The Dresden Files > DF TV Series
POLL: End Game Opinion of the Series
MitchellTF:
I was torn between decent, and great. I gotta say, the series was enjoyable, and there were parts that didn't quite match the books. But a lot of the changes were understandable, a lot of the hatred seems overblown.
And, honestly? Ghost-Bob was pretty awesome. He was played very well, too. Heck, if a new series was made, I'd want Bob to be done like that again.
When I read the books, the images of the characters I see are those from the TV Show. Even if the personalities are different.
Darkling:
--- Quote from: MitchellTF on April 22, 2010, 06:49:55 AM ---And, honestly? Ghost-Bob was pretty awesome. He was played very well, too. Heck, if a new series was made, I'd want Bob to be done like that again.
--- End quote ---
I agree. Terrence Mann as Bob / Hrothbert of Bainbridge was probably one of the best things about the show. I was very disappointed we didn't get to learn more about his backstory.
bkwyrm:
--- Quote from: Darkling on April 23, 2010, 04:20:04 AM ---I agree. Terrence Mann as Bob / Hrothbert of Bainbridge was probably one of the best things about the show. I was very disappointed we didn't get to learn more about his backstory.
--- End quote ---
I liked Terence Mann as Bob also, but his story should still have been Bob's, air elemental, spirit of intellect, etc. .
That lost love thing was a mistake.
The Dresden Files is still on my hard drive (Relax I bought from iTunes when the series was still running. That's when I finally admitted to myself that I was an die-hard fan of Harry's.) because I just can't bring myself to delete it not because I thought it was good.
If I had to characterize the brief season it would be as an enormous missed opportunity and a bitter disappointment.
If they thought so little of the series Jim created why did they bother to buy it and can Jim get the rights back so he can try again?
Darkling:
--- Quote from: bkwyrm on April 28, 2010, 11:57:57 PM ---I liked Terence Mann as Bob also, but his story should still have been Bob's, air elemental, spirit of intellect, etc. .
That lost love thing was a mistake.
--- End quote ---
I have to disagree. (Warning: the following is only opinion. I am not starting a ghost vs. Spirit of intellect thing. I am just explaining my personal taste in the matter.) I feel it added to the character. Go into the spoiler section for the books and do a search for threads about free will. There are long, long, long debates about Bob of the show and free will. All these overly philosophical answers to explain away how he is able to make choices and yet does not have free will simply because he's bound by an enchanted skull. That's loss of Freedom NOT Free will. It's not semantics, philosophically speaking it's important and there is a difference. With these debates still raging about the books can you imagine what would have happened if you had a character like Bob making choices and then claimed he had no free will on the show? You'd have to spend like forty minutes of an episode just trying to explain that to the audience and most still won't get it. Most readers still don't get it. I could hear The Nostalgia Critic screaming in the back of my mind the catch phrase 'Start making sense!'
The fact is the spirit of intellect thing doesn't make sense to many people. Have you tried to survey how many people, who read the books after seeing the show, were disappointed Bob of the books wasn't Hrothbert of Bainbridge? I have. The number is kind of high.
The fact is spirits of intellect aren't that interesting to me. Part of the show's Bob's appeal was his mysterious past. His angst. The fact that he actually was a human soul and had sympathetic qualities because I don't really care for the ghosts of The Dresden Files novels. I love the books, just not the book ghosts. As a person who has studied parapsychology I find the psychic echo version of ghosts really boring. Now human consciousness living on after death and able to make contact with this plain of being, that's interesting.
And I've got a soft spot for snarky and sardonic ghosts. Hrothbert of Bainbridge, Captain Daniel Gregg (The ghost and Mrs. Muir), Sir Simon de Canterville (The Canterville Ghost). These are fun ghosts. Bob of the show was fun. He was an actual person.
