Question: Why does the technology in the original trilogy not look as good or as advanced as the technology of the prequel trilogy?
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Question: What makes Taylor think they're on a planet in the constellation of Orion some 320 light years from Earth? How did he come to this conclusion?
Chosen answer: Because that's where the ship was originally headed. Some sort of malfunction made it turn around and return to Earth.
Question: What caused the original nuclear devastation depicted in the movie?
Answer: I think that this is meant to be a mystery. Taylor/Charlton Heston, an astronaut, leaves a world set somewhat in the future after 1968 (when the movie was made) but still recognisable to cinema-goers at the time, to travel through a "time vortex" to arrive in a world in a distant future, which has changed beyond recognition. Taylor meets the orangutan Zaius/Maurice Evans, and Zaius hints that he has some idea of what had happened, but Zaius' knowledge is either limited, or else Zaius is not going to tell Taylor (or his fellow apes) the full story. At the end of the movie Taylor discovers that, at some point between his leaving his own time and arriving in the "Planet Of The Apes", the world had been devastated by a nuclear war, but I think that the exact time, causes of, and course of this nuclear war are deliberately left as a mystery. Sometimes I think a bit of unresolved mystery actually improves a story, and I think this is the case here.
Chosen answer: World War III.
Question: After the B-2 bomber launches the nuclear missile towards the city destroyer, the B-2 is shown to be retreating, yet the nuclear missile is in fact travelling even faster than the B-2. My question is, was the B-2 destroyed when the nuclear missile struck the ship? Did it get out of there in time?
Chosen answer: Cruise missiles fired from a B-2 have a 100 mile range, so it would have escaped.
Question: How did the Psychlos originally find Earth?
Question: Is Jonnie correct in his assumption that there are other Psychlo colonies out there?
Chosen answer: Between the book and the hideous box office take, no he is not correct. In the book, Psychlo got turned into a sun and all the other colonies tried to teleport their ore shipments home and were wiped out by the resulting explosion.
Answer: If there were other colonies out there, they wouldn't love as much as their home planet just like earth. Besides even if there was, they've been mostly defenseless without their fleet on the homeworld and will already be on the verge of extinction.
Question: How could one nuclear weapon destroy the Psychlos' home planet?
Chosen answer: It's actually very similar to what scientists of the time thought would happen on Earth if a nuclear bomb was ever detonated. They were convinced that the entire atmosphere, being made up of several combustible gasses, would erupt in flames killing everyone on the planet. On Psychlos, their atmosphere reacted with the radiation released by the bomb. It's the reason the Psychlos could not enter the irradiated areas of Earth where the last groups of free humans lived: their breathing apparatuses would explode.
Question: It's been shown in the film the the aliens are technologically more advanced than us. Then, how come, with all their technology, they were unable to defend themselves from something as simple as a computer virus?
Answer: Remember that the aliens had to interface with our satellite computer code first...David simply "reverse engineered" the code to create the virus. When it was uploaded, they didn't have enough time to combat it.
Answer: It was also a bit of a tribute to "War of the Worlds", in which the alien invaders with much more advanced technology ultimately succumbed to ordinary terrestrial pathogens in the original novel by H. G. Wells as well as its many screen adaptations.
Chosen answer: Its supposed to be an exercise in demonstrating how the aliens underestimated their opponent, but in reality it's merely a convenient plot device.
Answer: I was wondering the same thing. Since the Harvesters had our satellites meant they could eavesdrop on every single conversation. David and other people in the facility probably put up a firewall on the computers and cameras, so that the aliens couldn't see or hear what they were planning on doing.
Answer: Maybe there were no viruses in the planet where these aliens came from so they didn't have any countermeasures against them.
Answer: They could defend against it, hence why they bring the nuke. The virus drops the shields, and the nuke destroys The Mother Ship. David even says that the shields will be down for a few minutes.
Utopia (1) - S3-E11
Question: The Doctor says that if a Time Lord were to absorb the energies of the time vortex they would become a vengeful god. Why exactly would they become vengeful?
Chosen answer: Given that their entire race was wiped out by the Daleks in the Time War and the Daleks are still around, I'd say that a Time Lord would have something to be vengeful for. That much power would go to anyone's head.
Question: Towards the end of episode 4, The Master transmits a message to the peoples of the universe, saying that if they do not acknowledge his rule, he will send a signal to close the CVE and restart the collapse of the universe. My questions are: How does The Master expect the peoples of the universe to respond to him in time? And what happens if the peoples of the universe don't comply with The Master's demands? Would he just close the CVE anyway?
Chosen answer: Two possibilities. 1: They can reply on the same frequency he's transmitting from. 2: He intends to close the CVE anyway and this is simply an act of cruelty.
Last of the Time Lords (3) - S3-E13
Question: Why does The Master want to create a new Time Lord empire? I would have thought that as a renegade Time Lord he would have been glad they were all gone, also, how could he create a Time Lord empire when they were all dead?
Chosen answer: He likely means an empire where he, a Time Lord, rules over all creation.
Castrovalva - S19-E1
Question: Why does The Master come up with these ridiculously elaborate plans to kill The Doctor when he could have killed him at the beginning of the first episode, just after his regeneration, when he was very weak?
Chosen answer: Because he wouldn't be satisfied simply killing The Doctor when he's weak and infirm. The Master needs to outsmart him.
Question: What exactly is the machine entity known as 'Deus Ex Machina'? Is it a physical representation of the machines? Or a separate being all together?
Question: It's been stated that Seraph is a former angel programme left over from a previous Matrix. Then why does one of The Merovingian henchmen refer to him as wingless?
Chosen answer: A Seraph is the highest level of God's angels, typically depicted with six wings (three pairs), the joke refers to the fact that Seraph physically has no wings in the matrix and that he now no longer works for the machines and so is also meant as a "fall from grace" jibe.
Question: What exactly did the Architect mean when he said to the Oracle, "You played a very dangerous game"?
Chosen answer: By encouraging Neo to go to the machine city and negotiate a peace contract she has upset the Architect's "perfect" world. The Architect, ruled by brutal logic, has a method that is tried and true; the death and rebirth of Neo and Zion, the Oracle has created a new order of things and has allowed Zion to survive, throwing a rather large spanner in the Architect's plans.
Question: Is there a reason the machines use humans for energy? Why not nuclear power or maybe even animals?
Chosen answer: Nuclear power would eventually run out, the impression is that the Machines occupy almost all of the planet's surface, so a LOT of power is needed. Animals are probably not used as their minds are a lot more instinctual and so it would be a lot harder to create a Matrix that their minds could accept, plus most animal and plant life probably died off when the sun was blocked off.
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Chosen answer: The real reason is that our technology has advanced in the thirty years since the original movies were made, so better effects were possible. The "in-movie" reason is that he rebels are operating illegally, and therefore their equipment is all jury-rigged and pieced together from stolen or broken scrap, not manufactured like the devices featured in the prequels.
Phixius ★