Miss Hawthorne's 'Magic Not Science' Awards

[Rob McCow]

'I thought you said you took general science at A Level?'

'I didn't say I passed!'

This is a thread to celebrate all the 'silly science' moments in Doctor Who. All those times when it was too much effort for a writer to consult the Junior Encyclopedia of Space, or skim read an issue of New Scientist.

What are Doctor Who's biggest travesties against physics, chemistry and biology?

[Jason Thompson]

My nominations are:

1: All that guff about weaving aluminium around a neutron star to decrease its gravity in The Creature From The Pit.

2: The solar flare gamma radiation/midnight DNA-conducting lightning strike nonsense in Evolution Of The Daleks (it's a solar flare, and it strikes at midnight! Gaaaah!).

3: The lack of impossibility about The Impossible Planet.

4: The equalising pressure after Varan falls through the wall of Skybase in The Mutants, and everyone just gets up and walks away from a gaping hole in the side leading out into space. One line about forcefields would have solved that....

That's all that spring to mind for the moment. Others will come no doubt.

[Dirk Gently]

Might I add the non-use of oxygen in the ignition & the burning of the atmosphere in The Poison Sky?

[Jason Thompson]

I'm sure there are various stories (Smith & Jones being the most recent) where it has been assumed that oxygen starvation will kill you in a sealed room, rather than carbon dioxide poisoning as in real life.

[Jon Masters]

I think its far more important to have a nice story that you enjoy than worry about all that science stuff - science is bo££@cks anyway

[Jason Thompson]

Who are you, and what have you done with the real Jon masters?

[Captain Tancredi]

The Sensorite window cleaner.

[Si Hunt]

Real science has yet to send anyone into the heart of a black hole, so we can't discount the possibility that it could send you into a magical world where you can create chairs and grunting servants with the power of your imagination. But it's unlikely.

Si.

[Zbigniev Hamson]

Everything that happens during the course of The Planet of Evil.

[Stuart Wallis]

Real science has yet to send anyone into the heart of a black hole, so we can't discount the possibility that it could send you into a magical world where you can create chairs and grunting servants with the power of your imagination. But it's unlikely.

Si.

Well of course it's possible, where do you think The Lads and Boris Johnson came from? eh?

The Bob 'n' Dave (ie. Baker and Martin) Book Of Science is always good for a laugh though. A Sontaran's head deflating? EH? Nuclear Power stations that don't affect the atmosphere when they explode? Pardon?* Spaceships that can occupy the same place in space and time without immediate mutual obliteration? Oh, go home!




*- And if I'm more wrong about that than they are, I'll willingly accept the award for daft science on their behalf!

[Zbigniev Hamson]

Correct me if I'm wrong here, but surely all the stuff about things trying to co-exist in the same space and time leading to mutual annihilation is all made up anyway? As far as I'm aware the only natural "law" about this is the Pauli exclusion principle and that just states that it can't actually happen, not that it can happen but will cause massive explosions. And the only theory I know about the breaking down of that principle relates to gravity and leads to black holes (again), which aren't particularly explosive either.

So Maybe Bob 'n' Dave are wrong to have spaceships occupying the same space at all*, but not really for not having them explode if they do.



*although they could probably be near enough to occupying the same space in any meaningful sense without being EXACTLY co-existant enough to violate anything.

[Stuart Wallis]

So Maybe Bob 'n' Dave are wrong to have spaceships occupying the same space at all*, but not really for not having them explode if they do.



*although they could probably be near enough to occupying the same space in any meaningful sense without being EXACTLY co-existant enough to violate anything.

Well I'll accept the award for daft science anyway, if the Impossible Planet people are willing to give it up.

[Jason Thompson]

Nuclear Power stations that don't affect the atmosphere when they explode? Pardon?

Wasn't it just the particle accelerator in the lab that exploded, not the nuclear reactor itself?

[Stuart Wallis]

Look, stop asking me questions I can't remember the answers to!