What if Ron Moore did Buck Rogers in the twenty-fifth century?

[Bob Karo]

There were intelligent people back in the 1910's too. Some were just as intelligent as any born today.

In real life, stripped bare, a 20th century man transplanted to the 25th century would probably be just as able as a 21st century man.

What's a joke is assuming that a 20th century man would act like one of the Three Stooges.

How is a radioactive gas supposed to put someone in suspended animation? it doesn't make physical sense, at least when you freeze somebody their molecules slow down. I don't know under what circumstance a World War I fighter can get in perfect suspended animation by accident. A more plausible story line is an astronaut in the near future freezes himself deliberately.

That's just the popular Phlebotinum of the era. Today it would probably be nanites or something.

The point is you have a modern man with some sort of interesting life history get frozen in time. Say what you want about WWI biplanes, those pilots were badass. They took to the skies in new technology to duel to the death (sometimes with pistols). Same deal with an airship pilot. A man who sailed the skies like a "futuristic" sailor. An average 1950s man was born in the depression and fought WWII.

Today, it could be an Air National Guard pilot who works for a biotech company full time.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

That's just the popular Phlebotinum of the era. Today it would probably be nanites or something.

Exactly.

 

[Mars]

There were intelligent people back in the 1910's too. Some were just as intelligent as any born today.

In real life, stripped bare, a 20th century man transplanted to the 25th century would probably be just as able as a 21st century man.

What's a joke is assuming that a 20th century man would act like one of the Three Stooges.

How is a radioactive gas supposed to put someone in suspended animation? it doesn't make physical sense, at least when you freeze somebody their molecules slow down. I don't know under what circumstance a World War I fighter can get in perfect suspended animation by accident. A more plausible story line is an astronaut in the near future freezes himself deliberately.

That's just the popular Phlebotinum of the era. Today it would probably be nanites or something.

The point is you have a modern man with some sort of interesting life history get frozen in time. Say what you want about WWI biplanes, those pilots were badass. They took to the skies in new technology to duel to the death (sometimes with pistols). Same deal with an airship pilot. A man who sailed the skies like a "futuristic" sailor. An average 1950s man was born in the depression and fought WWII.

Today, it could be an Air National Guard pilot who works for a biotech company full time.

What if we put Buck Rogers in the Star Trek Universe? Such that he ends up in the 25th century around the year 2491 for example? This is the opposite end of that century from Star Trek Online, and if you want a fighter pilot in the Star Trek continuity, the late 25th century might be the place for them.

Now about Buck's background, I'd say make him a product of the secret Eugenics war that was going on in the 1990s, he was one of the group of men and women that included Khan Noonan Singh, except he broke with them and ended up working for the CIA, using another bit of technology put together by Gary Seven, he was send in a second ship to follow the SS Botany Bay, except the 23rd century starship Enterprise never found him when it picked up the others, so ole Buck ended up in the 25th century to be picked up by a 25th century Star Trek version of Ardala, on her way to meet with Federation representatives on Earth. The ships of the era are warp fighter squadrons and large capital carriers. Ardala is a humanoid from another galaxy, lets say M31, the galaxies are connected by a series of artificial wormholes much like the Bajoran wormhole, but more of them have been discovered making intergalactic travel an everyday reality for the late 25th century Federation. New improved transwarp drives take ships to these wormholes for fast rapid transit to neighboring galaxies.

 

[Captaindemotion]

If by PTA you mean Paul Thomas Anderson, that's a different director (and this Paul Anderson adopted the "W. S." to differentiate himself). "PTA" is the director of films like Boogie Nights, Punch Drunk Love, and There Will Be Blood, and has five Academy Award nominations. Paul W. S. Anderson is known mainly for his video-game adaptations, Alien Vs. Predator, the 2011 The Three Musketeers, and the Death Race remake. I suspect from context that it's PWSA you're referring to.

It was indeed. I've read numerous reviews of the other (talented) Anderson's new movie, The Master, over the last few days, so it must have been Freudian. Or Hubbardian, given the latter's distaste for psychiatry (The Master is supposedly about a thinly-disguised L. Ron).

Pity, I was much a fan of Poul Anderson's books, I think they would make great movies, especially things like Operation Chaos. I mean if Harry Potter did well, could you imagine an "Operation Chaos" movie?

