Unique Properties of Television Worlds

[Mr. Laser Beam]

A unique property of the Red Green Show is, of course, Bill, who can survive being stomped flat, blasted from a cannon, whacked with all sorts of weapons, etc. etc., and come back without a scratch. Also he apparently has a dimensional warp from which he can produce any tool or other device as needed. Linky

 

[doubleohfive]

A unique property of the world of 24 (and mentioning this is a trope all on it's own, I realize) is that Jack and other various characters seem to be able to traverse the whole of Los Angeles (or parts, as required by the story) in under five to ten minutes, at least during the first six "days" (seasons).

If only. If only!

 

[auntiehill]

^The same thing when they were in Washington, DC. Only Jack Bauer could find street parking immediately, wherever he went, in the middle of the day in DC!

 

[JirinPanthosa]

Also, in any scifi shows where the government is covering things up from the world, it's incredibly easy to do so.

Space ships exploding in the sky, crashing in the sea? A surprising amount of aliens secretly living on the planet? The same cover stories that worked in the 1940s win over everybody in the internet age and not a single one of the thousands of people in the know violate their NDAs.

 

[Christopher]

Also, in any scifi shows where the government is covering things up from the world, it's incredibly easy to do so.

Space ships exploding in the sky, crashing in the sea? A surprising amount of aliens secretly living on the planet? The same cover stories that worked in the 1940s win over everybody in the internet age and not a single one of the thousands of people in the know violate their NDAs.

Yeah, but it's usually because the general public "doesn't want to know" that reality isn't what they think it is, so they talk themselves into believing that the aliens were just a hoax, and they dismiss the claims of those who know the truth.

 

[JirinPanthosa]

Also, in any scifi shows where the government is covering things up from the world, it's incredibly easy to do so.

Space ships exploding in the sky, crashing in the sea? A surprising amount of aliens secretly living on the planet? The same cover stories that worked in the 1940s win over everybody in the internet age and not a single one of the thousands of people in the know violate their NDAs.

Yeah, but it's usually because the general public "doesn't want to know" that reality isn't what they think it is, so they talk themselves into believing that the aliens were just a hoax, and they dismiss the claims of those who know the truth.

Is that believable, though? In real life people tend to respond to unpleasant knowledge by convincing themselves it isn't important, like the NSA leaks. Not by convincing themselves it isn't real.

 

[Christopher]

This isn't a thread about "believable."

 

[JirinPanthosa]

This isn't a thread about "believable."

I thought you were talking about believable in your previous posts. In these fictional worlds like Stargate, it doesn't seem like the public is deceiving themselves because they don't want to know, it seems like they've actually been successful at covering it up.

 

[Christopher]

^Huh? I did the exact same thing you were doing: mentioning something that is a property of fictional worlds. I wasn't talking about whether it was believable, I was just saying that it's something that many works of fiction assert to be the case.

For example, War of the Worlds: The Series asserted that humanity had forgotten the global alien invasion and devastation of 1953, partly because of some kind of alien-induced amnesia, but largely just out of denial and an unwillingness to believe in aliens. Buffy the Vampire Slayer asserted that the citizens of Sunnydale chose to deny all the supernatural things happening around them because they just didn't want to think about it. Doctor Who in the modern era has routinely had humanity forgetting alien invasions or dismissing them as hoaxes, from the first season -- when the Slitheen invasion was promptly written off as a hoax -- to the most recent season -- where the Doctor said that the trees had overgrown the planet to save it from disaster multiple times, but had been forgotten every time. And many, many times in between. It's a common trope in mass-media sci-fi that people want to live in comfortable ignorance. And of course there's a TV Tropes page on it.

 

[Marc]

^Huh? I did the exact same thing you were doing: mentioning something that is a property of fictional worlds. I wasn't talking about whether it was believable, I was just saying that it's something that many works of fiction assert to be the case.

