6 Classic Series You Didn't Know Were Made Up on the Fly
None of the film or TV series we're about to mention are bad -- we're not saying that. Some of them are great, even. But each of them was presented as having a master plan from the start, an overarching story or mystery that caused viewers to wait intently for the resolution, to see what the creators had in mind.
But time and time again, it turns out that the creators had nothing in mind at all, figuring they could throw out the mystery now and figure out the rest when it got closer to deadline. This is true of the minds behind...
#6.
The Original Star Wars Trilogy
Supposedly ...
The first film says it's "Episode IV" right in the opening credits. That's what makes Star Wars different from, say, Transformers or even the Matrix trilogy -- it was a single grand epic spawned in the possibly deranged mind of George Lucas long before cameras started rolling on the first film.
"There's no way the first three are anything but gold!"
According to the legend, when Lucas began writing the story it got too big for one movie, so he decided to split it up. Shortly after releasing the first film, Lucas claimed he already had an idea of what all nine parts of the saga would be about.
"Bullshit. They'll all be about stupid, pointless, petty bullshit."
But Actually ...
Obviously there have been only six films (Lucas now says there were always supposed to be just six). But the truth is, when he released the first film he had no idea it was anything other than a stand-alone movie. The studio greenlit only the one film, and they had their doubts about making their money back. Lucas thus had to write it assuming he'd never get a chance to add to the story.
Most fans don't realize that the famous "Episode IV" isn't anywhere in the original opening crawl -- it was only added to later prints:
The original Star Wars started production under the name Adventures of Luke Starkiller, as taken from the Journal of the Whills, Saga I: The Star Wars, later shortened to just the last two words. The idea of numbering the episodes came up with the second film ... which was originally announced as Star Wars II.
" Star Wars II: Electric Boogaloo, thank you very much."
Oh, and about the story... let's look at Darth Vader as an example. The prequels make it clear that the overall saga is supposed to be the story of Darth Vader's corruption and final redemption -- but Lucas didn't even know who Darth Vader was until the second draft of Star Wars II (that is, The Empire Strikes Back).
In interviews, Lucas has claimed that he came up with the name "Darth Vader" as a variation of "Dark Father," implying that it was always supposed to be a clue of his relationship with Luke. But in the early drafts, Lucas gave the name "Darth Vader" to a completely normal Imperial general who had nothing to do with Luke. In all likelihood, Darth Vader's real name was supposed to be ... Darth Vader. That's why in the original Star Wars, Obi-Wan calls him "Darth" instead of "Anakin," the name he would have known him by. In fact, in Lucas' early notes, Vader and Luke's father are supposed to appear together on-screen.
Though we're saying all of this to avoid the obvious: If Lucas had planned for Leia to be Luke's sister all along, this probably wouldn't have happened:
#5.
Battlestar Galactica (2004 version)
Supposedly ...
Unlike the formulaic 70s sci-fi show it's based on, the 2004 version of Battlestar Galactica had a running narrative with a fascinating mystery at its center: the identity of the 12 Cylons posing as humans, sometimes without their knowledge.
The remake also surpassed the original by touching on philosophical, social and spiritual topics, as opposed to just trying to rip off Star Trek.
AND Star Wars.
Fans stayed tuned until the very end to find the solution to the mystery the writers clearly had known from the beginning. Right?
But Actually ...
So, the show ran for four seasons. At what point did showrunner Ronald D. Moore decide that five regular cast members had been Cylons all along? In the middle of Season 3.
Here's how this massive, show-changing decision was made, in his own words:
"We were in the writers room on the finale of that season ... and I literally made it up in the room, I said, 'What if four of our characters walk from different parts of the ship, end up in a room and say, Oh my God, we're Cylons? And we leave one for next season.' ... And then we sat and spent a couple of hours talking about who those four would be."
"Eventually, we just drew names out of a hat."
Suddenly, the show's finale makes a whole lot more sense. Fans were annoyed to say the least when, in the last episode, the characters found an uncivilized planet resembling their old Earth (which, as it turns out, had been devastated by a nuclear war) and settled there. At which point it is revealed that this planet is our Earth, and that this futuristic sci-fi show really took place in the distant past all along! Of course, this revelation created countless contradictions (at one point, the Cylons use the song All Along the Watchtower as a secret code, for instance).
