|
Post by charlesuirdhein on Mar 30, 2017 20:36:12 GMT
My answer is yes. I'm a bit sick to the teeth of explanations that involve "imagine a vast tesseract floating in a binary non-space, well it's nothing like that but if that helps you then feel free", to the sonic effectively be magic. Now, I'm happy for there to be things that are unexplainable, allowing for the Arthur C Clarke premise that sufficiently advanced science would be nigh indistinguishable from magic but...can we at least attempt some science first? Basically, modern Who needs its version of Kit Pedlar and company, and while you might not have liked the film something like "Interstellar" (and watch the science extras on it if at all possible) are fascinating in themselves and could easily be referenced in Who (even without the budget). Hell, BF themselves do it! Just listen to "The Cold Equations" as an example.
|
|
|
Post by mark687 on Mar 30, 2017 20:49:22 GMT
Absolutely not!
Give me believable character or story motivations before believable science in Science Fiction or we'll end up with Kill the Moon style debates forever more, you can inject some in where appropriate but it shouldn't be rigorously applied.
Regards
mark687
|
|
Deleted
Deleted Member
Likes:
|
Post by Deleted on Mar 30, 2017 21:00:17 GMT
No. But it should be science fiction, not a fairy story
|
|
|
Post by charlesuirdhein on Mar 30, 2017 21:04:23 GMT
No. But it should be science fiction, not a fairy story That's a much better summary than mine to be fair. But Science Fiction starts from science, not fantasy.
|
|
|
Post by charlesuirdhein on Mar 30, 2017 21:09:22 GMT
Absolutely not! Give me believable character or story motivations before believable science in Science Fiction or we'll end up with Kill the Moon style debates forever more, you can inject some in where appropriate but it shouldn't be rigorously applied. Regards mark687 Believable characters and story motivations are not somehow anti-science. In fact heading straight for fairy tale endings can kill those things outright. Nine shouting that just today everyone lives and using the nanogenes is good science fiction, it's explained, it's reasonably logical, and it aids the story. This works. More of that line of thought. Science is amazing, extrapolating it for Sci fi is too.
|
|
|
Post by mark687 on Mar 30, 2017 21:23:56 GMT
Absolutely not! Give me believable character or story motivations before believable science in Science Fiction or we'll end up with Kill the Moon style debates forever more, you can inject some in where appropriate but it shouldn't be rigorously applied. Regards mark687 Believable characters and story motivations are not somehow anti-science. In fact heading straight for fairy tale endings can kill those things outright. Nine shouting that just today everyone lives and using the nanogenes is good science fiction, it's explained, it's reasonably logical, and it aids the story. This works. More of that line of thought. Science is amazing, extrapolating it for Sci fi is too. Well nano-genes were a proper example I agree .
Other then Kill the Moon which blew up out of all proportion can you think of an example in the post 2005 show for thinking why didn't they try basing this in science?
(I'm genuinely curious not trying to be awkward)
Regards
mark687
|
|
|
Post by sherlock on Mar 30, 2017 22:55:45 GMT
Think the whole real-science debate was resolved when they introduced a bigger-on-the-inside police box.
But more seriously, grounding it in real science is nice and can lead to very effective stories, and it would be nice to see it utilised more, but if real science is in the way of a good story-then ditch science. Certainly writers' ideas shouldn't be constrained by the need to explain everything within real science
|
|
|
Post by kimalysong on Mar 30, 2017 23:15:22 GMT
I don't really mind about the science but have to say one of my favorite commentaries was watching two NASA scientists tear Water of Mars apart. It was pretty hilarious.
|
|
|
Post by charlesuirdhein on Mar 31, 2017 0:08:12 GMT
Look, I'm not asking for it to be Apollo 13! TARDIS dimensions actually make sense, in a superscience way, dimensions nested inside each other, physicists have posited such a thing, but ...Ugh...moon egg does not because it's actually nonsense.
|
|
|
Post by Sir Wearer of Hats on Mar 31, 2017 0:39:15 GMT
Nope, the Doctor is the epitome of Clarke's Law. So why shouldn't the Sonic Screwdriver be a bit of a magic wand?
