Snap Judgement

[coalescent]

[Poll #895040]

Comments

[veggiesu.livejournal.com]

the Thames filling a hole drilled to the centre of the Earth

Several people have mentioned this so I'm starting to wonder if I just missed the bit where they said that the Thames *filled* the hole. Surely the point was just to drown the itsy-bitsy spiders? Which presumably happened, given all the screaming. Why would the hole need to be filled to achieve that?

[coalescent.livejournal.com]

Well, if the hole is filled I can allow myself to handwave away the fact that London presumably isn't now buried under several thousand tonnes of magma. Otherwise, not so much.

[dalmeny]

I got seriously worried about the water turning to steam and causing a St Helens-type explosive eruption and pyroclastic flow.

And then I remembered I was watching Dr Who.

[veggiesu.livejournal.com]

But if that was going to happen, presumably it would have happened the moment the hole was drilled. Which it didn't.

[coalescent.livejournal.com]

You know, pointing out more dumb things about that element of the plot is not the best route to making me like it more. :p

I can accept a certain amount of impossibility for the sake of the plot. Hole to the centre of the Earth: ok. But beyond a certain point, you can't keep dodging the consequences of the impossibilities you introduce with yet more impossibilities, because it just makes the story meaningless. If we know that every situation is going to be solved by some impossible method, why should we care about any situation? Hence, solving the problem by pouring the Thames down the hole to the centre of the Earth: much less ok. (Inventing a magic form of energy that has exactly the properties required by the plot, also a bit annoying.)

[veggiesu.livejournal.com]

You know, pointing out more dumb things about that element of the plot is not the best route to making me like it more. :p

Even I'm not daft enough to try to make you like it more (why do you bother watching it at all - it's not really your cup of tea, is it?); I was just pointing out that sometimes you have to go with the plot they're giving you, or just give up completely. There's no point trying to fanwank the fact that the Thames cooled the magma and that's why London isn't buried, when there's apparently no magma to cool.

So either you sit there yelling at bad physics and geology and so on, or you just accept it and get on with enjoying the show about a time-travelling alien saving the planet from space-spider people-eaters.

[secritcrush.livejournal.com]

you just accept it and get on with enjoying the show about a time-travelling alien saving the planet from space-spider people-eaters.

I haven't seen it yet, but that sounds all kinds of awesome.

[despotliz.livejournal.com]

Unfortunately it's not half as awesome as that sounds, but it does include David Tennant being both wet and angsty at the same time.

[secritcrush.livejournal.com]

it does include David Tennant being both wet and angsty at the same time.

*\o/*

[veggiesu.livejournal.com]

*sigh* Remind me just to let Iain do the explaining for me in future :-)

[coalescent.livejournal.com]

But my point was that it isn't a problem that Who routinely violates scientific plausibility -- the problem is that this episode did it so excessively and clumsily that it ended up violating the principles of good storytelling.

[veggiesu.livejournal.com]

So, the hole to the centre of the earth not covering London is magma that they used in this one episode is less plausible science than the bigger-on-the-inside phone box that can traverse time and space that they use in every single episode? OK then.

[coalescent.livejournal.com]

Again, that's not my point. My point is Mark Twain's point: "The personages of a tale shall confine themselves to possibilities and let miracles alone; or, if they venture a miracle, the author must so plausibly set it forth as to make it look possible and reasonable." That's why Who has the arbitrary rule about not being able to enter peoples' timestreams more than once -- it's not because it's somehow a bridge too far in plausibility terms, it's that it's essential to preserve the ability to tell a coherent story. In "The Runaway Bride", RTD didn't follow that guide -- he just kept on introducing more miracles to deal with the consequences of his earlier miracles. Which makes it very hard to care about anything that's happening.

[pikelet.livejournal.com]

And yet you, Liz, et al all bitched incessantly about the personal-timestream thing in the Gitface too, which suggests what we've known all along - you Just Can't Let Things Go.

[coalescent.livejournal.com]

Well, I think there's a difference between offhand references to the timestream in an episode like "The Runaway Bride", and an entire episode that almost goes out of its way to draw attention to how flimsy the "can't re-enter the timestream" justification actually is. But that may just be me. Remind me why the Doctor didn't need to ask Donna what year she'd come from, again? :p

[pikelet.livejournal.com]

He knew she'd only transported spatially, because she was glowing yellow? :p

But I also refer the honourable gentleman to my point of last night - plot convenience; shush.

