I agree that the Russian ambassador is using a miniature camera in his pocketwatch, but the delay before the doomsday machine goes off has nothing to do with bombs traveling to their targets. It’s located in a remote site, above the arctic circle, and is meant to kill everyone with a “doomsday shroud, a lethal cloud of radioactivity.” When they’re discussing the doomsday machine earlier, Strangelove says “when you merely wish to bury bombs, there is no limit to the size.”
The delay (if there is one) is merely necessary to the way the film is structured and edited. When I first saw it, I thought the ending was just a montage of random/generic nuclear explosions, not the literal detonation of the doomsday machine.
There is a tiny plot hole, however. After the people in the war room learn that there is one plane left that they aren’t able to recall, the President asks the Premier over the phone (although he may be speaking to the People’s Air Defence Headquarters in Omsk by that point) if that plane reaching its target will trigger the device. (And from his response, we can assume the answer is yes.) But because of the leaking fuel, the B-52 bombs a different “target of opportunity”. It’s never said if bombing that target will trigger doomsday.
Actually Plan R, as shown in the film, doesn’t make much sense. Of the two targets assigned to Major Kong’s plane, I seem to recall that at least one was an ICBM complex. This is an odd target for retaliation, since presumably Plan R only goes into effect after the U.S. has suffered a crippling first strike and any Soviet ICBMs will already have been launched. A more reasonable retaliatory target would be a strategic one, like a major city or large agricultural area.
<the bad Doctor>You’re missing the point. The whole purpose of the Doomsday Machine is to make retaliation Mein Fuhrer! Sorry. automatic. A trigger in a watch would not do that </Doctor S.>
I would expect the slow computers of those days would take some time to crank out tne need for setting off the machine. I have always taken the A bomb shots at the end to be symbolic, not the actual Doomsday machine.
Maybe the missile was nuclear, but it is never stated. It detonated pretty close to them if it was. The pulse effect was not well recognized back then, so I doubt that is what was happening.
I remember reading in one of the Kubrick bios I have that the pie scene didn’t work all that well. The humor in DS was mostly understated (except for Col. Guano’s coke shower) so I can believe Kubrick would cut it.
The NY Times had an interesting article on it in the Arts and Leisure section Sunday. First, Doctor Strangelove was based on Herman Kahn, who wrote a widely read book on nuclear war that included a part on mineshafts, and other stuff that seemed to have been quoted in the movie. There was a program just like the one General Ripper used to start the attack, with about the same lack of oversight. Daniel Ellsberg, who was working on nuclear policy at the time, went to see it when it came out. When he emerged, he said to his companion “We’ve just seen a documentary.” :eek:
My favorite thing about Doctor Strangelove: Major Kong is the only real hero in the film, with quirks but no major flaws. He is brave, inventive, and a good leader. And it all leads to Doomsday.
I was reading an on-line article yesterday (here it is - new york times ) that stated that many parts of Strangelove were actually factual - including the General sending his planes off to bomb the USSR. Apparently US policy at the time allowed generals to send the planes if the President was taken out, with only the General being able to recall them.
Kubrick was originally going to do a serious film, but realized how insane some of the things that were actually said were that he had to change it to a satire (especially people like Curtis LeMay, who allegedly had this conversation):
One more vote in favor of the Russian ambassador having a camera in his watch, not a detonator. Consider that a radio signal from his watch would have to not only reach the Arctic circle from wherever in the US the War Room happens to be located, but it would also have to be able to broadcast through all the layers of cement that surround the War Room, which is undoubtably hardened to survive a nuclear attack, and is probably subterranean. And the Russian’s watch doesn’t have any sort of visibile antennae or external power supply that could boost the signal that far. Naw, that was a simple camera. It was Kong’s bomb that triggered the Doomsday device.
You smug bastards have implacably underminded my long-standing belief that the Russki ambassador started armageddon. Fie on your reasoning skills. Phooey on your logic. Damn you for slaying my magnificent hypothesis with your grotesque facts.
My God in Heaven. How can so many people watch the same movie, and come away with such different versions of what they saw?
No, for the love of Christ, the Russian Ambassador Sadesky does not set off the Doomsday Device with his magical pocketwatch. Here are some reasons why:
a) It’s technically improbable to the degree of almost being impossible, given the technology of the time. Everything else in the movie, including the Doomsday Device itself, was technically possible. (They made up “Cobalt-Thorium G”, but I assume Strontium 90 and some other stuff would have worked as well.)
b) It makes no sense dramatically, or in terms of the satirical storyline for the entire rest of the movie.
c) It makes no sense for the character of Ambassador Sadesky.
d) It makes no sense politically. Even if it were possible to trigger the “Doomsday Device” via a tiny transmitter from the other side of the planet, why in the world would the Soviet Premier put that power in the hands of one of his ambassadors?
2) Here’s something that seems to have been missed:
a) We do not actually see the Doomsday Device going off. Over the end credits, we see film of various above-ground nuclear tests, as we hear Vera Lynn sing “We’ll Meet Again”. Powerful satire. Not intended to literally depict the detonation of the Doomsday Device, which I guess would have been an enormous chunk of remote Soviet territory abruptly being replaced by a huge ball of radioactive fire, followed by ye olde Doomsday Shroud.
So, we don’t know when, or even if, the DD actually goes boom. Doesn’t really matter.
It’s funny – it never before occurred to me that the missile that almost destroys Kong’s B-52 might have had a small nuclear warhead. That was definitely the case in the contemporary movie Fail Safe – a really good movie, but overshadowed by Kubrick’s “nightmare comedy”.
Well, it doesn’t. I checked the novelization by “Peter George” and Red Alert which it was based in, and the missile is conventional in both. In the novelization the missile hits them because their decoy malfunctions. It explodes about 100 yards away. The situation in the original book is more like the movie. BTW, the bomber in the original book is the Alabama Angel, and in the novelization it is The Leper Colony.
Wow. That’s not even a nuclear missile – it’s just an unguided air-to-air nuclear rocket. (Though I suppose you don’t need much in the way of guidance with the blast radius that sucker must’ve been packing.)
I take it the wide nose cone is to accomodate a spherical plutonium imploder?
In some sense, he would have to be a real hero. When General Turgidson is replying to the question of whether a damaged bomber could make it to the target, the General’s response to the question (after him talking about the “average Ruskie”) is, “If the pilot’s good, and I mean reeeaaal good…” His realization there is that they could be seriously screwed; however, our realization is that we know they’re screwed, because we’ve seen that Kong is exactly the sort of cowboy who will get the job done come hell or high water.
According to the documentary on the Dr. Strangelove DVD, there was a pie fight scene originally intended for the end of the movie, but it wasn’t used for a number of reasons.
