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Share opinions: If a new BTVS show was made, what should it contain?

Jul 05 2009 07:18 pm   #1Messiah
OK, this is all hypothetical and is in no way concrete but...
Say I became rich and famous (which I'm working on) and say I decided to make a new vampire slayer series with a new slayer and new friends and a knew plot.

What do you think are the key ingredients that would make the show good enough for you to watch.
Sure, I already have my ideas and all but I wanna know about you guys. What about the original Buffy makes it soo wonderful and yet crappy at times for you?

If I were to hire minions to do my bidding and make a new show-- it would have to have A) Romance
B) some kick ass violence and action
C) heartfelt and meaningful moments
D) morality on the whole good vs evil
E) great humour. Really, it should have everything; horror, heartbreak, drama etc

But it shouldn't be so dramatic that it makes the characters look stupid.. Like what they did to Lex Luther on Smallville.

Honestly, every episode he has to say " You know what my father gave to me for my 4th birthday, Clark? nothing! And that's why I stole Lana from you and faked her pregnancy!! *Throws glass in the fire*"

And the Clark goes "LEX! Project 5546345678! What is it and where is Lana!!"

So, yeah, ruling out retardedness.

So, anyway.
Tell me what you think would make a good slayer show and all that it should contain and how the plots should be. Don't be afraid to say whatever you want. And remember, this is all just speculation :D


- If you want to win a war, you must serve no master but your own ambition..

-The greatest pleasure in life is doing what people say you cannot do.

- A religious war is like children fighting over who has the strongest imaginary friend.


Jul 06 2009 03:47 pm   #2slaymesoftly
It would need the same mix of humor,horror,heartbreak,drama, violence, etc. that BtVS had - plus:
>actors that could do the scripts justice (and not try to be clones of the originals)
>good writers - and, most importantly, someone whose job it was to check for inconsistencies in both characterization and exposition. Someone who could speak up in meetings and say "Whoa, you can't say that. Last year we said just the opposite." or "Hey guys, we've just spent two month building this character up into such and such a person, do you really think he'd do something like_______?"
>an original take on the whole situation - different type Watcher, different slayer, different friends, different city, county, events.
I am not a minion of Evil...
I am upper management.
Jul 06 2009 07:48 pm   #3Scarlet Ibis
Someone who could speak up in meetings and say "Whoa, you can't say that. Last year we said just the opposite." or "Hey guys, we've just spent two month building this character up into such and such a person, do you really think he'd do something like_______?"

Excellent point.  The writers should be mindful of what they said and what they had the characters did previously for continuity, or at the very least have great reasons as to why a character would make any sudden, drastic changes in their personality.  Also the writers shouldn't take themselves too seriously, cause that has lame sauce all over it.

Also, and this is just personal preference, but more diversity of the hardcore/seen in every ep/Scooby variety.  It isn't a requirement for me to watch such a thing, but it'd be nice. 

I'd also pass on any and all hypocritical B.S. and backtracking.  
"Just when the caterpillar thought the world was over, it became a butterfly."
https://www.facebook.com/FangirlNovel
Jul 06 2009 08:05 pm   #4Guest
Excellent point. The writers should be mindful of what they said and what they had the characters did previously for continuity, or at the very least have great reasons as to why a character would make any sudden, drastic changes in their personality.

I totally agree. Nowadays in shows they have alot of that, though.

It would be like if Buffy suddenly decides to murder Dawn and sleep with Xander.
Drastic changes like that just mean you have a lack of imagination, usually.
It would need the same mix of humor,horror,heartbreak,drama, violence, etc. that BtVS had - plus: >actors that could do the scripts justice (and not try to be clones of the originals) >good writers - and, most importantly, someone whose job it was to check for inconsistencies in both characterization and exposition. Someone who could speak up in meetings and say "Whoa, you can't say that. Last year we said just the opposite." or "Hey guys, we've just spent two month building this character up into such and such a person, do you really think he'd do something like_______?" >an original take on the whole situation - different type Watcher, different slayer, different friends, different city, county, events.

Exactly what I envisioned in my head.
Now for more details.
Like what you think are the best and most intriguing kinds of villains and what kind of personality the knew slayer should have etc.. what you're tired of and what you can't get enough of?...


