Over the past four week, Lost in Translation theoretically remade TV series from the Eighties. This week, a look into the reasoning behind the choices.

Last week’s look at the Knight Rider franchise was to explain why Lost in Translation wasn’t touching remaking the original. Knight Rider was popular, but has had a number of remakes. The question isn’t how to remake the series but why remake it yet again. The answer is, the remake has a good chance of making money. There’s no real other reason until there’s a new approach to be taken. Knight Rider fell off the list early.

With /Knight Rider/ gone, though, that left the super-vehicle genre empty. Super-vehicles did happen, and included shows like Automan and Viper for ground vehicles and Airwolf and Blue Thunder for helicopters. Airwolf looked to be the best choice. Automan verged on the edge of science fiction and superheroes and Viper was a promotional series for Dodge’s then-new muscle car. With the helicopters, a remake of Blue Thunder would have the baggage of the militarization of police departments. A remake may be possible, but the writing would have to be precise. The original Blue Thunder movie might handle most of the problems, but even then, there are issues to thread.

That left Airwolf, which ran four seasons. The series had its own internal drama, and didn’t have the baggage for a modern remake that Blue Thunder had. A cut-out for an intelligence agency holding a high-tech helicopter in return for finding his brother? There’s always a foreign war, there’s always prisoners-of-war and servicemen missing in action, there’s always someone playing chess at the global level. Updating just means upgrading the electronics in the helicopter. Gender flipping is always a possibility.

Remington Steele was a popular series during the Eighties, introducing an American audience to Pierce Brosnan. The series is timeless, using the esthetics of classic film to frame episodes and sets. Laura needing a masculine boss is, unfortunately, still possible today. The flipping of the classic roles, the tough detective and the figurehead, can be kept fresh. Steele would likely have the least number of changes to be made, just taking account how today’s technology affects private investigators.

With Misfits of Science, the show was ahead of its time. In the Eighties, comics were still seen as being for kids, not adults, despite works like The Watchmen. Today, though, the series would fit in. It’s an original superhero series with the tone of a superhero story. It’s not gritty, not dark, just a group of people making their way in life in spite of their powers. It’s a story that is needed today, not attached to an existing property.

There were a number of series that I ignored. The Eighties saw the sitcom bloom as comedians saw a way to popularize their routines. Cosby, Rosanne, and Night Court are prime examples. Other sitcoms tended to be set at work, a holdover from series like WKRP in Cincinatti and Taxi in the Seventies. And while it is possible to remake Cheers or Wings, it may be easier to just set a new comedy with new characters in a new location to do the same thing, with a wink and a nod to the older shows.

The Eighties had a range of shows for audiences, especially with the VHS boom, the advent of first-run syndication, and the expansion of cable channels producing new content. Choosing even three was difficult. The choices made were representative of what was available, popular or not.

Last week, during the analysis of the TV adaptation of The Dresden Files, I mentioned that pragmatism will play a factor in how a work gets adapted. There will be times when what the original work envisioned just cannot be translated over to a new medium, whether the cause is budget, technical limitations, or needs of the new medium. Pragmatism does not necessarily affect quality, provided that there’s effort put in to acknowledge not just the change but what was changed. The originals tend to be written works – novels, short stories, even comics – where there isn’t a limitation based on practicality. Words and pictures cost time and energy to create, but can go beyond earthly limitations.

Let’s start with budget, a big factor in making both movies and TV series. No studio has an unlimited source of cash and no movie has made an infinite amount of money. Budgets, through methods that seem like dark sorcery, are drawn up based on expected rates of return. Even then, there’s no guarantee of success. Big budget flops have occurred. Sometimes, the studio is just using the film for other reasons, as in the case of Alien From L.A., where the movie was meant to get money out of a country under international sanctions. Low budget works have to work around the restriction. The ITV Playhouse adaptation of “Casting the Runes” didn’t have the budget to show the demon or the climactic plane crash; instead, the teleplay relies on using the actors’ reactions to hint at what’s happening and getting the viewers’ imaginations to fill in the rest of the details. However, budget isn’t always a limiter in a production. Studios are aware of how much production elements cost and won’t try overextending capabilities.

Where a budget may allow for an effect, technical limitations may be the bigger restriction. The advent of computer graphics in special effects has reduced the difficulty of staging effects. However, CGI isn’t a cure-all. Practical effects and props are still more cost effective than computer generated objects and easier for actors to interact with. In books, literary or comic, if a creator wants a character to own something specific, there is nothing to prevent the object from existing in the work. A custom piece of jewellery, an unusual and impractical weapon, or, as seen in The Dresden Files, a battered Volkswagen Beetle can easily be added. On screen, it’s not as easy. Jewellery can be approximated, but an exact likeness may not be possible because of the materials used. On TV, Harry Dresden’s Blue Beetle was replaced with a war surplus Jeep; the latter being more readily available than the now collector piece VW Beetle. The key when working around technical limitations is to remember why the original object was chosen. The adapted piece of jewellery should reflect the heritage the original has, from age to design. With the TV version of Dresden, the Jeep was of similar vintage as the Beetle, old enough that its mechanics were simple enough to not be affected by Harry’s tech bane nature.

