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The Decreasing Impact of Death In Sci-fi
brumgrunt writes "Are science fiction TV shows and movies overusing death as a plot device? And, more crucially, do any of us believe that a dead character is really dead any more?"
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Characters dying on television and being brought back at the convenience of the show has been a staple of television for decades. This rather lame plot device has been abused most egregiously on soap operas (both daytime and nighttime), where this sort of thing has been the norm almost from the get-go. Everyone who came up in the 80's remembers the infamous Dallas "missing season" that was dismissed as a mere amazingly-long dream sequence after Patrick Duffy decided he wanted his big Dallas paycheck after all. Evil twins, faked deaths, clones, cliffhangers where the character miraculously survives, etc. have been used by soap operas again and again as bargaining ploys against cocky cast members whose contracts are up for renewal and as ways to generate buzz for shows with flagging ratings.
Even genre shows have been using these ploys for a long time. Forver Knight was infamous back in the early 90's for killing off characters and bringing them back (or sometimes not). And the "Did they really kill off Fox Mulder?" cliffhanger became such a cliche on the X-files that even the most gullible fans eventually caught on to the fact that the network wasn't about to kill off the star of the series (by the time they did finally get rid of him briefly, no one even cared). And of course, replacing Dr. Who's became the norm back long before most of us were even born.
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... at least we didn't see Greedo get up off the cantina floor.
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We should chart popular shows agains the Sorting Algorithm of Deadness and plot them against time. If the average gets to 2.5 or below, there's a problem.
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This isn't really a sci-fi problem. It's called shitty clichéd writing. Is nobody here old enough to remember "Who shot J.R."?
Every other sci-fi thread on /. I hear a million people claiming Genre Series XYZ is the greatest literature known to man, surpassing all the known classics of history, and that anybody who doesn't eat, sleep, and breathe genre fiction is just a small-minded idiot who lacks vision and creative thinking. Can I seriously now be hearing someone on here suggest that the bulk of science fiction actually fucking sucks? Say it ain't so.
Sturgeon's Law, people.
Breakfast served all day!
You should be okay so long as you're not a redshirt.
In TOS and its movie sequels, didn't McCoy, Scotty, Spock and Kirk get resurrected in one way or another?
I am not a crackpot.
Are science fiction TV shows and movies overusing death as a plot device?
Yes.
do any of us believe that a dead character is really dead any more?
No.
That said, LoTR doesn't count, because the book was written 60 years ago. And Dr Who doesn't count because, well, anything goes when you've got Dr Who on the job.
some more than once. how many times does Spock die throughout the series / movies ?
Ever since the death of Superman woke up an audience for DC, every couple of years they kill or maim someone iconic just for the publicity. Ho hum. Whatever the news, even if it's only a costume change, you know everything will be put back the "old way" in a year.
Marvel sacrificed their rich continuity by getting in on the "reboot" fad with the Ultimate line, and at DC, lots of epic stuff happens, but after you read for a couple years, you realize that none of it really matters to the DC universe's history.
I want canon, with changes that "stick" as it develops over time.
I don't think that any show abused it more than Sg-1. It got so bad, they even started making fun of it as an in-show meme towards the last few seasons.
Ruining death for everyone.
We are all God's parents.
even more crucially, do any of us really care? I mean really?
One, staying dead must not be trivial or else we'll just be expecting the characters to return through cloning, time travel or whatever Deux Ex Machina the writers are inclined to use. Two, the characters must matter to the viewers. What dramatic drive is there in seeing a character die who had little screen time or relevance to the story? A main character's death has massive influence on the story, a red shirt's has none.
Mass Effect games are a good example of character death done right. Most gamers will play Mass Effect 2 multiple times and go out of their way to have a perfect playthrough where everyone survives the suicide mission.
Blame him.
... Forver Knight was infamous back in the early 90's for killing off characters and bringing them back (or sometimes not) ...
Wasn't that a vampire show? If so then they can't really be faulted for killing characters and bringing them back. ;-)
Seriously, nobody has mentioned this yet?
Scotty was 'resurrected' in a way that was totally plausible for the character. It worked, and technically he never died. Spock's resurrection was much less plausible
Good-bye
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle killed off Sherlock Holmes at Reichenbach Falls but later "resurrected" him in response to audience pressure.
There are sci fi shows on TV that aren't reruns? Huh, coulda fooled me.
