Plots that Go Askew

[The_Snark]

Hancock comes to mind. It started out as a comedy(?) about a bad-tempered superhero who's always screwing up and causing collateral damage, and then halfway through the movie it veers off into... a tragic love story with angels or immortals or something? I don't quite recall the details, but it was definitely not what the trailers had advertised. It was... odd.

You’d be surprised.

I’ve known several people that had nothing but praise for those shows. They thought they were the best written and planned out shows ever. NOTHING could have persuaded them otherwise, despite mountains of evidence the support claims to the contrary. Their rebuttal was that I was an idiot. *sigh*

If they had simply said something like, “I like it despite it’s flaws.” It wouldn’t bother me so much.

I liked that show despite its flaws. And it definitely does have them. Like you say, they were more or less making each season up as they went; plot elements and characters from earlier seasons sometimes got shunted off to the side, the writing varied in quality (though that's true of every TV show), some characters kept reliving the same arc over and over, and the Cylons totally didn't have a plan.

I think it helped that I watched the show well after it aired; I'd already heard all the complaints about how the show started out great and went downhill at the epilogue/final episode/last season/middle of the third season/right after the pilot. (Okay, maybe I'm exaggerating about that last one, but not the rest.) So I was pleasantly surprised to find myself enjoying it, more or less, all the way to the end. I sort of liked the blend of hard sci-fi and weird mysticism, though I know the latter bothers a lot of people. The finale had some plot holes and some off moments, but also some excellent scenes, so it averaged out to a pretty decent capstone in my mind.

And I'd basically accepted that there wasn't going to be a brilliant ending twist. They'd built up all these unanswered questions, and there was no way the answers was going to be as interesting as the mystery had been. (I haven't seen Lost, but from what I hear it suffered from the same issue.)

And worst of all, the starship battles weren't even any good and that - from me - is the single most damning thing I could ever say.

See, this is why I'm really glad they stopped focusing on the space dogfights: they got old quickly. I liked that they started delving into the day-to-day life and concerns of the refugee fleet: supply and logistics, civil rights and unrest, and of course dealing with all the issues you get when you stuff a bunch of traumatized people into tiny metal boxes drifting through space and force them to live like that for years on end while their race is slowly hunted to extinction.

It's not to everyone's taste, I'll grant you, but if all you want is cool CGI space battles there are plenty of movies and shows that do this, and not very many that take BSG's particular approach.

[Soras Teva Gee]

Heck, the 1980s starship battles were pretty rubbish by modern standards, but at least I could see what was going on. And they had crappy 1980s computer displays and not models on a fragging table like it was World War II. (That was the point I abandoned my attempts to watch it, because there is no reason, no circumstances, no matter how contrived, no justifications or what have you, nothing excuses the writers and world builders and whoever from being that frag-damn STUPID.)

Here I thought that when that started it wasn't going to be all ranting about shakey cam.

Anyways the little models make better then perfect sense to me. One the humans don't believe in networking very much for good reason. So where the hell is a computer display going to get its data. Second it can't break down and can be maintained by like one guy as a secondary duty. Third for what is essentially a vanity for the viewer anyways little models are more visually interesting and timeless then drawing blips on a screen or scribbles on a map.

Also I have the exact opposite opinion of 1980s BSG. Battles? Try starship battle, singular. Even the best SW era effects get old when you only have five of them for the entire series. And characters and stories, yeesh almost as cheesy as Star Trek TOS but at the same time not nearly cheesy enough. And while rebelled against their masters IS ridiculously overdone if one must have robots then at least its better then For Teh Evulz because you've already... rebelled and killed your lizard masters.

80s BSG has its fun to be sure but I threw that toaster in the junk-heap 15 minutes into the real series.

[Aotrs Commander]

See, this is why I'm really glad they stopped focusing on the space dogfights: they got old quickly. I liked that they started delving into the day-to-day life and concerns of the refugee fleet: supply and logistics, civil rights and unrest, and of course dealing with all the issues you get when you stuff a bunch of traumatized people into tiny metal boxes drifting through space and force them to live like that for years on end while their race is slowly hunted to extinction.

It's not to everyone's taste, I'll grant you, but if all you want is cool CGI space battles there are plenty of movies and shows that do this, and not very many that take BSG's particular approach.

