Faux Physics

Following up yesterdays topic is super science! If there's one thing Star Trek has taught me, it's that the easiest solution is just to sound as sciency as possible (and also that the main deflector dish cures 90% of all woes). However, let's say you're looking for something a little more... plausible. That takes some research. Sadly, however much you study, you're not going to make a working alternate universe portal or freeze ray (or if you are, why don't you just build it and make a mint?). The key is to look to the true cutting edge which can give you a basic framework and lots of room to play around. You can actually see the popular power source progression throughout the ages of comics. Radiation sure isn't the catch-all it used to be, that's for certain.

One particular subject that I find fun to play with is quantum physics. From entanglement to collapsing probability wave forms, there's a huge amount of territory in which to muck about. One fun little thought experiment I've been toying with is breaking the collective observation. What would happen if vital status of Schrödinger's cat varied by observer? If this were true for day to day goings on, then reality would as we know it would cease to function. However, what if this were only the case for a single major event causing people to be shunted to the reality matching their perception of it? This is all scientifically silly, but to the untrained ear it might be plausible enough. It certainly leaves the world in an interesting state to write from.

Again, I must stress that consistency is key. Scientific rigor is not required, but you have to play by your own rules. As a warning, I refer you to the anime series Noein. There's quite a lot of quantum universe technobabble throughout the series which is essentially meaningless. Worse than this nonsense overdose, though, was when they started using observation as a plot point. The alternate future version of the world is being kept alive by a massive supercomputer with two main duties. First, it constantly observes everyone in existence to prevent prevents spontaneous quantum existence failure. Apparently, consciousness does not grant enough self observation for continued existence. The second purpose is confused. Half the time it's supposedly simulating virtual realities while at others it only serves as a teleport between them. Real or simulated, present day earth with our protagonists is one such reality.

In that reality, the rules really start to break down. The visitors from the future require a cable connection to their home dimension at all times or the computer will stop observing them. By their logic, this means that they will cease to be which is demonstrated early on. Later, though, characters we're supposed to care about* decide to stay in the present by severing this connection. Suddenly, simply being observed by people in the present keeps the future folks existing. Except when it doesn't. Perhaps love was all you need? That seemed to be protection for a while. Oh, but then one character even winked out of existence in full view of multiple people including one who cared for him.

The true crowning moment of confusion came from the final episodes. Stop now if you truly care about spoilers for this one. The villain turns out to be yet another future alternate of the protagonist's boyfriend, which really comes as no surprise if you've got half a brain. He's been locked away in a dimension where everyone is in suspended animation but him. Turns out his entire motive was that she died in his reality, so he plans to wipe out all possible existences. She gets captured, friends come to the rescue, blah blah blah. Ultimately, they escape back to present day world leaving the suspended world to disappear due to lack of people observing it. The point is, the actual point is, absolutely nothing has changed in that reality since the beginning of the show! If that was going to cause the bad guy's universe to disappear, he should have vanished before his evil plan even began! The entirety of the series hinges on utter nonsense!

The moral is, bad writing is bad writing. Just because you can use science words doesn't protect against that.

The other moral here, sometimes the RightStuf bargain bin has winners. Sometimes even $20 is too much for a full series. Figure out which is which before ordering.

* That was the other truly gaping flaw in the series. The protagonist, her boyfriend, the boyfriend's future alternate, and the boyfriend's villainous other future alternate hogged most of the screen time and managed to be far less interesting than the supporting cast.