[despotliz.livejournal.com]

Hey! I'm not complaining about the hole to the centre of the earth - it's stupid, but I have learnt to let go and stop expecting RTD to produce anything good. I just wish he'd stop using the sonic screwdriver quite so much.

[veggiesu.livejournal.com]

Right, so, what is it about science as we understand it that makes a space-travelling timelord, and billions of years old spider people possible, but a non-magma-spewing hole to the centre of the earth "miraculous"?

And why, if you dislike it so, do you keep on watching the show?

[iainjclark.livejournal.com]

Well I see Niall's point in that in SF (assuming for a second that DW bears more than a passing resemblance to the stuff) you're traditionally allowed one magical macguffin and everything else has to be logical, or you end up in a freeform fantasy setting where nothing in the story is logical and therefore nothing has meaning or consequences.

However the point of this Christmas special was clearly the emotional stuff and the spectacle and the pace, not the detailed story logic. Torchwood tunnelled under the Thames Barrier. Why? Look, it's just the kind of ting that top secret organisations do from time to time. I'm happy with that. There's a whole to the Earth's core and no magma. Why? Well a wizard an alien did it, and they must have made sure there was no magma spewing up using sekrit alien technology or that wouldn't have been very much use to them, would it?

What did slightly bother me was the stupidity of the plot to force-feed Donna alien particles through a boyfriend over a six month period and not just kidnap someone random. Plus it seemed very easy to do the same to her fiancee in mere minutes at the end - so why did they even need her? (I think I missed some handwave from the spider queen about something having been perfected). That kind of thing niggles me more. The mad super-science not so much.

[coalescent.livejournal.com]

I feel like I'm saying the same thing over and over again.

There is no difference in terms of inherent plausibility. The difference is the position those things occupy in the story. Time travel is the premise of the show, the miracle you buy to get to the story; the hole is a plot device for this episode, a miracle you allow for the sake of this story; and the resolution of the hole, the Thames swirling down it, is an authorial convenience. Stories are emotionally satisfying because they play out situations to a conclusion. If the conclusion can be whisked out of a magic hat by the writer at the last moment, as it was in this episode, with no consistency with what has gone before, why should I care about the rest of the story?

Maybe someone else's words will be clearer.

I've established before that I'd never want Doctor Who to become Asimov-style hard sci-fi, but at the same time it has to take its sci-fi concepts seriously, even if they are only a varnish for the horror and adventure ideas underneath. Unfortunately, the science fiction in 'The Runaway Bride' isn't just dismissive, it's actively contemptuous of the genre it's meant to be a part of. Russell getting the creation of the Earth wrong by several hundred trillion years is one symptom, but the thinly-imagined jargon used to explain the Doctor's weather device, among others, is a thumb in the audience's eye. "The Dark Times"? "Arachnos"? These things may as well come with a note saying "GOOD FOR FIRST DRAFT - MIGHT WANT TO THINK OF SOMETHING BETTER FOR THE SECOND PASS".

And why, if you dislike it so, do you keep on watching the show?

Because the flaws are of execution, not inherent to the concept.

[grahamsleight.livejournal.com]

the problem is that this episode did it so excessively and clumsily that it ended up violating the principles of good storytelling.

Dang. I agree with you about Doctor Who. I should go and watch "Father's Day" to restore the natural order of things.

[sharp-blue.livejournal.com]

Haven't you ever heard of force fields?

Also, the centre of the Earth is clearly not full of magma as it's full of giant alien spider spaceship instead.

[coalescent.livejournal.com]

Ah! These would be the same forcefields that kept the air from leaking through the ventilation grids in "The Satan Pit", yes? :)

[sharp-blue.livejournal.com]

Yes, I think so. It's unfortunate that a side-effect of force field technology is to scramble neurons so much that, for example, bystanders think that merely pointing guns rather than, say, firing bullets at high speed from them is the way to stop menacing telepathic aliens.

I wonder how long it would take a planet to turn inside-out if you used force fields to hold open the walls of a shaft to the core and then unstoppered it.

[iainjclark.livejournal.com]

We really must get that contract hammered out. ;-)