Stargate SG1: 1.12 Fire and Water

 Here's an episode that seems like it would be good on paper.  But when you actually play it out, it ends up being a tremendous amount of wasting time.  For me it was very frustrating because we spent a lot of storytelling capital on watching, and not much on actually figuring things out.

The summary of the story is this:  The SG1 team returns from a off-world mission, without Daniel.  The rest of the team is all convinced that Daniel died in a fire.  We give him a military burial with full honors, have a wake at Jack's house and then start packing up Daniel's stuff.  This would all be great as far as it goes, but this takes fully half of the episode.  No development, no clues, no plot movement of any kind, nothing to generate any tension.  Coming as it does halfway through the first season of this new series, the audience is pretty sure that Daniel isn't really dead. But without any information to the contrary, we are literally biding our time watching the scenes play out, devoid of any tension because if Daniel isn't dead than nothing is at stake.

Meanwhile, on the alien planet, Daniel wakes up to a rubber suited monster straight out of Doctor Who.  And the alien only says one line, "What Fate Omorroca?"  This maddening line is repeated so often that we are thoroughly sick of it long before we move on to any other dialogue.  Because the line is not interesting, then the alien isn't interesting either.  Daniel actually IS interesting, as he deciphers cuniform writing and places it at 2000 BC, though the text itself means nothing and just when we thought we were going to learn something, we realize that the writing is irrelevant.  Again, we throw up our hands in frustration.

So about this time we learn that Omoroca is Rubber man's mate, in Babylon, 4000 years ago. We are as incredulous as Daniel.  This is part of the failing of this episode:  we don't care about Omoroca, her fate, or Rubber Man.  If there was some intriguing reason why we should find out about her, then we would be more deeply engaged with the story.  The subtext is that this is a parallel of Daniel looking for his own lost love, Sha're.  Daniel, and the audience as well, should be sympathetic with this man's plight.  But at this point, it doesn't seem to carry a lot of weight.

The real hero of this episode is Dr Janet.  She is the one that takes the lead, learning of the altered brain chemistry and seeking for deeper clues.  When she comes on the scene, the story begins heading for a resolution.  Finally with less than 10 minutes left in the show we begin the debriefing that should have happened at the beginning.  We begin to discuss lost time, conditioned responses, uncovering secrets through hypnosis.  All the exciting, mystery-revealing scooby-doo type detective work that should have been the meat of the story, crammed into the last 5 minutes.

In the end, we find out that a goauld murdered Omoroca.  That's it.  No greater story, no deeper meaning.  Just evil goauld being evil. This should have been a great story idea, all of the cool elements are present.  But the execution of the story, the writing of the plot, simply wasn't up to the promise of the premise.

Rating:  2.5 Stars. This wasn't a horrible cringe-inducing nightmare.  In the right hands, this could have been an exciting archaeology expedition worthy of Dr. Jones. However, what we got was less than satisfying.  

This is the only episode of Stargate SG-1 directed by Allan Eastman.

 

C:  We're bringing up the fact that it's an ordinary adventure and we could all die at any random planet.  The writers were trying to make that point.  SG1 team doesn't know that they can't die.

This was an opportunity to reveal that there was a great deal of mutual respect between Jack and Daniel.

 

Stargate SG1: The Children of the Gods

 This is a rewatch of the old Sci-fi standard, Stargate SG1.  Originally aired in 1997, Stargate was something of a sleeper.  It came on the downslope of the mighty Star Trek juggernaught, which was firmly in the throes of ST: Deep Space Nine (1993-99) and Voyager (1995-2001).  ST: Enterprise (2001-2005) was still on the horizon for Star Trek fans.  Babylon 5 (1993-98) still had another season to run and it was also up against Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1997-2003) and Farscape (1999-2003).  If you were inclined to watch Sci-Fi TV, you had plenty of options to choose from.

In short, Stargate came out in a field crowded with already powerful science fiction properties and some strong new contenders.  It was building on the groundwork laid by James Spader and Kurt Russell in the movie Stargate (1994) but the film had done very little to create a coherent universe, having traveled to a single planet beyond Earth.  As a result, this new series had to capture the feeling of the movie but build an entirely new world in which to place its adventures.

The show bridged several transitions in the TV storytelling medium.  The first seasons were 4:3 boxes of low resolution and weakly saturated color, for example,  while the later seasons were high-res, richly colored widescreen panoramics.  The most important change, though, was the transition from episodic, status-quo episodes to fully written seasons that are now released all at once.  Traditional TV established a status-quo, a steady state of character and world development to which the story always returned before the end of each episode.  The following episode started out in exactly the same place as the one before it.  That gave shows like ST: The Next Generation a comfortable and familiar feel.  

In the nineties, though, shows like the X-Files and especially Babylon 5 began to write metaplot arcs that were visited throughout each season.  Events in earlier episodes were maintained and developed in later episodes in a way that could substantially change the steady state of the universe. SG1, because it had a significant world-building task, used this technique almost from the beginning to develop long reaching story lines and character arcs.  Characters like Samantha Carter and Teal'c were given time to grow with the seasons, and because we saw their origins, we were more closely identified with their victories.

The very first episode of Stargate SG1 attempts to create a bridge to the prior film.  The first scene shows the stargate activated, the serpent-head guards and the face of Apophis.  But it also introduces Teal'c as the leader of Apophis' soldiers and we get a few revealing touches of his character.  For example, when the Jaffa open fire and the US soldiers return fire, Teal'c had ahold of the female soldier.  Rather than subject her to machine gun fire, Teal'c turns around to shelter her behind his metal armor.  I think this reflects his instinct to protect rather than destroy, and even in the opening scene gives us a glimpse into his future character.  

As an aside, in this scene we see Apophis' party come through the gate and watch it disengage behind him.  Then, despite the fact that the US gate has no dialing device, when we next see the Jaffa, they have managed to redial their own homeworld and escape through it.

I love the way we build the team.  We start with Jack O'Neill and establish a relationship with General Hammond.  Both of them go through the process of putting up an abrasive front that harbors something more heroic and caring underneath.  Jack could have kept his secret and let Hammond send the nuclear bomb through the gate, leaving Daniel to his fate.  Instead, he revealed his duplicity and accepted the consequences.  Similarly, Hammond could have proceeded with the bomb, following his orders.  Instead, he chose to preserve the life of  5,000 people on the other side of the gate as well as that of Daniel Jackson.

