Other Miscellany

[Bobby Bear]

miscellany / miss-sil-ay-knee \ * n. 1. an assortment of items, things.
2. issues arising from Film, especially those of a slight or incidental nature.

When a soldier got shot by a Hunter Killer or one of those cool tank machines' purple ray guns in The Terminator, they exploded spectacularly into a puffy pile of bone and regret. When the same thing happened in Terminator 2: Judgment Day, however, soldiers merely staggered about for a second before tumbling to their skull-lined resting place. Sure, the wound sizzled a bit and glowed with lasery goodness at the point of impact, but it's not nearly as impressive or frightening as it was in the '84 original.

Since these future war scenes depicted events from the same time period in the first two films, there was no reason to update the kill style on a narrative level; The Machines would still be using the same weapons. And since the sequel arrived several years after the original, with vastly superior SFX, why change one of the most striking things about these beloved sequences? The sight of Reese's comrade bursting to dust in the original genuinely scared me as a child and I was looking out for that effect especially when I watched the sequel again the other day. Needless to say I was disappointed at its absence.

I put it to you, Internet, to explain this and join me, if it pleases you, on the cutting edge of pedantry.

[Ed Hocken]

I always got confused by laser guns in general. Is getting hit with a laser gun like being shot with a regular gun or are you just stunned?

[Captain Russ]

The reason?

Maximize suffering for the victim.

They found out about their chrome-domed brother's humiliating and agonizing defeat at the hands of a human. Not only a human, but the apparent mother to humanity's salvation.

If you were a ruthless bunch of robots in the future assimilating this data, wouldn't you reconfigure your prime directive to cater to not only the extermination of the threat, but also to the most extreme exploitation of their suffering as well?

TL;DR

Robots are assholes and want to see you die alone and gut-shot.

[Ed Hocken]

Sam Waterson was right!

[V]

While I am not a fan of using directed energy weapons in most fiction, I do rather enjoy the science behind these...

In the Hammer universe, a powergun is a weapon which projects high energy copper plasma toward its target. This plasma is created by inducing an electrical field in a precisely aligned group of copper atoms; the atoms' alignment causes a resonance which greatly amplifies the field energy and ionizes the atoms. The resulting plasma is directed by a firing chamber and barrel made of refractory metal, such as iridium; the chamber and barrel are cooled between shots by injected gas (typically nitrogen). The copper atoms are stored as individual charges, with the atoms held in the correct alignment by a plastic matrix which is mostly consumed by the firing. All the parts of a powergun require extremely precise machining and advanced materials, which makes powerguns very expensive; only the most successful mercenary units (or technologically advanced planets) can afford large numbers of powerguns. Powerguns are easily identified by the extremely bright cyan color of their plasma bolts; the electrical field also generates a broadband radio frequency discharge which can be picked up by the appropriate equipment. A powergun's recoil is far lower than a projectile weapon of equivalent size or firepower, as the copper atoms have low rest mass; the primary limit for powergun rate of fire is its ability to dissipate heat. Many smaller rapid fire powerguns use a multibarrel configuration, either a rotary gatling or a multi chamber mitrailleuse (the latter called a "calliope" in Slammers military slang.)[3]
The operating characteristics and tactical employment of powerguns were chosen by the author, David Drake, to be roughly equivalent to modern chemically driven projectile weapons; specifically, the M-1 Garand rifle, the M1928A4 Thompson submachine gun, the M1911A1 .45 ACP pistol and the Browning M2 .50 caliber machine gun. This allowed him to easily translate his experiences in Vietnam to a science fiction context. The specifics of the powergun are inspired by Drake's interest in Fortean phenomena; the mechanism by which powerguns produce destructive plasma is similar to the working of a Tesla coil, and the destructive power of copper plasma is said (in the Slammers universe) to have resulted in the deaths of thousands in the 1902 eruption of Mount Pelee. (In reality, this was the result of a pyroclastic surge.)


I also highly recommend the Slammer novels by David Drake. He's a combat veteran who is quite possibly the only writer I know who can capture the modern soldier in a combat environment.

[PHEDG]

[Captain Russ]

If they were going to harvest people to fuel their Space Pintos, why turn their energy source into dust?

Those aliens are dumb.

[Bobby Bear]

I always got confused by laser guns in general. Is getting hit with a laser gun like being shot with a regular gun or are you just stunned?

I always thought this varied film to film, with the end result sometimes hinging more who'd been shot rather than how (or with what.) It's the same storytelling conceit used in regular action films; generic goons die left and right after one gunshot wound, but a good guy can become a second hand dartboard and still live.

As a general rule of thumb though, my understanding was always that a ray gun was effectively the Golden Gun 2.0. Best to stay out of its way.

The reason?

Maximize suffering for the victim.

They found out about their chrome-domed brother's humiliating and agonizing defeat at the hands of a human. Not only a human, but the apparent mother to humanity's salvation.

If you were a ruthless bunch of robots in the future assimilating this data, wouldn't you reconfigure your prime directive to cater to not only the extermination of the threat, but also to the most extreme exploitation of their suffering as well?

That makes sense, mate, and it definitely suits their M.O. but I still think the previous means of execution is more severe. It can't be pleasant to explode in a ball of light, nor watch one of your comrades do so. The more low-key alternative doesn't look like a massage either, yet it doesn't make the victim look like they've just been blown up by a space grenade.

Not only does the former seem more painful to endure, then, I'd say it's also more chilling to witness happening to others on the battlefield... thereby giving it a valuable psychological edge. It lets you know an instant is all it takes to be blinked out by one of those beams, making you extra jittery and probably more likely to make mistakes. I'm not sure if what's basically a regular gunshot wound those guys must have seen countless times could have that effect.

[Captain Russ]

That makes sense, mate, and it definitely suits their M.O. but I still think the previous means of execution is more severe. It can't be pleasant to explode in a ball of light, nor watch one of your comrades do so. The more low-key alternative doesn't look like a massage either, yet it doesn't make the victim look like they've just been blown up by a space grenade.

Not only does the former seem more painful to endure, then, I'd say it's also more chilling to witness happening to others on the battlefield... thereby giving it a valuable psychological edge. It lets you know an instant is all it takes to be blinked out by one of those beams, making you extra jittery and probably more likely to make mistakes. I'm not sure if what's basically a regular gunshot wound those guys must have seen countless times could have that effect.

Budget cuts. Not even the tinman is safe from them.

[Bobby Bear]

That dude with the razor strikes again!

Good point, mate. I suppose I just thought, since the rest of the flick looked so great, they could spring for a disintegration or two as well.

[Captain Russ]

I like to imagine that they have a certain quota to make and at the end of the month the "HK of the Month" gets to use the disintegrator gun.

It also gets a plaque on the wall and free tickets to the premier of Short Circuit XVII.

[Bobby Bear]

POST OF THE DAY: 04/07/11!

[B_Metal]

The realist in me believes it's shock and awe to gain a bit of compliance from the inhabiting creatures. Scare them enough they'll just jump into the pods of doom to feed our tripodal brethren.