Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.
Rocket your D&D 5E and Level Up: Advanced 5E games into space! Alpha Star Magazine Is Launching... Right Now!

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="wingsandsword" data-source="post: 2587420" data-attributes="member: 14159">Not an author, but another TV series makes me think of this.Star Trek: Voyager was very much into the "Gilligan's Island" syndrome.  Both shows were based on the idea of being stranded away from civilization, trying to get home, but always being thwarted since success means the end of the show.A formulaic Voyager Episode was as follows:1. Voyager is entering yet another area of space it knows nothing about, and finds a remarkable new technology/time-space anomaly which can send them home.2. Everybody gets their hopes up about being able to go home.3. Some big catch appears to prevent them from going home. (either the way home isn't real, or the Prime Directive or their Federation morality prevents them from taking it)4. Voyager continues on to the next sector.With several of the following stock elements added in to pad out the episode:1. The Doctor/7 of 9 learns a valuable lesson about humanity (on rare occasion, this can be B'lanna or Neelix instead, very rarely even Tuvok).2. A crewmember (most likely Harry Kim) is killed or apparently killed by some horrible force, and ressurected or rescued in the end.3. Paris's hot-shot flying (or more rarely, B'lanna's engineering) both impresses and endangers everybody.4. A technological Deus Ex Machina is provided at the last moment, which will never be seen again.The last episode of Voyager even made fun of this pattern, with future-Admiral Janeway coming back to tell present-Voyager to take this way home, since it's the last (of many) opportunities to go home they'll have.  It seemed to be a "wink & nudge" at the "we have a way home, but we can't use it because of our moral superiority" formulaic plot of Voyager episodes to say "Take the dang way home, forget your high and mighty Federation morality just this once!".</blockquote>

Verification