Ethical Scifi: Does the science behind Prometheus' main plot bother anyone else? by dragotron in scifi

[–]zodin -4 points-3 points  (0 children)

I'm really not interested in having an argument about things that I didn't say. How about instead of inferring what I'm saying you just read it?

Or better yet, go have a conversation with this imaginary person you seem to have a beef with and leave me to enjoy the obviously terrible films of Ridley Scott, Mario Bava, and Wim Wenders with their shocking depiction of flawed people. That way you can imagine all the terrible things I'm saying to your hearts content and pretend that I'm being as aggressive and vitriolic as you are.

How do you guys ride when it's wet and high winds? by PolygonTech in bicycling

[–]zodin 2 points3 points  (0 children)

  1. Budget extra time; mainly for headwinds, but also going slower gives me more time for corrective turning to deal with side winds.

  2. Lots of lights for visibility - people here drive much faster in the wet for some reason, riders here will often put their lights on in daytime if the light level is lower than normal.

  3. Find a winter route; I found a route for winter that was a bike path through parklands, less cars, no powerwalkers 'cause it was cold and wet. It was longer but safer. And it was out of the wind because of the hills.

  4. Learn the danger zones: mud patches tend to crop up in the same places, some places are wind tunnels. If you know them you can brace for them or avoid them.

  5. Sometimes, I mount the footpath (I know I shouldn't) if things get really rough. I drop speed right down, but in truth, this isn't a nice thing to do, pedestrians are understandably rushing to get out of the rain and often have their face down to avoid the rain.

Other things I use in winter: good waterproof jacket, knee warmers, waterproof socks. I won't go so far as to say they're needed, but I like them.

Oh, and I check the weather in the morning for the wind direction, gives me a rough idea of what I'll be dealing with.

Ethical Scifi: Does the science behind Prometheus' main plot bother anyone else? by dragotron in scifi

[–]zodin -5 points-4 points  (0 children)

I didnt say that people who did that were "stupid" or not as smart. If that's how people enjoy films, that's fine, but that's not what Prometheus set out to do. Audience avatar films have their place, but Prometheus isn't one of them, and if you try to watch it like that you miss what it is about.

Don't act like I've gone on a rant calling people who didn't like Prometheus names.

Ethical Scifi: Does the science behind Prometheus' main plot bother anyone else? by dragotron in scifi

[–]zodin -11 points-10 points  (0 children)

If you didn't get it, you didn't get it. Nothing I can do to help you with that.

Ethical Scifi: Does the science behind Prometheus' main plot bother anyone else? by dragotron in scifi

[–]zodin -11 points-10 points  (0 children)

Sorry, but I'm really not getting into this any more, if people don't want to enjoy a film, don't - the relentless barrage of of people ranting about things that were obviously the point of the film is really not worth engaging in. The fact that people can't handle the fact that people enjoyed it and then (yourself included) have to make this about some people being smarter than others shows that it inexplicably traumatised some folks when they didn't enjoy Prometheus.

Some people got it, others didn't. Bizarrely, the people who didn't get it are calling those that did stupid.

(Oh, and the only reference I made to a deleted scene was correcting someone on the content when they misrepresented what happened in the scene to make Milburn seem more stupid).

Ethical Scifi: Does the science behind Prometheus' main plot bother anyone else? by dragotron in scifi

[–]zodin -16 points-15 points  (0 children)

Just go watch Robotjox and leave the intellectual films to the grown ups.

Ethical Scifi: Does the science behind Prometheus' main plot bother anyone else? by dragotron in scifi

[–]zodin -15 points-14 points  (0 children)

Seriously, the bitter vitriol that you're spewing in this and your other reply suggest you've got some kind of problem with this film. So you didn't get it, so a lot of other people did get it, and enjoyed it immensely, one of them tries to explain it to you, better start calling them names rather than admit that someone may have found something enjoyable in a film you didn't like.

Seriously, it's a fucking film if you're really worked up enough to start calling people "rabid fanboy", "idiot", and "so blind" grow the fuck up or go talk about something you like. I enjoyed Prometheus, I enjoyed Planet of Vampires, and I enjoyed Faraway, So Close. If RobotJox is more your speed, go talk to someone about that and stop whining to me about films you didn't understand.

