in 1995 there was a show called Murder One.   On the surface it was just another lawyer show, except the entire season dealt mostly with just one case.   At the beginning of the season there was a murder, with multiple suspects.  The law firm defended the suspect who was eventually charged, but as the season progressed and they prepared for the trial, they kept flipping back and forth between being convinced their client was innocent, and wondering if he was in fact the murderer.  Of course, if their client was innocent, then their case would be made if they could conclusively prove which of the other suspects DID do it.    The final episodes of the season were about the trial, and the verdict, and the aftermath.

In the second season they scrapped the one-case format, because... well you already know why.   Audiences had to see every episode to keep up.  I gave up on the second season, and the show never got a third, but I sure did love season one.  Unlike every other lawyer show, Murder One was a true procedural, it showed just how much time and effort goes into a major case.

Another example, the 2003 Battlestar Galactica show bible (written a year before Lost debuted), specifically states that the series would have an overall arc, multi-episode sub-arcs, and individual episode arcs.  As it turned out they were pretty successful at that.

So Lost wasn't the first out of the gate with that idea at all, but it was such a phenomenon that ever since, it seems like every show HAS to have some kinda big mystery at its core.  Except Lost didn't start out by pushing that idea overtly.   It just let its story unfold, and left it to the audience to ask "WTF is going on with this frickin' island?" 

Now every show that wants to be the NEW Lost seems to start with the promise that there's a big mystery to be solved.   Flash Forward, The Event, and now Terra Nova come to mind, I'm sure there are other examples.   There's a big risk to making the audience AWARE that a big twisteroo is coming... they might not be all that impressed by the rabbit you finally pull out of the hat.  Already Terra Nova's  hyping their season finale as some kinda game-changer, and I wish them luck with that... but it better be good.

The lesson I take from this is that there are open-ended uber-arcs (how will the trial end?  Who will win the human-Cylon war?) that allow you to tell a story where the twists can occur organically... and too-specific uber-arcs (What is the Event?  What's REALLY going on at Terra Nova?) that can quickly become creative straitjackets.

Community isn't canceled - just off air for now.   That's not good news, but it's not the End Of All Things, either.

And the reason for that isn't mysterious at all if you look at it like a network rather than a whinging fanboy.  You have a Thursday-night comedy block of four shows that are all doing... well, not that great, really.  But now it's time to bring back 30 Rock, and naturally you want to put it back in its regular place in that Thursday night block.  Is it shocking that Community was chosen to go on hiatus, when it's the lowest-rated of the four?   

But in Community's favor, NBC's ratings overall are horrifying this season.  So compared to its peers Community's ratings aren't so bad.   And as Sr. Pavlich pointed out - any show that's gotten to its 3rd season has a good shot at a 4th.  Show owners will often license 4th seasons to networks at deeeeep discounts, just to get that 4th season - which is when the show hits the magic number of episodes that make syndication worthwhile.  So they get their payoff later if they take a loss on that 4th season at first.

On the other hand, networks often cancel their lowest-rated shows at the end of the season - even if the ratings aren't all that bad.   Simple reason for that, too - they want to make room in their slates for new shows.  So they get rid of the stragglers, in hopes that one of their new ones will be next season's hit.  But freshman shows are in more danger than ones that have run for a few seasons (see above).

Or maybe networks hate you and just want you to be sad.  This is an equally valid theory, according to the internet

I freely admit to being handsy with TN, but my interest is purely platonic.  Paying attention to Terra Nova's fate is part of my tv-sci-fi-showrunner self-guided study course. 

/if it succeeds, then meh, everyone's going to want more like it.
/if it fails then meh, every network's gonna say "if Spielberg can't make it work, then nobody can"
/so, meh

Update:  Terra Nova ratings down another 10% last Monday.  On-the-bubble status continues.

Meanwhile, Charlie Jane Anders over at Io9 seems as disappointed as I am about Terra Nova's refusal to develop its own premise:

Terra Nova:  Our Brains Can't Withstand These Levels of Boredom!