Ok, keep it comin'.

c'mon ppl, post!!

Mesh..
Jul 07 2009 02:09 am   #5Guest
Part of what made the original so good was the emphasis on inter-relationships. It became like a soap opera in that regard. Yeah, you were sad when Angel lost his soul, but why? Because of all the relationships he'd built and the fact of how much it hurt Buffy.

The emphasis needs to be on the people, not the monsters.
Jul 07 2009 02:51 am   #6Scarlet Ibis
The emphasis needs to be on the people, not the monsters.
Hmm, I'm gonna disagree there.

I think one of things that made the show so compelling was the layers we got to see in some of the "monsters."  In fact, some of the best characters were the eeeviL doers.

I would want more emphasis on that, actually.
"Just when the caterpillar thought the world was over, it became a butterfly."
https://www.facebook.com/FangirlNovel
Jul 07 2009 04:33 pm   #7Guest
I think one of things that made the show so compelling was the layers we got to see in some of the "monsters." In fact, some of the best characters were the eeeviL doers.

That's exactly what I was tryin to get at.
Villains can be just as interesting and just as profound as the good guys--but ppl tend to neglect this aspect.

Here are two examples - > Faith/Mayor and The First.

The First was boring as hell because there was no passion, no love, no emotion. Just "kill kill kill and kill some more"
Whereas Faith and the Mayor, as the show went on, developed and sort of father-daughter relationship

The interesting thing about some villains is their complexity and why they do what they do. Learning their vision of things. Even if it is an evil vision--it's still intriguing.
Life isn't all just black and white all the time.
There's pure evil and then there is good turned evil which is all the more interesting.

Another example is Dracula (with Gary Oldman(God he's soo hot!) ) and Lord Voldemort (If you've read Harry Potter).

Lord Voldemort was boring. You never wanted him to win. you never thought anything he did was interesting. He just wanted to rise to power, take over the ministry and kill off the humans and have slaves worship him.

Then there was Dracula (talking about the movie.. tried to read the book but fell asleep)
He was turned into a demon, forced to live off the blood of the living because he rejected Christ's love (pffsshht hahaha I'm damned!) because his wife killed herself.

He wanted something other than power. He wanted Mina to be his. He wanted to make her his bride and at the same time, fought his inhuman urges to damn her for eternity. He has feelings just as the good guys do.

All of this extra attention of details to the villains is what makes everything extra interesting.
----

*drool* oh no... gone into a fantasy about Gary Oldman sucking my blood again... I'll be back in a few hours... excuse me...

Messiah
Jul 08 2009 12:56 am   #8nmcil

For me the prime reason that the series was so great and compelling was that it reflected the Real World condition - that was the vital element and why all the viewers became so passionate, it was all the horrors, joys, suffer and pain and great deep complexity that we all face everyday.  Not all, but most of the times the  Monsters, like the humans, have to be  multi-layered and intellectually interesting. 

Dracula was terrific because he was such a symbol of erotic love.  Riley became really interesting when his narrow world view of The Initiative fell apart and he falls into a world of chaos.  Spike, for all his snark and compelling "Evil Vamp" phase would have been greatly diminished without his "transformation arc."  Look what happens with Principal Wood, his narrow arc of revenge for his mother lost power and interest the longer it played out.  Warren, unlike The First, was also, IMO, much more interesting as the symbol of evil.  The First Evil was an abstraction, it was the human Warren and the preacher Caleb  as its manifestation in the real world that was powerful and compelling characters.  Humans showing the extreme complex ideas and life  - here in my city last week  a just born infant was allowed to die because the parents believed that prayer and God was guiding their lives.  The human existence and social structures at their most complex. 

Buffy, made us all face those complex themes instead of just spending a hour in escapist TV and it made us think about the things that were presented in all their complexity.  Instead of the traditionally acceptable teen boy meets teen girl relationship we are presented with a complexity of potential pedophile with Angel and that silly teen girl sucking on that lollipop - for some viewers that was so "not right" and for others it was just fine - but we all had to face the questions of the theme.

