‘LOST’: What Comics Can Learn From the Creator-Driven Sci-Fi Epic

Source: comicsalliance.com

ABC’s six-season magical-realist “Lost” — largely spearheaded by showrunners and co-creators Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse — came to its end on Sunday night, bringing to a close an extended, complex time-traveling epic. Was it satisfying? Let’s be honest here: Much like “Battlestar Galactica,” I don’t think it was possible to craft a universally satisfying conclusion; I think it’s safe to say that many fans of the characters probably felt okay with the episode, while the puzzle-solvers are stymied.

What’s really remarkable about “Lost”, though, is that it ended at all. It wasn’t canceled, the showrunners didn’t leave, it didn’t switch lead characters or change direction — for better or for worse, it was a serialized story that was told from beginning to end by a distinct authorial voice, and that’s a lot more than you can say for the vast majority of network television even now.

That’s the thing about the ending, whether you liked it or not: It was the story’s ending. It wasn’t tacked on by executives, or quickly formulated due to a swiftly-announced cancellation, or the product of the show petering out after three executively-mandated showrunner changes to extend the show to twelve seasons. ABC let Lindelof and Cuse run with the idea and tell their story to the end, and this singularity of vision and message is why the fanbase was able to actually regrow its ranks in the final season while people kept catching up to see the story as a whole. “Lost” brought cable TV’s era of the auteur to network television, the idea of a finite, serialized, single story with a single voice that actually ends.

So how does this relate to comics?

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Interesting article. What do you think? Agree? Disagree?

Join us in the forum to discuss!

50 Questions Lost Really Does Need To Answer

So here are our pressing questions:

So the island is the place with the glowy light that’s inside all of us. Does this mean the Island’s alive? People talk about what the island “wants.” What do they mean? Is the island Eywa?

How come the island heals people? Why does it heal them selectively?

Who was the woman who raised Jacob and the Man In Black, and how did she get there?

If Jacob was a Roman, why is he so into Egyptian gods?

What was with those Egyptian symbols that appeared in the Hatch when the countdown went past 108 minutes? That didn’t seem like the Dharma Initiative’s style.

Jacob told Alpert some previous visitors to the island had built that Taweret statue. Did he tell them to build it? Why Taweret?

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Will LOST Find Closure With Its Series Finale? Show Stars Weigh In

It’s nearing the end of a six season run for ABC’s hit show “Lost”. Will the show famous for its enigmas answer the questions that fans have been dying to have answers to? Actors Henry Ian Cusick (who plays Desmond Hume) and Nestor Carbonell (who plays Richard Alpert) weigh in on their opinions of how the show concludes.

Carbonell on the theme of love in “Lost”:

“The issue of love is sort of at the heart of every one of our characters,” Carbonell said. “You’ve had Penny’s, mine was the angst over the loss of my wife. Just about every character, the one central theme is that love is at play in every one of our lives and has ripped us apart in some fashion. I think if that’s fully addressed in the finale, and I think a lot of those dynamics will be addressed, that to me is the most satisfying.”

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Do you think your questions will be answered about Lost? enough to satisfy you, so that you feel a bit of closure?

What do you think of what the cast has had to say about the finale?

EVERYTHING WE FLASHFORWARD TO IS WRONG!

Source: io9.com

Everything we thought we knew turns out to be wrong in the return of ABC’s FlashForward – Well, except for that whole part about Joseph Fiennes being an impossibly wooden actor and it not being a very good show. Spoilers!

You can tell that the show’s writers took the advantage of their lengthy break to rethink some parts of the show, if only because there were two pretty major backtracks in the two-part “Revelation Zero” double-bill that relaunched the show last night. Sadly, they weren’t really backtracks of the good kind. Here’re the major points of what you missed

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Do you watch FlashForward? What do you think of the plot changes? Will it entice you to watch the show, now?

Join us in the forum to discuss!

In today’s news, one show keeps is premiere date and one show gets its date pushed forward. 

Source: lost-media

FEBRUARY 2ND STAYS THE DAY OF ‘LOST’ RETURN!

The White House has come to its senses and won’t hold the State of the Union speech on Feb. 2.

Dharma lovers were agag when word leaked out this week that Team Obama was mulling scheduling SOTU on the same night ABC had long ago slotted the final season premiere of “Lost.” Doing so would likely result in a one-week delay of the premiere, and many fans reacted by declaring, “This will not stand.”

Read more here…

Source: scifiwire

ABC DELAYS FLASHFORWARD TWO MORE WEEKS

ABC is delaying the return of new episodes of its sci-fi series FlashForward by two weeks: It now returns March 18 in its Thursday 8 p.m. ET/PT timeslot rather than the original March 4.

The network gave no reason for the delay, other than to say it would allow the show to air weekly for the rest of the first season without repeats or pre-emptions (and, we presume, to take it out of the path ofAmerican Idol on Fox). Of course, according to a schedule posted by Robert J. Sawyer, author of the book on which the show is based, the show was already scheduled to run without pre-emptions before the change. Does this mean ABC is actually cutting two of the new episodes?

Read more here…

Lost fans rejoice! I wonder how much White House officials and ABC actually consulted with one another over this. I mean think about all the commercial programming that was bought to air during the shows premiere. Think of all the millions of dollars ABC might have Lost (heh heh) due to such a scheduling conflict. Makes you go ‘Hmmmm’.