The needs of the new medium may cause changes that don’t make sense otherwise. Television and film are visual media, often not having a narrator. Even when there is a narrator, the insights provided are for what’s not shown, such as a character’s thoughts. In contrast, written works use words to paint scenes for the reader; the narrative carries the story. Whether the point of view is first person or third, the reader gets to see what the author wants to show. Film and TV default to third person, specifically, the cameras. Even DOOM, based on the first person video game, only had a short scene from that point of view. Audiences want to see the actors. And while writers can show what characters are thinking and feeling directly, on screen, the actors have to do the heavy lifting. In the Dresden books, Bob is a spirit in a skull with some limited ability to take over a cat’s body for short joyrides. On TV, though, a skull doesn’t do that much, and Bob would be, effectively, a disembodied voice. Giving Bob a body, though, allows the actors to play off each other, adding to the depth of the scene. Human actors are also far more convincing than cat actors, who may become difficult to work with when naptime hits.

Another restriction placed on an adaptation by the needs of the new medium is time. Books don’t have time limits; readers read at their own pace. As long as the reader enjoys the work, there isn’t a problem. Television and movies, though, do have time limits. With TV, a work has to fit a thirty- or sixty-minute time slot as a series or a two-hour slot if a mini-series of movie of the week, plus leave time for advertising within the slot. Theatrical films have a minimum running time of around eighty to ninety minutes, any shorter and audiences won’t bother, and seldom run longer than two and a half hours. Longer films have happened, but tend to be ones that will draw an audience because of the running time. The film adapations of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, the first and shortest of the Potter novels, still had to lose scenes to fit the allowed time, which also took into account the young age of the likely audience. Even when spread across a full television season, details can be lost because there’s just not enough time to show everything in a novel.

Comic books run into similar. Unlike written novels, comics are a visual medium, but one with its own language. Comics are a series of panels, each one contributing to the story. Readers know how to fill in the details from one panel to another. Artists can compress time by showing a clock in two separate panels having a later time in the second. They can slow down time by repeating an image with minor changes between panels. Individual issues of a run may not fill the time of even a thirty-minute TV slot, but multi-part stories can work for feature film. The aesthetics of a comic book is difficult to pull off; Deadpool being a rare exception. A well done adaptation from a comic can be done well, but the studio involved cannot be lulled by the fact that comics and film are both visual. They have separate tropes, sometimes similar but not always.

Getting an adaptation perfect may not always be possible. The change in medium necessitates changes to the work. It’s in the how the change is done that will make the difference to an audience.

First of all, a huge apology for falling off schedule. I had meant to get something written for last week, but circumstances got in the way. Second, apologies again, for not doing a review. Similar reasons. That out of the way, this time out, I’ll show my methodology when writing a review for Lost in Translation.

One of the things I try to do is get some of the background of the original work, whether it’s a technique, a different approach, or something that advanced the state of the art of the medium. Often, the original work isn’t readily available or is relatively unknown while the remake/adaptation is available everywhere. This means that I need access to the original. Ideally, I’ll have already watched, read, or listened to the original work before even seeing the remake or adaptation. This gives me a baseline to compare to, the core of the review process.

Next, of course, is to view the remake/adaptation. In this, I do try to keep an open mind. I can’t approach with the idea of, “They changed it, thus now it sucks.” I have to let the new material stand or fail on its own merits first, then compare to the original. This is the tricky part. Part of Lost in Translation is to see what went right as well as what went wrong. Sometimes, the point of failure isn’t obvious. Saying, “It sucks!”* doesn’t do anyone any good. Finding what went wrong and noting how the problem could’ve been avoided, if possible, does.

Third step, write the review. In a perfect world, I’d have a six to eight week buffer built up and ready to go so that there’s no schedule slippage. Unfortunately, I live in this world** and slippage happens. Sometimes I don’t have the time to watch a remake. Sometimes I don’t have access to the original. A planned review of The Addams Family with Raul Julia keeps getting pushed back because I need to find a few of the original comics strips.

I’m going to take a moment to do an aside. My preference is to go to the original work and make direct comparisons. If I’m commenting on a Sherlock Holmes adaptation, I will read or re-read one of the original stories as a refresher before watching the remake. Using secondary and tertiary sources, such as Wikipedia or IMDB is reserved to double check dates and to jar my memory. My preference, especially for TV shows and movies, is the commentary*** in the special features. Interviews included in the special features are also handy for my purposes.

Once I get the review written, I go back and fill in details that I skipped over in the name of finishing the writing. Minor fact checking gets notated with a [?], while major work research work is highlighted. I make sure any links I need are in my notes so I can add the hyperlinks before posting.

The last part, the posting, involves making sure that spelling is good, that my markup notations are properly replaced, and the paragraphing isn’t broken. I add the needed tags, make sure that I’ve left nothing out, then schedule for Saturday morning.

And that’s what happens behind the curtain.

Coming up on Lost in Translation…
More reviews.
Guest spots.
An example of me using what I’ve discovered about remakes and adaptation using my NaNoWriMo project as a base.

* Like Jay Sherman.
** When I’m not allowed to be in my own little world.
*** I learned a lot about film making by having /Die Hard/’s commentary turned on.