And of course, replacing Dr. Who's became the norm back long before most of us were even born.
I don't think that counts. The whole point there was that they wanted to continue the series, but the actor didn't. They didn't really leave the audience hanging -- the regeneration usually happened in the last episode of the series, not the first episode of the new series. Other series have replaced actors for ongoing roles; Doctor Who just came up with a fun (if cheap) excuse for it.
I think it should be stressed that the doctor was somehow regenerated, ie the same being gets a new body. That's not quite killing the character off, its more like the masked character gets a new mask. Well, at least in the newer incarnations of the series. I don't recall exactly how things worked back in the 70s.
And not Tasha Yar, or Dax
Using Gandolf as an example? I might be wrong but I suspect Tolkien wrote the Lord of the Rings before this plot device became a cliche.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jury_nullification
He's dead, Jim.
I think McCoy had the good decency to grow old and die. I never remember him being resurrected.
Pfft whatever.... William Shakespeare was doing it long before that bring the cast members back as "spooky" ghosts... ohhhhhhhhhhhh!
This is absolutely true. The most egregious example is a character from the blockbuster Sci-Fi series "South Park", a character named Kenny seems to die almost every week. Long live Mysterion!
Rhymes that keep their secrets will unfold behind the clouds.There upon the rainbow is the answer to a neverending story
Find me a science fiction movie or science fiction TV show and I'll let you know...
No, not an action flick, just a bunch of explosions. No, not a drama all about living in th ebig city and dating and family life. No, not a fantasy complete with knights and swordfights. No, not yet another cop movie, bumbling mismatched partners, now with extra cool ray guns! No, not another vampire and werewolf with cool, yet irrelevant to the plot, cellphones.
Futuristic doesn't mean chrome, or shaky camera, or lack of lighting. Doesn't mean the really tired old cliche of "internet or network in general as a bad acid trip"
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
I guess we can give the guy a little bit of a break. He opens the article with "When I was a child..." and proceeds to talk about watching a movie with his mum... a movie that came out in 1993. Little wonder that he doesn't realize that the story with Gandalf and the white robes was written 40 years before he was born.
Breakfast served all day!
The author of the piece doesn't seem to "get" some of the characters. For example, Gandalf states that he's walked Middle-Earth for 3000 lives of men, indicating that he's quite likely immortal (and the Silmarillion explains more of his origin/status for anyone who cares); Wolverine is supposed to be able to heal from virtually any injury, so why not a mere bullet to the head (though I liked that in his prequel his memory didn't heal with his flesh); and in supernatural shows (Buffy, Angel, Supernatural, etc.) death is only one state of being and characters often transition to/from it. And while he mentioned Torchwood, it was interesting that he totally ignored Jack, who is immortal, but often seemed to get killed in both Torchwood and Dr Who.
The "death isn't real" issue is a problem in actual science fiction as opposed to fantasy/supernatural fiction, where it is often expected. In science fiction stories there may be some super tech that can restore life like a chocolate coated pill for a mostly dead character can do in a fantasy story. But in general, TV shows are using the "important character death" hook far too often, especially since it is almost invariably followed by the equivalent of, "April Fools! Thanks for the great ratings during sweeps!"
As Daniel Jackson said, "Ah. Been there, done that."
At least he didn't have the t-shirt.
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SF novels and movies almost always depict extraordinary events. Why else craft the stories in the first place? People always tend to die during extraordinary events. What would truly be shocking is if they didn't die. People are fragile often clueless little gnats on the cosmic stage; they get swatted and squished during extraordinary events and never see it coming. Extraordinary events wouldn't be extraordinary events if people weren't dying.
Is jumping the shark really a bad thing when the shark has a fricken' laser beam on its head?
Complaining about Gandalf's resurrection is a bit thin, since it hadn't really been abused all that much when Tolkien wrote LotR.
We should probably kill him again, just to be sure.
didn't they pretty much all die that died in Stargate Universe (yeah, there was one episode where the people left behind were around, but they were hardly returned to life permanently).
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
Yes, death is definitely overused as a plot device. No, when a character dies they are never really dead. When a character died, it used to be unexpected and invoke a certain emotion and bond between the show and the viewer ... but because it's so overused, it's like shows are trying to condition their viewers to death. When they do die, the show typically brings the character back if ratings decrease or the fan-base screams in outrage. It's disappointing to see any show (or universe) manipulated by the viewers. My mother always taught that when I create something, to do it for myself and no one else.
