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 Vulcan wrote:

epronovost wrote:
In the 1999 Mummy movie (the one with Brendan Fraser). Imhotep is shown to be buried alive with a bunch of flesh eating scarabs. He even clawed at his sarcophagus when burried alive. Yet, one of the main plot of the movie is him...running after his organs. How the hell was he alive without all his organs? If they removed the organs later, how did they survived the ravenous flesh eating scarabs?

Magic, I suppose. I was entertained enough to not worry about it.

How dare you ruin the Mummy for me...

 Dysartes wrote:
Well, unless the two companions reappear, or they do a spin-off (which I think is unlikely), there's no reason for it to matter, is there?

Well, its a Chekov's Gun situation. Narratively, there isn't any reason to do it unless it does contribute to a reappearance (or a plot point- ie someone kidnaps them or steals the papers). But the current Who writers are... not all that together with narrative structure (or interesting plots), so I can see them just handing out story seeds and never addressing it.

Sometimes in a series, you have to litter the place with story seeds just IN CASE you want to pick them up somewhere later. Series do not have to be as self-contained narratively as a play or one-off.

If you do not scatter seeds, you can easily write yourself into a corner. We have seen it on many other serialized TV shows.

I'm well aware. My point, for the third time, is that I don't think these writers are aware of that.

Voss wrote:
I'm well aware. My point, for the third time, is that I don't think these writers are aware of that.

I have not watched a Dr. Who since they stopped going to Netflix after Clara and Astrid storyline wrapped up. So, you may well be right!

Snowpiercer.

Honestly a world where cold is the real enemy so they build a long thin train that will lose heat terrible due to it's shape and surface/volume ration, and lose it even faster due to moving rapidly thru air, and use energy to move the train instead of just converting it to heat?

Yeah, i heard the 'rational" of a perpetual motion engine which anyone with a 6th grade understanding of science would reject, and got that it was all about keeping the 99% down but saying the train was the only liveable spot on earth.

I get the movie was a slam on the 1% dominating and enslaving the 99%, but the plot is just too ridiculous for me to even try watching it.

 Matt Swain wrote:
Snowpiercer.

Honestly a world where cold is the real enemy so they build a long thin train that will lose heat terrible due to it's shape and surface/volume ration, and lose it even faster due to moving rapidly thru air, and use energy to move the train instead of just converting it to heat?

Yeah, i heard the 'rational" of a perpetual motion engine which anyone with a 6th grade understanding of science would reject, and got that it was all about keeping the 99% down but saying the train was the only liveable spot on earth.

I get the movie was a slam on the 1% dominating and enslaving the 99%, but the plot is just too ridiculous for me to even try watching it.

The irony of the plot is that with some very minor adjustment it could have taken place in a bunker or some sort of dome without much problem.

I personnaly was concerned about the fact that the track system would et damaged pretty quick without anbody to repair it and, even worse the idea that trains needs to pass through a lot of dangerous unstable zones like mountain ranges prone to avalanches instead of making a roundabout some plains without much geological activies or danger.

The train is a lie...

Or given its a allegorical fairy tale the practical or otherwise doesn't matter as it's just a stand in for the world

My biggest nitpick was how Ms Swinton somehow based her character on Pauline from League of Gentlemen and nobody in the production noticed, bless her, most likely mismatched, socks

Neither movie nor TV show. But a pooter game.

Fallout 4 (possibly the others which I’ve not played).

Look. I get it. The devastation of Nuclear war is severe. Yet, certain skills and knowledge are largely eternal.

So how come in the 210 years since the bombs fell, nobody, literally nobody has properly got their poop together?

I mean, I can see Diamond City and it’s contemporaries being setup at their in-game scale within a few decades.

But centuries?. Pull the other one.

And how come outside of a single vault in a single DLC, there’s no option to turn the various vaults you find into settlements??

too risky?

once a vault is know it will attract all sorts of scavengers and local kingpins who might hesitate to attack a normal settlement (too risky, they've just got what we have)

but a vault with all that tech/slaves/energy and other riches that might be worth a major battle (after all if the settlement gets too strong they'll come after us anyway, better to fight them now)

Couple other reasons too.
The Vaults are, by and large, designed to fail.
They're laboratories, not viable long-term habitats. In many, resources are designed to run out, and there they aren't set up with manufacturing, raw materials or even in some cases, accessible supplies of food and water once equipment start to break down.
VaultTech are monsters

As for no one getting their poop together, that's a central premise of the setting. Things fall apart, the center cannot hold.

