Yeah... And if you want to actually [i]see[/i] all that content, your options are:
640x480 interlaced DVD image
I think virtually every DVD player on the market now does 3:2 pulldown and re-integrates the fields on DVD into proper full progressive frames for film based material. Unless you're using an interlaced display, in which case why are you even looking at blu-ray players?
Yeah, deinterlacing. My point is that the source image is still only 240 pixel rows of new content per 1/60 of a second.
Of course, you're right, if it's a film source (24fps encoded into 60fps interlaced via telecine) there's no reason a good DVD player can't detelecine the video and get back the original 24fps content at 480p. I didn't think of that.
Episode 3 was the biggest cinematic missed opportunity I can think of. The whole point of the movie, and the whole point of the prequel trilogy, was to see how and why Anakin went to the dark side. It was the reason we stomached the first two awful movies and should have helped us find new way to look at the original 3 movies. If they could nail that scene, the rest of the garbage might have just been worth it. Instead, the big payoff scene was clumsy and unbelievable and it manages to make all of the prequels all the more pointless. Unless they can get that aspect right, tweaking the rest hardly matters.
Palpatine: So you see, Anakin, being evil offers terrific health benefits. If you needed, say, extensive prosthetic work, that would be covered with zero deductible. The pay is good, plus you have the opportunity to study obscure black arts and transfer the credits toward a degree program. Anakin: I don't know... I'm not sure about the whole "conspiring to kill all my friends and comrades" thing. Won't that sort of go against everything I've stood for all my life? Palpatine: Oh, let's not dwell on that... Think of the opportunities! Oh, and don't forget your lady is gonna die unless you take drastic, horrifying measures to save her. Remember what happened to your mom? How she was kidnapped and tortured in such a way that the timing of her death coincided exactly with your effort to rescue her? That's what happens if you delay your decision too long. Anakin: Well, I know Padme is gonna hate me for this, but OK, you have a deal. Palpatine: Good, good! Now, you need a cool Sith name. How about "Vader"? Anakin: You seem to have given this some thought... Palpatine: Oh, my, no... I'm just really good at this sort of thing... "Vader", "Tyranus", "Sidious", "Maul"... I could come up with names all day long. Anakin: Wait, haven't I heard some of those before? Palpatine: No, and neither have I. Now, for your first assignment, I'd like you to go slaughter a room full of children. This is a very important and challenging job, so I need to send someone who I know will be capable of seeing it through...
I believe the notion is that Anakin Skywalker died at a young age when he was burned alive and finished his transformation into Darth Vader. Your force ghost represents how you looked when you died. It adds a Frankenstein element to Darth Vader, that he really was more machine than man.
More importantly, I guess, is that we actually get to see Anakin in the prequels, and from a story-telling perspective the audience needs to be able to recognize that ghost as Anakin - the only way that works is if the ghost is an image of Hayden Christensen.
I always kind of liked that Anakin's ghost was an older dude, I thought it fit better with him being an old friend of Obi-Wan... I sort of pictured Obi-Wan meeting a young Anakin (like around Luke's age) and some time later, the betrayal and Anakin turning to Vader. But I never had a clear picture of how much time was in between. 20 years? Seems a bit much, since Vader supposedly killed Anakin while both were still apprentices. (Judging from the fact that Vader was "just a learner" when they last met - he wouldn't have considered himself "just a learner" after being trained for 20 years, right?) So even looking at it just in terms of the information from the original trilogy, ignoring the information that was later presented in the prequels - A 40-something version of Anakin (not Vader) never existed. Certainly this isn't Anakin as Obi-Wan knew him... Is it what Anakin would have been, if he hadn't decided to be evil and gotten turned into a cyborg? Maybe... I don't think there's a clear answer to how Anakin's ghost should look, really. As Vader? As the mutilated human parts inside the Vader cyborg? As the middle-aged man he would have been? As the young man he was? It seems like all the options are equally valid. For the ghost to be the version of Anakin that Obi-Wan actually remembers seems kind of fitting. But for the ghost to be in a form Luke could identify as a father figure also seems fitting... <shrug>
or maybe you don't VALUE the higher res on video since that contributes maybe 5% to the actual movie watching experience.
you guys always forget this: content matters more.
