Raised by Wolves, which I’ve written about before, just had one of the most bonkers plot developments for a character I’ve ever seen. (No spoiler here.)
I definitely looking forward to each new episode of this show...but I find myself often pressing the “down” button on the remote to check the timeline while it’s on. (For what it’s worth, I found myself doing this during Game of Thrones, even before it jumped the shark.)
I finally realized why that is: none of the characters are actively investigating the mystery that we, the audience, desperately want explored!
They’re each pursuing their own agenda—and stuff happens to them that’s intriguing, that’s for sure—but meanwhile, there’s this crazy planet, and monsters, and a serpent creature, and aliens, and androids, and we’re like aaaah!!!! what is going on?
So that’s the teachable moment: Have the characters explore what the audience wants to know.
Of course, that’s harder on a TV series where the story has to be doled out over many years.
It’s funny how another show might simply have explained its mythology in an opening scroll—but this one keeps it all hidden away, until it seems to be accidentally disclosed.
And yeah, not to spoil anything—but it seems like an alien intelligence is manipulating life on this whackadoo planet for its own ideas of how to shepherd evolution.
In other words, all this has happened before...and will happen again...
Ah, BSG...how you were a good time. Even though you ret-conned yourself whenever you ran out of story!