How I Would Have Done A2A
Aug. 26th, 2011 10:07 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
chocolatepotI forced myself to stay up until 1 last night so I could finish Ashes to Ashes. The finale was so good that I was retroactively disappointed in the rest of the show - it seemed like they'd wasted the premise and were completely uninterested in the speculative fiction side of things. So I thought on it for a while and came up with a good rundown of what annoyed me, what I thought they wasted, and how I would have done it.
One problem I had was that the timeline makes no sense. Gene died in 1953 and he looks like he's aged naturally in Purgatory, so it was probably 1953 in Purgatory when he showed up. Since only 20 years went by to him when 50 went by IRL, time must run slower in P. But in A2A, it's very explicit that time goes by faster.
I definitely would have made it only two series long. One of the things I like about British shows and their short series is that there's usually not any filler, but the entire second series felt like filler to me. I think the second season could have been put into the first, with the thing about her parents only taking up half the time (although that seems a little rushed - maybe if they could have done two slightly longer seasons) and the whole Operation Rose thing could have been the other half, though I wouldn't have called it anything, it would have just been that guy showing her that it wasn't the real 1980s. She'd wake up at the end of the first series, but then die in the premiere of the second - although, as they did, she wouldn't realize she was dead. The clues that the others were dead would come much faster* and Alex would figure it out, and there would be a lot more exploration of how the world worked.
* They did a good and subtle job with Shaz, I think, finding the screwdrivers everywhere and being miserable, but Roy and Chris really didn't get much lead-up. Which was too bad, because really, at the end I thought the scenes with them were the best.
Because there was so little exploration! Did that P always exist, or did Gene create it? Who are all the non-police people? Did every single police officer come there all dioriented and confused like Alex and Sam? Did he just carve out his own niche, or was he intentionally or unintentionally controlling it? I like the idea of it being his little sandbox, where his John Wayne stuff always works (like it didn't when he died) and his men never die. Of course, Viv's death fucked that up, but I guess if Keats didn't step in maybe Viv wouldn't have died? I really like the sandbox idea, where Gene is like Adam Young in Lower Tadfield, warping it into his idea of the world. I think it would have been pretty cool for Gene to have been a continual psychopomp, like Wiki implied, deliberately manipulating things so that the dead police could come to terms with their deaths and move on.
Keats's crazy demonic fit at the end was weird. I don't know if it's objectively weird acting or if I just dislike Daniel Mays's face. In general, I think having a/the devil coming in and screwing things up was a good idea, but the execution reminded me way too much of the end of LoM.
Mostly, what I would have liked would have been for Alex to stay behind and help Gene keep making people come to terms with their deaths. Or for there to have been more of a payoff for their burning UST, FTLOG.
One problem I had was that the timeline makes no sense. Gene died in 1953 and he looks like he's aged naturally in Purgatory, so it was probably 1953 in Purgatory when he showed up. Since only 20 years went by to him when 50 went by IRL, time must run slower in P. But in A2A, it's very explicit that time goes by faster.
I definitely would have made it only two series long. One of the things I like about British shows and their short series is that there's usually not any filler, but the entire second series felt like filler to me. I think the second season could have been put into the first, with the thing about her parents only taking up half the time (although that seems a little rushed - maybe if they could have done two slightly longer seasons) and the whole Operation Rose thing could have been the other half, though I wouldn't have called it anything, it would have just been that guy showing her that it wasn't the real 1980s. She'd wake up at the end of the first series, but then die in the premiere of the second - although, as they did, she wouldn't realize she was dead. The clues that the others were dead would come much faster* and Alex would figure it out, and there would be a lot more exploration of how the world worked.
* They did a good and subtle job with Shaz, I think, finding the screwdrivers everywhere and being miserable, but Roy and Chris really didn't get much lead-up. Which was too bad, because really, at the end I thought the scenes with them were the best.
Because there was so little exploration! Did that P always exist, or did Gene create it? Who are all the non-police people? Did every single police officer come there all dioriented and confused like Alex and Sam? Did he just carve out his own niche, or was he intentionally or unintentionally controlling it? I like the idea of it being his little sandbox, where his John Wayne stuff always works (like it didn't when he died) and his men never die. Of course, Viv's death fucked that up, but I guess if Keats didn't step in maybe Viv wouldn't have died? I really like the sandbox idea, where Gene is like Adam Young in Lower Tadfield, warping it into his idea of the world. I think it would have been pretty cool for Gene to have been a continual psychopomp, like Wiki implied, deliberately manipulating things so that the dead police could come to terms with their deaths and move on.
Keats's crazy demonic fit at the end was weird. I don't know if it's objectively weird acting or if I just dislike Daniel Mays's face. In general, I think having a/the devil coming in and screwing things up was a good idea, but the execution reminded me way too much of the end of LoM.
Mostly, what I would have liked would have been for Alex to stay behind and help Gene keep making people come to terms with their deaths. Or for there to have been more of a payoff for their burning UST, FTLOG.