Yeah... And if you want to actually [i]see[/i] all that content, your options are:
640x480 interlaced DVD image, anamorphically stretched to 16:9 and upscaled to the TV's resolution (but in the case of movies with really wide aspect ratios, there might be letterboxing, too - so you're taking your whole 1280x720 or 1920x1280 picture from a source image that's 640x480 or smaller, deinterlacing, etc.)
Blu-Ray disc, which can offer 24fps at 1920x1080 progressive scan, or higher frame rates at lower and/or interlaced resolutions.
Just about any movie ever on a reasonably-sized HD set will benefit from the extra pixels.
The internet already killed the slow-mo nipple watch - who wants to go to all that effort when they have reams (sorry, poor choice of word) of free pr0n at their fingertips.
It's all about getting access to the specific nipples which stubbornly remain elusive.
Upscaling's a funny old business. My (1st gen US 60gig) PS3 upscales PS2 games and does a pretty decent job of it. Certainly, on a dull afternoon, I got my TV to display Final Fantasy X running on:
a) a PS2 b) the PS3, with upscaling to 720p c) ePSXe2 via my laptop (with HDTV adapter), with upscaling to 720p
Of the three, b) looked by far the best. The worst was a), which looked very blurry and muddy on a 38 inch HDTV. Meanwhile, c) just looked odd, with a very sterile and angular look. I think the point I took from this is that upscaling techniques can vary significantly in terms of quality.
The reason there's so much difference is because, in the course of rendering a 3-D game, the textures on the models get scaled (usually down) anyway. Rendering the same scene at a higher resolution gives you the opportunity to better utilize that source data.
Upscaling a DVD is different: it's pretty much just image scaling. The source material doesn't contain the sort of information that would make the end result a better picture.
other than the fact that you're a fanboy and GL's core customer, it takes time and money to transfer them to each new format. you have to buy the workstations, software and pay people to do the transfer and the work of taking a 30 some year old movie and upgrading it to HD quality
A 30 year old movie doesn't have to be "upgraded" to HD quality... The 35mm prints already have better resolution than HDTV.
Not to say there's not a lot of work involved in creating a good digital master...
Which version of the original theater version? You do realize there were like 5 of them, right? Not to mention that the VHS and LD versions, usually touted also as being the "original" versions, also had discrepancies in things like the audio mix, etc.
You know, I don't care. So long as it's one of the versions that's not overloaded with tacked-on CG creatures and such, omits the superfluous Jabba scene and leaves the Greedo scene alone, I don't care if it says "Episode IV: A New Hope" or not.
But it sounds like they're not prepared to do a decent remastering of such a version any time soon. Oh, well. I'll just wait longer, then. There's other movies I can buy.
I'd like to refer you to my sig line. Those words of wisdom contain an important, life-changing message for all fans of Doctor Who.
As for Tennant - I didn't like him at first, either. I didn't watch any of the 2005 series until around 2009, I think. In the end I think Tennant was great but I do wish Eccleston had done at least one more season.
Personally I think regeneration is always hard for the audience. In some cases more than others: like Tom Baker, who was the Doctor for about seven years and probably the most popular of all the original seven Doctors - Who fans are used to the idea of regeneration but it's still hard, when you've mostly watched one particular doctor, to move on from that and embrace a new actor in the role.
Tennant is, at least, the most popular Doctor since Tom Baker. He may have even surpassed him in the minds of present-day fans, I don't know.
But I would say that's the best analogy: both Matt Smith and Peter Davison followed very popular Doctors. In the case of Tom Baker - I don't think the show ever entirely recovered after he left. He was popular enough, and his run was long enough, that it must have been very hard to try and move forward from that point. Even though Tennant's run wasn't as long, he still accounts for four of the six years of the new series at this point. It seems to me that there is some danger that his run will have the same impact.
