Decipher SciFi

Original book. Orson Welled radio broadcast hysteria not as reported. Radiolab report on repeated adaptations. The new developments at the time of writing that informed the book.

Methods, research, planning. Trying to explain the buried  death-bots.

Are we food? Do they want our resources? Making the most sense of the options. Are liquified people good for fertilizer?

They might have done a little more research.

Enumerated in spectacular fashion in the film in order to get it out of the way and never speak of it again.

It’s really hard! Errors in humor and social expectations. Infinite conversational loops.

A nurturing environment maybe contributed to Robo Williams’ sentience. Art as awakening. Acting human. Emergence.

Why don’t we see them?

Turing tests. Robots, androids, biorobots. Robo Williams’ synthetic organs.

Actually kind of hard to define.

“Death is an engineering problem.”

Volcanoes and the year with no summer. Women writing books. Philosophers and children of philosophers.

The movie vs the book. The beginning of scifi. The ways that each broke boundaries in their own ways.

Was it scary at the time? The movie intro. Everything that’s cliché now was new once.

Science, evil science, and playing god. The ethics of mad science.

How to take the cutting edge and make it a horror story. Electricity. X-rays. Quantum stuff. Nano bio tech now? Deepak Chopra is full of crap.

David Lynch. Return of the Jedi. Different editions of the film. Alan Smithee. Internal monologues.

Before Game of Thrones, this was a new level of deep. Game theory and politics.

Mentats. Eyebrows.

Like oil? Drugs?

Was Frank Herbert homophobic? Considering the man and the time in which it was written.

How the movie and the book had opposite lessons. Making it rain.

As children of the 90s, we have to wax nostalgic over the Wing Commander video games. They were really, really important at the time. Ground-breaking, even. PC games pre-windows. FMV.

Director of the games was also director of the film! We hypothesize based on zero knowledge of anything how it may have been difficult for this first-time feature film director. We consider whether he is the George Lucas of video games, in both the good or bad senses.

Cat creatures? This may not have been clear in the film. Hairless cats.

Mister colbert, mount the forward laser pointer!

Simplifications of space combat, ignoring the vast distances and incredible speeds in their portrayals. Things that did it pretty right.

At least in Top Gun, there was only one Maverick. Here we have to consider if we’d want a ship full of Mavericks as Earth’s last best hope.

One makes sense. One seems to come out of nowhere. Maniac is awful and dangerous. This movie’s idea of “search and rescue” seems a bit off.

Pilgrim discrimination. Pilgrim backstory. Using pilgrim brains in the Navcom. Faith vs genetics.

Lack of studio support. Poor audience test results. VERY small number of screens. Somehow, a cult hit after release.

Has internet cult hit status. Why? Appealing to elitism and cynicism? Fart jokes? Love it or hate it.

It feels mean, basically. Also the extrapolations it makes are unreasonable as far as I’m concerned.

Network covered similar ground in the 1970s.

The yuppies for not reproducing more? The “dumb” people? The system? Corporatism, selfishness, etc?

Defining terms because people use them in the wrong way too often. How humanity actually evolves. Dysgenics. Why the movie is wrong.

“Crab mentality.”

Self absorption. Laziness. Selfishness. Willful ignorance. Materialism.

Actually there are some interesting examples here. Simplification of UI. “Idiot-proofing.” Automation.

Each host gives their plan to save the world. Governor Adrian implements the ~mushroom~ marshmallow test.

Thanks to Ted for coming on and helping us figure out what’s going on in Looper. Rather than an interview, Ted is a fully-fledged guest co-host with all the power that entails. :)

This gets a little convoluted, because the movie is not incredibly worried about logical consistency.

Despite appearances and the language in the film about loops and looping, we decide that either there are no paradoxical loops or the movie just doesn’t make a lot of sense in this regard. Or maybe both things. Probably both.

We straighten out how many Bruces/JGLs there have been and how they all lived out their lives. It might be more than you think! Ted has to reign us in so we don’t spend the whole show making diagrams with straws. :)

Actually it turns out this movie is about motherhood (an uncommon topic for science fiction) and the importance of a mother in keeping boys from growing up “lost.” We needed a professional writer on the show to get us to shut up about time travel long enough to figure out the point of the movie. Thanks, Ted.

Comparing and contrasting the appearance/reality of free will in this film and other examples (Twelve Monkies, Back to the Future).

Ted tries to rewrite the movie but realizes how important all of the logically difficult plot devices are to the story and characters.

_The first half of the film, where criminal organizations are sending people back in time to be killed - that made no sense at all! And that really bugged me.

But I quite liked the second half of the film, which was about the importance of motherhood and the possibility of breaking the cycle of violence.

I wanted there to be a way to fix the first half of the film, but keep the second half.

So I, in my mind, tried to rewrite the film…_

And keep an eye out for the upcoming movie “Arrival” based on Ted’s story “Story of Your Life” (with Jeremy Renner and Amy Adams) probably some time this year. Should be really good!

Fandom. Why do people love this so much?

Fantasy vs. science fiction. Humanities, sciences. Star Wars is a “fairy tale.”

People bonding with Star Wars in their youth. Watching it with the kids. There are younger people who actually dig the prequel trilogy, believe it or not.

Canons. Robots. Spaceships. FTL. Gravity. The Force. Planets. Language.

Big, bigger, and biggest! Engineering and construction. Military and civilian populations.

“I find your lack of faith disturbing.”

Our Star Wars meta discussion covers merchandising revolutions, VFX, viewing order (machete!), Star Wars Revisited, Star Wars Despecialized Edition, more.

George Lucas. Industrial Light and Magic. Practical effects vs. CG.

Star Wars was a revolution in movie merchandising.

Original Trilogy only because the prequels are less complicated and we just kinda don’t care

It’s important! Here is the original (really good!) article for machete order, but if you need the tldr it’s 4,5,2,3, and 6.

Google for it, maybe try to find a copy on Youtube. It’s around. It’s an edit of the prequel trilogy which puts them all into one feature-length movie, mostly leaving out the first film.

Our love for Carl. How his character and interests manifest in the characters in the film.

What it is. Why it is. Why is doesn’t get taken seriously. Their website.

The story of Carl’s question for Kip Thorn producing actual time travel science. Black holes and wormholes.

The Jodie Foster character really emulates Carl in a lot of ways. Also partially based on SETI astronomer Jill Tarter.

The dad in the movie. Carl Sagan’s gentle and understanding skepticism.

How to communicate with aliens. Dimensions and moves of communication.

No one trusts atheists. Our feelings on the Jodie Foster character and our own positions on things.