Maybe this explains why it wasn't the Hendrix version
We're not saying the writers just threw out a bunch of stuff without ultimately knowing how it would pay off. We would never accuse them of that. Instead, Moore refers to it as" stuff we just threw up and decided to take a flier on without ultimately knowing where it would pay off."
Oh, wait ...
#4.
The X-Files
Supposedly ...
The X-Files was mostly made up of "monster of the week" episodes where the two agents would take on some kind of supernatural threat or other. But what made the show famous, and what drew in obsessive fans, was the over-arching story behind it -- a complex mythology involving a seasons-spanning alien conspiracy. Also, enough sexual tension to kill anyone standing between the two protagonists from sheer atmospheric pressure.
If real FBI agents were this sexy, they'd never get anything done.
Fans are still looking forward to the proposed third movie, which according to Chris Carter's master plan will center on the 2012 alien invasion predicted by the series finale.
But Actually ...
There was never supposed to be a continuing story at all. It all happened because Gillian Anderson got knocked up.
It was David Duchovny's first interaction with a pregnant woman that didn't end in screaming and death threats.
The whole premise of The X-Files was originally just having two agents go around investigating random, unconnected weird shit, which is what they did for most of the first season. They did have some alien conspiracy-themed episodes in Season 1, but writer/producer Frank Spotnitz says they weren't really supposed to form an overall arc. The main reason this all changed had nothing to do with artistic growth or originality; it's because Gillian Anderson got pregnant.
The writers decided to work around Anderson's pregnancy by showing her as little as possible -- that's why the government splits the two agents in the Season 1 finale.
Scully's reduced role resulted in other characters getting more developed, like Director Skinner, the Cigarette-Smoking Man and Alex Krycek. None were supposed to be major characters. The Cigarette-Smoking Man, ultimately the key figure in the entire mythology, started off as "an extra leaning on a shelf."
Then Scully had to be written out for a few episodes so she could have her damn baby already, so the writers came up with the story arc where she's abducted and Mulder has to search for her. This was the first larger plot they ever did, and it was completely unplanned. As Spotnitz put it, "This mythology really ended up running through the life of the series, all because Gillian Anderson became pregnant."
So, no, Chris Carter never had a master plan and probably knew as much about the conspiracy as the people watching. For instance, one of the main draws of the show was the mystery behind the abduction of Mulder's sister, but even that was improvised. The early seasons dropped numerous clues that she was still alive, like Mulder finding a medical file with a "recent tissue sample" or, you know, being flat-out told "She's still alive" by people who had no reason to lie. But then, when the writers got tired of the plot, they revealed that she had been dead all along.
"Well, shit, that was a waste of time."
Star Wars is an interesting case: Orginally Lucas wrote a script that encompassed the 'bare bones' of all three movies, with Luke helping the rebels fight off an attack from the Empire, then going off to get Jedi training and returning to kill the emperor.
ReplyBut then, Fox told him that it was too complex, and couldnt be done as one movie. So Lucas took the first part and expanded that into a movie, adding in the Death Star, Han Solo and a bunch of other details that made the Star Wars we know and love, and re-worked it so it could be a stand alone film. He never planned on working with the rest of his very early draft, but he did look to them for the basis for his next two movies.
As far as 24 goes, Fox originally only greenlit 12 episodes. As a result the writing team had loosely mapped out a half-day story arc durring the first season, although they had a vauge idea of where they wanted to go the second half of season 1 was mostly made up as they went.
ReplySeason 2 was largely planned out from the start, because the executives at Fox wanted to change the format of the show so that each episode would encompase 24 hours(and be its own stand-alone story), for fear that keeping the format of the first season would drive away new viewers and hurt syndication costs. in response the writing team wrote up a season's long arc to show to the executives, which they liked enough to allow the show to keep the 'real time' format.
By seasons 3 and 4 they were pretty much making it up as they went along.
With the X-Files Mulder's sister thing...later, after the "she's really been dead this whole time" reveal, revealed to be alive and DNA tests Mulder had run on a sample he snuck out with him from the mindgame facility where he was supposedly lied to and all these people he met were supposed to be random actors. Turned out that the woman he was told was his sister really was her, but they kind of dropped that...other than the end of the episode where it showed the DNA result it never followed it up.