This is a different person again.

 

[Bob Karo]

How is a radioactive gas supposed to put someone in suspended animation? it doesn't make physical sense, at least when you freeze somebody their molecules slow down. I don't know under what circumstance a World War I fighter can get in perfect suspended animation by accident. A more plausible story line is an astronaut in the near future freezes himself deliberately.

That's just the popular Phlebotinum of the era. Today it would probably be nanites or something.

The point is you have a modern man with some sort of interesting life history get frozen in time. Say what you want about WWI biplanes, those pilots were badass. They took to the skies in new technology to duel to the death (sometimes with pistols). Same deal with an airship pilot. A man who sailed the skies like a "futuristic" sailor. An average 1950s man was born in the depression and fought WWII.

Today, it could be an Air National Guard pilot who works for a biotech company full time.

What if we put Buck Rogers in the Star Trek Universe? Such that he ends up in the 25th century around the year 2491 for example? This is the opposite end of that century from Star Trek Online, and if you want a fighter pilot in the Star Trek continuity, the late 25th century might be the place for them.

Now about Buck's background, I'd say make him a product of the secret Eugenics war that was going on in the 1990s, he was one of the group of men and women that included Khan Noonan Singh, except he broke with them and ended up working for the CIA, using another bit of technology put together by Gary Seven, he was send in a second ship to follow the SS Botany Bay, except the 23rd century starship Enterprise never found him when it picked up the others, so ole Buck ended up in the 25th century to be picked up by a 25th century Star Trek version of Ardala, on her way to meet with Federation representatives on Earth. The ships of the era are warp fighter squadrons and large capital carriers. Ardala is a humanoid from another galaxy, lets say M31, the galaxies are connected by a series of artificial wormholes much like the Bajoran wormhole, but more of them have been discovered making intergalactic travel an everyday reality for the late 25th century Federation. New improved transwarp drives take ships to these wormholes for fast rapid transit to neighboring galaxies.

Honestly, I find a guy accidentally being exposed to a mysterious chemical and sleeping five centuries more plausible.

 

[Bob Karo]

EDIT: latest rumor has Paul WS Anderson attached. Christopher, how does that compare to Frank Miller?

Well, just not being Frank Miller is an improvement. But the only thing of Anderson's I've seen was Event Horizon, which I actually kind of liked; aside from the "Hell dimension" stuff, it was one of the few SF movies that actually put some effort into getting the physics and mechanics of outer space right (like portraying the effects of vacuum exposure on the human body fairly accurately). So I dunno, maybe it could work. But I haven't gotten the impression that his other work has been particularly well-received.

I think that them going through the trouble of making it such a "Hard" sci-fi setting made the swerve into supernatural horror that much better. Although, I do wish we could get a straighter version of the movie. The idea of a USCG cutter in space does interest me.

As far as Frank Miller...

Well, we know Wilma would have prostituted herself to pay for flight school. Other than that, who knows?

 

[Christopher]

...But the only thing of Anderson's I've seen was Event Horizon, which I actually kind of liked; aside from the "Hell dimension" stuff, it was one of the few SF movies that actually put some effort into getting the physics and mechanics of outer space right (like portraying the effects of vacuum exposure on the human body fairly accurately)....

I think that them going through the trouble of making it such a "Hard" sci-fi setting made the swerve into supernatural horror that much better.

I actually once read a hard-SF novella, "The Way of All Ghosts" by Greg Bear IIRC, that posited an intrusion from another universe whose laws of physics and probability were so different from ours that it was kind of like a hell dimension, twisting reality and perception in horrifyingly, traumatically bizarre ways. So I'm actually kind of able to accept Event Horizon as semi-plausible based on that precedent.

As far as Frank Miller...

Well, we know Wilma would have prostituted herself to pay for flight school. Other than that, who knows?

Well, if Miller's Holy Terror is typical of how he thinks now, his version of Buck Rogers might bring back the original race-war elements...

 

[Nerys Myk]

It has to make sense. How about Billy the Kid in the 25th century, would you buy that?

You seem to be having trouble understanding what I wrote.

No it doesn't have to make sense. All it has to do is entertain. Me, I love time travel stories. I don't care if the method is "plausible" or the distance in time that is traveled. Most people watching probably feel the same.

