Titanic 2012

World-Building: Decent
Characterization: 2D
Plot: Does not Exist

I know it's not really speculative fiction, but a lot of times the world-building and characterization required in historical fiction is the same. It still needs to take you to a different place and time and remain believable. This  four-episode mini-series was attempting to retell the story of the titanic through more points of view, showing us a wider range of characters and their lives. The idea was really good and promising, and if the series had actually done that it would have been great. It didn't really deliver, however.

The first thing that detracted from it was the constant jumping back and forth in time. By the end of the first episode the ship was already sinking, but then in the second episode it went right back to the beginning and showed the same events again, through different points of view. This meant that we only spent a short amount of time with each character. In the case of Lady Georgiana and her rich American boyfriend this was a relief. It was the story of Rose and Jack all over again - except they were both rich and had zero motivation/dreams - and I didn't see why it needed to be in this series. Even so, it needed more time to be believable. They met each other and then ten minutes later they were in love. No.

The same goes for all the characters, we didn't spend enough time with any of them to really care about them once they started struggling for their lives. I personally really liked the cheerful servant girl Annie and the Italian waiter Paolo, but again the amount of time spent meant that they were just random people doing random disconnected things that didn't affect - I want to say the plot, but there really wasn't one! Those two were the only likable characters in the show. A couple of the officers were cool too, but like in James Cameron's Titanic they weren't really given any time.

This brings me to the other downside about the way they chose to portray the sinking. Because each episode began with the boarding and ended with hitting the iceberg there really was no climax for the whole series and no buildup towards it. It didn't have to be the ship's sinking, it could have been a personal conflict between the passengers, for example, but it should have been there.

Loose ends were another problem with this series. I know that the ship started sinking and people's lives were destroyed and such, but since they spent so much time on some things I wanted to know how they ended or what was going on. For example, the Lord's "other child." If she was on the ship the audience should have seen her. I can't be the only one with curiosity. Why didn't his wife want to see her? What about the Lord himself, did he not want to make sure she was safe when the ship started sinking? It made no sense.

Overall, I would say this series set out to do something interesting, but it failed. It had potential, but this was not reached. I wouldn't bother with it.