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A little knowledge

At first I knew a little about science and I made fun of bad science on TV and in movies.

Then I learned more science and my "making fun" got a little bit harsher.

Then I studied math, physics, electrical engineering, computer hardware design, software engineering …

In parallel with that, I developed a firmer understanding of storytelling, character development, narrative structure …

And I got vicious. (Well, some might say I was already vicious, but not in this particular way, exactly.)

This all happened without my realizing it until we went on a trip and watched cable TV at the hotel. We were watching the Science Fiction Channel, long may it live in infamy, on a Friday night, some hodgepodge of Battlestar Galactica, Stargate permutations, and a lot of commercials, none of which were familiar to me because I am a pop culture illiterate.

I know that people watch these shows for the stories, not for the science. However, in good science fiction, science informs the storyline, otherwise the story is just a fantasy with spaceships and energy weapons instead of horses and magic wands. I realize that this whole debate has a lot of gray areas and, besides, some of my favorite SF stories are pure, unapologetic space opera. Some of my least favorite SF stories have fantastic technical accuracy, but the story has no life. Some stories fall somewhere in the middle of that continuum. To a certain extent, the author has to treat advanced science and technology as magic and get on with the story, or else get bogged down with design issues. I have this problem myself, so I am sympathetic. I am, however, totally lacking in sympathy for writers who are ignorant and write dialogue by stringing together a bunch of buzzwords without regard to what the words represent. It's the ignorance that gets to me, because ignorance can be overcome with minimal effort.

In this particular episode of whatever it is we're watching, a virus has infected all the computer systems of the mother ship. The first thing (I think, I haven't really been paying attention because I've been reading a book. A good book.) they try is blowing up a transmitter array, e.g. hit it with a hammer. The guy who comes up with this is obviously a mech-e. They do that, even though blowing up something that's attached to you when you're floating around in hard vacuum is a Bad Idea. And it doesn't work, because they've got another fifteen or twenty minutes of show. They turn things off and then turn things back on again, and that doesn't quite work which is not surprising because viruses do survive that sort of thing if they're resident in non-volatile memory.

And then two characters have to foil the virus by running off to a hangar and doing something technical which doesn't actually make sense, technically. But the virus closes the hangar doors and the controls can't be bypassed! The solution is to use the transporter beam, since the virus hasn't infected that yet, to transport the guys to the other side of the door.

Transporters are evil. They are an evil, lame crutch for the writers. The writers who use them should be flogged. Except for Star Trek where transporters are grandfathered in.

Oz cries, "It's an electric door. It has a motor! You only need to complete a circuit to work the motor!"

I cry, "So a real engineer would just rip out the control panel, bypass the network circuitry and controls, and hotwire the door! By sticking two wires together!" (And, I might add, look like quite the badass in the process. Well, a badass in the engineering sense.)

I turn to Oz and ask, "So is this what happens to engineers? We get all educated, then sit around, drinking whiskey and ragging on the SF Channel?"

I used to like Star Junk, and now I've spoiled myself for it forever.

662 words | October 12, 2005 08:26 PM | Wired