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28
WEEKS LATER - 2007
The most famous "healthy carrier", of course, is Typhoid Mary, who carried and spread typhoid fever even though she never actually got it. This is usually the result of a mutant gene that keeps the disease from taking its course. The portrayal of just such an individual here is perfectly reasonable and represents a good news bad news situation, since on the one hand she’s potentially the source of a vaccine or even a cure, but on the other hand she’s really dangerous because she’s a Rage virus incubator. |
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SCIENCE MOMENT BY
KELLY PARKS |
PRIMEVAL - 2007
There really is a Gustave the giant crocodile. His size is often exaggerated but he does exist and does eat people. He was last sighted by researchers in April, 2007, according to the National Geographic web site. Gustave is easy to recognize because of his many bullet wounds. |
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SCIENCE MOMENT BY
KELLY PARKS |
SERENITY - 2007
In the original series the intro included talk about how after Earth got “used up” humanity found a new solar system with dozens of worlds and hundreds of moons and that everything, all the space travel, all the terraformed worlds, was in this single solar system.
That’s an astronomically unlikely arrangement because first, everything we know about solar system formation says such a crowded system is unlikely to exist. Second, if it did exist – if you had so many worlds in a single system – it would be horribly unstable and the many planets would long since have collided with each other. And third, it’s completely unnecessary because since they obviously have interstellar travel (to reach this new solar system) why not just assume that humanity spread to many normal solar systems and terraformed the worlds therein? And in fact in later episodes of Firefly various lines of dialogue seemed to confirm that the spread-across-multiple-solar-systems idea was the actual arrangement. In other words they corrected the mistake.
But for some unknown reason the movie backtracks and makes the original mistake again, specifying in the intro about the whole really crowded single solar system. Why, I don’t know, but there it is and it bothers me.
It also bothered me that they had sound in space. Normally that’s such a universal sci-fi movie mistake that I ignore it but one of the things I loved about the series was that Firefly didn’t have sound in space - the only sci-fi TV show ever that got that right. And during most of the movie they get it right but then there’s a big space battle scene where suddenly you can hear explosions and rockets blasting, etc. Not just wrong but inconsistent, in other words.
Kelly Parks was one of the first voices asking to SAVE FIREFLY |
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SCIENCE MOMENT BY
KELLY PARKS |
SPECIES IV: THE AWAKENING (2007)
I don’t have a huge problem with any of the science here. It's not quite implausible. The basic idea – that an alien broadcast contained enough information on genetic engineering to allow us to create alien-human hybrids – is sound and if you accept that you can achieve enough suspension of disbelief to get through the movie. No, I have no problem with the science. |
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SCIENCE MOMENT BY
KELLY PARKS |
WRONG
TURN 2: DEAD END 2007
These inbred mountain people have more than just inbreeding to thank for their mutations. It turns out that pollution from a long since closed paper mill not only turned the locals into super-strong freaks, it also killed off all the local wildlife, leaving these hunters no choice but to turn to humans for meat. All this is unworkable (mutagenic pollution would leave them all sterile and/or dead of cancer, not super-strong) and unnecessary, since generations of inbreeding are much more likely to cause freakish mutations. Plus, you don’t need to give inbred freaks a reasonable explanation for being cannibals. |
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SCIENCE MOMENT BY
KELLY PARKS |
NEXT (2007)
Paramount Pictures
This is a psychic power which is fantasy so the usual rules of science don’t really apply. But I do want to mention that, in the narration, Cris implies that his ability is related to quantum mechanics when he says, “Every time you look at the future, it changes.” If you really get into the details of quantum mechanics it’s a lot like fantasy so I can live with it. |
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SCIENCE MOMENT BY
KELLY PARKS |
I AM LEGEND (2007)
Universal Pictures
Rated: PG-13
The idea that a genetically engineered virus could turn deadly is perfectly believable so that part of the story is fine. But the idea that the virus could make the entire suite of mutations required to turn humans into the monsters found here is harder to swallow. It essentially makes them into another species and – while not impossible – it's hard to believe that could happen basically by accident. |
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SCIENCE MOMENT BY
KELLY PARKS |
ALIEN VS PREDATOR: REQUIEM - 2007
If you were in orbit around Earth and a dangerous alien creature got loose and killed your crew, that would not make the spaceship crash because orbit is a stable position that doesn’t require the application of propulsion. If it’s a very low orbit the tenuous upper atmosphere will eventually make it decay (in days or weeks) but they weren’t that low. |
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DOOMSDAY - 2008
In the opening sequence, hordes of Scots are trying to escape before the wall closes. Guards are sensibly posted to ensure no one infected gets through. Upon discovering a carrier amongst the crowd, the military opens fire. Wrong: projectile weaponry sprays infection and leaves a carcass for carrion animals to spread. The de-facto method to kill a known viral pathogen with no vaccine and with an unknown vector is to burn it. Would a flame-thrower be too much to ask?
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IRON MAN 2008
There are four obvious questions that come to mind when you see Iron Man in action. My first was, “Where are his fuel tanks?” He flies half-way around the world and back and that takes lots of reaction mass. Where is it?
Answer: He doesn't use jets – he uses repulsor beams, which constitute magical handwaving but as long as the issue is addressed I'm fine.
Next question: “Where does the power for the repulsor beams and all the other amazing technology come from?”
Answer: Arc reactors. More handwaving but also kind of cool, that the power of a nuclear reactor could be reduced to a glowing, hand-held gadget.
Third question: “How can he fly level?”
Answer: He can’t. Planes have wings for a reason and this is a mistake. When his propulsion system is directed backwards, thrusting him forwards, then nothing is fighting the pull of gravity (like the lift force created by wings) and he’d drop like a rock.
Final question: “I know his suit is super-bulletproof but how does he avoid being reduced to jelly by the high acceleration from impacting the ground?”
Answer: He can’t. I wish they’d done just a bit more handwaving, like mentioning that his suit included an “arc technology powered repulsor field” that absorbs inertia. Oh well. |
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