I would accept that “well, I guess what we thought we knew was wrong” would work for me.

I do not allow much room for logic flaws, though, outside of the fact that most sentient beings are emotional creatures, and therefore do not always behave logically or rationally.

BTW, did I mention that the fact that a thread I started inspired you to start another thread makes me feel warm and fuzzy inside? Second time in the past coupla days I’ve gotten warm fuzzies in CS. :slight_smile:

29

Yep - I figured we all do - the question is how narrow or broad it is - I think your distinction between hard SF and Fantasy makes sense…

Yeah - getting a solid name-check within the SDMB can be a very cool thing. It’s good - the thread you posted made me think, and this thread has gone interesting places, too…

30

Ok, I want to break from the Buffy/SF discussion for a moment and point out an error I saw in a show the other day. ( gotta flex those TV watching muscles every now and then :wink: ). I was watching an old episode of “That 70’s Show” (remember, this is a thread about continuity, not my taste in television).

It was an episode from the first season and the setting was a party at Donna’s house when her parents were away and she mentions something about looking after her little sister. I think “Wtf? She doesn’t have a sister does she?” I had thought they might be doing like a Vera or Marris thing and have a character that they talk about but never see. But then, a few minutes later the little sister is on screen with a speaking role! (Fez was hitting on her…)

Then, for the rest of the series, the little sister is never mentioned again. In fact, I’m pretty sure that it is said outright at some later point that Donna doesn’t have any siblings.

I thought this was a pretty big error for a show. I can understand and forgive minor continuity issues, but a whole character disappearing? That’s pretty big!

31

um, well, it was the ‘70’, and Donna’s parents seem pretty flaky…

32

I’m a soap opera fan.
That pretty much explains my feelings about continuity. I just don’t notice it at all. I fall into the “character and plot” are everything camp. Which is not to say I don’t find it very amusing to read Star Trek or West Wing threads in which the details are teased out (at least the first two or three pages of those threads, and then my eyes start to glaze over). But if Phlox says in this week’s episode that he has five children, and in next week’s he only has three, I’m not going to care. I’m probably not even going to remember.

The only time a continuity error will really bug me is if the particular point (or more likely the particular relationship) is one in which I had a special interest. But then my reaction will be more like, “damn, I liked his old girlfriend – she must have disappeared between episodes,” rather than “this show is completely ruined for me because he had a girlfriend in the last episode and now she’s gone.”

Sometimes I’m amused when a particular bit of continuity is injected into a show, but most of the time I don’t even notice unless it’s pointed out to me online. This is particularly true of The West Wing, where I have enough trouble keeping up with the dialogue that’s determining the current action to waste any time worrying about whether it’s consistent with what happened last week.

33

  1. Continuity is more important when attention is drawn to it. Less important when writers are trying to make other points (as in Dr. Who or Alice in Wonderland). If a “hard” science-fiction author goofs on basic things like gravity, then the reader has got to wonder what else is on shaky ground.

  2. Continuity is always important if it doesn’t contribute, or worse – interferes – with the effect of the story. Unfortunately for writers, what’s obvious to a small group of readers will be totally missed by most everyone else. So that leaves them in a difficult spot.

There’s a book on forensics (for writers). It is graphic, vivid and awful about crime, criminals and detection. (Description of cutting someone’s scalp off to examine head injuries, anyone?) If that’s what it takes to be logical and realistic, forget it.

  1. Pointing out discrepancies doesn’t please other people who aren’t looking for them, or are looking for them elsewhere. On the other hand, if something is so flawed it can’t be enjoyed, it seems like any discerning person would ask themselves “Why didn’t I enjoy that?”
34

One rule I personally have about continuity is that the damage done by a continuity breach is greatly lessened if the characcters themselves notice it, even if they are unable to find an explanation. For example, in the Buffyverse, the rule is that vampires cannot enter your home uninvited. Yet in a season 2 episode of AtS, Angel does just that…he breaks into Kate’s home to stop her suicide attempt. Later in the episode, she opines to Angel that a higher power must be watching out for her. Angel asks her why, and she points out that she never invited him in.

When a continuity breach happens, and the characters don’t notice it, though…that’s something I really hate.

35

Like in Bewitched, Bothered, and Bewildered in Buffy S2 when Angel reaches through the window, gets his body half way into the house, and pulls Xander out. I know he had his invite rescinded, so uh, what’s up with that?

36

She didn’t rescind the invitation until the next episode, “Passions”. Of course, it was abysmally stupid to wait that long…

37

Really? Holy hell, it never occured to me that she waited that long!

38

OK, pepperlandgirl, I’ve got one for you.

In “Passions”, Buffy actually has to use a *spell *to disinvite Angel from her house. In S5, I think it’s the ep immediately following the one when Riley takes a powder, Buffy orders Spike to “Stay away from me, stay away from my house, and stay away from my family!” or words to that effect, and hey, presto, invisible vamp barrier for Spike.

Continuity break, or comment on the character of Spike?

(personally, I vote for the latter)

39

I’m exactly the opposite. I was a soap opera fan, I finally broke the addiction, but I know at any second I could slide back in. And there I noticed everything, and made jokes about it, and laughed. But I noticed when the 10 year old went away to camp, came back as an 18 year old, and had a torrid affair with his/her grandparent’s ex spouse. But it didn’t stop me from watching because disappearing and reappearing spouses and children, radical age changes, total history re-writes, etc. are acceptable for soap operas.

Now, I generally notice continuity errors, the question is how much they bug me. Little ones, I just take joy in pointing out - but it doesn’t detract from the story (West Wing has a few of those, but they’re not glaring.) Big Glaring Errors will make me turn the show off. In most sci-fi fantasy, if last week you told me that X was impossible, and now you’re doing it, I need an explanation. Not one that I come up with myself, but one that the writers say deliberately - so I know they’re aware of the problem. Otherwise, it appears to me that they don’t bother watching or reading their own show, so why should I?

Don’t you see Willow coming down the steps? I think I remember seeing something that implied she learned not to wait so long and just cast the damn spell. (Or maybe I made it up in my head.)

40

Yeah, I always assumed Willow and Tara cast the spell while Buffy was tied up in his crypt. Afterall, she went there to explain to him that he never has a chance ever…