Somewhere in my head I must like TW because I actually wrote a couple of fics where some of the characters make an appearance. They're not the primary focus of the stories, but they are in there. I was very bummed when the Hub got blown up (just as I was bummed when Angel's original digs got blown up and they moved into that stupid hotel). I'm weird like that--location makes a difference to me--I also felt like Buffy lost something when they moved from the high school setting to the college setting (which is weird cos I work in a college, and I think there are interesting veins you could mine). God, I'm so fickle. ; )
LOL, we'll have to agree to disagree on Jane Espenson. Although I did like some of her early Buffy scripts, "Earshot" being my favorite. Her later stuff really grated on me, and I didn't care for her contributions to Miracle Day.
I will definitely read your piece on Miracle Day and get back to you later with feedback. Again: setting! I don't feel like it worked all that well in the US, although obviously we're supposed to believe TW has branches all over the world (aren't we?). Again, some of the characters just grated, and that silly American blonde bint was the worst one.
CoE was so harrowing. When you finally got the aliens' motives--that they were basically addicts using the kids as a drug source--it was utterly chilling, because the motive was so banal, and yet so horribly evil, and the reactions of the people in the government were honestly worse than the aliens themselves. CoE is like a horrible dark mirror that reflects the worst aspects of humanity. Complete sci-fi, but very believable.
Hopefully tomorrow (when I have the house to myself and can think in more depth), I'm going to post the link to the WT piece on my LJ and write up a retrospective of how I feel 11 years later. In hindsight, I think one of the disappointments is that putting Willow in a same-sex romance provided a rich vein to be mined--not unlike the college setting itself--and the writers did nothing with it. I had similar frustrations with Martha in season 3 of DW--here was an interesting character whose crazy-ass family gave her tons of motivations, and yet everything seemed to boil down to "she's in love with the Doctor." Which we'd just had two years of with Rose. **headdesk** Compare WT to JI or even Jenny-Vastra. The characters are interesting. They live in their own little 'weird/ supernatural' environments, but at the same time they also live in their larger worlds (which may or may not be so accepting). The characters are different from each other. They're interesting. Their relationships have textures. I felt like a lot of that was missing with WT--they were there just to show how 'hip' the producers were, or to provide cheap adolescent sexual gags, or to periodically preach 'gay acceptance' at the audience.
You're right that RTD being gay made a huge difference. He's lived the life, so he knows the territory. A friend of mine made the observation once that most straight male writers can't do lesbians well because "all men have girl-girl fantasies." I definitely felt (at the time) like WT were Joss Whedon's girl-girl fantasy couple.
I did like the changes in Tara in season six. In fact, the scene where she tells Willow where the dog died after Willow mind-wipes her is my absolute favorite Tara scene. I think if they'd stayed broken up (maybe with Tara coming back for a visit in season 7 to confirm that yeah, the relationship really was over), I'd have respected the 'ship a lot more. It would've been an arc where they got together, Tara grew and developed confidence, Willow's insecurity reared its head when they had a disagreement, so she magically wiped Tara's memory, Tara found out, and left, the end. Having Tara come back only to be pointlessly murdered undercut the character growth that had been done earlier in the season. It was a ham-handed motivation for Willow to "go evil" (an idea I found kind of stupid anyway, but that's another rant for another day). ; )
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LOL, we'll have to agree to disagree on Jane Espenson. Although I did like some of her early Buffy scripts, "Earshot" being my favorite. Her later stuff really grated on me, and I didn't care for her contributions to Miracle Day.
I will definitely read your piece on Miracle Day and get back to you later with feedback. Again: setting! I don't feel like it worked all that well in the US, although obviously we're supposed to believe TW has branches all over the world (aren't we?). Again, some of the characters just grated, and that silly American blonde bint was the worst one.
CoE was so harrowing. When you finally got the aliens' motives--that they were basically addicts using the kids as a drug source--it was utterly chilling, because the motive was so banal, and yet so horribly evil, and the reactions of the people in the government were honestly worse than the aliens themselves. CoE is like a horrible dark mirror that reflects the worst aspects of humanity. Complete sci-fi, but very believable.
Hopefully tomorrow (when I have the house to myself and can think in more depth), I'm going to post the link to the WT piece on my LJ and write up a retrospective of how I feel 11 years later. In hindsight, I think one of the disappointments is that putting Willow in a same-sex romance provided a rich vein to be mined--not unlike the college setting itself--and the writers did nothing with it. I had similar frustrations with Martha in season 3 of DW--here was an interesting character whose crazy-ass family gave her tons of motivations, and yet everything seemed to boil down to "she's in love with the Doctor." Which we'd just had two years of with Rose. **headdesk** Compare WT to JI or even Jenny-Vastra. The characters are interesting. They live in their own little 'weird/ supernatural' environments, but at the same time they also live in their larger worlds (which may or may not be so accepting). The characters are different from each other. They're interesting. Their relationships have textures. I felt like a lot of that was missing with WT--they were there just to show how 'hip' the producers were, or to provide cheap adolescent sexual gags, or to periodically preach 'gay acceptance' at the audience.
You're right that RTD being gay made a huge difference. He's lived the life, so he knows the territory. A friend of mine made the observation once that most straight male writers can't do lesbians well because "all men have girl-girl fantasies." I definitely felt (at the time) like WT were Joss Whedon's girl-girl fantasy couple.
I did like the changes in Tara in season six. In fact, the scene where she tells Willow where the dog died after Willow mind-wipes her is my absolute favorite Tara scene. I think if they'd stayed broken up (maybe with Tara coming back for a visit in season 7 to confirm that yeah, the relationship really was over), I'd have respected the 'ship a lot more. It would've been an arc where they got together, Tara grew and developed confidence, Willow's insecurity reared its head when they had a disagreement, so she magically wiped Tara's memory, Tara found out, and left, the end. Having Tara come back only to be pointlessly murdered undercut the character growth that had been done earlier in the season. It was a ham-handed motivation for Willow to "go evil" (an idea I found kind of stupid anyway, but that's another rant for another day). ; )