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Author Topic: Nitpicks that Ruined Movies  (Read 137814 times)

Scoops Novel

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Re: Nitpicks that Ruined Movies
« Reply #375 on: January 21, 2013, 05:00:36 pm »

Let me explain. (Doctor Who 10ebber10) Ever noticed how much of the doctor who universe has http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/RubberForeheadAliens? This has been explained in-universe by the work of a xenocidal time lord who manipulated reality to make all races as alike to them as possible. In the episode where the doctor dies by the hand of the invisible astronaut, where told that aliens would rip the world apart for his DNA. Finally, we have two humans give birth to a time-lord in the form of river after sufficient exposure to time travel. By all rights, a race that can do that should have every member either burned, conscripted or being researched. It doesn't help that people like the captain have arisen, along with countless other examples of molded humans. It's not beyond the capabilities of the doctors enemies to actually be efficient, as we nearly saw in the pandorica. They should have simply destroyed the entire sector long since. So that leaves us with the question as to why humans are still alive. The obvious one would be that something, someone, or everything may need time lords eventually, and are keeping humans in reserve. It would also explain why they've been allowed to positively teem across the galaxy in later years. As to why they're allowing invasions, i don't know. Thoughts?
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misko27

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Re: Nitpicks that Ruined Movies
« Reply #376 on: January 21, 2013, 05:08:05 pm »

That's the same excuse Star Trek uses.
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Neonivek

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Re: Nitpicks that Ruined Movies
« Reply #377 on: January 21, 2013, 05:10:42 pm »

The time lords when they were around were FAR supperior to all other races bar a few. To the extent that the statement that the Daleks were the Timelords Rivals is rediculous.

The issue is that, well, just up and destroying earth would just make the doctor angry. As well there are many galactic treaties that prevent such.

As well there is an impression that it is harder to outright wipe out a planet then you would think. Even the most advanced and warlike races had to spend months or even years planning to take them out (and still failed).
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Scoops Novel

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Re: Nitpicks that Ruined Movies
« Reply #378 on: January 21, 2013, 05:21:01 pm »

I'd like them to flesh it out. Steven Moffat has worked wonders with Sherlock, and if that means he has to let Doctor Who gather a young audience, so be it, but if not come on!

That's it though, bar a few. Those few likely would not appreciate the threat. Seconding that, they're still trying aren't they? Though we have seemed to moved up in class recently. I doubt that they're not prepared to accept massive casualties from a berserk doctor in exchange for stopping the time-lords from returning. On top of that, they also have time travel. The doctor might not like it, but they could and would have plenty of reason to kill them, looking at the time wars.
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Starver

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Re: Nitpicks that Ruined Movies
« Reply #379 on: January 21, 2013, 05:24:36 pm »

Ninjaed four times, FYI.  Will read these later, but need to reboot my computer right now.

For the first part, I guess The Avengers[/Avengers Assemble, for us in the UK].

The second seems to be some Doctor Who bit of canon that I either don't recognise, or have not seen yet.


Terracentrism is often a concern.  When it comes to DC/Marvel Universe stuff I usually imagine that (like with the Green Lantern Corps) there's a lot of other places and times that have planet-threatening battles with other bits of the universe/other universes, but (unless there's a guest human) we rarely get to see a set of macro-scale amoeboid superheroes saving their particular planet from their particular brand of threatening enemies.  Or, of course, if we're the threatening enemies.


(As for the Doctor... well, prior to the "Big Bang 2" reboot, we'd (presumably, but not assuredly) lost all other Mark I time lords, give or take The Master (again!), given how slippery he generally is.  DoctorDonna could be considered a Mk2, but isn't the same any more.  Of course there's Jennie, who I imagine is still out there somewhere, even post BB2, and friends and enemies alike may have been rebooted by the restorative field.  I've absolutely no idea what the latest arc concerning Clara's ongoing existence might have to do with this, until April's continuation of this current series.  Personally, I think the Doctor is fed up of Time Lords.)
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Neonivek

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Re: Nitpicks that Ruined Movies
« Reply #380 on: January 21, 2013, 05:26:21 pm »

Well not really most of the races couldn't care less about earth... they just somehow keep end up involving it.

