|
|
Post by backroadjunkie on Jul 20, 2020 18:20:18 GMT
(Edgar is a reference to the movie, Electric Dreams. If you've never seen it, it's a 1980's computer owner's worst nightmare. It's probably in my top 25 movies (or at least my top 25 movie soundtracks), even though it's not a very good movie, lol. Just turn the volume up if you see it, 'cause the tunes are rockin!  ) Hey! Someone loaded the entire movie on YouTube... If you watch it, remember, it was the 80's, lol... |
|
|
|
Post by FreeKresge on Jul 22, 2020 5:20:36 GMT
I assume that the prosthetic Jemma built (what else could have been in that case!) doesn't have quite the bells and whistles that a Fitz-product might have. Then again, considering that Jemma also somehow built the machine that can basically bring people back from the dead and she builds LMDs on the fly, it's clear that she has faaar exceeded any field limitations that her bio-chemistry degrees might make us assume she should have. Real world scientists are specialized. One joke is that the training process is about learning more and more about less and less until one knows everything there is to know about nothing at all. In real life, Simmons would know a great deal about her research specialty, a large amount about her area within biochemistry, about as much as a good undergraduate student in other areas of biochemistry, and a bit more than a layperson about other fields of science. Typically, a tenure-track professor does not have the breadth of knowledge to teach an introductory course in that professor's field. That being said, I can live with her (and Fitz) being very knowledgeable about many fields of science. As I see it, the writers would have three choices: - They can arrange storylines so that all scientific problems have a biochemical and/or engineering solution. She is a biochemist solely because the pilot required her to create a dendrotoxin to knock Mike Peterson out instantly and for Fitz to perfect the night-night gun as a delivery device for the dendrotoxin. Every other episode would have to require a similar solution.
- They can have guest characters who represent whichever branch of science is required to solve the episode's problem. One episode might require a botanist. Another might require a geologist. The problem is that no one character would appear in more than a few episodes, so there would be no character development. It also requires the team to have access to these scientists at all times, so going underground or time traveling or spacefaring would be out of the question.
- They can create a character or two who have an unrealistically high level of knowledge in whichever field happens to be relevant in any episode. If necessary, the same character can be a geologist (Simmons in "Aftershocks") or a botanist (Simmons in "The Honeymoon"). This sacrifices realism, but it allows for scientists to be characters with development and a character arc. If the plot requires the team to go into hiding or go into space or travel in time, the scientist characters can go along.
The first option would work in a show like a medical drama in which every problem would be solved by one of a handful of specialists who stick to their specialties. It would not work in a show that deals with a wider variety of problems. The second option works if there is no desire to have scientists as main characters and if plots always allow access to a wide variety of specialists. For Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., they probably just have to have characters who know far too much about far too many branches of science. If you guys are unlucky, I can share my rant about why it is so improbable that Simmons had two PhDs by the time she was 17 years old. This gets to an issue that I keep obsessing over. The total number of engineering feats that Fitz performed for S.H.I.E.L.D. in the sixth season were somewhere between diddly and squat. Mack, in his spare time from being Director, upgraded the Zephyr. Deke came up the the engineering solutions to defeat Izel. Given the rest of Fitz's history (listed in the thread on who should be Director of S.H.I.E.L.D.), I was wondering why he was still part of the team when he has become little more than Simmons's love interest. This is how the show had gotten away with being Fitz-free for eight episodes and counting. My knowledge of the comic books does not extend beyond what is in Wikipedia, but my understanding is that the comic book character also returns to where she started. I see that the last post of the live chat raised the question of whether Kara is Daisy's full sister or half sister. Kyle MacLachlan was 24 years old when the episode took place. The actress who played Kara was 28 years old when the episode was filmed. The only way that Kara is Daisy's full sister is if Jiaying cheated on Cal with Kara's father or if Cal has the same anti-aging powers that Jiaying and Ming-Na Wen have. And Dichen Lachman herself. Also of possible relevance is that the actress playing Kora is fully Asian. On the other hand, Cal had Virginia Madsen for a wife and Sean Young for a concubine around this time, so Jiaying didn't have to worry about getting caught playing around while he was busy killing Sting.  Dichen Lachman is not even fully Asian, so that is probably not an impediment. There is a real possibility that this episode takes place before Cal even met Jiaying, so I would hardly consider his activities with Madsen and Young to be infidelities. Well, I would assume that any episode that has May with the most dialogue would be a very quite episode to begin with. Or one where she's possessed or something. This episode came very close to being that very episode. For example, if it were May who said, "We won't let you fight this battle alone," instead of Elena, this would have been the episode in which May had the most dialogue. I do not bear too much of a grudge as this is only the second time that Elena has been on top (after "Past Life" when she had the advantage of having a few conversations with herself). May is probably the main character with the least dialogue compared to her screen time. Still, she is a major character who has been in nearly every episode. It seems weird that she has never been on top when characters like Samuel Voss, Ernest Hazard Koenig, Tess, and Ian Quinn have all been on top, and Elliot Randolph has been on top twice. This makes me wonder if the show could repurpose Dune footage to give young Cal a cameo. It might be just as expensive to get permission from various sources. |
|
|
|
Post by ayanami on Jul 30, 2020 1:55:16 GMT
I assume that the prosthetic Jemma built (what else could have been in that case!) doesn't have quite the bells and whistles that a Fitz-product might have. Then again, considering that Jemma also somehow built the machine that can basically bring people back from the dead and she builds LMDs on the fly, it's clear that she has faaar exceeded any field limitations that her bio-chemistry degrees might make us assume she should have. Real world scientists are specialized. One joke is that the training process is about learning more and more about less and less until one knows everything there is to know about nothing at all. In real life, Simmons would know a great deal about her research specialty, a large amount about her area within biochemistry, about as much as a good undergraduate student in other areas of biochemistry, and a bit more than a layperson about other fields of science. Typically, a tenure-track professor does not have the breadth of knowledge to teach an introductory course in that professor's field. That being said, I can live with her (and Fitz) being very knowledgeable about many fields of science. As I see it, the writers would have three choices: - They can arrange storylines so that all scientific problems have a biochemical and/or engineering solution. She is a biochemist solely because the pilot required her to create a dendrotoxin to knock Mike Peterson out instantly and for Fitz to perfect the night-night gun as a delivery device for the dendrotoxin. Every other episode would have to require a similar solution.
