'It was all a dream' rant

[vilakins]

I'd just like to express how much I loathe 'it was all a dream' stories. I feel I wasted yesterday evening watching a British TV play called Promoted to Glory. It was brilliantly acted with strong and likeable characters, but I felt very pissed off and cheated when the bloody thing ended and none of the characters but the dreamer were real. [stabs at writer with a spork]

The play starts with an alcoholic being entranced with the smiling face of a female Salvation Army officer singing Christmas carols. He crosses the street to her and gets knocked down by a bus. Cue a very involving story in which he has partial amnesia, is taken in at her detox centre, gets to know some interesting characters there, dries out, and pursues Annie, the officer, with whom he's in love--so much so he gets his life in order, becomes a Sally Army officer himself (learning all the articles of faith etc) and starts his own detox centre. He then has what appears to be a heart attack just as Annie realises she loves him and not her humourless but in the end sympathetic fiancé, and goes to him.

Then we replay the first scene and he's back there dying on the street with 'Annie' smiling down at him. Except that she's really called Margaret, her 'fiancé' is the bus driver, and the 'other alcoholics' he got to know are just random shoppers in the street who stop to look. This is just a kick in the teeth to the viewers. People we invest in are just figments in the mind of a dying man, and this isn't even logical: no-one dreams a year's events complete with scenes they weren't in, complex characters, religious instruction, and psychiatric assessments.

Like the clichéd sexist alien society, this plot device should be stamped out

Comments

[kalypso-v.livejournal.com]

Oh yes, I didn't see that one but I read a couple of reviews - they reacted the same way as you, they thought it was a brilliant play but felt cheated at the end.

[hobsonphile.livejournal.com]

OMG, I hate that device. Don't even get me started on how St. Elsewhere here in the states ended...

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

I used to watch that years ago (and loved Stephen Furst's character) but I never saw the end. Um, dare I ask what happened? Surely it wasn't all a dream?

[hobsonphile.livejournal.com]

Aha! I knew I'd ranted about the end of St. E. (http://www.livejournal.com/users/hobsonphile/50841.html) in my journal at some point. I just had to find the link in my memories. *g*

So, um, yes. There you are. *g*

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

I am so glad we never got to see it all here. Killing off Furst's character (how?) then saying the whole thing was someone's fantasy? SPORK! A kid couldn't imagine the complexity of a series like that complete with medical details and characters with real, non-autistic emotions. That totally stinks.

I remember being very angry about the end of Twin Peaks (and B7) but that takes the cake.

I have to make an angry icon...

[hobsonphile.livejournal.com]

Killing off Furst's character: He had an early heart attack and died post-coronary bypass when, while hallucinating, he pulled out his balloon. Why, why? *mutters some more and plots denial fic in which he becomes a small town GP because, OMG, he's so perfect for that*

Yes! Having an angry icon is useful.

[communicator.livejournal.com]

I'm afraid I don't have a link to this but I read a few months back: some American fans noticed that the series of St Elsewhere that is 'just a dream' includes a cross-over with some other show (Law and Order?) so they said 'this proves that that show must be just a dream too'.

But even worse that show in turn has cross-overs with other show(s) and by linking up all the shows that cross over you end up 'proving' that half of the shows on American TV are just part of this dream of the kid in St Elsewhere.

heh heh

[spacefall.livejournal.com]

*stampety*

[trixieleitz]

Damn straight. That is all.

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

Did you see it too? We recorded it and saw it last night (we only watch cricket live).

[trixieleitz]

No, it didn't look like my sort of thing. I just agree with you about the device of "all a dream" with no clues earlier in the story. Wasn't it Dallas that wiped out a whole series like that?

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

I believe it was just a season because they wanted to bring back a dead character. Sorry, I don't know much about it but it got a mention recently on a mailing list I'm on. The character in question came out of the shower but I gather he wasn't the one who dreamed it all.

[entropy-house.livejournal.com]

I never watched either, but yes, Dallas not only wiped out a season, but they had a spinoff that had been created following storylines in the season that was 'nevered', which not only ticked off the fans, but the cast/crew/writer's of the spinoff 'Knots Landing' IIRC.

[kerravonsen]

Um. I agree that the play mentioned above is just -- bah!
But.
Er.
But...

Okay, okay, I admit it... (very small voice) I wrote an "it was all a dream" fic once.
It was an attempt to retcon a series-ending I hated. But I did try to make it sort of plausible.

I mean, what do you think of the B7 stories which propose that the entire 4th season was "a dream"? I remember one of them basically proposed that the electronic "hallucination" that Avon was given about Blake in Terminal, was actually more than that, and was the entire 4th season.

[hafren.livejournal.com]

I mean, what do you think of the B7 stories which propose that the entire 4th season was "a dream"?

