Worst exposition ever?

I just got done teaching a one week class called Handling Exposition, so perhaps my senses are on Acute Awareness this week, but I think I may have found the worse exposition ever. It’s from an episode of the 70s TV series “The Six Million Dollar Man” and features not only Colonel Steve Austin, the SMDM himself, but also the Bionic Woman in eavesdropping mode. Here is the scene, Steve under house arrest with members of the SMDM team Oscar and Rudy:

Here is a transcript of Steve’s dialogue:

Steve Austin: I promised to keep it a secret. You’re not going to believe it. In the California mountains, there’s a colony of aliens, explorers from deep space. They’ve been here 250 years. They can move forward through time in the blink of an eye.

Okay, so far so good. But then…

Steve Austin: They also control the Sasquatch. A group of rebels broke away from the main complex. And they took the Sasquatch with them. They’ve been using Bigfoot to steal these materials to create some sort of magnetic force field around the new base to make it invulnerable. Remember last year when I disappeared in the mountains? Bigfoot took me to the complex. I met these people, I talked with them. They erased my memory. I know it all sounds crazy, but it’s true.

O-kay. Then a quick memory flash and…

Steve Austin: Wait a minute. They gave some of their wonder drug. It could cure most all diseases and help heal injuries in no time. They called it… Neotraxine. I gave it to you [Oscar] to give to Rudy to have it analyzed.

When asked why he can remember this now instead of back then…

Steve Austin: Because they sent this woman Gillian to ask me to try and help them. But she must have been captured by the rebels when the Boron 3 was stolen. Wait a minute. There’s proof for you. I was taken prisoner, but the Boron 3 was still stolen.

Confronted with the fact that the Boron 3, which leads a radioactive trail, stopped at the edge of the compound…

Steve Austin: Well, that’s right. Because Bigfoot carried it out. Then the rebels must have taken it, using their TLCs traveling much faster than normal. Which means the infrared trail must still be there, just much fainter than normal. I can trace it with my eye. All I need is a helicopter.

But Oscar and Rudy don’t trust Steve who leaps out the window. The question is to save the day… or save his butt from this 3+ minute ‘talking heads’ scene crammed with exposition.

This is not to slight the writers involved. God knows producing TV is a grind, scripts due and the clock never stops. Plus the series was escapist fare and did have a certain camp feel to it, so if you’re going to talk about time travel, Bigfoot, Boron 3, Neotraxine, whatever, I suppose this was the series on which to do that. But if one of the most basic tenets of what we do is “show it, don’t say it,” what we have here in this scene is gobs and gobs of “say” with scant “show.”

We can use this post as a catch-all per your questions and observations about writing exposition. Indeed I’ll pick up on the subject tomorrow in this same time slot. It’s an important, even critical issue, especially for writers new to the craft who may tend to rely on dialogue when movies are primarily a visual medium.

“Exposition equals death.” That’s something I heard or read years ago. While hyperbolic, it’s not a bad thing to keep in mind, forcing us to step up our game when handling exposition.

See you in comments… and more tomorrow.

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