This is discussion archived from a time before the current discussion method was installed.
Korval: I'm not sure this one counts:
- The Klingons in Star Trek The Original Series expressed no particular desire for honor — they used poison, subterfuge, and outright lies on many occasions. A lone line by a single Klingon captain — "Ahh, It would have been a glorious battle" — grew to encompass the entire culture and reinvent it as warriors focused solely on honor and glory in combat. The Artifact, however, was that most Klingons are still portrayed as thuggish, so this was spun into more of an ideal to reach for.
- This particular example was largely due to the substitution of the Klingons for the Romulans in Star Trek III, reinforced by their status as allies of the Federation in Star Trek The Next Generation.
- The Klingons in Star Trek The Original Series expressed no particular desire for honor — they used poison, subterfuge, and outright lies on many occasions. A lone line by a single Klingon captain — "Ahh, It would have been a glorious battle" — grew to encompass the entire culture and reinvent it as warriors focused solely on honor and glory in combat. The Artifact, however, was that most Klingons are still portrayed as thuggish, so this was spun into more of an ideal to reach for.
My reasoning is this: the Klingons weren't changed due to fan outcry or fan embrace of Kor's line. They were changed because they were boring. The Original Series Klingons were just vaguely Communistic bad-guys. That was fairly acceptable back in the 60s. But that kind of crap wasn't going to fly in the 80s and 90s. Look what happened to the Kazon (the most old-school Klingon-like villains in ST): BrotherChucked after 2 seasons of being completely ineffectual.
PlotTumors are a plot-aspect version of Flanderization, where a character is simplified down to one particular aspect. The Klingons were more a case of Character Development, where a nothing-villain is improved to have an actual point of view, culture, etc.
Robert: Should this within derivative works? All the examples given occur over the course of a single series, not as part of a derivative work.
Seth: I just put it in the same catagory as the tropes it links to. Ands in a way these are mostly derivative. The original borg thing was in a movie as was the brain bug and the new version were in a series. The jefreys mutation also happend from one version of ST to another (Original to TNG) If you can think of a better category feel free though.
Robert: Removed 'The Daleks, similarly, went from wanting to enslave the human race in their earliest appearances to wanting to exterminate all life.'
The Daleks first appearance was on Skaro, where there where no humans to enslave, and they were planning to exterminate the Thals. Nor is this kind of development a good example for Plot Tumor. If the Daleks had originally had some good motive, it would be Motive Decay. They didn't, making it the reverse of Villain Decay - Villain Inflation perhaps?
Plot Tumor is for cases where one minor aspect of the world is swollen to ludicrous proportions, damaging the entire story, which doesn't describe the Daleks. The cybermen were undermined by their gold weakness; the Daleks were strengthened as villains by the scale of their ambitions, and their implied success at achieving them.
Morgan Wick: For what it's worth, Flanderization isn't on the DW list nor should it be, and neither, necessarily, is Motive Decay. It helps to actually think about a trope (you do know how to think, don't you? You just put your brain cells together and... rub) rather than identifying it from its similar tropes and see-alsos, considering that there's probably a reason they're similar and not lumped together.
Man, did I have a bad week this week or what?
Robert: Moved the page to Tropes for now. The Borg are an instance of Motive Decay, perhaps a motive retcon. Magic in Buffy suffered from changing metaphors, a different problem. The power level stayed proportionate, and the magic secondary. A plot tumour would be if, say, Willow solved the problem of the week with magic every single time, and Buffy became her apprentice.
Peteman: I once had a Dn D DMPC character like this. He was originally a one-shot Paladin-Mummy who was to provide motiviation for the party to engage in a spooky adventure (it being Halloween). He ended up coming back by popular demand, though I made him a sentient sword after that. He eventually made it all the way to Trumpet Archon, and yet, he still retained a good deal of popularity amongst my players.
Semiapies: I have a problem with the derivative works aspect. Something like "The holodeck was just an amusing set piece at first, but after one holodeck-centric story, every fourth episode of TNG seemed to had a holodeck malfunction aspect!" describes something fundamentally different from, "There's an Expanded Universe book that collects a story about each bystander we saw in the Mos Eisley cantina. No, really." This may be insufficiently fannish of me to think so ;) , but one is talking about increased focus on something within a series/work, while the other talking about details that's expanded upon within other works. You might call the latter trope Tales Of Minutia - expansion upon some detail in the derivative works, like the silliness on however many styles of lightsaber combat are out there, doesn't change the emphasis on that detail in the canon, which strikes me as the key point of this trope.
"One of the complaints about the Vulcans on Enterprise was that they were portrayed as capable of deceit and underhanded behaviour..." I don't watch Star Trek. Is this meant to say "incapable"?
Arakhor: No. One early episode of Enterprise shows a bunch of slimy, treacherous, deceitful, green-blooded, pointy-eared aliens indulging in espionage and other such nasties... and I'm referring to the Vulcans, not the Romulans.
Charred Knight: Deleted because Tolkien never intended to create a sequel to the Hobbit. He retconned the ring from being a ring of invisibility, to being the ONE RING. He even rewrote Bilbo's meeting with Gollum so the Lord Of The Rings would make sense.
- This editor thinks that's more of a Chekhov's Gun than it is a Retcon.
- Pick up a first edition of The Hobbit sometime. You'll find that the section where Bilbo rejoins the Dwarves after escaping the caves is rather different from what you remember.
- This editor thinks that's more of a Chekhov's Gun than it is a Retcon.
Robert: Moved most of the rather long Holy Grail example over to King Arthur.
Greenygal: Deleted: "The above is also history repeating itself: The late 80s attempt to bring mutants into the MU mainstream (with the X-Men's sacrifice in Dallas broadcast on worldwide TV and X-Factor (AKA the original X-Men) being hailed as heroes) followed IMMEDIATELY by Fall of The Mutants and the passing of the Mutant Registration Act." Because the two cited stories were the Fall of the Mutants, and the Mutant Registration Act was passed before either of them happened.
Rebochan: I did some cleanup on the Naruto entry which was apparently written by someone who had no idea how to format in this wiki, let alone that using the strike tag over and over is not funny. I also pulled this:
- This troper can't speak for other fans, but he is quite tired of the writers of Special Victums Unit trying to play up the Unresolved Sexual Tension between Benson and Stabler. Aside from the fact that it's fodder for a sexual harassment lawsuit, Stabler is Happily Married, for chrissake...
- Seconded. Although, for me, it's because their chemistry comes across more as platonic, non-blood brother/sister closeness than as potential lovers. I had the same issue with Mulder and Scully.
- Agreed on Law And Order SVU. They're partners for Chrissakes. Besides, Olivia's in love with Alex Cabot. However, Mulder and Scully is the most natural, appropriate, organic pairing this troper has ever encountered.
- Seconded. Although, for me, it's because their chemistry comes across more as platonic, non-blood brother/sister closeness than as potential lovers. I had the same issue with Mulder and Scully.
Since one guy's opinion isn't relevant. And even less relevant is two other people chatting about Mulder and Scully. At best, that could be cleaned up and added to Romantic Plot Tumor, but it definitely has no place here.