Well then its no different than fantasy. I figure science fiction is a type of fantasy with some scientific plausibility behind it, even Star Trek has that, more than some, less than others. There are theories for warp drives in Modern physics for example. Space 1999 is an example of even softer science fiction, star wars is high tech fantasy. Lord of the Rings is entertaining but its fantasy. I'd like to imagine that a science fiction story can happen sometime in the future rather than it just being "Middle Earth" set in space. I figure the harder it is, while still being able to tell the story the better.

One can go overboard in the other direction as well, the Orionsarm setting does this in my opinion, AIs dominate in that setting, though plausible, not very interesting because there aren't characters I can identify with, lots of weirdness and bizarre Jargon that one needs to master before understanding one of their stories. I remember one guy wanting a character we could identify with, this guy has multiple bodies and a single hivelike mind much like the Borg in fact.

You thought wrong.

Buck Rogers is never going to be hard SF. Its a pretty pulpy/soft type of SF. Time Travel is a pretty implausible as science goes. Once your story hangs on that concept, your plausibility quotient is headed to the basement. So don't get hung up on that. You can use science ( real and theoretical) for other parts of the story if you want.

There's no one type of "good" science fiction. Not does SF have to be set in the future, or space. I'm not even sure it needs "science".

 

[Mars]

You seem to be having trouble understanding what I wrote.

No it doesn't have to make sense. All it has to do is entertain. Me, I love time travel stories. I don't care if the method is "plausible" or the distance in time that is traveled. Most people watching probably feel the same.

Well then its no different than fantasy. I figure science fiction is a type of fantasy with some scientific plausibility behind it, even Star Trek has that, more than some, less than others. There are theories for warp drives in Modern physics for example. Space 1999 is an example of even softer science fiction, star wars is high tech fantasy. Lord of the Rings is entertaining but its fantasy. I'd like to imagine that a science fiction story can happen sometime in the future rather than it just being "Middle Earth" set in space. I figure the harder it is, while still being able to tell the story the better.

One can go overboard in the other direction as well, the Orionsarm setting does this in my opinion, AIs dominate in that setting, though plausible, not very interesting because there aren't characters I can identify with, lots of weirdness and bizarre Jargon that one needs to master before understanding one of their stories. I remember one guy wanting a character we could identify with, this guy has multiple bodies and a single hivelike mind much like the Borg in fact.

You thought wrong.

Buck Rogers is never going to be hard SF. Its a pretty pulpy/soft type of SF. Time Travel is a pretty implausible as science goes. Once your story hangs on that concept, your plausibility quotient is headed to the basement. So don't get hung up on that. You can use science ( real and theoretical) for other parts of the story if you want.

There's no one type of "good" science fiction. Not does SF have to be set in the future, or space. I'm not even sure it needs "science".

Forward time travel is plausible, we do it all the time, the only difference is that Buck went forward 500 years instead of the standard 80-year human lifetime as we age, but there is no physical reason we can't live to 500, its all in the details, but there is nothing in the laws of physics or science that forbids it.

If you keep Buck within the Solar System, you can have a hard science fiction setting, and 500 years is enough time to terraform Mars perhaps.

 

[Mars]

EDIT: latest rumor has Paul WS Anderson attached. Christopher, how does that compare to Frank Miller?

Well, just not being Frank Miller is an improvement. But the only thing of Anderson's I've seen was Event Horizon, which I actually kind of liked; aside from the "Hell dimension" stuff, it was one of the few SF movies that actually put some effort into getting the physics and mechanics of outer space right (like portraying the effects of vacuum exposure on the human body fairly accurately). So I dunno, maybe it could work. But I haven't gotten the impression that his other work has been particularly well-received.

I think supernatural doesn't make any sense in a spaceship, superscience perhaps but not supernatural. If you see a ghost, it is a hologram, if you see a zombie, it is a robot.

I think that them going through the trouble of making it such a "Hard" sci-fi setting made the swerve into supernatural horror that much better. Although, I do wish we could get a straighter version of the movie. The idea of a USCG cutter in space does interest me.

As far as Frank Miller...

Well, we know Wilma would have prostituted herself to pay for flight school. Other than that, who knows?

