In Terry Pratchett’s Jingo, Vimes is complaining to Carrot about all the new people in the City Watch he doesn’t recognize. One of them is Reg Shoe, who gets a page and a half of Vimes griping about how he’s a zombie.
Six books later, in Night Watch, it turns out that Reg Shoe participated in a major heartwrenching event in Vimes’s past life (the Glorious Revolution, Ankh-Morpork’s mini-civil war) when Vimes was just a rookie on the force, and that his zombification turns out to be a particularly poignant–and memorable–plot point. Oops?
All right, I’ll concede that. After all, Khan didn’t need to have ever met Chekov to recognize him. He was shown scanning the ship’s library at super-human speed. He could have easily accessed the ship’s manifest and memorized the names and positions of the crew members in order to exploit any weaknesses among the crew in order to gain control of the ship. I still believe, however, that Chekov had no reason to encounter Khan on the Enterprise, and in fact, did not meet him while on board. Chekov, of course, could have become familiar with Khan on being promoted to Enterprise’s security chief and granted access to information on him.
The new biography Considering Doris Day by Tom Santopietro contains a thoughtful overview and analysis of the TV show and its extensive changes. The first season saw Day in a rural environment as a widow with two sons, who’s given up her high-profile journalism job to move back with her father Denver Pyle to give the boys a wholesome childhood. This proved to be a culture shock for viewers used to seeing Day in couture gowns.
“Everyone got the message – and quickly, at that – because by season two, Doris had moved to San Francisco . . . and career gal Doris was back in her natural milieu – the big city.” The boys and father were less often seen, but they were not eliminated.
Season three sent the father back to the farm, but moved Day with sons into an apartment over an Italian restaurant; ethnic comedy ensued.
Season four had the radical change: Doris became an associate magazine editor; sons and father were gone entirely. "This was asking a great deal of loyalty from the viewing audience; it’s as if the producers are saying, “Hey, watch our show for three years but forget any interest you may develop in any of the characters – they’re history.” The author suggests that The Mary Tyler Moore Show’s success may have been the model for this drastic overhaul.
In season five, Day’s apartment building, including the restaurant, has been sold, and she is forced to choose between two suitors, played by Peter Lawford and Patrick O’Neal. (She chooses O’Neal.) There is no big finish; no wedding episode – the series just ends.
I haven’t seen this show since it aired in 1968-1972, but I would love to see them again for Day’s performances and the many wonderful guest stars (Henry Fonda! Kaye Ballard!). A show like that today would be off the air in four episodes, and they wouldn’t give it a chance.
I have no idea how much of a canon violation this is, but I did end up feeling somewhat irked that the prequels proved Obi Wan was not just telling the truth from a certain point of view, but outright LYING.
“Your father wanted you to have this [lightsaber]”, Obi? Really?
“Go to Yoda, the Jedi Master who taught me”. What about poor Jedi Jesus Qui-Gonn?
“He was our last hope”–what, you forgot Padme had twins? You watched them give birth.
I also thought the whole “Oh, yeah, Leia’s your sister, good thing you two never accidentally slept with each other, huh?” revelation was a little out of left field. (Yeah, she kissed Luke to spite Han in the second movie, but still.)
I haven’t seen it since it originally aired either (and I only saw a few episodes). I’m guessing the show’s constant format changes have kept its reruns from being much in demand. I’m not even sure if Nick-at-Night or TV Land have ever aired them. Another reason why you’ve never seen repeats was the show itself was so unmemorable. Even when it was running it seemed to be one of those programs that you stumbled across and were surprised it was still on.
You are right about a program like that not lasting more than four episodes today. Networks were not as quick-with-the-trigger in 1968 and were at least willing to give a show 13 weeks before they pulled the plug. Also, I think CBS had invested a lot of money and hype in getting Doris Day (who was still considered a top box office draw) to do a TV show. This was quite a coup for the network since–outside of few guest shots–A-list movie stars never did TV. If you want to make a contemporary comparison, this would be like seeing Julia Roberts as the lead of a new sitcom this Fall.
In the Carol Burnett skits of Momma’s family, many a male guest star played one of Eunice’s brotehers–Tommy Smothers & Roddy McDowell are two. On “Mama’s Family,” only Vinton is still around.
