OLTL: Why the 1968 'Back to the Future' Story Bombed

[marceline]

I said pretty much the same thing in my comment to Marlena. Soaps don't naturally lend themselves to sci-fi so to dabble in it is IMO a mistake. Soaps already require a pretty hefty suspension of disbelief. The additional "buy in" required to do a sci-fi story is more than should be requested of a soap audience unless it done at the beginning a la Passions. Plus the detail requires time which brings us back to the chief complaint of the story going on too long.

[miajere]

I think OLTL needs to simplify their sci-fi story lines to just concepts instead of full blast sci-fi. Dream sequences or even hallucinations are much more significant than time travel- and yet could pose some of the same questions and would contain much of the same dialogue. I think it's okay to straddle the sci-fi line as long as it remains a continual story about the characters. Traveling back in time does the exact opposite.

As for the "buy in"- it would be alright if this were a continual concept in OLTL's storytelling- but OLTL just prided itself on being an urban display of modern life- something raw and not manufactured. Once again, me and RC have been watching different shows.

Perhaps the subtle approach isn't just required by the actors but the writers as well. In my opinion this story line was as big a bomb as when DH decided to do action/plot s/l. RC should stick to the interpersonal connections and think small- stop trying to impress with this knowledge of history. The timing of the s/l only made it that more apparent to the audience, but even after one week, I would have been saying ,"Huh?"

[Vanguardian]

It's funny because this storyline would've worked years ago when OLTL used sci-fi type stories regularly, but now it just seems horribly out of place for the show to be telling such a story. On another note, Tina has done NOTHING of interest since her return, and isn't it almost time for her to depart the show again? I said a while back that whenever TPTB persuade Andrea Evans to reprise the role of Tina, they'll find a way to ruin it; and that's exactly what they've done.