# Plot Holes in World War II **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [March 22, 2012, 2:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/plot-holes-in-world-war-ii/616463 "2012-03-22T02:30:12Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 11
**Author:** ![Sunspace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sunspace/32/1250_2.png) [@Sunspace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sunspace)\ **Post date:** [March 28, 2012, 4:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/plot-holes-in-world-war-ii/616463/201 "2012-03-28T04:47:09Z")
IMHO, _Sun Never Sets_ suffered from bad writing way before the “Ireland, My Ireland” episode. They should have gone with the whole “Imperial Federalism” thread, but that was just tossed aside. I suppose you could see repudiating Imperial Federalism as an echo of “Georgie Porgie Made The Colonists Cry”, but it was pretty ham-handed–they had the Irish Civil War and then completely flip-flopped with the Balfour Declaration. I think they were already trying to write in plot links to _The Great War_ as well. Too bad that knocked the stuffing out of the whole _Sun Never Sets_ story arc. Top-level editorial disagreements perhaps? I’m left feeling as let down as I was by the Bakshi “Lord of the Rings”. ---
**Author:** ![Boyo\_Jim](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/87869e/32.png) [@Boyo\_Jim](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Boyo_Jim)\ **Post date:** [March 28, 2012, 4:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/plot-holes-in-world-war-ii/616463/202 "2012-03-28T04:50:19Z")
And now England is forced to take shitty roles like _America’s Poodle_. ---
**Author:** ![Typo\_Knig](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/cdc98d/32.png) [@Typo\_Knig](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Typo_Knig)\ **Post date:** [March 28, 2012, 11:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/plot-holes-in-world-war-ii/616463/203 "2012-03-28T11:29:27Z")
> [@Oldeb](#): > > Oh, god. Audie Murphy. The Wesley Crusher of WW2. At least with York they tried to make it believable. They cast a guy who was 6’ and had some muscle on him. But Murphy? The kid wasn’t even 5’6" and weighed maybe 110 when wet. And I mean kid too. He couldn’t even legally drink until the last few episodes. > > So we have to sit through him getting rejected from all these enlistment centers cause he’s just so eager to go to war until he finally gets in. Way to rip off Captain America there. And then just to cement his supersolider status they have him contract malaria early on. You know how many people died of malaria just last year? Over 1,000,000. But not Murphy. He just shrugs it off and spends the whole war with it, not that this slows him down any. Then afterwards he just drinks some orange juice, takes a nap, and he all good? > > And don’t get me started on his damn spin-off series. Oh look, now he’s a movie star! And now he’s a songwriter who gets like a dozen artists to record his songs, including _frickin_’\* Dean Martin\*. You must have missed the scenes in the follow-up series where he [got addicted to sleeping pills, but broke himself of the addiction by locking himself in a motel room for a week - without any medical assistance or supervision.](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audie_Murphy#Post-war_illness) That’s less believable than a “Chuck Norris fact”. You would think that if anybody knew how addiction _really_ worked it would be Hollywood. But nooooo!!! ---
**Author:** ![RealityChuck](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/realitychuck/32/195_2.png) [@RealityChuck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RealityChuck)\ **Post date:** [March 28, 2012, 1:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/plot-holes-in-world-war-ii/616463/204 "2012-03-28T13:27:59Z")
I did enjoy the various cameos by Hollywood actors – James Stewart as a general, Clark Gable as a fighter pilot. It’s also fun to look back to see actors before they were famous, like Neville Brand as a infantryman and Jack Palance as a pilot. If you look closely, you can even see James Doohan on the beaches at D-Day. Though it’s inexplicable that the producers didn’t ask John Wayne to do a cameo, too. ---
**Author:** ![Scumpup](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ce73a5/32.png) [@Scumpup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Scumpup)\ **Post date:** [March 28, 2012, 2:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/plot-holes-in-world-war-ii/616463/205 "2012-03-28T14:00:30Z")
[James Arness](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_arness) and [Charles Durning](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Durning), also unknowns at the time, had standout moments in small roles. Though I do confess, no matter what he is in, I always expect Durning to break into ["Dance a Little Sidestep.](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rCDoBvG1HoI)" ---