 

[Nerys Myk]

Well then its no different than fantasy. I figure science fiction is a type of fantasy with some scientific plausibility behind it, even Star Trek has that, more than some, less than others. There are theories for warp drives in Modern physics for example. Space 1999 is an example of even softer science fiction, star wars is high tech fantasy. Lord of the Rings is entertaining but its fantasy. I'd like to imagine that a science fiction story can happen sometime in the future rather than it just being "Middle Earth" set in space. I figure the harder it is, while still being able to tell the story the better.

One can go overboard in the other direction as well, the Orionsarm setting does this in my opinion, AIs dominate in that setting, though plausible, not very interesting because there aren't characters I can identify with, lots of weirdness and bizarre Jargon that one needs to master before understanding one of their stories. I remember one guy wanting a character we could identify with, this guy has multiple bodies and a single hivelike mind much like the Borg in fact.

You thought wrong.

Buck Rogers is never going to be hard SF. Its a pretty pulpy/soft type of SF. Time Travel is a pretty implausible as science goes. Once your story hangs on that concept, your plausibility quotient is headed to the basement. So don't get hung up on that. You can use science ( real and theoretical) for other parts of the story if you want.

There's no one type of "good" science fiction. Not does SF have to be set in the future, or space. I'm not even sure it needs "science".

Forward time travel is plausible, we do it all the time, the only difference is that Buck went forward 500 years instead of the standard 80-year human lifetime as we age, but there is no physical reason we can't live to 500, its all in the details, but there is nothing in the laws of physics or science that forbids it.

If you keep Buck within the Solar System, you can have a hard science fiction setting, and 500 years is enough time to terraform Mars perhaps.

That's called life.

 

[Christopher]

Buck Rogers is never going to be hard SF. Its a pretty pulpy/soft type of SF.

Actually, from what I've read about them, the TSR novels and RPG were a very hard-SF take on the premise. That's the thing about reinventing a franchise -- you can change the rules under which it operates.

Time Travel is a pretty implausible as science goes. Once your story hangs on that concept, your plausibility quotient is headed to the basement.

But it's not time travel, it's suspended animation. Buck didn't pass through some kind of warp into the future; his life processes were slowed to a crawl and he survived unchanged for five centuries before being revived. That's still implausible given today's understanding of medical science, but far less of a stretch than time travel, since there are scientists actually researching ways to achieve long-term hibernation or to preserve bodies cryogenically for revival in future centuries. Hibernation and cryogenics are a staple of a lot of hard science fiction.

There's no one type of "good" science fiction. Not does SF have to be set in the future, or space. I'm not even sure it needs "science".

Well, it does need some kind of science, or why call it science fiction? SF is about proposing a what-if scenario -- a conjectural advance in science or technology, a radical new discovery or change in the natural world, a current technological or sociological trend taken to a possible extreme -- and exploring its consequences. The science doesn't have to correspond to how the real world works, but it should still be something that counts as science or technology within the rules of the imaginary world you're writing about. For instance, Ray Bradbury's Martian Chronicles have a lot of fanciful, borderline-magical things happening in them, but they're SF rather than fantasy because they're made possible by the alien nature or technology of the Martian people and found by humans who get to Mars using rocketships, rather than being faery magic found by humans who cast a spell to enter Tir na Nog.

 

[Nerys Myk]

True, its not actual time travel. I think the term is being applied very loosely here. More a short hand for a person from the past 'waking up' in the far future.

By "science" I was referring to the hard sciences. There are some who think that the only type of science there is.

 

[Mars]

Buck Rogers is never going to be hard SF. Its a pretty pulpy/soft type of SF.

Actually, from what I've read about them, the TSR novels and RPG were a very hard-SF take on the premise. That's the thing about reinventing a franchise -- you can change the rules under which it operates.

Time Travel is a pretty implausible as science goes. Once your story hangs on that concept, your plausibility quotient is headed to the basement.

But it's not time travel, it's suspended animation. Buck didn't pass through some kind of warp into the future; his life processes were slowed to a crawl and he survived unchanged for five centuries before being revived. That's still implausible given today's understanding of medical science, but far less of a stretch than time travel, since there are scientists actually researching ways to achieve long-term hibernation or to preserve bodies cryogenically for revival in future centuries. Hibernation and cryogenics are a staple of a lot of hard science fiction.

