The crew of a human vessel under attack by robots that take human form deal with the stress. Specifically Colin.
Performed by the hilarious Mitchell and Webb.
Monsters are monstrous. That’s the point of them.
Their inhumanity is defined by how little of ourselves we see in them. For example despite his Gallifreyan origin, The Doctor is chock full of human quirks. He’s prideful, arrogant, caring, has an accent (after all, lots of places have a North) and many times a liar. All elements that we recognize as human. All elements that make as love and trust The Doctor.
But his greatest enemy, The Dalek has a sliding scale of humanity. Sometimes they are fixated terrors determined to wipe out any and everything in front of them. But sometimes they are just a lost alien race, a pitiable hoard of lost barbarians long separated from their tribe. Often time, the latter is accomplished by having our tin can cretins talk more. Which is a mistake.
The Daleks suck the more they talk. I will prove it now!
Unreasonable
Many of the worst cop out endings for Doctor plots involve the one piece of information revealed when all is lost that totally changes the power dynamic. Great plot resolutions come from action and action is a necessity when your obstacle will only reply “EXTERMINATE!!!” to any pleadings.
It also reinforces the superior race element to the Dalek personality. They believe they are the most advanced race in the galaxy. Why would they engage in dialogue to pond scum like humans?
Iconic
They look like pimply tin cans, the roll as fast as Will Smith’s suggested Summertime cruising and look rather harmless.
Which is what makes them awesome.
They are the greatest killing machine known to any species in any time. This is best exemplified in the 2005 Dalek reintroduction entitled Dalek where the Doctor and Rose find a lone Skaro warrior trapped in the basement of an American billionaire. One tortured creature murders dozens and dismantles a man’s empire like a lost child. A slow rolling tower of chaos.
Quite simply, no words are needed.
They Look Stupid Talking To Each Other
When they sit there blinking at each other with their barely differential voices (a la The Daleks In Manhattan) plotting against each other or their enemies it just looks a bit too much like a really boring animatronic exhibition.
Holy crap.
Stuff actually happened on this show. Sure, there were some pretty maddening plot problems and we rehashed a few issues for the millionth time, but at the end of the episode people said important things to each other that might actually move the plot along. You hear that world! We might actually be heading in the right direction with this GD series! Yippee!
And then… there are two bits of news that almost completely ruin your joy. Find out both of those and everything else you need to know about Secrets AFTER THE JUMP… (more…)
Chinese native Chunzhenwang reports from Shanghai
I don’t like horror movies or ghost stories. My imagination pictures those things, especially at night, which freak me out. But the curiosity never stops me from listening to them. I want to figure out the reason behind each story. I feel like if I can find the rational side of these stories, I wouldn’t be scared anymore. Against my better judgement, I find myself seeking out ghost stories but very rarely finding the rationale behind them. So every night, I still fight with my imagination.
When you live in Shanghai, the subway will be your first choice for transportation. It’s not expensive and very convenient. But on Line One, there is a Caobao road station, or by its more popular name, “ghost station.”
According to popular legend, the train will suddenly break down at that station, without driver error. When a maintenance trailer pulls the train out of the station, it works again. Other riders have reported the door not opening when in the haunted stop.
But most alarming is the nine deaths at Caobao, all involving unexplainable circumstances.
A few couple years ago, when the subway in Shanghai did not have shielded gates, a passenger waited for the train. All of a sudden, he plunged down into the tracks after inexplicably losing his balance. Unfortunately for him, his train was on time, ending his life. Witnesses say he didn’t fall off the platform, they saw something dragging him.
Just imagine the poor souls that have to work there.
One day, as usual, the staff needed to clean the trash in the track. One worker while cleaning, heard a woman laugh from the deep and dark side of the track. Since the station was closed, no one was supposed to be there.
Other staff report sometimes seeing a girl in red sitting in one of the chairs. Many believe she is the spirit of a young woman who committed suicide a couple of days before in the Caobao station. In the next few days following her death, many staff saw her sitting there every night.
I haven’t been to the Caobao station myself, mostly because I don’t live near that area. But where do these stories come from?
I think the main reason is the location of Caobao. It’s near a local mortuary, and the station’s ladies restroom is specifically close to the mortuary.
I don’t know these stories of the Caobao station is true or not. But I believe at least the inspiration for them couldn’t be totally invented.
If you are unfamiliar, please refer to this Wikipedia page. La la la la.
In the pantheon of Weird Things heroes, Craig Venter stands among the most revered. His controversially sequenced the human genome faster than the most aggressive estimations. His swagger and braggadocio wrankle rivals who seem him as a publicity hound putting himself before the science.
In the parlance of our modern era, he balls so hard motherf—ers want to fine him.
Venter’s newest quest is completely redefine the world’s energy supply by creating fuel from algae. Although this is not a new idea, Venter’s approach is unique in that he wants forgo searching for a magic naturally occurrence of algae that can be replicated in favor of sequencing his own from scratch.
So how long will this take? He talked to Live Science.
