The chore of spelling out information that's vital to a story is the major struggle of all writers. And I truly believe folks who write material that's meant to be performed have it the toughest. In a novel, the writer can simply say exactly what's in a character's head and it doesn't feel like the bald delivery of story points.
When you're working through this stuff, you try to be artful about it. You try not to be "on the nose" or overexplain things. You try to "show, not tell," but sometimes you just can't make it work and you chuk art out the window. You give the character a diary, you have the character's new boss read his file to him, you have a character about to enter a room and overhear something, you begin a scene with one character turning to the other and say "Okay, tell me one more time, why are we doing this again?" Whatever it takes.
The chore of expostion can be even greater when dealing with tales that are supernatural. Science fiction, fantasy, horror - by definition, stories in these genres have their own laws, which have to be explained. If a character can fly, the audience has to know it . Most of the time, supernatural stories are not just breaking one law of nature, but a whole bunch of 'em -- a bad guy has built a device which could destroy the world but it won't work because the good guys have invented a ray to block its effects -- and the audience has to be reminded multiple times just to keep track. A very well done example of this is in The Terminator, when Reese has been caputured by the police. The cops would obviously question the hell out of him and, backed into a corner like that, he'd do his best to convince them what's going on since the danger of the Terminator threatening Sarah Connor is still so great. A ton of the laws of the Terminator universe are given out in that scene and it doesn't feel clunky because A: the way the drama has been built around it, and B: James Cameron spent a good deal of time making these laws seem reasonable. This isn't always the case.
The most stunning delivery of sci-fi exposition I've seen comes in the Six Million Dollar Man episode "The Return of Bigfoot." There's a lot of discussion about SMDM by fanboys of when the show jumped the shark. One school of thought is that the early stuff was the best. The pilot movie took itself pretty seriously, had the realistic mission of Steve Austin trying to rescue captured Israelis and dealt heavily with the mental anguish of becoming a cyborg. The next two TV movies, Wine, Women, War and Solid Gold Kidnapping, were also aimed for an adult-ish audience, but clearly were trying to give SMDM a James Bond spin. ("Solid Gold Kidnapping" going so far as to have a S.P.E.C.T.R.E.-like group and casting Thunderball villainess Luciana Paluzzi). After a while, the SMDB begain constructing plots aimed squarely at kids. In my mind, this is when the show was at its best. It had found its footing.
The high mark of the show was clearly The Secret of Bigfoot. While it may seem silly on the surface, it's easy to forget just how much this two-part episode delivered. Bigfoot mania was a huge phenomenon in the 70s and twenty minutes into the first part, we got to see him full-on, in bright daylight. Then, Steve Austin gets into a kick-ass fight with him, which ends in the shocker of him tearing off Bigfoot's robotic arm! Steve chases the one-armed Bigfoot robot into a tunnel, which starts to spin and knocks Steve unconscious. We learn that the robot Bigfoot is controlled by aliens. Again, I know it all sounds silly but the internal logic worked and it was hugely entertaining. I defy you to find someone who watched it when it first aired who doesn't have haunting memories of that spinning tunnel, which eventually became a stop on the tour of Universal Studios.
I can't sing similar praises about Bigfoot's inevitable return a season later. To me, SMDM clearly jumped the shark when Lee Majors decided to grow a mustache. In "The Return of Bigfoot," Sasquatch isn't the only one with facial hair and, as shark jumping evidence, this episode is my "exhibit A." The story somehow feels monumentally more ridiculous than the first one and I think that's just in the way it's handled. Midway though the first part, Steve is blamed for the theft of some raw elements. Oscar and Rudy confront him about it.
OSCAR: …And now you’re caught at the scene of the third crime with one guard saying, quote, that he saw you throw a steel drum on him.
STEVE: Do you believe that?
OSCAR: I don’t want to believe it, but who else could throw a steel drum?
STEVE: Oscar, I didn't throw it at him. I...
OSCAR: Are you going to tell us what happened?
DR. WELLS: We're trying to help.
STEVE: I promised to keep it a secret.
DR. WELLS: Anything you say stays with us!