Before we get to Daniel, however, we take a scene to introduce Captain Carter.  The writers go out of their way to escalate the tension between Jack and Carter.  Initially, we feel like the conflict is because Samantha is a woman, and O'Neill only respects men.  Carter certainly feels that is the case and this allows the writers to introduce her history as both an accomplished pilot (100 hrs over the Gulf War) and as the premier scientist with knowledge of the stargate.  Jack reveals that he is actually more concerned about her status as a scientist, whom he dismisses as "dweebs."  Carter's aggressive self-defense, though, earns Jack's begrudging respect

It reveals another side of Samantha Carter.  It feels like Carter has continually been in a position where she needs to defend her record and capabilities.  She suggests that she should have been on the initial stargate mission but was passed over, possibly unfairly.  And certainly the sentiment in the conference room reflects her fears.  Carter has plenty of self-confidence.  She knows that she knows more than anyone else in the room. But she's worried that once again she won't be given the credibility she deserves.

Next, we go through the gate and find Daniel.  After our heartwarming reunion, and Stargate does that better than anyone, we move into the next scene that has become a classic SG1 storytelling device.  Daniel has discovered a room with a cartouche that unlocks the mystery of stargate navigation.  The cartouche (which in this case is simply a stone tablet with written information on it) gives thousands of gate addresses, revealing that the stargate isn't simply a doorway between two planets, but an entire network of planets, each with its own gate and gate address.  This is a puzzle that Hammond and O'Neill hadn't fully grasped earlier.  They thought that if Apophis came through the gate, it must be from Skarra's world.  With this new information, which Sam and Daniel work out, the gate becomes a doorway to those thousands of planets.  In this one scene, the writers have clearly defined and expanded the Stargate universe, informing not only the current episode but the entire series.

This type of lore drop, the Cartouche scene, occurs throughout the seasons, and they are sometimes hard to pick up on the first time through.  The writers like to obscure the true impact of the scene by interjecting humor or impatience from Jack, or by elevating the tension in the background.  The writers also like to limit their new-found knowledge by destroying the key artifacts before they can be fully studied.

While the SG team is off looking at the cartouche, tragedy befalls the rest of Skarra's people.  The Jaffa visit the planet and abduct both Skarra and Sha're.  In this brief scene, we have given motivation to Daniel and Jack that pulls them through the next several seasons.

 

Blizzard's World of Warcraft State of the Game

 Bellular What's happened to Wow's Lore?  A breakdown of WHY it feels Alienating.

As usual, Bellular is dealing with the large, open question, "What's going wrong with World of Warcraft currently?"  We all can feel that something is not right, but it's hard to identify exactly what the problem is.  Bellular summarizes it in one word:  Alienating.  The world of Azeroth no longer feels like home to its players.

"The writing team has brought us to a 'technical, cosmic place' that feels alien to some."  Bellular opens with the observation that the game in its current iteration feels alien to some players, particularly to long-term players who have seen the lore develop first hand.  And this alienation happens both on a cosmic level, by which he means the deep lore of the game, and also on a technical level where he feels like the technical storytelling tools that Blizzard still uses are left over from 10 years ago, while the narrative style has changed.

Having laid down that thesis, Bellular shifts to ownership and address the question of who owns the WoW storyline. For him, it isn't as simple as saying that the current WoW writing team can do whatever they like.  Instead, they are merely custodians of lore that has existed long before they came upon the scene.

"From our setting emerges a narrative that we've engaged with for decades.  The people who create the narrative, the writing team, are better described as the custodians of Azeroth. Their mandate should be based on our history together as a community, our love of the setting, and our willingness to pay a subscription every month.

"We saw the slow motion car crash of the story in BFA.  I don't think we fully realized how deeply, how fundamentally the writing team failed at their role as custodian of the lore.  That was until the full madness of patch 9.1 was revealed.

It's beginning to feel like the narrative no longer serves the community that is keeping the setting alive.  Blizzard needs to change for the better."

With this opening paragraph, Bellular throws down three unusual claims.  First, that it is the Community that keeps the game going, and that the writing team has a responsibility to the community.  From this perspective, the writing team are merely caretakers of the WoW setting, not arbitrary masters of it.

Second, Bellular flatly asserts that the writing in BFA was a fundamental failure.  The writing team failed in their responsibility to the community.

Third, the writing team could claim that, "No, we are indeed the masters.  You will play our game."  To which, Bellular would point to falling subscriptions, toxic communication from the community, and migration to other games.  If game directors are confused about how those things came about, Bellular is willing to provide an answer.

"Today, we're going to be putting words to that feeling of alienation that a lot of us are feeling with the lore."

Zovaal

I think Bellular makes two main points about Zovaal, the Jailer, that I'm going to consider out of order.  

For the main issue, the most destructive, Bells lays the problem at the feet of Steve Danuser, lead narrative designer for Warcraft.  He thinks that Steve has overwritten the existing lore trajectory involving the Titans and Sargeras, with new lore that focuses on Zovaal.  All the old lore about Sargeras, the rebel Titan who is behind the Burning Legion, happened in narrative that took place before Danuser became head of story.  Accordingly, Steve appears to have no loyalty to it. On the other hand, Zovaal is a new character that Danuser created and now is inserting as the real prime mover behind everything.

"I think what's worse is that for Steve's crew, to put Zovaal at the pinnacle of death they had to overhaul the lore.

"The villain Sargeras, who we've been invested in since the beginning; this is the guy who people thought the whole lore was building up to.  No, actually the Jailer was deeply connected to him as well.  Sargeras was wearing domination rune armor."  So actually, Sargeras was being controlled by the Jailer all along.  "A re -framing so thorough that perhaps it has obliterated the original lore."

Everything that the players have experienced from the first expansion up through Legion and even beyond has all been changed.  Everything we thought we knew may have to be discarded.  All the details and narrative elements that we experienced first hand will have to be re -evaluated in light of this new character, the Jailer.  For long-term players, this is terribly disorienting.

And this transition is made more difficult by the fact that the players know very little about this new character, having only heard about him for a relatively short time.  This is the second of Bellular's Zovaal problems.

