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"What If The Powers
That Be Did This...?"
Byline
-- Webmaster,
Our Universe, December 24, 2006 (with subsequent edits)
A
common question about this
Meta-Smallville Twist has been along the lines of "Well, TPTB have
already said [such-and-such], so this twist will never happen..." or "At
some point in the future they
may do [such-and-such] and when they do this twist will be proven wrong
or won't
work." The thinking is very much focused on what the current Powers That Be might
do, rather than the
independent perspective that's reflected in the Meta-Smallville Twist.
The
main page and other material on the site gets to this issue somewhat, as
does the main page of the Smallville-Twist
site. But the bottom line is that this
Meta-Smallville concept can't be ruled out by anything they do, because
it's just what Lois is writing in the book. Even a Meta ending
LIKE this within the TV series, if badly done or dome without the key
elements of this MST, could be trumped by the MST top-level fix. If
the TV series did a Meta-Smallville Twist ending like this that was done
well, then that's fine and there'd be no need
to trump it. It could be embraced. Ultimately, the market
decides how these incarnations are judged, not the Powers That Be du
Jour.
Here's another comparison to
Star Trek: Enterprise. It played a role in how I perceived this
Meta-Smallville Twist idea
the minute I saw it. The following is draft material
originally intended for another forum:
The
reason I saw the potential of the MST, immediately upon reading
of the premise, was because of Enterprise. Like Smallville, I
actually
liked that series on the whole. But also like Smallville, I
concede it
was VERY deeply flawed. Because of the "Dear Doctor"
episode for
example, [withheld] and others favored the series being the early
Mirror
Universe. It may be that the reason the producers did a Mirror
Universe
story near the end of the series was to try to thwart that
speculation.
Then the finale, with Riker and Troi looking back on Archer's
Enterprise
via the apparently historical holoprogram, seemed like the producers
trying to Seal Their Series as Historical Canon.
The thing is, in the long term we're all dead and none of us set the
canon for iconic properties like Superman or Star Trek. It'll be
up
to future generations of fans, primarily, whether Electric Bluperman
enjoys a resurgence as genius, or Gob-of-Goo Matrix Supergirl is
superior to Superman's Cousin Kara Zor-El. I think most fans
today
can accurately predict the answer to those, even generations from now,
but in any case the market will decide which incarnation and which
interpretations of characters and so on are favored.
Judging by the reception of both Enterprise and Smallville in this
their
era of origin or first run, the very big ratings downtrends on both
series,
and the volume of unrefuted criticism, it suggests that these are deeply
flawed series that could definitely use a fix that frames them in the
best possible light. On the positive side, just the fact that
there are
some "customers" who care about the series enough --
probably a
reflection that they care about Superman and Star Trek and those
legacies -- is an indication that the series are in a way "worth
it". You
don't see many trying to "retcon" Andromeda into a better series after
the fact.
For [withheld] in the case of Enterprise, it was more or less
"forget the
bits in the finale where the producers say 'See! We're Canon!' and
just
think of the whole series as a holoprogram." I didn't want
to forget the
on-screen bits in the finale, but instead worked with them and refined
the scenario. Archer's Enterprise would be a program first
created
by Spock when he taught at the Academy more than a century later.
When Riker and Troi are running the program and seeming to treat
it as an historical-based one, that's because that had become the
traditional way to treat the program. Archer's Enterprise is
indeed
iconic canon in the Trek Universe, but it's that because Spock is the
one who created it, not because Archer's Enterprise actually existed
as depicted or happened that way. It could, however, have been
based
on fact to some extent.
It
wouldn't matter if Viacom/Paramount (the current owners of Trek) decided to
have five authors write books that all somehow tried to get around the
Spock's Training Program top-level fix. Every book, on every fifth
page, and every Trek comic book, could mention Archer's Enterprise in an
historical context and it wouldn't matter. Most of the market has long since rejected Enterprise as
being Good Enough As Is, and so it has a market for a spectacularly good
interpretation that frames it better. Customers rule in the end,
and it's the Enterprise series itself that stands or falls on its own.
If the Spock's Training Program solution is the one the market
eventually accepts then that'll be it. Virtually no one will be
saying "no, it can't be that" because some producer or other, a
generation ago perhaps, insisted it wasn't as he went off to his last
major creative cup of coffee in another series that got cancelled after
a few episodes.
This MST concept takes a long term view, and these days changes in corporate structures and powers that be happen overnight.
We live in a very different world with the Internet and so on, where the
market is at least potentially much more cohesive when coming to a very strong consensus judgment like "Smallville
and Enterprise are two
series with some very serious flaws." It shows up in
financially obvious ways for the owners of those properties even TODAY.
Webmaster
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