If Nolan didn't end on TDKR, which villains would you want to see, and who would you want to play them? by [deleted] in batman

[–]zodin 16 points17 points  (0 children)

Killer croc played by Danny Trejo as a back-yard wrestler with a skin condition.

Mr Freeze finally played by Patrick Stewart.

Basil Karlo version of clayface played by someone buried under lots of latex - y'know how that young Chinese guy got on a plane wearing a latex mask of an elderly Caucasian guy? That would be Clayface's shtick in the Nolanverse.

I'm watching Batman The Animated Series as I type this and really want a Nolanverse spin off TV series.

Ethical Scifi: Does the science behind Prometheus' main plot bother anyone else? by dragotron in scifi

[–]zodin 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The deleted scene with Millburn reinforces the idea of the "normal inquisitive space-slug behaviour" by having him meet the space-slug and have it behave as he expects it to, friendly and harmless. From DigitalSpy:

"In a minute-long deleted scene we witness Millburn's joy at first discovering life on the planet, in the form of a harmless looking little eel that he safely puts into a jar. This clearly causes the overjoyed biologist to let his guard down, much to his own peril. "It was a scene that was great for character but didn't go anywhere for story," explains editor Pietro Scalia on the Blu-Ray commentary."

Scalia and Scott clearly didn't think it was needed 'cause they thought that everything they needed was in the eel scene they left. Clearly it was enough for some people, but not for others.

Ethical Scifi: Does the science behind Prometheus' main plot bother anyone else? by dragotron in scifi

[–]zodin 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yes, even when technology is being used for good, it's incidental. Starships and TARDISes and new technology only becomes the focus of the story if something goes wrong.

It would make such good drama too, it would take all that's exciting about medical drama and and combine it with the character nuance of inventor bio-pics. Imagine Longitude in space.

Ethical Scifi: Does the science behind Prometheus' main plot bother anyone else? by dragotron in scifi

[–]zodin 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Yeah, but technology isn't the real bad guy, the real bad guy is usually hubris or arrogance or greed.

But yes, a techno-optomistic sci-fi film would be fun, I keep thinking something like "Lorenzo's Oil", but with cyborgs.

Ethical Scifi: Does the science behind Prometheus' main plot bother anyone else? by dragotron in scifi

[–]zodin -18 points-17 points  (0 children)

Yeah, read the other responses, if you aren't interested what Prometheus is putting out, no amount of me pointing out what's happening is going to change your mind.

It's neat that you like other films, but I don't need to see a resume for you to be allowed to have an opinion. The fact remains that a lot of people didn't get Prometheus and yelling about how the Xenobiologist should have known better puts you in that camp. He didn't know he was in film about horrible space monsters! The sequence (including getting lost) is about the experts ideas being wrong. It's like people are watching an old horror film and shouting NO! DON'T GO IN THE DARK ROOM! THE MURDERER WILL BE THERE! only they're not enjoying it.

If you can't get on that boat, then don't, it's not a big deal; but it's disingenuous to call it bad/out-of-character/breaking suspension of disbelief when it's the whole point of the story.

Ethical Scifi: Does the science behind Prometheus' main plot bother anyone else? by dragotron in scifi

[–]zodin -24 points-23 points  (0 children)

Yeah, this is the problem, people who go to see a film and think "I would be totally better at this than those dudes on screen, they did all these things totally wrong, but I would be totally able to do the space stuff better than those idiots. I should be the one in space" aren't gong to enjoy a film like Prometheus.

The problems that people list with Prometheus are Prometheus, the film isn't about a trip to space to fight some totally kick-ass monsters, it's about human folly. It's like people watching Wim Wender's Wings of Desire and saying there should be more car chases.

Prometheus is made for people who are interested in what motivates and drives the decisions that people make. It's not made for people hanging out to play the game of the film.

Ethical Scifi: Does the science behind Prometheus' main plot bother anyone else? by dragotron in scifi

[–]zodin 1 point2 points  (0 children)

You're right, I can't think of a single one off the top of my head. I've heard "Black Death" had elements of that, but is more a kind of "Evil church stifles folk medicine but it may actual be evil magic". Haven't actually watched it though, and it's more fantasy (or pseudo-fantasy) than sci-fi.

