I was reading an article about Star Trek IV and they made a mistake about the plot that is very common. They were asking how they were about to manufacture the Transparent Aluminum so quickly for the Whale tank.
But that isn’t what happens in the movie. They actually trade the formula for plastic the company already has in stock. They even say it will take years to turn Scottie’s formula into a real product. A lot of people have misunderstood this scene in this same way.
Another example is the finale of Roseanne. It’s possible the reboot changed some of this (I didn’t watch it or The Conners) but the original finale reveals the entire series was a book about her family that Roseanne wrote.
She made key changes from “real life” like swapping her daughters’ spouses and her sister’s sexual orientation so we have never seen the real Conner family, just the fictional version Roseanne created. She says she had a hard time processing Dan dying so the story she wrote became more outlandish to explain the crazy final season which a lot of people interpreted as only that season was her book. The intention was the entire series was.
Daniel from the Karate Kid is often described as,a kid who learned karate in a few months from Miyagi, but early dialogue establishes that Daniel had studied karate before he moved to California.
In The Birdcage, Hank Azaria’s manservant character is named “Agador,” not “Agador Spartacus.” Armand only starts calling him that as a hasty cover-up after forgetting to call him “Spartacus” while trying to pass him off as a Greek butler:
Armand: Agador! Val: Spartacus! Armand: Agador Spartacus! … He insists on being called by his full name.
I can’t think of another example but just Googled for a script to Star Trek IV and found the relevant dialogue.
SCOTT: Doctor Nichols, I may be able to offer something to you.
NICHOLS: Yes?
SCOTT: I notice you’re still working with polymers.
NICHOLS: Still? What else would I be working with?
SCOTT: Ah, what else indeed? I’ll put it another way. How thick would a piece of your plexiglass need to be, at sixty feet by ten feet to withstand the pressure of eighteen thousand cubic feet of water?
NICHOLS: That’s easy, six inches. We carry stuff that big in stock.
In other words, that facility already had a piece of plexiglass 60 feet x 10 feet x 0.5 feet and presumably that’s what Scott received in exchange for the formula.
On Sesame Street pre-1985, Mr. Snuffleupagus was not Big Bird’s “imaginary friend” (or “invisible friend”). He just happened to wander away every time Big Bird tried to show him to anyone else.
I agree, by the book, captain, that the transparent aluminum plot point is a misunderstanding. One that I have made, as well.
What isn’t a misunderstanding, is that the crew violates the basic rules of time travel. They’re risking changing the entire future, maybe (likely) eliminating themselves, the Enterprise, maybe the entire federation out of existence, for a cute scene.
And they only needed aluminum anyway. They didn’t need clear anything for a little ten-minute (and 300 year) trip into space and back.
The most jarring thing about the scene with Scotty talking to the materials guy, for me, is the way this futuristic engineer discusses the dimensions of the panel using feet and inches.
Except they are both speaking 20th century English, right? No difference between the materials guy’s dialect and Scotty’s? (Except the Scots, of course.).
So Scotty is clearly trained to speak 20th century US English dialect, instead of his native 23rd century English dialect. That training would include the common 20th century US units of feet and inches.
Or they could have just ‘beamed up’ the whales, stored them in the ‘pattern buffer’ for the short duration of the trip, and then transported basic once they reached the future Earth. Or better yet extracted a sample of DNA and used their super-advanced future technology to create a new population of whales not traumatized by hunting, ocean pollution, and human-generated acoustic racket who would likely be inclined to tell the probe, “Go ahead and take them out; they’re reckless, primitive land-skins who can’t even hold their breath for ten minutes. They deserve to be wiped out!”
It was like a French farce. I remember that stuff. Everyone just thought Big Bird made him up, and BB was constantly frustrated.
To be fair, the guy’s like a wooly mammoth; it seems implausible that nobody would notice him walking around inner city Manhattan. Then again, there are lots of monsters and giant talking animals hanging around, so that might not be that remarkable.
Even in my very first viewing, I expected that’s what the whales would say.
And why not? The movie even hinted at it, talking about how we drove them to extinction.
I’m thinking that’s a distinction without a difference. It’s SuperStupid either way.
Especially how, once Supes rescues Lois, that crack in the earth never comes along and swallows the empty car* which previously killed Lois Inane, meaning there was no need to save her. I mean, the filmmakers couldn’t even remember the plot of their own film enough to get that right??
My copy of Sesame Street Unpaved has a chapter on this. Originally it was deliberately unclear whether it was just timing or if Snuffy was a product of Big Bird’s imagination.
Then a few cases of child molestation became national news. The writers worried that the other characters not believing Big Bird would make children think that people would not believe them if they reported sexual abuse. The decision was made to have Snuffy be seen and heard by other characters .
There was a pre-1985 episode where Bob managed to see Snuffy. Unfortunately, Snuffy was wearing some kind of crazy get-up at the time - so when Bob told Big Bird what he’d seen, Big Bird thought Bob was delusional!
Speaking of superheros: People think Batman never kills, but that’s not always true. The no-kill rule was added in Batman #4 (1941), but he killed before that—and sometimes after. In movies like Tim Burton’s Batman and Batman v Superman, he clearly kills people.
