I wasn't going to do this.

TV I wasn't going to do this. It's Thursday night, I should have better things to do. But after sitting through yet another interminable episode of Heroes last night on BBC Three (so potential spoilers ahead for anyone else who isn't with me) I simply can't let this panel with creator Tim Kring pass-by without more comment than a simple link.

I liked the first series of Heroes very much. From the intriguing first episode wit the exhuberant moment of excitement from Heroes through to the admittedly slightly lumpy conclusion it seemed to be oen of the few television does superheroes series that tapped into what I used to like about comic books before they became a continuity quagmire filled with pointless huge events and little substance.

It tapped into the geek vibe perfectly, with enough nods to other sources to suggest that the writers had seen the same things as the rest of us and from the off were making a series directly for us. It didn't patronise, didn't seem to be pretending in the way the likes of Charmed always seemed. Above it was a worth replacement for the likes of Buffy and Angel with the potential to be as great.

Then the second series broke it. And the third has stamped all over the bits.

In this panel at the, in this case ironically named, Creative Screenwriting Expo, creator Kring answered question from fans in regards to the writing of the show. Here's what he said and what I think of what he said. Now I should preface these comments by saying that I understand that creating, writing and producing a show of this scale must be extremely difficult. What I'm questioning is if he's the right man for the job. Let's begin with apologies for any grammar and spelling in advance -- I'm typing quickly and I've not much time...

Going back to the origins of the show, Kring explained how he had recognized that NBC did not have any sort of ensemble, serialized drama, in the wake of the success of shows like 24 and Lost. Having come from procedural series, including his own Crossing Jordan, Kring said he saw an opportunity there when he conceived of Heroes, which was "a completely different animal" from his previous work.

Joss Whedon came to Buffy having written for sitcom. A writer isn't their material.

He joked that quickly he wondered, "What was I thinking?" noting that a serialized show is "an absolute bear to do." Kring said he's also finding, "It's a very flawed way of telling stories on network television right now, because of the advent of the DVR and online streaming. The engine that drove [serialized TV] was you had to be in front of the TV [when it aired]. Now you can watch it when you want, where you want, how you want to watch it, and almost all of those ways are superior to watching it on air. So [watching it] on air is related to the saps and the dips**s who can't figure out how to watch it in a superior way."

... then he basically calls people who like appointment television, to look forward to seeing a show broadcast on a weekly basis, who like serials and the gap between episodes to cogitate on what they've seen dipshits. Well fuck you very much for your honesty. He's wrong of course. Though there's room for stand alones and serials, the latter has a built in audience, who like to see characters grow. The trick is to do a bit of both, to have stand alone stories and running storylines across episodes, something Heroes did a bit in its opening series and which The West Wing, Buffy and Doctor Who these days have done well.

Kring said no final ending for Heroes has been conceived, noting, "We didn't have an island to get off of." On top of that, Kring noted that "My original idea was more of an anthological vibe to it, where you regenerate the characters."

Veiled Lost reference there. Actually, you did have a goal, a very good one, but you pissed it away at the close of season one. A surprising number of shows don't, but with a piece like Heroes you'd at least need to have a notion, simply because of all the characters involved. Audiences can smell when you don't know what your end game is. Look at The X-Files which began to look stale by the sixth season because we'd all worked out that Chris Carter had less of an idea of what his mythology meant than we did.

Kring explained he had thought they could almost completely replace the characters each season, remarking, "I was primarily fascinated by the origin story. Once the original story is over, and the character has no more questions about what's happening or existential drama, then the questions become just about plot, and then it becomes harder for me personally to connect to."

So you create new ones. Imagine if proper comic book creators had this approach. "Well, y'know Spider-man has realised he needs to be a hero to salve his consience about the Uncle Ben. Better get another hero." Oh come on! Buffy took five years to realise that the reason she was the chosen one was because she was prepared to die for what she believed in. Most of the origin stories at Marvel were ten page lead ins to better adventures -- they've been embelished a bit over the years, but what's really funky is what happens afterwards which counts. It's your own fault if the characters you've created aren't rich enough and don't have enough traits to withstand a bit of plot over character or don't have anywhere else to go.