If one attempts to meet the expectations of another, one will inevitably fail. However, if one focuses on their own expectations, one will never fail.
I do think death is being overused, especially the kind mentioned in TFA where the presumably dead character makes an inevitable return with some half backed story about how he survived. Case in point, SGU when Rush was left on the planet. SGU when the team on the planet was left behind. SGU when Telford was left behind on the alien ship. SGU when... well you get the picture.
But more than anything I hate the sheer amount of garbage on TV these days. 5 different shows about pawn shops is 5 too many. Well, at least having nothing interesting on TV has given me a new appreciation for spending my free time on other things. I guess that's worth something...
Murphey's fighting Occam, and we're in the stands.
Buffy was more to horror than fantasy and the occasional robot made it a little science fiction-y
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My dad had an uncle who woke up at his own funeral. The uncle lived several years after that. This would have been in Nova Scotia around the 1930's.
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The Doctor Who revival, wonderful as it has been, has been suffering from small problem of threat inflation in its season finales:
...
(1) Dalaks threaten a future point of Earth
(2) Daleks/Cybermen threaten the present Earth
(3) The Master treatens present Earth with it's future.
(4) Davros threaten to blow up all of space
(4b) Time Lords threaten to blow up all of time
(5) The Tardis blows up, taking all of space and time with it
I'm a little concerned about what happens next
Sadly I'm pretty sure Wash is dead and won't be coming back.
I think the recent film Moon with Sam Rockwell did an interesting take on the topic of mortality as a plot device. I don't want to spoil it for anyone who hasn't seen it yet. It's not blockbuster material, but it's not a cookie-cutter sci-fi film that Hollywood seems to always spit out.
Of course, I watched the movie while I was working abroad for 3 months and only had contact with friends and family with Skype. So my boss took great pleasure in doing quotes from the film.
These comments are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of my employer or colleagues...
I am not sure that is entirely fair. We are talking about writers abusing death as a plot device. I consider a plot device abused when its been inserted gratuitously. Its gratuitous when an author uses it add drama or intrigue to an otherwise boring story but does bother to weave it into the underlying theme of the story. Stargate's themes are steeped in Ancient Egyptian myth which was very concerned with death and the afterlife to say the least.
So Stargate actually has more license to use it than most others. Buffy (the series) is a big offender though. The first time Buffy dies it makes sense, the mythology established around the master demands it. Killing Joyce though really is just done to shock the audience.
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I don't remember Dax dying. Jadzia, on the other hand...
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Since the article actually includes fantasy stuff as well as sci-fi...
People who haven't read the Game of Thrones books but watch the new series starting this Sunday are going to get a very different viewpoint on this issue. George R.R. Martin isn't afraid to fully flesh out characters then kill them shortly after. So many major characters die so often that it is almost cliche, but they rarely come back afterward.
And this is why you negotiate the contracts for the next season before the finale. Anyone who hasn't signed on for the next season two or three episodes before the end finds their character having fatal accident...
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Yes and no. And it varies by sect.
A fundamental teaching of Buddhism is "anatta" which means "no soul." This is a major division point between Buddhism and Hinduism. Buddhists believe that there is no single part of you that is immortal and transitions from life-to-life, still being the same being. So, if "you" are not a soul, then "you" are not reborn.
However, your karma rolls forward. You are, of course, not your karma. Your karma is just a part of you, just like your body, your thoughts, etc., are all parts of you (without being "you").
Depending on the sect, Karma can be anything from a purely metaphorical representation of the fact that all actions have consequences which in turn have further consequences, to a mystical balancing force that creates the universe. Whatever it is, though, it is only "you" in the sense that the consequences of your actions are a part of who you are, and "you" are only reborn in the sense that these consequences continue even after you die.
As with most religions, the commoners understand the teachings of their faith differently than the priests. Most commoners are unable to think abstractly or philosophically, and aren't interested, and want something simple that they can understand. So they believe in rebirth. But the more educated, more philosophical, and more enlightened priests understand "rebirth" as a metaphor for the action of karma, which is itself just a high-level representation of cause-and-effect.
technically he never died.
NOMAD would like a word with you.
Why, without your clothes, you're naked, Miss Dudley!
