Buffy Season Six: The death of metaphor

One of the major problems with Season Six of Buffy The Vampire Slayer was the loss of metaphor in favour of a more realistic approach. Here I look at how that affected two of the season's key storylines: Buffy and Spike's relationship; and Willow's addiction.

Here's an anecdote that you may or may not find relevant further down. When Steven Spielberg first set out to make Jaws he originally planned to have a whole lot more shark in it ("I gotta have more shark, baby!"). The problem was that the damn shark just didn't work. This meant Spielberg had to scrap a load of shark action and instead come up with shots that suggested the shark but didn't actually show it (things like the infamous fin moving through the water).

For my money this is one of the reasons why Jaws is so great: it's not just about a rubber shark, it's about the threat of the shark, the image in your mind's eye of that shark, the potential of the shark. Now, fast forward to Jurassic Park, where Spielberg had the freedom to put as many dinosaurs on the screen as he wanted and you'll find a monster movie that's far less effective .

When the Buffy production team started work on Season Six they weren't just embarking on a new series, they were moving the show to a new broadcaster (UPN). With the move came more money (nearly twice as much per episode, I gather) and more freedom in what they could show on screen (finally, for instance, you could have Tara and Willow actually kissing, and you could talk about them having sex rather than use the metaphor of casting magic spells together).

Consequently, it's not without reason that some fans refer to this as 'season sex'. While previous years had their fair share of bonking, it was pretty much always off camera or, at the very least, left as much to the imagination as network standards prescribed. This year it was full on - and most of that was Buffy on Spike, or vice versa.

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Jun 10th 2010 20:45 // Reviews // No comments

Buffy Season Six: The flawed season

Nerds, sadomasochism and big bad Willow? It can only be Season Six of Buffy The Vampire Slayer. Was it really as troubled as it first seemed back in 2002? Let's take a second look.

Season Six of Buffy The Vampire Slayer has a fairly unique status for me. Not only does it mark the time of my life when I fell in love and met my wife (yes, I did mean to say it that way around) but it was the first season of Buffy that I actually watched on a week-by-week basis.

I came late to the Buffy party, joining in the fun sometime between season 5 and 6, and caught up with most of the earlier seasons on DVD. Hence, right from the outset, my viewing experience of Season Six was different.

While DVD gives you the luxury of cramming in an entire season as quickly as time and your own fervent fandom allows, it's a different story with TV broadcasts. For starters you're stuck with just the one episode each week, which really changes the way you digest the season as a whole. You need each of those single episodes to deliver your complete fix for the week; if the story doesn't progress in a major way you feel a bit cheated; if that week's episode sucks you can't move straight onto the next potentially great episode to wash the bad taste out of your mouth.

So, on my first painfully drawn out viewing back in 2002, Season Six undoubtedly had its highlights but overall I found it significantly lacking. I was never sure whether this was just down to watching it one episode per week, or whether the season was a genuinely lesser affair. Reading through the fan commentary of the time didn't really offer much illumination: you'd find that every season was the worst since the last according to at least some people, and this spanned all the way back to Season Two.

As with all the Buffy DVD sets I got hold of the Complete Season Six pretty much as soon as it first came out, but I'd never mustered sufficient interest in watching it all over again. The main stumbling block was down to me thinking it would just end up being painful, that there were too many low points of the season to endure all over again. On the other hand I've always been curious to see how it holds up in retrospect and particularly when viewed in a compressed period, over a single week or so.

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Jun 9th 2010 21:22 // Reviews // No comments

The not-Easter and not-ready-yet story

In which I make excuses for my failure to produce a not-Easter story and make attempts to get you all excited about a not-ready-yet story.

At the end of last year, buoyed by the warm reception for short story Graves (and also encouraged by the fact that I'd actually managed to finish writing a damn story) I pledged to write an Easter story. I figured that giving myself four months' notice would be enough of a heads-up and that even I would be able to churn something out by April.

Yeah, I was wrong about that.

