The Rise of the Dark Side

[thefourthvine]

Okay, so a few months ago I made a playlist for Best Beloved (based around the theme of heroes and saving the world, additions still gratefully accepted) featuring the song Michael (Jump in), which is actually written (Jumpin) in the version I bought, but I refuse to believe that. Anyway, what I didn't realize when I put the song on the mix is that it is, at least according to BB, a song written by a car to David Hasselhoff.

Best Beloved spent some time explaining this concept to me - apparently, the car was an artificial intelligence, and together he and Michael (played by David Hasselhoff) fought crime. And then I asked her about the line in the song that goes:

"It's not like you/To turn your back and let the dark side win"

Obviously, this gave me a mental image of the show as a kind of Star Wars crossover, where Michael was a Jedi and the car was his - trusty, um, whatever. Racer-thing, maybe. Basically, I was sort of envisioning David Hasselhoff as Anakin Skywalker, which made my brain hurt.

BB explained to me that, no, it wasn't about Michael's dark side. "Because I don't think he really had one," she said.

"But without angst, what do you write about in the third season?" I asked her.

She didn't know. Apparently her television knowledge is not that encyclopedic.

Thinking about it, though, I'm not sure I can imagine this concept. He's a lone wolf white guy out to save the world with just his car (and, I'm guessing, his fists or maybe a gun, although BB did not go into that part)! Surely he must have:

1. Angst, including a tragic back story.
   
2. A dead wife or girlfriend or kid something, or maybe just one who left him with prejudice after she found the photos of him with a puppy on his dick. (Warning for a dude with a puppy on his dick. NSFW, is what I'm saying. Also possibly not all that safe for your brain.)
   
3. A constant struggle with the dark side, whether it be his alcoholism or his desire to eat people or his evil twin or his general dickishness or whatever.

You can't have TV without those things, is my understanding. Even in Sports Night, a half-hour comedy show, Danny had a dead brother, a bad relationship with his parents, and some kind of major emotional breakdown including acting out on air. He had plenty of angst! He had a dark side! He was a news anchor on a half-hour comedy show. So I really don't see how a crimefighter with an intelligent car could get out of this. (BB does recall that the car apparently had some angst. And an evil twin.)

Except, as previously documented extensively in this space, my understanding of TV is limited and narrow. So - can you have TV without those things? I mean, are these the actual requirements, or am I just confused? And if those are the requirements, was it always that way? Can you pinpoint an era as the Rise of Main Character Angst? What about Main Character Dark Sides?

Tell me about angst and dark sides on TV, is what I'm saying!

Comments

[rheanna]

TOS James Kirk was a character who had virtually no dark side, which probably reflects the era in which he was created. TOS Kirk was basically a guy who was really, really good at being a starship captain and really, really liked his job, and didn't need much in life except to fly around the galaxy, bed the female guest star of the week, and spend a LOT of time with his Vulcan first officer. Any angst he did experience was generally resolved by the end of the episode. The later movies tried to give him Leading Man Angst in the form of David Marcus, but it never quite stuck. The only trauma you really *believed* Kirk experienced was over Spock's death and the destruction of the Enterprise, and both those things tied back into his original 1969 characterisation rather than the backstory that was added later in the movies. Reboot Kirk, otoh, has Major Angst about the death of his father, and a few anger management issues thrown in: in 2010, Kirk can't be just a guy who's really good at his job and is a success within the system (youngest starship captain ever), he has to be a rebel who succeeds almost in spite of himself.

The ST:TNG characters were pretty angst-free, weren't they? Picard accumulated increasing amounts of angst as the series and movies went on; although he went through his share of traumatic events, the only one which was referenced as having had a deep and abiding psychological impact on him was his time as Locutus of Borg -- famously, he had to face up to the immediate emotional aftermath in 'Family', and after that his feelings about the Borg affected his judgment on several occasions.

[pocketmouse]

This. Actually, a lot of the TNG characters had angst in their past, but usually it was used for an episode or two and that was it. Tasha and Worf both had some variation on Troubled Childhood, Dr. Crusher's husband had died, etc. But those things came up probably twice a season at a laaaarge stretch.

[melannen]

TOS Kirk did have Peter and his parents providing angst (I think all the parental!angst TOS Kirk had was bookverse, but wow did the Reboot writers pull from it) and of course various women he loved and then got killed - particularly Edith and Miramanee - but as mentioned below, TV at the time was so episodic that it didn't allow for much dwelling on the past, so most of the angst lasts one episode and then is never heard from again.

[brownbetty]

This is a decent point. I mean, Tarsus is TOS canon, but the show totally dropped the angst-ball on that one. I mean, if you made the Tarsus storyline now, we'd have to have flashbacks to the first time he killed a man at age eleven, or something, but in TOS it's basically like, “Yeah, so I never mentioned I am one of like five survivors of a genocidal maniac, did I? Long story, moving on!”

[thingswithwings]

Yeah, I really feel like one of the POINTS of the reboot is to add in extra manpain and angst - Kirk's dad dies (and his mother is absent-ish, I guess?) and Spock's mom dies, and even Nimoy!Spock is given a giant bag of angst in the form of "have to watch my planet implode." It's absolutely a dramatization of the difference between 1960s media and 21st century media, in that I guess Kirk and Spock can't be compelling unless they're angsting? Anyway I find it eyerolly.

[anatsuno]

Word.

[laurajv]

TOS James Kirk was a character who had virtually no dark side

And yet, there was an entire episode based around his rapey, rapey dark side.

I just -- I don't know. Kirk's past and dark side come up not-super-infrequently in TOS; there's not a lot of episode continuity so it's easy to see each instance as self-contained. But when you start listing them out, it's actually quite present, perhaps even as present a theme as Spock's Vulcan-human issues.

Tarsus, death of Gary Mitchell, obsessive and creepy love of his ship, rapey evil side transporter accident, horrible mind-rape, death of his brother and sister-in-law, death of Edith Keeler...

He spends a lot of time all bounding-yet-somehow-nerdy-sexy-captaining about, but I'm not sure I buy that the character is dark-side-less so much as the show only occasionally got round to his dark side driving anything.

[thefourthvine]

We talked about TOS - BB and me, I mean - when I posted this! And I think I agree. For me, the key is - okay, Kirk is presented as overcoming, or rather having already overcome, his dark side/angst/whatever. Yes, fine, whatever, Tarsus, all that, but it didn't stick. He's a hero! He's shiny and golden! He's had hard times and already dealt and moved on! Spock is the TOS dude with angst and a dark side.

Which, I mean, obviously they had to fix this when they rebooted, because you can't have a hero without manpain these days. You just cannot.

(Can't weigh in on TNG, though. I know nothing about any ST flavor that did not include a Spock.)