I have a pet peeve about stories that use ‘reversing the polarity’ as the solution to dealing with complex and/or alien machinery.
I’ve seen sf B movies in which small, brave children instantly defrosted adults who had been instantly frozen after announcing “I know, we’ll reverse the polarity!” and switching two unlabeled components on the mysterious machine. In the eighties, Marvel Comics had a Star Wars continuation comic. In one, a second death star in construction was destroyed when Princess Leia reversed the polarity on the cannon, causing it to fire in reverse and blow itself up.
This is like saying that you can turn around the batteries and your flashlight and throw a cone of darkness. Reverse the polarity on your microwave (yes, I know they use alternating current) and get ice cubes in three minutes.
What I want to do is collect a list of impossible things that could conceivably be done, in a B-universe, by reversing the polarity. I can only think of those two examples. I’d prefer that there was no mechanical aspect to the reversal. No saws putting boards back together or blenders unscrambling eggs. But that’s not an absolute. The only absolute is absurdity. Dramatic potential or literary references would be a plus. And feel free to mention other rediculous instances of ‘reversing the polarity’ in movies, stories, or comics.
Then I take you don’t like it when the Doctor solves problems by reversing the polarity of the neutron flow? We won’t even get into the sonic screwdriver.
That reminds me of an episode of Red Dwarf where they go to a “backwards” earth. The last shot:
“Where’s Cat?”
“He’s in the bushes. You know… ‘in the bushes’”
They realize they must stop the Cat, but it’s too late. Cat un-squats from the bushes with a most extraordinarily horrified expression.
I reversed the polarity on my 10 month-old daughter and was able to stare at the computer screen for longer than 5 seconds at a time, enough to type this post uninterrupted.
I reversed the polarity of my friend’s Gamecube and wound up with a pong machine. I then reversed the polarity of that and wound up with two racquetball rackets and a ball. I then reversed the polarity of those and got a poster of Anna Kournikova. I somehow don’t think my friend will mind…
Ease up on that reversal there! Sometimes, undesired results occur. For example…
A friend reversed the polarity of his study skills, hoping to pass a test. He failed worse than usual. Apparently his extremes are “fail” and “fail horribly”
I reversed the polarity of some Left Behind books, hoping to get something readable. They burst into flame. I’ve heard of martyrs, but this was excessive.
I couldn’t solve a Rubik’s cube so I reversed the polarity using a hammer. I now have a multi-coloured, irregulalrly shaped coaster and feel a lot better for it.
I knew a girl who reversed the polarity on her vibrator, and she had anti-orgasms. I reversed the polarity on a copy of Das Kapital and it became a counter-revolutionary tract.
This thread reminds me of the opening scene from Slave Girls From Beyond Infinity where the girls escape by “reversing the polarity of their handcuffs.”