Agents of Shield - Season 4

[Reverend]

I've always liked "any insufficiently explained pseudoscience is indistinguishable from magic."

Seriously though the magic = super-technology thing even applies to a lot high fantasy, going all the way back to Tolkien.
The Elves were never magical, they were just a different, very old breed with very sophisticated crafts (like the rings) and a direct line to whatever powerful beings created/shaped that world.
Even as recent as the Dragon Age games where all magic is a manipulation of a parallel universe that is shaped by thoughts and dreams and requires a certain rare substance tied to that realm to access.

 

[Kahless the Unforgettable]

I coined a phrase for my D&D/Stargate mashup RPG a while back: "If sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic, then sometimes it's okay to throw in some actual magic." I'm not sure that's quite what they're doing here, but it looks like it.

I agree, there's definitely supernatural powers in the Marvel universe that are distinct from mutations (Mutants), genetic modifications (Inhumans), alien physiology (obviously Aliens), and scientific accidents/breakthroughs (pretty much everyone else).

My point was that the Inhumans are just the result of advanced genetic abilities that granted powers beyond our understanding, and to us they appear to be the same thing as magic, but int he Marvel universe, they're definitely not the same thing. Even though the end results are often similar. The Kree clearly included some kind of clairsentient ability into the mist (or just the genesplicing) that allows Inhumans to gain powers that are "needed," but it's not a magical process. Just a really advanced alien technology.

Unlike Ghostrider, Dr. Strange, and the Darkhold which are all deeply entrenched in the supernatural mysticism of the setting. Even if they sometimes use technology as a prop in place of spellbooks and magic circles.

 

[LJones41]

Seriously though the magic = super-technology thing even applies to a lot high fantasy, going all the way back to Tolkien.

So, Frigga's abilities were simply "high technology"? It didn't look like it to me.

 

[Reverend]

So, Frigga's abilities were simply "high technology"? It didn't look like it to me.

No, no. Not "high technology". "Ultra high technology". Orders of magnatude more sophisticated.

Also, how is what she did fundamentally different from what Kilgrave could do?

 

[Christopher]

So, Frigga's abilities were simply "high technology"? It didn't look like it to me.

"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." -- Clarke's Third Law

 

[Silvercrest]

"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." -- Clarke's Third Law

... which means you can get away with throwing in actual magic — because the viewer can't distinguish between them.

 

[The Nth Doctor]

Rudimentary science for the win!

I loved that not only did Fitz's big brain saved the day, but he did it by knowing basic science and math.

I'm glad S.H.I.E.L.D. is now back in the public eye and good idea by Coulson to roll out the announcement on the heels of a global crisis. Not much of a better way to win back the hearts of citizen by showing what an organization can do during troubling times.

Fixing May seemed a bit easy (basically shutting her down and starting her up again), but I'm glad we got normal May back.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

So, can Fitz's code name be "Slide Rule"?

 

[Christopher]

Interesting how both Supergirl and this show are casting women of color (Tawny Cypress, Parminder Nagra) as their bigoted senators who are surrogates for race-baiting, white-supremacist politicians like Trump. I guess they're trying to avoid being too on the nose about it, but the commentary on current events was pretty overt anyway: politicians who use race-baiting and play on xenophobia are the bad guys. (Which made it incongruous that my local station showed an oddly upbeat pro-Trump commercial during the show.)

SHIELD being out in the open again is an interesting development. I wonder how it will lead to things playing out differently this season. I was wondering how they'd handle a crisis this massive in a way that would justify the movies continuing to ignore it, but I guess it was defused by the exposure of the hoax and the affirmation that SHIELD was on the job now. And I can understand why the show needed SHIELD to be seen saving the world from a crisis this massive in order to offset the mistrust from the Hydra revelations.

But how exactly did the EMP devices get shut down in the other cities so soon after Fitz shut down the one in Miami? Are we supposed to assume they were all linked, even though they were set off separately? Oh, well, it's not like there was any logic to their operation anyway. I don't know why so many fiction writers assume that EMP only affects active devices. I mean, the EMP induces a powerful current in conductors, so it doesn't matter if a device already has current running through it. So where did that myth come from? Also, there's the myth that EMP's effects are temporary and that you can just power the devices back up again after the crisis has passed. EMP doesn't just shut things down, it burns out their circuits.

