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"Brainstorm"
Rating: PG Several years ago a friend of mine who’s a screenwriter asked me out to dinner. His stated purpose was business. He knew that I was an avid reader of science fiction and an occasional admirer of well-done televised sci-fi. He didn’t, of course, understand the difference… but then, few people do. Despite the fact that he’d called me into his august presence to “brainstorm”, as he put it, he monopolized the conversation, as usual. He was working on a screenplay that he’d already pitched and sold to a production company that shall remain nameless. He’d decided to go with a tried and true formula that had worked for them before, and he wanted my input to “change it up a bit”. When I questioned him further, he gave me the details. The series would take place on a space ship of some sort. The primary characters would consist of a maverick captain who thought with either his gut or his gonads… he hadn’t decided which…, a miracle working engineer with an accent, a beautiful young female communications officer, an eccentric ship’s physician, and a coolly logical alien first officer. At that point I asked him if he thought that the viewers might possibly recognize the derivative nature of the series and get bored with it too quickly. He ridiculed the idea, giving the opinion that “television viewers aren’t nearly as smart as they think they are.” I shut up after that and just let him talk. Eventually, he finished his spiel and gave me an expectant look. I chewed on my lip for a minute and then ventured a suggestion. “You could make the series character driven,” I said. “Give the viewers relationships and drama. Let the characters grow as individuals over time instead of remaining cardboard cutouts, unchanged by the events that transpire.” My friend did a spit take with his glass of Chianti and laughed in my face. “That’s a soap opera, not sci-fi,” he chortled. “Sci-fi is always plot driven. The viewers want action… explosions and gadgets and fancy makeup. No one wants to watch character driven sci-fi!” And that, as they say, was that. I watched his series for a season or two. It was everything he said it would be. I heard rumors about declining ratings, though, and pretty soon he was on the phone again, asking me to meet him at that same restaurant. I knew it was futile, but he was paying and the food was good, so I went. “I don’t understand what I’m doing wrong. This has worked before. It should work now!” he protested over his plate of penne pasta and chicken, with marinara sauce and without cheese. He was on a diet. “Maybe the viewers want more relationships and fewer explosions,” I told him. He ignored me. He was chewing. Then his face brightened. “Sex! I’ll give ‘em sex!” He grinned at me, forked another hunk of red-dripping chicken into his mouth and began chewing. “You’re a genius, my friend… a frickin’ genius!” When I tried to explain that sex wasn’t precisely what I had meant, he waved his fork at me and started spouting poetic about the physical attributes of the two actors whose characters he planned to place in a completely gratuitous and contrived physical relationship strictly to increase his ratings. They apparently were two extremely attractive young people. I hadn’t really noticed before, having been expending all of my energies trying to make sense of the plot. After our second brainstorming session I had no choice but to notice, though, as the episodes subsequent to our meeting featured multiple opportunities for the viewers to appreciate the physical attributes of said young people in various states of undress. The scenes were titillating, to be sure, but didn’t achieve the ratings increase my friend was looking for. Finally, he called me again. “They’re canceling it. I’ve got to do something to ‘go out with a bang’!” he told me in desperation. I agreed to meet with him for the third and final time. He wasn’t on a diet this time. He had the porterhouse steak with a baked potato, fully dressed. “The execs are calling my work boring and derivative. I’ll never get another series again unless I can come up with something original!” he told me with his mouth full. I eyed him over my cup of coffee. I had no delusions left. The man would never listen to me, but I gave it a try anyway. “Respect the characters you’ve created. Give them a believable future… one that’s consistent with the personalities you’ve created for them. The fans will give you their support and will look for your work,” I said. His eyes had glassed over at the word ’future’, though. I don’t think he heard a word I said. “I’ll link it to the rest of the franchise,” he said to himself with a look of self-satisfaction. “That’s the key… the future.” He smiled and took a gulp of his wine. Then he speared a hunk of steak with a fork and started waving it in my face. “And I’ll kill off a major character permanently. No one’s done that before! It’s perfect!” No amount of argument from me would budge him. He was firm in his resolve, so I gave up. The last I’d heard, some woman had taken a pot shot at him at a science fiction convention in Cleveland… or maybe it was Tulsa. I don’t remember. Fortunately, she missed. He’s decided to focus his attention on westerns now. He says that sci-fi fans take themselves too seriously. And so it goes. End |
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