"At any point, interrogate who Zovaal is, and you come up with this void of information.  And we're a year into the expansion."  We're being asked to replace years worth of detailed information about Sargeras and the Titans and their struggle with the Old Gods, all of which defined the WoW universe for us up until about five minutes ago.  And the only thing we have to replace it with is a name and an mystery box of who the Jailer is.

The Lore Feels Bad

"The problem is that the lore feels bad right now.  Everything is so wrapped up in mystery, and what we do hear is told to us in intentionally vague ways, so intentionally vague that even if this is the most stellar lore to have ever existed, it feels half-written and bad for the player experience."

The Jailer is a generic bad guy and Blizzard is propping him up by using the clout of Arthas and Sylvannas, and diminishing them in the process.

The problem is that right at the end of the Shadowlands, we're probably going to be given all of Zovaal's intentions.  It will all culminate in a modern Blizzard shock moment  but it won't be satisfying.  Because we didn't even know who this Zovaal guy was a year ago.

The Jailer has been shoe-horned into the lore by connecting to everything that came before to him, but the Jailer doesn't contribute anything back to the lore in return.  In other words: If you remove the Jailer the lore is unchanged, if you remove the lore the Jailer becomes the hollow shell of the character he truly is.

So this is a point that Bellular returns to several times.  We all know that there is this big book of lore in the Blizzard offices where everything has all been worked out.  But the storytelling style that they have adopted is to reveal only microscopic fragments of this lore to the players.  They are hoping that the players can collectively put this together into a discernible narrative without knowing all the pieces, and by doing so that the narrative will feel deeper than it actually is.  But Bells takes it further and says that even the fragments that we are actually given are intentionally made even more vague, are deliberately obfuscated because they don't want players to figure out what is going on until the writers are ready for them to know.  d

So here's the problem.  Its actually impossible for writers, who know everything in the big book of lore, to know how the players, who don't know, will perceive their story.  The writers can't know if the story is coming across as they intend or not.  And it's very likely that what seems obvious to the writers is completely inscrutable to the average group of players.   Now if there is enough time, say several expansions of lore drops and hints, then the story will eventually emerge.  But if there is only something on the scale of a few patches, maybe half an expansion, and the lore drops are hidden in scripts that are 15 words long, it is doubtful that anything like a satisfying understanding is attainable.

 

Lore Speculation

"We've wondered if Lore Speculation is becoming too dominant. If the narrative is now geared toward this mystery box speculation.  Speculation will always be an incredible part of the Warcraft lore."  But that's all it is, a component of a greater narrative whole.  Speculation was based on background lore.  and it takes its place in the background of a larger narrative.

Now it appears that Speculative lore is all there is, and there is very little foreground narrative.  Speculative lore makes the game feel huge, but it was always grounded in the narrative of the game that we knew.  When speculative narrative is all there is, instead of the game feeling huge, it instead feels empty.  It feels less alive.

Blizzard has taken that speculation energy and made it so mysterious that you cannot even speculate on it any more.  Blizzard writers have become so addicted to speculative mystery boxes that we don't have any information about the next patch, let alone the cosmic trajectory of the next expansion.

Elune

This was a breaking point for many in the community in how it was done.  This is a case of not satisfying everyone, obviously, but does this new Elune stuff stand up?  The current trajectory does make me and many others uneasy.  A huge problem is in how the story is actually being told:

I. Teldrassil was burned and we are explicitly told that Elune kind of abandoned her people in the moment of the burning.  Many of the Night Elves believed as much at the time.

II. Then, we're told in patch 9.1 that Elune at least tried to ferry those souls to Ardenweald in the Shadowlands.  Where now we know they essentially turn into cosmic fertilizer, which is a bit grim.  Elune told the Winter Queen that she sent those souls to the Shadowlands. (Instead of what? allowing them to become wisps and reincarnate? instead of intervening and preventing them from dying in the first place? Its all very vague.)  Elune's suggested goal was to provide Ardenweald with extra anima.

III.  But why did Elune think that would be effective?  Could she ensure that these souls even went to Ardenweald? Could she bypass the Arbiter and show special treatment to these souls?  Well, No.  Those souls went to the Maw and therefore had to pass through the regular sorting process of the Arbiter, which was now switched off.  This means that Elune can't bypass the Arbiter and judgement is the role of the Arbiter.  And Elune didn't have enough influence with the Arbiter to even know that it was switched off.  The rules of Blizzard's lore don't even feel consistent.

If you're a Night Elf player, you're just thinking, "What was all of this misery and destruction even for?  How is the lore of the race in WoW that I connect with the most - how has it been pushed forward? How is it interesting?  I don't really think it is."

Then, the justifications and revelations of Elune are given to us piecemeal in cinematics with 15-word scripts.  And while we love mystery, this feels half-written.  It feels like huge pieces are missing.  Where they could write words that will give people a framework for understanding, they always go in the direction of more mystery. 

This lore could be incredible.  I think this Elune-lore could completely do Elune justice. But we actually need to know it.  We don't know all the information that the WoW writers know.  And I think they don't know how it feels to just get the snippets that they give us.  Enough with the mystery.  Either give us enough to do Elune justice, or put Elune back in the box.

Meta Physics

Lore is only fun when it is surrounding a satisfying story.  Story is the thing that matters the most.  

Much of a good story lies in the telling of that story.  And with video games it is more complex.  World of Warcraft is a game, and interaction is important.  And that is where Warcraft is falling behind.

In WoW, NPCs dispense walls of text at you.  And they are often just OK in the writing department.  Quest text is written by quest designers, whereas in FFXIV the quest text is actually written by writers.  When NPCs speak, it is often talking at you.  Take the Thrall/Drakka conversation in Korthia.  It's nice to see those characters chat, but you are barely involved.  And throughout, there's quite a bit of telling rather than showing.  NPCs tend to deliver blocks of exposition and use phrases like "Maw Walker" and other depersonalizing terms.  We are told we are the maw walker but we didn't actually chose that, so it isn't a core part of our fantasy.  

All these things reinforce the idea that you the players are a plot device, not a character.  I've met Jaina many times. And those times have been at her most vulnerable, her most emotionally charged, at some of the lowest points of her life.  I would appreciate it if she just said, "You" and talked to me directly, rather than call me Maw Walker. These are the core problems:  Othering language that breaks immersion, telling rather than showing, big walls of text, and NPCs talking at you. 