**Author:** ![Wolverine](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/ba9def/32.png) [@Wolverine](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wolverine)\ **Post date:** [March 28, 2012, 3:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/plot-holes-in-world-war-ii/616463/206 "2012-03-28T15:15:46Z")
> [@Andy\_L](#): > > You guys all missed the original series (“The Great War” - later renumbered (Lucas-style) into “WWI”), which had all those slapstick moments - They did try to incorporate some humor in The Deuce. Remember the episode with that [Polish bear](http://www.badassoftheweek.com/voytek.html) that was an official private in the army? The writers kept pushing it further and further. Instead of a simple wacky subplot, they destroyed my suspension of disbelief by adding ridiculous antics. The bear drinks beer. He smokes cigarettes. He wrestles his friends. He marches on two feet. He’s just like a human. :dubious: They completely lost me, however, when they had the bear start carrying ammunition. Everyone knows that wild animals run away from loud sounds, but here the bear is actually _contributing_? :rolleyes: It was too much for me. ---
**Author:** ![Lumpy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lumpy/32/446_2.png) [@Lumpy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lumpy)\ **Post date:** [March 28, 2012, 3:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/plot-holes-in-world-war-ii/616463/207 "2012-03-28T15:52:33Z")
> [@kunilou](#): > > \*Sun Never Sets \*had been plagued by cost overruns and cast problems for years. It was a big thing when Ireland left the show, but after India and Pakistan split there really wasn’t anyone interesting to drive the storyline anymore. Oh sure, they came up with one final moment of good drama left Egypt and Sudan, but mostly the show just stumbled along with recycled plots and a third-rate cast like Rhodesia and Cyprus. Although I rather liked that one-off special they had years later, _The Falklands_. ---
**Author:** ![Boyo\_Jim](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/87869e/32.png) [@Boyo\_Jim](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Boyo_Jim)\ **Post date:** [March 28, 2012, 4:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/plot-holes-in-world-war-ii/616463/208 "2012-03-28T16:14:10Z")
But they didn’t really get the visuals right until _Gulf War I_. Also, in a bold programming strategy, they ran the whole miniseries in the same week. ---
**Author:** ![Malacandra](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Malacandra](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Malacandra)\ **Post date:** [March 28, 2012, 5:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/plot-holes-in-world-war-ii/616463/209 "2012-03-28T17:26:49Z")
Another spin-off from _The Sun Never Sets_, of course, was _Partition_. I thought it was a bit contrived from the get-go, and maybe a bit suspect from a certain point of view - okay, India makes a great setting for this storyline where there turns out to be loads of feuding once the English have gone and it’s not just cliched happy-ever-after, but I felt it left a funny taste in the mouth, as though the writers were trying to imply that, after all, the funny brown subcontinentals might have been better off under Empire rule anyway.:dubious: But I stopped watching that one after about Episode 2. They’ve got this really powerful Gandhi character who was oozing charisma all through the India stories in _TSNS_ and what do the writers do? _They kill him off about five minutes after the English leave!_ :mad: I don’t care what issues there may have been around the actor, his salary, backstage personality clashes or whatever other stories you care to listen to - there was just no way anyone as inspirational as that would ever have been just murdered after he’d played such a huge part in engineering his country’s independence. ---
**Author:** ![lisiate](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/f05b48/32.png) [@lisiate](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lisiate)\ **Post date:** [March 28, 2012, 9:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/plot-holes-in-world-war-ii/616463/210 "2012-03-28T21:32:14Z")
> [@Wolverine](#): > > They did try to incorporate some humor in The Deuce. Remember the episode with that [Polish bear](http://www.badassoftheweek.com/voytek.html) that was an official private in the army? The writers kept pushing it further and further. Instead of a simple wacky subplot, they destroyed my suspension of disbelief by adding ridiculous antics. The bear drinks beer. He smokes cigarettes. He wrestles his friends. He marches on two feet. He’s just like a human. :dubious: > > They completely lost me, however, when they had the bear start carrying ammunition. Everyone knows that wild animals run away from loud sounds, but here the bear is actually _contributing_? :rolleyes: It was too much for me. Dammit I missed that episode. It sounds totally awesome. ---