I was expecting that Radcliffe would have to reveal AIDA's existence to Simmons in order to save May. I was surprised that he was just able to remove her battery and keep the secret.

 

[The Nth Doctor]

Yeah, I thought Radcliffe had to reveal AIDA as well. I guess they're saving that for another rainy day.

Speaking of myths, I did like how Radcliffe dismissed and mocked the common "we only use 10% of our brains" myth.

 

[LJones41]

So what exactly were the ghosts that had took over May's body? Will that explained as "technology" or is this a sign that Marvel is finally willing to accept the idea of magic and the supernatural? Will Mutant Enemy utilize these ghosts in future episodes of the Season? Or is this another story arc that will be quickly resolved and easily forgotten?

 

[Kahless the Unforgettable]

So what exactly were the ghosts that had took over May's body? Will that explained as "technology" or is this a sign that Marvel is finally willing to accept the idea of magic and the supernatural? Will Mutant Enemy utilize these ghosts in future episodes of the Season? Or is this another story arc that will be quickly resolved and easily forgotten?

What makes you think Marvel doesn't accept magic, given how many magicians, sorcerers, and magic items exist in their universe?

I'm guessing you meant SHIELD?

 

[Christopher]

Speaking of myths, I did like how Radcliffe dismissed and mocked the common "we only use 10% of our brains" myth.

Yeah, but then he seemed to walk it back with "but only a few neurons make all the noise." I'm not sure what he means by that, unless it's that, on average, only about 16% of neurons are active at any given moment, though we use pretty much all of them over the course of a day. Still, his phrasing was so confusing that it undermined the attempt to debunk the myth.

So what exactly were the ghosts that had took over May's body? Will that explained as "technology" or is this a sign that Marvel is finally willing to accept the idea of magic and the supernatural? Will Mutant Enemy utilize these ghosts in future episodes of the Season? Or is this another story arc that will be quickly resolved and easily forgotten?

As the producers have confirmed in interviews, they're introducing the supernatural this season as their way of coordinating with the upcoming release of Doctor Strange, which will be bringing magic to the MCU in a big way.

 

[LJones41]

What makes you think Marvel doesn't accept magic, given how many magicians, sorcerers, and magic items exist in their universe?

I'm guessing you meant SHIELD?

Then why do I keep encountering explanations that the "magic" and "sorcery" featured in the MCU is basically alien technology?

 

[Kahless the Unforgettable]

Then why do I keep encountering explanations that the "magic" and "sorcery" featured in the MCU is basically alien technology?

From Marvel? I sincerely doubt that. From SHIELD and other characters in the Marvel Universe? Because they haven't discovered magic yet.

 

[The Nth Doctor]

Yeah, but then he seemed to walk it back with "but only a few neurons make all the noise." I'm not sure what he means by that, unless it's that, on average, only about 16% of neurons are active at any given moment, though we use pretty much all of them over the course of a day. Still, his phrasing was so confusing that it undermined the attempt to debunk the myth.

I forgot about that line. I did find it a bit confusing as well and figured roughly what you theorized.

 

[Christopher]

Then why do I keep encountering explanations that the "magic" and "sorcery" featured in the MCU is basically alien technology?

Because the MCU was made with the understanding that the general audience had different expectations and sensibilities than the comics audience. Comics readers are used to their total hodgepodge of genres, where sorcerors and literal gods and demons can coexist with superscience and aliens and monsters and street-level vigilantes and straight-up cowboys and everything else. But to more general moviegoing audiences, seeing sci-fi and fantasy in the same universe could be confusing. So the makers of the MCU started out slow in order to ease the general audience into the sheer eclectic weirdness that comics fans take for granted. They started with the Earthbound, superscience stuff like Iron Man and the Hulk, then rationalized Thor and the Asgardians with a sci-fi explanation so they'd fit into a sci-fi universe. (Also, they probably treated the Asgardians as aliens rather than literal gods so as not to offend religious types.) But now that the audience has gotten more accustomed to the general freaky weirdness of Marvel's sci-fi aspects, they're ready for the MCU to take the next step and introduce them to actual magic. The movies are doing Doctor Strange, AoS is doing Ghost Rider, and the Netflix shows are about to introduce Iron Fist and his mystical chi powers, after already teasing us with the Hand and their resurrection abilities in Daredevil. (Indeed, the Netflix shows followed the same progression -- they started out with the least superpowered hero, even toning down the portrayal of Daredevil's power to less of a "radar sense" and more just using his surviving senses really well, and then they introduced more superpowered characters like Jessica Jones, Kilgrave, and Luke Cage, and they've saved the outright mystical powers of Iron Fist for last.)

