SFF things that are sure as fuck *not* getting my votes:

[theweaselking]

Things #1: "The Shannara Chronicles" is most definitely NOT going on my Hugo noms next year, and it's going below No Award on the final if other people's taste is Doctor-Who-level horrible and it gets nominated.

I had high hopes. TV miniseries doing an adaptation of "The Good Terry Brooks Novel" by Terry Brooks! Starring John Rhys Davies and Manu Bennett! And, uh. Um. Well....

Remember that scene you loved, the one you thought was exciting and awesome when you were a small child and read Elfstones? Remember those characters you though were awesome, the epic battles in the desperate defense against the army of demons? The suspense, heroism, the high drama?

Got all those clearly in your head? Yeah, none of them are in the TV show. They've all been replaced with high school subplots. Involving, in one episode, a LITERAL HIGH SCHOOL. Where one of the characters finds a bunch of old D&D dice. They spend a whole episode on the LITERAL high school and about 5 minutes on the D&D dice, but leave out the entire demon army until 15 minutes from the end of the series. Worse, remember how Elfstones was the book that broke with being a Tolkien pastiche and tried to be something more? Well, Chronicles Of Shannara is not that. It's fanfic on the Peter Jackson Hobbit movies, and as bad as they were compared to LotR? That's how bad Chronicles is compared to them.

Everything that was good or fun in the book is gone. The actors playing Wil, Amberle, and Eritrea do their best but the best of them is Amberle and she's, like, "good for MTV", not good. Manu Bennett has less to work with than he did in Spartacus and John Rhys Davies chews all the scenery but he's got a small part, so it's really not enough.

And then there's the pacing. Let me put it this way: I'm 95% sure JJ Abrams was an uncredited script consultant, because *wow* it's bad. It's Star Trek Into Darkness bad. It takes weeks to ride south to find the bloodfire but then one day to ride back, and on that day it's sunset for the whole time *and* then still sunset for several hours after they arrive. From the Elven city to the spot where the demon army comes through is At The Speed Of Plot which would be fine except it keeps taking DIFFERENT amounts of time. The main source of suspense in the book is whether or not the small party of Hobbits heroes can get the One Ring seed of the Ellcrys to Mount Doom the Bloodfire before the demon army fights through the combined forces of Good Guys and kills the Ellcrys, releasing them forever. Except, in the TV show? The demon army doesn't move, and the Elves make no attempt to stop them. It takes until after the Bloodfire is found for the demons to even *begin* to move towards Arborlon, and that's actually okay because the Elves set their very first line of defense *inside* the city, inside the Ellcrys' garden itself, like 30 meters from the tree.

And, I mean, then there's just the DUMB. Our Hobbits heroes fall into the LITERAL HIGH SCHOOL to have some more tweenager drama, and explain away the prom decorations and shit as "a pocket of the old world, preserved undisturbed for thousands of years". Not TWO SECONDS LATER there's a flood of bats leaving this mysteriously guano-less "perfectly sealed" "perfectly preserved" high school gymnasium. Because it occured to nobody that maybe there shouldn't be bats there.

It was just bad.

Thing #2: Sheila Gilbert.

I finished books 3 and 4 of that, and yeah, everything I said about the constantly-jarring lousy editing, worldbuilding mistakes, inconsistencies from sentence to sentence let alone scene to scene or book to book? It continues, constantly. It even gets worse, as Jim Hines makes an understandable-but-critical mistake when pulling from one of 2014's Hugo nominated novels because he clearly hasn't read it.... and nobody checks. Nobody caught his error. He hinges *his entire overarching series-long plot* on a detail that, if you've *read* the book he's pulling from, doesn't work that way. At all. It's like he used a Wikipedia summary, and his editor clearly didn't even ask.

