Of Heroes and Writer's Strikes

I spent a long time considering what the subject matter for this second post would be. I thought of continuing the Doctor Who theme and doing a post on David Tennant, Billie Piper, or even John Barrowman, who are all incredible. I may still do a post on them. But today, I feel like bringing my other favorite television show (who has been somewhat neglected of late, because of Doctor Who) and do a post on past world-wide sensation Heroes.

The logo for the series, featuring the plot-important eclipse.

The premise for the show is that the individuals that the show focuses on all have unique and individual superpowers. These powers are ingrained in their DNA, not because they're aliens or because they got too close to something radioactive. These people were born with these powers, but they only start to develop after a certain eclipse. Many connections between the characters are revealed throughout the storyline (which explains the appeal to fans of the show 'LOST,' it's the same sort of interconnecting character web. I happen to be a huge fan of both shows. Here is a link to the official Heroes wiki, for any question you could possibly want answered concerning the show). The show follows these people as they come to terms with who they are now that they have these abilities, and even more so, what they're going to do with them. Many issues of classic good and evil are brought up.

Peter Petrelli

Claire Bennet

There are many characters with 'classic' superpowers in the show, such as the flying Nathan Petrelli, the un-injurable Claire Bennet, and the telepathic Matt Parkman. But they also had more unusual powers, such as Peter Petrelli's 'power empathy,' the ability to absorb the powers of others, Micah Sanders' 'technopathy', the ability to control and direct machines, and Hiro Nakamura's time and space traveling, meaning he can teleport anywhere and anywhen (without a TARDIS). Obviously there were some bad decisions made about the show, leading to some (for lack of a better word) dumb powers. Here's a list that Cracked.com did of the worst 'Heroes' powers to have. I fully agree with this list.

Hiro Nakamura

Sylar (aka Gabriel Gray)

The show started on NBC in fall 2006, and within the first few episodes had gathered a huge following. People loved seeing these seemingly normal people have unique and individual superpowers. It seemed like everyone was waiting with bated breath for the finale of the series, when the main characters, the 'heroes,' as it were, would have their final standoff with the villain of the series, Sylar. (Sylar's power was to know how things worked, to -need- to know how they worked. Driven by a psychological need to be special, he killed other people with powers, and using his ability, took the people apart and absorbed the DNA that gave them their power. On a constant hunt for new abilities that would make him more powerful, he remained the main villain for the entire series.)

Elle Bishop

Season two rolled around. It introduced a few new characters and powers, including Monica Dawson, who could could physically copy what she saw people do, and Elle Bishop, who could generate and manipulate electricity. But despite these new powers, the storyline started to suffer, because that was the year of the infamous writer's strike (more detailed information on this event here). Other popular shows (such as LOST) also suffered from plot holes and bad writing because the writers simply stopped doing their jobs, and the slipshod replacements that TV stations brought in just weren't up to snuff. Season 2 is filled with gaps, blatant plot devices, and bad dialogue. It is also only about half of the length of the first season.

When Season 3 came the following year, the original writers came back!! This of course must be a good thing, right? No, sadly, they had to spend almost half the season cleaning up the mess the Season 2 writers made. Viewers were dropping like flies. Even as loyal fans of the show, my friends and I found Seasons 2 and 3 almost painful to watch. We watched still, but it didn't come anywhere close to Season 1. The season eventually did come back up to snuff, and the finale was as epic, if not more so, than for Season 1. Everyone assumed that the show would come back. NBC even did an entire superbowl commercial featuring the actors to promote the show. But when it was time for Season 4, the show never did regain it's original high-status or viewer count. NBC cancelled the show in the spring of 2010 (much to my distress and the distress of many fans worldwide. Click here to go to the unofficial/official fan page).

Leading up to this cancellation, many fans realized the show was in danger, and several attempts were made to save the show. SaveHeroesSaturday was one of them. Fans of the show put those words in every single one of their tweets that day, hoping that the topic would trend on Twitter and that NBC would see how big the fanbase was. This event wasn't as successful as the subsequent Heroes100Saturday, which I proudly took part in. The topic was high on the trending list in several places all around the world, and it managed to reach 8th on the worldwide trending list. But despite all of our efforts, NBC cancelled the show anyway.

Let me just point out that Heroes is one of the most purchased shows on iTunes and on DVD. Also, NBC was the station to cancel 'Star Trek' back in 1969. This station does not seem to realize what their viewers want, and what shows are going to stay popular.

There is one last effort being made to save the show, tomorrow actually. This is known as 'Spam NBC Sunday.' We're hoping, again, that NBC will take notice of us pathetic fans and give us back our characters we love so much. GOOD LUCK TO EVERYONE INVOLVED!! If you're interested, here's a link to the event page.

PICTURE SOURCES: 
Logo: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/7/70/Heroes_logo.png
Claire Bennet: http://hollywoodhatesme.files.wordpress.com/2010/02/claire-bennet_the-cheerleader.jpg
Peter Petrelli: http://heroes.download-tvshows.com/files/milo_ventimiglia.jpg
Hiro Nakamura: http://woodenspears.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/07/masi_oka_hiro_nakamura2.jpg
Sylar: http://www.heroestheseries.com/uploads/2008/07/heroes-301-promos-4.jpg
Elle: http://images.eonline.com/eol_images/Entire_Site/20071114/293.bell.heroes.111407.jpg