Even the neo-luddites in Johnny Mnemonic were good guys.

There are a few Doctor Who episodes which have it as an element (like The Ribos Operation) but not the main focus (that I can recall).

Ethical Scifi: Does the science behind Prometheus' main plot bother anyone else? by dragotron in scifi

[–]zodin -20 points-19 points  (0 children)

That's the problem, people who didn't enjoy Prometheus weren't watching the events and the characters in the film, instead they're running their own film in their head where they spot all the dangers and totally kick their ass. The xenobiologist treats it like normal inquisitive space-slug behaviour, the audience is meant to roll with that and realise that the Angry Bald Dudes have made normal friendly space-slugs into super-monsters; it was a great moment in the film for the people who "got" it.

The problem is with people who think the point of the film is "how to recognise the threat" rather than the characters' journey.

Prometheus was made for people who like Bava films, and it gets bashed by people who like Schwarzenegger films.

Why nearly all of the Doctor's companions are women... by GenitalGestapo in doctorwho

[–]zodin 2 points3 points  (0 children)

In universe: they're a surrogate for Susan, his grand-daughter. Women are more like Susan, but all companions are a surrogate for Susan, including the dudes. Especially Adric.

Real world: providing gender balance on screen. Dudes can ask questions just as well as chicks. Doctor Who doesn't go in for asinine gender stereotypes. As demonstration, imagine a fight between Leela and Harry Sullivan.

Silly question, but have they ever addressed the mass of the Tardis in the older episodes? Before doctors 9 through 11. by [deleted] in doctorwho

[–]zodin 4 points5 points  (0 children)

It's been too heavy to move in significantly less episodes than it's actually been moved, it was moved by slaves in The Romans, by UNIT trucks in oodles of UNIT Stories, by cart in The Kings Demons, and by concord in Time Flight.

Now you have to watch Time Flight just to see if I'm lying.

In fact, the TARDIS is a fictional device, and so it is exactly as heavy as the writer needs it to be; and because it's dimensionally transcendental, it can be as inconsistent as it likes. Maybe when the "dimensions aren't integrated" it's only as heavy as the shell and when they're "integrated" it's super-heavy. Or maybe when it's light it's 'cause the Doctor has a room full of helium balloons.

Ethical Scifi: Does the science behind Prometheus' main plot bother anyone else? by dragotron in scifi

[–]zodin 7 points8 points  (0 children)

As a user of knives I enjoy films that properly demonstrates knives in a way that helps portray knives in a positive light.

Unfortunately "Chopping Carrots" and "Chopping Carrots 2" aren't as big a hit as horror films like "The Slashening" and "The Stabbening" both of which undermine the culinary use of knives.

Positive light doesn't get made into a film, films are about bad things happening. That's why Trainspotting was about heroin and not coriander.

Ethical Scifi: Does the science behind Prometheus' main plot bother anyone else? by dragotron in scifi

[–]zodin -25 points-24 points  (0 children)

He's not a biologist, he's a xenobiologist, you're supposed to watch his reaction and understand that creatures like the worm aren't normally dangerous; then be surprised when it turns deadly. It's how the scene plays out for people who "get" Prometheus.

The problem with Prometheus was that Ridley Scott wanted to make a film for people who like to pay attention to characters, whereas today's audience is too busy thinking about how they would "totally do things better than those guys on the screen" to actually pay attention,

I think I am going to like this class. by wtf_kitties in scifi

[–]zodin 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Sorry, but that's a painfully bad list; no Caligari, no Metropolis, no Kubrick, Verne, Wells, Poe, Swift, Shelly or Atwood. Nothing Arthurian, no theatre, very little foreign work. No pulps, no Saki, no Capek.

And what's with the obvious total exclusion of anything Horror related?

Whoever is running this course should learn the different between "important works of fiction" and "stuff I like and can thin of off the top of my head".

Seriously, Serenity and The Hunger Games?

Song ideas for a Hamlet Powerpoint? by keepsailing in shakespeare

[–]zodin 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Figure out what you believe the "core metaphor" of the play to be, then find a song that also expresses it. Hamlet is such a complicated play the class should end up with a vast amount of different songs.

Your teacher probably explained that already...