Historically, this was not a problem because we were essentially minor adventurers making our way through lots of small stories, in and around these larger than life heroes.  But over time that has changed.  WoW's story is closer to you being the chosen one.  And this requires a change in story telling techniques.  The older ways do not suffice.

Rather than walls of text,   Blizzard should frame quests as dialogue between the character and the NPC. This necessitates a change in how quests are written.   They're probably going to need this stuff to be handled by writers.  Players should click through NPC dialogue.  And that dialogue should be framed as a conversation with the player, not a wall of text.

RP focused dialogue options should be presented, as they let a player better define their character.  this is a problem for Blizzard.  They would never do this in the past because they would want that dialogue choice to matter in terms of game play. They are all about "Gameplay First!" so  they would want these dialogue choices to lead to complex branching storytelling which is difficult.  But giving someone a dialogue choice is really important, because it lets them define who their character is.  

Most dialogue options in Mass Effect do not matter in terms of narrative outcomes.  Of course they matter to the player experience because that's you, talking through your character, defining your take on who Commander Shepherd is.  If Blizzard wants to tell a story where you are a Character, then they need to update their storytelling tools.  Telling a story that outpaces your means for telling it is a recipe for failure.

"The pacing of narrative arcs is a disaster within World of Warcraft.   Battle for Azeroth rocketed through multiple expansions worth of material, doing justice to none of it. This, by the way, betrays player investment in any of those plot points.  If you were a massive fan of Old God lore, you were not happy at the end of BFA.  If you were a massive fan of Queen Azshara lore, you were not happy at the end of BFA.   And in telling this story, they actually required two novellas, a book, and a bunch of other external material for all of that lore to properly make sense."  What we're saying here is that Blizzard has plenty of narrative material to continue to release in minor patches, but they would rather occupy the players' time with meaningless Korthia daily grinds.  This is what has to change.

WoW's emotes were designed to be viewed at a distance,which is why they are exaggerated.  Stylistically, they are very goofy, and they were conceived during Warlords of Draenor, before in-game cut scenes existed in world of warcraft.  In-game animation assets were designed at an earlier time when character animations were intended to be comic.  With the current reliance on cut scenes using those same animations, WoW has a problem delivering serious storytelling moments.

Sylvannas

Sylvannas has been a low-key community favorite for a long time.  Once the courageous Ranger-General turned Banshee Queen, who literally dragged the Forsaken up from their graves.  She has created one of the most powerful militaries on Azeroth. 

She has left such a profound mark on our setting, but one that now feels poisoned by her casual dismissal of the Horde, in the way that it was presented. And abandonment of Azeroth for the Shadowlands.  But Sylvannas' true reasons for joining the Jailer, and the atrocities that ensued, that's not something we've explored in-game.

But it's a betrayal of her character to be betrayed by death again, to be used by the Jailer again, where her whole arc was recovering from the trauma of Arthas, who essentially ended up being himself a pawn of the jailer.  So she's gone through two of these Serve and Rebel arcs with the Jailer.  Now she contrives world wars to feed some cosmic maw in the afterlife just she she can juice up her boss, Zovaal.  And that's a good-faith reading of the material:  that Sylvannas had her own agency and believed that her own best interests were served with the Jailer.  The worst reading is that she has been in an abusive relationship with the Jailer for a long, long time.

At the end of BFA, we had that scene in Windrunner Spire that had people excited:  is she going to be the next expansion's villain, is she going to strike back, will there be a Lich Queen, What will Sylvannas do?   And then all of that worked up emotion pretty much dissipated.  No, in fact Sylvannas was not sympathetic at all, She was just a servant.  At BlizCon, Blizzard told us that Sylvannas was an Ally of Zovaal, not a servant.  But that was clearly a straight up lie, given the end of patch 9.1 when Zovaal flicked away her wild arrow.  

So we are promised that all these questions will be explained in the upcoming Sylvannas novel.  The main selling point of this non-game novel is that we'll get the full picture of Sylvannas, but we should get all the narrative we need of Sylvannas within the the World of Warcraft video game.  That's the thing people are paying for.  That has been one of the central narratives of WoW for the last two expansions or more.  You shouldn't need to buy supplementary material to properly understand the main story content that is in the game.  This Sylvannas novel just underscores the problems facing our narrative.

We do not know Sylvannas' motivations fully even now, despite the fact that she has betrayed Zovaal.  We don't know her journey to the state of mind that saw her signing up with Zovaal.  Her story has not adequately been explained in-game either, through quest text, cinematics or otherwise.  To get a deeper appreciation, we need to read many external sources.  Her arc has been re-framed and re-framed into oblivion and they haven't dealt with the huge philosophical questions that Sylvannas herself posed to us when she said to us things like she would set us all free.  We still don't really know what that means.  

It has all culminated in a deep feeling of alienation from a character once considered to be core to what Warcraft meant.  There's a question of whether foregrounding her story in BFA would have made this story easier to swallow but this ship has sailed.

Shadowlands

Who are the truly memorable characters of this expansion?  Beside a few solid scenes with Denathrius, there are essentially no memorable characters in Shadowlands. And that includes the cast of characters we brought with us from Azeroth.  Tyrande is frozen into an action by a conflicted Goddess; the whole night warrior arc feels like it's done nothing but tease us about Elune.  We've got Baine Bloodhoof just sitting around in Oribos all day doing nothing.  There's Bolvar who did nothing  and finally got around to invading Korthia but now stands around the Respite doing nothing.

Then we have Anduin, who even within the snail's pace story advancement of the patch cycle these days is making these breakneck character changes, from the peace-loving prince, to the war torn king, to the ultimate tool of domination.  But even in this domination arc, Anduin himself has been a passive force in the story.  I think one of the problems here has been passive characters.

Because the narrative machine is broken, all of these great characters with great motivations and huge narrative potential are just stationed in Oribos, staring into the middle distance, not really doing anything.  What about Thassarian and Koltira Deathweaver?  They're both in Oribos and haven't done anything yet.  People care about those characters.  They actually had cool stories in the past.  Were they ever intended to have content in the shadowlands but it was cut?  Why are they there, but not being used?

