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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.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
... at least we didn't see Greedo get up off the cantina floor.
Trolling is a art,
Ruining death for everyone.
We are all God's parents.
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
Well, the question shouldn't be how frequently *other* authors abuse a device. The question should be whether a specific *story* abuses a device.
I think "abuse" in this case means the author undermining the logic of his own story to achieve something that takes more skill than he's displayed. Killing a character off for emotional impact then simply saying, "well death is a reversible process in this universe" throws doubt on *everything* in the story. That doesn't preclude resurrecting a character, but the resurrection has to be handled on a level above in-universe machinery if the reader is not to feel cheated.
I've heard a lot of literary complaints about LotR over the years, and most of them are from people with an obviously superficial understanding of the story. Yet the criticism that Gandalf's resurrection is a bit of a dodge is one of the ones most worth considering. Perhaps the strongest defense that can be mounted for Tolkien is that Gandalf's resurrection was narratively *unnecessary*. We saw Gandalf fall and *assumed* he was killed, but Tolkien takes pains to show that we jumped to a premature conclusion. Gandalf actually survived the fall, and only perished (if I recall) several days later after hunting down and killing the Balrog.
This actually shows some unusual artistic instinct on Tolkien's part. Normally resurrection would be a cheap plot device to get a killed off character back, but Tolkien actually takes the trouble of getting the character back *without recourse to resurrection*. This leaves him free to put resurrection on the table without making the reader feel cheated. Furthermore since Gandalf is already in an exempt category as an immortal (we know, for example, that *Sauron* came back after he was presumed dead), he *can* be resurrected without bringing all deaths in the story into question. Gandalf's resurrection doesn't mean that Boromir or Theoden or any of the various other mortal characters might return.
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