Peter Petrelli (Heroes Spoilers)

[Brent]

WHY did they de-power him to the level of only being able to retain one power at a time?

So, I've recently gotten into Heroes, and I'm watching through seasons 1-3 right now, I've pretty much glanced through the entire series at this point, and am now going back through and watching each episode in its entirety. I understand he had his powers taken away, then took the shot and got them back, but apparently not all the way. WHY did they decide to only make it so he could retain and use one power at a time? I don't like this, I want the old fully powered Peter back.

 

[Tom]

Because Kring believes that Full Power heroes or Villians have no story to tell. They did a similar thing to Sylar and at the end of 'Generations' he got just TK and his analystic power back and then had to regain powers again but not to the level of his season 1 poers but close, Sylar has never had time travel/stop or invisibilty like Peter had.

 

[Skywalker]

Because they forgot that they'd already come up with a reasonable way to limit his near-godliness. It's almost as clumsy as trying to keep Sylar contained by making him lose his memory every season.

 

[Brent]

Because Kring believes that Full Power heroes or Villians have no story to tell. They did a similar thing to Sylar and at the end of 'Generations' he got just TK and his analystic power back and then had to regain powers again but not to the level of his season 1 poers but close, Sylar has never had time travel/stop or invisibilty like Peter had.

Well I'm not happy about this at all

 

[Temis the Vorta]

It's the Superman problem - he was so overpowered that the writers were faced with the choice of 1) letting him kill all drama by solving all problems immediately or 2) being written so that he's too stupid to see that he could solve all problems immediately.

They did try #2 for a while. It was hugely annoying and we bitched incessantly about it. Good times. They can't very well opt for door #1, so they had to nerf the poor guy.

But the better option would have been door #3, which they had staring them in the face so I'm amazed they didn't go for it. Just continue the idea that the more powers Peter gets, the more damaged his health becomes.

Even worse, using powers really fraks him up. The bigger and more drama-killing a power - raising people from the dead, mind control, time travel - the more it whallops him upside the head. So that will inhibit him from killing drama willy-nilly and still allow him to be a reasonably intelligent person.

It would be interestingly ironic for Peter to have the most potent power of all - being able to absorb powers without even thinking about it, or wanting to - that becomes the most self-destructive and weakening power - because he ends up with a bunch of powers he doesn't dare use, except in the most dire emergency.

Writing these characters is all about finding their balance point and maintaining it, so that the dramatic tension never lets up.

Well I'm not happy about this at all

Join the club! Are there any happy Heroes viewers?

 

[Anwar]

But wouldn't that healing power he got from Claire keep him healthy no matter how many powers he would use?

 

[intrinsical]

But wouldn't that healing power he got from Claire keep him healthy no matter how many powers he would use?

It shouldn't work, because it would be like trying to charge a battery with itself. Using the healing power would damage Peter, so all he ends up doing is healing the damage caused by using the healing power.

 

[Aragorn]

Join the club! Are there any happy Heroes viewers?

I know of at least one person who posts on this board! Who thinks the show ISN'T stagnant.

 

[Temis the Vorta]

But wouldn't that healing power he got from Claire keep him healthy no matter how many powers he would use?

Just come up with a rationale - any reasonable rationale - that would get around that objection. maybe there's a limit to the number of times he is allowed to use a power and if he keeps hitting the "health" button, he'll run out of it. The point is, the writers need to jigger the rules so they aren't stuck choosing between killing the drama and making the character so stupid that we hate him. It's up to them to figure a way out of the trap. If they can't, then they suck as writers.

 

[Checkmate]

A really big limitation Peter had, but was quickly thrown out the door, was the emotive one. It would have been far, far more limiting than any health issues. If he wanted to use Sylar's telekinesis, for instance, he'd have to be focusing a murderous rage.

Not only would that have been a really cool limit with tons of acting potential (okay, so maybe that's why they got rid of it -- sorry Milo), but they could have gone one step further and only let him hold on to a single power per emotion; more than that, and he'd grow deathly ill. Or any other number of interesting possibilities.

That said, all signs point to the producers and the writers really hating the fact that they're doing a show about superheroes. Kring has on numerous occasions said he was only interested in doing a story about people learning they had a power, then killing/writing them off to do it all over again. Such a god damned waste for a setting with so much potential.

 

[Skywalker]

Agreed. I hope we'll get another major show about people with powers one of these days, but with the way Heroes has fallen from grace, I doubt it will happen.

 

[Anwar]

Uh-huh, it's the sci-fi ghetto thing again. Same reason people say Dark Knight isn't a superhero movie.

 

[Lt. Trull]

Join the club! Are there any happy Heroes viewers?

I know of at least one person who posts on this board! Who thinks the show ISN'T stagnant.