 Bellular:  I do believe that Steve Denuser and his narrative team have a full conception of everything that is going on right now, that they know where the plot is going and how it's all going to line up.  I do believe that they have it all mapped out and they probably have some incredible looking cork boards around the Blizzard office.  The problem is that the bits of that grand narrative tapestry that we get are not being served up in a satisfying fashion.  We're currently halfway through that process in Shadowlands, and I think it does feel pretty rough.

I think the community needs to rally around constructive ideas about what it means to go home.  Bring it back to Azeroth.  By all means tell your cosmic stuff, but it needs to be grounded in the setting and it needs to have a very solid, well-told story driving it forward.  Not a bunch of walking mystery boxes vaguely talking at us.

Character Arcs

"A character's want is the surface level goal driving them.  Their need is the lesson they gradually learn over the course of their story."  (A Closer Look)  "That lesson is almost always to learn how misguided their initial want is."

"At the beginning, show how the character is stuck in some way.  The characters are doing something, but it's not a fulfilling existence."

While I would use different vocabulary to approach this concept, the idea itself is perfect.  A character is a narrative element that has motivation that is driving it.  Rey is looking for a place to belong, Rey is looking for a way to unlock the potential inside her that will allow her to do good and therefore justify her belonging.  Rey has to find her own path to realize that potential rather than relying on some outside force.

Where this breaks down, however, is when we have a character with no motivation.  For example:  Ep 7: Fin is running from a life of  brutality and violence. Ep 8: Fin is trying to find a new life with the Resistance that is opposing the violent First Order.  Ep 9: Fin likes to follow Rey around.

You see how in this progression, Fin starts out with a motivation and is successful.  But in the second film, his motivation begins to falter.  By the third story, Fin has no motivation whatsoever, and is merely a presence on screen.

The second vocabulary change is in The Lesson.  Closer's Boseley suggests that the lesson is to learn how misguided the initial want is.  I think about this in terms of a character's Arc.  It's not a straight line, but it is a trajectory, a pathway that takes that person from their initial motivation to a place of resolution.  As suggested, that final resolution may not be what the character initially envisioned.  But in order for an arc to have taken place, the character must resolve the initial tension with which they begin the story.

The Force Awakens - Rey: initial tension:   waiting for someone to return and make her life better but she understands that something is wrong.  Progression:  realizing that the person she's waiting for is not coming back.  Resolution:  Accepting that she can no longer wait on Jakku, and instead will be happier struggling for something larger and better than herself.  Rey follows a classic arc in that she starts with initial tension, undergoes a transition that both brings enlightenment and starts her on a different pathway, finally resolving the tension and placing her in a new and more powerful situation.

Now, how can a character fail?   The obvious possibility is that they fail to undergo any of the elements of a character arc. They are the same at the end as at the beginning.

But the failure can be more subtle as well.  For example, a character seems to have an arc and goes through transition, but ultimately ends up where they started.  Similarly a character describes an arc that doesn't end up resolving the central tension that they started with.  Yes they end up in a different place, but the central tension remains.   

So in Rise of Skywalker, the Emperor offers Rey unlimited power as an inducement to undergo his ritual transformation.  But since Rey has never expressed any interest in unlimited power (unlike Kylo, for example), the audience doesn't see any tension in this offer:   What he's offering is not even a choice for her; it doesn't offer Rey anything that she wants.  To the audience, this seems confusing and not really a test of her character. But if this choice is devoid of tension, then the scene is also devoid of tension.  It's merely spectacle.  It's like the Bond villain gloating over his plan, leaving Rey and the audience feeling powerless. 

In addition, Rey never seems to find the heroic, altruistic place in the galaxy that she seems to be looking for.   Palpatine is defeated, Kylo is lost and Han, Leia and Luke are no more.  She strides away, alone on another desert planet, not much changed from where she began the series.

More subtly, the character appears to change over the course of the story, but the audience doesn't understand why the changes are happening:  the changes appear un-earned.  We see the changes but we don't follow the arc that led the character to their new perspective.  

Scenes.  We've discussed that Characters have arcs where the tension of their unresolved wants are slowly resolved.  Scenes also have a similar trajectory.  Scenes exist so that story elements can take place within them.  We sometimes call these story elements "beats.":  Characters can have beats just as scenes can.  A beat is the important thing that is happening in the scene that  leads the narrative toward its final goal.  Beats are often moments of tension that resolve in a particular direction, and through their resolution create a new framework in which the story takes place.

For example:  in SW: ANH, in the scene where Han and Luke are preparing for the impending arrival of the Death Star, Luke is dismayed that Han is running away from the battle.  The tension in this scene is that Luke has higher expectations for Han's moral character.  The story beat is that Han is simply out for himself and has no allegiance to any greater good or higher calling.  We need to lay down this beat here, so that we can resolve the tension in a later scene where Han returns to the battle to clear Luke for his attack run.

The outer motivation:  the visible goal

The inner journey:   how the character needs to change

Typically a character is caught between these two desires:  the outer, visible, obvious goal, and the inner state of things that is preventing the outer goal from being realized.  They are stuck in this exterior dilemma because of their unwillingness to abandon the safe status quo of their inner state.  this is the Inner Conflict.  Put simply, in order to resolve their outer problem, they need to work through their inner conflict.

Stage 1:  the setup  establishing who the characters are and we see the full realization of the character's inner identity. 

Stage 2:  the opportunity.  this is the chance that the character receives to begin working toward a different state.  Something happens to the character that forces them into Stage 2 is a new situation.  and in stage 2, the primary goal of the character is to figure out what's going on.  In stage 2 the character gets a glimpse of what living in his new inner identity might be like.  He sees a vision of a better world, though he isn't able to grab it yet.  and just as importantly, the audience sees that same vision.

At the end of stage 2, another event happens that drives the character to making a change towards this new vision.  Taking the first steps to achieve it.

Emotion grows out of conflict, so the more difficult the obstacles to overcome, the more invested and more interested the audience will be.   Another example is empathy.  We feel sympathy for the obstacles the character has faced in the past.  Putting a character in jeopardy makes us feel empathy for what a character might face in the future.

Stage 3 is Progress. where the character formulates a plan and starts going after that goal.  They face obstacles, which start to multiply, but they appear to be "making progress" toward the external goal

On the inside, on the inner journey,  the inner state begins to hinder their progress.  They begin to be confronted by the things about the inner state that have always kept them "stuck" in the past.  Contemplating changing the inner state is terrifying, however.  In this stage, the hero will vacillate between changing to a new inner state, and running back to the old one.  They will advance along their inner journey and then retreat, causing problems for the external goal.  Each advance will take them incrementally further.

