Dork Age/Live-Action TV


 * The 2007 Flash Gordon TV series has been viewed as a Dork Age by many fans, particularly for the extent to which it toys with the characters' mythos and familiar aspects. To cite one example, Ming the Merciless is white, has a full head of hair, is clean-shaven, wears a western-style military uniform, is only rarely called "the Merciless", and derives his authority over Mongo from owning the water company. Some things benefit from a clearer, more PC and more realistic interpretation, but Flash Gordon is not one of them.
 * Mention a Dork Age to a Doctor Who fan at your own peril. No matter which Doctor, no matter which writer, no matter which era, someone is going to consider it a Dork Age, and probably expostulate (at great length) why. Even David Tennant's run isn't entirely immune.
 * Frequent targets include the Paul McGann movie, which incorporated such elements as The Doctor being half-human, or the Colin Baker era, when the producer attempted to create a darker, grittier Doctor by having him be a complete douchebag half the time and a homicidal maniac the other half.
 * The G4 Network seems to be pretending that the first month or so of Los Angeles-based X-Play episodes don't exist. The recent G4 Replay block of reruns skipped from the last San Francisco eps to the L.A. eps with the dark green set, completely skipping the early L.A. eps with the hideously bright-green set.
 * Happened twice in Charmed.
 * After a great first season, the creators decided to focus on the melodrama of the sisters' lives, and whole episodes were devoted purely to their personal lives with supernatural subplots thrown in as afterthoughts (in, you know... a show about witches). The show was saved by its awesome third season, however.

It should be noted, though, that the lives of the Charmed Ones was always supposed to be the focus of the show. There was a quote that said that "The show isn't about three witches who happen to be sisters, it's about three sisters who happen to be witches." It was intended to be more of a drama with elements of fantasy (it was produced by Aaron Spelling, after all).
 * The show's fifth season, while still quite good in quality, changed the tone slightly to make things Lighter and Softer, and the structure shifted to have more stand alone episodes instead of an actual story arc. They introduced magical creatures such as mermaids, leprechauns, woodnymphs, etc which had never been heard of in the show's mythology. The sixth season took it Up to Eleven with girlish and childish storylines such as King Arthur's sword, the sisters creating a Mr. Right for Piper, and a demonic reality show. The seventh and eighth seasons became darker in tone and developed interesting story arcs to rectify the problem.
 * The infamous sixth season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer is frequently regarded as a Dork Age for the titular heroine, in which her is explored so realistically that she loses all her (previously characteristic) warmth, passion, sense of humor and interest in the world around her, becoming a pale and often unwatchable imitation of her former self. The supporting cast doesn't get it much better, either: Willow's magic addiction metaphor is simultaneously Anvilicious and a lore trainwreck given that it was never portrayed as such in prior episodes, Dawn's constant complaining got really annoying, the dissolution of Xander and Anya's marriage was forced, and Spike reached the depths of his Badass Decay, and the Trio's actions were just... stupid. At least Buffy had an excuse. Even the beloved "Once More with Feeling" couldn't save it.

Some fans would argue that full-on Seasonal Rot continued into Season 7, considering the change of Buffy into a full-fledged Knight Templar, Willow's inability to use magic for the better part of the season, Xander, Dawn, Anya and Giles getting virtually no character direction, having a textbook Generic Doomsday Villain as the Big Bad, the arrival of the insufferable Potentials, and Spike's total eclipse of the whole show. Joss Whedon has admitted that everyone working on the show was exhausted by that point, and it shows.

Season 4 is sometime mentioned as a Dork Age as well, given the awkward Initiative storyline, the introduction of the widely unpopular Riley as Buffy's rebound love-interest, and above all the episode about a beer that turns people into primitive savages. On the other hand, this season also produced the Emmy-nominated "Hush" episode.
 * Power Rangers Turbo tried to shoehorn extremely goofy source material into a not-so-silly story. It also had the series' biggest Scrappy. And then Power Rangers RPM comes along, uses goofy source footage for the darkest and edgiest story Power Rangers has ever done, and is brilliant.

