It's funny you know, how your own life experiences affect what you're prepared to swallow. I was watching TORCHWOOD: CHILDREN OF EARTH and I managed to accept as believable:
A man who cannot die.
Aliens in undetectable spaceships.
Mind control that allowed them to make every child on Earth stand, speak and point in unison but not apparently make them march to pick-up points.
The same aliens using human children as symbiotes and sources of good-time drugs while they live in an atmosphere no human could tolerate for a second.
But I balked at the assurances that the Senior Civil Servant gave that he could get 350,000 children away from their parents and to the aforementioned pickup points within twenty four hours, no problem Prime Minister.
'This man,' I thought, 'has never tried to move even a single child anywhere they didn't want to go and has probably been lied to by all his subordinates for the last ten years.... '
'Let's see, the fact that the children have just called out 10% of the number of children in each nation has been spotted by the media (and I bet someone in the know leaked it)... There's no way he can have enough elite, super-obedient troops to get that number of children moving and the regular Army-Oh isn't immune to mutiny: especially if any of their own kids get caught up in the sweep.'
'And the Civil Service will either loose the instructions or go home early: grand thing flexitime. This feels very like the point in one of my carefully crafted RPG scenarios when the players turn to me and say 'You what?' and proceed to pull down the whole unlikely edifice...'
And that was the point where it all fell to pieces for me as my disbelief suspenders snapped. Cap'n Jack facing down the Ambassador without much of a plan or a single operative brain cell flowed past me and I did not even twitch. I did laugh at the line about the School League Tables though...
And then the Army moving in like a bunch of invincible robots: in real life half of them will misread their orders or the maps and about twenty five percent will find some reason why they aren't allowed to go on child kidnapping expeditions for health and safety reasons. The authors clearly have an exaggerated estimate of the power and competence of government. They should suffer as I do in the lower bowels of the State and that will teach them.
Oh, and why can't a man who has just lied to the entire nation manage to lie to his subordinate and tell him, yes, yes, of course your children will be perfectly safe. I wouldn't dream of using them in a pointless and Machiavellean scheme to preserve my political career...
I object to my emotions being manipulated as blatantly as this series does. I object even more when the authors have to pull psychologically ridiculous moments like this because they can't be bothered to write an extra two minutes into the plot when the Big Civil Servant discovers he's being betrayed.
(Portions of this review have appeared in ALARUMS & EXCURSIONS).
And the quote about a hat out of a rabbit comes from THE NUMBER OF THE BEAST by Heinlein. Hilda to Lazarus Long.
no subject
It's funny you know, how your own life experiences affect what you're prepared to swallow. I was watching TORCHWOOD: CHILDREN OF EARTH and I managed to accept as believable:
A man who cannot die.
Aliens in undetectable spaceships.
Mind control that allowed them to make every child on Earth stand, speak and point in unison but not apparently make them march to pick-up points.
The same aliens using human children as symbiotes and sources of good-time drugs while they live in an atmosphere no human could tolerate for a second.
But I balked at the assurances that the Senior Civil Servant gave that he could get 350,000 children away from their parents and to the aforementioned pickup points within twenty four hours, no problem Prime Minister.
'This man,' I thought, 'has never tried to move even a single child anywhere they didn't want to go and has probably been lied to by all his subordinates for the last ten years.... '
'Let's see, the fact that the children have just called out 10% of the number of children in each nation has been spotted by the media (and I bet someone in the know leaked it)... There's no way he can have enough elite, super-obedient troops to get that number of children moving and the regular Army-Oh isn't immune to mutiny: especially if any of their own kids get caught up in the sweep.'
'And the Civil Service will either loose the instructions or go home early: grand thing flexitime. This feels very like the point in one of my carefully crafted RPG scenarios when the players turn to me and say 'You what?' and proceed to pull down the whole unlikely edifice...'
And that was the point where it all fell to pieces for me as my disbelief suspenders snapped. Cap'n Jack facing down the Ambassador without much of a plan or a single operative brain cell flowed past me and I did not even twitch. I did laugh at the line about the School League Tables though...
And then the Army moving in like a bunch of invincible robots: in real life half of them will misread their orders or the maps and about twenty five percent will find some reason why they aren't allowed to go on child kidnapping expeditions for health and safety reasons. The authors clearly have an exaggerated estimate of the power and competence of government. They should suffer as I do in the lower bowels of the State and that will teach them.
Oh, and why can't a man who has just lied to the entire nation manage to lie to his subordinate and tell him, yes, yes, of course your children will be perfectly safe. I wouldn't dream of using them in a pointless and Machiavellean scheme to preserve my political career...
I object to my emotions being manipulated as blatantly as this series does. I object even more when the authors have to pull psychologically ridiculous moments like this because they can't be bothered to write an extra two minutes into the plot when the Big Civil Servant discovers he's being betrayed.
(Portions of this review have appeared in ALARUMS & EXCURSIONS).
And the quote about a hat out of a rabbit comes from THE NUMBER OF THE BEAST by Heinlein. Hilda to Lazarus Long.
Michael Cule