|
|
|
Post by charlesuirdhein on Mar 31, 2017 0:57:26 GMT
Nope, the Doctor is the epitome of Clarke's Law. So why shouldn't the Sonic Screwdriver be a bit of a magic wand? Except he is only that when someone hasn't worked out their plot. The last actually clever use i saw of the sonic was in Day of the Doctor, the rest is get out of jail free cards and hand waving away difficulty. Moffat took it away from him in The Eleventh Hour and look at the difference! The story benefits. And I'm not even advocating removing it, just if you're the smartest man in the room show us. Magicians aren't smart, they're deceptive, entirely different thing.
|
|
Deleted
Deleted Member
Likes:
|
Post by Deleted on Mar 31, 2017 1:50:21 GMT
Yes, and no. Who has at times, depending on who is the showrunner/script editor and who is the writer been very science-oriented...then the next week it couldn't care less. It's done hard sci-fi and it's done fairytale whimsy and no other show manages to do both and yet be completely true to the show's identity at the same time. I like the dichotomy. Other shows have a narrower purview and a smaller scope by default since they don;t have all of time and space to play with. I think Charles is perhaps right that we don't need false science when perfectly good science does exist but...I dunno. I'd rather writer concentrate on story, plot, characterisation and the fundamentals of storytelling than taking a cold, Bidmead like approach to getting the theories and applications down pat. If they have the knowledge and want to inject science, fine, but it's not a priority for me. I should add I'm a tad hypocritical...well, more than a tad. As a History graduate I don't like any glaring inaccuracies on screen in depicting the past when even rudimentary research would do so I guess if someone else had my passion for history but for science instead...they'd be as flummoxed with what they see sometimes. I'll be the first to admit science was not my best subject at school. While it's mentioned above; I've got zero issue with most of the sonic "overuse". With 45 minutes in New Who rather than 100 minutes on average in the classic series, I don't need to see minute obstacles such as locked doors or computer terminals taking up any more time than neccessary when we know the Doc will get through such trivialities, sonic or not. Rather impishly, I adore the sonic shades from Series 9. They, to me, just showed the silliness of the whole thing, that we accept a screwdriver can do all these wacky thing but sunglasses get fans up in arms. The change only serves to highlight the jabberwocky that is inherent to the sonic. Wonderful, beautiful iconoclasm from Moffat.
|
|
|
Post by elkawho on Mar 31, 2017 3:13:18 GMT
I don't mind running a little fast and loose with the science, and I do appreciate the sonic at times. Especially when I have to endure the 5th and 6th Doctors trying to figure out how to open a door (and in BF, adding the perfunctory, "I need to remember to make another sonic screwdriver sometime.") However Eleven's use of it as a magic wand became so completely non-sensical and tiresome for me. How many times do we have to see him open it, wave it around like a madman and then look at it as if it was really going to tell him something? When did the screwdriver become a tricorder? Especially since it doesn't have a screen? I kind of lost it in The Impossible Astronaut/The Day Of The Moon when it seemed like lasers were shooting out of it.
But in terms of the original thread question, I don't mind a story with hard science or one with a little of the fantasy as long as either doesn't get overdone at the expense of the story, or of the ability for that story to be believable in that world.
|
|
Deleted
Deleted Member
Likes:
|
Post by Deleted on Mar 31, 2017 5:32:56 GMT
No. But it should be science fiction, not a fairy story That's a much better summary than mine to be fair. But Science Fiction starts from science, not fantasy. Starts from science, but is not bound by it. Thats how I like my sci fi.
|
|
|
Post by ulyssessarcher on Mar 31, 2017 7:37:14 GMT
Well, this'll start a firestorm but wont be my first time.
It's easier to believe in God than some of the fantasy of Doctor Who, especially the new series. That sonic screwdriver can do everything unless it cant, and one week it can, next it cant. Guess the screwdriver had to much timey whimey to be reliable.
I prefer a good story, but if you start thinking bout the science too much, you're screwed. These are writers writing the story, not scientists. When you add in the fact, that the more we learn about science, the more we also unlearn, it gets far to big to tell a decent story without some gobbleddy goop explanation, on how things went this way or that way.