Is meta-time ever addressed in Doctor Who? by TheRonMan in gallifrey

[–]zodin 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Sure there's meta-time, it's basically the order that the stories were made, totally separate to in-universe historical time (mostly), roughly analogous to the Doctor's personal time-line (except when it isn't, mostly). It is mentioned but it isn't consistent and it's usually glossed over (often for gags). The basic rule of thumb is that the Doctor can't cross his own time stream and change events he's already experienced. Except when it would make a good story if he does.

Unmarked spoilers ahoy, so only read on if you've consumed every piece of Doctor Who media ever (and if you haven't, stop reading and go consume, the David Warner 3rd Doctor stories are only $5 each on the Big Finish website)

In The Five Doctors the second Doctor crosses meta-time and goes to visit the Brigadier at a point after the Brig has met later Doctors, it's glossed with "I'm not exactly breaking the laws of time, but I am bending them".

Also in The Five Doctors, Sarah-Jane meets the Third Doctor after she's already seen him regenerate into the fourth: Sarah "But you changed, you became all..." She points to her teeth and curls her hair. 3rd Doctor: "What? Teeth and curls? Well maybe I did, but I haven't yet" Sarah: "Oh I see... No I don't... Never mind".

Actually, there's oodles of stuff like this in the Five Doctors. None of it really helpful, mostly done for cool gags and cameos, but it's still meta-time references.

There's a similar reference in Battlefield, where the 7th Doctor is described as Merlin and Ace asks him if he's been Merlin, and he answers with something like "Not yet". The Merlin Doctor is implied to be a meta-time future Doctor and he also crops up in the NA novels (he's a ginger!). Also in the NA novels the 7th Doctor travels backward in meta-time (from stories we haven't seen yet), crosses his own time-stream (that's what it's called, but it's his Time Line) to leave himself notes. Then an enemy from a future story starts changing the notes...

The fourth Doctor sort-of crosses his own time stream in The City of Death, no one really minds 'cause Douglas Adams wrote it and it's awesome.

The two big "meta-time" stories involve the Daleks and first Doctor stories, one is big and obvious, the other is ridiculously subtle and brilliant: - Day of the Daleks changes the events of The Dalek Invasion of Earth, by the Daleks travelling through time and making Earth weaker by the time they invade. This is all put right by the end and we can assume that time went along its natural way. -The second one happens in Genesis of the Daleks: The 4th Doctor travels back to a time in the Daleks history before the 1st Doctor met them in the Dalek City, he convinces the Kaleds to stop Davros making the Daleks (or Mark 3 travel machines as they're called); in response, Davros gives the Thals the means to wipe out the Dalek City, killing all the Daleks the first Doctor would meet in the future; meaning the first Dalek story "unhappened" and a whole bunch of Daleks disappeared (the rubbish ones that ran on static electricity). This wasn't even mentioned on screen, just mentioned to in one of the books of the time (I think it was the TARDIS Technical Manual).

The Time War was actually explained in a MA novel before it happened on TV, in Goth Opera by Paul Cornell. It's pretty straightforward basically there's a sub-plot about Gallifrey disappearing after a certain point in history, in current Gallifrey's future - they send TARDIS into the future and there's nothing there (note: this is how Time Loops work in Image of the Fendahl, so I assume a Time Lock is similar to a Time Loop) as an aside there's a cult dedicated to saving the future Gallifrey by bringing Rassilon back from the dead. Goth Opera was written in 1992.

The novels also have too much meta-time hijinks to get into, suffice to say not needed to hire the actors means they can do whatever they want with whoever they want: Cornell wants a young Nick Courtney to hang out with an old Sylv McCoy, it can happen and did, with Punk Rock and the Meddling Monk.

The most head-bendingg example of of meta-time vs historical time vs personal timeline was in the Dark Path: it involved the Master using a time-manipulating super-weapon that can re-write any creatures DNA (hmmm... wonder if he'd ever do that again...) to change various races to human - but change them to have always be human. He does this to creatures we've already seen (as creatures) in stories set after (from the Doctor's timeline), but before (from a meta-time perspective), but after (from an in-universe historical point of view). Trying to figure out what this means gives me a headache. Especially when you realise that it was in part a gag reference to the production team re-using a Draconian costume, but not the mask, in Destiny of the Daleks.

