Public misunderstanding of science
Aug. 14th, 2006 12:41 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shark_hatI went to a TV recording on Saturday, a pilot for a show called Lab Rats which will be on BBC3 in the autumn. I enjoyed it; it was co-written by and co-starring Chris Addison (whose radio series Civilization is available on CD), who has a very nice witty and unpredictable turn of phrase. Plus it had Ford Prefect Geoffrey McGivern in it. I hadn't seen a sitcom filmed before, so that was interesting. Cunning contrivances with the set; one corridor plays three, by having poster A in place when filming out through the door of an office, poster B when actually walking along the corridor, or by moving a cabinet in and out of shot; the same patch of wall appears different. Clever, eh?
It went on until very late, not from major cock-ups but just smallish retakes, set-ups taking quite a long time, that sort of thing; the warm-up bloke was pretty good, and Addison chatted to the audience too (segueing into some of his stand-up) so it was fun all the time.
I was sort of hoping this would be my show the way "The IT Crowd" was for many geeks; it's set in a biology lab! Hooray! Unfortunately they just missed doing the science right.
I could forgive The IT Crowd the irritating "computer-illiterate girlie who is obsessed with shoes" stuff because the atmosphere was spot on. This isn't, quite- it got scientists wrong, and so the characters, though funny in themselves, don't make me believe that they are biologists as opposed to any random group of co-workers. Getting a Nobel just is not the major drive in scientists' lives. (For a start, you can only know what discoveries have been world-shaking many years after they're made; trying to work out now what lines of research might end up getting a Nobel in twenty years would be an exercise in frustration.) Needing to publish to keep your funding, wanting to get ahead of the Smith labs in Ohio, and even the love of research for its own sake, yes; ambition, on the whole, no. (Not to say that they aren't human and don't dream of maybe winning a prize one day. But it isn't what drives their work.)
A more minor niggle, but they also got cloning wrong; if you clone your grandmother, you don't open a magic box and get an old lady. You get an egg, which needs to be incubated in the time-honoured manner, and the end product is a baby who your great-gran would find familiar. The magic-box method is science fiction. Which is cool; the Red Dwarf episode where Rimmer clones himself? Genius. But this show is supposed to be science, not SF. Many comedians have done this sort of gag, of course, but surely you can get it right and be funny as well? (That'd be more original, too!)
(Also, in a slightly more esoteric point, if you're a mouse-cloning guy, suddenly being able to clone a mollusc? Hahahaha, haha, hah. Looking for an analogy... "hey, you can knit, you must be able to help me wind the bobbin on my sewing machine, right?")
So, poot, not what I was hoping for, WSoD didn't get enough lift. Also there were some slightly creaky plot devices, one of which made the ending a tad predictable... (forgivable- first-time sitcom writers.) But hell, any show where the director looks carefully at his monitors and says "can we have another bucket of slime over Chris, please" has something going for it. Plusses: Nice remorseless working-out of the situation, inventive subplotting, nice character interaction, witty dialogue. (Loved Cara and the Christmas decorations; Cara and the 700 lemons; Cara and the fan; and the others were pretty funny too- Alex and the simmering pink-lab-coat situation; the comfy chair; the statue.) I'd watch it, if I could get BBC3.
It went on until very late, not from major cock-ups but just smallish retakes, set-ups taking quite a long time, that sort of thing; the warm-up bloke was pretty good, and Addison chatted to the audience too (segueing into some of his stand-up) so it was fun all the time.
I was sort of hoping this would be my show the way "The IT Crowd" was for many geeks; it's set in a biology lab! Hooray! Unfortunately they just missed doing the science right.
I could forgive The IT Crowd the irritating "computer-illiterate girlie who is obsessed with shoes" stuff because the atmosphere was spot on. This isn't, quite- it got scientists wrong, and so the characters, though funny in themselves, don't make me believe that they are biologists as opposed to any random group of co-workers. Getting a Nobel just is not the major drive in scientists' lives. (For a start, you can only know what discoveries have been world-shaking many years after they're made; trying to work out now what lines of research might end up getting a Nobel in twenty years would be an exercise in frustration.) Needing to publish to keep your funding, wanting to get ahead of the Smith labs in Ohio, and even the love of research for its own sake, yes; ambition, on the whole, no. (Not to say that they aren't human and don't dream of maybe winning a prize one day. But it isn't what drives their work.)
A more minor niggle, but they also got cloning wrong; if you clone your grandmother, you don't open a magic box and get an old lady. You get an egg, which needs to be incubated in the time-honoured manner, and the end product is a baby who your great-gran would find familiar. The magic-box method is science fiction. Which is cool; the Red Dwarf episode where Rimmer clones himself? Genius. But this show is supposed to be science, not SF. Many comedians have done this sort of gag, of course, but surely you can get it right and be funny as well? (That'd be more original, too!)
(Also, in a slightly more esoteric point, if you're a mouse-cloning guy, suddenly being able to clone a mollusc? Hahahaha, haha, hah. Looking for an analogy... "hey, you can knit, you must be able to help me wind the bobbin on my sewing machine, right?")
So, poot, not what I was hoping for, WSoD didn't get enough lift. Also there were some slightly creaky plot devices, one of which made the ending a tad predictable... (forgivable- first-time sitcom writers.) But hell, any show where the director looks carefully at his monitors and says "can we have another bucket of slime over Chris, please" has something going for it. Plusses: Nice remorseless working-out of the situation, inventive subplotting, nice character interaction, witty dialogue. (Loved Cara and the Christmas decorations; Cara and the 700 lemons; Cara and the fan; and the others were pretty funny too- Alex and the simmering pink-lab-coat situation; the comfy chair; the statue.) I'd watch it, if I could get BBC3.
