#bad scriptwriting

[cidenas]

Another “Jar-Jar” story

So I went through some episodes of the korean series "Tomorrow" and I could not continue watching it because the primary main character is a "Jar-Jar" style character, that is implausibly infantile and ridiculous. That is lazy scriptwriting, that happens sometimes in TV series. At least in the original "Jar-Jar" it was later revealed to be a ruthless character acting infantile and ridiculous with skill only to deceive others.

[eclipsemidnight]

Blue Shadow Virus Blues

So I just watched Blue Shadow Virus, and we all knew watching it that somehow there was going to be a cure, and somehow Obi Wan and Anakin would get the cure, get back to the compound, and save the day.

But how did they get the hatch open without exposing all of Naboo to the virus? I mean, it’s great that they have a cure. But there was a reason that Ahsoka and Padme and Rex and the rest of them were going around killing all the battle droids to keep the gas from getting out, and it wasn’t just that they didn’t have a cure. There was a cure, and they knew it. But there being a cure is very different than having a widely accessible cure, and completely different from prevention. 

The disease is such that there is a 48 hour time limit between when you contract it and when it kills you. We don’t know how long it took for the virus to become symptomatic, but by how the show goes not very long. To be honest, I have to assume that it took more time than implied or that Vindi created something more along the lines of a nerve poison or toxic gas/chemical compound than a disease. If you get sick, there’s an incubation period. It doesn’t make sense for them to be infected and immediately become sick. Especially if they’re not dying immediately because it’s such an aggressive illness.

The coughing, at least, can be passed off as something not so serious, but the blue parts of their faces (and I’m not going to guess why, I’m no doctor or medical student) would be a dead giveaway. Because times are not really explained in the show, and it’s not immediate, we don’t know how long before these less innocuous symptoms show up.

Assuming that the bioengineer recreated the disease perfectly, it would have to take some time. If the disease was so deadly, it makes sense for coughing to be a symptom. However, if we’re basing this off of the bubonic plague, then it doesn’t make sense that there wouldn’t have been an airborne variant that evolved to complement the aquatic variant. It’s honestly confusing that Vindi claims that there was no previously existing airborne variant.

Anyway, what are the odds that Naboo can find a cure almost instantly that Vindi didn’t know about? He’s supposed to be an expert in the subject, so it stands to reason that he should be aware of any cure. The Naboo are meant to be blindsided by this, so how do they have a cure so quickly? If we’re still basing this on the bubonic plague, there would be periodic short-lived crop ups. That would be enough to perhaps find a cure (and since Iego was apparently a stop on the spice smuggling route, it would make sense that it would be affected, and have the root be found). That still doesn’t explain how Vindi was ignorant.

And the Separatists. Vindi is one person. An expert, but one person who’s been shut up in a lab for a while. If the Separatists were paying him to recreate this “virus”, there’s no way that they would be ignorant of a cure. They /left/ Iego. Why, if the only cure to an illness they were creating was made from only this one plant on this one planet that they had held, did they leave the planet? If they were smart, they would have had Vindi manufacture a variant that traded infection rate for time to death, possibly by increasing incubation time, and had antidote ready. Even if they didn’t, once the disease was spread the Republic worlds wouldn’t have a choice but to flock to the Separatists to get the cure. Or they would die. 

And what’s this about “one bomb per key system will wipe them all out”? There are so many things wrong with this idea. For one, the bomb is a horrible delivery mechanism. I mean really. This is the kind of thing you don’t want people knowing about, or they’ll quarantine planets. The exploding bomb would be obvious. Second, the bomb/alternate delivery mechanism would have to get to a planet, because space is a void with no air or water to transmit it. Then it would need to get other people sick who were taking transports to nearby planets, to spread the disease. They would have to be very nearby, before the person started having less-than-innocuous seeming symptoms, as I mentioned before, and infect people there before they died. It would quickly become obvious what was killing people because the blue face thing seems quite distinctive.

I’m using Black Cat’s Hyperspace Travel Times as reference here. http://www.angelfire.com/or2/blackcathome/starwars/hyperspacetimes.html

We’re not sure how long before atypical symptoms show up, so we’ll jump to the cure. In canon, this is occurring on Naboo, and the cure is on Iego. Naboo is on the Mid Rim, close to the Outer Rim. Iego is on the Outer Rim, close to the edge of the galaxy, on the other side of the galaxy. A link to a star wars map, if you’re interested in checking that out. http://s1243.photobucket.com/user/Zenbe10/media/WaroftheDreamTeamsMap.png.html

By Black Cat’s estimations, it takes 24 hours to get from the Mid Rim to the Outer Rim in base travel time. We’re probably adding more to the because it’s so far across the galaxy, but even if we don’t, that is still 48 hours to get to Iego, turn around, and get back to Naboo. All of the people infected with the disease are dead and you didn’t get the cure. Even if you revise up the estimate because it’s airborne and not waterborne (less concentrated), there is still the time it took for Obi Wan and Anakin to get to Theed, hand over Vindi to security, hear about the cure, get off planet and on a route to Iego, deal with the locals on Iego and get the root, get off of Iego (and go back and deal with the energy net before actually leaving, which had to have taken time to set up), get back to Naboo, and have someone make the cure from the root. Anakin only got one tiny root, so they really need to use every bit of it. Why, Anakin, did you only get one root? You had that big backpack. At that point, you should have been trying to fill the thing with roots. 

Anyway, presuming that anyone is still alive after that, and by that point it’s probably been at least 60 hours, if not a full three days, they open up the compound. They just exposed all of Naboo to the virus. Even forgetting that, it doesn’t make sense that any of them (except JarJar, whose hazmat suit is still fuctioning, and maybe Padme, depending on how far in hers burst) are still conscious. They should be dead. At that point, they should be so far gone that the cure doesn’t do much. Medicines are not miracles that you take a pill and “poof” you’re cured. 

And the Gungans. The virus is still in the water. Who lives in the water? The Gungans! And given that the herbivores that female Gungan was herding died almost immediately (which is why this resembles a chemical bioweapon, not a disease), how long do the Gungans living downstream have to live? Not very long! For some reason, this is completely glossed over. A version of the show that didn’t air implied that there had been Gungan losses, and that caused more bad relations between the Gungans and the Naboo, but still.

Even if you have a cure, and the one root Anakin got is so powerful it can be diluted to cure everyone, or they got more roots offscreen somehow, you still have people dying. There was a coordinated effort to eradicate this thing because it was so horrible. No cure works 100%. So now you have dead humans and Gungans and livestock that need buried. How does this affect their ecosystems? Naboo is supposed to be a lush world. If this is in the water, and affects all species, does it affect the flora? Or just the fauna? Can the water be purified somehow, or do they need to rely on water from Offworld?

This entire episode was a mess. Sorry for the rather disjointed rant, but I’m still mentally throwing up my hands at the egregious ignored galactic considerations that got ignored so Anakin and Obi Wan could save the day.