Voss wrote:
As for no one getting their poop together, that's a central premise of the setting. Things fall apart, the center cannot hold.

That's actually a premise of the entire post-apocalyptic genre. It explores a world in which humans have, for some reason, completely forgot how or lost the instinct to live in society. Just like wizards, it doesn't make any sense, but it has to be accepted for the genre to work.

GI Joe. Sinking ice.

epronovost wrote:

Voss wrote:
As for no one getting their poop together, that's a central premise of the setting. Things fall apart, the center cannot hold.

That's actually a premise of the entire post-apocalyptic genre. It explores a world in which humans have, for some reason, completely forgot how or lost the instinct to live in society. Just like wizards, it doesn't make any sense, but it has to be accepted for the genre to work.

It makes too much sense, actually. The genre is very grounded in real and rational fears about society and crises.
You can trace those fears back centuries, if not longer, and the struggles and failures of people to put things back together only to have it all fall apart again give those fear validation.

How can an x wing fighter have 4 very large engines in relation to it's total size and cannot easily outrun a tie fighter with two tiny in relation to its total size engines on it?





Note on the tie fighter the two tiny red lights are the engines, not the hole between them.

We don’t really know how Star Wars thrust technology works. Perhaps the X-wing’s engine housings are outbound for redundancy and ease of maintenance while the TIE fighter’s engines are integral to the ship and thus more efficient...even if it costs as much to repair a TIE as it would to scrap and replace it.

TIEs are much smaller by volume, so the difference in mass might account for that.

Since most fights happen near moons, planets or amidst hugh jass capital ships, perhaps we are not seeing a difference in capability so much as a difference in doctrine. We know X-Wings can accelerate from a Jovian moon’s surface to space and then around the gas giant in an incredibly short time frame. We never see this kind of linear-ish acceleration during combat.

That is, if those cylinders in front of the 4 X-wing exhausts are even related to the engines at all. We just assume that they work as a unit because they look like our primitive jet engines. For all we know they are heat radiators or hyperdrive components or part of the S-foil system. And by comparison, the TIE appears to have larger radiator/S-foil space.

Good points there bob.

The X-Wing miniature game actually handles this fairly well. A TIE Fighter is only moderately faster in a straight line than an X-Wing (shown by having a 5-straight move on its dial) while the X-Wing can "Boost" at the cost of combat efficiency to technically be faster overall. Also, the TIE is more nimble and manoeuvrable than the X-Wing, which makes the X-Wing seem "slower" and more cumbersome.

And also "space magic" and "reasons"

And differences in Engine Types.

X-Wings of course pack a hyperdrive. TIE Fighters typically do not (though Kylo’s return to Exegol seems to suggest at least some did). So the larger engine may well be part of that design logic.

X-Wings are apparently kitted out with four ‘fusial thrust’ engines, TIE of course have Twin Ion Engines. What’s the difference? I honestly don’t know myself. Maybe Ion engines are more advanced. Consider the difference in scale between modern petrol engines and steam engines. Larger does not mean better!

 Matt Swain wrote:
How can an x wing fighter have 4 very large engines in relation to it's total size and cannot easily outrun a tie fighter with two tiny in relation to its total size engines on it?

Probably in much the same way a sports motorcycle can out-accelerate a muscle car.

Ok, some good points on the TIE vs x wing issue.

I suppose one could also postulate that a TIEs engines are hypercharged and burn out fairly often, mandating regular replacement, but that's ok as the empire has the industrial base to treat their fighters like disposable lighters. (Pilots too) whereas other forces had to maintain their fighters.

The nazi jet fighter the Me-262 had an issue with its engines failing regularly due to excess power and needing frequent replacement, which limited their use thankfully. There was a soviet jet fighter that could attain extreme speed but generally needed it's engines survived or replace afterwards, so there is some historical precedent for this idea.

It's also worth remembering a lot of those combat scenes were inspired by WWII fighter footage, and the speed vs. maneuverability reflects the corsair vs. zero situation in the Pacific.

