Mysteron Parlour Tricks

[DocBrown]

Posted: Sun Jul 04, 2004 2:54 pm Post subject: Originally posted: MSN Forum 06/05/2004

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Riiiight…. The real issue here is cause and effect, isn’t it? At least I think it is! Is it possible for a structure to come into being without anything having caused it to come into being? Because if we DO think of time as literally just one more spatial dimension along which we happen to be being projected, and somebody changes the past, then we have a present without the sequence of events that led up to it.* Or do we simply invent a past to explain any particular present scenario, as soon as the past changes? If so, then time travelers could be changing the past all the time, and we’d never know about it – because we’re just the consequences of the one particular revision that gave rise to us.

[* For a tongue-in-cheek treatment of this particular point in a story about the consequences of meddling with the past that’s a laugh a minute, check out “The Technicolor Time Machine” by Harry Harrison. The question of cause and effect comes up in the form of a note telling one of the characters how to solve the paradox, which he gives to his earlier self during the course of the story, then carries around with him until he can hand it over to himself etc etc. The end result is that nobody ever actually writes it. The story concerns a film crew which returns to the eleventh century to make an epic about the building of the early Viking settlements in North America, but can’t find any when they get there – so they arrange for a bunch of Vikings with nothing better to do to make the trip… For a whistle-stop review of a lot of time-travel SF literature including this one, visit http://www.towson.edu/~flynn/timetv.html
DocBrown

[Captain Indigo]

Crikey, you lot have been busy tonight! (Or a few months ago, and transferred it all here tonight, whatever.) Anyway, I beg your indulgence in letting me reply without having read all the messages. I don't have the brain power to follow something that complicated...

Anyway, the message I wanted to respond to, hoping of course that it hasn't been covered further down, is Doc D's message about the Car Vu that starts 'It must have been the chocolate'; the method of Scarlet's release from the Mysterons etc.

Perhaps it was some kind of EM field, although you pretty much seem to have ruled that out with all the reasoning about power stations and the journey up, or maybe, as Marion said (I believe), that the Mysterons withdrew their power before death. I've come up with a different theory that I'm about to inflict upon you because it was reading the messages that made me think of it. (Hey, I might not be able to keep up with reading the technobabble, but I can still think it up when I'm sleep-deprived! )

Anyway, staying within the confines of the SM series, we learned two things about Mysterons and their power over humans, imanimate objects etc. One: the influence can be lost when a large EM field is close-by (Flight 104) for an inanimate object, at least. Two: the Mysterons can abandon any replicant that they no longer need, but said replica does not retain retrometabolism, and dies.

Considerng the arguements regarding the EM field presented for the episodes 'Place of Angels' and 'Noose of Ice', I can only conclude that the EM effect only occurs for inanimate objects, such as planes, cars and the like - objects that would be affected by EM fileds anyway. The organic replicas are not affected in the same way. As for Marion's theory, perhaps it was not that the Mysterons withdrew their influence before Scarlet died when falling from the Car Vu, but I believe it was afterwards. You have to bear in mind that Scarlet was THE first (human) replica that the Mysterons had experience with - Black, as per the widely accepted theory, is not a replica, and Brown was blown up by the Mysterons themselves, an action designed to terminate his life. Perhaps the Mysterons did not realise what effect the reconstruction process would have on human metabilosm, and they thought that once he was dead, that he would remain dead. If they didn't know that he would be able to regenerate the damaged parts of his body, they will probably have fought to keep him until the moment that he actually died.
Of course, one has to ask why they didn't teleport him away from the danger (ooh, sudden plot bunny . And no, it's not what's written next ), and this very question lends a lot of credence to Marion's idea. Possibly Marion is right, and the Mysterons did abandon Scarlet bafore he died, however, there is all the future reconstructions who die once the influence is removed to explain.
{Draws deep breath and collects thoughts}Maybe, following a mixture of both Marion's idea and mine, the Mysterons did give up on Scarlet before he hit the ground, BUT because they had no experience with human replicas, had no way of knowing that he would survive using retrometabolism. After that happened, though. they did know, and made damn sure that they never made the same mistake again when abandoning their creations.

Now, why can I not come up with some ingenius idea like that when I'm trying to write a story?

Anyway, apologies again if this has already been covered, somewhere after where I read up to. I must go and write down the plot bunny before I forget it.

So long, fare well, Auf Wiedersehen and goodbye,

Cap'n Indigo

[Captain Indigo]

...and having caught up with the rest of the messages, I think i'd rather just retract my last statement and cry quietly somewhere

However, with regards to the speed that Scarlet would have been travelling at when he hit the ground, I've done the calculations (I do have other things I could be doing, but it's an impossible calculation masquerading as a Biology excercise). If I remember all the conversions correctly and discarding air resistance (because I never got up to that in Physics), he would have been falling at 110 mph when he hit the ground.

Erm... ow!

Out of curiosity, I also worked it out for Captain Blackheart's fall in "Whose Heart is Blackest", another example of what you were discussing (although in fan fic, admittedly). That poor guy, falling from Cloudbase, wuld have hit the ground at the impressive speed of 777.7 mph!

[Clya Brown]

I'll bet that when Captain Blue arrived to find Scarlet's body at the base of the Car-Vu, Scarlet was mumbling something about "Air resistance is useless..."

[Captain Indigo]

I'll bet that when Captain Blue arrived to find Scarlet's body at the base of the Car-Vu, Scarlet was mumbling something about "Air resistance is useless..."

Quite!

I don't think it will have mattered much in the equation. Whilst it will have affected his speed slightly, he'll still have been travelling at one heck of a speed!

[Maltray]

"offhand I can't think of an instance in which a non-metallic object was commandeered by the Mysterons other than the champagne..."

Hm sorry we're told that the Mysterons can infulance objects "White As Snow" show a chain on the submarine White gopes to wrapping it's self around the leg of one of the crew memebers.

In "The Mysterons" the tyre on the spectrum saloon exploded without warning.Resulting in the crash and eaths of Brown and Scarlet. There a few other gthings as well. We can safely say the Mysterons can infulance inanimate objects as well.

Then there is the Lunar Controller granted somehow the Mysteron's must have killed him at a earlier time. However until the Luar Contoler shows himself to be a mysteron no one's very sure not even Colonel White. The Mysterons did say that they had targeted earth for destruction because of Black's actions. Seeing that the Mooon and it's colonies didn't take part on the I do have to wonder if the Mysteron's would have left the Moon's colonies alone.

[Quote]OUR RETALLIATION WILL BE SLOW BUT NONE THE LESS EFFECTIVE IT WILL MEAN THE ULTIMATE DESTRUCTION OF LIFE ON EARTH[Quote]

So there for the moon wasn't considered to be part of Earth. Any thoughts anyone?

[DartBrat701]

And don't forget about the Mysteronised (drugged) coffee in "Inquisition"