# Best works with the dumbest plot elements **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [July 2, 2017, 2:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-works-with-the-dumbest-plot-elements/790326 "2017-07-02T02:26:41Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![Just\_Asking\_Questions](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ba9def/32.png) [@Just\_Asking\_Questions](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Just_Asking_Questions)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2017, 5:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-works-with-the-dumbest-plot-elements/790326/61 "2017-07-03T17:50:42Z")
> [@Lucas\_Jackson](#): > > Quantum of Solace > > To me, Bond movies are about saving the world from evil geniuses in remote mountain lairs that are going to blow up the planet from space with lasers. > > Quantum of Solace was basically Bond intervening in someone trying raise the price of water. Yawn… And in real life, when [that exact plan was used](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cochabamba_Water_War), the people didn’t just suck it up and pay. They rebelled, and the government nationalized the water supply. So much for their cunning plan. Even in the movie, it was seen that the region was economically dead, and people were moving away. Who is going to buy your water, Quantum? Still a better movie than Skyfall, which is flawed right at the foundation. ---
**Author:** ![GargoyleWB](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gargoylewb/32/199_2.png) [@GargoyleWB](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GargoyleWB)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2017, 5:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-works-with-the-dumbest-plot-elements/790326/62 "2017-07-03T17:50:48Z")
> [@Don\_Draper](#): > > … > Remember, it’s 1917. Planes are still pretty rare. Lindbergh wouldn’t make his historic first trans-atlantic flight for another 10 years. It’s likely, Trevor was the first person to fly a plane anywhere near it… My nit with the movie setting was the use of the Eindecker airplane, one which was already obsolete and out of use by 1916. 1917/18 the skies were filled with biplanes, triplanes, Flying Circuses, etc. While cool to see the Eindecker being used in a movie, it was a weird anachronism for late-war WW1. Maybe it could be fanwanked that there is a squadron of them still being used away from the front, but you’d think a secret project base with a too-modern mega bomber would have some contemporary Albatrosses or Fokkers to protect the base. ---
**Author:** ![John\_Bredin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/96bed5/32.png) [@John\_Bredin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Bredin)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2017, 6:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-works-with-the-dumbest-plot-elements/790326/63 "2017-07-03T18:02:02Z")
[quote=“NDP, post:28, topic:790326”] > [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](#): > > I agree with you about “Conscience of the King.” Surely they would have fingerprints, voiceprints, even DNA of Gov. Kodos. > To be fair, identifying someone using their DNA is something that came about long after the episode aired. It’s also an example of recent real-life science actually being more advanced than that projected in a work of science fiction set hundreds of years in the future. That said, what bothered me about the episode was they made Kodo/Karidian a despotic ruler like Hitler or Mussolini. It would’ve been more believable if he was some lesser-known functionary like [John Dejanjuk](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Demjanjuk) who committed numerous horrible crimes in his youth and then hid in plain sight for years in some oridnary occupation. As it is, it’s like if Pol Pot disappeared in 1979 and turned up years later under the name Pot Pal as the star of a wacky American sitcom about an Asian restaurant. Yep, but Kodos was governor of a relatively small colony of 8,000ish people. From the perspective of a Federation with umpty-umph worlds and colonies, he was a lesser-known functionary. Less like Pol Pot, more like Jim Jones. ---
**Author:** ![Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/7cd45c/32.png) [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elendil_s_Heir)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2017, 6:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-works-with-the-dumbest-plot-elements/790326/64 "2017-07-03T18:10:23Z")
> [@Just\_Asking\_Questions](#): > > _Covertly_? They’d _overtly_ pick him up as soon as they recognized him, and shoot him. Whether or not they used some polite fiction like “shot while escaping” would depend on how nice they were feeling that day… I’m willing to cut the filmmakers some slack and imagine that Maj. Strasser was under orders to play nice so as to have the Vichy administration of Casablanca remain more inexpensively pro-Nazi until, perhaps, a German garrison force could arrive. ---
**Author:** ![G0sp3l](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/c68b51/32.png) [@G0sp3l](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/G0sp3l)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2017, 6:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-works-with-the-dumbest-plot-elements/790326/65 "2017-07-03T18:24:16Z")
I have to preface this by saying, I loves me some _Game of Thrones_! But… a couple of corpses reanimate and the plan is to take three hundred warriors beyond the wall? A wall that has stood for millennia and has not be attacked yet? And, since we need help, lets send the most abrasive asshole in Westeros to ask for aid! ---