At some point in this oscillation, the character will progress the internal transition to a point of no return.  Their interior journey will continue to a new state, where they can no longer retreat back to their original status, and they face a crisis.  Something will happen to demand or lead the character to make a deeper commitment to the goal. 

Moments of Dramatic Impasse:   a dramatic moment where two characters are striving against each other but neither can gain the upper hand in the current conflict.  They must find another way to achieve their objective

Moments of Dramatic Synthesis:The moment when characters who were previously at odds find a common goal or common ground, so they are no longer in conflict, at least for the present.  they can move forward together with a better sense of understanding.

Interiority:  the emotional and psychological space that they occupy at the moment.

Spinning Plates:  When the story begins to layer a number of elements of  tension on top of each other.  The danger isn't coming from just one direction, but from multiple threats.  There could be a physical threat, an emotional threat, and a psychological threat.

Out of the Frying Pan...  Escaping one predicament only to land in a greater one.

Stacking the Odds:  Escalating the danger the protagonists are in.

Character Foil:  A character in circumstances similar to the hero, presented with the same moral choices, makes different and less optimal decisions.  Used to demonstrate how badly things could have gone if our hero lacked moral character.

The Ending is Earned:   good payoffs come from good setups.  Action that is foreshadowed, action that is prefigured is always more satisfying.

What's the thing the characters could do at the end of the movie, that they couldn't do at the beginning?

Just because we know the ending does not mean this can't be a good movie, but we have to care about the people.  "We had characters with emotional stakes and different motivations that conflict with each other. What's interesting is having different characters with different motivations that play off each other and show their humanity.  Watching someone go to a place to get a thing that you know they are going to get is not interesting."

A Story.

The simple definition of a story is, a Character is placed in a Setting from which a Conflict emerges which Develops and then Resolves.  The development happens through cycles of tension and resolution.  These cycles are not linear, that is one doesn't follow after another when the first is resolved.  Instead, they can be happening on differing time scales and with differing story elements, often at the same time.

Cycles.

It is these cycles of tension and resolution that draw the audience through the story.  For example, the main character can develop relationships with other characters in the story.  If that other character is the main antagonist, often this tension is the main Conflict.  But the other character could be an ally as well, or a mentor or competitor, among many other possibilities.  

Even if the other character is an ally, there could be any number of sources of tension that make the interaction interesting.  For example, the ally could have a slightly different objective than the protagonist that could eventually express itself.  Or, the ally could have a weakness that everyone has to deal with.  A mentor may have information that affects the protagonist in unexpected ways ("you should become a knight like your father"or "Though you never knew her, your mother was also a grimm"), or a competitor's challenge could drive the protagonist to greater proficiency than they would otherwise achieve.

Cycles can break down, however, leading to failed storytelling.  Typically, a tension that is never resolved leaves an unsettled feeling in the audience that cast a shadow over the entire story.  This can lead to a feeling of dangling loose ends that need to be tied up.  The audience can feel that the resolution of the main story is overshadowed by the unresolved elements.

Arcs

The other engine of the story is the long term arcs.  Unlike the pattern of tension and resolution of cycles, character arcs and story arcs are linear progressions where the fundamental parameters change through the unfolding of the story.  This often happens on the level of the character, where the country girl takes her place in the big city, or the high school loser shifts his focus from his miserable existence to the struggles of others.   It could happen with the setting, where a dystopian isolation gives way to an open world filled with more possibilities, or an oppressive monarchy takes the first steps toward egalitarianism.

Arcs tend to be story-length changes that happen incrementally in a linear pattern, while cycles are more short-term moments of tension that can be resolved without major state changes.  The major challenge with these long term arcs is that they need to be built on a foundation of story elements that support the major state change that these arcs represent.  We refer to these supporting story elements as Justification.  A character that changes abruptly and without justification can seem shallow and the resulting story can feel unearned

Motivations

As we talked about above, each character has a motivation that drives their actions, even if that motivation is nothing more than simply to continue their undisturbed existence.  The motivations can be shaped in a number of ways.  We discussed the outer want and the inner need of the protagonist as long term motivations, but actually

Justification

Cycles are story elements that build Justification.  In a successful story, events are interconnected, with later events supported by previous ones.  When the audience is invited to participate in a story, they begin to piece together the events into chains of cause and effect.  We might think of them as a series of setups and payoffs.  When we step into these character's lives, we begin to understand that their decisions are motivated by their perspective on the world, and that perspective is shaped by what has happened to them previously. The more we see of these events, the more we can understand the character's perspective and therefore their motivation.  This complex interaction between motivation, history, and perspective supports or "provides justification" for their choices and actions.

Even if the audience doesn't agree with the character's choices and actions, the more they understand the motivations and history leading up to them, the more satisfied the audience will be as to the outcome and resolution of the story.  Unsupported actions or unjustified choices violate the most basic social contract of storytelling, that the events the storyteller is relating are all interrelated and necessary to achieve resolution.

Star Wars Sequel Trilogy: a new direction

The Rise of Skywalker was released in December of 2019, a little over six months ago, bringing to a close the first Star Wars trilogy under the patronage of Disney.  Since then, the Star Wars franchise has been relatively silent, while the undercurrent of disappointed fans has continued to churn and shows no sign of abating.  It's time to look at the current state of Star Wars and see where we can go from here.

Disney's financial reality

Two things have happened in the last six months to the Star Wars franchise under Disney management.  The Mandalorian was a modest success with all fans back in November/December of 2019, and the limited final season of Clone Wars was released earlier this year, without controversy but also without particular acclaim.  Neither of these are situated in the Sequel Era, and in fact, nothing of note has come out of Star Wars in the Sequel Trilogy era at all.  No movies on the horizon, no TV shows in production, one book, few toys or collectables.  It's been basically silence.

The second thing is that rumors have begun to circulate that Disney is thinking about stepping back from the Sequel Trilogy because it is too divisive.  Disney is not about being edgy and divisive, and Star Wars is not about being edgy and divisive. For another franchise, this tension might have been a marketing boon, but not for the family-oriented, feel-good Star Wars saga.   And Disney, an entertainment company that requires the audience to fill theaters and amusement parks, has been especially hard hit over the past four months with the covid social distancing rules.  They need to start generating money and do it quickly.