We don’t have the final answer to anything. We’re evaluating thousands of strains and large numbers of genetic changes. The long-term solution is to make the entire genetic code from scratch and control all the parameters. To us, this is a long-term plan. It’s a 10-year plan. We’re not promising new fuel for your car in the next 18 months.
In comparison to the human genome challenge, Venter adds he completed that “in nine months.”
Swag.
Pictures of a strange plot of land in China’s western Gansu province could a secret weapons testing facility and if one weapons expert is to be believed, it’s very similar to American installations in Nevada. Including the famed Area 51.
Tim Ripley, a defence expert from Jane’s Defence Weekly, compared the structures to similar grids in Area 51, the secret United States military test base in Nevada. “The picture of the circle looks very like a missile test range, with target and instrumentation set out to record weapon effects. The Americans have lots of these in Nevada – Area 51!” he said.
This region is known to be used by the Chinese military for secret weapons test and this kind of grid could be used to simulate city streets, presumably to test the accuracy of missiles.
Like a zombie whose brain has been cleaved in twain by a last minute arrow, this episode of The Walking Dead was of two minds. The first, let’s continue to put our characters on the path of the most boring, pointless plot arc in history. The second, let’s continue to give the audience slight glimmers of the promise that this show once found bursting out of every seem.
Also, Michael Rooker is back. Or is he.
Find it all, AFTER THE JUMP… (more…)
If you thought that we’d never create a feedback loop with yeast that could help us control it’s organic nature using a computer, you are dead wrong.
This work, performed by scientists at the Automatic Control Laboratory at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich, is exceptional because of its simplicity: The computer turns the yeast on by flashing a red light, and it turns the yeast off by flashing a deeper red light. Connected to the yeast is a “reporter” molecule that fluoresces when the protein is produced. The computer can see this fluorescence and alter the light it emits, thus creating a full feedback loop.
This is the first step toward manipulating organic material by way of cell signaling which could lead to us making anything from fuel to pills from a vat ooze. Which is awesome.
We’ve talked at length on the podcast about the intelligence and possible threat presented by Octopi. This will do nothing to bury those very real, justified fears.
Two deep-ocean species of cephalopod, an octopus and a squid, can go from transparent to opaque in the blink of an eye, a new study finds.
This impressive camouflage swap is an adaptation that likely keeps the cephalopods safe from two different types of predators. The first are deep-sea creatures that hunt by looking upward for prey silhouetted against the light filtering down through thousands of feet of water. The second are fish that spotlight prey in “biological” headlights. These fish use bioluminescence, their own body-driven light source, to hunt for food.
They can go invisible now? Maybe it is time to align with the sharks…
Would you rather an adaptation of a source material be a literal copy or a totally new story with the same characters and themes?
It’s a fundamental question, which I believe is at the heart of the ever raging debate amongst The Walking Dead viewers and fans of the Robert Kirkman funny book. Do you want to see actors portray stories you know on sets that resemble what you’ve seen before? Or do you want the story to surprise you, like the source material once did, with new twists and turns?
If your answer is the latter, then there is nothing that could shake up the story in the AMC series than to kill our hero Rick Grimes. I explain AFTER THE JUMP… (more…)
Houdini was a hack.
The following photo comes from a new campaign by the World Wildlife Fund. In an effort to save endangered black rhinos from rampant poaching, the WWF is trying to expand their range. The problem? Getting the big lugs from one place to another.
Thankfully for fans of awesome things, the safest way is also the most hilarious. Workers sedate the beasts and hook their legs up to a waiting helicopter. They then transport them in a 10-minute flight before depositing the gigantic creatures in their new homes.
A modern day tale of Icarus! The burning need to see an asteroid pass between the Earth and the moon led one man to do his best impression of Father Christmas one and a half months early.
Translated from French paper Est Republicain:
A madman who wanted to see the passage of the asteroid “grazing” the earth from the top of a disused factory chimney Crevéchamps in Meurthe et Moselle got stuck in “altititude” last night in Lorraine.
The young man, named Yoan, guided by an indescribable curiosity, climbed the chimney in the dark, with a backpack and his computer.Unfortunately for him, in his rise to dominate the stars and make the transition from the “asteroid”, he did give rungs of the ladder under his weight. The man found himself a prisoner of his observation site. Impossible indeed down: 5 meters separated him from other levels…
It could be worse. Just ask Pheobe Cates in Gremlins.
A 45-year-old Russian historian kept a collection of 29 human-sized dolls comprised of mummified corpses wearing the clothes they were buried in. The man was a well renown expert on cemeteries in the region and was published in the local newspapers.
Police began investigating the string of grave robbing two years ago, believe it was an extremist political organization.
Video released by police showed an eerie collection of what looks like life-sized dolls, outfitted in shabby dresses and headscarves, their hands and faces wrapped in fabric. Authorities say the man also stole clothes from the graves when he took the bodies.
Check out the video below…
Thanks to Weird Things reader David.
[CNN]