Well, TN finished production shortly after the series debuted, without knowing if they were canceled or renewed (officially they're still in limbo, though it's possible that the decision's been made and just not announced yet).   They certainly went into it intending to run forever, but then all shows do.  Making a "just in case" episode when you're still hoping for renewal is pretty unusual.

However, there are cases of shows that were canceled while still in production, and occasionally those WILL turn the last episode into a finale.   The Playboy Club was canceled so fast that the network literally halted production before the 13 episodes were even finished.  The seventh (and unexpectedly final) episode was reportedly turned into something of a finale... which I guess can be seen someday on DVD.

And it turns out I misremembered in my earlier post - Studio 60 actually DID get a "back nine" order and ran for 22 episodes.    But it was already in trouble when the back nine was (grudgingly) ordered, and by the time they finished production they knew it was over.  So Studio 60 does end with a solid wrap-up of most of the major storylines.

I know Firefly was still in production even after it was canceled, though I dunno if it's by accident or design that Objects In Space, the last episode, kinda has a wrap-up feel to it as well.  It's notable that it was the last episode aired, even though the three unaired episodes were originally supposed to come before it in order.

Long story.   

Terra Nova was supposed to be a massive hit, what with the subject matter and the Spielberg name and the amount of money they've been spending on it.   But the debut ratings were far below expectations and have since slipped downward to a level that would put ANY show in jeopardy, especially one as expensive as this one.

To be fair, Terra Nova has had a run of bad ratings luck.  One early episode got delayed almost an hour when the baseball playoffs ran long... which dealt a hit to the ratings and even more of a hit to the DVR numbers, when people booted up their DVR's to watch TN and got baseball instead.  (a lot of House viewers were equally dismayed when their House recording turned out to be full of Terra Nova. ) 

Then the show was pre-empted for a week because Fox was running the World Series.  The week after THAT, Terra Nova aired on Halloween night, when their target audience was trick-or-treating, so the ratings were low again (but did recover once DVR views were counted).

Last week's episode was the first in a while that didn't have some extenuating circumstance to blame... and yet the ratings stayed solidly in the "meh" zone.  As a result, more than one Nielsen-watching expert has now put the show officially on the endangered list.

But... I dunno.   First of all, TN is already airing in several foreign markets.  I'm not following the ratings offshore, but if they're significant enough, that could help Terra Nova's chances.

Next - most every show starts the season with a 13 episode order from the network.  A key indicator of the network's mood is when - or if - they order the "back nine" episodes for a full-season total of 22.  If a new show dies fast enough (Studio 60, Firefly), there's no "back nine" and thirteen episodes is all there ever is.   If a show goes the full 22, of course it can still be canceled at the end of the season, but at least the network's given it a full season to find its audience. 

But somewhat unusually, Terra Nova will only be 13 episodes in its first season, no matter what, and those episodes have already been shot.  That was a decision made long before it ever aired.   So there's no "back nine" decision to be made.  This is lucky for Fox, because right about now they'd have to be pulling the trigger on the back nine or not.  What they've opted to do instead is announce that all the remaining episodes will air in order and without being bumped. 

So they won't move the show to another time slot, or pull it off the schedule and then burn the remaining episodes off next spring, or any of the other things that people like to point to later as excuses for how a network ruined a show that otherwise would have been - supposedly - a huge hit. 

This all good news for Fox, because they don't have to be bad guys and cancel Terra Nova  - instead they can just quietly not renew it later.   They'll air the remaining episodes and then they can just say nothing for the rest of the season, if they don't want to.   Maybe not even until they announce next year's lineup and wait to see if anyone notices that Terra Nova's not on it.

But there's also the wildcard - Steven Spielberg could step in and throw his weight around and get another season that way.  Might have to make some concessions to make it happen (budget cuts for example, but I wouldn't say that's a bad thing).  He got a second season out of Amazing Stories even after that turned out to be a not-so-successful venture, too.

My completely-unscientific guess right now is - Terra Nova gets a second season.   Everybody involved seemed to think they'd made the Greatest Show Evar - until the debut ratings came back and they realized they'd just shit themselves in public.  It's in everyone's interest to keep it on the air - if for no other reason than as a face-saving gesture all around.