**Author:** ![Kent\_Clark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kent_clark/32/105_2.png) [@Kent\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kent_Clark)\ **Post date:** [March 28, 2012, 9:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/plot-holes-in-world-war-ii/616463/211 "2012-03-28T21:51:46Z")
> [@Malacandra](#): > > Another spin-off from _The Sun Never Sets_, of course, was _Partition_. I thought it was a bit contrived from the get-go, and maybe a bit suspect from a certain point of view - okay, India makes a great setting for this storyline where there turns out to be loads of feuding once the English have gone and it’s not just cliched happy-ever-after, but I felt it left a funny taste in the mouth, as though the writers were trying to imply that, after all, the funny brown subcontinentals might have been better off under Empire rule anyway.:dubious: > > But I stopped watching that one after about Episode 2. They’ve got this really powerful Gandhi character who was oozing charisma all through the India stories in _TSNS_ and what do the writers do? _They kill him off about five minutes after the English leave!_ :mad: I don’t care what issues there may have been around the actor, his salary, backstage personality clashes or whatever other stories you care to listen to - there was just no way anyone as inspirational as that would ever have been just murdered after he’d played such a huge part in engineering his country’s independence. They did something like that in the U.S. series _Dreams!_ There was a really charismatic “hot” character with a great name, Malcolm X. He gets killed off. That set up the emergence of the cool, rational character, Martin, as the lead. Wrong! They killed him off, too, leaving us with no one left as the star. ---
**Author:** ![Fubaya](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/c2a13f/32.png) [@Fubaya](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fubaya)\ **Post date:** [March 29, 2012, 12:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/plot-holes-in-world-war-ii/616463/212 "2012-03-29T00:11:34Z")
I don’t like to brag, but I had family members who were in this series, just as unnamed extras of course. My grandfather can be seen in several of the pacific island scenes. I have a collection of photos that were taken during production and you wouldn’t believe how large and elaborate the sets were. My grandmother had a role during the part where they were making that big bomb thing that they used at the end. She played a worker at the big bomb factory thing. ---
**Author:** ![Koxinga](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/4af34b/32.png) [@Koxinga](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Koxinga)\ **Post date:** [March 29, 2012, 1:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/plot-holes-in-world-war-ii/616463/213 "2012-03-29T01:24:03Z")
> [@kunilou](#): > > They did something like that in the U.S. series _Dreams!_ There was a really charismatic “hot” character with a great name, Malcolm X. He gets killed off. That set up the emergence of the cool, rational character, Martin, as the lead. Wrong! They killed him off, too, leaving us with no one left as the star. Similar thing happened in the denouement of _The Missiles of October_. Hero saves the day, and then gets shot not too long afterward. Those series in the 60s really had a hard on for killing off the protagonist. ---
**Author:** ![Askance](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/askance/32/8281_2.png) [@Askance](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Askance)\ **Post date:** [March 29, 2012, 4:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/plot-holes-in-world-war-ii/616463/214 "2012-03-29T04:55:35Z")
> [@RealityChuck](#): > > I did enjoy the various cameos by Hollywood actors – James Stewart as a general, Clark Gable as a fighter pilot. It’s also fun to look back to see actors before they were famous, like Neville Brand as a infantryman and Jack Palance as a pilot. If you look closely, you can even see James Doohan on the beaches at D-Day. > > Though it’s inexplicable that the producers didn’t ask John Wayne to do a cameo, too. > [@Scumpup](#): > > [James Arness](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_arness) and [Charles Durning](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Durning), also unknowns at the time, had standout moments in small roles. Though I do confess, no matter what he is in, I always expect Durning to break into ["Dance a Little Sidestep.](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rCDoBvG1HoI)" Not to mention the uncredited roles for Ian Fleming and Graham Greene. Spy novelists as actual spies? Really, producers? ---
**Author:** ![Koxinga](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/4af34b/32.png) [@Koxinga](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Koxinga)\ **Post date:** [March 29, 2012, 6:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/plot-holes-in-world-war-ii/616463/215 "2012-03-29T06:00:46Z")
> [@Askance](#): > > Not to mention the uncredited roles for Ian Fleming and Graham Greene. Spy novelists as actual spies? Really, producers? Ohhh, that’s not the [half of it](http://www.cracked.com/article_19458_the-5-most-badass-teams-famous-people-to-ever-join-forces_p2.html)! [QUOTE=Cracked] Back in the beginning of World War II, Britain was all kinds of royally screwed: The Nazi war machine marched on and the U.S. had no interest in helping for fear of breaking its winning war streak in an away game. But Britain wasn’t content to let the Americans sit it out, so they assembled a secret agent group nicknamed the Baker Street Irregulars to nudge the Americans into the war. Since this mission didn’t involve stabbing or shooting people, the agents were chosen more for