In search of a new sci-fi show, we started watching Sanctuary

[sholio]

I know there are a number of people on my flist who really like this show, so please take my opinion with, you know, all suitable disclaimers (IMHO, to each their own, and so forth), but as of Sanctuary 1x03, I'm finding it hilariously awful.

The budget is apparently, like, nothing, which really isn't the show's fault, but does lead to lots of gigglefit-inducing moments like Ashley chasing Druitt in a warehouse full of guns with one l'il pistol, or the mooks in the Morrigan episode that looked like bad Halloween costumes and totally had that whole not-at-all-menacing B-movie lurking thing going. (Note to the Cabal: You may be an Ancient Organization of Evil (TM), but ... it's 2008! Battle technology has advanced beyond slow-moving unarmed creatures with no fighting skills! I'M JUST SAYING.)

More annoyingly, the characters are idiots, and the science!fail and shoddy research is on the level of a bad fanfic, such as Will saying that the bubonic plague was last seen in Scotland in 800 AD. (... so the Black Death never made it to Scotland, I guess? FOR GOD'S SAKE LEARN TO USE GOOGLE, WRITERS.) The dialogue often has that cringe-inducing "bad Renfaire" sound as in the worst Stargate episodes, and omfg, if Will was any denser, the man would spontaneously collapse into a black hole. And what is up with Ashley, supposedly their badass fighter, getting taken hostage and having people get the drop on her and just generally lacking the common sense of a mushroom ...?

It's not enough to just tell me that characters are smart and competent! You have to actually SHOW them being smart and competent too! As it is, they basically win their fights because the bad guys and monsters just stand there and let themselves be attacked, a la Old Skool Doctor Who.

Despite, or perhaps because of the general silliness of it, I'm finding it very entertaining anyway. The more overblown and melodramatic the characters get, the less seriously I can take them, and I do enjoy the silly B-movie moments (at times, it's hard to tell if the writers are doing it as a deliberate nod to old monster movies, or if this really is, god help them, the best they can do). And every once in a while there'll be something that genuinely is funny or clever. I can't help liking Henry, and I want to like Amanda's character because, well, it's Amanda (although ... the accent ... *cries*). But mostly, I go back and forth between being entertained by its mockability and annoyed by its implausibility, I suppose.

So ... does the show actually get better later on? Or do you just have to be willing to accept it for the cute-but-very-silly thing that it is? XD

This entry is also posted at http://friendshipper.dreamwidth.org/302145.html with comments.

Comments

[abyssinia4077.livejournal.com]

Stay patient. The first season is pretty rocky, mostly because they got picked up at the last minute so pretty much had about 2 weeks to write, film, edit, and polish each episode. I find the goofiness of S1 charming, if ridiculous, but when it starts coming into its own it gets *good* (and, oh man, season 3 so far has been GOOD).

I promise later the characters get increasingly smart and competent. I'd say try to make it through season one (only 13 episodes - some of which are very good (I'd say "The Five" and "Requiem" (OMG AMANDA IS AWESOME) are the best, along with the season finale) and some of which are important info bits for later.

As for Amanda's accent, it kinda drives me crazy when people complain about that, so I'm going to give you my standard response. Amanda can do an authentic British Accent. She purposely makes Helen's accent off because she's accounting for the 100+ years Helen spent traveling the world and living in places other than Britain, and how that would affect her accent.

Pretty much, the genuinely funny and clever gets more common, Henry becomes a main character (OMG HENRY!), and you will, I think, grow to like Helen a lot. It just, well, most shows are pretty rocky the first few episodes. You do have to allow for the effects to be cheesy sometimes, though those get better also.

Also...I think Damian Kindler, judging by his Stargate episodes, and Sanctuary, is one of those writers who is very good at big interesting ideas, but less good on the follow-through and the little details. A number of S1 and S2 episodes left me thinking "I really liked a lot of that, but I feel like one more run around the editing room would have elevated it from "I really enjoyed that" to "that was a really well-told story"" So...yeah. S3, though? Damn.

Um. I rambled a lot. Does that help?

[abyssinia4077.livejournal.com]

[Um, yeah, What I was trying to say in my just-awake ramble was that you haven't really seen any of the good episodes yet. I think the premiere is the strongest one you've seen, and pilots are rarely very good. I think if you can make it to the end of the season, and you haven't enjoyed it and the characters aren't drawing you at all, and you aren't intrigued by parts of it, then it isn't for you. But the characters get smarter, the facts get less implausible (though I still have moments, but the science isn't any worse than gateverse science) and the stories get tighter.]

So if you're finding it entertaining now, it shouldn't be too hard to give it a bit more of a chance.

[frogspace.livejournal.com]

(and, oh man, season 3 so far has been GOOD)

"For King and Country" had me flailing madly all over the place. So good! *flails some more* The last few minutes I almost forgot to breathe. *_*

[sholio]

I'll give a few more episodes a chance -- penknife also suggested "The Five", so I'll try that and see if it grabs me any better. I want to like it; it seems to have that "earnestly well-meaning yet occasionally missing the boat" aspect that Stargate used to (prior to SGU). And I want a new show to enjoy, since just about everything I'm watching right now has degenerated to the point where I'm watching them out of habit and a morbid curiosity to see what happens to the characters, more than actual fun ...

