Reset button technique
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The reset button technique (based on the idea of status quo ante) is a plot device that interrupts continuity in works of fiction. Simply put, use of a reset button device returns all characters and situations to the status quo they held before a major change of some sort was introduced.[1] Often used in science fiction television series, animated series, soap operas, and comic books, the device allows elaborate and dramatic changes to characters and the fictional universe that might otherwise invalidate the premise of the show with respect to future continuity. Writers may, for example, use the technique to allow the audience to experience the death of the lead character, which traditionally would not be possible without effectively ending the work.
The term may be based on the reset button found on a video game console or computer. When pressed, such a button automatically restarts the machine, losing any unsaved data.
Effective use of this device depends on the audience being unaware of the continuity status, or successful suspension of disbelief that continuity is or will be interrupted, and the eventual communication of the status of continuity to the audience. It is usually employed as a plot twist that effectively undoes all the happenings of the episode. Common uses of this technique draw liberally from science fiction and metaphysical ideas, perhaps contributing to its widespread use in those genres. Examples of the reset button technique include dream sequences, alternate-history flashbacks, daydreams, time travel and hallucinations.
Continuity-wise, television shows belong in a continuum between the serial and episode-by-episode extremes. In serial shows, each episode not only follows but builds on previous material, and although the reset button can still be used, any use generally leaves a negative imprint on the general continuity. In episode-by-episode works, on the other hand, the RBT is often utilized to eliminate dangling plot threads. Soap operas are almost universally serials; American animated series and sitcoms are almost universally episode-by-episode. Johnny Vaughan, in discussions about his sitcom ’Orrible, stated one rule about the writing: “No richer, no wiser,” meaning that everything must be back to normal by the end of the episode.[citation needed]
The danger of the reset button is that the audience will become frustrated and cynical because they are expected to suspend disbelief and emotionally invest in the characters, yet know that anything the characters do to improve themselves or their world is destined to be futile, since a change in either would require the show to have continuity rather than be stand-alone episodes. Audiences are forced to conclude that it is too painful to care in the first place about the characters or their world, so why bother watching the show at all?[citation needed]
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[edit] History
The idea of a return to the status quo ante is certainly not original to television; Shakespeare scholars have recognized it as a regular device of his comedies[citation needed], and it is in fact a standard literary device in general.
The term has especially been applied to the Star Trek television series, where it was "one of the default mechanisms". The exception is Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, where a "fixed location and strong story arcs" made it impractical. At its worst, the device "restores the status quo in its entirety so that nothing is changed and nothing is learned."[1]
[edit] Examples
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- The various Star Trek TV series (most notoriously[citation needed] Star Trek: Voyager)—The writers would often kill or significantly alter characters or situations, but reset near the end of the story arc to avoid permanent changes. (Example episodes include: “Year of Hell”; “Yesterday’s Enterprise”; “All Good Things...”; and “Twilight.”) This technique, however, is much less pronounced in Star Trek: Deep Space 9, particularly in the later seasons, due to its more serialized format.
- The TV drama Dallas—An entire season of the show, including the death of a major character, was written off as a dream of another character.
- The TV series Newhart - In the series finale, it's revealed that the entire show was just a dream.
- The TV series Quantum Leap—The very premise of this show, Dr. Beckett’s “leaping from life to life” through time, provided a natural and complete reset device for each episode. As long as Dr. Beckett never leaped home (to stay), nothing substantial in his situation could change, since at each episode’s end he would leap out of the time, place, and identity he had occupied for the duration of that show, to be assigned a completely new setting and identity in the next episode.
- In some TV westerns of the 1960s and early 1970s, in episodes in which a male character on the show married a woman, the woman would end up dead by the end of that episode. This reset button technique was used so that the main character could have serious love interests in each episode while returning to status quo ante at the end of the episode. (The same form of this technique was also applied in The Big Valley, Bonanza,CHiPs, CSI:Miami, Miami Vice, and the James Bond film On Her Majesty’s Secret Service and Star Trek, for example.)