STEVE: You’re not going to believe it. In the California mountains, there’s a colony of aliens. Explorers from deep space.
OSCAR: Space people?
DR. WELLS: In the mountains? Where?
STEVE: I don't know exactly. They’ve been here for 250 years. They can move forward through time in the blink of an eye. They also control the sasquatch.
DR. WELLS: Bigfoot?
(NOTE: Although this two-part episode is a sequel to “The Secret of Bigfoot” from the year before, no one but Steve saw Bigfoot or was even convinced that there was a bigfoot creature by the end of the story. Steve is NOT saying “These aliens control that Bigfoot creature that we all know is real.” He’s telling Oscar and Rudy that the currently-only-known-as-myth of Bigfoot is real.)
STEVE: That's right. But 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 their new base to make it invulnerable. Oscar, you remember last year that day I disappeared in the mountains?
OSCAR: Yes.
STEVE: Bigfoot took me to the complex. I met these people. I talked with them.
OSCAR: Well why didn’t you tell me about it then, Steve?
STEVE: Because they erased my memory!
DR. WELLS: Erased your memory?
STEVE: Look I know it all sounds crazy, but it’s true. Wait a minute. They gave me some of their wonder drug. It could cure most all diseases and help heal injuries in no time. They called it… neotraxcin.
OSCAR: Well, what happened to it?
STEVE: I gave it to you to give to Rudy to have it analyzed.
DR. WELLS: I don’t remember too much about that. I do remember I was worried about you. You had a head injury during the earthquake
STEVE: There’s nothing wrong with my head, then or now.
DR. WELLS: Steve, how come you can remember this now?
STEVE: Because sent this woman, named Gillian, to ask me to try and help them.
DR. WELLS: And she can move through time, like you say?
STEVE: Yes!
DR. WELLS: Well, maybe we can meet her.
STEVE: But she must have been captured by the rebels when the boron 3 was stolen! There’s proof. I was taken prisoner yet the Boron 3 was still stolen.
DR. WELLS: National Security Bureau had us check on that. Boron 3 leaves a radioactive infrared trace. Now our instruments picked up a trail, which led outside the compound and stopped.
STEVE: Well that’s right. Because Bigfoot carried it out. (putting it all together) And then the rebels must have taken it using their TCLs, traveling much faster than normal. Which means that this infrared trail must still be there, but much fainter than normal. Isn’t that possible, Rudy?
DR. WELLS: Well…
STEVE: Of course it is! And I can trace it with my eye. All I need is a helicopter.
The scene ends with Oscar saying that he's been asked to turn down Steve's bionics. Steve then breaks out of the room and takes off on his own. This is exactly what he should have done in the first place. The outrageousness of the lines is only matched by the horrible way in which Lee Majors delivers them. As he's sitting captive, Steve Austin should just keep his mouth shut. The truth is just so insane, no sensible person would even try to convince anyone of it. Here's a tally of what Steve is trying to convince people of.
--1. Bigfoot is real. Obviously a huge thing to ask anyone to belive, but fine. There was some rumors last year and Oscar saw the footprints. The way that Lee Majors says the word "Bigfoot" in this scene is hilarious. He's says the word quickly, like he's some guy they all know.
--2. Bigfoot is actually a pawn of aliens. Stop right there. You're taking two completely separate but equally massive myths and combining them into one. This is where this scene differs from the one in the Terminator, which, although outrageous, has cohesion.
--3. The Aliens have a wonder drug. Yet another separate sci fi standard. I like how the name "Neotraxcin," sound like something you could get at any human drugstore.
--4. The Aliens have a device that allows them to move forward through time. The highlight of the scene may be when Dr. Wells asks to meet Gillain and Steve replies that she must have been captured-- like that's really obvious and Dr. Wells is just trying to be a jerk.
--5. The Aliens have technology that can erase memories. This is so convenient that at after mentioning it, Steve should realize how insane it sounds and say "Naw, I'm just kidding. I did take the Boron 3."
--6. The Rebel Aliens are building a force field. A force field is probably less outrageous than a wonder drug or time-traveling device, but I think maybe the notion that Steve is caught in the middle of this war of aliens that no one can see makes it seem even more delusional.