The series was also considered to have gone downhill while Bruce Kalish was at the helm (lasting four seasons: Power Rangers SPD, Power Rangers Mystic Force, Power Rangers Operation Overdrive, and Power Rangers Jungle Fury); due to plot and characterization fading in favor of more Stuff Blowing Up and often becoming nonsensical when it did appear. It didn't help that elements from the original sentai plots often happened without the setup those plots had provided, or were referenced without being shown.
 * For a brief time on Star Trek Deep Space Nine, Odo had his powers taken away by the founders, as one of those vehicles-for-exploring-the-Human-condition that Star Trek is so fond of. In this case, it didn't turn out well; Odo got his powers back in a very contrived way and the whole incident was referenced precisely once (in the very next episode) and then never again. This came about during an effort late in season 4 to make major changes to the characters, with Sisko's girlfriend being imprisoned, Dukat becoming a terrorist, Worf being dishonored again, Quark also getting cut off from his people, and Kira first getting into a relationship with the First Minister of Bajor, then becoming a surrogate mother for the O'Brien's baby. As it turned out, every single one of these changes misfired badly with the fans, and Kira's becoming a surrogate mother was the only one that wasn't undone by halfway through season 5 -- and that was because her actress, Nana Visitor, was actually pregnant during production, which is why the arc was included in the first place. She delivered during production of a season 5 episode, and the plot was fairly quickly wound up thereafter.
 * Star Trek the Next Generation was tonally very similar to the original Star Trek -- which turned out not to work as well with such a large cast. However, seasons 2-7 found their own style.
 * Hercules: The Legendary Journeys (and, to a lesser extent, Xena: Warrior Princess) started to drift into dorky territory sometime after its first two seasons. People tend to forget that the series was a spinoff from a string of successful made-for-TV action-adventure movies that were more or less played straight, sometimes brutally so. And while the TV show itself always had undertones of campiness (particularly in its attempt to shoehorn Hercules into every ancient legend that had not featured him in the first place), at least that was a level of camp that made sense within the series's universe.