So let's say you've got mind backups and cloning in your setting. The conventional approach is that you have one version of you at a time and weekly backups. You die, your clone is decanted and given the most recent update. Life goes on.
But that's thinking conventionally. Why not have multiple instances of you running in parallel? If we presume cloning and resurrection is expensive, only really important people will have it. Your best secret agent, your top scientist, sadly probably your typical reality TV bimbo.
Then you take it one step further. What makes you you? Consider how vastly people can change based on life experiences. How long can two of you exist apart, experiencing things until you're no longer indiscernibly the same?
Charlie Stross took this to some pretty wild extremes. It feels like a mix of disaster recovery software and mindfucking. So you have a general "you" that's what gets backed up. You can create multiple instances that you call vectors. You can live apart as real people. You might split a vector to go deep cover in an organization. Maybe you're involved in war and swap out your orthohuman body for a killing machine instead. You spawn off another dozen instances and you're a regiment of killing machines, all operating in concert. Each vector's accumulated experiences represents a delta from the original split point. Those new experiences can be merged back into the primary backup that is "you." If the experience is too painful, you may elect to excise it from your memory instead.
Raises some interesting questions. If you don't believe in an immaterial soul, then the sense of self is just a conceit within the neural net of your own meat brain. If you make a copy of your mind and upload it to machine, which you is you? The one outside the machine will think "Gee, I'm glad I'm still here" and the one in the machine thinks "Gee, I'm glad I made it in here." Can you both be right? Now let's say that you come out of the clone vat and you have a conversation with yourself. "I'm the original," says the one meeting you. "I'm asking you to go off and do something dangerous, possibly suicidal." Do you do it? There's a backup, will you really be dead? This instance of you, yes. But how long does this instance of you last, really? Are you the same person you were as a child? As a young man? As an old man? Those parts of yourself are just as lost as if they died in the past. A parent watching a child grow up to be a drug addict killing himself one injection at a time, can he really say the child who bounced on his knee is still alive? A corpse was once the child and yet given up living perhaps, but that child is gone.
A Strossian future gets convoluted very quickly. See Accelleando and Glasshouse.
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
Agreed. While we are at it, pop Turlough.
Why, without your clothes, you're naked, Miss Dudley!
Over its six seasons, Lost must have killed off over a thousand people, many implied, but a large number explicitly. Major cast members, guest stars, red shirts. They all died. Guns, smoke monsters, drownings, flaming arrows. Towards the end, they were running out of new and unique ways to off people. It's my theory that that is reason they had to end the series.
Reincarnation is believe of majority people, so why it is so hard to accept in present western world that death is just a transition phase?
(that not supposed to be religious comment, so please do not start burning things now...)
Who gives a damn if Mulder died, we just wanted to see him bang Scully!
I8-D
I was annoyed at the ending to "Source Code". They set up a poignant death at the end (the "frozen" scene), highlighting his noble but futile gesture. It should have ended there. But then they undid it all by tacking on a Hollywood, happily-ever-after ending.
From the X-Men comics. Haven't collected since high school, so I hope I get the history right.
* Died in a plane wreck
* Was resurrected by the Phoenix for a surrogate body
* Was dumped by the Phoenix and cloned as Madeleine Pryor
* Madeleine Pryor was dumped by Scott Summers after dead Jean Grey resurrected as the original Jean Grey.
All had the pleasure of getting nailed by Cyclops. Much of this happened outside the narrow window of my collecting career. But, I was under the impression that the entire 3-time resurrection was a post-rationalized all-encompassing explanation for why we keep seeing redheads with a taste for the One-Eye. Who knows if she's been killed and brought back since the late 80s.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
This is what identical twins are for.
... until McCoy says, "He's dead, Jim. He's dead."
Laws affecting technology will always be bad until enough techies become lawyers.
"...And, more crucially, do any of us believe that a dead character is really dead any more?"
So, let me get this straight. While I'm watching a 40-year old TV show about a spaceship traveling through space at "warp speed" with Vulcans dealing with Tribbles, I'm supposed to be concerned about accepting a rather normal concept of death?
Let's try and keep this in perspective. They don't call it science fiction because it markets well...
I think McCoy had the good decency to grow old and die. I never remember him being resurrected.
"Shore Leave"
I am not a crackpot.