They're still entertaining novels but they're facepalmingly-badly-EDITED novels, with constant failures of internal consistency. And I know Jim Hines thinks Sheila Gilbert did a great job and is nominating her himself, but no. If those 4 books are examples of her work, she's *not* "Best Editor". There are a great many editors where I have no idea if they're good or not, because I can't see their work. When I'm looking in the right place I *can* see Sheila Gilbert's work, and it apparently sucks.

Comments

[torrain.livejournal.com]

I am so sorry Chronicles was not better. (I really wanted to see her turn into the tree. The actual effect was... a bit short of that.)

(I still kind of giggle over the line "I need you to understand", spoken with great sincerity, as the Dagda Mor is on the doorstep and the world is within a spit of ending. No. No, you don't need him to understand, you need to go to the tree, can we not prioritize here?)

[franklanguage.livejournal.com]

Maybe you want to crosspost this to weepingcock? (Maybe not.)

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

Not really. It's Bad Tweenager Drama involving "is he really into me?" and "does he really like her more than me?" and a decent amount of "I think I like her WAY more than him" but not awkward sex scenes.

[leecetheartist.livejournal.com]

I watched the pilot and thought it looked very beautiful. It sounds like it's going to go downhill.

Downhill

[lsanderson.livejournal.com]

And over the cliff.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

I watched the pilot and thought it looked potentially good: they made Amberle an action hero! They introduced the plot and made it scary!

Then it just stopped, modulo High School Drama, for 9 hours.

[queenanthai.livejournal.com]

...I...I may have had things to say about The Shannara Chronicles.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

Having just read through that: I agree with you on *most* of the things you and Noel think are good, especially the expanded roles and better characterisation of Amberle and Eritrea, but I thought things like the amazing vistas and the awesome Ellcrys model actually made the rest of the series look cheap in comparison, especially any time they swap to a tight indoor set and their lack of budget makes it look like a bunch of larpers who worked hard on their costumes but are playing in a series of high school multipurpose rooms.

Leaving aside, y'know, the ACTUAL HIGH SCHOOL.

The thing that bothered me the most was the number of completely unnecessary, completely uninteresting additions they made that they then spent entire episodes on, while cutting so much of what made the book fun. Psychic-elf-Druid-dude? Pointless and very badly handled. Cut him entirely, you can probably save enough minutes to fit another episode. The Hostel episode at Pykon: Pointless, badly handled, cut it entirely and run something closer to the books in 20-25 minutes, save half an episode and remove YET ANOTHER rape threat. The elf hunters and Utopia, and the high school: Nope, they're stupid and were handled very badly, and their only purpose was to introduce Perk The Wing Rider and his Roc... and Perk was cut. Cut all three. Save two and a half whole episodes. The "warlock sword" arc? Cut it, entirely, it was hot garbage. Save another episode.

I've just removed *five entire episodes* and even if I add absolutely nothing back, I've improved the series immensely. Have you seen the fanedit of all three Hobbit movies that cuts them together as a single 4 hour movie, and the guy who did it said he could get it down to three if he could *reshoot* several scenes that are twice as long as they should be instead of needing to include them as-is?

(part 1)

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

But you want this to be longer than a 5-episode miniseries, so let's start by adding *back* some of the things that were cut from the books. You *need* to have the Breakline, and the demon army trying to kill the tree before it can be regenerated would be nice, so let's spend some of that newly freed time on Halys Cut and the Hoare Flats. You won't be able to do the book justice without HBO's budget, but you can at least *try* to show the Elves stopping the demons before they literally march into the Ellcrys' garden unopposed. Hire someone to be Stee Jan and bring on the Free Corps. So let's add an episode's worth of that, in pieces spread across the second half of the season leading up to Ander's "welp, we're fucked" speech[1] from the last battle. You can even kill Arion here, like they did in the book, and you can even bring him back like the TV show did to have him fridge the King's girlfriend, but I'd recommend, uh, NOT doing that.

I'd also really like to see the elves defend the city. You know, at least a little bit. The defense of Arborlon is, again, a HUGE part of the book. Can we not have *one* scene of demons attacking? You say we don't have any demons because we spent all our budget on high schools and barn raves? I have GOOD NEWS.