**Author:** ![Ethilrist](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ethilrist/32/4604_2.png) [@Ethilrist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ethilrist)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2017, 8:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-works-with-the-dumbest-plot-elements/790326/66 "2017-07-03T20:25:42Z")
Magneto wears a helmet that blocks Professor X’s telepathy, so he can stay hidden. This doesn’t explain why Professor X doesn’t just look for Sabretooth, Toad, or his friggin’ _sister_… ---
**Author:** ![moojja](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e5b9ba/32.png) [@moojja](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/moojja)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2017, 9:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-works-with-the-dumbest-plot-elements/790326/67 "2017-07-03T21:27:43Z")
> [@Acsenray](#): > > Yeah and that doesn’t make sense. Yet, still a great episode. ---
**Author:** ![alphaboi867](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alphaboi867/32/3898_2.png) [@alphaboi867](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/alphaboi867)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2017, 10:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-works-with-the-dumbest-plot-elements/790326/68 "2017-07-03T22:12:04Z")
> [@The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](#): > > Where did you get “the early 1950s”? IIRC, one episode – not of **Galactica: 1980** , but of the original series – had a broadcast coming in of Neil Armstrong announcing that _The Eagle Has Landed,_ which I figure marks it as the late 1960s (or later, if we figure they’re light-years away from Earth; but not sooner). Boxey (aka Troy) goes from being a 6-7 year old boy in TOS to a middle-aged man in G:80 after a 30 year voyage (at least according to the series bible). Yes it’s impossible to reconcile this with them intercepting footage of Apollo 11 in The Hand of God, considered the Moon landing only took place in 1969, but way more than 11 years passed before the found Earth. [This](http://bsgc.proboards.com/thread/2382/classic-battlestar-galactica-timeline?page=1) fan timeline explains some of the issues. ---
**Author:** ![Acsenray](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/acsenray/32/4519_2.png) [@Acsenray](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Acsenray)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2017, 11:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-works-with-the-dumbest-plot-elements/790326/69 "2017-07-03T23:37:21Z")
> [@alphaboi867](#): > > Boxey (aka Troy) goes from being a 6-7 year old boy in TOS to a middle-aged man in G:80 after a 30 year voyage (at least according to the series bible). Yes it’s impossible to reconcile this with them intercepting footage of Apollo 11 in The Hand of God, considered the Moon landing only took place in 1969, but way more than 11 years passed before the found Earth. [This](http://bsgc.proboards.com/thread/2382/classic-battlestar-galactica-timeline?page=1) fan timeline explains some of the issues. Does time pass in Earth at the same rate that it passes for the people on the Galactica? ---
**Author:** ![RivkahChaya](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rivkahchaya/32/8919_2.png) [@RivkahChaya](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RivkahChaya)\ **Post date:** [July 4, 2017, 12:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-works-with-the-dumbest-plot-elements/790326/70 "2017-07-04T00:06:41Z")
There an episode of \*L&O: SVU \*that makes me nuts, because dramatically, it’s a great episode, but the premise is flawed. It’s called “Stolen,” and it’s the one where a recent kidnapping helps Cragen solve a child disappearance from a long time ago, when he was at the 27th precinct. **OPEN SPOILERS** : A woman is murdered, and her newborn son is missing from his crib. That makes sense if someone killed her to get the baby, right? but that’s not what happened. The person who killed her was a woman who also had a baby by the same father, and wanted to marry him, and didn’t want him to find out he had another child. So she killed, KILLED, the mother, then while she was supposed to be looking after a newborn of her own, went through an elaborate caper of representing herself as the mother of the baby with the dead mother, and gives him to a private adoption attorney. Right? No. She just killed the mother-- she would have killed the baby too, right? If she was overcome by hormones, or something, she would have dropped him off at a safe haven. Or even not at one, but just left him some place like a hospital. Getting herself fake ID to misrepresent herself as the mother was just too much. It’s necessary, because it’s how the baby eventually gets traced, but it’s stupid, right? The episode doesn’t focus much on that, though. It focuses on Cragen finding the kid after all these years, and then the custody between the adoptive parents and the bio father. That’s all nice and dramatic, and upon first viewing, distracts you from the glaring plot hole. But if you see it a second or third time, and start to think about it, it falls apart. ---