Bottom line for me - no matter what the location, realm, monsters vs humans or monsters vs aliens, your show would have to make me ask the questions of a complex theme otherwise I would fall into the "take or leave it" pattern. 

” Recent evolutionary models have demonstrated what politicians have long known: the best way to get people to collaborate and to think like a group is to identify an enemy and charge that “they” threaten “us.”

Michael Tomasello is co-director of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology.
Jul 09 2009 05:13 am   #9Guest

We know that Buffy having family and friends and being so focused on being human and normal (read: boring) was unusual for a Slayer. I think I'd like to see a slayer not like Buffy, but not like Kendra. Kendra's world was black and white, Buffy forced a black and white view on the Slaying side of her world. What about a Slayer whose whole life is focused on the mission, which forces her to socialize with demons like at Willy's for information and accept shades of gray and going undercover and trusting the peaceful demons. What if slaying wasn't a job, where she just chopped down ten vamps and a couple demons as an offhand duty, but where she understood her enemies were like enemy soldiers, with feeligns and hopes and ambitions and (evil) plans with reasons behind them. I think that Slayer would be very interesting, and we could have her be a girl able to laugh at things and grumble about things that annoyed her and most of all, THINK about important issues and her feelings about what she does to survive, not taking for granted that she will live. Definitely not a Council drone, and I think it would be totally new but interesting, without copying the unique BtVS we all love.

Jul 09 2009 05:39 am   #10Scarlet Ibis
What about a Slayer whose whole life is focused on the mission, which forces her to socialize with demons like at Willy's for information and accept shades of gray and going undercover and trusting the peaceful demons.
See, this is why I think Nikki would be a good candidate.  Being a single black mom in the seventies and a slayer, well, I'm sure her world view was more well rounded.  Or at least, I think it would be.

Well okay, what I just said is more appropriate for the movie thread...but it works here too :P
"Just when the caterpillar thought the world was over, it became a butterfly."
https://www.facebook.com/FangirlNovel
Jul 10 2009 07:20 pm   #11Guest
We know that Buffy having family and friends and being so focused on being human and normal (read: boring) was unusual for a Slayer. I think I'd like to see a slayer not like Buffy, but not like Kendra. Kendra's world was black and white, Buffy forced a black and white view on the Slaying side of her world. What about a Slayer whose whole life is focused on the mission

Couldn't have said it better meself.

Buffy was irritating because she lived in a constant state of denial. She's the slayer for christ's sake and she wants to be normal? psshht... wake up, honey.... Normal is just a point of view. Then again--even normal people want to be normal because their lives already are messed up... She was just cutting herself off from enjoying life

Which comes down to the fact that Buffy is not a hero at heart. She was forced to become a hero.
If she never ever got any super slayer powers, she would have eventually gotten married and had kids and died a ripe old age without even caring if people got eaten every night.
We see this in "normal again" how her desire to just forget everything is stronger than her desire to save the world. But she didn't give in to the spell because she knew somehow it wasn't real.

Buffy, by herself, without her super friends or super powers is just a normal valley girl plain and simple. Just another sheep in the flock that was forced to become a hero when she would have been happiest grazing with the other sheep.

She wasn't born with a desire to save the world and make it a better place and be a hero-she just wanted to live in a happy little world of her own.
So, I would agree that it would be more interesting if there was a slayer that even before she was called, knew the world was in trouble and had a natural desire to make it better and embrace her calling fully and enjoye it at the same time.

Buffy was rarely happy about her job because she didn't accept it fully. in the back of her mind she wanted anything but to be a slayer, which made it hard for her to enjoy her life because she didn't want to be anything that she was.

Laughter is the best medicine.

Jul 10 2009 07:41 pm   #12nmcil
Buffy, by herself, without her super friends or super powers is just a normal valley girl plain and simple. Just another sheep in the flock that was forced to become a hero when she would have been happiest grazing with the other sheep.

Buffy was rarely happy about her job because she didn't accept it fully. in the back of her mind she wanted anything but to be a slayer, which made it hard for her to enjoy her life because she didn't want to be anything that she was.

I think the idea of having a Slayer that did have a much greater understanding of the real world and that totally accepted her duty as The Slayer is excellent - That Slayer could be so interesting and the dynamics around this concept would be awesome - any subject and theme could be explored and it would also have the foundation for the Slayer to have the intellectual and emotional capacity to deal with the complexity of humans, monsters, magical beings, etc. 

