sinanju

If I create a one-hex image of a mobile actor (an animal, a cop, a thug) can it move out of the area in which it was created? Or can it only move within that area?

I've seen speculation that the characters who got derezzed are the ones who will all ultimately survive when the credits roll on Infinity War Part 2. The idea being that many of the characters left alive at the end of this film--Iron Man and Captain America, primarily--are, as has been said, on the downside of their contracts. (Evans is about done, and RDJ's contract was up several movies back but there's no guarantee he'll stick around.) So...MAYBE resurrecting the "dead" heroes (and the countless trillions all over the universe who died with them) will require a sacrifice by one or more of the survivors of THIS film. If Captain America or Iron Man have to die, doing so in order to save half the universe is not a bad way to go.

And it could so easily have been derailed. Mrs. DeVoe: "Judge, that man is an imposter! My husband is buried in XX Cemetary. I don't know who that is, but he's lying! Test his DNA! Let me ask him questions about our life together!" So, apparently Barry is a legal formalist. Yeah, the judge released him (though of course it isn't that quick or easy), but it was based on fraudulent testimony by an imposter. But hey! Legal! Also...how dumb are those metahuman crooks? Look, it's Barry Allen, recently incarcerated former Central City CSI tech and metahuman. A speedster, no less! And NONE of them came to the conclusion that he was the Flash?

Yeah, I very much hope they get a third season of Travellers. I liked Wild, Wild West as a kid. Yeah, parts hold up and parts don't. My favorite villain was always Dr. Miguelito Loveless. But my favorite line from the whole series came from Victor Buono. He has captured West and has him strapped to a table. On a table next to him is, like, every gadget he's *ever* used on the show. All of which, presumably, they took off him while he was unconscious. Buono says, "Mr. West, I'm surprised you don't clank when you walk."

I know better than to expect plausible technobabble from this show (or Flash, or well, any show really) but last night's episode took scientific stupidity to new heights. Blue stars emit radiation of a very weird, specific kind that only affects Y chromosomes! Amazing! The DEO can bounce FTL signals off the Voyager probe in order to communicate with the Legion ship countless lightyears away. Stars do not have EVENT HORIZONS. They have a surface, which is what I assume they meant. Black holes have event horizons, where the speed of light is insufficient to escape the pull of its gravity. Supergirl really IS stronger than Superman. She was able throw a ginormous orbital fortress at FTL speeds into ANOTHER SOLAR SYSTEM lightyears from earth. Without killing everyone aboard from the titanic G forces. Speaking of titanic G forces. That blue star solar flare also knocked the fortress out of it's stable orbit...by .003 AU. An AU (Astronomical Unit) is the distance from earth to the sun, or 93,000,000 miles. Which means the fortress was *instantly* shoved 279,000 miles from its initial position. How is it still intact? How is every aboard it not turned into jelly on the walls? All that said, I enjoyed a lot of the episode. I've always been a fan of Livewire. I like the actress, I like the character. I thought she was exactly the sort of antagonist Kara needs more of--with superpowers different from hers, which make her hard to deal with, so she has to be clever, instead of having just another punch-out. I'm seriously bummed that they killed her.

I'm mainlining TRAVELERS on Netflix right now. I'm halfway through the second season. I really hope it gets picked up for a third season. Time travelers from a horrible, apocalyptic future are downloaded into the minds of people in the (our) present--hundreds of years before their time--who were about to die. They take over their bodies and lives and work as teams to perform various missions that they hope will allow them to prevent the awful future, or at least improve it. It's a one-time, one-way trip. The nature of time travel generally prevents "do-overs" so if a mission fails, it fails. There's lots I could say about this series, but SPOILERS. I really like this show.

"Not telling your troops the whole plan..."? She didn't even tell them she HAD a plan other than jog away from the oncoming fleet til they ran out of gas. Part of being a good leader is giving your troops reason to trust you even when they don't know your plans. She failed miserably at that. He didn't NEED a communicator. He could have APPEARED TO REY (or anyone apparently, as everyone within range could see him as if he were really there) anywhere in the galaxy (apparently) and said, "I changed my mind. Send someone to get me." The order had no idea where he was and, apart from Kylo, no other Force sensitives we know about, now that Snoke is dead. (Speaking of which, is he DEAD dead, or only MOSTLY dead like Luke and Yoda and Obi-Wan and Vader?) So they'd have had no way to find him. Why on earth would Leia or Rey "lose contact with the rebellion" if they went to visit Luke? Rey didn't. She had a magic maguffin that allowed her to find Leia (or whoever held the other magic maguffin) anywhere in the galaxy. (And why wasn't Leai being baked alive by the sheer wattage of whatever broadcast that thing was generating to be detectable at galactic distances?) You're assuming the books were destroyed. We don't know that. Rey might have taken them. Yoda may have "destroyed" them with lightning so Luke wouldn't discover that they're gone. Just because the "wisdom" of the Jedi was lacking (which I agree with), doesn't mean that she can't learn from their history--and I'm assuming at least some of those books are histories/logs/diaries/etc. We're not talking about Rey. We're talking about Luke Skywalker, who saw the potential for redemption in a man whose crimes were literally legendary. A man who'd destroyed the Jedi, murdered countless people, and...well, all of it. He confronted THAT man with no intention of ever killing him. He confronted him ready to die in the attempt to redeem him. And THAT man, THAT Luke Skywalker, would never have tried--even for a nanosecond--to murder a sleeping boy because he feared with that boy MIGHT do.

If it was, I missed it. This is the first I've heard of that. But using them to disguise Puffins on the island is pretty clever.

