Round Three [The Exodus vs. Little Black Stray]

The Exodus (Shockah rank: #7, Burley rank: #6)

v.

Little Black Stray (Shockah rank: #3, Burley rank: #4)

DROP IT LIKE IT'S HOT!

NOTE OF TRIVIA: This is the first battle where both ideas have Top 8 ranks from each of us.

The Exodus
In a world where the Earth is nothing more than a black cinder, the last surviving humans live on orbiting space stations, trying to make the best out of an impossible situation. Some are resigned to being the end of the human race, some think the Earth can be rebuilt and repopulated... and one scientist thinks he's found a signal from an alien race. Are they really out there? Can they save the human race? But presenting the evidence will start a civil war in space, and threaten to end humanity prematurely.

Pro
For some reason, I like stories that start out with a real depressing premise or world. Doesn't get more depressing than this, does it? The Earth is scorched, presumably not a living thing left on it (although some still have hope and are looking for it), and the last humans are stuck in floating aqualungs orbiting around the very thing they helped destroy. Good job, guys! But maybe what I like about these kind of stories is that, since we start at the bottom, there must be some kind of hope to chase after, else it's about people hanging around, waiting to die. (There are movies like that, which I'm less fond of, I think.)

And chasing after hope is part of "the human condition" -- a good and worthy theme to build a story around. But let's get down to what's really cool about this:

Space stations.

Space stations are awesome. They're like shopping malls in space. Who wouldn't want to go to the Gap or Best Buy in space? Not me, that's for sure. (Not that they'd have these stores up there -- I don't think, at least -- but they are self-sustaining communities and they'd need to be visually tolerable for the people stuck there. Or maybe the original Dawn of the Dead messed me up. That would explain why I've always wanted to see a "zombies in the space station" movie.) And I like the idea of spending time thinking about and designing these space stations, since it looks like 90% of the story takes place on them.

And then throw in the idea that's there like 3 or more of these space stations, each with its own politics (within and between the other stations) and goals, and it sounds like fun. (Meaning: one of them has to blow up.)

Con
Character stuff seems a little light. Certainly there's some kind of scientist character who finds what appear to be alien signals, but the rest of it is pretty wide open. Also, it seems like a story that lends itself, for good and ill, to stereotypes: the gruff space station captain who only wants what's good for his citizens, the idealistic scientist, the headstrong rebel who screws it up for everyone else, the love interest who's probably on a different space station. It's all so very anime, and I mean that in a bad way.

I'm also wondering if the extreme, uh, "containedness" of the premise might get a little boring after awhile. There's really only a few locations: space between the stations, space way away from the stations, maybe the dead surface of earth, and of course the stations themselves (which admittedly are made up of a bunch of sublocations). Maybe not a real big deal -- maybe that kind of claustrophobia is exactly the point -- but I think my subconscious is trying to warn me about this.

And I just realized I have a theory about the "con" sections of these battles, at least on my side. More on that later.

Little Black Stray
In a World where violent male offenders are sent to labor camps on the remote prison planet, one crew of hardened men finds something impossible: a young woman in tattered clothes, mute and frightened. A small group protect and feed her, keeping her out of sight of the guards and away from those who would use her mercilessly. As she gains in strength it seems that she has an agenda--and the truth of what she was doing on a world where no women stepped before might be a big enough secret to shatter the whole planet of forced labor.

Pro
GENDER ISSUES! GENDER ISSUES! GENDER ISSUES! Gender issues are awesome -- they're another key component of that thing we call "the human condition", and as drama, they're practically inexhaustible. Men and women are gonna be bitching about each other for the next thousand years, just as they have since the beginning of time. And I know it's a topic of some interest to both Burley and me.

So what we have here is a planet not just full of men, but full of machismo and testosterone, and full of violence and danger because of it. What happens when they come into contact with a woman, someone who is (at the outset, presumably) the complete opposite of them? Although we already know in the abstract, what makes it interesting is how her appearance affects the various male characters. Does she change them? Do some make a concerted effort to not change? Are one or more of the men changed from aggressors to protectors? Does the presence of the woman change some from somewhat docile to violent and aggressive? Basic stuff, yes, but the point is, there's a wealth of opportunity to explore characters, which is what it's all about, innit?

Another thing I like, something it has in common with the upcoming Methane Madness, is the plot device of "prisoners must keep secret from wardens". Don't know why that appeals to me so much -- watching "Hogan's Heroes" as a kid? -- but it's a great way to introduce some objective tension to a story that seems to be primarily about subjective tension.

(An explanation: one of the screenwriting books I've read points out the difference between the kind of conflict/tension that a viewer can pick up without any knowing what's happened in the story previously or even the language -- for example, if we see uniformed guys with guns chasing and shooting at another guy running away from them, we don't need any special knowledge to understand what each party wants in the scene. But there can also be moments, say like one character gives another character a present which makes him break down and cry, where we need some background info to totally make sense of the scene. I don't remember what the book called them, so for now, it's objective and subjective tension.)

Finally: isn't this the first idea up for battle that actually has, y'know, a prison planet in it?

Con
Okay, I'll admit: I have no freakin' idea what the secret agenda/big twist to this story is going to be. Presumably, Burley does, but if he's anything like me, he just wrote it because it sounds good :-) In the interest of being proactive, I offer three (3) stupid, outrageous-as-possible ideas for a secret, composed as quickly as I can:

1. She's actually a man! Or more precisely, she's been genetically changed, from a male prisoner to something not-quite-man-but-not-really-woman-either-but-shares-some-of-the-characteristics-of-a-woman-though, and it's all a experiment by the scientific mucky-mucks to see if they can eliminate crime. Or something. (If Burley knows me, he knows I like gender-bending as a theme.)

2. There's a female prison camp on the other side of the planet, and it's even more fucked up than the men's camp! Can the two sexes come together and throw off their oppressors? Or something.

3. She's an alien superpredator! And she's going to implant her seed, seahorse-style, into the captives of the camp and turn them all into mindless, pregnant zombies! Or something.

Oh, and one last thing: even some similarities are inevitable, I don't want this to be OZ in Space. Maybe it starts out like that, but it should eventually shed it, like a chrysalis.