**Author:** ![terentii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/terentii/32/212_2.png) [@terentii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/terentii)\ **Post date:** [July 4, 2017, 4:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-works-with-the-dumbest-plot-elements/790326/71 "2017-07-04T04:38:43Z")
> [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](#): > > I’m willing to cut the filmmakers some slack and imagine that Maj. Strasser was under orders to play nice so as to have the Vichy administration of Casablanca remain more inexpensively pro-Nazi until, perhaps, a German garrison force could arrive. FWIW, Gen Henri Giraud was captured by the Germans in May 1940, escaped from a POW camp in Dresden, and made his way to Unoccupied France. Berlin wanted him back, but the Vichy government refused to extradite him. He eventually co-headed the Free French movement for a time in North Africa, alongside Charles deGaulle. ---
**Author:** ![Poysyn](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/f4b2a3/32.png) [@Poysyn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Poysyn)\ **Post date:** [July 4, 2017, 4:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-works-with-the-dumbest-plot-elements/790326/72 "2017-07-04T04:51:25Z")
_ **Wonder Woman** _ - I figured that the island became “discoverable” because Diana discovered her powers for the first time, thereby opening some kind of rift? Or - POOF - magic ---
**Author:** ![Robot\_Arm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/robot_arm/32/18280_2.png) [@Robot\_Arm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Robot_Arm)\ **Post date:** [July 4, 2017, 5:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-works-with-the-dumbest-plot-elements/790326/73 "2017-07-04T05:01:52Z")
> [@Poysyn](#): > > _ **Wonder Woman** _ - I figured that the island became “discoverable” because Diana discovered her powers for the first time, thereby opening some kind of rift? The fog explanation works for me. Or maybe the island just wasn’t in a place where ships ever had reason to be. Generally you’re sailing from someplace, to someplace else, and you take the shortest path to get there. Maybe Themyscira is in some out of the way place, and no one ever sailed through the invisibility screen because it wasn’t between where they were and where they wanted to go. Do we even know where in the world it is? Trevor flew there from Germany, so that suggests the North Sea somewhere. But the weather, buildings, plants, etc. look more Mediterranean. ---
**Author:** ![JohnT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnt/32/15048_2.png) [@JohnT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JohnT)\ **Post date:** [July 4, 2017, 5:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-works-with-the-dumbest-plot-elements/790326/74 "2017-07-04T05:33:35Z")
It’s on the other side of Skull Island, where Kong lives. ---
**Author:** ![Patch](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/a183cd/32.png) [@Patch](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Patch)\ **Post date:** [July 4, 2017, 6:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-works-with-the-dumbest-plot-elements/790326/75 "2017-07-04T06:18:55Z")
[Chain Reaction](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0115857/?ref_=nm_flmg_act_69). Keanu Reeves and his scientist buddies invent a way to get energy from water, but if something goes wrong it turns the water into a huge bomb. In the beginning, when evil peepulz steal the info to suppress the invention, the bathtub-sized reactor vessel of water explodes, taking out something like 16 city blocks. At the end of the movie, Keanu has sent out plans of his reactor to thousands of scientists. Yay! Free energy for everyone! Except for the nasty point that, he’s also sent out the ability for anyone to build a nuclear bomb-level device if they have his reactor designs and a swimming pool. It’s a terrorist’s wet dream. I realized this early on, and all through the movie I’m cheering on the bad guys, hoping they’ll stop that mumbly SOB. ---
**Author:** ![terentii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/terentii/32/212_2.png) [@terentii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/terentii)\ **Post date:** [July 4, 2017, 6:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-works-with-the-dumbest-plot-elements/790326/76 "2017-07-04T06:50:47Z")
> [@Patch](#): > > [Chain Reaction](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0115857/?ref_=nm_flmg_act_69). Keanu Reeves and his scientist buddies invent a way to get energy from water, but if something goes wrong it turns the water into a huge bomb. In the beginning, when evil peepulz steal the info to suppress the invention, the bathtub-sized reactor vessel of water explodes, taking out something like 16 city blocks. At the end of the movie, Keanu has sent out plans of his reactor to thousands of scientists. Yay! Free energy for everyone! > > Except for the nasty point that, he’s also sent out the ability for anyone to build a nuclear bomb-level device if they have his reactor designs and a swimming pool. It’s a terrorist’s wet dream. I realized this early on, and all through the movie I’m cheering on the bad guys, hoping they’ll stop that mumbly SOB. I switched it off after the first five minutes, when he outran the blast wave on his motor scooter and took cover in a ditch. Blast waves travel at something like 26,000 fps, and they expand to fill every little depression you might try to hide in. He would have been crushed by something denser than solid steel. ---
**Author:** ![terentii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/terentii/32/212_2.png) [@terentii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/terentii)\ **Post date:** [July 4, 2017, 6:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-works-with-the-dumbest-plot-elements/790326/77 "2017-07-04T06:55:55Z")
My vote is _ **Die Hard II** _, where the terrorists take over an airport at Christmastime. The movie and its failings have been thoroughly dissected elsewhere in this forum. Its sole virtue is that things happen so fast you don’t have time to dwell on how silly they are. (I sat through it three nights in a row when it first came out. Guilty pleasure!) ---