In the first year of The Nanny, Fran had a sister Nadine and a brother-in-law Barry. They disappeared at some point, not even coming to Fran & Maxwell’s wedding.
This is a prime example of The Trousers of Time. Pterry has it covered. Before Vimes went back, he didn’t know Reg. Then he went back, and now he does. See? Simple, really.
Her mother was dead. She died about the time Rachel was 10 or 11 on her trip backwards. The way her condition works is every day she wakes up, and thinks it’s the corresponding day in her normal aging. So every night, she forgets what happened that day, and wakes up thinking it’s the day she’s (for example) 14 years, 211 days old. She plans to go to school, meet up with her friends afterwards, etc. Her parents, every day, tells her something like “Oh, you’ve been sick, we’re going to take a day off school today.” She enjoys a day with her parents. The next morning, she wakes up, thinking it’s the day she’s 14 years, 210 days old. etc. etc.
After her mother dies, every morning, she wakes up, asks “Where’s mom?” and her father has to tell her “She’s visiting her sister. She’ll be back tomorrow.” It’s heart-wrenching.
And it was never said she’d vanish into nothingness at the moment of her birth. They didn’t know just what would happen, but at the point where she’d come to depend on her umbilical cord again, they assumed she’d die. The even planned to put her in the hibernation freezers on the Consul’s ship if nothing better offerred, but they couldn’t get back to the ship in time, which is why her father gave her to the Shrike. At that point, she was the size of a newborn, had turned purple, slick pasty skin, etc.
I agree though - Hoyt still carrying Dure’s cruciform was a huge mistake. I didn’t buy the ret-conning either by the author - something that important to Dure shouldn’t have been a mistake by an unreliable narrator.
Well, Qui-Gonn is dead and “one with the Force” so he is not going to be much help.
Also, you have to consider it turns out that Obi Wan and Yoda are really trying to manipulate Luke. If Luke had been given the full story he would not have gotten him to do what they needed. Hence, obi Wan spins him a story that makes him a direct victem of the Empire rather than the blood heir to continue it.
They have no idea that Leia is strong in the force. Actually, the line “there is another” is a bit odder.
I’m pretty sure Lucas knew this from the beginning, since otherwise it is odd that the second banana, not the hero, gets the girl. Plus the first bio of Lucas mentions childhood stories which often involve the hero rescuing his sister. I think assuming that the Force kept them apart is fairly reasonable.
Yeah, I have to agree. The passage about the first two books being written by Silenus is, imho, hand-waving by an author who was too far into writing Endymion to start over when he realized his mistake. I mean, the final chapter of Fall of Hyperion has the following lines:
Anyway, with the collapse of the farcaster system (and fatline), the fact is there is no way that Silenus could’ve written much (if any) of Fall of Hyperion with any amount of accuracy. Might as well admit that all of the non-Hyperion sections of the book were completely made up: Meina Gladstone, all that happened to Dure (including his visit to the Worldtree and the Ouster attack), everything that occurred to Keats and Leigh Hunt, etc.
And if you’re going to go that far, might as well state that the entire book was bullshit.
*Silenus, Brawne, the Consul, and Theo Lane.
**Dure was made Pope at the end of FoH. Of course, the Catholic Church was a very small organization at this time, so I don’t have any idea why that particular bit of news would seem worthwhile to broadcast as your civilization is collapsing. It would be like interrupting MSNBC during a market meltdown to report that Larry Davis is now president of the local Rotary Club.
Considering that Dawn was meant to be a parody of the “suddenly appearing younger sibling” syndrome, I think she can be forgiven as a canon violation. Besides, Dawn was never as glaring a canon violation as Spike.
In the pilot episodes, it’s clearly stated - vampires are ethereal demons simply possessing/inhabiting the bodies of deceased humans. They are remorseless, inhuman, irredeemably evil creatures who view living humans as nothing more than ‘happy meals on legs.’ Angel is the ONLY exception, because a tribe of gypsies placed a curse on him so that he would have his soul back.
In season two, Spike arrives. Giles’ records state that this vampire inhabits the body of a particularly violent killer known in his lifetime as ‘William the Bloody.’
