The Chris Carter Effect Discussion - Television Tropes & Idioms

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Tabby: Is there an entry for the thing where a show promises a complicated storyline that will eventually have answers, but viewers shy away from it because they've heard that line before with shows that failed to resolve anything? Kind of like The Firefly Effect, but with The X Files as the show providing the original burn.

Ununnilium: Conspiracy Blues, perhaps?

Gus Tabby, there isn't an entry for that, and it is quite distinct from the The Firefly Effect. Good eye! It a very real phenom, and needs a name.

Dark Sasami: Are there really that many shows where that very specific thing happens? I mean...I was scared away from Babylon5 because I hadn't watched it from the beginning, not because I was afraid it wouldn't resolve, but it sounds like a similar sort of thing — really, it sounds like Commitment Anxiety.

Devils Advocate: Somewhat related, but perhaps not quite the same, is shows that you don't watch because "you need to watch them from the beginning." This is why I don't watch Lost, even though I've heard good things about it and am intrigued.

Gus: First of all, watch Lost. Also, watch Veronica Mars. Don't let the fact that they are scheduled against each other stop you. Technology has solutions for this. Tape or DVR one of them. Download Lost eppies to you iPod. Rent the first season of Lost on DVD.

Devils Advocate: Well, I've seen a few episodes of Veronica Mars. Decent show, but not really my thing. Right now, I'm working on catching up on Battlestar Galactica. You see, I had never watched the 1970s version when it was on, so I originally didn't pay any attention when the new one came out. But I kept hearing rumblings that it was a good show, so eventually I caught an episode: "Pegasus." And when it was done, I said to myself, "How have I been missing this? This is the best science fiction that's been on television since Star Trek Deep Space Nine and Babylon 5 ended!" So purely on the strength of that one episode, I immediately went out and bought the first season on DVD, and I'm working my way through it now, then I'll have the first part of the second season to watch, not to mention I'm also watching the new episodes on that. So once I'm caught up with BSG maybe I'll start in on Lost, but not before then.

Second of all ... the trope is real. It is probably why Millennium and ... dangit, I'm memfaulting on the show name for the Frohicke spin-off... [The Lone Gunmen — Devils Advocate] failed to build an audience. People had lost trust in the producers that it was all going somewhere.

I think Dark Sasami is right that Commitment Anxiety is a different but related phenomenon, so maybe the two should have similar names. Maybe Carter Anxiety, since most of it appears to have been inspired by good old Chris?

Idle Dandy: Heh. Before I even scrolled down, the first thing I thought when I read this was The Chris Carter Effect or Damn You Chris Carter. I was explaining the principle to my dad last week while watching Lost (which, btw, is totally worth it even if it clearly suffers from this effect. Remember, The X Files was good for at least three and a half seasons.

Space Ace: I don't get the popularity of Lost. I watched the first two seasons, and there just was no story. Period. The show is just an experiment to see how long you can string people along with a bunch of riddles that are never solved. At least the stand-alone episodes of The X Files were good. Lost doesn't have any.

Idle Dandy: Well, I highly disagree with "no story," but to each his own. To me Lost is Zork. It's an adventure game. Some of the turns are more fun than others, but I always loved those games, and a newly discovered object, character, or location on the show gives me the same thrill as when the drunk guy fell over in Return to Zork and I went down the trapdoor for the first time...

On a related note, I realized part of why I love The 4400 so much is that I have no X-Files-like expectations of it. It's cool, and interesting, and silly, and even though I don't think the writers know exactly where they're going, I still think it'll end up being someplace cool.

Fast Eddie: Looks like this is not an example ...