The DC television universe also used this approach. First they started with Arrow, a grounded, street-level vigilante show. Then they started to bring in science-based superpowers with the Mirakuru serum, and that primed audiences for the Flash and a world of metahumans and superscience, and then they started to hint at the paranormal with the Lazarus Pit, and then they brought in actual magic last season, as well as time travel, reincarnation, aliens, pretty much the whole jumble of genres. But they needed to start out grounded and ease the general audience into the weirder stuff one idea at a time.

 

[JD]

Same here. Even with that I was still happy about the first line, the whole 10% thing has starting really driving me crazy lately.
I liked that we got to spend some time with Robbie's brother.
The reveal that it was the Watchdogs and not Inhumans responsible for the EMPs was a nice twist.
It was great getting to see Fitz get in on the action, and get to save the day.
It also looks like Robbie's Uncle Eli is still alive, so I guess he's not the spirit responsible for Robbie being Ghost Rider like in the comics. So I wonder if means he's a mashup with Robbie possessed by Zarathos? Daisy did mention a demon of vengeance, which I believe could be seen as a reference to Zarathos more that Eli.

So what exactly were the ghosts that had took over May's body? Will that explained as "technology" or is this a sign that Marvel is finally willing to accept the idea of magic and the supernatural? Will Mutant Enemy utilize these ghosts in future episodes of the Season? Or is this another story arc that will be quickly resolved and easily forgotten?

It does sound like we will be getting a bit of a science explanation, but it's still real magic with spells and spirits and demons, rather than just sci-fi kind of stuff. Christopher mention LOTR, but a lot of modern fantasy stuff also likes to give it's magic a sciency bent, with it being manipulations of matter, and having an equal-and-opposite reaction kind of thing going on. I wouldn't be surprised if this is the direction the MUC goes.

 

[Reverend]

It's interesting to see how some seem to struggle to comprehend why "magic" is so often tied to a "scientific" grounding in modern storytelling.

There are a lot of reasons of course, but lets boil it down to the basics. First off: what exactly is "magic"? In broad terms, you can probably narrow the definition to "an observed effect that changes the nature of the environment." Be that objects appearing or disappearing out of nowhere, information and insight gathered at great distance. Future events divined from actions in the present and so on and so forth.

Next question: what is technology? It's a means to alter the nature of one's environment. A manifestation of will. Thinking of something and making it happen. That can range from "I want a sharp stone to cut this meat" to "I want to visit the moon."

Clark's Law was not a massive leap of logic, or a great insight but an observation of what was already obvious to anyone with eyes and a brain to use them. We've been magic wielders ever since we started banging rocks together to make fire, throwing sticks at our fellow animals to make food and learning which roots and seeds fight off illness. Technology has always been magic, it's just now we have a larger vocabulary to understand it.

Try to explain a phone to someone from the dark ages and the closest to comprehension they can get is "magic talking box". Now have a Celestial try to explain the workings of an infinity stone to us and the best we can do to understand is "magic rock".

 

[Christopher]

The reveal that it was the Watchdogs and not Inhumans responsible for the EMPs was a nice twist.

I didn't really see it as a twist, because I thought it was pretty obvious from the get-go. It was an attack that could more likely be pulled off with technology than with Inhuman powers, and the ultimatums were likely to stir up even more fear and hatred against Inhumans, and that's just what their enemies would want.

It was great getting to see Fitz get in on the action, and get to save the day.

I found it a bit incongruous to see him participating in the fisticuffs, but I guess he's still a SHIELD agent and that would be part of his training.