Actually, there really aren't; and certainly not since sci-fi shows have fallen out of popularity with the movie companises and networks; even less that do it well.

But at the end of the day, I have never been interested in stories about "the human condition" (sic); especially when they go into "edgy" and "gritty" as I inevitable find them to be simultaneously tiresome and monumentally unrealistic.

Here I thought that when that started it wasn't going to be all ranting about shakey cam.

Shaky cam is dreadful invention that does nothing but subtract from the viewing experience and needs to unilaterally go die in a fire, but that's not really a topic for this thread.

Anyways the little models make better then perfect sense to me. One the humans don't believe in networking very much for good reason. So where the hell is a computer display going to get its data. Second it can't break down and can be maintained by like one guy as a secondary duty. Third for what is essentially a vanity for the viewer anyways little models are more visually interesting and timeless then drawing blips on a screen or scribbles on a map.

And I think it is still utterly indefensible - for one thing, it an extension of, and is as indefensible, as the whole "technology is teh evuls" philosphy (which as I understand it, ended up as the theme in the last - apparently, from what I've been told, rather lower quality seasons), which has been so done to to death so much it's more Undead than I am. It was a moribund concept when it was first done and time has not improved it. All it does is cause me to say, "wait, hang on, without technology, there would be no medical technology, medicines or hygiene" then remember that there are places in the world without such things, and convince me the writer has never actually seen the news, or a film clip or something from them.

"The robots are rebelling", while not nearly as damning, is also the single most over-used cliche in al of sci-fi (even freaking Mass Effect uses it, for crying ot loud; but that at least had the decency to do it well.) I tend to find it at worst, frankly humanocentric arrogance when it boils down to just technologicals and humans in isolation, or at best a poor approximation of dealing with discrimination and marginalisation (and if I want that, I'll read X-Men.)

Also I have the exact opposite opinion of 1980s BSG. Battles? Try starship battle, singular. Even the best SW era effects get old when you only have five of them for the entire series. And characters and stories, yeesh almost as cheesy as Star Trek TOS but at the same time not nearly cheesy enough. And while rebelled against their masters IS ridiculously overdone if one must have robots then at least its better then For Teh Evulz because you've already... rebelled and killed your lizard masters.

80s BSG has its fun to be sure but I threw that toaster in the junk-heap 15 minutes into the real series.

My impression of the show are biased, I'll grant you, since aside from the movie and one or two epsiodes, I remember little of it; but I've never bothered to go look it up on DVD, which should tell you something. No, it probably wasn't very good when viewed as not a child, and not a patch on more modern sci-fi (or for that matter the original Star Trek or Buck Rogers - the latter of which was camp enough to hilarious in an Adam West Batman kind of way (not that TOS wasn't camp as well, just microscopically less).)

But anyway, I've said all I can say about BSG (as I can't claim to have watched it, as I say; normally I try and give a show one or two episodes before judging it, but I just couldn't force myself even to watch to the end of an episode I caught half-way through during "exciting bit"), so I'll shall be quiet on that subject now.



I'll also take black and white morality over dreary grey any day of the week, at least nowadays where the latter is held as being "better." Perhaps much of my ire is due to the cantankerousness of age, but I'm growing increasingly tired of modern media's inability to create anything with a positive spin (My Little Pony excepted), and I find myself increasingly drawn to older stuff like Lensman or Biggles (despite the sometimes astonishing level of unthinking sexism and/or racism that was acceptable in the times, which I view a bit tongue in cheek), because at least they're FUN. I watch/read/play media to be entertained, not to be philosphised/preached at, and as I've said before, I am not remotely entertained by people being miserable. Imperilled, yes, but the two are entirely not related, something that a lot of modern writers seem to have forgotten.

So, to bring this rant to relevance, I guess I can say I think there is a general tendancy to many plots these days which has gone askew; drama for the sake of drama, as opposed to when necessary. The comic industry is particularly bad for this, as is TV and a lot of the movies. (The fact that movies are now almost entirely derivative of something else that has gone before is a topic for another time.)



You know, I honestly thought people were going to take more umbridge with me saying starships were more important than characters in my last post! I had a rant about how you can tell stories without characters (at least, with a definition of "character" as more than "thing the story is about", so perhaps it would be better to say "without characterisation") and everything. I don't know whether I should be pleased or put-out...!