The comic Gold Digger. Fred Perry frequently sets up elaborate storylines... then delays or drops them when he falls in love with stories that were intended as short filler, and the characters he introduced in them, for whom he then creates elaborate storylines. At this point, he's basically discarded a great deal of his former plots for the sake of doing a "fairly well in the future" storyline, to the point where he's had to start using repeated editor's notes explaining that references the characters are making aren't in earlier issues... they haven't been revealed yet.
- Though, at least with Gold Digger, he manages to keep up with the elaborate storylines by virtue of lots and lots of notes. In fact, he published his own "list of unfinished plotlines."
- I'm not sure if this counts because he is getting around to resolving most of them, just a lot later than original planned.

Novium: How is it that there's no x-files example on this page?

Tabby: Because it's in the entry text.

Haven: Lord knows season three Heroes has its faults, but I don't think The Chris Carter Effect is among them. The only lingering mystery I can think of is since Linderman was a hallucination, how'd Nathan recover from the shooting. There is, of course, who are Sylar's real parents - but that's going to be answered pretty promptly, it seems.

No, we know the answer to that first one. Future Peter healed him. That scene was pretty obvious. In fact the whole comment about the third season being over is incorrect anyways, only the first half is done.

Antheia: Found a long thread of natter. Putting it here, so someone familiar with the work in question can figure out what to do with the example.

The 2000 Battlestar Galactica series seems to be falling to this, to the point that the tagline used in trailers for the fourth season is "All will be revealed." So far, not so much, though to be fair the season was not meant to be split and thus would presumably have answered them if the eps had all been shown together. Several new questions have been raised, though. The Fifth of the Final Five?
- Not to mention that from the beginning we've been told that the Cylons have a plan, but the last few seasons have made clear that they (and the writers) are just making it up as they go.
  - Indeed the 'They have a plan' bit has been dropped from each episode's opening as of late as it has become clear that while the Cylons did have plans, several in fact, they have been totally thrown out the window as events in the series have developed and now no side has a firm plan and is just reacting to the chaos that has emerged, particularly with the Enemy Civil War among the Cylons. Whoever it is that has a plan (and something has clearly been manipulating events, as acknowledged by the characters), it isn't a plan the Cylons can claim as theirs alone. In this case it's more that the original mysteries have been revealed to not be the real vital mysteries of the show after all rather than a failure to make the audience believe answers are coming. They still seemingly are, but are not the mysteries people thought they would be at the start.
  - The first episode of season four's second half to air after the split may be taking a subtle jab at this, as it very blatantly shows that there is a plan of some kind that may very well tie into everything that's happened (though it may not tie everything together, per se.) The twist? The plan was the Final Five's plan, two thousand years ago, not anything the seven models have done from bombing the colonies to the present. 'The Cylons have a plan' indeed.
- Many, many fans watching as the argument between the two Cylon factions escalated into full-out civil war: "Guys? I don't think they have a plan any more."
- Given the contents of the episode "No Exit", it is clear that yes, there were answers. The episode is basically all exposition.
  - And some would say that the fact that they are forced to spend an entire episode filled with exposition and Ass Pull to recreate the Canon is a failure in itself.
  - Love It Or Hate It. This Troper just watched the episode and loved it. It all made sense.
- The Word Of God said that there was never really a plan, that Executive Meddling made them put it into the opening credits. However, the TV movie The Plan is supposed to give viewers some idea of a plan. (This troper doesn't really believe this story, needless to say.)

Also, there seems to be quite a number of shows listed that started lots of plot threads, but were cancelled before they could give all the answers. Surely that's not the same thing as this?

Does the Zelda series count? It sort of seems like the creators aren't remotely trying to answer questions, or taking any care not to create a dozen more in each game. They keep making more games that implicitly follow the third game chronologically, in nearly (but not entirely) mutually exclusive ways.

NGE doesn't seem like a real example. There's no suggestion that the creators didn't know where they were going or how to end the series, it's just that their idea of an ending didn't involve a lot of tedious and unnecessary explanation of mysteries that a lot of fans apparently wanted spoiled.

The discussion of The X-Files and Babylon 5 in the opening doesn't make sense; I didn't watch Babylon 5, but it debuted only a year after The X-Files, so the X-Files was hardly limping to its conclusion by that point.

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