WHO DESERVES A HAPPY ENDING?

There are some stories that deserve a happy ending. But there are some stories where characters do not require one.

I was troubled by this season of Doctor Who. The showrunner was keen on giving two companion characters major send-offs. It was one of those "they deserved their moment in the limelight." But it does dilute the main character's role as a super-intelligent, time traveling alien who always viewed himself as above the more primitive human race.

Part of the problem was that after the Doctor's current companion, Clara, died because she tried to be as clever as the Doctor himself. That was a pretty solid finish for a character that really did not take a back seat in her last season. She did not play the secondary damsel in distress role; she was a co-worker in solving problems. But the show brought her back in a weird Time Lord trope of pulling her back a second before her death so she could further humanize the Doctor. I don't think that worked at all especially since Clara is no longer dead, and running around with another immortal in their very own time machine.

Then for the annual Christmas special, the Indiana Jonesian character, River Song, had her grand send-off. Again, this plot seemed too forced and out of character. The Doctor has always been cast as a loner who always needed an innocent human companion to balance his potentially unchecked desire to create chaos and destruction. To have one last caper is one thing; but to push the tangential story line that the Doctor and River Song were timelessly in love (even through a re-generation) further weakened the Doctor's character.

 Did Clara and River Song require a happy ending? No. It would have been more powerful if they had bad or heroic endings since that would have been key points in the Doctor's future decision making process (wrestling with guilt, shame, loss).

This same type of forced happy ending put a sour taste in many fans. The final season was a mess of character show reel type plots. One example was the back story episode for Alpert. The only thing that episode did was add evidence that the island was not purgatory, but Hell.

LOST could have ended well at the end of Season 5. Yes, there would have been many loose ends not tied up - - - but that was said when the series finally concluded in the sideways church and then some more plot issues. Was the sideways post-death limbo just a device to force a happy ending for Jack? It would appear so, but it was not executed well because once Jack awakened, he did not seem very happy. More confused than happy.

Other characters, such as Ben, got a happier conclusion than they really deserved. Ben was an alleged mass murdering, abusive psychopath who really did not pay any penalty for his sins. Was that all immaterial when Ben got to choose to stay in the sideways existence to find his missing family life with Rousseau and Alex?

Kate was very happy to see Jack once she awakened from her island slumber. But that happiness was contrary to the reality of their past relationship. In the O6 world, Kate's relationship with Jack soured quickly. On the island, Kate chose Sawyer over Jack. When Jack was in the depths of alcohol/drug depression, Kate turned his back on him. And when Jack was injured on the island, Kate did not stay by his side but instead left the island with Sawyer. It made no sense for Kate to come back in the after life to be Jack's main love interest, his soul mate.

But then again, in the final scene two characters in the church apparently had no happy ending: Locke and Boone. They had no one special with them to share the next level of existence. Both died in the island time frame in brutal and senseless deaths. And in the subsequent story lines, they were not truly mourned by their friends. Was it enough just to have these two loners be a part of a larger group?

Fans probably like the idea of happy endings because they had invested so much time and thought into their favorite characters. But sometimes forced happy endings are the worst thing a show can do.

LAYERED DREAMS

It was not one of the best Doctor Who Christmas specials, but this year's did have an interesting concept at play: dreams within dreams where the characters believed they were dealing with real time, interactive events, even though they were not even in the same location.

In LOST, dream theorists believe that the characters were all hooked up on machines that criss-cross neuron-impulses to create a fabricated, collective dream matrix. It is run by the subconscious mind, like running through levels of a video game. Nothing is real, even though your brain and your senses think it is real.

But the application of dreams within dreams can explain the problematic sideways universe. In essence, the characters mental comas or sleep states could have created the following layers: background stories; the flight from Sydney; the crash onto the island; the island events; the off-island events like the O6; the inconsistent time travel events; and the sideways world. Even when someone died on the island, like Libby, she was still an illusion in the next layer of the complex dream state: the sideways arc.

The dream state explanation is one of the true unified theories to LOST. Since dreams are not reality, basic tenets of fact like time and physics (such as a moving island) do not matter so there is no continuity errors. Vivid dreams can take the place of actual events in minds that are broken, drugged or fragmented - - - which are traits in most of the characters who landed on the island.

