Commentary track for deleted scene #12
May. 21st, 2005 12:01 pmHaving written what
bram described as a "spoof of the fanboy mentality", I'm now going to turn around and defend the pastime of minutely picking apart fictional universes. Some people seem to be actively offended or baffled by this; I recently got the "dude, it's science FICTION, don't worry about it" response after posting a picky physics-based criticism of the handling of time paradoxes in the BBC's revived Doctor Who, a show that was obviously not intended to be analyzed that way.
The thing to understand is that (1) I think it's fun to subject entertainment to this kind of criticism; it's a large part of the enjoyment I get out of science fiction; and (2) I don't automatically regard something as bad because it doesn't meet my standards of consistency.
In fact, I think that knowing a relatively large amount about physics, and enjoying picking things apart on that basis, has made me more forgiving of big lapses, because I don't have the false impression that media SF (or even print SF) is scientifically accurate most of the time. There have been a million anguished essays posted to rec.arts.sf.movies about how some time-travel paradox makes Terminator 2 a stupid movie; their authors give the impression of having failed to notice the absurdities in action-movie science fiction until they become confusing enough to emerge above some cognitive waterline. Actually, as time-travel stories go, Terminator 2 was more logical than most of them; the writers at least seemed to be thinking a little about the issues involved. One of the reasons I tried to blow apart the logic of that Doctor Who episode ("Father's Day") was that other people were getting agitated about this or that detail in it making no sense. Actually the whole thing made no sense except on an emotional level, which was the level it was pitched at and on which it worked splendidly. Audience reactions to the episode hinged mostly on whether that focus bothered the viewer or not.
The "it's science FICTION" reprimand does bother me a little bit because it shortchanges what science fiction is capable of doing. It's possible to come up with imaginary worlds that approach the real one in seeming solidity, and while I don't demand it in my entertainment, I always admire it when I see it done. (Harlan Ellison's written about a related phenomenon; it bothers him when people object to his critical essays by telling him that SF and fantasy are just silly kid stuff and shouldn't be criticized with adult critical faculties, since he knows it isn't always true.)
On the other hand, it's also limiting to insist that that's the only approach creators should be taking; some of my favorite SF/fantasy works have been gloriously irrational. Philip K. Dick never wrote an internally consistent novel in his life, and Ellison's own work often exists in a realm entirely outside of science and logic. Traditionalists in the vein of the Campbell Astounding would probably insist that this stuff, while possibly worthy, is not Science Fiction, but I don't consider that particular definitional debate personally interesting (other people are welcome to it; not my kink, and that's OK).
Now, fiction based on a long franchise with elaborate continuity and fandom can actually get in trouble when the fanwank impulse leads the creators to make bad art—and this is more what I was trying to get at in my last post. Trying to come up with an explanation of an inconsistency in lightsaber noises is harmless fun, but stopping a movie to put in the explanation would be a disaster, since a tiny subcommunity of fans with a rarefied hobby would be the only people interested. This is actually one of the things that wrecked the most recent Star Trek movie, Nemesis. The screenwriter was a hardcore Star Trek fan who peppered the dialogue with countless continuity references to various TV shows and movies in the canon. It was kind of fun to see them pop up, but most of them had nothing to do with the actual story at hand, and heard with fresh ears they'd have just been confusing. Personally I like to use obscurity and confusion for comedy purposes; if you don't get the references the obscurity itself is fun to hear. But that's a limited tool.
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The thing to understand is that (1) I think it's fun to subject entertainment to this kind of criticism; it's a large part of the enjoyment I get out of science fiction; and (2) I don't automatically regard something as bad because it doesn't meet my standards of consistency.
In fact, I think that knowing a relatively large amount about physics, and enjoying picking things apart on that basis, has made me more forgiving of big lapses, because I don't have the false impression that media SF (or even print SF) is scientifically accurate most of the time. There have been a million anguished essays posted to rec.arts.sf.movies about how some time-travel paradox makes Terminator 2 a stupid movie; their authors give the impression of having failed to notice the absurdities in action-movie science fiction until they become confusing enough to emerge above some cognitive waterline. Actually, as time-travel stories go, Terminator 2 was more logical than most of them; the writers at least seemed to be thinking a little about the issues involved. One of the reasons I tried to blow apart the logic of that Doctor Who episode ("Father's Day") was that other people were getting agitated about this or that detail in it making no sense. Actually the whole thing made no sense except on an emotional level, which was the level it was pitched at and on which it worked splendidly. Audience reactions to the episode hinged mostly on whether that focus bothered the viewer or not.
The "it's science FICTION" reprimand does bother me a little bit because it shortchanges what science fiction is capable of doing. It's possible to come up with imaginary worlds that approach the real one in seeming solidity, and while I don't demand it in my entertainment, I always admire it when I see it done. (Harlan Ellison's written about a related phenomenon; it bothers him when people object to his critical essays by telling him that SF and fantasy are just silly kid stuff and shouldn't be criticized with adult critical faculties, since he knows it isn't always true.)
On the other hand, it's also limiting to insist that that's the only approach creators should be taking; some of my favorite SF/fantasy works have been gloriously irrational. Philip K. Dick never wrote an internally consistent novel in his life, and Ellison's own work often exists in a realm entirely outside of science and logic. Traditionalists in the vein of the Campbell Astounding would probably insist that this stuff, while possibly worthy, is not Science Fiction, but I don't consider that particular definitional debate personally interesting (other people are welcome to it; not my kink, and that's OK).
Now, fiction based on a long franchise with elaborate continuity and fandom can actually get in trouble when the fanwank impulse leads the creators to make bad art—and this is more what I was trying to get at in my last post. Trying to come up with an explanation of an inconsistency in lightsaber noises is harmless fun, but stopping a movie to put in the explanation would be a disaster, since a tiny subcommunity of fans with a rarefied hobby would be the only people interested. This is actually one of the things that wrecked the most recent Star Trek movie, Nemesis. The screenwriter was a hardcore Star Trek fan who peppered the dialogue with countless continuity references to various TV shows and movies in the canon. It was kind of fun to see them pop up, but most of them had nothing to do with the actual story at hand, and heard with fresh ears they'd have just been confusing. Personally I like to use obscurity and confusion for comedy purposes; if you don't get the references the obscurity itself is fun to hear. But that's a limited tool.