[Weezer]

@ Nu BSG Never managed to even watch one episode. The original - a childhood favourite of mine - was too deeply ingrained, I didn't like the "no aliens" thing (I liked the alien Cylons). The entire concept of humans and Cylons and *yawn* "mankind has wrought teh evils with technology" and whatnot completely put me off. I consider the original BSG to a good framing device for some shooting and most importanly, some fighter combat. I do not want philosphy or social commentary (etc etc) ruining the pure sanctity of my starship combat, thank you; not now, not ever. Starships are by far the most important thing that can be included in any story; far more so than characters, if push really comes to shove and yes I am being completely serious for once.

And worst of all, the starship battles weren't even any good and that - from me - is the single most damning thing I could ever say.

Heck, the 1980s starship battles were pretty rubbish by modern standards, but at least I could see what was going on. And they had crappy 1980s computer displays and not models on a fragging table like it was World War II. (That was the point I abandoned my attempts to watch it, because there is no reason, no circumstances, no matter how contrived, no justifications or what have you, nothing excuses the writers and world builders and whoever from being that frag-damn STUPID.)

Actually, there is a lot more in common between old and new BSG than the first few episodes of either would indicate, just finished watching old-BSG a few weeks ago and I was surprised at some similarities. Both incorporate religious stuff, with old-BSG going so far as to explicitely encounter a Devil-analogue and the corresponding Angel-analogues (who, like the ones in new-BSG, can only be seen by some people), there was the whole 'disappearing Starbuck' thing, conflict between the military and civilian governments, conflict between the Pegasus and Galactica, the list goes on. The original also delves in some grey morality and contemporary political commentary when they arrive at Earth and find what is obviously a cold war analogue that had been going on so long that both sides were fighting just because one was "East" and the other was "West", a bit heavy handed, yes. A lot of this stuff was only dealt with in one or two episodes in the old show where the new one would've had a drawn out story arch, but that's due to differences in length and how TV shows have changed in the past 40+ years. It's actually impressive the depth that the original went to, and very obvious why it became a classic.

[Aotrs Commander]

Actually, there is a lot more in common between old and new BSG than the first few episodes of either would indicate, just finished watching old-BSG a few weeks ago and I was surprised at some similarities. Both incorporate religious stuff, with old-BSG going so far as to explicitely encounter a Devil-analogue and the corresponding Angel-analogues (who, like the ones in new-BSG, can only be seen by some people), there was the whole 'disappearing Starbuck' thing, conflict between the military and civilian governments, conflict between the Pegasus and Galactica, the list goes on. The original also delves in some grey morality and contemporary political commentary when they arrive at Earth and find what is obviously a cold war analogue that had been going on so long that both sides were fighting just because one was "East" and the other was "West", a bit heavy handed, yes. A lot of this stuff was only dealt with in one or two episodes in the old show where the new one would've had a drawn out story arch, but that's due to differences in length and how TV shows have changed in the past 40+ years. It's actually impressive the depth that the original went to, and very obvious why it became a classic.

I shall take your word for it. As I say, I remember little about the original save that was in the movie, and that was portrayed in the two early novels I have and that one episode where the Galactica was really badly on fire. I was, after all, fairly young at the time, and nuances would have passed me by (watching B5 again for the first time sine it's came out last year was informative, as I realised how much subtext I'd missed, and I was in my mid-late teens at the time, so by no means oblivious). Especially since my appreciation of characters and plots as it stands is a relatively new thing; in those days, my interests was only in the vehicle (combat).

I suspect that my biggest issue with new BSG was that I found it literally and figuratively unwatchable - the fact it delved into a subject matter I also dislike (which to be fair I have only gathered from hearsay) merely puts me off further.

I also suspect, though, even if some of the themes were present in the old series, I would have found more them paletable in small doses (doubly so if sandwiched between starship battles - I'll put up with a significant amount of anything, even general crappiness, if there's a big starship battle involved at the end...)

...

...

Yeah, I think I also just need to say one last thing, and you probably could surmise this must be coming, so I apologise for treading territory that new BSG fans must had heard time and time again, so I'll do this as fast as I can:*metaphoical deep breath* theykilledJollyFaceisnotagirlandneitherisBoomerand he'snotaCylon! *gasp*

Sorry, sorry...! I...just needed to get that off my chest... I'll be quiet now...