... their TARDISes merged and nearly created an explosion the... exact size of Belgium, Well, that was anticlimactic, but how big will the explosion be this time? Two Belgiums, possibly?
Belgium squared. I know that the units on that quantity (length to the fourth power) don't make sense from a conventional standpoint, it takes some complicated Gallifreyan dimensional analysis to sort it all out...
People like Foxworthy were using the term just like Richard Prior or Chris Rock were using the N word, and Foxworthy has dropped it for similar reasons finding out how seriously its still taken as an insult in some places.
Atcually, that's something socially awkward nerds sometimes mistake for humor. Really, it's not.
Humor is subjective, so positing what purports on its face to be a factual, objective statement that someone else is wrong about what is and is not humorous is kind of pointless.
On Vulcan, humor is largely considered irrelevant to our intellectual pursuits. However, there are segments of our population which do enjoy Vulcan humor, and as such there are a certain number of comedy clubs to be found. One of the more popular forms of Vulcan comedy is to posit an elaborate hypothesis containing a small logical flaw; but to proceed ahead with the hypothesis while attempting to provide arguments and calculations supporting the hypothesis which, to a careless mind, would appear sound. The hypothesis is then carried forward to its naturally absurd conclusions. I once attended such a performance: I found it rather whimsical.
You must really be popular at parties when you over-analyze every joke told...
One form of "nerd humor" is to respond to a joke as if it's straight and analyze it deeper until something else funny shows up. (It's similar to "deadpan humor".)
And you may be a redneck if you look forward to the upcoming family reunion because it's a great place to meet girls.
Ha ha. But...
You should be aware that "Redneck" is a racist (implies mixed American Indian and colonist ancestry) and culturalist epithet (coastal urban self-appointed elites looking down on other US cultural groups), on a par with "The N word" or other racial/cultural epithet of your choice.
Oh, no! Not the Big, Scary N-word! I hear that if you dare speak the N-word, you open a hole in your soul and the devil flies straight in! Strange men will suddenly appear at your door and give you your hood and robes and initiate you into the Klan right on the spot! In short, you will instantly and automatically be transformed into the worst sort of racist! Unless of course, you're black, in which case it's totally OK to say it.
Really? You had to wait for this to happen for you to hate time travel? You mean the "Temporal Cold War" from Enterprise wasn't enough to make your blood boil?
I don't know... Actually I didn't watch Enterprise when it was on TV (I was kind of tired of Next-Gen-style Trek at that point, still reeling from the first couple seasons of Voyager) - but I've started watching it recently, and I'm really enjoying it.
It did seem a bit too convenient when they'd solve a problem by breaking the seal on Daniels's quarters - and the whole Temporal Cold War isn't really my favorite storyline on the show - but I wouldn't say it ruins the show for me or anything.
'Course, I'm on season 2. Maybe later on it becomes more obnoxious?
Daleks haven't been challenged by stairs since 1988. The sylvestor mccoy episode "remembrance of the daleks" had a transmat in the basement of a school used to transport daleks in.
First time we saw one float upstairs was THEN, not in the new incarnation "Dalek" episode.
And before that there were instances of Daleks getting up stairs off-screen... Like in "The Chase".
Full Circle was the serial featuring Tom Baker (Dr. 4) that introduced Adric (Matthew Waterhouse) a.k.a the "Wesley Crusher" of Dr. Who.
I'm still pretty new to that era of the show - and I haven't watched all the 5th doctor episodes - but what's so bad about Adric? I never got the impression that he was a "Mary Sue" character in the vein of Wesley's more obnoxious moments - he was just one of the companions who was actually good at something instead of just being the one who gets captured all the time. Just the 1980s male counterpart of Zoe, basically.