The horny air spirit whose back story is never even properly questioned by our hero in the novels has started to bore me because no ne in the books acknowledges his mystery. He was funny at first with his pop culture and snark and lechery but when you stop and think about it, he's repetitive. Not to mention why does Dresden never ask what his original personality was like before he adjusted himself to the personalities of his owners? You'd think this is the sort of thing Harry would have wanted to know ...years ago.
I'm sorry if this offends anyone. Jim Butcher is a fun writer. I like his books. They're fun. They're brain candy. But the fact is if you speculate too long about the spirit of intellect version of Bob there are quite a few things you can poke holes at.
--- Quote ---If they thought so little of the series Jim created why did they bother to buy it and can Jim get the rights back so he can try again?
--- End quote ---
They didn't think little of Jim Butcher's book series or they wouldn't have wanted to use it at all. There were changes, most of which were very necessary. You have to be realistic with what can or can't make sense on TV and what a TV audience will respond well toward. Certain things seem great in a novel that just won't work on TV.
The mystery about Hrothbert of Bainbridge's past is what kept me hooked with the show. It was something interesting that didn't exist in the books. And it didn't severely disappoint my ghost-obsessed imagination with the most boring type of echo hauntings. You can have four vampire courts and five types of werewolves, trolls, goblins, faeries, zombie dinosaurs, skin-walkers and demons but a human soul-consciousness as a ghost doesn't exist in the books? That disappointed me on multiple levels. That's why I'm kind of hoping things might change with the next book.
bkwyrm:
I'm not offended, and I doubt anyone would be, I just disagree with you.
Bob, as snarky as he is in the books should have been left as is and he does have a back story spread out in the books.
When Harry released one of Bob's past personalities Bob nearly killed him (I don't have the books on hand to check but I think that's in "Dead Beat". ).
We have, in fact been getting bits and pieces through out the series and, if they bothered to check back with Jim, Bob could have been expanded as a character in the series.
He wasn't a ghost?
I doubt many would have noticed or cared about the distinction.
--- Quote ---They didn't think little of Jim Butcher's book series or they wouldn't have wanted to use it at all. There were changes, most of which were very necessary. You have to be realistic with what can or can't make sense on TV and what a TV audience will respond well toward. Certain things seem great in a novel that just won't work on TV.
--- End quote ---
Now about what works and what doesn't.
This wasn't about what a TV audience can make sense of, they can make sense of everything from "The X-files" to "Fringe" and track the twist and turns of Walter ( Who is "grey" morally if ever a sympathetic character was.) and the seasons end of "Burn Notice" has just put Michael Weston in immediate moral peril that's been building for 3 seasons now.
Terence Mann as Bob struck me as a necessary change, that was correct even if turning him to the remaining half of a pair of star-crossed lovers wasn't.
Making changes with the Blue beetle was necessary, finance wise, these are things you do when you switch from the printed page to the screen.
Make visual what you can, drop long expository passages (Unless you can get Kate Blanchett to read them of course.), and in general map out the visual realm and your story arc so you know where you're going and why.
What we got was no story arc, looting a few of the books for points of interest (werewolves!), the awful treatment of the characters Jim created.
What we saw was a waste of money, time and talent, spent in an attempt to make something as formulaic as possible.
Like just about everyone here I watched the series come together with obsessive interest and growing alarm as I started seeing those little mis-steps on the road to the premier.
I don't think the writers lacked smarts, indeed there were enough touches that cropped up "Polka Lives!" that showed they knew the world but the blond-brunette switch followed by the dearth of information about what the episodes would include rang alarm bells.
SyFy blew this one and it had nothing to do with what a tv audience will and won't watch, they watch good tv if it catches their interest.
What they did was turn Jim's books into bad formulaic TV and if I were ever asked to give a course on what not to do with an interesting new book series you just bought for television I would use the Dresden File show as an object lesson.
With the best will in the world (They don't get money for flops and that's certainly motivating.) they gutted Jim's books and produced bad tv and it had nothing to do with what works on screen and what doesn't.
Navigation
[0] Message Index
[#] Next page
[*] Previous page
Go to full version