Switching to people meters WAS one of the improvements they've made recently.  Nielsen's constantly refining their methodology, just like any good science.   Admittedly statistics isn't a "hard" science like, say, chemistry,  and the most stringently-gathered data is still no more than a "best guess".   But we base a lot of our lives on those best guesses, it's not just for tv shows.

Also in the past few years, numerous competing methods that measure media consumption have arrived on the scene, many of which are more detailed than the Nielsens.   To the point where the refrain of "why don't they measure ____ instead" has become fairly common.  Again, that's why it might make a good intermission topic - to get into why some of those alternate measurements don't matter, and why others are counted, but aren't considered as important as the Nielsen numbers, why still others suggest that the Nielsens are most likely accurate, etc.

I don't want to get into any more detail here, since maybe this is enough to put the topic on the Intermission schedule. 

Young Stephen Lang is startlingly different than modern-day Stephen Lang.  I was honestly shocked when I realized the Avatar guy was the same actor who played the goofball reporter in Manhunter.

I didn't realize he was in Tombstone either, but now that you mention it, yeah, that was him all righty.

It's a fair point that three-act structure is over-emphasized in mainstream Hollywood movies... but that's largely because of the system itself.  You have to get your script past studio execs who literally will page-count it to see if you've done it "right", according to the Syd Field structure that has become the blueprint for How You Do It.

But some writers think of a script as four acts, using what others call the "second-act midpoint' as another act break.  And others plan their scripts with a long second act that is itself made of three sub-acts, which adds up to a Shakespearian five acts.

And if you've ever seen a theatrical movie on commercial TV, you've probably seen some awkward breaks where the movie just stops and cuts to a commercial.  But a movie that was written FOR tv will have a definitive cutting point for every commercial, because tv movies are designed around the commercial breaks, and thus may have nine acts, maybe even more.

But it's all the same thing, really - it's about keeping the story moving, and building in surprises and turning points wherever you can.   Five acts, nine, eleven, whatever.  Go crazy.

The importance of three-act structure is that it's the minimum number.  If you can't at least break your story into some form of beginning, middle, and end... well, it still might work, but you're braver than most if you wanna try it.

My problem is that the expanded view of 2149 actually raised more questions.    It's akin to the Matrix sequels for me, the more they tried to justify everything, the deeper a hole they dug for themselves.   

In the original TN pilot you see almost nothing of the world, all I can tell ya is that having seen both versions, the original worked better.  Bonus, there was less cutesy family interaction as well.

This person was, a bit.  But Wall-e seemed to suggest that the Earth was wrecked by rampant consumerism that used up all the resources and left nothing but trash.   Also, it was a cartoon.       Terra Nova specifically says that the skies are so smoky that people can't see the Moon, and I still wanna know how "overpopulation" caused that.  It's not a 1-1 thing.

That wasn't the analogy, and Daktari was the very example I had in mind.  The point is that Daktari was NOT about the family being attacked by the local wildlife every week.  Every so often, sure.  But not EVERY week.  Better still, Daktari was about a veterinarian and his family, so the premise itself justified weekly interaction with the local fauna.   

Meanwhile, Terra Nova is about people who don't want to get attacked by dinosaurs and have taken reasonable precautions to avoid them.  But it was sold to the audience as Jurassic Park Every Week, and so they're stuck with contriving weekly dinosaur encounters, which often makes the characters look like idiots.   

If Fox wanted a Little House in the Cretaceous, as they say TN was intended to be, they should have used Daktari as an inspiration, because that really was Little House on the Serengeti.

One thing I wish I HAD done was draw a clearer line between the "writers" and the network - more than once I blamed the "writers" for things that may not really be their fault.  I did say that the original pilot was better than the final result - clearly somebody was trying to do a darker, grittier show, and the network changed that.   

There are actually some talented writers on the Terra Nova staff, and it may well be that they've been fighting a weekly battle to put on a good show.  But based on what's made it on the air, they're not having a lot of success with that.

Now who's nitpicking?   

We'll be in Dallas Texas for three days and then it's on to Charleston.