Not a lot. I really think that device is hopeless; my reaction to it as a reader is "oh, so I've just wasted my time reading it then?" (Incidentally this also goes for the forerunner of them all, at least in modern times, Alice in Wonderland. I felt totally cheated by that as a child.) I ban my students from using it

[reapermum.livejournal.com]

Hey!! I go with S4 is all "a dream". I wanted it carefully designed to break Avon by having him betray his friends, then S5 can have them picking up the pieces and putting him back together again.

And Red Dwarf never got out of Better than Life, the tax inspector came out of the cupboard as they went to the credits so they were still in at that point.

It was Bobby in Dallas that died for a series. He came out of the shower to be greeted by his wife saying "I've just had the srangest dream. You were dead" But everything else from that series was supposed to have happened.

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

Re B7 S4 as an induced dream or VR: I'm beta-reading a B7 novel with just that idea: Servlalan, Carnell, and the people we see on Terminal (who don't look Federation) designed S4 and made Avon experience it (sometimes several times in some scenes till they got the right response) to leave him with nothing and such self-loathing he would throw his lot in with Servie. I like this because it doesn't dismiss S4 but explores just why elements of it were done. It's a logical and fascinating story, if a bit slow-moving.

[reapermum.livejournal.com]

Does Liberator get saved? It started breaking up before they arrived on Terminal, so that can't be dismissed.

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

Yes, it does get saved; Dayna and Vila analyse the enzymes. Before Avon went down to Terminal (remember he was on the flight deck a long time) he set up Orac to be unavailable, teleport any crew who follow him, and leave. The AU starts from when Avon gets knocked on the head after he tells Vila to leave.

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

what do you think of the B7 stories which propose that the entire 4th season was "a dream"?

If it was just something a character dreamed, not much. However if it was an induced VR experience as in 'Terminal', then it can be interesting. I'm beta-reading a B7 novel with just that premise and the author has really thought bout why various events were in the matrix and their desired effect on Avon, so it's fascinating and actually very logical. She's thought it through.

[entropy-house.livejournal.com]

I admit to doing it at least twice to B7-- both times I did try to set up hints to the reader all along. The dream theme was an integral part of one of them, and even in the other, the character had been having bad dreams from time to time.

[pinkdormouse.livejournal.com]

I'm being very careful with the dream sequences in my novel. The completely logical ones are Richard replaying his memories, and the ones that don't make that much sense to him *should* make sense to the reader in terms of what he's been thinking about in the preceding scenes.

I think the Buffyverse got things right with 'Normal Again', and I never really thought about how close my 'Mexico Sucks' came to being the same thing until my beta pointed it out.

But the scenario you described is taking things way too far.

Gina

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

Oh, I don't mind dreams if we know that's what they are: they can give you lots of insight into a character. I just hate being told something I considered 'real' wasn't.

[pinkdormouse.livejournal.com]

I don't always reveal that it's a dream until after the end of a scene, and the whole of the prologue is a series of dreams/memories, but each dream serves to reveal stuff that would otherwise need a big chunk of exposition.

Gina

[magic-wanderer.livejournal.com]

How bizarre. Russell T Davies, in his "Production Notes" in Doctor Who Magazine this month, gives a stern warning to avoid the press because it will ruin every plot point about the new series of Doctor Who before it's aired, and uses that play as an example of previewers' knack for spoiling.

You're right, it is a rubbish ending though.

I wrote a massive story when I was about seven or eight and in it, having been surrounded by robot leopards in a bleak futuristic city (after coming across a time machine while out for a walk, as you do) hitherto unseen human resistance fighters arrived, and saved me, knocking me unconscious. The next paragraph was something like "I awoke on an old but comfortable bed to see a woman in combat gear and an older man looking down at me..." and it would have continued into a fantastic "team up with the resistance to fight the robot leopards and their android masters" romp. However, my teacher decided we should move on, so next thing I know, she's printed out a copy (this was being typed on an old BBC Micro) and stuck it to the wall as finished. It's time capsule discoveries and robot leopards all the way, then "I woke up on an old but comfortable bed. THE END" I was mortified!

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

I would be too. That's horrible; she mangled your story and negated it.

I avoid spoilers, but if I'd read one for that play, I wouldn't have watched it and in effect wasted an evening's viewing.

[mistraltoes.livejournal.com]

How rotten.

Buffy uses dream sequences to good effect, but there are always indications that they are dream sequences (as in B7's Terminal). Still, now that I need to write one for a Buffy fanfic, I worry that it'll come out incredibly stupid. A good dream sequence is hard to do. And one that negates the whole story is just - a world of no!

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

Exactly. I have no objection to dream sequences as long as we know that's what they are. The guy in that play even had them, and flights of imagination too, cued by lighting changes and they were fun. But then to say at the end that none of it existed... augh!