There's absolutely no evidence for the notion that the dreadnought was actively "hovering" rather than operating in orbit, nor that any other vessels were doing so. This battle was just as non-sensical as every other space battle in Star Wars. (I mean, seriously--bombers? That can only drop their payloads at knife-fighting range? Maybe if they'd used missiles, or even just flung the bombs from a distance, they might not have had the whole bomber force wiped out.

That's a nice try at an explanation, but it doesn't wash. While the pull of gravity at orbital distances isn't much less than it is on the surface...it feels like microgravity due to the centripetal force of your orbital speed trying to force you outward (well, actually, trying to keep you moving in a straight line instead of the curving path you're on). The bombs are moving at that same orbital speed, so planetary gravity would not pull them down. This is just another artifact of seeing WWII planetary air combat played out in space. It doesn't make any sense, and the film makers don't care.

I don't hate the movie. I enjoyed much of it, but it was (in my opinion) much too long. I almost walked out at one point because I was bored by the endless set-piece battle scenes. Part of it, I suspect is based on the saying that, "The Golden Age of Science Fiction is fifteen." I was 18 (not 15) when Star Wars came out--but close enough. From the moment I saw the first trailer--spaceships, space battles, LIGHTSABERS, aliens--I was hooked. All the space opera I'd read all my life was about to become a movie! I saw that film eleven times that summer, and god knows how many times since on VHS, DVD, cable.... Fast-forward forty years and I'm not that kid anymore. I've read a hell of a lot more SF, and seen many, many, many more SF movies. I expect--well, no, I WANT--more from a story these days than I did then. And even then, I could nitpick all kinds of things. It is what it is. A lot of the plot holes go away if you remember that it's not SF, it's fantasy with SF trappings, plus WW II-era combat tactics and strategy played out on a galactic scale. It doesn't make much sense, but that's never been the goal. Spectacle, and exciting visuals are the goal. I'm just less interested in what it is than I once was. And that's okay. Rey's parentage--I think Kylo was telling the truth. I hope he was. I want Rey to be a mutt. No pedigree, no famous family, nothing. Stir the DNA of a galaxy full of humans and humanoids, and *somebody* has to wind up with a potent connection to the Force. It just happens to be Rey. I don't want the whole history of the Jedi (and conflict between rebels and empire) to be a simple Skywalker clan feud. As for the ship wars (Finn/Poe, Finn/Rose, Finn/Rey, Poe/Rey, Rey/Kylo, Poe/Finn/Rey, etc.) --that's the glory of fanfic. EVERYONE WINS. There's fic about every one of those combos, and plenty more besides.

I wasn't impressed by Snoke. He was just more of the same we saw in Palpatine. I saw Luke's snuffing it as more of "I'm done here" moment. Besides, since when does "dying" stop a Jedi Master from meddling in the affairs of the galaxy? Also, who knew a ship's artificial gravity extend so far above the ship that you can *drop* bombs on it from overhead? Whiskey Tango Foxtrot! Well, Phasma's armor is reflective. Of course it's better at deflecting blaster bolts. Maybe "matte white" isn't the best color for stormtrooper armor. As for Leia...it would have been better if she'd been the one to Kamikazi the cruiser into the enemy battlewagon. If they'd known....

Dislikes: Agreed--General Haldo took way too long to react to the attack on the transports. WAY too long. So...the Rebellion spent years fighting to overthrow the Empire and succeeded...only to get their asses kicked, and get nearly wiped out, by The Order only a few years later. Whiskey Tango Foxtrot. I guess the idea is that the rebels always have to be the underdogs, but it's getting really old. Plus, I don't care who they have on their side, a group that could fit comfortably in my living room is very unlikely to succeed at liberating a city, much less a galaxy. At least they didn't drag out another Deathstar-like superweapon (the battering-ram beam doesn't count). The endless, endless, endless battle scenes. I almost left the theater at the two-thirds mark because I was bored by them. As far as I was concerned, the battle scenes were like videogame cutscenes. Nothing of consequence to our heroes was going to happen in those battles, so I don't really care about them. I stuck it out, and was glad I did because I got to see some other interesting stuff, but my personal fan-edit of the movie would drastically cut the battle scenes in favor of the more personal stuff. Likes: Snoke is dead. These obnoxious, arrogant, physically-deformed Evil Emperors are getting old. Kylo is at least normal looking. "I want every gun we have trained on that man!" "Do you think you got him?" I like Rose. Miscellaneous: Was what Kylo told Rey about her parents true? I think it was, in essence if not in detail. She was clearly abandoned (no matter how desperately she wanted to believe otherwise), and she has no pedigree worth mentioning. I thought it was funny how attached Luke was to the Jedi manuscripts given his history. I've seen it commented on elsewhere (tumblr, mostly) that Luke was successful as a hero mostly because he *ignored* the well-meant training of Obi-Way and Yoda when it went against his sense of right and wrong...whereas Anakin became Darth Vader because he tried so hard to be the perfect Jedi. I did like Luke's comment that the history of the Jedi was one of failure and hubris. Yes. Yes, it was.

I am rewatching Archer, S1-7 on Netflix. I've watched the first episode of Godless, and I intend to watch more. And I'm working my way through Science & Futurism with Isaac Arthur on Youtube TV. He's got lots and lots of episodes covering a range of topics, but I'm mostly watching the episodes on getting into and around in space, and space colonization, habitable worlds and the like as fodder for a possible Traveller universe. (He sticks to known science, but it's still got background information even if the existence of artificial gravity, reactionless drives and jump drives in Traveller makes a lot of this obsolete. It still gives me ideas for lower-tech worlds that don't have access to those things.)

That's the main reason I liked Roger Ebert's reviews. He was perfectly capable of saying, "It's not a *good* move, but it's a FUN movie." Not many critics can (or will) do that.