TWO

 

[Tom]

Originaly when Heroes started Peter could only use a power of the person near him and I thought thats as far as it went. Later in season one he got together with Claude (the invisible Dr. Who! LOL) that taught him that he does keep all the powers and how to access them when he needed them, after this point Peter became all poweful.

Now Peter is back to one power at a time, the bad thing is he has to touch a person, not just be near them to get there power. The good thing is, he can retain the power for as long as he wants without being near the person.

 

[Temis the Vorta]

A really big limitation Peter had, but was quickly thrown out the door, was the emotive one. It would have been far, far more limiting than any health issues. If he wanted to use Sylar's telekinesis, for instance, he'd have to be focusing a murderous rage.

I'm not sure how that would work dramatically. If he wanted to "be" murderous, does he just fake it, like an actor? How can he really "be" murderous if he isn't feeling it? Or is part of his power (handicap) that imagining emotions really causes him to feel that way, and the danger of using Sylar's power is that he could become like Sylar? In which case, since most of the characters aren't crazy, there's no limitation to using their powers and therefore no dramatic point.

 

[Checkmate]

It would be a limit, one very similar to what he has now. One power at a time (since you can't just flip emotions on a dime, especially at will). And considering that Sylar has access to his full gambit of powers at any given time, it still makes him far more formidable while still letting Peter be really unique and conditional.

And if a really odd emotion gets tacked on to a power, all the better. A great example of that would be Flight only when he's feeling suicidal or has something to prove. Then you have some that are a perfect combination, such as Invisibility when he's scared.

It also means his regeneration would only work in specific situations and certainly not when he's dead/unconscious.

 

[mswood]

Actually the writers had a very easy way to get around Peter's ability and have him be the opposite of Sylar.

When ylar gains an ability its because he see's it and understands it (quick mastery of said ability), yet Peter gets an ability he gets it but doesn't have control over it.

As such Peter who would have a huge library of powers to choose from would have no time to mastery those abilities (because for him the mastery doesn't just come to him, or didn't).

So his limitation should have been that he isn't very good would those abilities. A person with one would have all the time in the world to really learn what one can and can't do with it, but Peter should have control over those abilities and thus that should have been his weakness (and for season one they really played it off like that).

 

[Brent]

Actually the writers had a very easy way to get around Peter's ability and have him be the opposite of Sylar.

When ylar gains an ability its because he see's it and understands it (quick mastery of said ability), yet Peter gets an ability he gets it but doesn't have control over it.

As such Peter who would have a huge library of powers to choose from would have no time to mastery those abilities (because for him the mastery doesn't just come to him, or didn't).

So his limitation should have been that he isn't very good would those abilities. A person with one would have all the time in the world to really learn what one can and can't do with it, but Peter should have control over those abilities and thus that should have been his weakness (and for season one they really played it off like that).

Indeed, in S1 he wasn't able to use multiple powers for a long while until he learned he has the ability to do so through feeling it, but that definitely limited him in S1. I don't see why they couldn't have still had this limit throughout the series, maybe he is able to use multiple powers, but still not to their full mastery like Sylar does. That would be his weakness.

 

[Checkmate]

Earlier in the series they implied that most powers had "advanced" features to them, too. Such as telepathy evolving into the creation of illusions and mind traps, or regeneration evolving into immortality. That would have limited Peter, too, though he still would have needed some other limitations since even the base powers were freakishly powerful, especially in concert with other powers.

It doesn't really matter though. The writers just apparently decided to say fuck it and let him be an utter master of the powers as soon as he absorbed them. We saw this clearly with his mastery of time and space power; he was far and away better at controlling and using it than Hiro was.

 

[Temis the Vorta]

As such Peter who would have a huge library of powers to choose from would have no time to mastery those abilities (because for him the mastery doesn't just come to him, or didn't).

So his limitation should have been that he isn't very good would those abilities.

Now that's a good idea! Think of his current healing power, which doubles as a killing power. Would he even dare try to use it? If he didn't practice, he'd never get good at it, but he can't very well practice without risking someone's life. And knowing bleeding-heart Petey, he would hesitate to even practice on an animal.

Walking through walls, teleportation, flying and time travel are also powers he'd really hesitate to use. Mind reading and mind control might rebound on him if the person realizes he's doing it, if he gets the "blowback" phenomenon that Matt is now suffering, or if venturing into other people's minds does a number on his own psychological stability.

There are a ton of interesting ways you could take that situation - every new power is a new chance to frak with the guy and create drama rather than kill it.

Earlier in the series they implied that most powers had "advanced" features to them, too. Such as telepathy evolving into the creation of illusions and mind traps, or regeneration evolving into immortality.

They should have stuck with the idea that the powers can evolve (separate from getting good at using them) - or devolve. It would add to the drama if these characters' powers grew more or less strong, or they developed new (but logically connected) powers. But they shouldn't just lose the powers outright - maybe that could happen to a couple of characters, once apiece. That routine has just been flat-out overused.