ReplyI really wasn't surprised by anything on this list. It seemed obvious to me for each of these shows that things were made up on the fly at least until it came time to try to tie all of the plot threads together as best they could.
ReplyThe bomb in Valencia going off and killing only 12,000 people has always seemed a bit low to me, if only because it went off at about 10am, which means that Six Flags Magic Mountain (Six Flags flagship park, which is in Valencia) would likely have had close to that many people by itself, not counting residents of Valencia and the much larger Santa Clarita that borders it.
This was a bomb that didn't just take out a small suburb of LA, it took one of the largest theme parks in the country with it and was close enough to have taken a good chunk of a decent-sized, densely populated suburb with it.
It took George Lucas at least a year to write "Star Wars", he's confirmed that multiple times. Just another reminder that people shouldn't get their facts from Cracked.
ReplyThe point of the article is that although Lucas may have taken that long writing it originally, the studio told him only one movie at first. Then he had to rewrite it so he could close the plot holes up in one movie. Then when they gave him the other movies, he had to rewrite them to fit in with the rewritten first movie. Use your head for once.
I'm so glad I'm not one of those dupes who watched Lost every week, taped it, watched it over and over looking for "clues", writing those numbers down and crawling all over the internet to decipher what they "meant". That show was BS from the start. The second I saw a commercial involving a f*****g SMOKE MONSTER I knew I was glad I never started watching Lost.
ReplyAnd the ending for B.G. sounds totally retarded. It only makes sense if you still believe in Santa Claus.
Battlestar Galactica is just a bizarre attempt to convert people to mormonism. I'm not even kidding about that.
Lost, at least the first few seasons before the writers went batshit insane and just started throwing random crap into the mix, was a great show, but not for the reasons people typically think, the 'mystery' aspect of Lost was actually the least interesting aspect of the show to me. I was enthralled by the characters, how they reacted to the mysteries around them, the way they each had their own backstory that led to them being on the island, etc.
And then half the cast got off the island and the other half got thrown back in time 30 years, and the show promptly dove into incoherence and insanity, but prior to that point was some of the best TV ever produced.
24 isn't like most shows. They had a harsher schedule and they wanted it to be like a small screen movie series where anything can happen. I for one think the series benefited from this not knowing where it was going. They never claimed they new where they were going season to season but they made up for it with great writing.
ReplyThey had no idea Nina was the mole in season 1 until they got right up to the reveal.
President Logan wasn't going to be the bad guy until someone just had a brain fart and said "lets make the president behind all this"
Hell that bald graem who was on the phone with him wasn't Jack's brother until season 6.
These were all great plot twists that cemented 24 as the best show ever made in my book.
I get that an article focused on TV series that lost their way because of on-the-fly writing, it's impossible not to list Lost as #1 or at least #2. But damn, you could've done better than pull a few random quotes. Like, for one, Entertainment Weekly's cover story near the end of Lost, which perfectly outlined how the show was formed. An ABC exec came up with the idea in a meeting, and then they pitched it to J.J. Abrams, who created the pilot and was the season one showrunner. But later, Abrams left Carlton Cuse and Damon Lindelof to run the show (they joined production halfway through season one), and those two had to figure out the overall mythology of the show. And while it's easy to criticize their shortcomings, now that the series finale aired, they weren't entirely dishonest about how they came up with their ideas. In fact, some of their long term plans didn't pan out (like Eko, whose actor hastily left in season 3), and some characters were formed, because they really liked the actor (like Michael Emerson's Benjamin Linus).
ReplyAnd hey, as a fan of the show, I enjoyed most of what they did. Few season finales made my jaw drop the same way season 3's did, and I actually enjoyed the controversial series finale. But while even I admit that Lost made some crucial missteps along the way, I'm glad I watched it to the end. Better this than the millions of crime dramas that seem to come out every year.
Yeah, I was bummed come season 3 of Battlestar- up to that point, they were good about resolving things as they happened... season 3 and 4.0 were where it started to unravel a bit for me because it became apparent that IF they'd had an overarching story at the beginning, they'd deviated from it and if they didn't ever have an overarching idea, well... they'd gotten significantly less good at improvising. I actually had made the prediction that it was distant past all along... but I thought that, with all of Baltar's connections to the Cylons as well as his rise as a prophet, speaking of one god (along with his increasingly long and unkempt hair/beard), that they would arrive on Earth at the time of Christ- he would BECOME Christ and then be the first cylon to "resurrect" without a ressurection ship, thus forming the basis of our whole current Judeo Christian society. Quite frankly, I like my idea better than what ended up happening.