Certainly on the "annoying" scale I don't think Adric comes anywhere close to Peri - who was fabulous eye candy, of course, but still, she'd always be whining away in that fake American accent... And then on the one hand it'd feel great that the Sixth Doctor would yell at her for it, but on the other hand it'd mean she'd whine some more about having been yelled at...
"GATTACA" is considered the "most realistic." The fact that its politics is so obvious, its smarmy moralizing oozes from every frame, and it's "space mission" at the end consists of people in 3-piece suits entering what looks like an elevator in the lobby of a modern office seem not to weigh against it. I think we're seeing at work the presumption that in order for a film to be considered scientifically-accurate, it must first be considered a terrible bore.
If nothing else I think GATTACA is worth it for the unintentional comedy - for instance, watching Vincent, the morning after sleeping with Irene, frantically rummaging through the bed looking for any DNA samples he may have left behind...
Nuke it from the ground: It's the only way to be sure.
That probably wouldn't work, unfortunately...
Nuclear weapons don't explode in space. The reason you get a huge explosion, heat, etc. detonating one on Earth is because radiation is soaked up by the atmosphere. If you detonate in space, you just get an intense burst of radiation... Which could still be sufficient to kill people over long distances, and it's possible this would be enough to destroy the satellite - but it's not a sure thing. You're not going to be vaporizing that satellite with a nuclear weapon.
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah... And if you want to actually [i]see[/i] all that content, your options are:
640x480 interlaced DVD image
I think virtually every DVD player on the market now does 3:2 pulldown and re-integrates the fields on DVD into proper full progressive frames for film based material. Unless you're using an interlaced display, in which case why are you even looking at blu-ray players?
Yeah, deinterlacing. My point is that the source image is still only 240 pixel rows of new content per 1/60 of a second.
Of course, you're right, if it's a film source (24fps encoded into 60fps interlaced via telecine) there's no reason a good DVD player can't detelecine the video and get back the original 24fps content at 480p. I didn't think of that.
Episode 3 was the biggest cinematic missed opportunity I can think of. The whole point of the movie, and the whole point of the prequel trilogy, was to see how and why Anakin went to the dark side. It was the reason we stomached the first two awful movies and should have helped us find new way to look at the original 3 movies. If they could nail that scene, the rest of the garbage might have just been worth it. Instead, the big payoff scene was clumsy and unbelievable and it manages to make all of the prequels all the more pointless. Unless they can get that aspect right, tweaking the rest hardly matters.
Palpatine: So you see, Anakin, being evil offers terrific health benefits. If you needed, say, extensive prosthetic work, that would be covered with zero deductible. The pay is good, plus you have the opportunity to study obscure black arts and transfer the credits toward a degree program.
Anakin: I don't know... I'm not sure about the whole "conspiring to kill all my friends and comrades" thing. Won't that sort of go against everything I've stood for all my life?
Palpatine: Oh, let's not dwell on that... Think of the opportunities! Oh, and don't forget your lady is gonna die unless you take drastic, horrifying measures to save her. Remember what happened to your mom? How she was kidnapped and tortured in such a way that the timing of her death coincided exactly with your effort to rescue her? That's what happens if you delay your decision too long.
Anakin: Well, I know Padme is gonna hate me for this, but OK, you have a deal.
Palpatine: Good, good! Now, you need a cool Sith name. How about "Vader"?
Anakin: You seem to have given this some thought...
Palpatine: Oh, my, no... I'm just really good at this sort of thing... "Vader", "Tyranus", "Sidious", "Maul"... I could come up with names all day long.
Anakin: Wait, haven't I heard some of those before?
Palpatine: No, and neither have I. Now, for your first assignment, I'd like you to go slaughter a room full of children. This is a very important and challenging job, so I need to send someone who I know will be capable of seeing it through...
"A penny saved is a penny earned." -Jedi Franklin
Ben Franklin's not a Jedi, he's a Voodoo demon-sorcerer.
