Leopold's Dr. Abby "Ms. Exposition!" Sinian

From: chance <chance_at_unix.infoserve.net>
Date: Fri, 15 Mar 1996 08:01:17 -0800

>>>She also suppose to appear on "Curse of Kataluna".
>>
>>Ah, yes, one of the infamous "unfinished episodes." The only good thing is
>>that *one* of these days we're gonna get the script to it. But I remember
>>reading somewhere (I think it was the Animato! article) that "The Deadly
>>Pryamid" was really "Abi's" episode. Understand what I just said?
>
>Well, in some sort of way, that episode is a "Sinian" episode. I think that Sinian's role was wisely use in that episode.

I loved that ep, but one of the things that really *bugs* me about writing, is when
the characters go into a kind of "Mr. Exposition" trance for the benefit of the
audience only. Glenn Leopold wrote that ep and was the story editor for the
series. One of the duties of story editor is to "listen" from the perspective of the
audience and ensure that the way plot points are conveyed in the script will
be understood by the viewers. Sometimes writers take "short cuts" when they're
too lazy to 'explain' something another way, and the characters end up spouting
unnatural dialogue that would never be spoken character-to-character in a
'real-life' situation. Leopold did that with "Pyramid" in the person of Dr. Sinian. Glenn
had to introduce the name of the dig, and 'foreshadow' the appearance of that
big nasty that tangled with T-Bone and swatted Razor, and he tried to do it all
at once:

"Tie everything down or we're going to lose months of work on this Katcchu-Picchu
  excavation!"

Um, yeah. First of all, her co-workers - arthritic and sunburned after 'months of work'
on said dig - would likely be quite familiar the name of the project, so their response
should collectively have been a 'Molly Metallikat'-ish, "well....duh!".

Glenn, though a good writer, did that kind of thing on a few other occasions as
well, and in each case it grated just as badly. Still, I guess they have to cram a lot
into 22 minutes, and they aren't exactly paid to do "Citizen Kane".
_____________________________________________________
"Dedicated to the indomitable spirit of the sled dogs that relayed
 antitoxin six hundred miles over rough ice, across treacherous waters,
 through Arctic blizzards from Nenana to the relief of stricken Nome in
 the winter of 1925. Endurance, Fidelity, Intelligence." -- "Balto"
_____________________________________________________

Received on Fri Mar 15 1996 - 11:21:52 PST