However, Kring continued that, "The problem is you run into a whole series of issues, where show and business run into each other. The network falls in love with characters, the audience falls in love with characters, the press falls in love with characters. And it's contractually hard to get people onboard for a brief period." As a result, Kring said, "You find yourself writing for characters you thought would be gone."

Well, duh. Television is seduction, it's enticing your audience in with good writing and also characters they can believe in or love and want to see again week in and out. But if your plan is to refresh the cast every now and then, you have to build that in from the off, you need to let them know that they can't expect to be watching this crowd in four season's time should all go to plan. Most shows have a casting attrition rate -- none of the original cast are still regulars on E.R. -- so its also possible to do it gradually.

Asked if the audience reaction ever influences the stories, Kring replied, "It's never directly, because we're so far ahead of them. We were shooting episode 13 [the final chapter of the current volume, "Villains"] when we launched [Season 3]. Any feedback by the audience is irrelevant in terms of that. But bigger trends you want to follow."

Never, ever listen to fans. We know shit all about how to make drama and if your vision is so flimsy that it lets their ideas in, you're on a hiding to nothing. That said, this fan thinks that you do have a habit of killing off the great characters which would have stood you in great stead in story terms -- Adam for example was a waste.

Kring feels that gauging the reaction to a story "us generally not very calculable. It's the old adage, 'That's why god made chocolate and vanilla.' What one person loves, somebody else hates. It's really hard to discern 'Is that a trend or one guy's opinion?' Reading chat boards can be a study in futility, as far as that's concerned."

Well alright, now we're getting somewhere.

Kring said that he felt the shorter "Volumes" Heroes does now, as opposed to season-long arcs, allows them to tell new or more casual viewers "every couple of months, 'come on in, the water's fine.' You can hop on the train and you won't have missed too much."

There are no casual viewers for a series like this and it's a false premise to say that they'll think about waiting a few months to tune in if a storyline has already started. If you're writing a series well enough, there should be enough exposition to explain anything they've missed, which is why you space out the story a bit more than the series is at the moment. [spoiler] The two scenes of Sylar and Elle and Parkman in Angela Petrelli's head could have been extended to a whole episode with the Hiro stuff as a C-plot all of that was compelling enough. The West Wing did this kind of thing all the time -- whole episodes set in the oval office. Plus Star Trek: The Next Generation's Chain of Command "There are four lights!"

Heroes is written in an unusual manner, with each writer assigned to a different storyline (usually sticking with one character or pairing of characters). Kring explained how that worked when it came to the credited writer for an episode. [...] That being said, Kring revealed that, "This season I've written five episodes so far, all by myself."

Words fail me. I'm betting the coherent and best episodes are the ones Kring wrote. No wonder some of them seem so uneven and random. Yup. The usual process is to break the story then hand it off to a single writer or writing team and then often a polish is done by the series creator. In the above process the writing is done on the scripts which are then stitched together which is to be fair how DC's 52 was done, but it still sounds like a mad way to script a television programme. No wonder it's often obstusely complicated and you're not sure what the motivations are half the time. Is Sylar
supposed to be good or bad now? This next bits fun ...

An audience member asked about Caitlin, Peter Petrelli's love interest from Season 2, who was last seen left behind in a plague-stricken future – a future that thanks to the re-shot end of "Generations," doesn't exist. Kring revealed that if the strike hadn't cut Season 2 short, the plan was, "to get to [Caitlin] around episode 14 or 15, during 'Exodus'. She was a casualty of that storyline never being told." After the long hiatus during which Heroes was off the air, Kring said, "We realized that going back to [Caitlin] nine and a half months later would have been insanity." He felt that while there would "be some people asking about it, but for most people it would have been a hard left [in the story]." When the fan asked if Peter would ever acknowledge Caitlin or express any grief over what seems to be her dire fate, Kring replied, "No, we passed it. We leapfrogged it."He added that when the idea of returning to Caitlin was brought up, they asked, "Really? Are we going to risk that? We have enough stuff to [deal with]."

