What-dun-it?
Oct. 2nd, 2013 05:13 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mbarkerWe've got some new television shows starting up here in Japan. One of them that caught my eye apparently is a remake of an older show. From the ads, it is a TV mystery/police show, with the twist that the team -- they keep saying the SRI team -- gets the supernatural cases. For example, the ads show a man dissolving, and in one ad the team is looking up a path in the woods when suddenly an invisible ball of force rolls down the path, warping the light and breaking branches and bushes.
I was thinking about how you present this kind of a show. I think part of the trick is giving enough early clues so that the audience expects some sort of supernatural monster. If you just had an ordinary mystery, and then tossed in a supernatural cause at the last moment, I think the audience would be upset. Deus ex machina with a supernatural monster is kind of a cheat. But if you start with the body being clawed, the police baffled by clues that just don't fit normal causes, and then the SRI team shows us that the real problem is a were tiger or something, that could work. I may watch a few episodes to see how it goes.
I was thinking about how you present this kind of a show. I think part of the trick is giving enough early clues so that the audience expects some sort of supernatural monster. If you just had an ordinary mystery, and then tossed in a supernatural cause at the last moment, I think the audience would be upset. Deus ex machina with a supernatural monster is kind of a cheat. But if you start with the body being clawed, the police baffled by clues that just don't fit normal causes, and then the SRI team shows us that the real problem is a were tiger or something, that could work. I may watch a few episodes to see how it goes.
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Date: 2013-11-07 04:13 am (UTC)Episode one. What is the mysterious ball of force, warping lights and breaking branches as it floats down a pathway? Well, when it catches up with a young couple, it turns into a ball of blood, and a mummified body falls out! But the HQ hacker soon determines that it is really a NASA secret project, an invisible floating ball, duplicated by a Japanese company... and locates the genius who is using one of these to collect blood to feed his giant fungus, and whose father is a world-famous fungus researcher. As the genius tries to harvest a children's campground, his father stands in front of the ball of force. Then an agent figures out that you can slide under the ball and shoot it up! The genius, heartbroken at having killed his father, surrenders and they torch his laboratory...
Episode two. A hacker, writing email in an internet cafe, suddenly scratches at his arm, and screams. When the cafe worker opens the door of his booth, because there is some strange liquid coming out from under it, she finds a skeleton! Pursuing clues, the agents run into a whole series of strange ant-based twists and turns, ending with a cross-dressing researcher destroying himself.
So far, the themes seem to focus on crazed researchers doing edge of science stuff. No real supernatural stuff, and the HQ hacker and other bad tropes bother me.
There's another episode this weekend. I'll see if it has improved any.