Outcasts science fail
Mar. 15th, 2011 02:02 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beccaelizabethI don't usually bother complaining about bad science in TV science fiction. But sometimes it's really mind bogglingly stupid. So: Outcasts. Already it had horrible dialogue and characterisation and pacing and, well, everything. But then it decided that the planetary overmind existed in ultrasonic sound. And, okay, whatever, not what I would have picked, but it's a planetary overmind, it's not like there's science there. But then there was a big dramatic plot confrontation because one side wanted to use an ultrasonic shield to block the signal and the other said that would block their communication with a spaceship. In space. Which is the big empty.
In space no one can hear you scream, even ultrasonically.
Ultrasonics absolutely cannot be used to communicate with spaceships.
It's not difficult. It's really very basic physics there. So it's physics fail on a new and mind boggling level.
Oh, also? That was the last episode. I didn't even know. Usually a last episode should have some zing to it, tie things up or do a cliffhanger. This was zingless. There's a ship about to land but that's not a cliffhanger for between seasons, that's just a next episode thing. It's like they set up the story and then oh dear out of time oops.
And when I say set up the story I mean only did anything remotely interesting in the last episode or two. I think it's a failure of non-SF writers not understanding how fast you can set up the SF. You could do the whole season in two hours easy, and then have some world built and run with the story. Some of it would be best held until quite late - I knew someone would turn out to be an AC but I'd not thought who, you can keep that back. But the early episodes just had 'there's a planet. with humans on. isn't it planet-y?' And you can easily go 'there's a planet with humans, clones they don't think of as human, and some kind of spooky overmind thing going on' and then do stories with it. The slow made it really rubbish, lost all the viewers before there was anything interesting for them to watch. The first episode was particularly bad, nothing it set up was remotely interesting or relevant for later, it spent the whole hour on characters who died by the end of it. It seems likely the writers were going for character focused stories, building up their regulars, but that only works if, er, it's any good at all.
I'm not wound up about this one, just kind of depressed. Because you know people will point at this and go 'science fiction doesn't work on the TV', when really the problem is bad writing doesn't work on the TV. You can set up any kind of implausibility in the world, but the characters have to be solid. They're what we're there for, they keep us week to week, they're the whole appeal. Engaging, plausible, rounded characters bring us to a story. If you break that and just give pretty pictures then you lose your audience every time. Movies can get away with it because they're a watch once proposition; television needs people. Good dialogue makes people. Miss that and the series goes splat, no matter what genre.
In space no one can hear you scream, even ultrasonically.
Ultrasonics absolutely cannot be used to communicate with spaceships.
It's not difficult. It's really very basic physics there. So it's physics fail on a new and mind boggling level.
Oh, also? That was the last episode. I didn't even know. Usually a last episode should have some zing to it, tie things up or do a cliffhanger. This was zingless. There's a ship about to land but that's not a cliffhanger for between seasons, that's just a next episode thing. It's like they set up the story and then oh dear out of time oops.
And when I say set up the story I mean only did anything remotely interesting in the last episode or two. I think it's a failure of non-SF writers not understanding how fast you can set up the SF. You could do the whole season in two hours easy, and then have some world built and run with the story. Some of it would be best held until quite late - I knew someone would turn out to be an AC but I'd not thought who, you can keep that back. But the early episodes just had 'there's a planet. with humans on. isn't it planet-y?' And you can easily go 'there's a planet with humans, clones they don't think of as human, and some kind of spooky overmind thing going on' and then do stories with it. The slow made it really rubbish, lost all the viewers before there was anything interesting for them to watch. The first episode was particularly bad, nothing it set up was remotely interesting or relevant for later, it spent the whole hour on characters who died by the end of it. It seems likely the writers were going for character focused stories, building up their regulars, but that only works if, er, it's any good at all.
I'm not wound up about this one, just kind of depressed. Because you know people will point at this and go 'science fiction doesn't work on the TV', when really the problem is bad writing doesn't work on the TV. You can set up any kind of implausibility in the world, but the characters have to be solid. They're what we're there for, they keep us week to week, they're the whole appeal. Engaging, plausible, rounded characters bring us to a story. If you break that and just give pretty pictures then you lose your audience every time. Movies can get away with it because they're a watch once proposition; television needs people. Good dialogue makes people. Miss that and the series goes splat, no matter what genre.