WHEN CANON HITS A DEAD END

The British television series, Doctor Who, has lasted for 50 years (with a hiatus period). Today marks another milestone as Peter Capaldi takes the reign as the Next Doctor. The picture above shows all the previous actors who played the iconic role of the The Doctor. As you can count, there are 12 men who have played The Doctor. The reason so many could do so was that early on in the series, the writers came up with the concept of re-generation.

When one actor left the show, a new one could replace him through this biological process that only seems to work with Time Lords. It is like a cat who is said to have 9 lives; in the Who universe, a Time Lord has 12 re-generations, or 13 lives in total.  In reboot Season 8, Capaldi becomes the 13th and final Doctor according to the show's own canon.

Now, I take the position that the producers should embrace the challenge of having the "last" Doctor because it would be a trans formative narrative for a complex character that is still shrouded in much mystery. But the BBC still calls the new Doctor only the 12th. And the producers seem to agree.

But with such intense fandom, and the regeneration process one of the few ironclad rules of the show, this is a potential Jump the Sharknado moment. Some believe that the producers will just concoct another cycle of regenerations (like some believe may have occurred during Matt Smith's final episode in Season 7). But that does not show respect for the original material, and the legacy of the prior creators who kept the series alive, fresh and interesting.

It is a very simple proposition when the current Doctor leaves the show. He dies. But what panic would occur in London if there was no new Doctor? Probably not much, for you see it would be just as compelling for the show to turn its axis point (temporarily) to the biggest mystery of all: who could replace the Doctor? The candidates could be more vast than the standard collection of Who villains. Another Time Lord? Another alien species? The Doctor's "daughter?" Or his last companion? For Doctor 2.0 to exist in the context of the original canon, he or she would have to be an extraordinary being (alien) compatible with Gallifreyan  biology and who would inherit the one item that would bind the new series with the old: the Doctor's pocket watch. The watch contains all the memories and information of the past time lords. It can imprint them on Doctor 2.0. Problem solved from a writing continuity standpoint.

But I find this solution highly improbable. It is too detailed; too "insider" for a network executive to grasp the nuisances. The production company has the brand of the Doctor and does not want to dilute it with a successor, even if he or she is a worthy one.

It is theme for successful shows, including sci-fi epics, that if set canon is violated, the trust with their audience is breached because successful sci-fi shows rely heavily on their own mythology to support the fantasy. Doctor Who is fast approaching such a breach. How the show runners will cope with this event is still unknown.

THE FRANCHISE PROBLEM

There is a point where a long running franchise writes itself into a corner. At this point, the fans of the series have accepted the canon rules as fact. And such facts, even in science fiction tales, cannot be changed to suit the need for the character story to continue on forever.

This is the problem with Doctor Who, the 50 year old British sci-fi series. Yesterday, the 11th/12th Doctor, Matt Smith, made his farewell appearance as the main character. But under the terms of the Who franchise, a Time Lord can only regenerate 12 times . . . i.e. gather a new life cycle before dying. Under this season's episodes, Smith was actually the 12th Time Lord in his regenerated body . . . meaning that there was only one left, the final Doctor to be played by Peter Capaldi.

Which is the canon that fans know about. It is the Rule from the very beginning.

Things got a little muddled in this Christmas special, The Time of the Doctor, when head writer Steven Moffat crammed so many untied story strings together to make the special. Smith's Doctor, who previously helped stop a universal war by sending his home planet into a different hidden universe of time and space, finds the means to bring back his home planet, but at the cost of restarting the war that will destroy everyone. It is a typical big picture ethical dilemma that the main character has to solve. In this case, he decided to fight his enemies alone on a wayward planet that he knows from seeing his own future where he dies.

In an fuzzy moment, Smith attempts to explain that he should not be able to regenerate again because of the 10th Doctor's aborted regeneration may have used up his final reboot. Smith's character accepts that this is the end, but his companion whispers through a crack in time and space for help to his trapped home world. At the climax, the Time Lords for some unknown way, transmit to the Doctor another dose of life regeneration which he uses to destroy his enemies, save the planet, then make his final farewell.

That is all well and good, except it really unclear what really happened. Buried in the explosions and sentimentality, is a question of how the writer is getting around the most sacred story Rule of the series on how many times a time lord can regenerate. Even the television reviewers are confused at what the explanation was for the regeneration process.  On reviewer stated that  Time Lords granted the Doctor a new regeneration cycle, thereby saving him from death on Trenzalore and changing his future; that temporary rejuvenation is a 'reset' for the new cycle of regenerations to begin and the second phase of the regeneration is taking some time to start up, but he will soon change. However, another reviewer states that the Time Lords granted Smith's character only "one more" regeneration and not a new cycle (which would mean 12 more characters in the future). 