I believe the notion is that Anakin Skywalker died at a young age when he was burned alive and finished his transformation into Darth Vader. Your force ghost represents how you looked when you died. It adds a Frankenstein element to Darth Vader, that he really was more machine than man.
More importantly, I guess, is that we actually get to see Anakin in the prequels, and from a story-telling perspective the audience needs to be able to recognize that ghost as Anakin - the only way that works is if the ghost is an image of Hayden Christensen.
I always kind of liked that Anakin's ghost was an older dude, I thought it fit better with him being an old friend of Obi-Wan... I sort of pictured Obi-Wan meeting a young Anakin (like around Luke's age) and some time later, the betrayal and Anakin turning to Vader. But I never had a clear picture of how much time was in between. 20 years? Seems a bit much, since Vader supposedly killed Anakin while both were still apprentices. (Judging from the fact that Vader was "just a learner" when they last met - he wouldn't have considered himself "just a learner" after being trained for 20 years, right?) So even looking at it just in terms of the information from the original trilogy, ignoring the information that was later presented in the prequels - A 40-something version of Anakin (not Vader) never existed. Certainly this isn't Anakin as Obi-Wan knew him... Is it what Anakin would have been, if he hadn't decided to be evil and gotten turned into a cyborg? Maybe... I don't think there's a clear answer to how Anakin's ghost should look, really. As Vader? As the mutilated human parts inside the Vader cyborg? As the middle-aged man he would have been? As the young man he was? It seems like all the options are equally valid. For the ghost to be the version of Anakin that Obi-Wan actually remembers seems kind of fitting. But for the ghost to be in a form Luke could identify as a father figure also seems fitting... <shrug>
or maybe you don't VALUE the higher res on video since that contributes maybe 5% to the actual movie watching experience.
you guys always forget this: content matters more.
Yeah... And if you want to actually [i]see[/i] all that content, your options are:
640x480 interlaced DVD image, anamorphically stretched to 16:9 and upscaled to the TV's resolution (but in the case of movies with really wide aspect ratios, there might be letterboxing, too - so you're taking your whole 1280x720 or 1920x1280 picture from a source image that's 640x480 or smaller, deinterlacing, etc.)
Blu-Ray disc, which can offer 24fps at 1920x1080 progressive scan, or higher frame rates at lower and/or interlaced resolutions.
Just about any movie ever on a reasonably-sized HD set will benefit from the extra pixels.
The internet already killed the slow-mo nipple watch - who wants to go to all that effort when they have reams (sorry, poor choice of word) of free pr0n at their fingertips.
It's all about getting access to the specific nipples which stubbornly remain elusive.
Upscaling's a funny old business. My (1st gen US 60gig) PS3 upscales PS2 games and does a pretty decent job of it. Certainly, on a dull afternoon, I got my TV to display Final Fantasy X running on:
a) a PS2
b) the PS3, with upscaling to 720p
c) ePSXe2 via my laptop (with HDTV adapter), with upscaling to 720p
Of the three, b) looked by far the best. The worst was a), which looked very blurry and muddy on a 38 inch HDTV. Meanwhile, c) just looked odd, with a very sterile and angular look. I think the point I took from this is that upscaling techniques can vary significantly in terms of quality.
The reason there's so much difference is because, in the course of rendering a 3-D game, the textures on the models get scaled (usually down) anyway. Rendering the same scene at a higher resolution gives you the opportunity to better utilize that source data.
Upscaling a DVD is different: it's pretty much just image scaling. The source material doesn't contain the sort of information that would make the end result a better picture.
other than the fact that you're a fanboy and GL's core customer, it takes time and money to transfer them to each new format. you have to buy the workstations, software and pay people to do the transfer and the work of taking a 30 some year old movie and upgrading it to HD quality
A 30 year old movie doesn't have to be "upgraded" to HD quality... The 35mm prints already have better resolution than HDTV.
Not to say there's not a lot of work involved in creating a good digital master...