Spike becomes a popular character. So he gets added to the cast as a regular. But wait! We can’t have a remorseless, irredeemably evil killer as a regular character. Let’s put a microchip in his brain to make him feel agonizing pain whenever he tries to bite someone. Of course, that takes a lot of the ‘bite’ (sorry, couldn’t resist) out of Spike. He has little to do but utter sarcastic wisecracks - a role which is already covered by Xander.
Actor James Marsden shows more onscreen chemistry with star Sarah Michelle Gellar than the guy playing Buffy’s boyfriend. All of a sudden, Spike has the hots for Buffy. But that’s not enough. Then, Spike is in WUV with Buffy! Awwwwww! Suddenly Spike is getting all gushy and showing his soft side (something that, as a vampire, he shouldn’t have.)
Then, we get the flashback to Spike’s origin story. Turns out, he wasn’t a notoriously evil killer - he was a bad poet, known as “William the Bloody Awful Poet.” Spike just keeps gettin’ cuddlier.
We even get a follow-up flashback episode showing Spike biting ‘his’ mother and feeling distrought when, as her vampiric self, she berates his poetry. Mama has become an unfeeling killing machine with none of the human emotions she exhibited when alive (as per the original canon explanation of vampires), but Spike is horrified by what ‘his’ mother has become. What? So, Spike has ALWAYS secretly been a big sap.
Then Spike sacrifices himself in the final episode of “Buffy” to seal up the Hellmouth. But wait! Spike is a Popular. Character. So, Spike is suddenly alive again and added to the cast of “Angel” - pointlessly - for that show’s next, final season.
Along with Spike comes Harmony - and we learn that Harmony belongs to a whole subculture of vampires who don’t drink human blood (kind of like vegetarianism for vampires.) Angel doesn’t drink human blood because he has his human conscience. Even Spike (who had his soul restored by this point) could reasonably be shown to recoil
Spike wasn’t simply retconned. His character changed virtually episode by episode sometimes.
This is before the storm on the rooftop with Carcer. Vimes was there the first time around, just as young Sam Vimes and not as John Keel. When Vimes and Carcer got sent back, the monks manage to split the timestream into two identical copies–the one Vimes grew up with, and the one where he and Carcer show up–with the caveat that they’ll merge back together in a few days. So if Vimes remembers the Glorious Revolution from his past, he should remember Reg Shoe.
Well, yes, but Vimes is never particularly carefull about letting events play out like he remembered them.
It is quite possible that the original Young Vimes never met/noticed Reg Shoe, but still participated in the revolution, whereas Young Vimes #2 and Old Vimes get to know him the second time around.
That way, when Vimes gets back to the future, he has always known Reg Shoe, whereas before, he didn’t.
Great, upon getting a “timeout error”, a 500 word response that I spent half an hour lovingly crafting just got wiped out when I hit the back button to try to retrieve it, only to find that it had vanished into the ether. [Those who are wondering why I have “guest” under my name now should understand perfectly why.]
Anyway, my overall point was that, given the rules of how vamps work in the Buffyverse, Spike’s tale just couldn’t be capably told there, because the choice of redemption ultimately wasn’t-nay, couldn’t be his, given that vamps have no conscience, no souls, and perhaps even no free-will. In another universe, say perhaps that of Anne Rice (pre-conversion (hers)), Spike’s story could have been compelling. Not in the Buffyverse tho, and certainly not with his fate in the hands of a second-rate hack like Marti Noxon.
The very first thing we learn about Spike is that he can love, and he does, quite well. His entire motive for being in Sunnydale was Drusilla and restoring her health. Killing Buffy was a perk, and even a necessity to get what he wanted, but he didn’t show up in Sunnydale to get a 3rd Slayer notch on his belt. We also know that Spike is a bit impulsive. He kills the Annoying One without hesitation. He ruins his own, very good plan, in favor of attacking the high school. So, he loves. He’s impulsive. He enjoys watching television. He smokes, even though as a vampire he shouldn’t get anything out of it. Already, Spike is different from the vampires we’ve seen on BtVS–especially different from Darla and the Master. And when Angel becomes Angelus, we realize the difference is even starker than we had first assumed. Because not only does Spike harbor real emotions (he loves Dru so much he’ll pass up the opportunity to kill Buffy if it means saving her life) but he likes this world. The other vampires exist to feed off the world, to hurt it, to destroy it, to end it. Like you’d expect evil to do. But not Spike. He likes his “happy meals with legs” and he likes soccer and he likes the Sex Pistols and he likes his car and he loves Drusilla.