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I doubt that they're not prepared to accept massive casualties from a berserk doctor in exchange for stopping the time-lords from returning.

Yeah here is kinda the thing. No one is more feared then the Doctor. He has bluffed entire armies and has managed to genocide entire alien species.

An Enraged doctor would be unstoppable and every single member of your race would be absolutely dead!

--

I still want to know how the Timewar went though.

There are so many timelords who should still be alive... yet they havn't explained why they would be dead.
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Scoops Novel

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Re: Nitpicks that Ruined Movies
« Reply #381 on: January 21, 2013, 05:36:50 pm »

You have one doctor, or seven billion. Your choice.
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Neonivek

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Re: Nitpicks that Ruined Movies
« Reply #382 on: January 21, 2013, 05:37:33 pm »

You have one doctor, or ten billion. Your choice.

Only the doctor involved himself with other species. Otherwise the Timelords existed forever (or never at all)
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Scoops Novel

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Re: Nitpicks that Ruined Movies
« Reply #383 on: January 21, 2013, 05:42:47 pm »

Nope. The time lords were just usually more subtle. My point is no species worth a second time war. On the other hand, apparently in older canon there are other races identical to humans, to the point of being the doctors companions. They may have been socially identically or not, or retconned out. Which raises the question whether the doctor has similar ties to their well being. Then again, his recent companions have been from earth, and he doesn't seem to fix everything on a planet in one visit.
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Neonivek

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Re: Nitpicks that Ruined Movies
« Reply #384 on: January 21, 2013, 05:48:04 pm »

No, aliens who look exactly like humans still exist.

I know they explained the human looking aliens in the future away (Humans mated with aliens), but for the past I cannot remember.
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Starver

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Re: Nitpicks that Ruined Movies
« Reply #385 on: January 21, 2013, 07:13:07 pm »

Double-post...  Or rather the following one was, but I was still mid-edit and suffering 504s/abortive previews, and the inadvertent follow-up is more complete/better edited.
« Last Edit: January 21, 2013, 07:47:54 pm by Starver »
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Starver

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Re: Nitpicks that Ruined Movies
« Reply #386 on: January 21, 2013, 07:44:54 pm »

the invisible astronaut
"the Impossible astronaut", do you mean?

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told that aliens would rip the world apart for his DNA
OTOH, this could have been a ruse (at least when there was a ruse, if it was ever real "first time round") to conceal the trickery involved.

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two humans give birth to a time-lord in the form of river after sufficient exposure to time travel
Two humans conceived one, maybe...  Only one actually gave birth. ;)  I think that the Hitler episode effectively puts paid to there being a 'proper' new-TimeLord(/Lady), although there could have been.  (i.e. something Jennie-like to have happened after the Library episode.)

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It doesn't help that people like the captain have arisen, along with countless other examples of molded humans.
Molded? If you mean time-travelling, like Jack, that's... I think... not proper Time Lord tech, the wristband.  The Daleks stole timetech from the TimeLords though, back in the early days, so I can't state that for sure.

(Something I've accidentally snipped about the enemies not being efficient.)
The enemies can be efficient, until the Doctor 'happens'.  (Or the Tardis.  There's sufficient evidence to suggest that she is the subconscious Sam Beckett (or whatever his "God, Fate, or whatever" is, from Quantum Leap) of the whole shooting match, or at least sufficiently so to ensure that key things happen (Volcano Day) and, when key things do not, that they get made to happen, regardless of the Doctor's intent ("Waters of Mars", was it?).)  They are indeed apparently 'better' at besting the Doctor when allied, but even then they are imperfect.  (First of all, getting their reasoning wrong.  Secondly, not being able to out-manoeuvre someone who knows how to get a time-loop paradox to work the way it should.  (On the whole, other Time Lords we could mention (the Monk and the Master, among them) tend to try and fight time, but the Doctor does best when he makes the flow work...  Although he's said (Eighth Doctor audio episodes) that he used to be a Meddling Monk.