Which version of the original theater version? You do realize there were like 5 of them, right? Not to mention that the VHS and LD versions, usually touted also as being the "original" versions, also had discrepancies in things like the audio mix, etc.
You know, I don't care. So long as it's one of the versions that's not overloaded with tacked-on CG creatures and such, omits the superfluous Jabba scene and leaves the Greedo scene alone, I don't care if it says "Episode IV: A New Hope" or not.
But it sounds like they're not prepared to do a decent remastering of such a version any time soon. Oh, well. I'll just wait longer, then. There's other movies I can buy.
Um, in the original version Obiwan did shoot first, if you consider his cutting off that alien's arm "shooting".
Poor Ponda Baba. That was his drawing arm, too!
With Matt Smith, it just seems... wrong.
I'd like to refer you to my sig line. Those words of wisdom contain an important, life-changing message for all fans of Doctor Who.
As for Tennant - I didn't like him at first, either. I didn't watch any of the 2005 series until around 2009, I think. In the end I think Tennant was great but I do wish Eccleston had done at least one more season.
Personally I think regeneration is always hard for the audience. In some cases more than others: like Tom Baker, who was the Doctor for about seven years and probably the most popular of all the original seven Doctors - Who fans are used to the idea of regeneration but it's still hard, when you've mostly watched one particular doctor, to move on from that and embrace a new actor in the role.
Tennant is, at least, the most popular Doctor since Tom Baker. He may have even surpassed him in the minds of present-day fans, I don't know.
But I would say that's the best analogy: both Matt Smith and Peter Davison followed very popular Doctors. In the case of Tom Baker - I don't think the show ever entirely recovered after he left. He was popular enough, and his run was long enough, that it must have been very hard to try and move forward from that point. Even though Tennant's run wasn't as long, he still accounts for four of the six years of the new series at this point. It seems to me that there is some danger that his run will have the same impact.
... their TARDISes merged and nearly created an explosion the... exact size of Belgium, Well, that was anticlimactic, but how big will the explosion be this time? Two Belgiums, possibly?
Belgium squared. I know that the units on that quantity (length to the fourth power) don't make sense from a conventional standpoint, it takes some complicated Gallifreyan dimensional analysis to sort it all out...
I'll explain later.
"Who is marrying whom", surely?
No, and don't call me Shirley*!
Sorry, couldn't let that slide - I'm surprised everyone else did.
Honestly, I still haven't entirely gotten the hang of "whom".
(* One of the great injustices of the English language is that this joke does not work as intended in text form.)
They explained it with the usual burst of technoblather from Tennant, an exasperated noise, and some waving of hands with "You wouldn't understand." :)
"I'll explain later!"
Didn't he used to run a Death Star?
No, no, you're thinking of the guy from "Doctor Who and the Daleks".
People like Foxworthy were using the term just like Richard Prior or Chris Rock were using the N word, and Foxworthy has dropped it for similar reasons finding out how seriously its still taken as an insult in some places.
Fuckin' pussy.
Atcually, that's something socially awkward nerds sometimes mistake for humor. Really, it's not.
Humor is subjective, so positing what purports on its face to be a factual, objective statement that someone else is wrong about what is and is not humorous is kind of pointless.
On Vulcan, humor is largely considered irrelevant to our intellectual pursuits. However, there are segments of our population which do enjoy Vulcan humor, and as such there are a certain number of comedy clubs to be found. One of the more popular forms of Vulcan comedy is to posit an elaborate hypothesis containing a small logical flaw; but to proceed ahead with the hypothesis while attempting to provide arguments and calculations supporting the hypothesis which, to a careless mind, would appear sound. The hypothesis is then carried forward to its naturally absurd conclusions. I once attended such a performance: I found it rather whimsical.
You must really be popular at parties when you over-analyze every joke told...
One form of "nerd humor" is to respond to a joke as if it's straight and analyze it deeper until something else funny shows up. (It's similar to "deadpan humor".)
