It’s driving me crazy that the TNG officer has the TOS phaser, and the 10th Doctor has the 11th’s screwdriver.
That’s also Ben solo with Anakin Skywalker’s saber.
Yeah, I thought that looked wrong, but I couldn’t tell for sure which lightsaber that was, and I wasn’t even 100% that was supposed to be a picture of Kylo Ren, so I just stuck to what I was sure of.
Diplomacy usually comes before the pew pew for Trek and the sonic moves the scene along without solving the problem in its entirety for The Doctor.
I fell out of love with Doctor Who when I realized all the sci-fi bits were complete made-up bullshit. Kinda the same reason I don’t much care for Star Wars.
Star Trek is at least plausible if far-fetched, and Stargate actually tries to make the technobabble compatible with theoretical physics, which is a major reason I’ve come to adore it.
And I came to hate the writing of Doctor Who because it has the same problem as BBC’s Sherlock (which makes sense as they shared showrunners and writing staff): they make the main character seem clever by figuring out the mystery before the viewer, but only because they deliberately hide or obfuscate key details until they’re ready for the big reveal. So the solution feels less like a brilliant show of deduction and more like a batshit insane ex Machina.
Star Wars just isn’t sci-fi. Its technology should be treated the same way one treats magic in a fantasy story. Because that’s what it is: a fantasy story. It’s just space fantasy, rather than the more typical mediaeval or urban fantasy genres.
Sherlock Holmes is kinda meant to be that way. It’s not the BBC version’s fault, that’s just faithful adaptation. Sherlock isn’t meant to be a mystery series in the style of an Agatha Christie novel. It’s more of a character study of a character so different from normal people. It’s ok not to like Sherlock Holmes or adaptations of it (gods know…there’s plenty of criticism out there for the BBC adaptation), but if you dislike it because it breaks Knox’s rules of detective fiction, that’s because you went into it with entirely the wrong expectations, rather than because it’s poor storytelling.
To be fair, I’ve never read any of the original Arthur Conan Doyle novels so I’ll take your word on it. I’ve heard that he famously hated the character of Sherlock Holmes and didn’t understand why people found him so fascinating, to the point of trying to kill him off just so he could move on. So I can see the angle there.
But the thing about BBC Sherlock is, it’s presented as a classic mystery story. They show Sherlock gathering clues, they give you some peeks into his thought process and what catches his attention, as if to say, “you should be paying attention too, this is potentially really important!”
Then later they go, “actually, the solution all hinges on this thing we just now revealed and that you couldn’t have possibly predicted. Hope you enjoyed being taken for a ride, dipshit!”
And it’s not really enjoyable to re-watch, knowing the solution and trying to spot the clues and foreshadowing; because in the end, what little foreshadowed there was adds up to fuck-all.
I’m on my Nth re-watch of House, which is really interesting by comparison because it was inspired by the same real-life person that was the inspiration for Sherlock. In spite of any other criticism that it deserves, I think it actually handles this aspect pretty well.
The viewer isn’t supposed to actually understand the medicine, but the resolution of the case almost always leans on something that was mentioned by the patient, or just shown in passing, during the first act. Knowing the solution actually makes it more fun to re-watch, because you can spot exactly when this happens, and it’s brilliant.
it was inspired by the same real-life person that was the inspiration for Sherlock
Wait really? I always thought it was just directly inspired by Sherlock Holmes himself.
I guess I was remembering something someone wrote on Reddit.
House has a ton of Sherlock Holmes references throughout, it was definitely the primary inspiration. But they also make a couple references to the surgeon Joseph Bell, the original inspiration for Sherlock.
Christie deliberately breaks Knox’s rules, and for that matter, Willard Huntington Wright’s Twenty Rules usually seeing them as a challenge of how to include such features without alienating the reader. In some cases, for instance, the culprit is the maid or butler, but the character is well established before she is outed. In other cases, there are secret passages, or even affairs of state that might or might not figure into the mystery.
I’m not familiar with Wright’s. I’ll have to go look it up.
But yes, absolutely. I think that Knox’s rules are actually even less rules and more guidelines than many other writing “rules”, such as Chekhov’s gun, are. And even those are only guidelines. Basically all of Knox’s rules were specific examples of popular tropes at the time, where the real underlying issue was “don’t make a mystery story where the solution is impossible to figure out even in hindsight by throwing in what is essential a deus ex machina”.
Wright’s pen name was S. S. Van Dine ( on Wikipedia ), a mystery writer himself when he posited his rules and (allegedly) obeyed them in his own stories.
Find the list here
This is FN P90, the most bisexual of all hand-held weapons, erasure, and I will not stand for it.
Stargate is one word, it’s bothering me a perhaps unreasonable amount.
Chapa I
Dja far!
I still argue the sonic screwdriver opening doors is more elegant than the lightsaber. Usually after the fact, the door can be closed and locked again.
C4 is the most elegant way of opening doors out of the four… there is no door, doorframe, or wall left after usage. You’ve kinetically remodeled the room!
When in doubt… C4
“Explosive placed!”
All of these could be attempted to be built by someone clever enough to use geometry to manipulate energy.
An example is how benzene is a special organic molecule that stores a high amount of energy.
Go away, bot
The name’s Theo Mulraney and I don’t think I’m a robot. I think I’m a mathematical philosopher; therefore I am. Lol
All of these < Farscape < Babylon 5 < Cleopatra 2525
Cleopatra 2525 is the greatest!
How have I never heard of this before
Don’t beat yourself up for what you didn’t know in the past. Rather, use what you’ve learned to propel you into the future…
All the way to the year 2525!
Pretty much undisputable.
cries in Zat’nik’tel
The snake scepter thingies the Goa’uld use are basically those
Did you just refer to a goa’uld staff weapon as a snake sceptre?
Snek stik pew pew
