Agents of SHIELD. Season 1 Discussion Thread

Discussion in 'Science Fiction & Fantasy' started by Trekker4747, Sep 25, 2013.

  1. Turtletrekker

    Turtletrekker Admiral Admiral

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    May's mom did say that she drove 500 miles.
     
  2. Marc

    Marc Fleet Admiral Premium Member

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    yeah I ran it through google maps.

    Distance from Philidephia to Toronto came in at 498 miles :)

    Though I thought "Providence" was up in the north of the Province so May would have to do some travelling to down to meet her mother.

    Distance from "Providence" to Philly according to google maps 887miles/1420km.
     
  3. Kirby

    Kirby Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    I would drive 500 miles
    And I would drive 500 more
    Just pick up my daughter in the wilderness
    In order to clean up HYDRA's mess


    I'm sorry...
     
  4. ClayinCA

    ClayinCA Commodore Commodore

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    Great--now I have a Proclaimers song in my head. :p
     
  5. Enterprise1701

    Enterprise1701 Commodore Commodore

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    I guess it's a movie/TV contrivance that May walked from Providence in the wilderness to a city, probably Toronto in under a day. After all, this whole Uprising story arc seems to take much less time than Captain America: The Winter Soldier. I hope the producers have remembered that at the end of The Winter Soldier Maria Hill is working for Stark Industries.
     
  6. Alidar Jarok

    Alidar Jarok Everything in moderation but moderation Moderator

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    There's still the argument that he's a sleeper after his death (not before). That's the one plausible argument left. Although I don't think the lie detector would have caught that anyway even if it were true.

    I doubt the producers have forgotten that, although I'm not certain it's happened yet chronologically speaking. Everything from the Fury scene on the streets of DC (teased in the AoS stinger) to the fall of the Helicarriers happened in about three days. But we don't know if the Congressional hearing was the next day or how much time passed before that and Romanoff decided to go off the grid again. All we know is Fury and Rogers were thought dead or MIA during that gap period and then officially went into hiding after that.

    It's also not clear how long after Garrett was captured until they abandoned the Hub, how long they were at Providence before orientation, how long the events last episode took (although my guess is two days, maybe three with travel time).
     
  7. The Old Mixer

    The Old Mixer Mih ssim, mih ssim, nam, daed si Xim. Moderator

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    Yet running with the Hydra situation initiated by TWS and mining it for story material within the constraints of the show needn't affect future films one iota. If, say, Fitz or Simmons winds up being a traitor, that's just the show telling its own story with its own characters. There's plenty of room for the show to initiate big twists or swerves involving its own show-specific characters and concepts (including Marvel properties that they've been cleared to use on the show).

    And yeah, describing harmless fan speculation as "fear" was way OTT. It's the fans actually starting to care enough about the show to get more invested in it, which is a big improvement for this show.
     
  8. Christopher

    Christopher Writer Admiral

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    Why Philadelphia? It's way on the opposite end of Pennsylvania. The closest city in PA to the coordinates of Providence would be Erie, and that's about 628 miles (by the shortest suggested route) from Cochrane, Ontario, the nearest town Google Maps shows to the coordinates of the base.

    We don't know she walked the whole way. She could've hitched a ride from someone.


    As Alidar Jarok said, there could've been a major gap in time between the destruction of the Helicarriers and the Congressional hearings/closing montage. It surely takes more than a couple of days to schedule and organize a Congressional hearing -- probably more like a few weeks. And it would've taken time for Hill to get her job at Stark and Sharon Carter to get her job at the CIA -- indeed, they both would've needed to be investigated and cleared beforehand.

    So Hill's appearance next week could well take place before her final scene at SI in the movie.



    But that wouldn't even really qualify as a twist, because a twist is something that changes the story's direction, and revealing a second HYDRA sleeper would just be reinforcing the current direction. It would also be pretty anticlimactic, so it wouldn't feel all that big either.

    But someone on the Tor.com thread for this episode offered an intriguing suggestion: That Fitz may be starting to become disillusioned and that Ward (whom he clearly has a rapport with, if not an attraction to) might recruit him to HYDRA. Having another character turn out to be a sleeper already would be repetitive and boring, but having another character choose to switch sides to HYDRA now, to be won over to the enemy by Ward, would be entertainingly different.


    Call it caution or alertness, then, but the thought process is similar: One sees a bad thing happen and one starts expecting it to recur.
     
  9. The Old Mixer

    The Old Mixer Mih ssim, mih ssim, nam, daed si Xim. Moderator

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    I was hesitant to bring it up in the context of the current conversation, but I was starting to think the same thing myself earlier today. It could very well be where they're going with the rift that they seem to be growing between Fitz and Simmons. I'd assume that up to this point, Fitz has been a loyal SHIELD agent...Garrett gave him the opportunity to switch sides when things looked hopeless for the team a couple of episodes ago, and he was defiant of Hydra. But if he starts to rethink things, he may decide to take Garrett up on his offer...and thus the offer itself would prove to have had a larger purpose.

    But we'll see....
     
  10. Marc

    Marc Fleet Admiral Premium Member

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    Cos I have about the geographical layout of Pennsylvania and simply went from capital to capital.

    but in either case it's still more than 500miles.
     
  11. Christopher

    Christopher Writer Admiral

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    Yes, of course, but May had clearly traveled some distance from the base by the time her mother picked her up, because she was on a fair-sized paved road rather than in the snowy wilderness. As I said, she probably hitched a ride part of the way.

    Heck, it makes immensely more sense than powerless Clark Kent walking to and from the Fortress of Solitude in Superman II.
     
  12. Velocity

    Velocity Vice Admiral Admiral

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    Women often are not given a middle name because it is assumed they will use their maiden name as their middle name after they marry.
     
  13. USS Fardell

    USS Fardell Fleet Captain Fleet Captain

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    Of course I was guessing that May's mother had driven up from Ottawa (a bit less than 500 miles) to pick up her daughter.
     
  14. Guy Gardener

    Guy Gardener Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    In the lap of squalor I assure you.
    That is horrible.

    I thought it was cute when I found out that Martha Kent's maiden name was Clark, but if her name is Martha Clark Kent, doesn't that make you wonder if Clark Kent isn't really Clark Kent jr? Which also make you wonder if his first name all along has been Martha to fully qualify for that junior status?
     
  15. Christopher

    Christopher Writer Admiral

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    I can't think of any woman I've ever known who definitely lacked a middle name. That sounds like an older custom, perhaps.
     
  16. Duncan MacLeod

    Duncan MacLeod Fleet Captain Fleet Captain

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    Well she could have been visiting friends in Ottawa when May's call came in.
     
  17. DEWLine

    DEWLine Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    Yep.

    Entirely possible, given the family profession.
     
  18. dansigal

    dansigal Captain Captain

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    I thought the anger, sadness and defiannce Fitz displayed when Garrett was revealed and tried to get him to join willingly was a defining moment for Fitz' character. That scene having happened the way it did, they'd have to do it pretty freaking well to do a "Ward successfully recruits Fitz" story convincingly.
     
  19. DEWLine

    DEWLine Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    Agreed on this point.

    Garrett agreeing to be the price paid to land Fitz as a recruit could happen...but he'd have to have Damn Good Reasons to accept that trade-off, wouldn't he?

    And speaking of reasons...do we accept Garrett's claimed motives for switching from SHIELD to HYDRA in the first place?
     
  20. Alidar Jarok

    Alidar Jarok Everything in moderation but moderation Moderator

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    I accept he's not a true believer in HYDRA, yeah. His actions seem to confirm that. Given this, I don't have much of a reason to doubt his claimed motives.