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Prog 1990 - Standing Tall

Started by Colin YNWA, 16 July, 2016, 05:19:30 PM

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Timothy

Secret tunnel used by Dredd in the Apocalypse War.

Hawkmumbler

That secret research facility where, until told other wise, they're keeping Sabbats head...

Frank

Quote from: Tordelback on 29 July, 2016, 11:22:12 AM
Quote from: BPP on 29 July, 2016, 02:26:43 AM
Wonder what Smiley made of it all. He must have been out of town.

Carroll slipped up! He forgot that all existential  threats to Justice Dept would be solved by Judge Smiley, just as they always have.


Yeah, but he was inside the Chief Judge's office while Oswin had Hershey at gunpoint, watching it all happen and dipping another Rich Tea in his Yellow Label.

Smiley sat out much worse tragedies than Who Dares Oswins, but that raises the question of why he parted the plasterboard for Bachman but not for Oswin [1] under pretty much identical circumstances. [2]

While acknowledging they're all just stories made up by a man, and that any story starts coming apart if you choose to pick at it, can we all agree that Smiley was a terrible idea from the point of view of future stories? [3]


[1] ... or Kazan, or Necropolis, or Narcos ...

[2] Bad lady holding Hershey and Dredd at gunpoint in the CJ's office

[3] He's joined Anderson and the Birdie on the list of things that need explained away before any writer can get on with telling their story.

Richard

It's okay to not like a story, but I think some of the criticism has been unduly harsh, especially coming from people who've forgotten or didn't understand most of it.

The remote teleporter is how the British kidnapped Dredd in the first place. You remember -- the climax to The Grindstone Cowboys where Dredd's h-wagon exploded and which made a lot of readers think for a few weeks that Dredd had actually finally been killed off. Until he turned up alive in Brit-Cit and got rescued. Which kind of explains why The Lion's Den part of the story existed. Now if you didn't enjoy The Lion's Den then that's fine, that's your prerogative, but it's a bit of a stretch to say that whole part of the story could have been skipped altogether, as if Dredd just magically turning up in MC1 and telling us where he's been and how he got back in a couple of speech bubbles of exposition would somehow be more entertaining.

And a remote teleporter needs co-ordinates. The rifle was one way to get them. I suppose MC could have come up with a less dramatic way to do that, but would that have improved the story?

TordelBack

Have to agree with Richard here, in fact I think most of BPP's gripes are strong points of the story. In particular I was impressed by how the finale managed to make use of all the strands and elements, however briefly.

Carroll is trying a different tack with epics here, pulling in characters and locations in the wider Dreddverse to make a sort of multi-thread globetrotting quasi-political thing (yes I know Trifecta is a something of a precedent). It wasn't perfect, but it was fun and inventive and streets ahead of 'grim unstoppable megadeath event No. 23', plus it was a writer playing to his own strengths. Personally I'd have enjoyed a Devlin thread added in just for fun.

And ignoring Smiley's existence at all times is the only thing a writer can do.  It's how he'd want it to be.

Frank

Quote from: Richard on 29 July, 2016, 05:55:38 PM
The remote teleporter is how the British kidnapped Dredd in the first place ... it's a bit of a stretch to say that whole part of the story could have been skipped altogether, as if Dredd just magically turning up in MC1 and telling us where he's been and how he got back in a couple of speech bubbles of exposition would somehow be more entertaining.

Nobody thought Dredd was actually dead, so the reader was left marking time until he woke up and the story started again. [1]

I enjoyed some of Lion's Den, but it took Joyce 8 weeks to fall down the same hole as Javier Bardem's train in Skyfall, pop round Armitage's flat, and give Dredd a lift back to MC1. Not terrible in any way, just uneventful.

The death and Brit Cit parts of the story are unimportant to the story of a coup in MC1. Because the teleport element had already been introduced, I thought Carroll's use of it to dispatch Oswin was neat, but it wasn't so great it made 8 weeks in a coma fun.


