Discuss - Ep #0765

[MagnusTrask]

I am a huge fan of continuity and honestly get really bothered when it's not utilized.

Excellent.  I'm now off to get the club t-shirts printed up.

[Pansity]

Continuity and worldbuilding.  Can't have one without the other.  (and Magnus, put me on the list for the virtual t shirts. )

I adore worldbuilding, Magnus,  but then it's part and parcel of decent historical fiction or Science Fiction.  If the author doesn't see the world they're writing about, how can they structure a work so the audience does.  For all the "what are they thinking?!" moments we keep hitting in 1897, the main structure is a complete self contained world and the audience buys it as such. What I also like is how they use throwaways to use people's knowledge of the real world history (or the literature they're stealing from) to create the self contained world.

Jeannie

[MagnusTrask]

The great thing about the "throwaways" (though VW et al probably liked those bits especially as we do) is that they expand the world and story out beyond the claustrophobic confines of these limited 22-minute episodes.   In a way they do what people are doing when they put up a huge mirror on the wall in some bar or restaurant or even an apartment.   They're creating the illusion of there being twice the space that there really is.

It may seem silly to do that in an apartment because it's not real, but in fiction it's all unreal, so that extra space is just as 'real' and good and valuable as the space you started with.   You're squeezing every bit of story that you can out of what you're writing, by getting the viewer to help.

How dare new people come along and try to ditch the previous worldbuilding on a show and start over.... however they may use words such as "reimagining" for it, I think part of it is that the new people in charge can't be bothered to learn the show's history, and buy in to the popular idea that only "geeks" care about that.   By the way, the same attitude gets in the way of kids learning in school.   god forbid they be accused of being geeks....!

[Pansity]

Another wonderul post, Magnus. Loved the analogy of a mirror making a space look bigger to storytelling with external references and throwaways making the STORY look bigger.

That made me think of one thing that I consistantly forget to mention: the LACK of a throwaway about Jack the Ripper once the werewolf starts marauding.  Here's this creature killing women messily and bloodily.  The Ripper was active only 9 years before, in 1888, which would be something all the adult characters would remember hearing about. (Well, maybe not Judith, depending on whether Edward was one of those Victorian males who didn't believe that womenfolk should read newspapers.)  They really could have played with that for plot purposes, and the extra intensity it would give to the horror the attacks were causing   -- but apparently it got forgotten.

Jeannie

[Lydia]

I think DS did fairly well with continuity.

I give Dark Shadows about a C-, and when I consider the glaring discrepancies between 1967 and 1795, and between 1970 and 1840, I think I'm being generous.  On the whole, I'd say that Dark Shadows has enough continuity so that I don't give up on it in despair, but is sufficiently lacking in continuity so that I still find it interesting.

Joan Bennett cracks me up when she screams.  It's quite funny because it almost seems as if she is a bit embarrassed too.

Bennett did Grade A screams in 1795, when[spoiler]Naomi saw Barnabas biting Millicent.[/spoiler]Maybe she just couldn't get worked up over little Alex Stevens having a bad hair day.

I liked Beth's line to Judith when they were talking in the drawing room: "Would you like some more tea?"  Desperately trying to steer the conversation away from dangerous depths and towards polite chit-chat.

The closing credits showed (besides the afghan previously noted by Pansity, toted over from the Old House where it was last seen covering, and then not covering, Jamison) a light fixture with three lightbulbs on the floor, and I'm sure the lightbulbs were lit.  Very strange.