- The Doctor Who Eighth Doctor novels—After the Faction Paradox storyline, the Doctor is left with no memories of his travels, has his ability to travel in space and time taken away, and is left alone on Earth, therefore resetting the series of novels. (This sort of reset button allows writers freedom from complicated story arcs, and allows them to focus on individual adventures for the series.)
- The film Galaxy Quest employs an "Omega-13 device", which is initially under Unopened Door status: everyone agrees on its importance, but no information is present on its function. A fan of the Galaxy Quest series reveals to the captain that they believe the device is used for time travel. The captain activates Omega-13, prompted by that exchange, in a dire situation as a last ditch effort to stop a murderer who snuck onto the ship. The Omega-13 is revealed as a reset button which sends time backwards by exactly 13 seconds.[1]
- Several animated series also employ the reset button so that no new design work is required, and to be able to reuse existing cels. Animation writers enjoy poking fun at the constraining practice when possible. Examples include:
- In South Park, the character Kenny McCormick dies in every almost every episode but at the beginning of each subsequent episode is reset. The notable exception to this is the episode Kenny Dies, in which his death is the central part of the episode and does not get reset at the beginning of the next episode.
- Cardcaptor Sakura—An episode exists where Sakura captures a card known as “The Time.” This event has the card’s spirit continuously repeat that same day over and over again, using the reset button multiple times during the duration of the episode.
- Dragonball Z — The power of mystic(as well as scientific, in some cases) artifacts, such as the dragonballs, are used to reverse irreparable damages to the planet, deaths of main characters(as well as mass deaths), and in some cases, total annihilation of planets and/or solar systems.
- Excel Saga—The anime widely parodied the whole concept, with “the Great Will of the Macrocosm” repeatedly resetting the whole universe whenever things headed off unsatisfactorily (over five resets occur in the first episode alone due to the main character dying multiple times).
- The French animated television series Code Lyoko—the main characters have access to a supercomputer that can turn back time. This is used consistently through most first season episodes to undo nearly every unwanted change. In the second season, Code Lyoko embraces a story arc technique, and the reset button technique is used only to reverse emergency situations.
- The Japanese series Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon—A Magic Silver Crystal is first used as a MacGuffin, then as a reset button. In the final act, it restores the lives of just about every character in the series except Usagi, who survives throughout.
- The animated series Family Guy—Parodies of various reset button techniques are used in the episodes "Mind Over Murder" (which uses Stewie’s time machine as a reset button and affecting the events that transpired at the beginning of the episode, resulting in the episode’s events never having happened) and "Da Boom" (the episode’s events are revealed to have been a dream by Pam Ewing, parodying the Dallas season reset). Also at the beginning of "Mr. Griffin Goes to Washington", Lois discovers that Stewie is an evil genius. Just as she's about to be destroyed for her knowledge, however, she wakes up, realizing the whole thing was a dream. In the film Stewie Griffin: The Untold Story, the reset button is used when Stewie travels back in time to save himself from a lifeguard chair, but is vaporized by his past self before he can explain to him anything that transpired, thus putting everything back to the way it was, with Stewie having no knowledge of the future. Also, the two-part episode "Stewie Kills Lois/Lois Kills Stewie" was revealed in the last part to all just be a simulation used by Stewie to see what would happen if he tried to kill Lois and take over the world right away. This episode ends with Brian saying that a lot of people might be pissed off by the reset button technique they used, and Stewie saying that the viewer should just have enjoyed it while it lasted. Stewie says that it was at least better than the infamous end-of-the-series blackout of The Sopranos.
- The FOX TV show Futurama features several episodes in which the 'what if' machine is utilized, allowing the explorations of character's dreams or ideas were they to happen, while not affecting the continuity of the show.
