While I don’t generally watch television (do you watch it as often as you used to?) I must admit being quite keen on Heroes. We’re well passed the opening series and in some ways it’s an established show but there is much that feels experimental about it too, and not the sort of toeing-the-line experiemental that a producer might be hoping for but more of the sort of learning what everyone else knows experimental stuff. In short, despite my hopes for the show, I often find myself disappointed with the plot, the characters and the overall feel of the programme.

I suppose I should first explain my hopes. Production technology has certainly reached the stage where Heroes and other similar shows can incorporate regularly and efficently effects which were once the reserve of medium to large budget feature films. The everyday use of supernatural powers being a staple of the Heroes diet makes it an excellent programme to produce today in an environment where the impossible can be made to appear reasonably plausible to a tight schedule. Think about the classic six million dollar man and some of the things they had to resort to to convey speed and power and then think about some of the effect deployed in Heroes.

All of these possibilities led me to believe, perhaps erroneously, that the effects would take a back seat and the drama and plot would shine through, even against such a ridiculous premise. Certainly for much of the properly maligned series two, this wasn’t the case.

The plot arcs are just too complex to be enjoyable. Contrast the goings on in Heroes with the Simpsons. Perhaps two extremes of the plot salad bar. At one end you have a show where every episode is entirely self contained. At the end of your thirty minutes all of the characters are returned to their original status and made ready for essentially any other episode to follow. The weather is the same, the characters don’t age or improve their circumstances. It’s the perfect sandbox for writers who can explore an idea and its permutations at their leisure in a controlled environment. Many of the most popular television series use a similar model. Think about Star Trek, they just kept on boldy going and did so until not enough people wanted to boldy go with them.

At the other end of our illustratory salad bar you have shows like 24, Prison Break and Heroes. While each episode is largely self-sufficient, and those that aren’t form explicitly linked pairs or triplets of story, there is a progressive story arc. Each episode develops the overall story and the characters who feature in an episode are changed by that episode to a lesser or greater extent. For example, if Homer gets shot he will heal completely in time for the next show, if you shot a character in Heroes then they’ll carry a scar for the rest of the season. Let me be straight, I think that’s a mistake!

There are several reasons for my opinion. First, continuity in a fictional universe is hard going. There are whole communities out there dedicated to identifying and publishing continuity errors and illogical decisions. Think about the head in the box in Prison Break… That wasn’t so much an error as a massive inconvenience when audience surveys revealed that practically everyone wanted that character back! You could also think about 24 where working within the constraints of the show just isn’t feasible all of the time. What sort of president calls eight cabinet meetings in one 24 hour period?

A second reason is that the lack of a sandbox environment really makes it hard on the writers. If you have one writer, like Babylon 5 did then the multi-season story arc works really well. After all, one person has the whole thing mapped out from start to finish and that makes keeping things coherent much more straightforward. At least they should do. If the writers or Heroes know where the story is going then they really aren’t doing the best job of showing it. Think about Voyager, a solid example of how to progress without ever making any progress, while the episodes are sometimes bizarre all of the characters have a clearly defined purpose and role which best of all is achievable and yet entirely beyond their grasp. The ship is so far away from home that progress as much as they want, home stays firmly out of reach. In short, Voyager managed to make ongoing progress part of the sandbox model and is a successful example of a multi-series story arc which delivered progress and development in a very stable plot environment.

Finally the characters. While I appreciate a bit of character development I think that it’s a bit too epic for a TV show. The regrettably late Robert Jordan’s The Wheel of Time consumed eleven large books to convey Rand’s development as a person. Even then you could argue convincingly that the series constitutes an investigation into his character, through his associations and experiences over an extended period rather than his personal development. The characters in Heroes are so changing and dynamic that it is hard to associate with them, to identify with them. When you do, they change on a whim and you are left longing for the consistency of Bart or the recalcitrance of House’s dislike for the world.

Despite all of this you can bet your bottom dollar I’ll be watching the next episode. After all, they might get it right this time.

Word of the Day: Abacist
- adjective

1 – A person using an abacus

Representatives from the radical international organisation Tfos Orcim who normally refute utterly and automatically any claim made by their counterparts at Elppa, the conservative monopolistic data giant, stand today shoulder to shoulder, like brothers of unestablished parentage, against the embryo of a common enemy, for there can be no doubt that the fourth of these dates is no present cause for concern, but perhaps represents a shadow of policy to follow. Evets Workless of ELppa, raised from the sick bed to do verbal battle said this morning, “The free sharing, deliberate or reckless, with or without malice aforethought, of any and all data, no matter how carefully obtained, accurate or inaccurate, and however personal is the absolute right of every American and every citizen of the free world. This careful manipulation of the facts by the oppressive regime now in power in the Tyrannic States of Europe is a clear example of why the people of the free world must stand together against responsibility, against privacy, and ultimately against public accountability!”

He continued, while in a breathtaking display of approbation his counterpart nods and smiles.

“Failure to prevent the adoption of so-called ‘responsible data use’ will lead to personal details being kept that way. Will lead to greater trust of politicians, will lead to reductions in crime, improve the profits of data sharing organisati and identity theft, will improve citizens’ relations with systems of government and ultimately undermine and perhaps, though I cannot for a moment believe it would happen, dilapidate and destroy our system of government, Anarchy.”

Despite their emphatic delivery Mr Workless comments may have fallen on deaf ears; only two hundred people were in attendance at his press conference in Sand Hill, Gambia while the TSE press release has been viewed more than three hundred million times and over a million hard copies purchased through the Nile.com internet shopping portal.

This is a GDMNW news bulletin by Gareth Newton-Williams, GDMNW, Alternative News.