Apart from taking the piss out of people who care about the damn storyline your spinning and want to know what happened to a character you spent episodes creating and making us like, as with Adam it's an example Kring not keeping some gold in his back pocket. Some of the best episodes in television and stories in comics can come from tying up a loose end like this one. Imagine an episode told half from Caitlin's POV in which she experiences changes in the timeline around her demonstrating to the audience how the choices Peter's making in the past are directly effecting the future. At present it weaken's Peter's character that he's not even mentioned or thought about his old girlfriend in this context. At this point, she's simply gone to Mandyland.

That being said, Kring said he was "very interested in a more standalone version of Heroes. I think the show needs to move towards that in order to survive. I think the serialized format is very challenging on network television."

No I think your version of it is challenged. As I've said, it can work. You can have mythology and stand alone at the same time, not one or the other. But in that case you need to be more about 'villain/disaster of the week' or decide exactly what kind of the story you want to tell.

Another fan asked about Claire Bennet and her ability to heal others with her blood. Kring said a plot point like that, "Gives us freedom and then it screws us up. What often happens on a show like this is you often get boxed in – you set a fuse of something that's just too easy to use. A weapon that's just too sharp. Then you have to blunt it again. You have to figure out ways to take it away, once you've put it out there." Kring said another example of that is Peter Petrelli, who got to the point where "he's so powerful that there's no challenge for the character. So now we've found ways to wipe that out and bring him back to normal again."

That's about the only thing I do agree with. Making Peter human again gives him a challenge -- that storyline worked very well in the Spiderman comics -- he was treated like a pinata by the supervillain community. He's had the power and now he's having to deal with not having it again. But paradoxes abound. How did future Peter come back in time if he never existed in the first place (as far as we know).

Asked what he would do differently, looking back, Kring said, "It's very hard to be peoples' friends and colleague at the same time you're the boss. It's a constant struggle. I was a very reluctant boss." Kring referenced all of the various places his attention has been pulled in with Heroes, including all its various cross promotions and multimedia tie-ins and said that if he could do it all again, "I would probably delegate more responsibilities earlier, so it doesn't take so long [for others] learn it."

Megalomania much? But it's true that the series went to far into merchandising too quickly, even before its core values had been established. Over mechandise something and it can become less special if you're not careful. Not related, but why isn't Parkman funny anymore?

When it comes to time travel as a plot point, Kring said, "I'd encourage everyone to avoid it. It's a minefield that will make your mind explode. It will just drive you crazy. That's been something we've tried to use with a certain amount of rules - Not being able to change the future unless you go back. That device has been one of those that's just been so complicated for us." He added that when it comes to time travel, "We are taking a little hiatus from that for the next 12 episodes," referring to the next volume, "Fugitives."

Thank god. One of the problems with the series is that we've seen so many different versions of the future, we've no clue which is supposed to be the right one. The answer's obviously, none of them, but we've seen so many of these now its impacted on our understanding of who the 'contemporary' characters are and what their motivations are supposed to be.

Kring said he saw "Fugitives" as a chance "for us to wipe the table [clean]." Kring revealed that the big question that storyline centers on is, "What happens when our people have to go underground and go back to being normal after two and a half years of being superheroes?"

Oh fuck no. So we're back to the opening of seasons two and three again. That said, wasn't the show more fun when the heroes had proper secret identities and actually acted like heroes now and then instead of just throwing each other around? This could work!

Asked what super power he'd like himself, Kring drew laughs, answering, "Time travel, so you can go back and correct all the mistakes you've made!" Kring went on to say, "I cannot stress enough the imperfect science that making a show is." He noted that on Heroes, "We often have three different directors working on any given day," and scenes from certain episodes shot months apart, because " Actors are not available, so you drop them in later. I have crazy stories on how this big giant mess is made every week. Once you get on the assembly line and you're cranking it out at the pace that we're doing, it's kind of a miracle that more stuff doesn't go wrong."

He's talking about Zaach Quinto last year who was off making Star Trek.

There's nothing about Heroes that isn't fixable. It just needs to slow down, try and do so much so quickly, focus on one or two characters each episode or failing that make it the Hiro/Ando hour. They're still the best, most entertaining thing about it and what's keeping me watching. Well that and Haydn.