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So that leaves us with the question as to why humans are still alive.
It may vary, especially during the time of Gallifrey's (benign?) overseeing of universal affairs, but in Eleventh Doctor times "Basically... Run!" is the message given to anyone from the rest of the universe who thinks they might otherwise interfere.  #10 tried to convey the same sort of message with the Sycorax, although whether the humans turned out to be their own worst enemy is something we could discuss.

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why they've been allowed to positively teem across the galaxy in later years
That's humans for you "marvellous, wonderful humans!", to paraphrase an often gleeful Doctor (of various regenerations).  He might admire other life-forms ("oooh, you're a work of art, you are...") but it seems Humans are his absolute favourite.  And although a distinct rubber-face regularity seems to be a part of the ostensibly non-human residents, there's quite a few more Monsters Of The Week that (even prior to the reboot series, Doctors 9+) aren't strictly anthropomorphic than you find in Trek... Although admittedly quite a few are bipedal with a recognisable body-plan and their own particular variation on a visage, and only one major 'Monster' race really departs from that idiom.  (But have done ever since episode 2 in 1963!  If you ignore the Manhattan episode...)


We could talk about Red Dwarf, you know.  Absolutely no Aliens.  Which might or might not explain why most non-human (never-human, like the Cat; human-inspired like various mechanoids; human-offshoots like the Gelfs).  Actually, what's the Despair Squid?  Originally a Terran squid but evolved, or an actual non-Terran life-form?  But that's the only example I can immediately think of that might be non-Terran in origin (and, in most of the cases that are Terran, Human-arisen as well).

But then Red Dwarf is an empty universe.  Of course there'd be no aliens in a Red Dwarf universe, and generally only humans/human-derived... because it appears there's only the one cradle of life.  Compared with this, it's easier to find fault with Trek/Who/Babylon 5 or even Blake's 7 (ostensibly a human-only universe, like RD, except there's notably the race that built the Liberator).  Farscape tries to do a decent job (helped by Jim Henson) but falls into the trap of rubber-facedness, augmented by rubber-bodiedness and Yoda-like implementations.  The Andromadean 'Maggog' are furry-suits (could be worse, could be better), although mostly it's Human Expansion again (Nietzscheans being human origin, although Perseids appear to not be, and Trance is... well).

The book of Battlefield Earth works with truly alien Aliens.  Travolta/whoever took the concept of them and made them prothseticalised human actors though (to get him a part?). And, talking of 'Aliens', the Promethean tale explains humans by a form of panspermia (sanctioned/intended, or otherwise) towards our race.

Although the original Alien series (while heavy on the vaguely anthropomorphic body-plan, which also meshes with the Predator series, especially where these two merge) seems to go by the "life is rare, and disconnected, but heads towards the two-arms-two-legs-and-a-head bodyplan" principle.  At least for the space-faring races (which is humans and Predators, if discounting the prometheans), with the attack/breeding/working form of the Aliens themselves either being accidentally so similar or due to influence by their being plucked out of their original homeworld (where they were nothing special, and barely scraping by) to become the sport of the Predators/whoever.  I'm not entirely familiar with the extended Alien canon, so I may have forgotten/ignored something that was brought up in a comic series or elsewhere...

I've recommended them before, and I'll recommend them again, though, if you like books...  Jack Cohen and Ian Stewart (or vice-versa) wrote "Wheelers" and "Heaven" (or vice-versa, but that way round is as good a way as any to read the largely disconnected books that probably have a non-implied timeline connection in that direction).