I did start the story. I planned it. I wrote about half of it. And then I stalled. Along the way I had a few changes of voice, came up with some better ideas than I'd originally had, but something wasn't quite gelling. As the end of April loomed it became abundantly clear that I wasn't going to finish the story, at least not in any satisfactory manner. Also, with my parents due to fly over for a long awaited visit over Easter I knew I wouldn't get much of a chance to sit down and write for much of April (in fact, as it turned out, my parents were stranded with us for the entirety of April due to a pesky volcano that wouldn't stop spewing).

So it's been a week now since my parents flew back to England and while that wasn't exactly a cause for great celebration I was looking forward to getting stuck into some writing again. Of course, instead of doing that I've been doing other things such as drinking wine and watching Buffy The Vampire Slayer.

Part of the reason for this procrastination is that I wasn't quite satisfied with how the story was turning out, but at the same time I didn't really know what I was going to do with it once I put my writer's hat back on. In truth I still don't know, but today I rewrote the first paragraph in a bid to kickstart the writing process again. I often find myself agonising over first lines, and first paragraphs - they're the crucial hooks, the precious few words you have to draw the reader in, to set up your stall and to get the mood just right. I might still have it wrong, but you tell me - does the following make you want more?

Katarina walked down the road to Brendan's house. She carried the box carefully in front of her, holding it with both hands to make sure she didn't drop it. It was already starting to get heavy, but she didn't mind. She loved being out at this time of year, she loved the air; it was warm and bitter and full of mischief. Also it would be getting dark soon. The change was always good: the change from light to dark, from warm to cold, from alive to dead.

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May 10th 2010 20:24 // On Writing // 2 comments

(the story behind) Colder Still

To celebrate surpassing the 1,000th download of my short story Colder Still (via Smashwords.com) I reveal, for the very first time, the gripping tale of how Colder Still came into existence.

Colour me surprised. Sometime over the weekend of March 13 2010 the total downloads recorded for my short horror story, Colder Still, passed beyond the 1,000 mark. How many of those 1,000 people have actually read my story I have no way of knowing, but it's exciting enough that the story is readily available and that more than 1,000 people have demonstrated enough interest to at least download it.

It was published (i.e. uploaded) almost exactly a year ago, so it's taken a while to get even this far. I can't claim to have done any great promotion for it, other than a few pleading mentions on Twitter. In fact I fully expected to see a few downloads within the first week or so and then pretty much zip after that. Nevertheless, over the past year downloads have continued quite steadily and show no signs of slowing down (1,135 downloads as of my last check).

It's always been my intention to discuss the process of writing my stories - whether you want to know about it or not - and reaching 1,000 downloads is enough of a cue for me to start talking  about how and why I wrote Colder Still. I do want to say up front that if you haven't read the story you should stop reading this right now as there will be spoilers. Instead, if you're so inclined, go over to smashwords.com and download Colder Still.

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Apr 19th 2010 16:19 // Shorts // No comments

New New Who

Finally, after months of excitement, curiosity and, perhaps, even trepidation, Doctor Who returned to UK screens on April 3 (and to everyone else's screens in the hours and days following). Naturally, such a momentous event requires nothing less than a dedicated blog post.

It's not often that I find myself writing reviews these days. This is partly because I just don't watch as much stuff as I used to, but mainly because very few films or shows excite me enough that I want to spend the time writing about them. It doesn't mean everything I've watched lately has been rubbish or boring - quite the opposite - but something has to be profoundly original, or momentously awful for me to feel that urge to start tapping away after the credits have rolled (let's face it - it has to be nothing short of a revelation). Another deterrent comes from watching a lot of episodic television: do I try and review every single episode, or try and encapsulate all the highs and lows of an entire series in a single review? Either way, it's a fool's errand if you ask me.

That said, here I am, about to start writing about a single episode of Doctor Who, one of the longest-running series' on television - but what an episode: one that boldly changes everything, while ensuring that everything remains just the way it should be.

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Apr 10th 2010 16:27 // Reviews // No comments

The Case of the Mysteriously, Yet Temporarily, Disappearing Toothbrush

It was a dark and stormy night. The sort of night where things went amiss, askew or, even, awry (and, sometimes, all three). Yet, in the House of Cawthorne only one thing went amiss: a lone toothbrush.

