Splendid Chaps - Eight/Science

11th August 2013

After intending to go to all the Splendid Chaps recordings I've missed a few here and there.
The last one I attended was "Who and Books", and before that the last Doctor-themed one was "Four/Comedy" during the Melbourne Comedy Festival. It all feels like such a long time ago, with so much stuff in between.
So it was nice to get out, laugh and see Doctor Who-based stuff.
   
As with previous podcast recordings I've been to I wished this one went on longer.
I also wish that they, (John Richards and Ben McKenzie) hadn't waffled as long about the 1996 TV movie (the only TV-based appearance of the Eighth Doctor), and yet also that they'd covered more different parts of it.

I also wish they'd spend more time on their guests; science communicator, MScGenetics student at the University of Melbourne and head editor of the Young Australian Skeptics Jack Scanlan, astrophysicist Dr Alan Duffy and science communicator Allie Ford. Scanlan, also being a podcaster at least knew how to hold himself in front of the mic of a podcast, but the others seemed to need direct questions asking of them to prompt them into speaking.

I also found the lack of attention or coverage of the "homework" (the stories they say we should watch, read of listen to prior to attending the podcast recording) somewhat disappointing, given the theme for this episode was ‘Science’. I had wanted to hear some in depth discussion about science in Doctor Who, considering how much it’s used (and abused) in the series. I was maybe expecting coverage of The Daleks, how the Daleks originally ran on static electricity perhaps. Terror of the Autons was mentioned and briefly dealt with. Four to Doomsday and its illustration of Newtonian physics was coverage quite well and I was surprised that it was seen to be accurate. Well not the Fifth Doctor being in space without a space suit, but the cricket ball action in space was accurate. The Masque of Mandragora wasn't mentioned at all, It seemed like an odd choice of story, perhaps to spark discussion of dimensions and other stuff like that. The Lazarus Experiment was also discussed from a genetics point of view. All of its science pretty wrong, to paraphrase Scanlan, what should have happened when Lazarus got into the machine was that he'd step, well flop out of the machine as a big cancerous blob.

Some people left before the musical portion at the end of the podcast could begin, and I was tempted to join them. The musical bit at end of the podcast feels a bit like a tax dodge. That it's there to fulfil some obscure piece of renting the venue or getting some tax concession or something. I think almost all the people who have gone to these podcast recordings would be totally happy if there wasn't a musical bit at the end and instead was a little more podcast recording.
The musical bit at the end of this was a performance of “In a Dream”, the music that was playing on the record player at the start and end of the TVM. The music that skips on "time". Disappointingly they didn't have a music-only version with only static / record static to play through the speakers whilst singer Hannah Pelka-Caven sang the song. It was nice, although not better than the music in the movie.

Turning to philosophy or science

“I realised that science couldn’t answer any of the really interesting questions, so I turned to philosophy. Been searching for god ever since.” Chantilas. Red Planet.

I really love this quote, it might possibly be one of my favourite quotes from a movie. It is I admit from my favourite science fiction film, a Mars movie. But the quote delivered from a character who is a philosopher (as well as a surgeon or something) during a quiet moment in the story is just, it’s great.

I feel like it should clash with my atheistic thoughts and notions.
But I like the idea of god, not in a belief structure sort of way, but in a fictional idea sort of way.

I don’t believe in god, I think it’s frankly a silly proposition that there’s some deity that influences our actions or that we must atone to.

But in fiction I think it’s a great concept, it’s a great concept to play against other things.

Maybe not god as such, belief might be a better term for how I like it to work in fiction.

Having god or gods for that matter in fiction is a little bit of a dead end.
The Greeks and Romans had it right with their gods in their plays, poems and other fictions that they created. Those gods, the polytheistic religions from those civilisations had flawed gods that aside from being immortal had the flaws and problems of humans, they drank, they had sex, they fought and they weren’t all powerful.

Which is the problem in any fiction that’s written, you need to balance the powers of your characters and the world that they inhabit. Having people, places, things with too much power upsets that narrative. It means you can’t write a plot with super-powered elements in it because whenever there’s a problem then the all powerful thing would just come along and BANG, that’s it problem solved. There’s no problem solving process that goes along with trying to sort out a problem, it’s just fixed and then that’s it.

Then there’s free will. With god around you don’t have any.
You already start with “original sin”, whatever that is, and then spend your whole life trying to atone for this sin that’s built into you. Which suggests the lack of any free will. If you had free will then you’d have the choice not to start with the sin, or to make choices to avoid the sin implantation in the first place.
Or, alternatively if god has a plan, then why should we bother striving, why should we try and control our lives if god has planned it all?

Returning to the quote, I could simply cut out the god bit and quote it as “I realised that science couldn’t answer any of the really interesting questions, so I turned to philosophy.” But that still doesn’t make how I think any clearer. I do think that science has all the answers.
I certainly think science has the answers to the really interesting questions, or at least will have a stab at the interesting questions until someone comes along with an even better go at it. Scientists want to be challenged, with proof, not god. Though if god showed up that’d be an interesting conversation (or not).