In the empire strike back, the rebels had a forcefield that could protect their base from "any bombardment" a super star destroyer, like, what, 6-8 regular star destroyers and their massed force of fighters could inflict, but they could not put a shield around their generator to stop the ATATs from destroying it?

 Matt Swain wrote:
In the empire strike back, the rebels had a forcefield that could protect their base from "any bombardment" a super star destroyer, like, what, 6-8 regular star destroyers and their massed force of fighters could inflict, but they could not put a shield around their generator to stop the ATATs from destroying it?

It was a planetary shield generator, just like the ones we see in operation in Rogue One. But instead of having enough to cover Hoth entirely, they only had one and therefore could only protect a relatively small area.

As I understand it, it projects a dome above the atmosphere, but that shield loses strength rapidly in atmosphere. With proper overlap of coverage this isn't a problem. So it becomes possible to get around a single, isolated generator by going around and then under it. Which is what the Empire did.

And the Rebels knew that was what the Empire would do, so they had set up their base in such a way that the Empire had to attack along a predictable route, which then allowed the Rebels to evacuate their forces in the other direction.

Ok, i guess that is why they stunned the one sd covering that vector with the ion cannon so they could get away in that direction.

Still it seems odd they couldn't put a shield over their generators that would block the shots from that walker.

Maybe i should quit picking on star wars, but i just can't help thinking it odd that the original death star had within its gigantic bulk just enough TIE fighters to more or less evenly engage the 30 or so rebel fighters launched from Yavin 4. As it seemed to be at the end there didn't appear to be any TIEs left, vaders advanced prototype was knocked off into space and away from the DS and like 3-4 rebel ships managed to get back to Yavin, implying the DS had just enough fighters in it's massive volume to engage about 30 enemy fighters.

Maybe Solo picked off some on his way to help luke. There seemed to be none left around the DS or pursuing the withdrawing rebel forces.

I know i know, plot. Just like how solo could have vaped vader but instead shot his wingman even tho vader was the only one firing on luke. Looking at it tactically i'm surprised solo didn't target vader, especially as from above his fighter likely had a larger target aspect. But vader had his plot armor, or maybe this was an early draft of the 'look out sir!" rule...

The TIE fighter thing actually is kind of covered in the movies dialogue (and is expanded upon in the EU materials).

Tarkin was *so* incredibly arrogant that he straight up refuses to launch the TIE Fighters under his command. He wants to prove the Death Star is invulnerable just by itself without needing help from anyone.

Then (explained by EU), ultimately the only TIE Fighters that launch are Black Squadron, the ones under Vaders direct personal command, as his bodyguard escort. So only like 12 TIE Fighters launch in the fight.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Raiders of the Lost Ark.

Opening scenes.

Indy gets the treasure, having lost two assistants of dubious moral virtue. Flees to the sea plane.

The two seater sea plane.

How about the Fact that Indiana Jones slept with an underage girl. The female lead was supposed to be in her late 20's, it's stated that he had previously seduced her, and it has been over 15 years since they last saw each other.

Yeah, the 'it was wrong and you knew it (I was a child!)' conversation is incredibly fethed up. I don't know why its in there.

Someone clearly decided that he needed a reason to be estranged from his old mentor (that we never see, as he's dead), but she could have easily been an appropriate age, and he decided not to marry her or left her at the altar or something. That would have created the same rift, but... you know, not made him monstrous in a way that's extra creepy because no one cares.

Its something of a terrible tribute to 1981 (and the 30s/40s) that it gets glossed over as not a big deal.

It doesn't help that this was an actual problem in early archaeology (and honestly never entirely stopped), with grad students and professors seducing high school and college students on digs. At a job some years back, while going through archival records for a site in New Mexico, we came across the journal and notes for an archaeologist in the 1930s. It included a recipe for an an alcoholic beverage that he had dubbed the 'Pants-sneaker' (ie, for getting into pants), and he recorded his expenses in paying for day labor among the local native american tribe- the bottles of whiskey he bought them in lieu of paying in cash. Classy, classy guy.

I could have been ligit (if skeezy) depending on where it happened

eg Georgia or Hawaii had an age of consent of 14 at the time, although most of he rest of the states had gone to 16+ by the 20s

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ages_of_consent_in_the_United_State