Scotty was 'resurrected' in a way that was totally plausible for the character. It worked, and technically he never died. Spock's resurrection was much less plausible
According to Memory-Alpha, "Scotty ... attempts to save Uhura from the probe, but is killed by it, only to be revived by it shortly thereafter."
I am not a crackpot.
With death/resurrection, like the other well-used plot points, it is not the individual issue, but how the story is told that determines if it was appropriate and gripping or trite and ignored.
So, I agree that death is "yet another plot point" and is nothing special in today's fantasy, but as pointed out by others I don't think that is new, nor do I think its a problem. Bad writing & pushy producers I'm sure ruin far more shows than any single plot device.
Sci-Fi itself is dead (on TV)
The channel that used to go by that name is now SyFy and shows mostly horror, Ghost Hunters, wrestling, more ghost hunters, and reruns
AFAIK the only Sci-Fi show still being made is Dr Who, and the resurrection of The Doctor has been part of that show from the beginning. BTW the BBCA also shows reruns of TNG and X-Files
LOTR is fantasy, not Sc-Fi (and Buffy and Harry Potter are also fantasy.
Anyway Season Ending Cliffhangers, where the main character(s) may die (or not, tune in next year to find out) are a part of 'normal' TV drama. Sometimes its part of contract negotiations with the actors.
Warning: personal opinion. Yes, it is. Sharks with frickin' lasers have become such a cliché any possible use of it would have to be a parody to be entertaining.
They say a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, but it's not one half so bad as a lot of ignorance. - Terry Pratchett
Warning: Rant coming:
I don't understand why more and more, people mix up the difference between Science Fiction and Fantasy. There might be a lot of overlap in the audiences, and sometimes the line gets a little blurred, but have we now really gone as low as calling Lord of the Rings a Science Fiction ?????!?!!?!?
It might not have a lot to do with the topic at hand, but I don't think Tolkien in his wildest dreams could have imagined that his master piece would ever be called a Science Fiction.
I'll allow The Matrix, Torchwood and Dr.Who into the SF category, but Buffy, LotR or Being Human. Who makes up this stuff??
Sorry for the rant, but I really don't understand why a lot of Fantasy is being misnamed as SF nowadays. Where does this come from, can anyone explain?
Maybe I'm getting old, I just turned 35. When I say Science Fiction, I mean Asimov and Arthur C. Clarke, Battlestar Galactica and Star Wars. Fantasy is Tolkien, Jordan and Feist, Harry Potter and Pirates of the Caribean.
Sure the line gets blurred a bit with a writer like Tanith Lee or a series like Smallville. But sheeesh, calling Lord of the Rings an SF???
RogerWilco the Adventurous Janitor
Love George for that. Lots of other problems (that's just the critical me, it's my favorite fantasy series), but there is much to be said for the real danger of a loved character getting the... umm.. boot. Was going to say another implement, but can't find the spoiler tags...
Now, Catherine fooked that all up, but that's for another rant at another time.
The murder mystery where the culprit is the one everyone presumed dead? The horror movie where the dead come back? The Action movie where the best friend was killed halfway through the film only to save the day in the end?
C'mon. You can say that SciFi made it easier for the writers to make a resurrection believable and less cheesy, but singling it out for this cheap deus-ex-machina effect is not doing it justice. If you want to pick on bad SciFi scripts, take all the other deus-ex'es that exist, like the particle-of-the-week in Star Trek. Seriously. There seems to be nothing an inverted tachyon beam sent through subspace can't sure. It's like watching an Agatha Christie murder case where you simply CANNOT solve it yourself since you lack important information (in the case of Star Trek, the technobabble that solves the problem).
That's the beef I have with many contemporary SciFi series, that the "exits" are simply akin to "paint one to the wall and walk through", there is no resolution that the viewer could come up with, the magical technology solves it all. But death? You can blame every genre for cheap resurrection when some artist decides to come back to the set.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
It sure is fiction, but kinda lacks the science.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
If they bring back Heath Ledger, they get a free pass.
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That works as long as you get your renewal notice in time. Not so well when you think you're cancelled, and get a renewal at the eleventh hour like B5.
Benford's Corollary to Clarke's Law: "Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced."
Does this mean we should expect someone from the WWF (WWE) to die and then come back later too?