Disney's new streaming service has a whole channel dedicated to Star Wars and the Sequels are featured prominently but, again, there's been nothing new there since a handful of Clone Wars episodes dropped.  Season 2 of Mandalorian is set for the  late Fall and a confirmed Obi-wan Kenobi series is supposed to be filming this summer, but with the current public health situation there is the possibility of a delay in the release until at least early 2021.  What this means is that Disney has very little to generate interest, and therefore revenue, on one of the cornerstones of its streaming service.

The bottom line is that the Sequel Trilogy has effectively killed the Star Wars franchise and Disney needs to bring it back to life.  Disney didn't acquire Star Wars to break even or to make a modest profit from a few films and then move on.  They needed the franchise to be another major pillar of their licensed properties, reliably delivering one or two tentpole films every year for the next several decades in much the same way that Marvel has done for them.  They were investing in another consistent revenue stream that would throw off not just movies, but merchandise, theme park tie-ins, video games, and all manner of income generating activities including content for its fledgling streaming service.

Star Wars as Creative Content

The reality is that Lucasfilm has not lived up to the expectations of their corporate overlords.  The Sequels are at present generating nothing; neither revenue, nor, and perhaps more importantly, the intellectual creativity that will carry the stories forward.  And this last is perhaps more damaging to the property as a whole.

The Sequels needed to generate intellectual property.  The Original Trilogy was overflowing with creative content including strong characters like R2-D2,  Princess Leia and even Anakin Skywalker, and iconic images such as the Death Star and the Millennium Falcon, and the AT-AT walkers.  It is this intellectual property that not only produces revenue but also drives the next round of storytelling.  So, while RoS has distinct characters in the form of Rey and Fin, most of the visual content is derived from previous trilogies, and all of the storylines are narrative dead ends. Side characters are particularly weak and few in number.  Lucasfilm finds itself in a narrative wasteland having generated no content that any of its fans were interested in, including broom boy.

What's more,  the current round of movies effectively crushed the existing intellectual property of the franchise by tarnishing the images of Luke, Han, and Leia. By foreclosing on Luke's story and leaving his final memory of a green-milk recluse, these films have limited the marketability of his character.  By making Han a deadbeat dad who left his wife and son and in his senility lost his car in the Walmart parking lot, Lucasfilm has diminished his status as a hyper-competent hero.  Our last images of Princess Leia are as a failed general who was unable to hold together the rebellion she started and ultimately let down all those who followed her.

Disney can't use the young, heroic Luke on posters or future content of any kind without also calling to mind his ignoble ending.  The same is true for Han and Leia, but also by extension every other Original era character.  All the intellectual property that Disney paid $4 billion for has been tossed onto the trash.  And this makes sense from a certain point of view.  Disney/Lucasfilm didn't want to be forever tied to the past, and possibly felt they needed to clean the slate so they could move on.  The problem is that the Sequels didn't seem to move on to any thing new.  They didn't generate the numerous potential plot arcs and concepts that could, themselves, spawn new stories.  This is the real disappointment of the new trilogy - the creative bankruptcy that both killed the old concepts and failed to replace them with story elements of equal potential.

 We aren't, for example, putting together a story with Rose Tico and Poe Dameron, or tracking the revenge/redemption arc of Cpt. Phasma.  I'd be interested to find out what Maz Kanata was up to (one of the few new and innovative characters of Force Awakens) but Zori Bliss or Jannah were given little more than flashes of screen time, not nearly enough to create intrigue or even recognition of any kind. 

This brings Lucasfilm to the predicament they are in now;  instead of launching a new era of Star Wars movies under Disney, the drive to "end the Skywalker saga" has actually killed the Disney era just as it was beginning. Disney is in a financial crisis where they need to draw on their properties to sustain them.  Lucasfilm has only a very few active revenue streams (ex. their streaming service) and the have little new creative content in the pipeline.  What they do have in development builds on George Lucas era material.  Their own trilogy did not fill the creative air with possibilities.


Speculation has it that one-third of the fanbase enjoyed the Sequels, one-third hated them, and one-third were ambivalent.  This cannot be true, however, based on Disney's response to the sequels, which has been to ignore them, and go with Original Trilogy content.  If 2/3rds of their audience either strongly or moderately approved of the Sequels, they would be doubling down on that content and they simply aren't.  If the haters were merely a small vocal minority, Disney would be ignoring the haters instead of ignoring the Sequels as they are actually doing.

Instead, we have creative silence from the story factory, and rumors of finding a way to rewind the Sequels.   Disney must make changes that will re-gain the fans without losing the ones they have retained.  But more importantly, they must find a way to move the story forward creatively.  And they must find a way to move Forward  with the saga.  Looking back to the Old Republic era, or the inter-trilogy era, as they are doing now is fine for a while.

But the most powerful stories can only be written when the creators have a free hand.   When they aren't constrained by endpoints predefined by existing canon.  We already know what happens between Episodes III and IV, so the Obi-wan series can be meaningful but it can't really break new ground.  These side stories won't be the engine that drives the space opera; that requires stories of a grander scale and scope.  This is where the Disney Star Wars era must go now.

Rise of Skywalker - lingering questions

Positives

•  To someone who hated the previous episode, this movie seemed like a total repudiation of everything that happened in The Last Jedi.  All of the decisions that went wrong in that film were put right.
• Specifically, Rey was trained, albeit by Leia.  Rey was finally given an origin story and has parents and ancestors. Rey struggles with the discipline necessary to become a Jedi.  She was, in fact, totally defeated by Kylo Ren until Leia interrupted  Ben's concentration.  At last we see how Kylo represented the dark side ascendant.