This story confusion is unwarranted and tricky since everyone accepted the fact that Smith's Doctor had one more regeneration to go. The fact that he suddenly needed an "extra" boost does not make sense since the aborted regen did not alter the prior Doctor's appearance (which shows the completion of the cycle). So, everyone assumed that the regeneration to the Capaldi Doctor was a given and no intervention by his home planet was required to accomplish it.

Because, if the one reviewer is correct in the assumption that the Time Lords can grant another full life cycle of 12 regenerations, and hence immortality, then the Rule was frivolous from the start. The need to "change" the rule so dramatically is to extend the franchise's main character is an easy way out, without the creativity to make a "new" doctor profile (i.e. someone to take the place of the Doctor character - - - would not violate the Rule). But executives and producers believe that the viewers are tied to the main character (in all the incarnations it is still the same man), but that is another false assumption, because as we have seen in the Star Trek franchise, fans will accept different captains, different ships, even different eras - - - so long as they do not violate the basic canon rules of the show. To mess with canon rules is to mess up the show's past history - - - to diminish it to irrelevance.

So the series producers need to quickly explain what they meant by Smith's final regeneration. Did it change the normal, steadfast rule which has been in place for 50 years, or was it convenient hocus pocus to extend the franchise's main character?

Fan reaction to the episode and continuity has been mixed, much like LOST's ending.

There is a vocal majority who believe that the show produced a McGuffin to get around the Rules to make the premise that there are no rules in the show's universe. A few have scanned the wiki-archives to find one small reference to the proposition that the Doctor's high council could "grant" an additional cycle of regenerations to a Time Lord. But how is that possible, especially if the high council is trapped in another universe and cannot get out into ours? And it seems odd that a species has the ability to "grant" another sequence of life force on a mere whim. Again, that would mean that no time lord would ever die, but they have in the past so much so that they were about to be wiped out during the Time War. The change in the principle rule of regenerations has taken many fans to questioning the future of the series; whether it has jumped the shark. More than a few have lamented that there should have been a better, more clever story line than just instantaneously but haphazardly giving a character another cycle of regenerations. These are the same criticisms we have been debating since The End finale of LOST.

EXPECTATIONS

Expectations are a difficult thing to manage for a series showrunner. Fans may get ahead of the writer's curve. It also depends on the "set-up" of the series itself - - - the massive build up of story line, cliffhangers and hints at massive plot twists.

We were aware that there were great expectations for LOST's final season. There was even more expectations for the finale, which the producers wrangled more air time to finish their story. The finale pretty much split the fan base.

Last weekend, the television expectation game went into a global frenzy with the Doctor Who 50th Anniversary Special. For any television series to last six seasons is unique, but to last 50 years (with some interrupted periods) is improbable. The British series has survived the decades since the first airing by a clever concept of replacing the main character with new actors (an alien regeneration).

Science fiction has always been a niche market. But its fan base tends to be more loyal and rabid. The Doctor Who premise is actually quite simple. It is the story of a Time Lord, a man who can manipulate both time and space, to travel the universe to fight foes and observe historical events. The premise of this series was clear. It stated its story rules early on in the series. Fans accepted the notion that a blue box was bigger on the inside; that alien technology was more advanced than Earth's; and that one man with almost infinite knowledge can stop global invasions or disasters. Fans are not caught up in the how or why the Doctor can manipulate time, space, elements, or physical objects such as locks with a sonic screwdriver. Just as with Star Trek, the in-story concepts such as warp drive are taken as the explanation for impossible physics of the series, so the story can move forward with the characters not being bogged down with explaining the world around them.

The foundational elements of a science fiction show are critical to its viability and credibility. The canon on how the show's universe works is as important as the characters interacting inside that universe.

Which gets us back to two points on LOST.

First, as the series unfolded, it is hard to imagine that it could have kept going for decades with new incarnations as Star Trek or Doctor Who. We don't know what the LOST universe is; or what or where the island is located (Charlie's first insightful question from the pilot episode).

Second, the series could not be rebooted without answering all the unanswered and conflicting questions from the original series. This is something the creators have adamantly decided not to do.

Reviews of the Doctor Who special have been quite positive, as it seemed to pack various elements of fan service into existing story line canon. A few fans still question what the special's reveals means to the future of the show, but their expectations were met by the episode.