I think my conclusion (if I have any) is that it's easier to assume human (or humanoid) prevalence across the universe for live-action fictions, not just lazier.  Although that also extends to most animations (including CGI) too, except when it's a specific case of a "space whale" or "space amoeba" or "space wasp".  And whilst the likes of Autobots are justified in copying earth-forms for their 'disguises', anthropomorphic tendencies exist in their core forms, too.  When it comes to literature, you're not technically stuck with the same conventions, so long as you can convey what you mean on paper.  But you have to be dedicated (c.f. Jack'n'Ian, above) to persevere with a believable non-standard bodyform rather than saying "a being taller than a human with a baby-like face" or "like a robotic space-pterodactyl".  If you can get away with it by not showing the aliens directly, or having any appearance of an alien be in the form of their choosing that is acceptable to the human observer (2001, Contact), perhaps that 'helps'.  But horses (or equinoid equivalents) for courses...


(To respond to yet another ninjaing... An interesting "not-a-human human" in Doctor Who is Adric.  A resident of parallel E-Space.  Of course, parallel universe, parallel development, right?  For a lot of pre-history human-like civilisations I actually rather assume that there's far-future humans that get adrift in time and space.  Which is probably lazy of me.  And I forgot to mention the Silurians, who obviously arose from the same prehistoric body-plan (thus had the potential to be humanoid), albeit that was the currently extant reptilian line, which makes it curious how so alike us they turned out given that mammals, let alone monkeys, apes and then hominids, had yet to come to prominence.  Although, IIRC, originally they were three-eyed, and not either the aquaticly-adapted variant of The Sea Devils nor the lithe Homo Reptilia of the currently repeated incarnations (Hungry Earth, A Good Man..., the Dinosaurs on a Spaceship" ones and the recent Christmas thing).)

((Oh yes, and any Timelord (other than the Doc' or the Mast') that is potentially still alive was obviously on Gallifrey at the time of that Planet's Time-Locking, which means they're either still trapped, or the events of The End Of Time were such that having failed to break out of the trap they no longer exist.  Of course, since Big Bang 2 and after the big time mashup that the wedding of River Song was supposed to sort out, they could now exist/not-exist/never-have-existed/whatever...  hard to say.))


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inteuniso

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Re: Nitpicks that Ruined Movies
« Reply #387 on: January 22, 2013, 01:16:52 am »

This isn't real life.
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Neonivek

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Re: Nitpicks that Ruined Movies
« Reply #388 on: January 22, 2013, 01:28:09 am »

This isn't real life.

Hardly matters, it not reflecting real life logic can be a pretty big deal breaker for some people.

Heck Jack Black getting away with his HORRIFICALLY DEVILISH PLOT in School of Rock could just be explained that "It isn't real life, obviously he getting in trouble would go against the point of the movie which is that Jack Black is amazing and we needed to appreciate him more... ohh and the kids... who are just foils for Jack Black". Yet I cannot stand that movie, it angers me everytime.

Jack should have got some jail time for that or at LEAST a fine. I had a fake teacher for a single day and he got arrested and his wife got her teaching license revoked.

What he did was morally irreprehensible and would have actually cost the school a lot of money in insurance fees.
« Last Edit: January 22, 2013, 01:32:31 am by Neonivek »
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Sergius

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Re: Nitpicks that Ruined Movies
« Reply #389 on: January 22, 2013, 09:31:12 am »

Although the original Alien series (while heavy on the vaguely anthropomorphic body-plan, which also meshes with the Predator series, especially where these two merge) seems to go by the "life is rare, and disconnected, but heads towards the two-arms-two-legs-and-a-head bodyplan" principle.  At least for the space-faring races (which is humans and Predators, if discounting the prometheans), with the attack/breeding/working form of the Aliens themselves either being accidentally so similar or due to influence by their being plucked out of their original homeworld (where they were nothing special, and barely scraping by) to become the sport of the Predators/whoever.  I'm not entirely familiar with the extended Alien canon, so I may have forgotten/ignored something that was brought up in a comic series or elsewhere...

I think the basic explanation of Xenomorph (the aliens in Aliens) appearance is that they somewhat resemble whatever species they chestbursted from, mostly the physique while retaining the Giger-ness of the creature.
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