In a message dated 2/17/01 2:11:29 AM Eastern Standard Time, N.Faulkner@tesco.net writes:
<< From: Bizarro7@aol.com
Fans don't write fanfic about characters and plot elements they feel were 'mishandled'. You seldom see much of that. Again, I feel it's simply
ignored.
Like, say, the Orbit shuttle?<
The fans aren't fans of the mishandling. The number one attraction of ORBIT is the horrible situation of Avon, trying to survive by hunting down someone who was supposed to be his friend, with an eye toward murdering him. Not the science or mechanics, faulty or otherwise, of the shuttle.
Or the cellar scene in Rumours? Or Avon's
final showdown with Blake?<<
I think maybe we are misinterpreting the word 'mishandled'. The terrible events you cite aren't mishandling. They are high drama, melodrama, script choices. We may or may not agree with them, but they were deliberate. In "Blake", the final scene was deliberately done to be upsetting and ambivelant, in hopes of generating a cliffhanger that would make a 5th season possible. The fact that the 5th season never happened created the frustration that makes so many B7 fan writers seek closure. It wasn't planned that way, but it wasn't mishandling. Similarly, the end of "Rumors" was high tragedy. I never saw it as any sort of mishandling. I don't see fanfic generated by these scenes as 'corrections' so much as necessary elaborations, because the show didn't have the time or will to carry the story elements forward themselves.
I thought the moments you cited were highly *original*, something hard to achieve in a script, nowadays. Maybe originality is one of those extra ingredients we need to add to your list of the previous post, Neil.