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.
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.
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.
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.
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
I must just note that while I can kinds sorta see your other points, the idea that the personal timestream rule is in any way a major issue with Who puzzles me. Not only does it support storytelling but it's never felt to me like an inherently stupid time travel principle. Surely there could be any number of sensible time paradox reasons?
Indeed in 'Mawdryn Undead' during the original series there was an idea that if you touched an earlier version of yourself Very Bad Things would happen. I can't remeber what, but I'm sure it was at least as bad as crossing the streams in Ghostbusters. :-)
Remind me why the Doctor didn't need to ask Donna what year she'd come from, again?
I noticed that too, and was absolutely certain that it (and the fact that Donna didn't know about the Sycorax invasion and the battle of Canary Wharf) was going to turn out to be a plot point - that the Doctor had arrived at Christmas 2004 or earlier, and that the episode was going to end with him getting a glimpse of Rose before he'd met her.
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.
In this episode it actually got to be sonic. That has to count for something.
Thinking therapeutically, maybe the Doctor's next companion should be Sonic the Hedgehog. Then we could gradually reduce his reliance on the screwdriver.
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?
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.
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
The problem for me comes when people are prepared to say "it's alien, it's OK" about, for example, space travel, time travel, regeneration, the sonic screwdriver, Knowing Stuff, all that kind of jazz, but not "the hole doesn't leak magma" and the like. It seems to be a inconsistent demand for realism in the show just to make a point that certain aspects aren't realistic, presumably in order to demonstrate that the show doesn't meet some arbitrary requirements that it's not even addressing.
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?
Exactly. I'm really not quite sure why so many people seem to have such a problem with 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?
Yeah that was very odd. Like you say, the fact that they managed to force feed Lance enough stuff at the end kinda threw the whole "slow poisoning over six months" thing for a curve. And that kind of inconsistency *is* annoying.
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?
The Empress expositioned while they were force-feeding Lance: the slow Donna experiment had established the correct "dose" and now they could do it to anyone quickly.
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?
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.
I actually don't think that Doctor Who is contemptuous of SF. It doesn't give SF that much thought! It doesn't regard itself as SF any more than Buffy does, and if any of its writers says otherwise then they clearly think Lost in Space is also SF.
I think that parma_violets is focusing on small niggles in this quote. I personally disagree that phrases like "The Dark Times" are poor; they serve the same purpose here as in Buffy, and very effectively sketch a kind of Pulp Scientific Romance kind of history. I also disagree that a throwaway gag like the weather device needs sensible technobabble. There are dozens of ways he could have done it, and it has no bearing whatsoever on the story. Likewise the age of the Earth being wrong (I can't actually remember the figure used in the episode) makes no difference to the plot and, hey, maybe the Doctor misspoke. All of these examples seem to me pretty trivial.
I agree more with your comments about magical plot devices. It's just that it doesn't seem inherently crazy to me - in the context of the DW universe - that powerful alien SUPERSCIENCE could drill a really stupidly deep hole to the centre of the Earth which did not spew magma (hell, the Daleks did exactly this in the original series). This is stupid science and a plotting convenience but hardly a magical deus ex machina because it sets up the problem rather than solving it.
And having set up the problem - a really stupidly deep hole with aliens at the bottom - what exactly is so illogical or inconsistent about flooding the aliens at the bottom using the previously established river overhead? Or using the previously established remote controlled bombs to do it?
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.
And I'm still not seeing why scientific realism is important for some of those things, but not others.
Stories are emotionally satisfying because they play out situations to a conclusion.
Well, no. Stories are emotionally satisfying because of their emotional content. They're narratively satisfying because they play out to a reasonable conclusion. But I think that's difference of opinion is fairly symptomatic of the different ways we approach both stories and life in general :-p
As for what parma_violets says, well, frankly I couldn't give a good goddamn if the show doesn't take sci-fi concepts seriously; not do I care what genre it's "supposed" to be a part of, so that argument doesn't really hold for me. And if that's also your argument, then maybe you understand why I've had such a time trying to work out why the science behind the hole to the centre of the earth matters so much - because to me it really, really doesn't.
Didn't the story get the formation of the Earth correct to within a hundred million years or so? I'm pretty sure the Doctor said it was 4.6 billion years ago, which is pretty close to the accepted age of 4.55 billion years. I don't know where this idea about hundreds of trillions of years came from.
Also, I thought "Dark Times" was supposed to be understood literally rather than metaphorically: the time before the first stars began to burn. But I've only watched the episode once and I was partially distracted throughout.