Morag and Mallenroe: Rather than a 5 minute fight scene, I'd spend an entire episode on them and their rivalry, and their protection of the Bloodfire. Leading up to, y'know, the same 5 minute fight scene where Wil kills them both, but they could have done a lot more with a little time, and the twin witches jealously and hatred mirrors an awful lot of what the humans and elves go through in the show. And, hey, Perk could be *their* prisoner instead of the Gnome Boner Tea Merchants' prisoner, and they could take his Roc back to Arborlon and avoid 90% of the "wait, HOW LONG does all this take?" issues in the last episode.

And, okay, you don't have the budget for the duel between Allanon and the Dagda Mor. It's simply not gonna happen. But I'm allowed to hope, y'know?

I'm still at about 8 episodes instead of 10, but I'm pretty sure I have a similar budget (I want to spend more, on less) and a MUCH better show.


[1] seriously, Ander and Slanter?
King Ander: "We now have a historic alliance of old enemies against a greater evil! King Slanter, take all your expendable gnome cannon fodder and put it in front of the demons so that after they slaughter your entire species, they will be tired and the Elven troops will have a better chance."
King Slanter: "This is a wonderful idea that I agree with wholeheartedly and I observe nothing suspicious about this plan!"

Although I do notice that while Ander told Slanter to stick all his troops out front, defending the city, not one of them actually *did* that. So maybe Slanter decided that the genocidal elf king's plan to eliminate all Gnomes even if they win the war *shouldn't* be followed and just didn't say so when he was surrounded by Elves with knives.

[queenanthai.livejournal.com]

I agree with a LOT of what you said, especially re: pacing, but I generally did like the new chara---okay fine I just liked Bandon.

Honestly? It felt like they shot it THINKING they were going to get more than ten episodes and ended up having to compress a LOT into the final two. That would explain an awful lot. I'd argue the show should have had MORE episodes to allow for the sort of thing you're asking for. Too many awesome parts from the book got shafted because of that.

The parts that honestly angered me the most were the torture and rape threats because WHY, killing off Tilton for no fucking good reason, and the absolutely awful pile of queerbait that was PrincessRover. ERETRIA THOUGHT SHE WAS GONNA DIE, SHE COULDN'T'VE KISSED AMBERLE GOODBYE TOO COME ON

I still want to see a Season Two because I want to see Gough and Millar hear the criticism and improve the storyline, especially if they're going in an original direction rather than a strict adaptation of Wishsong. Sort of a, "hey, what could you do with this if you gave a shit about your audience?" hope.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

I don't think it needed more than 10 to show what I wanted. I think they *wasted* half their episodes on garbage, and could have used 2/3 of that wasted time to make things much better.

And sure, maybe they got cut to 10 unexpectedly and had to cram - but that wouldn't have happened if they hadn't made episodes 2-8 suck so much. If episodes 2-8 had been as good as 1, they wouldn't have gotten stuck cramming.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

Also, seriously, the elves set their VERY FIRST line of defense against the demons FAR INSIDE the city, in the Ellcrys' garden itself. About 30 meters from the tree. With absolutely zero attempt to even slow them down, before letting them into line of sight of the tree.

That's criminally bad TVmaking.

[ironphoenix.livejournal.com]

Shannara: see icon.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

Did you watch it?

[ironphoenix.livejournal.com]

Heavens no. Thanks for the warning!

[tisiphone.livejournal.com]

I feel the same way about Gilbert and the Hines novels, which is a pity because I really like Jim Hines and I love the idea of his books, and quite enjoyed the first two. It's just gone a bit wrong in the second half of the series. I had to force my way through the third one, and haven't started the fourth.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

I thought the last two were pretty much the same as the first two: Light reads, generally entertaining, some good ideas.... and terrible goddamn editing, with near-constant internal contradictions.