**Author:** ![nate](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/nate/32/13085_2.png) [@nate](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nate)\ **Post date:** [July 4, 2017, 8:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-works-with-the-dumbest-plot-elements/790326/78 "2017-07-04T08:10:55Z")
This season of _Fargo_, which I must confess I put this series up on the same pedestal as Breaking Bad as the one of the best TV series ever made. As with just about any Cohen bros concept, there is a unstoppable evil force vs a naive character or couple thrust into a criminal situation which they try to take advantage of and usually some omnipotent narrator or police unit that is ineffective at stopping the evil force. Anyway, one of the plot points is that the naive character is refusing to sign papers for the unstoppable evil. But I’m thinking, why does this evil clan care about a legit signature? Why wouldn’t they just forge it? I mean they kill innocent people without question, what’s a little signature fraud? ---
**Author:** ![Gyrate](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gyrate/32/3588_2.png) [@Gyrate](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gyrate)\ **Post date:** [July 4, 2017, 9:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-works-with-the-dumbest-plot-elements/790326/79 "2017-07-04T09:46:33Z")
Can I mention the Professor Layton games? [I had a rant ages ago](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=10921821&postcount=1)about the first one: > [@Professor Layton and the Curious Village - a small rant (story spoilers)](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/professor-layton-and-the-curious-village-a-small-rant-story-spoilers/488936/1): > > **WARNING: the following contains story - but not puzzle - spoilers.** > Okay, I’ve finished the game (apart from Puzzle 135, which continues to frustrate me) and I have to say that that was one of the most depressing stories I’ve encountered in a long time. > > The Professor and Luke “rescue” Flora from the Tower (which she could leave at any time, mind you). The Professor becomes her guardian, and she elects to leave her fortune behind so that the “people” of the village can continue to go on as before with their (artificial) lives. > > Or, to put it another way: > > [ul] > [li]A young girl has been given away to a strange man as a prize for solving a bunch of puzzles. I’m fairly sure that’s illegal in most Western countries.[/li] > [li]Bruno, the only other actual human in the village, who has been keeping up all the robots out of devotion to Flora and her late father, is now condemned to stay in the village on his own and continue to repair the robots (which appear to break down frequently, judging by the number of “disappearances” mentioned earlier in the game).[/li] > [li]Bruno will have to do this without his workshops, which were in the Tower, which is now a pile of rubble.[/li] > [li]And that’s assuming Bruno got out of the collapsing Tower (which he probably did - Luke escaped from a point much further from the exit, and the drawbridge crank turned up at the end which Bruno had).[/ul][/li] > Nice. > > Did I miss anything? Don’t get me wrong - I enjoyed the puzzles but that was a pretty honking big plothole. Nonetheless I tried the next two games…which also had enormous issues appearing at the end. In “The Diabolical Box/Pandora’s Box”, it turns out that the whole time they were in the town they were hallucinating…but weirdly both the Professor and Luke were having the _exact same hallucination for days_, which is stretching credulity to the limit. In “Unwound Future/Lost Future”, we discover that the bad guy is Clive, seeking revenge for the explosion which killed his parents. In the end Clive is sorry for his crimes and promises to atone. Unfortunately his “crimes” include tearing a massive hole in central London, which would have killed tens of thousands of people. Good luck atoning for that one, Clive. How many evil masterminds will that spawn?After that, I gave up. ---
**Author:** ![NDP](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ndp/32/55_2.png) [@NDP](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/NDP)\ **Post date:** [July 4, 2017, 6:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-works-with-the-dumbest-plot-elements/790326/80 "2017-07-04T18:46:37Z")
[quote=“John\_Bredin, post:63, topic:790326”] > [@NDP](#): > > Yep, but Kodos was governor of a relatively small colony of 8,000ish people. From the perspective of a Federation with umpty-umph worlds and colonies, he was a lesser-known functionary. Less like Pol Pot, more like Jim Jones. Two other things about that Star Trek:TOS episode. First, in retrospect, Kodo/Karidian was likely based on Adolf Eichmann. Second, Kodo/Karidian was a governor before he became an actor. I thought this was rather odd until I realized this is the reverse of Ronald Reagan’s career. Reagan had just been elected governor of California when the show first aired, and since he was considered a quasi-John Bircher with fascistic views by many Hollywood liberals, the episode was basically a thinly-disguised jab at him. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-works-with-the-dumbest-plot-elements/790326.md?page=3) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/best-works-with-the-dumbest-plot-elements/790326.md?page=5)