Unimatrix Two

The Science of Doctor Who: s01e07, “The Long Game”

It’s the year 200,000, and the Doctor, Rose, and Adam arrive on an Earth-orbiting space platform that has somehow become inhabited completely by the mid-21st century. Well, that’s not quite the plot, but it’s a sin that current sci-fi TV keeps committing over and over. Fashion, food, and entertainment are all exactly as we might expect them to be a decade or two from now, and while the plotline suggests that Earth’s cultural development’s been held back, this is a bit much.

Can’t I have just a little space fashion, space food, and holographic display tablets? I know it may come off as a bit silly, but silly beats lazy any day on Doctor Who. (Okay, “kronkburgers” are mentioned, and are an in-joke from old Doctor Who comic strips. So maybe the food is a *bit* futuristic, but the burger stand hasn’t changed in 198,000 years.)

Moving on past that, some people on Satellite 5 have dataports for high-speed super-broadband wireless data streaming directly into their brains. Sure, that’s very cyberpunk and an integral plot point; I don’t have any problem with that. However, to add “ew, ick!” factor for the eight-year-olds, they made the dataports into little doors that open up directly to the surface of the brain. Immediately, I started thinking “Well, there’s a fatal infection just aching to happen.”  And why bother, given that there appears to be no hardware installed in the brain itself? You should be able to find an electromagnetic frequency that would pass through skin and bone well enough. While the transmission shows a visible beam, that would have to be a side effect: if the information is carried on visible light pulses, the brain tissue itself would block them. Brains aren’t transparent.

Now we head up to Floor 500, where we discover that the satellite is owned by a giant slug shark, managed by New Scotty, and operated by frozen zombies. Oh, dear, zombies again. Let me quote myself from “The Unquiet Dead”: “centuries of embalming technology has blinded modern humans to one fact: dead bodies decay. Shortly after death, various chemical processes in a body are no longer inhibited or controlled; it doesn’t take long at all before eyes are useless for seeing, internal organs are useless for digesting food, brain tissue cannot carry electrical charges, and muscles will no longer flex and pull.” And let me tell you that freezing the dead tissue doesn’t make it any better at doing any of these things.

Frost-encrusted dead people should have been about as useful to the operations of Satellite 5 as a frozen pack of convenience-store beef jerky, and about the same consistency, but as a culture we just can’t seem to get rid of our zombies, can we? Wouldn’t it have made just as much sense, and in fact be a delicious irony, for the Satellite operators to be alive and mind-controlled though the very dataports they were so eager to have installed?

Oh, and Adam is kind of a weasel, isn’t he? Of course, he was written that way in “Dalek”, so fair enough.

Next: an episode that will have repeated repercussions for Rose Tyler.

30-Day Cosplay Challenge – Day 1: Your First Cosplay

I don’t have any trouble at all remembering my first costume. I can’t tell you exactly how old I was, though I know I’d have been at least five years old. I suspect I was closer to seven or eight at the time; there was a friend of mine who lived probably three or four blocks away – a long walk when I was that age – and he was just as crazy about Star Trek as I was. He insisted that I always be Mr. Spock in our little innocent role-playing, and eventually my mom agreed to make the costume for me.

I don’t think she made the blue shirt, though I might be wrong about that – she was certainly good enough to do it. I can’t remember clearly if she put the black collar on it – I originally thought not, but upon further reflection she might have done so after all. I do remember she found exactly the right gold braid for the sleeve rank, and made sure it matched the Commander’s pattern in my treasured Starfleet Technical Manual. (I still have that, by the way, almost four decades later.) I think she hand-embroidered the department arrowhead symbol on the front – she did so again later for a Scotty shirt. I appreciate that so much now looking back!

Of course, I outgrew it soon enough. I was active enough as a child that I’d have worn it out if I hadn’t outgrown it. There aren’t any pictures that I know of, which is a darn shame. But that shirt meant so much to me, and my lifelong love for costumes and cosplay began back then. Thanks again, Mom.

