| Sithdarth |
08-20-2008 02:34 AM |
You know the more I think about this episode the more I loath it and all it stands for. Seriously I can list at least three things off the top of my head that make it utterly stupid. Ok a little bit of a side track here but stay with me. I'm all for techno-babble as an explanation. However, there is a very distinct line and the writers of Eureka crossed it in this episode. Then the went back and pissed on it until it burst into unholy flames pulled from the very bowels of hell. This line I am referring too is when you take your supposedly realistic scientific show and instead of exploiting the unknown edges of science you instead trample all over established science. This would be where the list comes in:
1) Ultra-Indigo Light. The entire concept itself is stupid. No light would have those properties and the only way light gets close to being black is by not being very intense. Seriously people quantumly speaking the simple act of light bouncing off you can't tag your particles so they move forward in time while the universe shoots backwards. In fact it violates some well established laws about quantum physics that makes things like salt crystals that don't implode into neutron stars possible. I'm not even going to go into how its name suggests this light is somehow between UV and X-rays and how the thought of that giving it properties different than any other light is just idiotic. Especially since light of that wavelength would be naturally produced by the sun (and every other cosmic source of light) as well as wielding, Tanning beds, TVs, and anything else that emits X-rays other than old CRT TVs.
2) Slowing down a photon does not have that effect at all. Hell we've done it more then enough times to know that doesn't happen. It definitely wouldn't cause any sort of chain reaction. Mostly because photons don't goddamn interact with each other. They pass through each other and can temporarily cancel each other but both emerge from the encounter completely unchanged. There are well established theories about doing what the writers wanted (sort of) using the specific materials the writers used without inventing all this crap. It was at first what I thought they were referring too and why I initially accepted the idea. To my dismay they then proceeded to totally biff the whole concept and trample all over some very basic first year college stuff.
3) The EPR thing is not the be all and end of of time travel. In fact, its both basically the worst way to time travel and wasn't even thought of initially as a method of time travel. Its about wormholes made between blackholes and how they could be used to travel across distances in space and eventually time. This episode had no wormholes and no blackholes rendering any reference to it absolutely meaningless. It was dropped into the conversation on some sort of hope that it would lend credibility. Unfortunately its horrible misuse did nothing but underscore how horribly this episode trampled on established science. Not to mention Hawking Radiation and String Theory (should String Theory prove out) punch pretty giant holes in the concept at all.
4) The whole new atomic clock thing was oh so stupid. I mean seriously powered by "unstable plutonium neutrons"? If you are going to use words damn well do some basic research on what they mean. Research like how neutrons are never unstable and if they where it would mean the end of all things. That and how a neutron from one element is not ever nor could ever be different from a neutron from another element. A neutron is a neutron and there could exists particles that behave something like neutrons but they would be different in mass and such than normal neutrons. This would make them highly unstable and they would maybe last nanoseconds if one were lucky and never become part of a nucleus big enough to be called plutonium. That and how Stark seemed to start to suggest that while stable plutonium neutrons would split while being used as power somehow unstable ones wouldn't despite being unstable. I'm not entirely sure how one powers something directly with subatomic particles with no charge either. I mean you could collect beta minus decay, ie electrons, but that would be a bit inefficient. Generally you use the heat of decay to create steam or power a thermocouple. Basically the whole idea once again flies in the face of some pretty basic stuff.
5) The whole deleting from timespace thing while not directly contradicting established science, seeing as we can't test that just yet, did run counter to some theories. Mostly dealing with the quantum realm where such things have been known to happen. That is to say we know time can run backwards for brief spurts especially when dealing with quantum stuff and the universe doesn't care. That and despite time being very linear and one directional for us nothing in the laws of physics anywhere at all ever suggests that forward is the preferred or only possible direction for time. Indeed the universe doesn't seem to care at all what the hell time does. The problems are mostly in our head and as far as physics can determine at the moment causality problems would simply be confusing as all hell and not actually be harmful in anyway to the universe itself.
Huh I guess that was more than 3. That's probably because like I said the more I think about this episode and pull on the threads the more it unravels into the poorly written mass of crap that it is. On the bright side the actors or so amazingly great that I totally don't even care and would watch the episode again. Well that and the writers know their comedy well and they write the character interactions very very well. Enough to support the show on those merits alone. I just wish for the love of all that is good and holy they would hire someone with at least a bachelors, preferably a masters, in each field of science they want to dabble in. You don't set out to write a realistic crime drama without talking to police, district attorney, ect consultants. (At least not if you want to keep an audience now a days.) I just ask the same courtesy be given to other professions when trying to write a semi-realistic drama about them. There are dramatizations that still go on in these shows around how the characters act and such. However, they rarely if ever completely and utterly ignore something like needing a warrant. Well in this case it would be like a cop doing a search without probable cause and no warrant and the defense not objecting and the Judge totally ignoring it. Not to mention the defendant not bringing it up at all and everyone just acting like its supposed to happen like this anyway. Thus, ends a very long rant.
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