For example, War of the Worlds: The Series asserted that humanity had forgotten the global alien invasion and devastation of 1953, partly because of some kind of alien-induced amnesia, but largely just out of denial and an unwillingness to believe in aliens. Buffy the Vampire Slayer asserted that the citizens of Sunnydale chose to deny all the supernatural things happening around them because they just didn't want to think about it. Doctor Who in the modern era has routinely had humanity forgetting alien invasions or dismissing them as hoaxes, from the first season -- when the Slitheen invasion was promptly written off as a hoax -- to the most recent season -- where the Doctor said that the trees had overgrown the planet to save it from disaster multiple times, but had been forgotten every time. And many, many times in between. It's a common trope in mass-media sci-fi that people want to live in comfortable ignorance. And of course there's a TV Tropes page on it.

Though in Doctor Who, humantiy forgetting about Alien invasions has long been a feature - well before the modern series.

 

[Christopher]

Though in Doctor Who, humantiy forgetting about Alien invasions has long been a feature - well before the modern series.

Only because of the general lack of continuity in the series at the time. As far as I can recall, it wasn't until the new series that it was explicitly called attention to and lampshaded.

 

[Marc]

Though in Doctor Who, humantiy forgetting about Alien invasions has long been a feature - well before the modern series.

Only because of the general lack of continuity in the series at the time. As far as I can recall, it wasn't until the new series that it was explicitly called attention to and lampshaded.

I think Ace brings it up in Remberance Of The Daleks and the Doctor comments on Humanity's power for self deception.

 

[Christopher]

I think Ace brings it up in Remberance Of The Daleks and the Doctor comments on Humanity's power for self deception.

Well, that makes sense. The last few years of the original series were starting to show some trends in common with the modern revival, like more attention to story arcs, more acknowledgment of series history, more complex characterization of the companions, etc.

 

[JirinPanthosa]

Ahh, I see. I was mostly focusing on Stargate, where it's clear that the public actually doesn't know. I haven't followed Dr Who or Buffy.

 

[sojourner]

A new one I noticed today. When surveillance of someone needs to be done there is always a conveniently vacant building across the way.

 

[scotpens]

Not a television world, but in the movie world of Fast and Furious:

. . . Everyone loves cars, without exception. No one is lukewarm about automobiles. . . . Since everyone loves cars, the entire world is designed for them and their maintenance. NO2 tanks can be purchased at any store, illegal tunnels to Mexico are dug large enough to accommodate cars traveling through them, even graveyards rest in the shadow of giant oil rigs that pump precious petroleum from the earth for all of eternity.

Sounds pretty much like real-life Southern California, actually.

Interesting you should bring up the Mad Max universe. In a world where gasoline is supposedly extinct, all those cars manage to keep running!

They probably run on methane extracted from pig poop.

 

[Enterprise1701]

I think Ace brings it up in Remberance Of The Daleks and the Doctor comments on Humanity's power for self deception.

Well, that makes sense. The last few years of the original series were starting to show some trends in common with the modern revival, like more attention to story arcs, more acknowledgment of series history, more complex characterization of the companions, etc.

In the series 8 episode "In the Forest of the Night", the Doctor tells Clara that humans will forget about the episode's special forests protecting Earth from a massive solar flare because it's a human trait to forget.

Edit: Oops, forgot that episode was already mentioned here.

 

[Christopher]

^Yes, I already cited that episode above.

 

[Sketcher]

And ironically all of humanity tried to forget that episode ever happened.

 

[JirinPanthosa]

A couple more Stargate ones, since it's the show I've been watching through lately.

-Gu'ald seem to have rather lax security measures, yet the Tok'ra didn't manage to kill a single one in six thousand years.
-No Stargate seems to be guarded by more than a dozen men, yet the SGC has never considered sending a force of more than four people through on any mission.
-Earth has saved every non-evil race in the universe yet they refuse to help Earth in the slightest.