New BSG did ONE thing right, though; no crappy Boxey and his frag-awful robodog. (Well, I don't know about the former, in truth, but I'm pretty sure the latter didn't exist.)

Frag, I hated those tiresome child characters even as a child myself. They can go along with Scott Trakker and T-Bob (and maybe Snarf and Slimer) and go... to a really bad place as politeness prevents me from describing their fate in detail. (Chip and Spike Witwickey were only microscopically less bad because at least they weren't actually children, and before long weren't very central to the plot, though still more or less unecessary...)

[Avilan the Grey]

And you sure did not get the feel that Conan was a 'barbarian'. He should have done much more 'hulk smash' type stuff

Which is absolutely and totally wrong. Conan, unlike the stereotypical barbarian, is very intelligent, extremely crafty, and equally sneaky as he is brutal.

[Velaryon]

Not me personaly but when my mum first watched From Dusk Till Dawn she thought it was a kidnapping movie for the first half because she didn't know anything about it before hand. Then all of a sudden the vampires showed up and she wondered if she was watching the same movie. She loved it but still found it wierd.

That's how I felt about it. From Dusk Til Dawn had the makings of a pretty great kidnapping film, then it takes a sudden turn into the bizarre halfway through the film. The final product was alright I guess, but honestly if you dumped the whole vampire thing and just extended the original plotline I think it would have been a better movie.

That wasn't the worst part in my opinion.

The worst part was Connor.

Sweet pony princessess how I hated that kid.

The only good thing about Connor was that he provided a nice excuse for Darla to be around before he was born. But yeah, once he actually showed up, he pretty much ruined the show until they got rid of him.

[bloodtide]

Which is absolutely and totally wrong. Conan, unlike the stereotypical barbarian, is very intelligent, extremely crafty, and equally sneaky as he is brutal.

My point was more that Hollywood would never make a very intelligent, extremely crafty, and equally sneaky as he is brutal type Conan. Hollywood can never go buy-the-book. They will always feel the must 'change' a character. After all just look at every single character based on something. Some guy in Hollywood said 'oh, we need to change this and that.

So accepting that, I would have at least liked to have seen an intelligent, crafty hulk smash type Conan. And I would have loved more brutality, but then they could not have it pg-13 and try and get all the kid money.

[The_Snark]

But at the end of the day, I have never been interested in stories about "the human condition" (sic); especially when they go into "edgy" and "gritty" as I inevitable find them to be simultaneously tiresome and monumentally unrealistic.

*shrug* Like I said, not to everyone's taste. I get bored when people focus too much on the laser guns and rocket ships. Different strokes for different folks, y'know?

And I think it is still utterly indefensible - for one thing, it an extension of, and is as indefensible, as the whole "technology is teh evuls" philosphy (which as I understand it, ended up as the theme in the last - apparently, from what I've been told, rather lower quality seasons), which has been so done to to death so much it's more Undead than I am. It was a moribund concept when it was first done and time has not improved it. All it does is cause me to say, "wait, hang on, without technology, there would be no medical technology, medicines or hygiene" then remember that there are places in the world without such things, and convince me the writer has never actually seen the news, or a film clip or something from them.

I never thought the show was trying to preach the evils of technology. I feel like people who interpret it that way are missing the real point, which is Be Nice To Your Robots. Sometimes it's subtle, sometimes it's blunt, but it's pretty clear that the Cylons only rose up because they were, you know, enslaved; some of the human characters in the show may blame the evil robots for everything, but the writers generally undermine them. The Cylons are shown to be very human over the course of the show—which doesn't necessarily make them good, because humans are perfectly capable of doing horrible things, and from an AI storytelling perspective you could criticize it as unimaginative (why are robots exactly like humans again?)... But the point is, it's a standard-issue cycle of violence thing, not a claim that Robots Are Intrinsically Evil And Will Always Rebel.

There's one plot point in the finale that could be interpreted as saying technology=bad, but I'm pretty sure that it was included for a different reason, and it's promptly followed by the most ham-handed Be Nice To Your Robots moment in the whole series (bleh).

There are plenty of valid reasons to criticize the show, but I don't think this is one of them.

