The Reset Button

These days it seems that writers aren’t content just to reboot a franchise story—the new trend seems to be hitting the reset button. Last week’s Doctor Who 50^th Anniversary special was just one example of a story arc which not only affects the future of a series, but retroactively changes everything that’s come before.

For the serious fan, the reset button can lead to some serious headaches.

Here are some re-sets in my fandoms, and my Head-Scratcher Score™

On a scale of 1-5: 

1 is clever despite being mildly irritating

5 is I’ll never be able to watch or read the same way again, dammit.

Doctor Who’s 50^th Anniversary Special

(if you haven’t seen it yet, “Spoilers!”)

 Ask almost any Whovian, and they’ll tell you Steven Moffat, the current show-runner, has some major cojones when it comes to reconfiguring the world of Doctor Who. But he really stepped in it with some fans by rewriting the modern Doctor’s most defining moment. I won’t claim to be an expert on Classic Who, so I’ll stick to modern Doc-lore. Since the show was revived in 2005, his defining trait has been his guilt over ending the Time War by destroying not only the Daleks but also his home world of Gallifrey in the process. But Moffat’s anniversary special rewrote that history, so that now the planet’s merely hidden, possibly in a painting (you have to love SF sometimes).

And the Doctor’s overwhelming guilt—that drives not only his personality development but has also guided every choice he’s made since then? Suffice it to say it will be hard to re-watch without thinking about this conundrum.

Head Scratcher Score: 3

Upsetting, but I can get past it, especially if it means re-watching the David Tennant years.

Star Trek: The New Movies

Like Moffat, J.J. Abrams had time travel in his arsenal, so resetting the world of Trek was as easy as sending classic-Spock out into space with some vaguely named “red matter” and opening up a temporal rift which changed Kirk’s destiny, and that of the rest of his crew along with it. To me, the most engaging part of this story was watching a Kirk who grew up aimless and angry over losing his father still manage to blunder into his destiny. 

If, like me, you adore classic Star Trek, it will probably creep into your brain when you re-watch an episode featuring the planet Vulcan “oh, hey, everything’s different now, so that (sort of) never happened”...but this move was still such a brilliant way to reboot the franchise. I’m not too sure, though, about the moment in the second new film when new-Spock rings up old-Spock for advice about Khan. It seemed cool until I really thought about it—what’s to prevent the old-version of Spock from just giving the new one a list of People and Places to Avoid? The next movie would literally be the ship just peacefully cataloging gaseous anomalies, nowhere near any angry Klingons or troublesome Tribbles.

Head Scratcher Score: 2

This would be a 1 except for the aforementioned Advice From Past Spock interlude.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer—2.0

In 2001, Buffy changed networks—and rose from the dead. Buffy’s creator, Joss Whedon, didn’t have time travel at his disposal—but he did have magic, which witch (and Buffy’s bff) Willow employed to bring Buffy back to life...after a disturbingly long period of decay, I might add.

Buffy 2.0 reset the show in a number of ways—when Spike warned that she “came back wrong” it definitely seemed to be true. A Buffy who was willing to sleep with Spike was certainly a new version of our old heroine. But the most reset-buttony moment of this season came in episode seventeen, “Normal Again,” in which it is suggested to the audience that maybe there never were any demons, witches, or vampires. Maybe crazy Buffy had been imagining it all as part of her psychotic episodes, which she'd been having for years, locked inside a mental hospital. 

The episode ends leaving the audience to wonder—FOREVER—if Joss meant that was the real story.

Head Scratcher Score: 4

Still adore the show, but, yeah, this will bother me forever.

Twilight Love

Oh, Stephanie Meyer, you do create characters I really care about, and then you go crazy with the deus ex machina and the absurdly happy endings—and the reset button.

This button, of course, reset the entire love story of Bella and Jacob. Now, I know that clearly Meyer meant for us to root for Bella and Edward all along (TEAM JACOB FOREVER!) But the love triangle was what kept me reading those thousands of pages. Now, if I go back, I’ll know that Jacob was just drawn to Bella so he could fall in love with her baby.

Head Scratcher Score: 5

Ruined.

How do you feel about the reset button? Clever storytelling, or plot to ruin fan’s lives?

The End

I guess because it’s May—the end of the school year, and the end of the regular TV season—but I’ve been thinking about endings. I watched the season finale of my current favorite, Doctor Who, this past week, and as the episode ended (right after I yelled the name of the exec producer: Moffattttt!!!!!! Captain-Kirk style, and scared my dog) I was left with way more questions than answers. I hopped online, but the rest of cyberspace seemed to be just as confused as me. A lot of folks have theories, but none of us will know if we’re on the right track until November. Which seems like such a long time to wait.

