For crying out loud, Ron, Sink the Frakking Moon already !

For crying out loud, Ron, Sink the Frakking Moon already !

Hi Rob (and the good people of PGS),

So a LONG time ago, Ronald D. Moore said that he would love to redo Space: 1999. But that the premise was simply too weird. And I will admit that Space: 1999 had issues with scientific accuracy. The Breakaway explosion in the pilot episode would have simply vaporized Moonbase Alpha or broken the moon completely. And that’s just for starters. The beauty of a rebooting of re-imagining shows, however, is that you can FIX stuff like that. 

So, let move on to how to do that. Well, it’s already in the title of this letter. Sink….the….frakking….moon ! In Deep Space Nine’s pilot “Emissary”, the crew has to figure out how to fly the titular space station from Bajor to the wormhole. So they create a subspace field around the station, which dials down gravity’s pull on the station and allows it’s thrusters to do the job. All you have to do, is dial that up to twelve. How ?

Come up with some (technobabble) backstory and BOOM !! Suddenly, the Breakaway explosion creates a particle surge, the surge creates a subspace rift and the moon sinks into subspace. And Tada ! Now, you can have the moon bounce between subspace and normal space whenever the plot requires it. Hell, you have a McGuffin that – properly written – will explain whatever you need it to. Alternate universes, time travel, horrible creatures from dark places, the list goes on. Especially if later seasons see the crew of Moonbase Alpha try to control this bounce. Sci-fi, after all, loves an experiment gone wrong.

So, Ron, sink the frakking moon already !

Thoughts, Rob ?

Regards,

Ruben Hilbers

Bunnyburrow is doomed, not Zootopia

Hi Alex,

I recently saw a few Zootopia theory videos on YouTube and that got me thinking. At the end of Zootopia 2, a feather falls into Judy Hops apartment. This is seen as a portent of doom by several YouTube reviewers. And I agree with that. But the thing is, I disagree with WHERE that doom will strike first.

Zootopia City has weather walls, it has locations - buildings, cars, etc - that can be locked and secured to repel invaders and not one, but two disciplined, well trained forces that can resist. The Zootopia Police Department and Mister Big's Mafia. It might have a lot of people. But it is, from a tactical perspective, a HARD target.

However, in the first movie, Judy has to move to from Bunnyburrow to Zootopia to become a police officer. And everybody keeps pointing out how she is the first bunny police officer. If there was a Bunnyburrow PD, completely staffed by bunnies, there would have been nothing special about Judy becoming a cop. 

Nor would she have had to move to Zootopia. She could have just joined the Bunnyburrow PD. The first movie wouldn't have happened. Combined with the town's location in the fields and lack of other defenses, Bunnyburrow is a SOFT target. 

It is a lot easier to attack by a bunch of angry, hungry, predatory, bloodthirsty birds. On top of that, based on the town's population counter in the first movie, Bunnyburrow has a lot bigger population then Zootopia. 

There is also a darker long-term potential for danger. If I was a tactician with dark designs on Zootopia, I would first attack all the soft targets outside the city I could find. Not only would this provide my force with a large influx of food - as Napoleon said: An army marches (or in this case flies) on its stomach - it forces the ZPD to spread itself thin as they try to find out what is going on. And once that happens, leaving the defenses weakened, THEN I'd pounced on my final target: The city of Zootopia itself.

So, yes, Zootopia is doomed. Just not right away. And with even the smallest drop of realism, Zootopia 3 will not be a child friendly buddy cop movie....It'll be a dark, horrific, dystopian war flick, with people getting eaten left and right. 

Regards,

Ruben A. Hilbers (aka Commander Nash) 

There is no such thing as the ninth Chevron

Hello fellow Gaters,

To begin with, some technical notes. I know, I know, they are boring, but I need to get them out of the way. So here we go...

As far as I can tell, Destiny has a Mark One Stargate, Earth has a Mark Two and Atlantis comes with a Mark Three. It takes seven Chevrons to dial a destination inside the galaxy and eight for galaxy-to-galaxy dialing. Carter compared it to dialing an area code. With the obvious stated, let's move on...

These days, the Milky Way Galaxy has a network of Mark Two gates. But when Destiny launched, the Mark Two had not been invented yet. Or they would have used it for the Destiny Research Mission. So back then, the Milky Way network was made out of Mark One gates. 

Which is the same model the Seed ships build and plant along Destiny's course. The same model that we've seen Young and company use. Which is strictly short-range. So no galaxy-to-galaxy travel yet. The Ancients had to INVENT it make the Destiny Research Mission work.

My pitch is that Destiny doesn't have an area code. It has the first area code ever. And because it's the prototype, it bigger and cruder. This was the first time they did this, so the Ancients hadn't figured out how to boil it down to one Chevron (yet).

That's why it's two Chevrons and having to properly calibrate the power. If it was a cell phone, the eight chevron is a modern smart phone. The ninth chevron is one of those ancient bricks from eighties that nobody could afford, took forever to charge and only gave you thirty minutes of call time even when fully charged.

But they are still the same thing. 

Regards,

Ruben A. Hilbers (aka @Dantes74302)