Re: Poisons and disease

[Doc Denim]

All;

A number of good questions raised here! Much of this has been discussed (or rather, I've blathered about it at length) before, and I'm going to have to risk boring some folks with a few cut and paste bits of Siobhan-opinion here. (Apologies in advance, that is!)

RhapsodyAngel8 wrote:

NCS Scarlet appears to be susceptible to disease

That may be, but I'm afraid I'm a a bit of a die-hard OCS fan and had quite a difficult time even watching NCS - so I simply cannot comment on this item, as I never saw the episode. But as far as OCS goes, I always took the series at it's word and went along with the Mysterons creating 'an exact duplicate' of their chosen victims or target objects. And with that in mind...

RhapsodyAngel8 wrote:

If a disease / poison acts very rapidly, then the chances are that he would suffer initially – possibly even dying - before recovering. The more rapid and severe the disease, the more he would be likely to suffer.

Doc Denim concurs with this absolutely!

Intensity Angel wrote:

How adavanced is his immune system on that point anyway?

Shades wrote:

I wonder... if his system is invaded by a virus or bacterium, would his body fight it in the normal way- T-cells, antibodies, white blood cells etc

In answer to both, I have to speculate that Scarlet's immune system is perfectly 'human-normal' because I happen to believe he's an exact duplicate of a normal human, and I expect that looking at samples of his antibodies and white blood cells won't reveal anything extraordinary. I will grant that when the original Scarlet died he was at the peak of health and likely had an excellent immune system/response that was flawlessly duplicated, and that certainly doesn't hurt much. But again, how much of a factor this is depends entirely on what "mechanism" you happen to believe is behind his retrometabolism - my own opinion is that Scarlet doesn't heal by himself, he has the Mysterons to thank for each and every recovery he's ever experienced:

Doc Denim has previously postulated:

Just to be clear, let me differentiate: Healing vs. Restoration

What I believe happens to Scarlet Isn't an enhanced natural internal ability for his body to 'heal' itself - because if that was so, I'd think he'd have to be a mass of scar tissue by now - because scar tissue is what the body naturally provides for itself if it's been sufficiently damaged - and I think it's fair to say that Scarlet has been damaged that badly on occasion. And the body has problems filling in bits of missing matter, in the event that some bit happens to get lopped off - the replacement 'mass' (no matter how little we're talking about) has to come from somewhere, and if he's dead, he's not eating/drinking /breathing in anything to replace it. (I especially wonder about blood loss - and how that missing 'volume' is replaced without any 'input.)

If, however, Scarlet's 'recovery' is a matter of 'restoration' then the process is 'external' - maintained from without - the missing bits are replaced by the Mysterons, according to template, via the proposed interdimensional conduit, made from the same 'stuff' as the original Scarlet Construct in the opening episode - which, because the construct is an exact duplicate, is indistinguishable from anything the very first earth-born Scarlet had when he died the first time- so the process looks like 'healing' but isn't really. And for me, the very best thing about such a process is that it can save Scarlet from any fate whatsoever....even if he is incinerated, dismembered or eaten alive, just to mention a few of the previous grisly scenarios we've discussed before.....

(From Dodging Bullets thread.)

I’d just like to reiterate that I don’t think Scarlet retrometabolises by himself – He does it with a lot of help from his friendly neighbourhood Mysterons, who are happy to restore his beaten and mangled body (dead or injured) to its original ‘templated’ blueprint, which they keep on file in their data banks on Mars, and are kind enough to update with current up-to-the-minute information. In my opinion (and that's all it is) this isn’t an in-built, Scarlet-specific ability, it’s Mysteron bestowed and maintained. If such ‘recovery’ was just a physiological ‘reset’ then I would have to think that his memories would always also revert back to the Saloon crash that killed Scarlet in the opening episode – so to my mind, there has to be far more going on than just that as regards Scarlet’s retrometabolism.

(from Can Scarlet Die of Natural Causes thread.)

And that seems like more than sufficient for one post...

Doc Denim (as she runs for cover...)

[Intensity Angel]

Don't run for cover, you just made the whole thread seem a lot less confusing.