Reply Hide All See All 3 RepliesI'm not a fan of the show, but your idea does sound a LOT better than what the actual ending sounded like.
They couldn't make Baltar Christ without a SERIOUS s**t storm. I agree the idea is interesting (especially because they never do anything with the whole gods vs god thing) but yeah...
I had that same theory as you, only i thought he would be the first human to resurrect on a resurrection ship instead of being the first cylon to do it without one.
Ahh! I don't want to read the Battlestar Galactica one! Full of spoilers! I've just started season 3 >.
Replyi finished battlestar just before reading this, but i am in the middle of twin peaks right now
Luke totally shoulda tapped that.
ReplyGoldmember: Dr. Evil, we still have the ultimate insurance policy. May I present to you, the very sexual, the very toite, Austin Power's fahza.
ReplyDr. Evil: His what?
Number 2: His fahza, Dr. Evil.
Dr. Evil: His farger? What's a farger?
Goldmember: His fahza. You know, the fahza.
Dr. Evil: You know Goldmember, I don't speak freaky-deaky Dutch. Okay, perv boy?
Goldmember: Fahza, his dad, dad is fahza.
Dr. Evil: Oh, his dad. His *fa-ther*
Vader = Vater = German for Father? :O I know Vater is pronounced differently than Vader/Vater would be... German: "Vah-tuhr" Vader "Vay-duhr" .. but I just realized that in German class when we first started learning about the families. .
ReplyI was like .. "Vater...means father..oh cool..."
20 minutes later
"HOLY SON OF MY MOM O___O"
"If Lucas had planned for Leia to be Luke's sister all along, this probably wouldn't have happened:"
ReplyEr, i always took it more as he always planned it as kind of a mind-frak. like then you go back later and go... dude, he kissed his sister that way?
Yeah, it wasn't even George Lucas original idea of Luke and Leia being brothers; or Darth Vader being their father. That was written by Lucas co-writer (who felt the series needed to create a better emotional bound with the fans), since Mr. Lucas was too busy during the production of Empire Strikes Back. ;D
ReplyIn the Lost section you forgot to mention that Jack was supposed to die in like the 2nd episode. But they aired the pilot and he became so popular among viewers that they decided to keep him and he ended up becoming the most important character in the entire show.
Reply Hide All See All 3 RepliesI'm almost entirely certain that did not happened. You see, TV shows tend to be shot all at once. They don't do some hurried shooting of every scene, every week.
As I understand it, they were convinced to keep Jack alive during pre-production. Especially since he was originally to die in the first episode. They replaced his death with the death of the pilot.
@Drizzt380
Pilots are some times shot long before any main series production gets under way. It depends on how many episodes the network orders. Sometimes its 12, some times its 24, sometimes it's just the pilot.
If they hadn't changed Jack's role prior to filming the pilot he would have been played by Michael Keaton. Jack only died in the early draft. Keaton left the role when rewrites turned Jack into a major character.
Are you f**king kidding me with the "Most fans don't realize that the famous "Episode IV" isn't anywhere in the original opening crawl"?! EVERY fan knows that
ReplyMost die hard fans know that, most fans have no idea
Thanks Mr. Moore, that was some ballsy decision. It made the show crap by the way.
ReplyThe scene of luke skywalker staggering through the snow on hoth was filmed from a hotel room doorway during a snowstorm while he pretended to have hypothermia in the unplowed parking lot.
ReplyIn addition to Obi Wan callng Vader "Darth" instead of "Anakin", let's not forget the whole "Darth Vader betrayed and murdered your father. Whoops, he's actually your father. Uh - Vader betrayed the man he used to be. So, what I said was correct, from a certain point of view." I always felt sorry for Sir Alec having to spew that nonsense.
Reply(I say this out of love for the original "Star Wars" trilogy, but good grief George, weasel much?)
Though to be fair, everything any Jedi said was true, from a certain point of view.
That's easy though, they had decided Luke and Leia could never know Vader was actually their father, Obi Wan only came clean about it after Luke had already found out.
Not saying that was the point all along, but it certainly makes a lot of sense.