A Willing Suspension of Disbelief
September 10, 2014
The key to a good
fictional work, whether a
book or
film, is a
willing suspension of disbelief, a phrase coined by
English poet,
Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Coleridge is known especially for his epic poem,
The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. This 1798 work has elements much like a
science fiction story of today, with a
sailing ship set off
course to
Antarctica, a place so foreign at the time that it might as well have been the
Moon.
There is a
genre of science fiction called
hard science fiction in which the
author strives for
scientific accuracy. In such works, there is just a stretching of the
imagination, but no breaking. My two
novels are hard science fiction, but some fictional works take great liberties with the reader's or viewer's suspension of disbelief. Examples would be most of the many "
B movies" found on the
Syfy channel.[1]
I was reminded of the lack of accuracy in science fiction films while viewing the
1970 film,
Beneath the Planet of the Apes,[2] last
weekend on
Turner Classic Movies (TCM). My wife and I enjoy TCM, since it shows films, albeit older films, with no
commercial interruption. With
Zardoz[3] as an exception, I don't enjoy watching
apocalyptic and
dystopian films. However I had seen this particular film at its
theatrical release, and I was interested to see why I enjoyed watching it forty years ago.
Beneath the Planet of the Apes is the
sequel to the
1968 film,
Planet of the Apes.[4] The first film is based on the
1963 novel,
La Planète des Singes, by
French author,
Pierre Boulle. The
plot of the first film is that the surviving
astronaut of a
crash landing on a
planet, supposedly far distant from
Earth, finds that the planet is ruled by
intelligent,
talking apes. The roles of
humans and apes are reversed, with
mute humans
hunted by the apes. At the end of the film, it's found that the planet is actually Earth about 2,000 years in the
future after a
nuclear war.
The plot of the sequel is that the surviving astronaut of an expedition to trace the
fate of the first expedition crash lands on the same planet. He finds that he's landed on the future Earth, near
New York City, in the middle of the movie. He discovers the first astronaut, and they team in an attempt to stop a
race of
telepathic humans from
detonating a
doomsday nuclear device that they
worship.
I'm as willing as most to suspend some beliefs while watching science fiction films. As a
Star Trek fan, I need to believe in
faster-than-light travel,
transporters, and the idea that the
Klingons didn't destroy themselves long ago. The Ape movies, however, had serious problems that are hard to dismiss, as I'll recount.
First is the idea that the astronauts don't immediately know that they're on Earth, and not on an earthlike
exoplanet far distant from Earth. Anyone trained as an astronaut should be familiar with even a few
constellations, so a single night's passage would have raised the possibility. Even someone not familiar with the constellations should recognize the appearance of the
Moon.
Second, everyone speaks
English. Since this facilitates the plot of these movies to such a great extent, I don't really object. A second-order problem is that the English language did not change in 2,000 years. Just read the 700 year old
Canterbury Tales to see how much the English language has changed in a shorter time. Even if the apes had been taught perfect English 2,000 years prior, it would have been easier for them to
vocalize certain sounds than others, so there would be a rapid evolution of the
language.
Although the
spacecraft in the films were bound by
light speed, there was still the misconception that
radio communications with Earth would be instantaneous. Also, everyone arrives at the same place. Earth is a big place, but the two ships, the ape
city, and the telepathic humans are quite close to each other. How many 50 mile x 50 mile patches of land exist on the Earth? The
land area of the Earth is about 57 million
square miles, so (57,000,000/2,500) = 22,800.
I'm actually somewhat
open-minded about telepathy. Not that it exists, today, but that it might
evolve. The
human brain is rife with
electrical activity, and we have the example of
electric eels producing intense
electric fields.
Technologically-assisted telepathy would likely be easier to accomplish.
One major problem in Beneath the Planet of the Apes is the doomsday bomb. The "
cobalt bomb"
meme, so popular in science fiction, is invoked, and the bomb is surprisingly small. The biggest problem is that the bomb has been kept for two
millennia without degradation. Aside from the
stability of the
chemical explosives used in all such bombs,
electrical and electronic components will
fail from innocent things like
diurnal temperature cycling.
The
half-life of
plutonium-239 is 24,100 years, but the half-life of another bomb component,
tritium, is just 12.4-years, so it needs to be constantly replenished. It would not have been possible for a small group of humans to
maintain the weapon, even if they knew how. It costs the
United States billions of
dollars each year for
stockpile stewardship.
It's easy to take
potshots at science fiction film and television. At the same time, I realize that they're not intended as science lessons, but as
entertainment. However, a little less "
deus ex machina" would be refreshing.
References:
- I thoroughly enjoyed the Syfy series, Eureka, but the days for quality shows like that seem to have passed; Eureka (2006-2012) on the Internet Movie Database.
- Beneath the Planet of the Apes (1970, Ted Post, Director), on the Internet Movie Database.
- Zardoz (1974, John Boorman, Director), on the Internet Movie Database.
- Planet of the Apes (1968, Franklin J. Schaffner, Director), on the Internet Movie Database.
