Is There any Science Left In Doctor Who's Science Fiction?
- Thread starter StCoop
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Also, they weren't "in space" they were in the upper atmosphere, which has enough of a medium there for drag to work on low Earth orbit satellites...
Like I said, the shock wave is a property of the medium, not the explosive. Detonate identical explosions in water, in sea-level atmospheric pressure, and in near-vacuum, and you'll get three very, very different magnitudes of shock wave. If you're, say, 20 feet away from an exploding hand grenade in air, the shock wave won't hurt you much, and the main danger is from shrapnel. If you're the same distance from an identical grenade in water, though, the shock will probably kill you because the medium is much denser and thus transmits much more force. By the same token, if you're close enough to an explosion to be killed by the shock wave in air, then an identical explosion going off in near-vacuum won't harm you much at all, because there simply isn't as much material to transmit energy to your body. There, shrapnel will pretty much be your only worry. (Unless it's a nuclear or antimatter explosion, in which case you're dead from radiation.)
When something explodes in a vacuum, the only thing expanding outward is the material that made up the exploding object itself. But the whole nature of an explosion is that the material of the explosive expands immensely in volume in a very short time, and therefore decreases immensely in density in a very short time. So it would very rapidly become too diffuse to have any major impact on anything nearby.
Well, as shown, they were far enough from Earth that they would qualify as being in orbital space. IIRC, the apparent size of Earth was smaller than what you'd see from the space shuttle in orbit.
And again, it's a matter of degree. Yes, LEO satellites are subject to a small amount of drag that can gradually slow their orbits over years or decades. That hardly qualifies as sufficient drag to exert any noticeable force on a human(oid) body or human-sized spacesuit. It's small enough to be negligible on the scale we're discussing.
Tell that to a supernova. It entirely depends on the amount of material that is exploding.
Actually him crashlanding on Earth heavily damaged and instantly repaired by the suit instead of being utterly crushed and so dead even regeneration wouldn't bring him back, pushed it too far for me.
I couldn't take anything seriously enough to fully enjoy the show after that up until the Amy/Rory moment.
I couldn't take anything seriously enough to fully enjoy the show after that up until the Amy/Rory moment.
I guess that those spacesuits are built to last. Inertial dampening, maybe?
Also, did I miss something or should there be thousands of humanoid aliens making landfall at about the same time?
Really, I don't think that this episode will benefit too much from scrutiny. Still, it's big and not too clever - standard Who Christmas fare in a way.
Also, did I miss something or should there be thousands of humanoid aliens making landfall at about the same time?
Really, I don't think that this episode will benefit too much from scrutiny. Still, it's big and not too clever - standard Who Christmas fare in a way.
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The Christmas special has an awful lot of boxes to tick, so it's a miracle that they're watchable at all. I watched it with people aged from 8 to 80 and everyone enjoyed it. It's a testament to the cleverness of the writers and actors that it was such a success.
So you think it's right to appease people? That sort of thing is the cause of world wars. You Monster!
Doctor Who has never been scientifically accurate, nor should it be. That ebing said, this year's Christmas special did take a bit too many liberties. Surviving the vacuum of space, a 1940s housewife who has never operated anything more complicated than a car learning how to operate a futuristic mech and fly a dome through time and space.
Eh, whatever. It's no worse than warp 10 salamanders.
Eh, whatever. It's no worse than warp 10 salamanders.
Maybe it was early on, and sometimes it can be. But it's always been more of a complete fantasy show than science fiction.
Very little in DW these days stands up to reason. In series 5 we had a character - Amy Pond - still existing after both her parents had been retroactively erased from existence! How do we explain this? Answer: we can't. It's a trifle annoying, but it doesn't stop me from persevering with the show.
That's not so unlikely. What's complete fantasy is the "explosive decompression" seen in movies like Outland and Total Recall, the idea that you'd blow up in vacuum or a tenuous atmosphere. The "explosive" in that phrase just means that the air rushes out of any available exit with great speed and force, like the way the explosion of the powder in a firearm cartridge forces the bullet (and the vapors from the exploding powder) out at supersonic speeds. If you try to hold your breath in vacuum, that intense pressure differential would rupture your lungs and kill you, so you'd need to let the air leave your lungs right away. And the Doctor certainly wasn't trying to hold his breath here.
You also wouldn't freeze instantly, because vacuum is an insulator. If you were in direct sunlight, you'd be in more danger of overheating.
In reality, the human body can survive about 60-90 seconds of vacuum exposure before the heart stops; the main problem is loss of oxygen to the brain, which can cause unconsciousness within about 15 seconds. But we know that Time Lords have "respiratory cutoff;" the Doctor has survived several minutes without air on various past occasions. So it's consistent that he could be able to retain consciousness in vacuum longer than a human could.
Its original intent was to be an educational show, alternating between serials that taught history and serials that taught science; but the science was always pretty dire, at least by modern standards (and the history was often questionable).
Correct me if I'm wrong, Christopher, but wouldn't there also be some bruising due to capillary rupture from the vacuum exposure? I recall a Larry Niven essay about the first barefoot human footprint on the moon (hasn't happened yet, but it will eventually), and I'm pretty sure that Niven mentioned that there would be some bruising.
Otherwise, I agree entirely with your assessment. Skin is actually adapted well to vacuum conditions, and with the Time Lord's respiratory bypass the Doctor could survive vacuum exposure and maintain consciousness for longer than a human could.
Even in fantasy, though, things are expected to make sense within that world. Doctor Who just seems to be pulling stuff out of its ass.
I'm not Christopher, but by this point I half expect Amy's timeline to collapse under the weight of its own recursiveness.
Well to me something can still be science fiction if it at least pretends to take place in the real world (or a close enough version of it). It's only when it takes place in an entirely different world or reality (as in SW or Game of Thrones) that I consider it fantasy.
That may not be the common or accepted definition, but it's the one I go by.
That said, Doctor Who definitely comes very close to crossing the fantasy line at times.
Technically all of existence was erased. But yeah there's always some fantastic type things in DW but this isn't really new. I mean really how many times have the Daleks, Cybermen, etc been completely destroyed only to come back. The new series is probably a bit more ridiculous. But then again how many times did the Third doctor have to deal with invasions of some sort in a matter of those few years. That's kinda ridiculous isn't it?
I guess what I'm saying is if you are watching Doctor Who or Star Trek or any type of fiction you aren't in it for real science because most real science is actually boring to most normal people.
My impression is that trying to apply scientific or logical analysis to Doctor Who is using the wrong tool for the job. It's not a science fiction show, it's a science fantasy show. It's always played gleefully fast and loose with science and history and internal consistency and common sense, and it's that unfettered wildness, that sense that anything can happen, no matter how bizarre, that's part of its inherent character and charm. There are plenty of shows I nitpick, shows that have a pretense of credibility, but Doctor Who isn't even trying to be plausible, so it's like nitpicking the science of Greek mythology or the Brothers Grimm. Doctor Who makes it up as it goes along. It's as freewheeling and fluid as a child's imagination. It's a tall tale like Paul Bunyan, the sheer impossbility of its exaggerations being part of its inherent poetry.
I like my SF to be scientifically credible and consistent, but it doesn't all have to be like that. There's room in it for stories that just cut loose and play freely with ideas. Science fiction deserves its own tall tales and ripping yarns as much as any other genre, and that's what Doctor Who provides. If it were linear and consistent and scientifically well-behaved, it wouldn't be Doctor Who.
Doctor Who is science fiction. But there are many different kinds of science fiction.
