kengr: (Default)
[personal profile] kengr
Been catching up on shows from last season I hadn't gotten around to watching. Latest one was The Orville 02x05 - All the World is Birthday Cake

They have an advanced society that believes in astrology. Ok, I can accept that, people can be weird.

But my suspension of disbelief fails when they try to apply it to people born on other planets.

If *I* was the captain, I'd have pointed out that the crew members they grabbed were born on *different* planets. With different constellations. Which means they weren't born under the constellations that the natives were worried about.

Of course, that'd have left the Jilliacs(sp?) still in the camps.

The light sail idea wasn't bad, but to work, it'd have had to be emplaced *way* out from the system.

But where they did, it wouldn't fool *naked eye* observers from the planet, much less their observatories and satellites.

Y'see there's this thing called parallax. They'd be reading different angle from different places.

Placing it far enough out wouldn't have been difficult. But it would have complicated the plot because it'd have taken days to months for the light to reach the planet.

Also the farther out the light sail is the bigger it'd have to be. In any case, it'd be thousands of kilometers across.

*sigh*

Date: 2020-03-29 11:30 pm (UTC)
skjam: Man in blue suit and fedora, wearing an eyeless mask emblazoned with the scales of justice (Default)
From: [personal profile] skjam
I was recently reminded that Heinlein's "Stranger in a Strange Land" has a scene where an astrologer isn't able to properly chart Michael because he was born on Mars. So she has to bullshit some results using the "could apply to anyone" language from astrology columns.

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