- Several video games also use the Reset Button Technique as both a gameplay tool (allowing the character to rewind time) and a plot device (causing certain events of the storyline to be reset). Examples include:
- Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time incorporates the technique in both ways, allowing the player to use the Sands of Time along with a mystical dagger to “rewind” time by a few seconds in order to correct fatal mistakes and, at the end of the game, "rewinding" the entire event of the game to the beginning (by replacing the Sands of Time into the giant hourglass whence they came and destroying the villain who would have released them). Later games incorporate this in other ways: the player controlled reset to undo mistakes made by the player him/her-self exist in all three games; Also, in Warrior Within, the Prince makes a horrible mistake in killing Kaileena, the Empress of Time which would have led to his inevitable death. However, he finds another "reset button," the "Mask of The Wraith" which gives him a second chance by allowing his present self to co-exist with his ignorant past self, and eventually allow his past self to die and take its place. He then finds a way that both he and Kaileena to survive, but ends up unknowingly "resetting" the death of the villain in "The Sands of Time". He then finds his father dead, and, realizing that he has been simply fleeing the consequences of his mistakes, refuses to use any more "reset buttons," and allows Kaileena to take the Sands into another dimension.
- TimeShift also uses time-manipulating devices in much the same manner, even taking it as far as to let the player rewind whole cutscenes to reposition the character.
- Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories has the main characters rapidly losing most of their memories. In the end of the game, their memories have to be restored, which causes them to forget the events of the entire game. In the next game, Kingdom Hearts 2, the only lasting effects from Chain of Memories are lost time, weaker strength (from sleeping for a year), and a slight change of scenery; all of these are soon forgotten.
- The DS version of Need for Speed: Carbon: Own the City features a rewind technique that can be unlocked after the player defeats the fourth boss.
[edit] Time-loop stories
Some movies, television shows, and books use the reset as a mysterious plot device; in these cases, the events of the story happen repeatedly. Usually, one character is aware of the reset, struggles to understand the cause, and/or attempts to return “time” to its forward flow.
- Stargate SG-1—The episode “Window of Opportunity” involves a time loop that only two of the main characters are aware of.
- Star Trek: The Next Generation—In the episode “Cause and Effect”, the Enterprise crew discovers that for 17 days it has been caught in a “Temporal Causality Loop” repeating the events leading to the ship’s destruction.
- Xena, Warrior Princess—One episode (Season 3; "Been there, done that.") sees the heroine reliving the same day multiple times. She eventually learns that the goddess Aphrodite has caused the time-loop so that Xena can aid a pair of star-crossed lovers.
- The comedy film Groundhog Day is probably the best-known example of the time-loop plot. Whenever Bill Murray’s character dies or goes to sleep, he wakes up to realize that the same day—February 2nd—is happening again. This premise was also used in the series Day Break and the movie 12:01. In another series, Tru Calling, the main character is asked by the ghosts of murder victims to “help” them; this cases her to wake up on the day of the victim’s death, giving her a chance to prevent the tragedy.
- Supernatural—In the episode Mystery Spot, Sam Winchester experiences a time loop in which his brother Dean dies in various ways; each time, the loop resets shortly after. The episode is played mostly for comedic effect and even references Groundhog Day.
- The Third Policeman—The unnamed narrator of the story lives through normal time until the end of the book, but the ending implies that the narrator and his friend return to the beginning only to go through the book again in a never ending time-loop.
[edit] Avoiding the reset button
One science fiction television series that presents a notable exception to the rest is Babylon 5. Because creator J. Michael Straczynski served as a writer for the vast majority of the episodes, the series was able to maintain a progressive continuity and consistency that wasn’t reliant on the reset button technique. Hence, the series was able to feature many interrelated stories, spanning multiple episodes or seasons, in which characters evolve substantially over the course of the greater story arc, and events from one episode have serious repercussions throughout the rest of the series.
Since then, the reset-button technique appears to be used with less frequency, with many writers seeing it as distasteful, and networks seeing that rather than confusing viewers, series continuity can increase viewership. Witchblade, Lost, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Alias, Stargate SG-1, Stargate Atlantis, Farscape and the re-imagined Battlestar Galactica , as well as the original Battlestar Galactica, are modern examples that do not regularly employ the reset button (though some, such as the Stargate SG-1 episode “Window of Opportunity,” have exploited the time-loop for comedic effect).
[edit] References
- ^ a b c Roz Kaveney (2005). From Alien To The Matrix: Reading Science Fiction Film. I.B. Tauris. ISBN 1850438064.