Where they really dropped the ball is adding way too many self-indulgences: grossly stereotyped characters, gratuitous slapstick, and especially Anachronism Stew (relying on the Rule of Funny, of course). It became really hard after a while to enjoy Hercules as a serious action show. Arguably even more damaging was the decision to introduce the concept of monotheism in both Hercules and Xena; while this allowed the writers to cook up intriguing Ninja Pirate Zombie Robot scenarios (such as bringing in the story of David and Goliath), it violated the original polytheistic mythology that Christian, Jewish, and Muslim viewers could take as pure fantasy.
 * Apart from the Ending Fatigue that plagued seasons 5, 6, and 7 of The West Wing after the departures of principal character Sam Seaborn, writer-of-almost-every-episode Aaron Sorkin and stylistically-influential director Thomas Schlamme, season 5 was especially derided for being just plain bad and having terrible storylines. One of the worst of these was a contrived character arc for Josh Lyman that relied on simultaneously making him into a complete moron and having all his friends inexplicably distrust him in order to set up a "hero rises from the ashes" story that failed miserably since it was never wanted or needed in the first place.
 * Survivor has had several:
 * The first one was encountered around seasons 3-5. Season 3 didn't do as well in the ratings compared to its predecessors, partly because the scorching heat of the Kenyan scrubland made it too hot for the contestants to do anything interesting besides sitting around all day. Season 4 had a bunch of boring people and a Diabolus Ex Machina that screwed someone doing very well in the game, and Season 5 was full of people who were outright irritating. They all had their moments, granted, but the show got better around season 6 and then gradually got better.
 * Then we had season 14 (Survivor: Fiji), with a cast full of dull people, a twist that was more or less an Epic Fail and resulted in a Can't Catch Up scenario pre-merge, only a couple of real moments, and even the host says isn't very memorable. In all fairness to the producers, Jeff Probst mentioned that Fiji season was supposed to be Cook Islands part two with a similarly racially segregated theme. Unfortunately, one of the twenty contestants leaving at the very last minute forced the producers to throw a new twist to the game they didn't plan to do. It's debatable on whether Fiji would've been better or worse if the season went according more to the initial plan, but that was definitely a factor.
 * Then from Season 18 (Survivor: Tocantins) to the present, it became highly obvious that the editors were having way too much fun accentuating certain players they like, turning them into Creator's Pets and everyone else into living props. These favorites were usually crazy and delusional or just arrogant jerkasses. In a couple of these seasons, the other tribe members were Too Dumb to Live, giving the Creator's Pet an easy ride to the finals. It's gotten so bad that fans sometimes wonder if there were backstage shenanigans, either purposely casting bad players to make things easy for the ones the editors liked best, or setting up challenges that play to their strengths. On top of that, some of these seasons had twists that did nothing to add drama and suspense, and in the case of season 22 (Survivor: Redemption Island) may have even undermined it by causing conflict between the players that were already out instead of the ones still subject to the vote.
 * The sixth season of 24 tried to shake up the previously-established formula with a number of surprising changes while still keeping the status quo. On paper, the season's plot probably seemed like a good idea -- Jack Bauer, who has been released from Chinese custody, spends the season trying to atone for his past sins while embroiled in a battle against Middle Eastern terrorists and duplicitous family members. In practice, the season turned out to be a mess -- Jack was working with CTU again (for a reason that stretched believability after five seasons of the same thing), characters dropped in and out of the plot, potential season-long storylines (the effects of a nuclear bomb detonation in California) were never capitalized on, several returning characters got a "X goes through Hell" storyline, and the entire affair was bogged down in ridiculous family drama involving Jack's brother's wife and her child, as well as Jack's father (who was a corrupt executive). Following this season (and the lowest ratings in the show's history), FOX "rebooted" the show, moved it to the other side of the continent and jettisoned most of the previous cast and locations.
 * Oz, the terse, taut HBO drama about shanking, Prison Rape and the impossibility of redemption, started off mightily strong for its first few seasons, kickstarted a few careers and got a lot of attention... and then, following the murder of Simon Adebisi, completely ran out of ideas. New characters were introduced only to be unceremoniously murdered and forgotten, relationships sparked up and died out abruptly, characters were wildly derailed, and carefully crafted storylines were trashed and hurled away until the show's fans were almost begging for the poor show to be put down. And then the formerly gritty and realistic show started to introduce elements like pills that caused Rapid Aging...
 * The Price Is Right started to get a little tired in Bob Barker's last few seasons (increasing senior moments from Bob, sudden insurgence of idiotic contestants and a butt-ugly set didn't help). Once Drew Carey took over, he began bringing back many of the elements from the peak of Bob's tenure, such as the Showcase skits and host-announcer interaction, and the show once again has the same "fun" feel.
 * The middle part of the second and final season of Twin Peaks: the episodes following the resolution of the Palmer case and predating the introduction of Windom Earle.
 * The ninth season of Two and A Half Men is largely considered this due to much worse writing and extreme Flanderization: Alan becoming more immature and an even bigger mooch, Jake smoking pot and becoming even more stupid, Rose becoming more a bitch, Lindsay becoming crazier, and Berta being the only character who's stayed consistent so far. The tone is completely different, there's a much greater emphasis on Toilet Humor that's more gross then funny, and the biggest problem of all, Charlie's replacement Walden -- a character that's too thin to cut it as a supporting character, let alone a replacement for Charlie Harper. He's little more then a rich and more immature version of Alan and his interactions with the other characters feel very forced and unnatural, which isn't so much Ashton Kutcher's fault, he looks like he's really trying, but the lousy material gives him almost nothing to work with. Any way you slice it, this season is Two and A Half Men In Name Only.