[1] Carroll only took Dredd off the board for a couple of months because Tharg asked him for a story that could be split between 2000ad and the Megazine (7m 15s).

TordelBack

I'd counter by saying that the structure if this story meant that individual elements didn't have to be solely in service of the whole. Lion's Den was an opportunity for the Dredd strip's first (?) sustained visit to Brit Cit (Doomsday hardly counts), some fun Holden background gags, a lengthy chase, not-much-of-a surprise cameo for Armitage... it was entertaining on its own merits, if not judged purely on how much it advanced the plot.  And plenty of folk seemed to buy into 'Dredd...dead?', even if cynical grognards such as one finds around these parts didn't.

Frank

Quote from: Tordelback on 29 July, 2016, 07:21:49 PM
Lion's Den was ... some fun Holden background gags, a lengthy chase, not-much-of-a surprise cameo for Armitage... it was entertaining on its own merits

Yeah, most of it was fun. If it had been 5 parts long, like Grindstone and Reclamation, I wouldn't have been bored.

Carroll's remarks on the Thrill Cast, that the pacing of the story was determined by the decision to split it between prog and Meg, explains why Lion's Den took 8 weeks to resolve, rather than the 5 weeks the more eventful Reclamation was squeezed into.

As far as the entitled whining of genre fans is concerned, 3 extra weeks of wishing Dredd's alarm clock would go off is pretty small beer. I'll get over it (like Dredd got over being dead); nobody died (even if we were supposed to think they had).



Magnetica

So there seems to be a criticism that certain episodes didn't advance the plot.

er...I take it most of us on the board have read The Cursed Earth and the Judge Child Quest? Anyone think they are classics? Notice the episodes that didn't move the plot forward?

Richard

I think the use of the teleporter at the end actually worked better because we'd seen it before. If we hadn't then it would have felt that it had just come out of nowhere, in a desperate move by the writer because he was too lazy to think of an ending that made sense. Instead, the ending made perfect sense because it had been set up weeks earlier, by which time enough time had passed that it we'd have forgotten about it so it wasn't obvious that it was going to be part of the climax of the story.

Frank

Quote from: Richard on 29 July, 2016, 11:40:47 PM
Quote from: Butch on 29 July, 2016, 06:53:24 PM
Because the teleport element had already been introduced, I thought Carroll's use of it to dispatch Oswin was neat

I think the use of the teleporter at the end actually worked better because we'd seen it before. If we hadn't then it would have felt that it had just come out of nowhere, in a desperate move by the writer because he was too lazy to think of an ending that made sense. Instead, the ending made perfect sense because it had been set up weeks earlier, by which time enough time had passed that it we'd have forgotten about it so it wasn't obvious that it was going to be part of the climax of the story.


I thought that was what I said ... but we agree, so hurrah!



TordelBack

Quote from: Butch on 29 July, 2016, 07:57:55 PM
Carroll's remarks on the Thrill Cast, that the pacing of the story was determined by the decision to split it between prog and Meg, explains why Lion's Den took 8 weeks to resolve, rather than the 5 weeks the more eventful Reclamation was squeezed into.

Ahh, interesting. Will have to catch up on my Thrillcasts. 

Richard

Hmm, I seem to have hallucinated reading a sentence with the exact opposite meaning. Might be the onset of senility.
(Which thread is this again?)

BPP

Smiley is absolutely fine as a character and idea, the problem lies in him being in a magic kingdom right next door to the Chief Judges office. Remove that element and he's a powerful schemer who can be blindsided and rendered vulnerable by things outside his chess game.

Of particular interest would be his age and whether he is seeking to replace himself and the contrast to Dredd's endurance.

Of course he'd need to be handled by the talented end of the script pool, the ones that manage to invest their characters with personality.
If I'd known it was harmless I would have killed it myself.

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Quote from: Hawkmumbler on 29 July, 2016, 04:58:39 PM
That secret research facility where, until told other wise, they're keeping Sabbats head...

Which Prog(s) please???
I can't help but feel that Godpleton's avatar/icon gets more appropriate everyday... - TordelBack
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