A Little Disbelief

The great thing about downloading television shows is being able to re-visit your past, as sad as it may be. I’ve started to re-watch Seaquest DSV, not the best show coming out of the 90s but I admit I had a crush on Jonathon Brandis, plus this was my ‘I want to work at Sea World and train killer whales’ phase, and there was Darwin the talking dolphin as an added bonus.

Watching it now is kind funny, I know you have to suspend your disbelief to watch sci-fi and just enjoy, but they took it over the top. You have cryogenics, aliens landing on earth a million years ago and talking dolphin, pre-historic giant crocodiles unfreezing from glaciers (alive and laying eggs), psychics and so much more!

My favourite part has to be when they refer to the past, which was the ‘distant’ future when they shot the show and is now our present. In 2010 Seaquest time, all beef is outlawed because cattle farming degrades the atmosphere, and we’ve established underwater colonies (aren’t we just special). I do have to give some credit they have a great green message, the underwater colonies, mining, oxygen generators, etc are all necessities because we destroyed our world, so thumbs up for that.

I am willing to throw science out the window for some shows/movies, especially the really really bad monster movies (Ex: Shark Attack 3: Megalodon, Kracken: Tentacles of the Deep and the upcoming Sharktopus (can’t wait!)), but not everyone is. An American physicist is calling for Hollywood producers to tone down the fanciful science, and allow only one major suspension of disbelief per movie.

This would mean no megalodon or kracken, well if believe in monsters is considered suspending disbelief and what about ghosts, angels, gods, devils, Spiderman/ superman etc (all very unscientific). With this we would be left with romantic comedies, because in reality action movies, comic books and even cartoons (how many talk fish do you know) all need more than just a little disbelief. I appreciate where he’s coming from and more movies with good science can always be used, but I think he's suspended all disbelief if he thinks this is ever going to happen.