Dark Matter, SyFy's new space show, premieres June 12th
- Thread starter Quinton O'Connor
- Start date
But Tabor Calchek is not Rodney McKay. Maybe the problem is that he hasn't appeared enough times for the differences between the characters to become clear. Though it seems to me that Calchek is a lot less neurotic than McKay, more a snake-oil salesman and wheeler-dealer.
Then again, I suppose Hewlett does tend to specialize in abrasive characters like McKay, Calchek, and the neighbor from Rise of the Planet of the Apes.
Then again, I suppose Hewlett does tend to specialize in abrasive characters like McKay, Calchek, and the neighbor from Rise of the Planet of the Apes.
I think he just signed on as a regular cast member for that upcoming SyFy show, Incorporate (?), so the question of more than occasional guest spots by Hewlett on Dark Matter may be moot.
Since I've only seen the last two eps. I don't know, but did ever appear in person or only a screen? It's possible they can keep him on the show and film his onscreen scenes seperately as they've been doing all along.
Indeed, his total screen time could have been filmed in an hour on one day. And if he's on another SyFy show as a regular, slumming on a counterpart in the schedule is nothing new. Rob Stewart was on both DM and Killjoys on the same week!
Mark
Mark
Nobody has any thoughts on the odds that the GA will use the Raza crew as bait for the multicorps, in S2?
I think the "transfer transit" pods are a nice take on ST transporters. There used to be discussions on here about the morality aspect of dissolving your body on one end and rebuilding it on the other end, and the pods on DM illustrate this to some extent. Unlike ST transporters, those need a receiver installation, which helps make the tech far less overpowered then it is in ST.
I think the "transfer transit" pods are a nice take on ST transporters. There used to be discussions on here about the morality aspect of dissolving your body on one end and rebuilding it on the other end, and the pods on DM illustrate this to some extent. Unlike ST transporters, those need a receiver installation, which helps make the tech far less overpowered then it is in ST.
I see no way to assess the odds without more information. It's one possibility out of many, a reasonable-sounding one, but we don't know what the writers have planned. So we wait and see.
Also, your body isn't dissolved; you just stay in the sending pod under sedation while your duplicate is off having experiences that are later downloaded into your brain. It's telepresence rather than teleportation. Cf. the film Avatar, the comic and movie Surrogates, Doctor Who's "The Rebel Flesh" and "The Almost People," and books including David Brin's Kiln People, John Scalzi's Lock In, Alastair Reynolds's Blue Remembered Earth, etc. But by employing telepresence across interstellar distances, it's able to function analogously to interstellar teleportation, which is a clever application (though one I have seen in prose before).
I saw an interview with Mallozzi (post s1-finale, but before the order for S2 was confirmed) in which he mentioned something spoilery that may be of interest: [
S2 is apparently going to start in a "Galactic super max prison". Mallozi noted that potentially, other inmates could join the crew, allthough he may be teasing or misleading us there.
I know the body isn't dissolved in DM, but it apparently is (or can be considered to) in ST transporter tech. It's just that making the copy of the body is made so visually clear in DM. One could see a Trek transporter as a machine that operated like the DM tech, only without the need for a receiver pod and without a limitation on the life span of the "clone". And of course, the original body not being preserved.
I like Dark Matter, they do a lot on a limited budget.
The clone body in DM (which goes back into the receiver pods) arguably also is converted to energy patterns, albeit in addition to leftover matter. The Transfer Transit lady said the materials are recycled for the creation of later clones, and I suppose this recycling would involve a change from matter to energy as well.
Joseph Mallozzi has answered a number of fan questions on his blog: "answers to burning questions"
Some interesting stuff; we can expect more space battles in S2. Early in S2, we will know for sure who "Titch the farm boy" is.
I wonder if Titch could possibly be the old guy in the bed from episode 12, and some of his memories are buried in Two somewhere.
Not really. The TNG-era tech manuals explain that the transporter actually breaks down your particles, sends them through the beam to the destination, then puts them back together again. So it's not a copy of you, it's the same physical particles.
Of course, as far as quantum theory goes, that's a meaningless distinction. Particles of a given type are indistinguishable, given identity only by their quantum state. If you transmit the quantum state information from one set of particles and impress it onto another, then in quantum terms it's the same entity. Quantum teleportation, if it could work in this sense, would involve scanning a person on the quantum level, transmitting that quantum information, and impressing it onto a new set of particles. Trek transporters just send the particles too and use them as the matter source, which I guess is what enables them to work without needing a receiving station.
But the act of scanning an object and recording its precise quantum-level data requires destroying that object. Quantum information is conserved; it can't be copied, only transferred. So to record all the quantum states of the particles in a body, you have to change the states that define them as part of that body, and so the body's integrity will be lost. So quantum teleportation wouldn't be like sending a fax; the original body is destroyed and a new one is created. But the new one is effectively the same body as the original, because it contains the same continuous quantum information.
Transfer Transit bodies are not quantum replicas in that sense, because the original bodies survive. They're just Gangers, to use the Doctor Who term. (After all, if One's Transfer Transit body had been an exact duplicate of his real body, rather than just a quick-clone based on his DNA scan, then it would've had his plastic surgery too, and would've looked like Jace Corso instead of Darren Cross.)
Why in the world would you think that recycling had anything to do with changing matter to energy? It's just processing matter into new configurations, like melting down used aluminum cans to make new aluminum cans.
Besides, the whole conceit of "turning matter to energy" is physically ludicrous. You know what really turns matter to energy? A nuclear reaction. The amount of energy contained in matter is enormous. A hydrogen bomb changes just a few percent of the reaction mass to energy and gives a titanic explosion. If you could convert the mass of a single paper clip entirely to energy, you'd get the same amount of energy released by the Hiroshima bomb. Convert an entire human body to energy and it would be something like 30 times more energetic than the largest nuke ever detonated.
So, no. Any sci-fi handwave you've ever heard about teleporters or recycling processes converting matter to energy is stupid. Ignore it. Converting mass to energy can only be done with nuclear reactions or matter-antimatter annihilation. If you want to convert one material object into another material object, you just change one form of matter to another form of matter.
Yeah, so much for Star Trek's replicators, but I always thought it was nice to give the replicator the dirty dishes and have it convert them back into energy.
I give the dishwasher my dirty dishes and it converts them into clean dishes.
Obviously you're hitting the wrong button.
If Star Trek transporters worked as described, and Star Trek replicators worked as described, then you would be able to do thousands of things in Star Trek that were not possible in Star Trek. I ignored those things because of "suspension of disbelief."
If you want to enjoy sci fi tv shows you have to engage in suspension of disbelief at some point.
If you want to enjoy sci fi tv shows you have to engage in suspension of disbelief at some point.
No, I always make sure I say "energize" or "engage" when I hit it.I give the dishwasher my dirty dishes and it converts them into clean dishes.
Obviously you're hitting the wrong button.