Why would a story that rips forward at light-speed pace take a whole first season for what seemed like ordinary short-term TV conflicts? When Babylon 5 does just that (with so much excitement to come), it makes me rethink why other stories protect their status quo so fiercely.
Medium and Message?
Sure, television. TV’s whole history has been shaped by coming into viewers’ homes night after night like some old friend—or at least a neighbor that gives that steadying sense of the familiar.
For decades it’s been easier to set up TV plotlines (and sell them) around a concept that can stir up conflict, laughs, or whatever else it wants and then end the episode with so little actually changed. At most the plan inches toward the season finale, and then next fall starts in with a new villain or Slightly Different Situation that moves through the same motions. I understand soap operas liked spreading their major arguments, seductions, and other big scenes out over two episodes so a viewer forced to miss one day can always feel they “saw” the big break-up, mostly.
It’s the model for classic TV… and not only TV.
On the bright side, it’s also called suspense. Done right, a story can hold our interest with just when something’s going to tear free and bring back that sense that anything could change. A show like Babylon 5 is more fun to watch with a few spoilers, knowing its first year’s “barely-contained hostility” won’t stay contained and won’t go back in the box afterward.
Or… Severus Snape.
One keystone of the Harry Potter books is the most vicious professor at Hogwarts, and his growing hostility to Harry and perhaps to the whole wizarding world. Every book we learn more about how much is driving him, but also how many other pressures are involved and we wonder if this will be the arc that actually unleashes him against our hero.
That and, we’re wondering the same thing about certain Dark Forces in the world at large.
(I’ll skip the spoilers here, for the few people who don’t know them. But if you don’t, or you think all you need is to hold your own in a Potter conversation or enjoy a few of the movies in passing… think again. Read the books, trust me.)
Plus, Snape reminds us, TV is only one place to find a semi-stable series. Any medium can use it, and most do.
So, can it work?
Holding Patterns Worth Holding
Basic storytelling would suggest, skip the waiting and start pushing the story forward hard. It’s easy to look at the big cable and Netflix hits and say, raise the stakes, forget the brakes.
But looking at those stories gives some powerful lessons on the other side.
- Setup matters too. Change counts for more when we care about what’s changing. Remember the classic sin in horror, to start the killing before we’re rooting for anyone to survive. But Babylon 5’s traditional first season laid the groundwork that everything else tore up, and even Game of Thrones had one almost calm book/year before the heads started rolling.
- If a character and plot arc aren’t moving yet, is there enough else to keep us busy? At its best, that means whole, worthwhile storylines that aren’t relying on how they “just might” trigger the Big Ominous or the Perfect Pairing. Harry Potter’s a perfect example—for all the hard-hitting arcs that take place, page by page it never runs out of sheer whimsy and variety.
- No shortcuts. Snape is a pleasure to know because… well, he’s Snape. The sheer venom in him, and all the layers he gets, keep us going the way a major draw needs to. And delivering that is all the more vital because he doesn’t “do” anything for whole books.
If a slow-changing character isn’t written on a level that calls for an Alan Rickman to play him, he’s got nothing else to “carry his wait.”
But if it works… more of the fun reading Potter books is just knowing you’ve got three or four of them still ahead, and realizing Rowling is having too much fun with Snape to break the pattern too soon. It could be the best of all worlds: a busy story, simmering energy near the center, but trusting—hoping!—that part will drag on a little longer before messing with perfection.
Setting Up the Setup
Finally, it helps if the whole world of a story fits with why that arc isn’t moving yet.
Babylon 5 is an embassy, the classic place for enemies to “maintain hostility at the usual levels,” so we see why Londo and his empire don’t start their conquests without a push. (Plus, he and his people are a tired race, while his rival G’Kar is on the rise and angry, so more of the early gambits come from his side of the feud—more clarity!) Snape is an old-school British teacher, free to abuse the kids under him, up to a point.
That’s not only justification. It’s part of the whole concept of their stories. (C’mon, if you’re first hearing about a magic-school story, isn’t one of your first thoughts “Wow, how bad is a Teacher From Hell who can shoot hellfire?”)
–Or, imagine some of the early schemes Londo and G’Kar would get up to, if they were crime bosses instead of ambassadors; the peace wouldn’t last an episode! Or so many will-they-or-won’t-they couples that don’t have a reason besides sheer friction to ignore their supposed chemistry.
If a story wants a delaying tactic, those delays ought to work. Either find a better concept, take time to convince us that right now nobody wants change, or build that slow setup around just which characters there do have a reason to take their time. Make it believable.
Not just believable, it ought to glory in it! Of course a story here won’t be breaking out of its holding pattern too soon… and that pattern can be half the fun in itself.
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