I've been watching a few series in foreign, as it were, and one that has had me pondering is Das Signal, a four-part near-future sci-fi from the land of discount supermarkets and Septemberfest.
It's utter hokum, of course, albeit with a likeable human element at its core, and engaging performances, particularly from youngster Yuna Bennett. But all the way through, there's a sense of continually being pulled out of the story by elements that make you sit up and think - really?
For me, the first red flag appeared in the opening minutes of the initial episode. In this, two astronauts returned to earth in a capsule, the fiery glow of re-entry blazing outside the capsule windows. And that got me thinking: would a capsule really have windows? Would you risk structural integrity by boring out portholes?
To be fair, the Apollo capsules did have tiny portholes, which I was surprised at when I fact-checked it, but I suppose that was their only space when they weren't parked up on the lunar surface to play golf. This capsule was merely these characters' shuttle back to earth; most of the time they're on the International Space Station. But - hey, come on guys, support me here - I ask again, would they have given it such bloody big windows? Does that make engineering sense?
The second red flag appeared moments later, when one astronaut refuses? fails? to deploy the parachute. One: surely that would be automatic, based on height? Two: space capsules are both small and designed with every eventuality in mind; are we really saying one occupant can't reach all the switches? What if the other occupant were dead or disabled? People who design space vehicles are a tad above average, intellectual horsepower-wise. They'll have thought of that.
So, even if the first red flag was something of a red herring, and would have been dismissed with VAR, I put it to the court that the second was legitimate. You'd think, once you embark on this slippery slope, you can't stop. But, in all honesty, I wasn't watching to pick holes, and I didn't want to, but when it's revealed the astronaut in question had historic addiction and psychological issues, and there is no way on earth (or in space) that she would ever have got anywhere near a space program, you can't help but concentrate on batting the red flags out of the way so you can see the screen.
It's odd - the weightlessness of space was well done, and I know in space you're weightless, but it never once bothered me in Star Trek that everyone sticks to the floor like they're in a studio in Burbank. But little things in terms of how humans act and react, and what happens in systems where humans set the rules, failed to ring true to a jarring extent.
There's a famous (I think, although two minutes of Googling has failed to bring it up) example of ensuring an incorrect detail rings true. Kubrick knew computers were becoming increasingly miniaturised, that by 2001 HAL would not be room-sized. But he also knew his audiences only knew computers being the size of a supermarket booze section in its own sealed room, so that's what he gave them.
There's also a wilfully obscure story I heard of attempting to get something to ring true and failing miserably: allegedly, a restaurant in India once served western food that was... well, all wrong. The dishes tasted fine, but looked... odd. Turned out the chef had a set of recipe cards that had faded in the sun, different dyes degenerating at different rates, leaving them as if seen through a blue filter. And he had cooked all his food to match.
Do I care because I write sci-fi? I don't think so. I don't write hard sci-fi, and I don't much care if the sci is little more than magic in a box of flashing lights. But I do need it to ring true. Maybe we all have different 'ring true' thresholds, but I can't believe mine is significantly more finely tuned than the average couch potato. I'd argue we all pick up the donks amongst the chimes; maybe I'm more conscious of them because I write, but my main concern is as an audience member.
So, here's the theory I'm leaving you with, my cod law of speculative fiction. The more incredible the story, the more fantastical the plot, the more it matters that you get the details an intelligent spectator can guess at right (or give us reasons why the parachute can't deploy automatically; why Hadi can't reach the button; why Paula has been let anywhere near a spaceship...). Then - and only then - will we give you licence to tell us the bits that we can't guess at.
My Thoughts are with You. Your Thoughts are with the Authorities for Calibration Against Societal Norms.
Award-nominated science fiction and slipstream author Robert Bagnall’s second anthology of twenty-four stories, variously bleak, funny, bleakly funny or – very occasionally – optimistic.
2084. The world remains at war.
In the Eurasian desert, twenty-year old Adnan emerges from a coma with memories of a strictly ordered city of steel and glass, and a woman he loved.
The city is the Dome, and the woman... is Adnan's secret to keep.
Adnan learns what the Dome is, and what his role really was within it. He learns why everybody fears the Sickness more than the troopers. And he learns why he is the only one who can stop the war.
Persuaded to re-enter the Dome to implant a virus that will bring the war machine to its knees, the resistance think that Adnan is returning to free the many - but really he wants to free the one.
24 0s & a 2
“Brilliant stories, well written!” (five stars, Amazon).