And you may be a redneck if you look forward to the upcoming family reunion because it's a great place to meet girls.
Ha ha. But...
You should be aware that "Redneck" is a racist (implies mixed American Indian and colonist ancestry) and culturalist epithet (coastal urban self-appointed elites looking down on other US cultural groups), on a par with "The N word" or other racial/cultural epithet of your choice.
Oh, no! Not the Big, Scary N-word! I hear that if you dare speak the N-word, you open a hole in your soul and the devil flies straight in! Strange men will suddenly appear at your door and give you your hood and robes and initiate you into the Klan right on the spot! In short, you will instantly and automatically be transformed into the worst sort of racist! Unless of course, you're black, in which case it's totally OK to say it.
Really? You had to wait for this to happen for you to hate time travel? You mean the "Temporal Cold War" from Enterprise wasn't enough to make your blood boil?
I don't know... Actually I didn't watch Enterprise when it was on TV (I was kind of tired of Next-Gen-style Trek at that point, still reeling from the first couple seasons of Voyager) - but I've started watching it recently, and I'm really enjoying it.
It did seem a bit too convenient when they'd solve a problem by breaking the seal on Daniels's quarters - and the whole Temporal Cold War isn't really my favorite storyline on the show - but I wouldn't say it ruins the show for me or anything.
'Course, I'm on season 2. Maybe later on it becomes more obnoxious?
Daleks haven't been challenged by stairs since 1988.
The sylvestor mccoy episode "remembrance of the daleks" had a transmat in the basement of a school used to transport daleks in.
First time we saw one float upstairs was THEN, not in the new incarnation "Dalek" episode.
And before that there were instances of Daleks getting up stairs off-screen... Like in "The Chase".
but the reception was at the top of a grand staircase
after 3 hours of trying to figure out how to use the stairs, the dalek's leveled the entire building in frustration and anger
Daleks have been able to navigate stairs at least as early as 1965. Though the earliest time it happened on-screen was in 1988...
Full Circle was the serial featuring Tom Baker (Dr. 4) that introduced Adric (Matthew Waterhouse) a.k.a the "Wesley Crusher" of Dr. Who.
I'm still pretty new to that era of the show - and I haven't watched all the 5th doctor episodes - but what's so bad about Adric? I never got the impression that he was a "Mary Sue" character in the vein of Wesley's more obnoxious moments - he was just one of the companions who was actually good at something instead of just being the one who gets captured all the time. Just the 1980s male counterpart of Zoe, basically.
Certainly on the "annoying" scale I don't think Adric comes anywhere close to Peri - who was fabulous eye candy, of course, but still, she'd always be whining away in that fake American accent... And then on the one hand it'd feel great that the Sixth Doctor would yell at her for it, but on the other hand it'd mean she'd whine some more about having been yelled at...
"GATTACA" is considered the "most realistic." The fact that its politics is so obvious, its smarmy moralizing oozes from every frame, and it's "space mission" at the end consists of people in 3-piece suits entering what looks like an elevator in the lobby of a modern office seem not to weigh against it. I think we're seeing at work the presumption that in order for a film to be considered scientifically-accurate, it must first be considered a terrible bore.
If nothing else I think GATTACA is worth it for the unintentional comedy - for instance, watching Vincent, the morning after sleeping with Irene, frantically rummaging through the bed looking for any DNA samples he may have left behind...
As god is my witness, I thought trains could fly.
Not only can they fly (between star systems, even) but they can also transform and combine into a giant robot.
Nuke it from the ground: It's the only way to be sure.
That probably wouldn't work, unfortunately...
Nuclear weapons don't explode in space. The reason you get a huge explosion, heat, etc. detonating one on Earth is because radiation is soaked up by the atmosphere. If you detonate in space, you just get an intense burst of radiation... Which could still be sufficient to kill people over long distances, and it's possible this would be enough to destroy the satellite - but it's not a sure thing. You're not going to be vaporizing that satellite with a nuclear weapon.