Does It Fly?
Roddenberry Leisure
Accessible wherever you get your podcasts
Think about you’re hanging out at a bar together with your very enthusiastic buddies, about two beers in, and somebody brings up Star Trek. OK, however the transporter! How would that really work? What concerning the TARDIS of Physician Who — does that factor even make sense? It made for therefore many good tales, although, proper?
That’s the premise — and tone — of the entertaining podcast Does It Fly?, hosted by astrophysicist and “mad scientist” (his phrases) Hakeem Oluseyi and actress, author and “popular culture skilled” Tamara Krinsky. Launched roughly as soon as every week since April, every episode facilities on a science or know-how idea from a preferred sci-fi present or film. The hosts spend most of 45 minutes pondering how effectively every idea works — does it “fly”? — not simply technologically, but in addition as an engine for storytelling.
Pondering the real-world feasibility of any given sci-fi tech is hardly a brand new idea; fandoms have enthusiastically wrangled over this form of factor for many years (SN: 9/22/15).
Does It Fly? acknowledges its place on this historical past on the outset. Oluseyi and Krinsky are, respectively, a self-proclaimed nerd and geek, they usually emphasize that they’re coming at these ideas from a spot of affection and pleasure. Typically a bit of an excessive amount of. Listening to the hosts’ banter can really feel like lurking in a fandom discussion board chat, and it’s typically tempting to fast-forward previous that banter to get to the good things.
And Does It Fly? has some actually fascinating moments. Oluseyi’s astrophysics bona fides shine when he describes, for instance, the quandaries of real-world Star Trek transporter know-how, or ponders the feasibility of constructing Star Wars’ lightsabers by utilizing magnetic fields to comprise plasma right into a lethal but moveable blade kind. (Do lightsabers fly? Oluseyi says nah, not any time quickly and possibly by no means.)
Take the transporters, “one of the crucial iconic conceits in all of science fiction,” Krinsky says. The Star Trek gadget can ship objects throughout nice distances by changing them into vitality after which reconstituting them within the supply location. In actuality, the closest factor we now have to such a know-how is quantum teleportation, by which quantum states of particles, however not the particles themselves, may be transmitted from one location to a different. This isn’t that, Oluseyi says.
The obvious difficulty, maybe, with making a transporter work as we speak is first break down an object into its fundamental models — and what are these, anyway? Molecules and atoms? Electrons and quarks? Even in the event you may, you’d want an immense quantity of storage for all that information — far past what present know-how permits. And even when we remedy the storage drawback centuries from now, Oluseyi provides, there’s one more drawback: correctly report after which re-create all of the dynamic information, like recollections, that make up an individual at any given second.
The podcast’s fascinating twist on sci-fi science — one which this author significantly appreciated — is the dialogue of how an imagined know-how does or doesn’t serve the general storytelling. For instance, from a storytelling standpoint, the transporter is central to lots of Star Trek’s most memorable episodes, Krinsky says. The gadget “transports” characters rapidly into the motion and drives plotlines round every part from cloning to “transporter psychosis.” The various spin-offs of the unique Star Trek have additionally allowed the transporter’s engineering to evolve, exhibiting, as an illustration, the technological breakthrough of transporting natural and never simply inorganic supplies for the primary time.
Backside line: Scientifically, the transporter doesn’t fly. However storywise, Krinsky says, “I’d say hell, sure!”
The hosts’ cheerful and sometimes unstructured dialog works effectively once they’re bouncing ideas round concerning the physics of time journey, or the tornado-analyzing silver-ball sensors of the 1996 film Tornado, or the neuroknow-how in Netflix’s 3 Physique Downside (SN: 7/19/24; SN: 4/23/24).
However not each fan favourite present or film is amenable to this podcast’s format. An episode dedicated to demonic possession à la Beetlejuice feels uneven and unmoored, largely as a result of there isn’t a lot science mentioned — or actually to talk about — on the topic.
Listeners actually gained’t all the time agree with the hosts’ assessments. However perhaps that’s a part of the purpose. Every episode conveys the sensation of leaping into the center of an ongoing dialogue, one that’s absolutely anticipated to proceed after the hosts log off.
That was my expertise throughout a latest automobile journey. I listened to the TARDIS episode with my sister, an enormous Physician Who fan. We each loved the mind-bending concept that the present’s beloved, time-traveling blue telephone sales space mimics a black gap in some ways: It manipulates time; it’s bigger on the within than the surface; and there’s even a hypothetical kind of black gap, known as a wormhole, thought to behave as a portal via house. “Every little thing black holes do, the TARDIS does,” Oluseyi says, giving the not-a-phone-booth kind of a scientific thumbs-up.
However then Krinsky means that the TARDIS is flawed from a storytelling standpoint as a result of the present generally flouts its personal guidelines about how the TARDIS works, breaking a golden rule of sci-fi. My sister disagreed. These logic leaps had been absolutely justified, she stated.
Let’s simply say, I discovered lots about Physician Who throughout that automobile journey. And because the miles flew by, a great time was had by all.