Negatives

• Still never fully communicated the state of the Galaxy.  Was the First Order  truly dominating the galaxy, or were they just a limited power.  Had they taken over all of the old Empire holdings, was there anything of the New Republic left?  To me, this seemed like an essential piece of world building that was simply neglected.  In contrast, this is handled very satisfactorily in The Mandalorian. 
•  So, what happened to the First Order?  At the very end, when the emperor was again defeated, what happened to First Order ships scattered around the core worlds busily dominating planets?  Do they collapse, presumably without the cohesion provided by Kylo Ren.  This seems like a very unfinished victory.
• And while we're talking about it, we see Kylo firmly in command of the First Order, when the film opens.  What happened between the death of Snoke and the beginning of this episode?  where was Hux?
• 
  

Doctor Who: An Unearthly Child. S1 E1-4

Synopsis:  Two teachers, Ian and Barbara, discuss one of their pupils who seems to be highly unusual.  She is particularly intelligent and eager to learn; and while she is advanced in some areas of study, is less familiar with more local subjects such as the British monetary system.  Barbara had decided to check on Susan at home but when she went to the address given there was nothing there but a junkyard.  Concerned for Susan's welfare, she enlists the help of Ian to try again and find out where Susan lives.

The teachers track Susan back to the same abandoned lot but this time they meet her grandfather, the Doctor, a contentious old man who only wants to be left alone and will answer no questions about Susan or himself.  When Susan appears, the Doctor allows Ian and Barbara inside the Tardis whereupon he activates the transmat and dematerializes the Tardis.  The Doctor has, in effect, kidnapped the two teachers and has no intention of returning them to London. Ian and Barbara are immediately struck with the impossibility of the interior of the Tardis, being "bigger on the inside." Ian has a particularly difficult time wrapping his head around things that contradict the science he knows to be true.

Because he decided to leave in a hurry, the Doctor didn't adequately calibrate their destination, and he has no control of where they will end up.  In fact, they materialize in a desert wasteland and when they leave the Tardis to explore the surrounding area, the Doctor is taken prisoner.  His captors are the local paleolithic community whose main concerns are finding enough meat to eat and discovering the secret of fire to sustain them through the coming winter.

Leadership of the tribe depends on providing those things, and one aspirant kidnapped the Doctor to provide fire for the tribe and claim leadership in the ongoing struggle between Kal and Za.  The recalcitrant Doctor refuses and is about to be attacked by the tribe when Ian and Barbara intervene.  The whole group is confined to the Cave of Skulls while the tribe determines their fate.  An elder woman of the tribe is convinced that fire will only cause conflict within the tribe and she sets the party free.

The tribal leader discovers the escape and, urged by his wife, pursues them.  In the forest, however, he is wounded in an attack by a wild animal, and Ian and Barbara come to his aid.  However in doing so, they allow the tribe to catch them and bring them back to the Cave of Skulls.  At that point, Ian makes fire for the tribe in hopes of being released. The leader Za refuses, hoping they will join his tribe.  Eventually the group sets up the spectacle of burning skulls on sticks and makes a break for the Tardis, narrowly escaping the pursuing tribe.

Review:
For a variety of reasons, this initial episode was a very uncertain start to this very successful franchise.  The season began in 1963, shot in a murky black and white, just three years before Star Trek was released in the US and in technicolor.  While technical sophistication would never be Doctor Who's strong point, in comparison to its contemporaries, the brightly lit Perry Mason or Andy Griffith, it seemed to reflect the styling of something shot 10 years earlier.  I also got the impression that the most effort was spent on the set design of the interior of the Tardis.   The rest of the episode was all styrofoam caves and boulders, with dripping water and wind as background noises.

My intention is not to be needlessly critical, but this seemed to be a very slow start to so auspicious a series.  The greater weakness of the episode was the rather static storytelling of the whole narrative. 

The main story of the plight of the stone age tribe felt rather static and drawn out.  If the story meant to interest us with the struggles between Kal and Za it largely failed.  I'm also unconvinced that this entirely imaginative portrayal of paleolithic life had any historical value at all.  We don't have any idea what a stone age existence looked like so this is all simplistic speculation.  In short, the cave man story was boring.  Our party is made captives, escapes, is kept captive again, and escapes a second time, finally making it to the Tardis.  Neither the Doctor nor Susan contribute anything of import, while Ian passes on a few words of wisdom and Barbara models compassion by saving the injured Za.

The majority of the story concerned the internal politics of this stone age tribe, rather than dealing with our main characters, but in doing so it established one of the basic premises of the show. Most of Doctor Who is about him as an observer of other people's stories.   It isn't about a grand quest that he himself must complete.  He generally doesn't go to these worlds with things that he wants to accomplish.  He largely has no deeds to do, and no where that he has to be.  Instead, he stumbles into a complex situation and spends much of his time figuring out where he is and what is going on.

His position as an outside observer can be a strength, giving a perspective that provides a solution.  This can also be a weakness, however, when the Doctor can be entirely passive, merely watching what is happening as seems to be the case with the cave men.  In the end, it is Ian who give the tribe the fire, and Barbara who goes to help the injured Za. This is a tension that the entire series attempts to balance, and sometimes struggles with; is the Doctor the prime mover in creating the narrative's resolution, or is he simply a passive observer, offering us a window into these unusual science fiction worlds.

The other tension that the story must negotiate is the position of the companions.  At their worst, companions are simple narrative devices that function to ask questions that the audience needs the answers to, (what's that, Doctor?) or as plot devices to get captured, feel confused or frightened, or act irrationally.  In this episode, Barbara is called on to scream, and be overwhelmed with emotions, providing some of those basic functions.  At their  best, companions offer insights into solving the problem, and bring a humanizing element to the often bizarre stories they are thrown into.   Not only can they ask the questions but also provide the answers.  At the least, the audience must sympathize with the companions, because they often don't really understand what the Doctor is feeling.

Throughout this first story, we  aren't sure who we are supposed to identify with.  Is the irascible Doctor a hindrance, or the prime point of contact for the audience?  At least in this episode, we more closely associate with Barbara and Ian.

There is an interesting moment when Ian and the Doctor clash about marching orders and then later when challenged by Za, Ian defers that leadership of his "tribe" belongs to the Doctor.  It's a moment  of development for Ian, where he recognizes the Doctors wisdom.  And I think that also affected the Doctor as well.  Earlier, the cave men were about to kill the Doctor when Ian plunged in to his rescue, and while he only succeeded in getting himself and the others captured along side the Doctor, at least he did forestall the Doctor's execution.  It is the character of Ian who has the most nuanced development here

This first episode had the seeds of the great show that Doctor Who would become.  However, it constantly felt unsure of itself.  My overall rating is 2 stars out of 5.