That's how I felt about it. From Dusk Til Dawn had the makings of a pretty great kidnapping film, then it takes a sudden turn into the bizarre halfway through the film. The final product was alright I guess, but honestly if you dumped the whole vampire thing and just extended the original plotline I think it would have been a better movie.

Reminds me of The Forgotten. My friends and I rented that movie thinking it was a psychological thriller; the main character is a woman in mourning for her deceased son, who's told that she never had a son, that she is in fact delusional. And of course she resists the idea, but as the film goes on and she can't find any evidence (outside of her memories) that he existed, she starts wondering whether she really is crazy... Then a bunch of sinister-looking MIB-types show up, and it turns out that her son a) definitely existed, b) isn't dead, and c) was kidnapped by aliens. Who want to remove him from existence because... because... you know, I don't think the movie ever answered that question? A plot summary I found on the Internet informs me it was all an experiment to see if the emotional bond between parent and child could be broken, but apparently there's no motive beyond "because we can."

It was disappointing. It could have been a good psychological drama; it could have even pulled off the alien angle, cliche as that is, if the aliens and their government conspiracy minions hadn't been so pointless and generic and incompetent.

[pffh]

My point was more that Hollywood would never make a very intelligent, extremely crafty, and equally sneaky as he is brutal type Conan. Hollywood can never go buy-the-book. They will always feel the must 'change' a character. After all just look at every single character based on something. Some guy in Hollywood said 'oh, we need to change this and that.

So accepting that, I would have at least liked to have seen an intelligent, crafty hulk smash type Conan. And I would have loved more brutality, but then they could not have it pg-13 and try and get all the kid money.

But they did. Have you even seen the old Conan movies?

[pita]

Not me personaly but when my mum first watched From Dusk Till Dawn she thought it was a kidnapping movie for the first half because she didn't know anything about it before hand. Then all of a sudden the vampires showed up and she wondered if she was watching the same movie. She loved it but still found it wierd.

A friend of mine described From Dusk Till Dawn as "Rodriguez proves he has a really good movie in him until he gets bored."

[Kjata]

I think the anime No. 6 is a good example. I'm gpoing to spoil it, because it isn't worth watching.

So the story begins in a fairly distopian future. Everyone is happy, or else. This kid takes care of an injured kid wandering around, who was a fugitive. The kid loses a lot of his rights, and ends up being a park keeper instead of going to college. There is also this girl, who is am implied love interest.

The kid finds a dried up husk of a dead body, and a bee flies out of its neck. Apparently, this is a government conspiracy, because the kid is thrown out of the city into a shanty town outside of giant walls. There he meets the fugitive.

So, they discuss figuring out what the bees are, but instead end up developing a homsexual relationship. Eventually, the girl is in trouble, so they go to save her. But it turns out, she is the Goddess of Bees reincarnated into a prison host, and she can only be freed by the girl dying. So the fugitive blows the girl up, and the Bee Goddess releases a swarm of killer bees on the city.

There is also this rebellion sub plot involving the kids mom. But the rebels decided to beging their rebellion as the bee Goddess releases her swarm, and they are killed by angry bees. Seriously, the entire rebellion subplot had NO EFFECT whatsoever. They weren't even killed by the governent to show the audience that the government is too powerful, they die as collateral damage with the government to the freaking bees.

So the main kid and the fugitive decide that being butt buddies forever is too happy for the ending of an anime, and part ways. Seriously, the kid isn't pissed that his childhood friend died, he's kinda just like "Well, good luck. Who needs love anyway?"

Seriously, the entire thing seemed like it was leading up to a sweet rebellion, but it got deus ex machina'd to hell, and all the plots had no relevance whatsoever.

[The Glyphstone]

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.ph...sWorseWithBees

[Kato]

Oh my god, yes... No. 6 was.. oh my god... it wasn't a perfect recollection, e.g. Nezumi helped... whatever his name was to leave the city and some other things... but really, it was one of the worst wastes of my time ever... no ides why I watched it all the way through.


To be honest, I think this is something that happens in nine out of ten works, to a bigger or smaller degree... But often enough i can ignore/enjoy it anyway.