Imagine, if you will, a bathroom, but not just any bathroom: my bathroom. Now imagine, if your wits allow it, a basin. Above that basin picture a mirror. On that mirror envisage, above the height of your head, a cup held fast by the power of suction, a cup containing scissors and an ageing pair of nail clippers. To the right of the very same basin allow your mind to display to you a plastic, lidded receptacle (inside which receptacle you may project what you will). To the left of the basin, perhaps most critically, there is a shiny metal cup, into which might be posited a surprising array of toothbrushes and, indeed, tubes of toothpaste. To further blind your mind's eye I would also beseech you to outline a carelessly abandoned bag of toiletries alongside which you might identify a plastic tray containing soaps and other items pertaining to personal hygiene and domestic comfort.

Why should this sight be held fast in your already dizzied imagination? Well, dear reader, press on for in words lies knowledge, and in knowledge lies understanding, and in understanding lies satisfaction, and in satisfaction lies - ok, let's move on....

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Mar 24th 2010 20:44 // Miscilliness // 2 comments

Fun with PHP Calendars: Part 1

Recently I've writted up some functions using the various date related functions built into PHP to create some calendars and other listings. Here's a method for displaying a list of weeks for a particular event.

Recently I had to restyle a fairly elaborate web page calendar as part of my work. The original version was written in straight html, and the page would need to be rewritten at least once a year, so naturally I decided to recode it as a dynamic PHP page to save on future maintenance. One major feature of this calendar was listing the weeks of any given semester which was to be placed alongside a traditional calendar display. My approach was to write a function with the first and last dates as the key parameters, and then let PHP do the rest of the working out. The result is a simple script that will display a range of values for each week between a starting and end date - for instance, the date of Monday of each week, the calendar week, and so on.

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Mar 18th 2010 15:58 // Web Design // No comments

On Writing... fan-fiction

Fan-fiction provides a chance for fans to immerse themselves in their chosen universe beyond the limits of official canon. For the reader it offers all-new stories featuring much-loved characters, but what does it offer the budding writer? Is it nothing more than a waste of time, or can it provide valuable exercise?

(For my personal background to this article, and my own effort at writing some fan-fiction, please refer to my earlier post: Sacrificial: A (Star Wars) short story.)

As I discussed in the above-mentioned article my initial gut reaction to the thought of writing a Star Wars story was something along the lines of: '...mere fan-fiction? why waste my time on that?'. Obviously I ignored my gut and wrote the story anyway. Why? What could this endeavour possibly offer me when I've got plenty of my own stories crying out to be written?

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Mar 5th 2010 15:13 // On Writing // No comments

Sacrificial: A (Star Wars) short story

Welcome to my first (published (sort of)) attempt at writing some fan-fiction. This may, in fact, be the only time I make such an effort, so enjoy it while you can - or before George Lucas notices and demands his share of the vast profits I will doubtless reap from this enterprise.

My original plan was to write a lengthy post exploring the ins and outs of fan-fiction, with my own entry providing a sort of epilogue to the piece. However, I decided: sod it - let my story stand on its own. There's not meant to be any suggestion there that Sacrificial is such an evolutionary step in the world of fan-fiction that it couldn't possibly be diluted by any other content. To the contrary, I think the proposed examination of fan-fiction itself will probably be more interesting, and to include vague witterings about why I'm writing a story featuring Princess Leia would probably distract.

So I'm putting all those witterings here.

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Mar 4th 2010 09:01 // Shorts // No comments

RSS Update

There's been a fair bit of 'dicking around' with the RSS feeds on the site these last few days. Now that most of the work is done here's an update on where to point your RSS readers.

To access the main RSS feed for this site look no further than http://www.edpriceishungry.com/rss/ (the previously available URLs http://www.edpriceishungry.com/feed/ and http://www.edpriceishungry.com/feed/all/ will also still work). At present the main feed is provided by Feedburner, but the above URL now automatically redirects to Feedburner, so there's no need to use any other link.

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Mar 2nd 2010 12:52 // Miscilliness // No comments