- They can have guest characters who represent whichever branch of science is required to solve the episode's problem. One episode might require a botanist. Another might require a geologist. The problem is that no one character would appear in more than a few episodes, so there would be no character development. It also requires the team to have access to these scientists at all times, so going underground or time traveling or spacefaring would be out of the question.
- They can create a character or two who have an unrealistically high level of knowledge in whichever field happens to be relevant in any episode. If necessary, the same character can be a geologist (Simmons in "Aftershocks") or a botanist (Simmons in "The Honeymoon"). This sacrifices realism, but it allows for scientists to be characters with development and a character arc. If the plot requires the team to go into hiding or go into space or travel in time, the scientist characters can go along.
The first option would work in a show like a medical drama in which every problem would be solved by one of a handful of specialists who stick to their specialties. It would not work in a show that deals with a wider variety of problems. The second option works if there is no desire to have scientists as main characters and if plots always allow access to a wide variety of specialists. For Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., they probably just have to have characters who know far too much about far too many branches of science. If you guys are unlucky, I can share my rant about why it is so improbable that Simmons had two PhDs by the time she was 17 years old. Honestly, most of that explanation is actually pretty self-explanatory. This is a sci-fi/superhero show set in the MCU, of course our resident super geniuses are gonna have an unrealistically wide array of skills. However, the sheer extent of this is something that has been increasing - especially in regards to Simmons - over the course of the show. Fitz has always been the tech guy, who eventually graduated to badass tech guy, but his niche has mostly stayed the same over time. Even when it came to hardware vs software, they also often brought Skye into the mix, especially early on, thereby limiting Fitz's area of expertise even more. As far as Simmons is concerned, though, I'm almost certain that I'm not the only who's raised an eyebrow or two at times at the stuff she can apparently do. I don't remember the details of her geologist knowledge from Aftershocks, but for me the first big "huh?" moment was when she suddenly acted as a surgeon when Bobbi was shot. Considering that people had been going mental over Skye's supposedly unrealistic fighting skills in the previous weeks and months, it just seemed a bit weird to see Simmons pull new abbilities out of her hat at any given moment. Her figuring out the calculations to get home from Maveth falls in the same category for me, although I think she at least admitted that it took her way longer than it would have taken Fitz. That basically falls right into the point I was making: The thing is, we never saw Fitz infringing into the "realm of science" that was Simmons' domain during the show, except perhaps in the framework when he was doing his experiments on Inhumans. And even that is a skill set I don't recall him using again afterwards. Simmons on the other hand has repeatedly done things Fitz would usually handle and it has been getting way out of hand during this season. Again, though, there is a lot of time and a lot of details we missed, so there could be some additional explanation coming soon as to why Jemma Simmons has become pretty much the most overpowered character in the entire show. I have to admit, I think the character took a startlingly weird nose-dive after the first half of the fifth season and I honestly have no idea why. I even considered doing a rewatch of every Fitz-scene in the show just to get a better grasp of his development, but my focus has been distracted to other interests, so I haven't really gotten anywhere with this. Still, though, Fitz's turn for the worse as a part of the team seems to coincide with Deke's addition, although I'm not sure whether we're dealing with correlation of causation here. As in: Did they side-line Fitz to further promote Deke or did they make Deke the new tech guy, because Iain's future involvement in the show became an uncertain factor and they needed someone around to disarm a nuke or built a gadget if need be? I would really have to take a look at a number of scenes throughout the last few seasons to form a comprehensive opinion on this, but I think there are a number of points to consider here. For one, the two characters never worked well together on screen and it really always seemed to be Fitz's fault. As a matter of fact, post-framework Fitz often seemed to be kind of a douchebag, and I don't know whether that was really intentional or if they just couldn't quite get a handle on how to organically incorporate the Doctor into his character without ruining him. Also, was it a coincidence that one of the showrunners herself decided to play Deke's girlfriend on the show or was that actually the expression of blatant favouritism that it seemed to be? Plus, while Deke was definitely introduced as someone with technical skills, that wasn't really his focus at first. He was the rogue survival-type in the beginning with merely hints of comic relief, but of course (as this show loves to do with white male characters that aren't Coulson!) he got quickly neutered before anyone could even get the idea of him becoming the new "alpha male type" of AoS. (Ward, Hunter...) Now he's full-on comic relief mixed with tech genius and if that doesn't sound familiar to anyone, I would invite them to look back at the first season of this show and tell me if they can spot a similar character...  Her nickname would hardly be "Yo-Yo" if her abilities weren't like that in the comics as well. Which is why my point was fully meant to include both her comic book character and what we've seen on the show, because the reasons for her character design will have been the same, no matter at what time she was created. |
|
)
)
I'll be spending next weekend with some family I like and trying to avoid any remotely controversial conversations with others that I spend the rest of the year avoiding 
I'll be spending next weekend with some family I like and trying to avoid any remotely controversial conversations with others that I spend the rest of the year avoiding 