I thought Buffy handled death fairly well...if characters were killed by monsters / magic / gods / etc. they could come back from the dead. If they died from something else, they were just dead. Joyce's death, and later Tara's, were both very effective because you knew that they were definitely, 100% not coming back. It was a way to actually give some tension to death, and in both seasons it also had a strong impact on the overall plot (Joyce's death setting up Buffy's crisis of confidence and eventual self sacrifice / suicide at the end of the season, Tara's death setting up Willow's slide off the deep end) - they weren't just one-off "audience shockers". I will say, most of the other deaths in Angel / Buffy weren't all that impactful, because you knew the character was probably going to be resurrected or come back in one way or another. The one exception was the death of Fred in the last season of Angel - it had a real punch, because you knew the character was definitely dead and not coming back.
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That is when the show completely fell off the rails. When they killed Mulder, and then dug him up and resurrected him... Idiotic.
...if the actors & the producers could resolve their contract disputes before the end of the season.
The actual idea of regenerating Doctors is misplaced, but the article in the summary actually refers to the actual use of killing off characters and resurrecting them in Doctor Who. In the first season with Matt Smith, a sort-of-primary character was killed off in an incredibly permanent way... he was erased from history. And yet despite being erased from history, he came back in the season finale as an android copy of himself with all his memories.
You got to admit, when Doctor Who uses a cliche, it goes all out.
"All great wisdom is contained in .signature files"
Any new film, based on any part of the "Star Trek" franchises. :-)
Producers, get this one thing straight: "It's dead, Jim."
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
This is something SGU did right. Characters killed other characters and those dead characters were dead. Death directly impacted the morale and capability of the remaining crew. When a crew member thought their dead child might still be alive ... they weren't. When the obligatory "all these people died but now they are back!" episode happened, the dead people were dead again by the end of it.
Firefly did this same thing years earlier and in the movie. I'm sure others have done it well, but they are few and very far between.
Sadly, this is likely part of why the mainstream population couldn't bend their minds around either show for very long.
It is more productive to voice thoughtful opinions (reply) than to judge (moderate) others.
Well, it depends on the exact religion and period. Egyptian religion changed quite substantially over its 3 millennia of existence, ranging from just a Ka and a parallel world, to a Ka and a Ba, to rebirth. So it's probably misleading the casual readers to say anything as applying to Egyptian myths generally, much less the whole Mediterranean area religions.
That said, it's kinda interesting.
The original Egyptian myth afterlife was more like ours than what many other religions had, in a sense. And in another sense, it wasn't exactly heaven either, but rather a parallel world which doesn't work very differently from the normal world.
I could rant for pages about peculiarities of those myths, and, well, I _do_ tend to rant lots. But in this case I'd say that the main motif of the hero who gets killed, is somehow near or past the point of no return (e.g., already buried), then *poof* he/she's alive again, much to everyone's surprise, is already there.
Maybe Osiris is the bad example, there. While an actual resurrection of him in the physical world can be supported too (if in their crops, rather than as a guy: they actually have paintings of wheat stalks growing up of a buried corpse, and that was actually a resurrection scene for them), it actually does require a wall of text to even scratch the surface of. So we're probably better off just forgetting about him entirely.
But there are plenty who don't remain in some afterlife as a resurrection. E.g., Dionysus is killed and actually his body destroyed, eaten by the Titans even, except for his heart, in one version of the myth. That's way beyond what you'd expect even Jesus to be able to resurrect any more. But Zeus implants that heart in his thigh, and Dionysus is born a second time.
Sure, it's not the same kind of resurrection as in the Bible, but it's nothing you couldn't use, say, for a superhero story after you offed them once. Since, you know, that's the thread's topic.
And the thing is, that seems to be exactly how these old religions evolved. Each tribe or city state had one patron god, and as power dynamics shifted, so did god hierarchies. They made up stories as to how god A got to rule over god B, as the faction worshipping god A came to have power over those who liked god B.
And gods and heroes (demigods) were routinely killed or disabled in stories, too. E.g., Akhenaten made up a whole story in which Amun is killed, when he wanted to replace the solar worship with his own cult of Aten. Then, a dozen years later, Akhenaten's reign is over, an suddenly Amun lives again.
That's the 14'th century BC, not 20'th century Marvel and DC comics :p
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
OBviously, SOMEone didn't even notice that sci-fi IS dead!
"Stratigraphically the origin of agriculture and thermonuclear destruction will appear essentially simultaneous" -- Lee
You should be okay so long as you're not a redshirt.