I haven’t missed FlashFoward much since its hiatus. I had continued watching it during its season just because i want to know the why’s and where fore’s, not so much due to the fact that I felt vested in the show. So what’s another two weeks really?  Are  you unhappy with this shift in schedule?

via hollywoodcrush

NEW ‘VAMPIRE DIARIES’ CAST MEMEBER, DILLON CASEY, COULD GIVE PAUL WESLEY A RUN FOR HIS MONEY

A vampire vet is all set to join the cast of “Vampire Diaries” as a guest star, in the new year. Dillon Casey, who starred in the MTV mini-series “Valemont” about…you guessed it…vampires, will be playing a character named Noah, a CW rep confirmed to us.

The storyline is still being kept under wraps, but according to Vampire-Diaries.net, Noah becomes “obsessed” with Elena (Nina Dobrev).

Read more here…

via scifiwire

ABC CUTS V, FLASH FORWARD EPISODES, BUT NOT BY MUCH

It’s sort of official: The relatively low ratings for ABC’s V and FlashForward hurt the shows, but not enough for the network to pull the plug entirely. ABC is cutting its final order for each show by one episode, the Futon Critic site reported:

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If it weren’t enough that Stefan had his hands full keeping Elena safe and away from Damon, he has another hurdle coming his way, via ‘Noah’.  Nothing stirs the pot more than a love triangle, oops, I mean quadrilateral. How do you feel about Elena having yet another vampire vying for her attention?

Honestly, when I quickly glanced at the news headline for ABC’s V and FlashForward, I assumed the shows were being cut entirely and I let out a whiny NOOOO!, then exhaled with a ‘Whew’ when I saw it was for only one episode each. After many an episode I finally got into FlashForward and really enjoy it. I had never heard of anything like this before (cutting one episode), but I am glad they are deciding to do this instead of scrap both shows entirely. It like giving someone half a book; just when you get all involved in it’s story, it ends, and there are no more chapters to read. I would have lost my faith in television had that happened. Do you think cutting one episode from each show will ruin the story?

from Scott D. Pierce at Deseret News: 3 science fiction series are really struggling

Dying is easy. Comedy is hard,” goes the old saying.

But when it comes to television these days, science fiction is hard. Really hard.

ABC is struggling with both “V” and “FlashForward” — both in terms of the ratings and getting the shows made.

And Fox, which has canceled both “Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles” and “Dollhouse” because of abysmal ratings, seems to be headed down the same road with “Fringe.”

The future of “V” is about as up in the air as one of those giant spaceships hovering over a major Earth city. The day that the show premiered, ABC announced that a new executive producer/showrunner had been hired to helm the series.

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from Sci fi Wire: FlashForward hits a series low and ABC halts production

The ratings for FlashForward fell yet again with last week’s episode, down 8 percent to a new low of only 8 million. And today, according to The Hollywood Reporter, ABC has stopped production on the freshman series for this week.

A rep for the network said that the six-day hiatus had always been built into the show’s schedule, adding, “They want to maintain the high quality of the show, and this gives the writers the opportunity to do so.”

Reason to worry? Perhaps.

But before you start panicking that you’ll never learn exactly how we get to the world of April 29, 2010, it’s too soon to know whether this will mean good news or bad news for viewers.

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By Kris De Leon at Buddy TV: Three Things to Look Forward to When ‘The Vampire Diaries’ Returns in January

The Vampire Diaries has left us high and dry with lots of cliffhangers and unsolved mysteries. While I don’t know who turned Logan Fell into a vampire or who caused Elena’s accident, I do have some teasers to look forward to when The Vampire Diaries returns in January, thanks to TV Guide Magazine.

Warning: Spoiler Ahead!!!

The Mystery Vampire
Though there is no word yet on this new mystery vamp on the loose, but his identity and ultimate agenda in Mystic Falls are the show’s next big focus, according to Plec. And as we unearth more details about the new vamp, we’ll also learn more about the 27 tombs and the possible aftermath if the tombs are opened.

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From Chris Curtis at Broadcast Now: RTS rewards Being Human werewolf

Millennium FX won best special effects for Being Human (Touchpaper Television for BBC3) despite working with “small budgets and tight deadlines, and with no post-production enhancement”. The judges said the werewolf transformations “were a tour de force”.

The judges praised Scott’s work which portrayed “in grim detail” the result of a vicious beating. “The make-up was so convincing, so livid and so credible that it immediately pulled you as a viewer into the heart of the story”, they said.

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From Ian Spelling at Sci FI Wire: Alice (and her commitment issues) go to Wonderland

Just as writer-director Nick Willing completely turned The Wizard of Oz on its ear with the Syfy’s Tin Man, he’s up to the same trick with Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, reinventing it as an upcoming modern-day, off-the-wall four-hour Syfy movie entitled Alice. The biggest change? Alice isn’t a little girl anymore, but rather a 20-something with daddy issues and commitment problems.

All those tweaks were fine with Canadian actress Caterina Scorsone, whose credits include Goosebumps and 1-800-Missing. She beat out 300 women for the coveted role of Alice Hamilton and interacts with a wide variety of re-imagined characters that includes the Hatter (Andrew Lee Potts), the Queen of Hearts (Kathy Bates), Jack Chase (Philip Winchester), the King of Hearts (Colm Meaney), Caterpillar (Harry Dean Stanton), Dodo (Tim Curry) and the White Knight (Matt Frewer).

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I’ve honestly never seen Flash Forward, but I watch V and I really hope they pick it up next year. They can’t just leave us hanging like that! I’m excited about the Vampires Diaries returning too, I want to know how they walking in the sun and exactly who Alaric is.

What do you think of the Being Human werewolf? What are you most looking forward to when Vampire Diaries comes back? Do you watch Flash Forward or V?