While Buffy from the series could be a supernatural being as The Slayer - her youth, emotions, and intellect always made you want to scream at her "grow up and see the real world."
Frankly, Buffy/Slayer of a "growing up" phase without some changes to her maturity and emotional status would have become rather boring -
” Recent evolutionary models have demonstrated what politicians have long known: the best way to get people to collaborate and to think like a group is to identify an enemy and charge that “they” threaten “us.”

Michael Tomasello is co-director of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology.
Jul 10 2009 07:47 pm   #13nmcil
Which comes down to the fact that Buffy is not a hero at heart. She was forced to become a hero.

Don't want to change the subject of the thread but this made me think about Buffy and Angel - perhaps this is why the characters were so attracted to one another - both were imposed upon by forces outside themselves -

The idea of A Slayer of a mature understanding with a Vampire Consort would also make a really good series -
” Recent evolutionary models have demonstrated what politicians have long known: the best way to get people to collaborate and to think like a group is to identify an enemy and charge that “they” threaten “us.”

Michael Tomasello is co-director of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology.
Jul 10 2009 09:07 pm   #14Eowyn315
and, most importantly, someone whose job it was to check for inconsistencies in both characterization and exposition.
It's kind of sad that we feel the need to explicitly state this as something we'd want on a TV show. My expectation is that EVERY show should automatically do this - if they don't have a specific person fact-checking or a show bible with that information, then at the very least, the showrunner(s) should be able to catch such things. There are some shows that do it very well (Veronica Mars and How I Met Your Mother are like continuity porn), and I've never understood why the writers on Buffy didn't think it was important.
Writing should feel easy, like a monkey driving a speed boat.
Jul 11 2009 04:50 pm   #15Guest
Don't want to change the subject of the thread but this made me think about Buffy and Angel - perhaps this is why the characters were so attracted to one another - both were imposed upon by forces outside themselves - The idea of A Slayer of a mature understanding with a Vampire Consort would also make a really good series -

Yeah that made it all scandalous and kinky.. But in order not to copy Buffy exactly, we could make up a totally new love interest that has a human guise as well as a demon one that isn't too grotesque.
And if this new slayer in this new Slayer show(which does not exist but I'm working on it lol) did accept her life and her slayerness, she would be all for dating a sexy demon and wouldn't be all pouty about it.

Which reminds me of the episode where Buffy found out Willow was gay.
Willow got upset because she thought her friend was freaking at the idea of her being a lesbian--she said she thought Buffy would be a little more open minded about these things and then Buffy said something like "If I was any more open minded my brains would fall out!"

But we all know that Buffy is one of the most uptight, condescending, patronizing, stereotyping, hypocritical nazis that ever walked the earth.
She has little to no perspective on anything which makes her all the more retarded.
I mean... Look at how Dawn turned out for god's sake O.o
Jul 12 2009 02:15 am   #16Guest
Which reminds me of the episode where Buffy found out Willow was gay. Willow got upset because she thought her friend was freaking at the idea of her being a lesbian--she said she thought Buffy would be a little more open minded about these things and then Buffy said something like "If I was any more open minded my brains would fall out!" But we all know that Buffy is one of the most uptight, condescending, patronizing, stereotyping, hypocritical nazis that ever walked the earth. She has little to no perspective on anything which makes her all the more retarded.

Amen to that.
Jul 16 2009 12:37 pm   #17nmcil
You two are making me have a nice little smiley time - this has to be one of the best ever descriptions of the great big Buffy Bitch persona - she could be so easy to hate so much of the time - same way, only not to such a high degree with Xander.
” Recent evolutionary models have demonstrated what politicians have long known: the best way to get people to collaborate and to think like a group is to identify an enemy and charge that “they” threaten “us.”

Michael Tomasello is co-director of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology.
Jul 17 2009 10:49 pm   #18Guest
You two are making me have a nice little smiley time

I'm glad I amuse you lol :D

same way, only not to such a high degree with Xander.

Xander? What do you mean?

Mesh ~