[Yora]

As pretty much everyone who played the game agrees: Mass Effect 3.
If you played it, you know exactly at what moment everything goes downhill. Everything pretty much makes sense, is well paced, and fun. And the moment you get hit in the chest by a giant laser from a spaceship, nothing makes any sense anymore. From that point the rest of the game is just random sequence of scenes that fail to mention what happened in between, new characters are introduced, never before seen powers are taken for granted, and some things should be impossible. It's as if the game was written to continue for three more hours, but then someone droped the last section of the game and all they could save from the pile was 15 minutes of content that was just glued together without any system, and they called it a day.

Spoiler

Show

There's actually the theory that the giant laser knocked you out and everything that happened after that was a hallucination while you were burried under a pile of concrete. Because you are also shown under a pile of concrete after blowing up with a space station. Which is in space!

[Kjata]

Oh my god, yes... No. 6 was.. oh my god... it wasn't a perfect recollection, e.g. Nezumi helped... whatever his name was to leave the city and some other things... but really, it was one of the worst wastes of my time ever... no ides why I watched it all the way through.


To be honest, I think this is something that happens in nine out of ten works, to a bigger or smaller degree... But often enough i can ignore/enjoy it anyway.

I watched the whole thing because the first few episodes were really intriguing, then as the plot started to deepen i thought it was cool. I thought it was interesting to have the main character forgo the obvious girlfriend and be gay. It was the last 2 episodes that annoyed me. It was like the people making it set up a really elaborate troll.

I mean, it had the makings of a good series. But instead of exploring the government conspiracy, they went "ARGH BEEEEEEES! HAHAHA!"

[Ozfer]

What about the Robin Hood BBC series? It was great, and funny... But my god, it slowly deteriorated into this beast of poorly thought out story-lines and terrible characters.

It could have been so great :\.

[Jan Mattys]

As pretty much everyone who played the game agrees: Mass Effect 3.
If you played it, you know exactly at what moment everything goes downhill. Everything pretty much makes sense, is well paced, and fun. And the moment you get hit in the chest by a giant laser from a spaceship, nothing makes any sense anymore. From that point the rest of the game is just random sequence of scenes that fail to mention what happened in between, new characters are introduced, never before seen powers are taken for granted, and some things should be impossible. It's as if the game was written to continue for three more hours, but then someone droped the last section of the game and all they could save from the pile was 15 minutes of content that was just glued together without any system, and they called it a day.

Spoiler

Show

There's actually the theory that the giant laser knocked you out and everything that happened after that was a hallucination while you were burried under a pile of concrete. Because you are also shown under a pile of concrete after blowing up with a space station. Which is in space!

It's more of a failed ending than a plot going askew.

Until the very last 4 minutes of a 60 hours long journey, it's just magnificent.

[Ninjadeadbeard]

And Fable. The first game was amazing and had a brilliant plot and my favourite villain ever. The second one starts out good but the ending ............ . Not good at all. You unite the 3 heroes then find out it was all pointless. Then when you come back from the dead and find the boss he dies in one hit then you get kicked out the plot. Cheers for getting rid of Lucian and getting me this tower, now bugger off. Your kid will need me in Fable 3 but I'm done with you.

I...actually didn't mind Fable 2's ending. I thought it was an awfully mature/audacious way to end a game. Your quest for vengeance really was meaningless, because revenge is meaningless. In the end, the object of your hatred was just a sad old man, and yet look at all the bodies you had to step over to get him. But Fable 3's plot? That was unforgivable schlock.

And just to add my own contribution, Dragonball Z. Don't get me wrong, I loved watching it as a kid, and I still watch it if I find it on somewhere. But I lost track somewhere around the point where there were three parallel time-travel plots going, and I still didn't know what was going on until that...pink thing...showed up. But that wasn't the moment I went, “What the heck?” That was when it looked like the whole series was about to end with Gohan vs Buu...and then it just kept going. And going. And going. And going.

[Moofaa]

Like others, I have endless rage at the direction of the BSG series. The pseudo-religous themes, terribly predictable love stories, and hippy-lets-go-green-and-forgoe-evil-technology ending was crappy, boring, and just lazy.

It made me really miss Babylon 5. All BSG had going for it was the all-too-few space battles, tactics, and some of the episodes/scenes on dealing with limited resources and damaged/aging equipment.

