Genre Shift: Difference between revisions

'''Narrator:''' I am your permit, your license, your permission to drive. I am a privilege, and an obligation... Your obligation to drive skillfully, carefully, and legally.

''(Someone suddenly gets into a car crash, with quick cuts to up-close shots of innocent bystanders reacting, before settling on a long shot of a traffic light in a fog of smoke.)''

 

The weird cousin of [[Executive Meddling]], except it can be planned in advance by the writers.

** And then season six ditches the science fiction in favor of becoming a fantasy show.

** The shift from science fiction to fantasy is definitely the most clear cut example of genre shift in the show. The dramatic shift from (occasionally bonkers) sci-fi to straight up [[A Wizard Did It]] fantasy left a sour taste in the mouth of many longtime fans, to the point that season 6 more than any other season has been fanonically disregarded by many. Lost never really shifted into sci-fi to the same jarring degree, it was really grounded in it from the beginning, albeit far more subtly and with a greater emphasis on mystery than anything else.

* ''[[Passions]]'' started out as a typical soap opera and quickly mutated into a supernatural weird-fest. Ditto for ''[[Dark Shadows (TV series)|Dark Shadows]]'' and ''[[General Hospital]]'''s [[Spin-Off]] ''Port Charles''.

* The early episodes of ''[[Lonelygirl15]]'' were in the style of a realistic video blog. Over time, it turned into a sort of soap opera/drama/thriller hybrid with evil cults, conspiracies, guns and laser beams. For an example of just how different the show has become, compare classic episode "Proving Science Wrong!"[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQEBobE9XZs\] to one of the early season 2 episodes, "Home Invasion."[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HnVvMzQpGUo\]

* ''[[House (TV series)|House]]'' was pitched to Fox as a show somewhat along the lines of ''[[Diagnosis: Murder]]'', where the doctors use their medical skills to solve crimes. It quickly moved away from this and became a drama centered on the fact that "everybody lies," from the patients to [[Jerkass|House]] himself.

* ''[[Star Trek: Deep Space Nine]]'' is a slightly odd example since, in hindsight, the static setting seems an obvious way to do more [[Story Arc|arc-based]] storylines and use lots of recurring characters but, in the beginning, it was just normal [[Star Trek]] with a gimmick -- the only important difference was that the [[Once an Episode|alien of the week]] from the [[Planet of Hats]] came to ''them'' instead of the other way 'round thanks to the wormhole discovered in the first episode. The first season is almost indistinguishable from other Treks, and only when the characters are established do the writers start doing different things.

* For much of its long life, ''[[The Bill]]'' was a [[Police Procedural]], but when a new executive producer took over in 2002 it rapidly shifted into a [[Crime-Time Soap]], alienating many long-term fans.

* ''[[Baywatch Nights]].'' Goes from action to sci-fi in season two.