I'm glad to hear Henry becomes a main character! I like him! Helen's accent ... see, I'd been fanwanking that it's exactly what you said, that she's lived in the U.S. and Canada for a long time and lost most of the accent. Which makes sense! But then, in the flashback to ye olde London, to my ear her accent sounds just about the same, which makes it much harder to explain away.

(I've actually been fanwanking a lot of the harder-to-believe stuff in the series, like Helen's claim that she removed and froze Ashley's embryo ... in 1880 ... the ONLY thing I can bring myself to believe here is that she simply doesn't want to admit to Will that she had sex with Druitt as recently as 1985 or so, so she came up with this lame story that he believes because he's, well, Will.)

OH WELL. It may be that this is simply not the show for me. But I'll give another couple episodes a try.

[penknife.livejournal.com]

(I've actually been fanwanking a lot of the harder-to-believe stuff in the series, like Helen's claim that she removed and froze Ashley's embryo ... in 1880 ... the ONLY thing I can bring myself to believe here is that she simply doesn't want to admit to Will that she had sex with Druitt as recently as 1985 or so, so she came up with this lame story that he believes because he's, well, Will.)

If your suspension of disbelief breaks there, this really may not be the show for you -- you really have to buy into steampunk-y Victorian mad science being possible in the show's universe.

[sholio]

OH DEAR. I was afraid of that. *g*

I think that, like I said to tielan below, this show is simply not hitting my happy buttons (yet!) to the point where I'm willing to handwave away the hard-to-swallow stuff and the lapses in writing and so forth, which is where I was with Stargate and, well, most of the things I fan on, actually. (Someday, I keep thinking, I need to get into a fandom for a show that is actually good. *g*) There's sort of a tipping point where I suddenly find myself falling headlong into love with the characters and the world, and stop caring about everything that doesn't make sense. It's too early to tell if that's going to happen with Sanctuary, but I'll check out the episodes that you and abyssinia4077 recommended to me, and see if the fun factor can overwhelm the problems I'm having with it thus far.

[abyssinia4077.livejournal.com]

Yeah. Like I said, S1 was filmed REALLY FAST on very little budget (they were literally doing things like editing episode 3 while filming episode 4 while writing episode 5) which made the season extremely rough and uneven, and what you've seen is not very good. I think, of S1, "The Five", "Requiem" and "Revelations" are the most representative of what the show has evolved into (when people are saying that S2 is much better than S1, and S3 is WAY better still, they aren't kidding).

I personally wasn't all that interested in the premise when it started, so while I wished Amanda well, I didn't really start watching. I ended up watching all of S1 in one really quick burst, which I think helped a lot in getting through the rocky bits to enjoy the awesomeness. Now, I can enjoy the bad ones, even the craptasticness that is "Warriors" (OH GOD SO BAD) for the little moments they give me of characters I love. Plus, like you, I'm a "watch in order" kind of person and unfortunately, some episodes that are otherwise bad have some gem of information that's good later, or some tiny awesome character moment. I do think you can watch "The Five" and "Requiem" as is, and then see if you liked them enough to go back and make it through the bad (I mean, c'mon, SG-1 had some serious CLUNKERS the first few seasons too).

I'm glad to hear Henry becomes a main character! I like him! Helen's accent ... see, I'd been fanwanking that it's exactly what you said, that she's lived in the U.S. and Canada for a long time and lost most of the accent. Which makes sense! But then, in the flashback to ye olde London, to my ear her accent sounds just about the same, which makes it much harder to explain away.

Henry does become a main character and he is OMG AWESOME (my favorite characters are definitely Henry, Tesla, and Helen....possibly in that order, depending on the episode - Will I alternately almost-like and want to smack and sometimes I really wish he wasn't the secondary main character). As for the accent, *shrugs* I have a really really really terrible ear for accents, so I can't hear what everyone is complaining about anyway. And the fact that Helen's accent has changed overtime isn't just fanwanking - that explanation is straight from AT's mouth. As for not changing in old London...I don't know. They thought it was too confusing to change things maybe? They were too busy to care?

(I've actually been fanwanking a lot of the harder-to-believe stuff in the series, like Helen's claim that she removed and froze Ashley's embryo ... in 1880 ... the ONLY thing I can bring myself to believe here is that she simply doesn't want to admit to Will that she had sex with Druitt as recently as 1985 or so, so she came up with this lame story that he believes because he's, well, Will.)

Yeah....I...that never really comes up again so it's something I just stick my fingers in my ears and hum really loudly about. I think you're idea of not admitting it to Will though. Because Will has gullible written across his forehead.

OH WELL. It may be that this is simply not the show for me. But I'll give another couple episodes a try.

It's true, it might not be for you. While it does develop more deeper friendships between characters, there isn't the buddy-buddy pair that seems to often draw you to shows. But I will say that what you have seen is far from representative of how good the show is.

(and I can understand your disappointment, because season 3 has been really really awesome so far, so there's been a lot of squee. Jumping into early S1 after seeing people so excited would be a bit of a "WTF are they going on about?")