Also, I think "Arachnos" was first draft. By the second draft they had become "Racnoss", clearly a substantial step forward in sophistication.
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.
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Date: 2006-12-26 02:44 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-12-26 02:53 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-12-26 03:31 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-12-26 03:49 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-12-26 04:59 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-12-26 05:05 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-12-26 05:12 pm (UTC)But I also refer the honourable gentleman to my point of last night - plot convenience; shush.
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Date: 2006-12-26 06:03 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-12-26 06:22 pm (UTC)Indeed in 'Mawdryn Undead' during the original series there was an idea that if you touched an earlier version of yourself Very Bad Things would happen. I can't remeber what, but I'm sure it was at least as bad as crossing the streams in Ghostbusters. :-)
(no subject)
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Date: 2006-12-26 08:23 pm (UTC)I noticed that too, and was absolutely certain that it (and the fact that Donna didn't know about the Sycorax invasion and the battle of Canary Wharf) was going to turn out to be a plot point - that the Doctor had arrived at Christmas 2004 or earlier, and that the episode was going to end with him getting a glimpse of Rose before he'd met her.
(no subject)
From:no subject
Date: 2006-12-26 11:53 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-12-27 01:18 am (UTC)Thinking therapeutically, maybe the Doctor's next companion should be Sonic the Hedgehog. Then we could gradually reduce his reliance on the screwdriver.
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Date: 2006-12-26 05:20 pm (UTC)And why, if you dislike it so, do you keep on watching the show?
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Date: 2006-12-26 06:09 pm (UTC)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 wizardan 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.
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Date: 2006-12-26 06:39 pm (UTC)The problem for me comes when people are prepared to say "it's alien, it's OK" about, for example, space travel, time travel, regeneration, the sonic screwdriver, Knowing Stuff, all that kind of jazz, but not "the hole doesn't leak magma" and the like. It seems to be a inconsistent demand for realism in the show just to make a point that certain aspects aren't realistic, presumably in order to demonstrate that the show doesn't meet some arbitrary requirements that it's not even addressing.
Well
a wizardan 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?Exactly. I'm really not quite sure why so many people seem to have such a problem with 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?
Yeah that was very odd. Like you say, the fact that they managed to force feed Lance enough stuff at the end kinda threw the whole "slow poisoning over six months" thing for a curve. And that kind of inconsistency *is* annoying.
(no subject)
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Date: 2006-12-28 10:49 pm (UTC)The Empress expositioned while they were force-feeding Lance: the slow Donna experiment had established the correct "dose" and now they could do it to anyone quickly.
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Date: 2006-12-26 06:19 pm (UTC)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.
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.
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Date: 2006-12-26 06:39 pm (UTC)I think that
I agree more with your comments about magical plot devices. It's just that it doesn't seem inherently crazy to me - in the context of the DW universe - that powerful alien SUPERSCIENCE could drill a really stupidly deep hole to the centre of the Earth which did not spew magma (hell, the Daleks did exactly this in the original series). This is stupid science and a plotting convenience but hardly a magical deus ex machina because it sets up the problem rather than solving it.
And having set up the problem - a really stupidly deep hole with aliens at the bottom - what exactly is so illogical or inconsistent about flooding the aliens at the bottom using the previously established river overhead? Or using the previously established remote controlled bombs to do it?
(no subject)
From:no subject
Date: 2006-12-26 07:00 pm (UTC)And I'm still not seeing why scientific realism is important for some of those things, but not others.
Stories are emotionally satisfying because they play out situations to a conclusion.
Well, no. Stories are emotionally satisfying because of their emotional content. They're narratively satisfying because they play out to a reasonable conclusion. But I think that's difference of opinion is fairly symptomatic of the different ways we approach both stories and life in general :-p
As for what
(no subject)
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Date: 2006-12-26 11:25 pm (UTC)Also, I thought "Dark Times" was supposed to be understood literally rather than metaphorically: the time before the first stars began to burn. But I've only watched the episode once and I was partially distracted throughout.
Also, I think "Arachnos" was first draft. By the second draft they had become "Racnoss", clearly a substantial step forward in sophistication.
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Date: 2006-12-26 07:22 pm (UTC)Dang. I agree with you about Doctor Who. I should go and watch "Father's Day" to restore the natural order of things.
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Date: 2006-12-26 10:53 pm (UTC)Also, the centre of the Earth is clearly not full of magma as it's full of giant alien spider spaceship instead.
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Date: 2006-12-26 10:55 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-12-26 11:02 pm (UTC)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.
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Date: 2006-12-26 07:07 pm (UTC)