There's no one type of "good" science fiction. Not does SF have to be set in the future, or space. I'm not even sure it needs "science".

Well, it does need some kind of science, or why call it science fiction? SF is about proposing a what-if scenario -- a conjectural advance in science or technology, a radical new discovery or change in the natural world, a current technological or sociological trend taken to a possible extreme -- and exploring its consequences. The science doesn't have to correspond to how the real world works, but it should still be something that counts as science or technology within the rules of the imaginary world you're writing about. For instance, Ray Bradbury's Martian Chronicles have a lot of fanciful, borderline-magical things happening in them, but they're SF rather than fantasy because they're made possible by the alien nature or technology of the Martian people and found by humans who get to Mars using rocketships, rather than being faery magic found by humans who cast a spell to enter Tir na Nog.

Bradbury's Mars was possible, some of the more fantastic things, aliens with telepathy was not. The thing is Mars could have held onto an Earthlike atmosphere and under lower gravity, you'd need to stack up that atmosphere higher than you would to get similar air pressures as on Earth, this means a greater greenhouse effect to compensate for the greater distance of Mars from the Sun. Flying should be easier on a low gravity Mars with a thicker atmosphere. If you just make Bradbury's Mars into Alternate History, a good deal of it could be hard science, which is to say its not our Mars but it wouldn't violate the laws of physics if it did exist.

 

[Mars]

True, its not actual time travel. I think the term is being applied very loosely here. More a short hand for a person from the past 'waking up' in the far future.

By "science" I was referring to the hard sciences. There are some who think that the only type of science there is.

I'd say suspended animation is a lot easier than Warp Drive. All you really need to build a star ship is a good atomic rocket and a suspended animation chamber if you don't care when you get there. At a Voyager 2 rate of speed you could be at Alpha Centauri in 40,000 years, and that would be an interesting journey more for the travel into the future than the travel in space. My guess is a lot of things would arrive ahead of you if you could travel at this speed and had suspended animation.

One possibility is you might find a ringworld there when you arrived. Alpha Centauri has two suns after all, one of them could be taken apart and made to form the "backbone" of the ringworld, while the actual ringworld itself would be made of about 1 jupiter's mass of material, and 20 jupiter masses would have to be converted to energy to spin the thing up, but if you travelled 40,000 years in the future, you might witness such things.

 

[Shawnster]

If they can find 10,000 year old mammoths frozen in ice with preserved flesh, then would a perfectly preserved frozen man be that difficult to revive with 25th Century medical technology?

 

[Nerys Myk]

If they can find 10,000 year old mammoths frozen in ice with preserved flesh, then would a perfectly preserved frozen man be that difficult to revive with 25th Century medical technology?

Totally implausible. That's like something out of a science fiction stor....oh, wait.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

If they can find 10,000 year old mammoths frozen in ice with preserved flesh, then would a perfectly preserved frozen man be that difficult to revive with 25th Century medical technology?

Totally implausible. That's like something out of a science fiction stor....oh, wait.

It's been done. http://www.southparkstudios.com/clips/155394/cartmans-buck-rodgers-intro

 

[Christopher]

If they can find 10,000 year old mammoths frozen in ice with preserved flesh, then would a perfectly preserved frozen man be that difficult to revive with 25th Century medical technology?

The problem with that example is that the mammoths were well-preserved corpses. They were still dead once they were thawed out; they just hadn't decayed. So the "technology" you're talking about here isn't simply reversal of suspended animation -- it's resurrection of the dead. If 25th-century technology is capable of that, it's going to transform society in profound ways that I doubt any Buck Rogers story would be likely to concern itself with. Besides, ideally whatever happened to Buck should be exceptional, otherwise the future would be full of revived corpsicles and Buck's situation wouldn't be particularly special. (Maybe he could get a job as a delivery boy for an interstellar shipping company run by his great-to-the-nth grandnephew.)

Still, even hard science fiction is generally permitted one or two breaks from reality, so long as their consequences are addressed in a plausible manner. And cryogenics is a venerable trope in SF, so it's a bit late to start complaining about it now.

 

[Greg Cox]

All I know is that if a cryogenically-frozen dictator from the Eugenics Wars can be thawed out in the 23rd century, why not Buck Rogers in the 25th?