I have a love-hate relationship with cliffhangers and open endings. On the one hand, I hate waiting and not knowing. But on the other, how often in life do all the loose ends really get tied up? People are always talking about closure, but a lot of times we have to just move on without it. In an episode of The Big Bang Theory the other week, Sheldon freaked out when Leonard casually mentioned that Alphas was cancelled, calling the SyFy channel in a panic because he had to know what happened to the characters, and saying,

“They have to help the viewers let go. Firefly did a movie to wrap things up. Buffy the Vampire Slayer continued on as a comic book. Heroes gradually lowered the quality season by season until we were grateful it ended.”

Penny. Penny....Penny.

I’ve been mourning the untimely death of Firefly since 2003, but this past year at the ten-year anniversary, one of the showrunners, Tim Minear, described his and Joss Whedon’s plans for the series—a horrific story about Inara that I’m glad I never got to/had to see.  The closure I thought I wanted might have retroactively ruined the show for me, the way a bad ending sometimes can.

When a series is caught unaware, and there’s crap-all for resolution, it is really annoying. But I think it’s even worse when the writers do know, and they fail to deliver a real ending. Of course, endings, just like every other part of the story, are in the eye of the beholder. But for most of us, when we love characters, seeing them happy and at least on their way toward what they want in life is hard to not like. A decent ending can make up for a lot—Roswell, for example: the third season was a hot mess. But the final ten minutes or so saw the whole gang together, Max and Liz married, and a happy song played as they all drove off in the distance. And though we were all worried about Harry's fate, J.K. gave us all a lovely epilogue with a happy Harry and company. 

It’s not just alien and wizard teens who want to be happy and on the right path, though—it’s what we all want. In fantasy and SF stories, the writers can always pull a rabbit out of their hat and fix things for the characters. Part of why I was so confused about the final Doctor Who ep is because there are sort of twelve of him. In the real world there’s only one of each of us. Sometimes we feel like we’re on that right path, but how can we ever really know? The stories that are the most true to life don’t offer that much closure.

A contemporary novel has to have a last page, but does it have to have an ending? Think about Holden Caulfield at the end of The Catcher in the Rye. We sort of hope he’s on his way--that he'll go to a new school, make friends, get good grades--but we'll never really know. In a way the lack of clear resolution keeps Holden pure: he never becomes something else at the end of the story, so he’ll forever be that boy watching his little sister going around and around on the carousel. 

There's no grand final curtain—at least while you’re still alive and kicking. Joss Whedon said it best this past week on Twitter: a follower tweeted that his life would be complete if @jossactual retweeted him. The reply: No, your life will be complete when you die.

At least I think it was Joss—this being real life, I’ll probably never know for sure.  

I’ll Buy That

I remember the time I was sitting on my back porch, thinking about Mark, the cute boy in my geometry class, and a time portal opened up—right beside my dad’s garden shed. A handsome boy (impossibly handsome, if you want to know the truth) stepped through the shaft of blinding blue light and he said just three words: “Come with me.”

When did I lose you? On time portal, probably. Maybe a select few were with me until the boy was impossibly handsome. And yet, he almost always is. When book boys have blue eyes, they are intensely blue. When they smile, angels weep, etc. Also, in a lot of books written for teens, these outlandishly gorgeous boys are part of a plot that’s even more outlandish.

Here, in no particular order, a sample list of plots I’ve read or read about in the past couple of years:                

Alien pod people

Genie in the hallway at school!

Time travel

Automaton-ized family members

Everyone dies at either 21 or 25

Shadowhunters!

Love-removal operation (though I wish it were a love-removal machine, because that’s a great song by The Cult)

Boy turns into worm-creature

Fairies are real

...and so on. The best part about the thriving world of teen paranormal romance/fantasy/steampunk is the fact that the passionate following that many of these books and series have amassed is a testament to the fact that kids can still get lost in a story. Coleridge’s willing suspension of disbelief is alive and well.

But how far is too far? Can a premise be too outlandish, or can a writer “sell” any story if they are passionate enough about the world they create, if the characters who live in that world feel real, and if the rules of that world are consistent?

I think maybe writers can sell almost any idea, but I also think we have a lucky trick in our toolbox. A story about angels or demons or fairies or genies appeals to our collective unconscious (sometimes even the writer doesn’t plan it) and resonates on some level we may not even realize.

Maybe that’s why so many alterna-worlds are set in either the present or the sort-of-past. The future usually ends up being all about Science. And it’s hard to avoid at least a hint of cheese when dealing with anything robot-related. If you’ve ever watched Doctor Who, you know: as scary as the idea of being converted into one is, those Cybermen—just, ugh.  

The thing is, the real world is usually sort of boring. Stories are a safe way (well, as long as you keep the book budget under control) of living in a different, non-boring world.

A world in which a majority of boys are heart-stoppingly handsome=bonus.