The defective red uniforms were replaced in the late 23rd century.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
Showtime never should have canceled Dead Like Me. Dumbest move ever second only to Fox canceling Firefly.
Do you even REALIZE you are discussing this like a bunch of old women
in a bridge club ? This is the most pathetic shit I have seen in a long time.
This is it, the last time I will waste a precious second of my life looking at Slashdot, which
has become less worthwhile than a turd.
At least a turd can be used as fertilizer.
I'll take old women in a bridge club over the comic store guy any day.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
Ironically, J K Rowling was very strict on keeping dead people dead in Harry Potter. Being a series aimed for children, it's much more serious than adult literature, which liberally resurrect dead ones with cheap reasons.
(OK, there is an exception, but not going into spoilers, he was not really dead in the first place).
The Andy Griffith Show. 5 Season in black and white with Barney Fife, and then several more in color without. The shows with Barney are so popular, that people often turn off the set when they see the show is in color. Some station run the color episodes in black and white just to keep people from immediately turning the show off.
Why did Don Knots leave? Well Andy had said the show was going to have a 5 year run. Thats it, only 5 years. So half way though the last season, Don Knots singed a contract with a Studio to do several movie projects. By the time Andy decided to do season 6, Don Knots was already contractually obligated to leave.
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That is the problem with drama driven sci-fi like BSG, Lost and SGU. There has to be drama at all costs. Then they really have to ratchet the drama up during sweeps. They get to a point where they only way they can take it up one more notch is to kill someone important or that the audience loves.
Then comes regret and the "oh shit" moment when they realize they have to get that character back. Or the seriously screwed up personality switches they did on Heroes. Every time I start watching Heroes season 1, BSG season 1 or Lost season one, I think about what they have done to Mohinder, HRG, Kara and Locke. I have to turn the TV set off before I see any of these decent characters ruined again.
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You know, if I'm driving a Ford-F150, a 750cc sportbike or a Lamborghini, it's still me dri... :-)
He put his boots up on the table and made a face. "The sig," he smirked. "You can waste your life in search of the sig."
With any luck, geeks a couple centuries from now will be arguing if "Highlander" and "the Matrix" had any sequels, or if they were made and just lost to history. :-)
He put his boots up on the table and made a face. "The sig," he smirked. "You can waste your life in search of the sig."
Does anyone else remember being annoyed with Gene Roddenberry's Earth: Final Conflict, when the main character, Boone died? I gave up watching the rest of the series because of it, but caught a later episode where Boone was apparently a reanimated corpse servant on a Taelon ship.
EXT: WOODLAND MEADOW, HAPPY FLUFFY BABY JOKES AT PLAY
VOICEOVER
Every year, thousands of baby jokes are clubbed to death by needless explanation
and exposition.
Hordes of Explanations armed with cudgels descend on the meadow, splashing blood
among the flowers. Comically high-pitched screams echo through the forest.
VOICEOVER
With your help, we can help end this atrocity. With your support, even if we can save only
one joke from senseless needless death...
PUSH IN ON THE WET QUIVERING EYES OF A BABY JOKE HIDING UNDER A LOG.
AUDIO BEGINS OF "WE CAN SAVE THE LAUGHTER" BY PEABO BRYSON
VOICEOVER
Won't you please help?
He put his boots up on the table and made a face. "The sig," he smirked. "You can waste your life in search of the sig."
Interesting, apparently I haven't seen the whole series.
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
Stargate SG1 had 4 or 5 years of being told it was their last season ... only to be renewed at the last minute. They were told 'you aren't coming back next year' and managed to do a great job of dealing with it year after year ... it wasn't even a 'we haven't decided if you'll come back', it was 'you wont be coming back ... JUST KIDDING!'
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
I notice they mention the resurrecting Cylons from the re-imaged BSG, but fail to mention that plenty of them did die for real under certain circumstances (including just about all of them at the end), and a whole slew of human characters bought the farm.
No statement is true, not even this one.
Rush and that douch bag guy from earth that gated in with the lucian alliance were both 'brought back to life' before they died, and were in the same show with their doubles, before the duplicate rush killed the duplicate douche and died himself as the duplicate Destiny fell into the star it was near.
Pretty much everyone died in the first iteration of the planet they found the kino on which recorded their future.