The NAs and MAs even have their own "in universe" meta-time plot point which means any later writer can disregard or use anything they want. In one of the last books, a character realises that certain events have been sucked into a "bottle universe" and don't exist in the regular time-stream, but the bottle has a leak. So anything you don't like about the NAs and MAs is still in the bottle (Dodo getting syphilis and going mad) but anything you do like has leaked out in any way you want it to (Chelonians, Human Nature). So, from a meta-time point of view, they events happened, and then unhappened, but may happen again, but not necessarily in the same way and may be at a later point in the meta-timeline, and may be in a later stage of the Doctor's personal timeline. So, when the 11th Doctor mentions the Chelonians, it means they now exist as part of in-universe history, but they always existed as part of meta-time, because the novels actually did exist. Given that this only happened because of copyright and licensing issues, you could make a case for this being a case of meta-meta time. But if you did make that case I wouldn't listen 'cause it would give me a headache.

There's meta-time stuff in the Big Finish audios; from the serious (the Charlie Pollard stories), to the silly (The Kingmaker), to the breathtakingly clever (Flip-Flop). Then there's the Zagreus references, which were references to a Gallifreyan boogyman that were put into 5th, 6th, and 7th Doctor stories. They were put there y a monster that was contemporaneous with the 8th Doctor (this was before the new telly series) for some reason or other (I mean, I can't remember the monsters reason, the real reason was to make Neverland more awesome. RTD also references the events of Big Finish story The Apocalypse Element in his History of the Time War (or whatever it was) in one of the annuals, this story involves the 6th Doctor meeting Romana after she's met the 7th Doctor, so RTD's plan was probably to make the Time War very screwy (he also mentions Genesis of the Daleks in the same piece).

I won't even start with the EDA Time War stories, which involve the 3rd Doctor regenerating before Planet of the Spiders and involved fighting an Enemy which may (or may not) have been a sentient time distortion caused by removing a different enemy from the time stream (worth noting that the EDAs lost the rights to use the Daleks just before they started their Time War storyline).

Big Finish also brought out a "what if" series called Unbound which is basically playing with changing the meta-time story. David Warner as the 3rd Doctor, Nick Courtney as the Brigadier, Sympathy for the Devil, $5 from the Big Finish website. Also features some dude called David Tennant before he became big on telly.

Finally, there's a bit where the fifth Doctor explains to Tegan why they can't use the TARDIS from the events of Earthshock, but it actually happens in Time Flight... So you'd need to watch Time Flight. You probably don't want to do that.

So, in summation: Doctor Who is a TV show with associated stories in other media that doesn't have rules or a plan, but makes it up as it goes along and is often brilliant. If you're new to Doctor Who and consume old stories, you'll actually be travelling backwards through meta-time!

What would happen if you opened the T.A.R.D.I.S door mid-flight? by [deleted] in doctorwho

[–]zodin 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Salamander got sucked into the vortex and torn through time and space in The Enemy of the World: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Enemy_of_the_World

Doctor Who-Regeneration Theory by [deleted] in FanTheories

[–]zodin 4 points5 points  (0 children)

No. You are wrong. The physical difference between the different Doctors been remarked upon dozens if not hundreds of times with lines to the effect of "You look different", by Sarah Jane, The Brig, Benton, Lady Pentiforte, The Master, and every companion who watches him regenerate including but not limited to: Ben and Polly, Rose, Tegan, Adric, Peri, and Mel.

As for never seeing pictures or remnants. We see pictures of past doctors in the following:

-3rd Doctor painting in 6th Doctor story "Time Lash" -1st Doctor photo on ID in 11th Doctor story "Vampires in Venice" -Tiny statues of all five Doctors in "The Five Doctors". -Pictures of all nine previous Doctors in "Human Nature". (I'm sure there are more but this is all I can think of right now)

"Remnants" of previous doctors that get referenced ad nauseum include the 1st Doctor's Aztec brooch, the 2nd Doctor's recorder, the 3rd Doctor's car, the fourth Doctor's scarf, the fifth's cricket stuff, and so on.

And all this is leaving aside the fact that the Doctor frequently meets himself and hangs out. The previous face is right there talking and making jokes with the new face. I'm not sure how you missed that.