In other words, Spike’s defining feature is that he is very much a part of the world and not removed from it by his death. That was canon from the first episode we met him.
The simplistic explanation of demons and vampires, who they are, and what they do was workable in S1, but it evolved and changed on both BtVS and AtS (especially AtS which made it a superior show, imho). In part because of Spike and the depth he brought to the show. But he was always a vampire who was characterized by the need to want to be in the world. Think about when he was at his lowest points–when Drusilla dumped him, when he got the chip, and when Buffy died. The thing those 3 things have in common are that he lost his touchstone to the social circle he had developed for himself. Think about the times we saw him away from Buffy–he played kitten poker, he went out drinking, he had friends. Think about what we did on Angel as a ghost–glommed onto Fred because Fred would let him be around and he was lonely. When he became corporeal, he was susceptible to Lindsay and jealous of Angel because Angel had the thing he didn’t have–he was part of a greater whole. Which is strange to say, because Spike fancied himself such an outsider, but that was just a shield.
I think Spike was the most consistent character. His motives were simple. He wanted to survive. He wanted a good fight. And he wanted to be part of some unit, whether that unit is a relationship with Dru or Buffy, a friendship with Dawn, or an uneasy partnership with Angel–and please note, he turned on Angelus precisely because Angelus cut him out of their “little family.”
I’m not bothering with The Clone Wars, but I have seen some advertising for the series that seems to suggest Anakin Skywalker had been assigned a Padawan. Was he qualified for that? Wasn’t it his resentment over being kept unqualified for it that played a significant role in his being ripe for turning by Palatine?
I’m also not bothering with The Force Unleashed. But Vader having an apprentice strikes me as even more implausible than Anakin.
[AArrgghh! Now I just unintentionally hit a two-key combo which closed the window I was posting in…<beeble beeble beeble> Anyway…]
pepperlandgirl, you certainly provide a plausible rationale for Spike’s growth throughout the series, one I am actually somewhat sympathetic to. But the question remains: why was Spike different from almost all other vampires? Why did he form attachments to certain people and worldly objects, moreso than most others of his kind? What would happen, for example, if someone like Mother Teresa or the Dalai Lama got vamped? Would they turn into amoral killing machines just like most any other vampire? How much of their original personality would linger on and affect them post-vamping? Could the Dalai Lama then spend 1,000 years “getting back” to his former spiritual state, if he truly wished to do so and worked uncompromisingly at it? Or do vampires simply not ever make that choice? Can’t make that choice to begin with, rather. Then why was Spike able to do so?
The problem with Spike remains that he cuts across the grain of what the show had already clearly established, for good or bad. Recall the therapist vamp who basically counseled Buffy one night at the graveyard? After Buffy gets some new perspectives on her life, at the end the vamp announces that he’ll be off in search of fresh blood, and naturally Buffy is obliged to stake him, no doubts or soul-searching or ambiguity. “I’m a vampire, I’m going to kill people indiscriminately if you don’t stop me, so do your worst.” As opposed to, “Hey I have a choice here don’t I? Well it’s better than getting staked at least.”
I can accept a show’s premises on their merits even if they don’t jibe with my own views on the matter. I personally swing towards the likes of Nagarjuna who at best said that souls are like useful fictions, but have no substantial metaphysical weight in the end analysis (thus it is incoherent to “earn” something back you never lost, because you never had it to begin with). But it has to decide which way to go. If Buffy had stumbled across a group of repentant vampires at some point in her adventures, then Spike’s turn towards the Light Side would make more sense (and I seem to remember that happening-vamps in search of redemption-in some other mythos or something-perhaps in one of those Buffy novels). But he is a glaring singular exception to the rule, and I need a bit more to fully buy it.
