Star Trek recipe for soaps?

[Vee]

How do we know history is the doom of soaps? Where is it written? Where is the evidence? Who has proven that? What show has borne that out? Santa Barbara, AW and GL were cancelled for failing to uphold their standard and their history. EON and SFT were, I believe, cancelled for money and network bias. (In fact, IIRC Frons himself pulled the trigger on SFT)

The inescapable fact you and others in daytime seem to want to avoid is that soaps are a unique serialized medium building upon decades of history and relationships. If you can't handle writing for veteran characters and families, and if you can't deal with that history, do not write for soaps. Someone else will. IIRC, the BBC once tried to reinvent the wheel on Who; it had grown stagnant through mismanagement and in some cases, direct sabotage by the programming dept. They figured it was old hat and took it off at the end of the 80s. They spent most of the next decade trying to sell it to America and let Steven Spielberg remake it. That failed (as did the American-made Paul McGann pilot film) and finally someone with sense said, "right, we know what the public wants, the videos and new radio dramas still sell very well, let's stop trying to fit a square peg into a round hole and take it on again ourselves." When they did, they found a very receptive audience of old fans and new people who'd never seen a second of it waiting with delight. And they didn't have to reinvent the wheel to do it. It was updated and streamlined in certain ways, but the history remained intact.

Soaps cannot "soft reboot" and go off the air like a sci-fi show like Who, (I think that would be death) but they can take lessons from it. Soaps should always have new stories, new ideas, new characters but there is absolutely no reason to lose the history or what makes soaps soaps in order to do that. History does not doom soaps. People who hate or resent what they write and produce doom soaps.

[Toups]

You guys better talk more about soaps in here or else it's going to be moved to the primetime forum. LOL

[Vee]

I'm the only one staying on-topic. As usual.

[Sylph]

It dooms them because there are so many stories you can write for the same people who've been on for 20 years. The risk of repeating yourself is huge. And people always repeat themselves because daytime has been plagued by lazy writers.

[Sylph]

I only see this now: I agree fully. No one here is talking about: Wipe their entire history. No one.

[Vee]

The risk of repeating yourself exists in any form of writing for any medium. Daytime has its own rules just like police procedurals or primetime soaps or sitcoms, but innovation can always happen therein. If you can't take the heat, leave the kitchen. Daytime only survived this long because of its core characters and families. You can create new paradigms and new characters and stories, but if you can't write for the core or stomach using them, don't work in daytime.

[marceline]

Let me try phrasing this another way. "Shipping" is the primetime term for what we call fanbase wars. On Lost it's Jate/Skate, on AMC its Zendall/Rendall.

Shipping kills shows.

[Sylph]

That is where I disagree. In the sense that you should create new core families & core characters. Yes, I know, the chance of failure is huge. But Lemay proved you can write the stories you want about people you like, create new amazingly popular people and be successful. Not only successful, but remembered as one of the greatest soap writers. Truly greatest.

[Vee]

I anticipated you bringing up Lemay, but I waited until you did to explain why you're wrong. Here's your answer: AW was not yet ten years old when Lemay arrived. Things were not fully set, an audience was not entirely guaranteed for the future. It's not the early '70s anymore. TV soaps were relatively new then. Daytime has since become a full-blown institution of family, love and history, built on the kind of viewer base that was first created in the '70s and '80s. In 1971, Lemay could take risks with the established characters and weed out deadwood. That was still a fairly new show, as was daytime as a TV medium. Daytime is different today, a solid genre, because of what people like Lemay made it into. You can still weed out deadwood and take risks as did Lemay, but a core is set and there are now decades of history to draw from. Back then, there was little background to work with.

Once Lemay created a core from old and new parts, he cherished it. The audience knows the people it cares about, just as Lemay knew people cared for Rachel Davis, or Ada, or Lenore or Pat Matthews before he took the job. He didn't try to get rid of Rachel and Ada. He didn't get rid of Steve Frame or Alice (though he changed them, and later Reinholt quit). He used them all to a personal apex. Old and new characters, old and new core families and new ideas. Linda Gottlieb did the same with OLTL and Viki, Dorian, Bo, Clint, Max, etc. in the 90s.

[Sylph]

You didn't convince me nor proven me wrong.

[Vee]

But I clearly left you with nothing to say.

I own the book too.

[Sylph]

Because there is no point. You always keep your opinion, I always keep mine.

[Vee]

I threw Lemay back in your face, Sylph. Lemay. You don't have a way to explain why it's still 1971?

[MarkH]

Bill Bell also created whole new families on Y&R. When (about 7 years into its run?) the show expanded to an hour, he phased out his original clans (Brooks, Fosters) and brought in new ones (Abbotts, Williams...and kind of Newmans). As Vee cites, the show was young. Also, there was an extended period of cross-fertilization. Peggy Brooks had an affair with Jack Abbott. Jill Foster had affairs with Jack and John Abbott. Lorie Brooks was embroiled with Victor Newman. And so forth. He also retained, as core story drivers, Jill Foster and Katherine Chancellor.

But it was certainly risky. Note that Brad Bell tried to do something similar on B&B (the Marones), and it basically failed. Anyone remember Oscar Marone?

ETA: OLTL was nearly destroyed by the Rappaports, no?

[marceline]

Yeah, I knew the lovefest (a.k.a. respectful discussion) wouldn't last.