their ability to make friends, charm people and find their way into women’s pants. [/QUOTE] And what were they smoking when they had that cameo by a [beloved children’s author](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roald_Dahl) not only playing a spy, but an exceptionally horny and foul mouthed one\*? I mean, I’ve heard of casting against type, but just . . . wow. > [@](#): > > The group’s main mission was to befriend important and influential people and convince them to join the war effort or, if that didn’t work, spy on them and gather enough material to blackmail them. And that’s where their penises came in. Roald Dahl became the personal sausage delivery guy for Clare Booth Luce, Republican congresswoman and the wife of the owner of Time, Life and Fortune magazines. Her husband, Henry Luce, was considered an anti-British isolationist, so nailing the man’s wife just to spy on him was actually a very important mission. After just a few days of it, Dahl called his superiors pleading to abort the project because, and this is a real quote, “I am all fucked out! That goddamn woman has absolutely screwed me from one end of the room to the other for three goddam nights.” ---
**Author:** ![Sr\_Siete](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/6de8d8/32.png) [@Sr\_Siete](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sr_Siete)\ **Post date:** [March 29, 2012, 11:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/plot-holes-in-world-war-ii/616463/216 "2012-03-29T11:30:31Z")
I’m the biggest fan of _ **World War: TOS** _. Sure, the writing was a bit cheesy, they had next to no budget, they kept reusing the same “dirty trench” set for both sides and the “planes” were obviously made of canvas and wood. I know all that. But damn, was it realistic. Grim, gritty, with no real heroes or villains, kids who never knew what they were fighting about. Each series since then has been increasingly dumber, until we get to the downright insulting current series War on Terror (WW: WOT) and their use of badly drawn caricatures as main characters. Last time I watched that tripe, they were literally using a black actor as the President. How clichéd and patronizing can you get? ---
**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:** [March 29, 2012, 12:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/plot-holes-in-world-war-ii/616463/217 "2012-03-29T12:48:20Z")
Yeah, since Morgan Freeman aced the role in _Deep Impact_ or _Armageddon_ or whatever, the “black president” has become quite the cliche, hasn’t it? It’s almost become part of the “mystical negro” approach to African-American characters in movies. Who wrote that stuff anyway, Stephen King? ---
**Author:** ![Sr\_Siete](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/6de8d8/32.png) [@Sr\_Siete](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sr_Siete)\ **Post date:** [March 29, 2012, 1:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/plot-holes-in-world-war-ii/616463/218 "2012-03-29T13:48:23Z")
> [@JohnT](#): > > Yeah, since Morgan Freeman aced the role in _Deep Impact_ or _Armageddon_ or whatever, the “black president” has become quite the cliche, hasn’t it? It’s almost become part of the “mystical negro” approach to African-American characters in movies. Who wrote that stuff anyway, Stephen King? The new stuff? Without looking, I’m pretty sure it has to be Brannon Braga. ---
**Author:** ![Malacandra](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Malacandra](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Malacandra)\ **Post date:** [March 29, 2012, 3:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/plot-holes-in-world-war-ii/616463/219 "2012-03-29T15:47:49Z")
> [@JohnT](#): > > Yeah, since Morgan Freeman aced the role in _Deep Impact_ or _Armageddon_ or whatever, the “black president” has become quite the cliche, hasn’t it? It’s almost become part of the “mystical negro” approach to African-American characters in movies. Who wrote that stuff anyway, Stephen King? Wait, what about that 1980s series where they made out the President was a failed cowboy actor? :D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [March 29, 2012, 4:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/plot-holes-in-world-war-ii/616463/220 "2012-03-29T16:15:40Z")
> [@Askance](#): > > Not to mention the uncredited roles for Ian Fleming and Graham Greene. Spy novelists as actual spies? Really, producers? Which reminds me of the most unrealistic subplot of the entire war. Ian Fleming supposedly listed a whole bunch of ideas, one of which led to [Operation Mincemeat](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Mincemeat) in which British intelligence got an unclaimed corpse, invented an identity for it, and then dumped it into the ocean with a letter saying that the invasion of Sicily was really going to be an invasion of Greece. It washed up on the shores of Spain, a Nazi sympathizer copied the letter and replaced it before the corpse was returned to England, and the Germans actually believed in. Pull the other one, folks! [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/plot-holes-in-world-war-ii/616463.md?page=10) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/plot-holes-in-world-war-ii/616463.md?page=12)