Alan Moore's Thoughts On TV

Commentaries from the Maestro himself, Alan Moore, on the Idiot Box. Check out the original article on Wizard Universe. Here's an excerpt with his thoughts on "Battlestar Galactica" and the recent state of TV series, by and large. "I have seen the first half of the final series of 'Battlestar Galactica.' It's well done, but I'll reserve judgment until I've seen the final episodes, because it could, as with so many of these things, end up as a bit of a mess. It seemed that they got a bit self-conscious about making some kind of political analogies that ended up being a bit confusing and ham fisted and perhaps spoiling. I feel that the big problem with most of these programs is that people start off with the good beginnings of an idea. That is disastrous because that is enough to get a show commissioned. So you've got the beginnings of a good idea and if it's not brought to its conclusion properly, it won't be a good idea at all; it'll be a waste of everybody's time. It'll be a waste of the creator's time, and more importantly it'll be a complete waste of the audience's time. I mean, if you have been following a show expecting it to have a kind of payoff and you've been following it for three or four seasons and then at the end, it turns out Bobby Ewing comes out of the shower and one of the characters wakes up and says, 'Oh, Bobby, I've just had the most strange dream!' You know? There's a lot of hours, days of your life that you're never gonna get back again, you know? So if people are gonna invest this much time and enthusiasm, genuine enthusiasm, in these shows, I really think that they ought to pay off. The writers ought to know what the end is; at least the important parts of it before they start and not do anything that is gonna turn out to be irrelevant, pointless or just a confusing red herring." Oh, and not to forget his very brief remarks on the fan-favourite "Lost". "I saw the first few episodes and there were already so many inconsistencies where all the writer would have had to have done was check back to the previous episode. I have no confidence in them knowing where they are going. I think they're just thinking of weird things week by week."