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Random thought, discussion of a thing in Doctor Who 4x05, The Poison Sky below the cut
The fire in the sky thing is horrible science. Horrible. The thing is...I love it. No, seriously love it. I'm aware that this severely knocks my cred down a bit, but lemme explain. I have this rule about bad science on tv and in movies because, lets face it, the odds of getting good science in most of the things I watch are rather slim. I'm lucky, because although I'm a bit of a science fangirl a lot of it is way over my head and I just don't notice a lot of the stuff that is wrong, but I do recognize a lot of it is crap. Hence the rules. If you're going to pass off nonsense as science one of two things will make me go along with it.
1. Rapid fire technobabble hand waving, followed up by pushing the plot or character movement. Key word here is rapid. Info dump a bunch of vaguely sciency type terms that move too quickly to actually think through, but that let Our Hero or Heroes get shit done. 'blahblahreversethepolarityblahblah' *wave the sonic screwdriver*...on with the ride. Bonus points if accompanied by fiddling with wires or tapping on keyboards for further distraction. What's being said isn't important so much as the tone of it, and that it be wrapped up in other stuff being more important. It's when the 'science' gets slowed down and made into a major plot point and one is expected to actually follow along that it gets dodgy. I'm me, so I'll handwave it anyway...but I'll have an eyebrow raised when I do it.
or
2. Go balls out, over the top, totally ridiculous, in your face, 'sense? who needs to make sense?' with absolutely no pretense of realism or nods to anything resembling logic. Go BIG. Extra super bonus points for explosions or fire. A complete lack of shame goes a long way towards my enjoyment of a thing. No, really. I think the jet vs. semi on a freeway overpass confrontation in the last Die Hard movie is the best thing ever. They key here is if you can answer any question as to why or how with 'because it is AWESOME, what else do you need?' and mean it.
Doctor Who tends to make heavy use of both of these options in varying degrees...and setting the sky on fire to save the world from a choking fog of clone feed pollution? Has no shame. Not even the five year olds watching were thinking 'that could happen'. What does it have? EPIC FIREBALLS. Call me cheap, but I can totally be bought off for the price of an epic fireball saving the day. Why? Because it's AWESOME. Because it's big and shiny and goes woosh across the sky, so you can have lots of amazed reaction shots, and skyscrapers getting clipped, and long shots from space of the Earth burning, and sit there with your mouth hanging open going 'seriously? did they seriously just do that?!?' and have a fit of giggles with your adrenaline dump.
Trying to pass off dodgy science as real feels like insulting my intelligence. Bribing me with a big ball of fire because you don't expect anyone to actually wonder if we might solve pollution by blowing up the sky doesn't. I just file that under fun and Scottish Ninjas. I mentioned I am both easy and easily amused, yes?
The fire in the sky thing is horrible science. Horrible. The thing is...I love it. No, seriously love it. I'm aware that this severely knocks my cred down a bit, but lemme explain. I have this rule about bad science on tv and in movies because, lets face it, the odds of getting good science in most of the things I watch are rather slim. I'm lucky, because although I'm a bit of a science fangirl a lot of it is way over my head and I just don't notice a lot of the stuff that is wrong, but I do recognize a lot of it is crap. Hence the rules. If you're going to pass off nonsense as science one of two things will make me go along with it.
1. Rapid fire technobabble hand waving, followed up by pushing the plot or character movement. Key word here is rapid. Info dump a bunch of vaguely sciency type terms that move too quickly to actually think through, but that let Our Hero or Heroes get shit done. 'blahblahreversethepolarityblahblah' *wave the sonic screwdriver*...on with the ride. Bonus points if accompanied by fiddling with wires or tapping on keyboards for further distraction. What's being said isn't important so much as the tone of it, and that it be wrapped up in other stuff being more important. It's when the 'science' gets slowed down and made into a major plot point and one is expected to actually follow along that it gets dodgy. I'm me, so I'll handwave it anyway...but I'll have an eyebrow raised when I do it.
or
2. Go balls out, over the top, totally ridiculous, in your face, 'sense? who needs to make sense?' with absolutely no pretense of realism or nods to anything resembling logic. Go BIG. Extra super bonus points for explosions or fire. A complete lack of shame goes a long way towards my enjoyment of a thing. No, really. I think the jet vs. semi on a freeway overpass confrontation in the last Die Hard movie is the best thing ever. They key here is if you can answer any question as to why or how with 'because it is AWESOME, what else do you need?' and mean it.
Doctor Who tends to make heavy use of both of these options in varying degrees...and setting the sky on fire to save the world from a choking fog of clone feed pollution? Has no shame. Not even the five year olds watching were thinking 'that could happen'. What does it have? EPIC FIREBALLS. Call me cheap, but I can totally be bought off for the price of an epic fireball saving the day. Why? Because it's AWESOME. Because it's big and shiny and goes woosh across the sky, so you can have lots of amazed reaction shots, and skyscrapers getting clipped, and long shots from space of the Earth burning, and sit there with your mouth hanging open going 'seriously? did they seriously just do that?!?' and have a fit of giggles with your adrenaline dump.
Trying to pass off dodgy science as real feels like insulting my intelligence. Bribing me with a big ball of fire because you don't expect anyone to actually wonder if we might solve pollution by blowing up the sky doesn't. I just file that under fun and Scottish Ninjas. I mentioned I am both easy and easily amused, yes?
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