The Science of Doctor Who: s01e06, “Dalek”

Remember these? It’s only been a gap of nearly three years, after all, hardly a blink in the overall scheme of space and time and universes. And while my focus will remain on the science issues of the scripts, there’s likely to be commentary on plot elements too. There’s simply too much to talk about as new Who evolves. So lets talk about one of the best episodes of the Ninth Doctor, and probably the best Dalek episode since 1963.

The Dalek itself doesn’t pose too many science problems. It’s a mobile armored life-support unit for the Kaled mutant inside, and while some of the construction materials and power sources might be a little implausible, there’s nothing especially offensive there. However, I would like to know how the Dalek regenerates itself simply by “extrapolating the DNA of a time traveler”. I’m willing to accept that there’s a cloud of strange energy following time travelers around because of their exposure to the Time Vortex and the energies powering the TARDIS. I have more trouble that a simple touch from Rose could provide the Dalek’s nanomachines (of course it’s nanomachines, right?) with enough energy and raw materials to repair all the visible damage. Just how much time-zap do Rose and the Doctor carry around, anyway?

“The Dalek’s downloading the Internet!” Well, that’s great. But here’s how the Internet works: There are a bunch of files on a computer somewhere which make a game or a web page. Your computer sends a request from your home connection, to your Internet provider, to the big telecommunications networks, to the other computer’s provider, to its connection, and finally to that computer, which sends you the file(s) back over a similar path. Each part of that path can only send so much data so fast, so it doesn’t matter if your computer and your connection can download the Internet in an hour unless all the other parts of the path can.

And, well, even if super-rich guy has the special private uber-connection into the big telecoms, it doesn’t help. You still are limited by the capabilities of the local networks and computers from which you are downloading. So, sorry… no downloading the Internet in an hour, even if you are a Dalek. (And by the way, they’s why the “I own the Internet” line makes no sense whatsoever. Own all the big telecom companies? Well… maybe. Maybe. He sure as hell doesn’t own all the ISPs and the computers attached to them. Sorry, big guy.)

Oh, and could someone tell van Statten that we’ve invented all sorts of machines even in real 2005 that can scan someone’s biology without causing them excruciating pain? X-Rays, MRIs, tomography machines… van Statten’s clearly a bit of an idiot who doesn’t care how much he’s damaging the thing he’s “studying”. Hell, if he took proper care “studying” his specimens, he’d probably have learned so much that he really would own the planet.

And speaking of which, what sort of idiot kills people on a whim if they fail to amuse him? He’s a monster, and it’s played for a giggle but is really not funny. The guy’s lucky one of his own men hasn’t shot him in desperation by now if he’s been making a habit of this. And don’t tell me van Statten isn’t really having them killed: if your memory’s been wiped clean, your body may still be alive, but you are gone. You are never coming back. He’s a murderer on a whim, and I can’t say I’m sorry he gets the same done to him. (Yes, that means that Bail Organa and Owen Lars are also cold-blooded murderers, and no I’m not kidding.)

Still this is a great episode. Rarely has a Dalek been this terrifying; we can see that stairs really don’t bother them; and as someone said, this is the episode where a Time Lord acts like a Dalek, a Dalek acts like a human, and a human acts like a Time Lord. Some excellent acting all round, and this is one of my favorites. See you soon for “The Long Game”.

February: A Con Odyssey

Just did Farpoint in Baltimore, and MystiCon in Roanoke back to back. Both cons are five hours away from my home. Pro tip: don’t do this.

Farpoint was the second stop for Luna-C, so as usual I spent most of the weekend preparing for the performance in one way or another. Of course, I simultaneously love live performing from the depths of my soul and it triggers my anxieties as only a job interview can, so it’s both relief and regret when the show is done. Regret must win, though, since I’m always eager for the next show. We premiered my “Lonely Villain” skit which I think is quite funny; and I got to play Scotty again, which has been one of my lifelong dreams.

I also premiered the My Little Pony “Twilight Sparkle” costume at Farpoint, and I must say it was a pretty big hit. I’ve known since the fandom took off that I would need an MLP costume before long, so of course I had to do it in my own special fashion.

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