I really wish we could get a hard sci-fi series with aliens, space battles, politics, adventure and a nice believable plot with real progression (and not just random episodes where the heroes deal with random incidents in 45 minutes for 15 episodes a season, although some of that is perfectly fine). No "force", no telepaths, no time travel, no gods/demons/ghosts/religion. No rubbing my face in comparisons to "real world" society/politics/climate change to deliver some retarded message or to "make people think".

Firefly was the closest thing I can think of recently to what I want.

Lost was another show with a terrible chance in direction. If they had kept things moving as they had been early on, I would have really enjoyed it.

[Yora]

I really wish we could get a hard sci-fi series with aliens, space battles, politics, adventure and a nice believable plot with real progression (and not just random episodes where the heroes deal with random incidents in 45 minutes for 15 episodes a season, although some of that is perfectly fine). No "force", no telepaths, no time travel, no gods/demons/ghosts/religion. No rubbing my face in comparisons to "real world" society/politics/climate change to deliver some retarded message or to "make people think".

But that requires some actual effort in writing and a plan where the plot goint to.

[Saph]

Have any other sci-fi series tried out the Babylon 5 "plan out the story from the start" model? If not, I wonder why . . .

[Yora]

I assume flexibility. After each season, you can decide what characters to kill of, what new elements to introduce, and so on. On Babylon 5 it worked, because it was written in a way that made every single character replaceable and would provide a logical explaination why the character is gone. Which is a lot of work.
It also is less accesible to new viewers who didn't see the first seasons or don't watch every episode.

Also, I assume it's cheaper to hire screenplay writers only for a couple of episodes instead of having one doing it all.

Yes, it's a tall order, but the reason why I watch so few TV shows. You don't get the same quality in storytelling.

[Axolotl]

Have any other sci-fi series tried out the Babylon 5 "plan out the story from the start" model? If not, I wonder why . . .

Deep Space Nine did it and I've been told the new Battlestar Galactica did it (although I've never seen it).

[Yora]

Though DS9 looks a lot like they decided to drastically change everything at the end of the second season. Until that point there wasn't any plot at all.

But the season 2 finale and the season 3 opener were the best episodes of the show. And the two-parter that is a direct continuation of it (and doesn't even tell you it's a two parter until the end, which again lulls you in a false sense of being a generic mid-season episode), as well as the Fake-Chancelor/Dominion Prison plot where also excelent.
And as I just now notice that all my favorite episodes are two- or three-parters, it appears that they did indeed have a very strong main storyline, just with more single-episode plots between them than B5.

[DigoDragon]

Have any other sci-fi series tried out the Babylon 5 "plan out the story from the start" model? If not, I wonder why . . .

Because only the good writers do that and they cost money?

(I've heard there is a large field of inexperienced writers who do work for nickels on the dollar. If true, it explains the decline of good story telling on TV).

[Weezer]

Another difficulty with planning out full show archs from the very beginning is that you have no way of knowing how long your show will last. Let's say you have a 4 season arch, the show is largely ruined if it's canceled any time before the end of the 4th season or if it's pushed longer than those 4 seasons. It really restricts you in a way that doesn't work well with the unstable nature of TV. The best shows I can think of, though not sci-fi (The Wire, Mad Men, a few others) tended to have largely one season story archs, but multi-season character archs. I think this is a nice middle ground to hit.

[Gnoman]

There's also the insurmountable problem that network executives don't like whole-show story arcs due to the Continuity Lockout problem. This is, in fact, why BSG got so much less coherent in season three. SciFi executives demanded that they make more stand-alone episodes to draw in new viewers.

[Mewtarthio]

tl;dr The American TV system is screwed up.

[Yora]

Another difficulty with planning out full show archs from the very beginning is that you have no way of knowing how long your show will last. Let's say you have a 4 season arch, the show is largely ruined if it's canceled any time before the end of the 4th season or if it's pushed longer than those 4 seasons. It really restricts you in a way that doesn't work well with the unstable nature of TV. The best shows I can think of, though not sci-fi (The Wire, Mad Men, a few others) tended to have largely one season story archs, but multi-season character archs. I think this is a nice middle ground to hit.

And that's why big budget art is bad. If you have something to say or a story to tell, chose a medium that doesn't require hundreds of thousands of dollars.