Main part of Doctor Who is that it's fiction, science or otherwise, it's still just fiction. And I really don't want scientists writing my Doctor Who stories, there's enough bad writers doing that already, cause the best ones do a lot of work at BF.
|
|
|
Post by charlesuirdhein on Mar 31, 2017 9:51:27 GMT
I think people are missing my point. The point is the show doesn't have any scientific rigor and it should have some, not that it rigidly adhere to all known laws of physics such as no FTL or time travel etc, but the use of imaginary science should be logically explicable if we buy into the mcguffin behind it. So as per examples earlier, nano genes good, moon egg bad.
I don't need to know the science behind gangers because that's not the point of the story, we just assume it works, like our existing tech. But when you start explaining stuff then at least be consistent.
|
|
Deleted
Deleted Member
Likes:
|
Post by Deleted on Mar 31, 2017 9:55:19 GMT
Ah, the great question of soft science fiction vs. hard science fiction and the myriad of differing interpretations in between. The Mohs Scale is really good here:
Science may be perceived as limiting but consider this... In the field known as physics there is classical, modern, applied, experimental, theoretical, computational, atomic, condensed matter, mechanics, molecular, nuclear, particle, plasma, quantum field theory, quantum mechanics, special relativity, general relativity, rheology, string theory, and thermodynamics. Those are merely one subset of the physical sciences, which are again, just one of seven other fields ranging from the formal to the philosophical. There's a lot there. Everything from archaeology to psychology.
I love the idea of the awe-inspiring cylinder of Rama from the series of the same name, the construction linking Moloch and Belial in Lucifer Rising, the flower-shaped array of the Citadel from Mass Effect and that is just the environments. The people themselves can range from the bizarre Guild Navigators of Dune to the intriguing androgynous figures of The Left Hand of Darkness. I enjoy my starships, alien worlds, time travel, galactic empires, questioning humanity's worth and all. I forget whoever said it, I think it was Asimov, but science fiction exists in two halves -- you have the science and the fiction. One inspires the other through speculation and in real life, the reverse has been seen as well. We now have a medical tricorder that can be used in third world countries for diagnoses and there is now wi-fi in more countries than there are running water.
Why don't we have stories about the Ungreening of the world and efforts to seed the clouds with crystals that will cause rain? Why don't we explore how frightened a scientist would be to hear an android ask "Are you okay?" Why don't we have a story or two in a China where vertical farming has transformed it into an airtight New Babylon? Why not see what a planet wrapt up in a bio-augmented apartheid would look like? Why not use all these concepts and their implications -- both theoretical and practical -- to challenge and explore who we are? After all, that's precisely how we got the Daleks. They were speculations about what kind of society could arise from a world that had been ravaged by atomic mutilation. Fanciful, true, but no less relevant.
Doctor Who shouldn't be constrained by the tenants of real world science -- whether it be biological, physical or chemical -- because they're changing daily, but there is a vast ocean of possibilities that are being ignored by not picking up a copy of New Scientist and seeing what has been invented this week. You want an idea for a story? Look at what we're accomplishing right now all over the world. Look at the sciences. All of them. And see where your imagination will take you.
|
|
Deleted
Deleted Member
Likes:
|
Post by Deleted on Mar 31, 2017 9:56:48 GMT
nano genes good, moon egg bad. Moon egg bad around Earth. Moon egg good if it was another planet. That would have more or less fixed the issue, it was just a bit of loose thinking.
|
|
|
Post by charlesuirdhein on Mar 31, 2017 10:11:07 GMT
nano genes good, moon egg bad. Moon egg bad around Earth. Moon egg good if it was another planet. That would have more or less fixed the issue, it was just a bit of loose thinking. Well still nonsense but less so, because we know a reasonable amount about our moon and it ain't an egg...And that wasn't the worst bit.
|
|
Deleted
Deleted Member
Likes:
|
Post by Deleted on Mar 31, 2017 10:11:40 GMT
Believable characters and story motivations are not somehow anti-science. In fact heading straight for fairy tale endings can kill those things outright. Nine shouting that just today everyone lives and using the nanogenes is good science fiction, it's explained, it's reasonably logical, and it aids the story. This works. More of that line of thought. Science is amazing, extrapolating it for Sci fi is too. Well nano-genes were a proper example I agree .
Other then Kill the Moon which blew up out of all proportion can you think of an example in the post 2005 show for thinking why didn't they try basing this in science?
(I'm genuinely curious not trying to be awkward)
Regards
mark687
Lets tow the Earth home? Universe 2.0 rebooted from one girl's memory
|
|