On SG-1 only general Landry died and was brought back via the Asgaard time dilation field reversing time. Jackson never died, only ascended which is not death. A few other characters came back to life during an alternate reality collision but that was only for that one episode until everyone went home.
Atlantis killed off Beckett, then they said they were 'bringing him back but not by cloning or time travel' only to bring him back as a clone. Shepard was drained of life to the point of death by a wraith, but rejuvenated by that same wraith. Ronan Dax was killed and brought back by a wraith, though he may not have technically been dead, just unconscious as there was a really short time between his being stabbed and his being restored.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
jar jar will not come back, jar jar will not come back, ...
Facts take all of the premium out of arm waving - T. Reynolds
I was referring to this episode http://www.startrek.com/database_article/relics
Good-bye
it was in TNG episode
Dyson sphere.
he was stuck in a transporter suspension e set up to live long enough for rescue to come.
...with the distinct lack of sci-fi that is around these days. Or, one could argue, lack of good sci-fi these days.
Although I think that while some of even the best and worst of sci-fi has used it, it is all about how it is used. If it is used for a quick "OMG they died...HOLY CRAP THEY'RE BACK!" moment then meh. But if it becomes part of the storyline and/or mythos of the show (such as in Stargate SG-1 where Apophis keeps showing back up for the first several seasons, or Daniel comes back after his "death", etc) then I believe it can be an interesting and important part of a sci-fi show's plot.
"I hope you know how very lucky you are to know me, because I am so incredibly incredible."
Now this series may be as much an offender as others out there, but it did very well in handling the death of a major character in the second season. It even had an episode devoted to the possibility of the character coming back, before finally ending with the idea that they were truly gone. Pretty clever writing, as it was playing on the expectations of the viewer that the character would come back.
If you strike me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine ...
Long I fell, and he fell with me. His fire was about me. I was burned. ... Ever he clutched me, and ever I hewed him, till at last he fled into dark ...
Forgive them for they know not what they do
for they walk through life in toe crampity shoes
Even the bible knocks off a few guys and brings them back for dramatic effect. There was Lazerus and that mexican dude, Jesus.
Capt. Jack might dust himself off, but the rest of them die and stay dead (eventually).
You want a long dream sequence, try the Tommy Westphall hypothesis.
Basically, the ending of St. Elsewhere was that the entire show was a product of this kids imagination. Many of the characters of this show made cameos on other shows. Thus, the shows that they cameoed on are part of his imagination as well. Any cameos or spin-offs from those shows make those other shows imaginary and so on.
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That one doesn't really count because the audience was never led to believe he was dead. The whole thing with him being trapped in the transporter buffer was really just a plot device to bring him into the TNG era
That would be Scotty, not McCoy. McCoy briefly appeared in the TNG pilot, where he had actually been alive since the TOS era with none of the usual Sci-Fi handwaving involved.
Jackson never died, only ascended which is not death.
Actually, Jackson died quite a few times, he usually just got sarcophagused. Hell, he even died in the movie. It practically became a running joke.
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Steven Seagal => Executive Decision Drew Barrymore => Scream Samuel L. Jackson => Deep Blue Sea Jesse Ventura => Predator I'm sure other slashdotters can find other examples of stars/characters who dies early in movies.
The myth of some holy dude or healer reviving a dead person is actually even more common than someone popping back by themselves. You have stories all over the Mediterranean of some dude or dudette that was brought back when they were waay past where everyone had written them off for dead.
It's still the same basic thing of having someone offed and then back in the story, though. And in fact most of the examples I gave there are actually in this category.
E.g., Osiris is not just already long dead, he's even been dismembered and the pieces scattered all over the world. Then Isis puts him back together and anoints him, and *WHAM* he lives again. Eat your heart out, Lazarus ;)
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
There hasn't really been any real science fiction on TV or cinema lately.
Doesn't mean a thing in modern anime--aside from those classic 80s series like Legend of the Galactic Heroes or the original Gundam. The weight of death in anime is such that most people outright deny when their favorite character is dead--and 9 times out of 10 are right. From wishing them back to life to beating up death, meeting them in a parallel world or just plain figuring out they faked their own death...
Ginga no Rekshiya Mata Each page.
Bullets make an impact. Death would have an effect or would affect a character.
Descriptivist excuses in 3... 2... 1....
Utilizing the synergization of benchmark e-solutions to pre-workaround action items!