Question: How did the Psychlos originally find Earth?
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Question: I've always wondered, what's the significance of the kid pointing a wooden gun and making 'pew pew' noises at Reese when he enters the human hideout? Is it meant to be purely a bit of comical play between the two, or a subtle inference that mankind will never be able to abolish its inherent desire to destroy itself, even in the face of total extinction?
Answer: Its simply a child being a child and playing, but more than anything, showing the innocence of the children that inspite of the near death of the human race all around them, there's still time to play and be... human.
Answer: I think it refers more to the irony fact the kids innocently playing soldiers, would soon become real soldiers in a fight for their lives.
Answer: I've always thought it was to show that these children didn't know anything else. They hadn't had a childhood due to the war against the machines and all they knew was to shoot guns because that's all they've seen people do.
Answer: I agree with the playing and innocence aspects, as well as some comic relief. Toddlers/children prepare for possible future roles in life by mimicking adults' behaviors. What the child lacks is a sense of danger, showing no fear (or guilt) "shooting" a much larger person who knows how to kill. The child also lacks an understanding of consequences of behavior and meaning/permanence of death.
Question: How come Boston was relatively intact with no signs of destruction?
Chosen answer: The Martians hadn't gotten that far yet.
Question: What is the celestial object seen at the end of The Empire Strikes Back? Is it the galaxy? Or something else?
Chosen answer: It's a galaxy. Given the distance that the fleet would have to be away from it in order to see the whole thing like that, it seem unlikely that it's intended to be the galaxy that the saga takes place in, but another one that's relatively close to it.
Answer: It is the Star Wars galaxy. Haven was the codename of the Rebel Alliance's predetermined rendezvous point far beyond the Galactic Rim, where the Alliance Fleet regrouped after the Rebellion's defeat at the Battle of Hoth in 3 ABY. The rendezvous point lay near the coordinates 2.427 by 3.886 by 673.52 above the galactic plane.
Question: How did Robbie survive?
Answer: Robbie said that he only wanted to watch it happen, and not interact. He most likely ran off somehow and hid from the aliens before you saw the burning Humvee indicating the death of the military squadrons flying/driving in.
Chosen answer: Dumb luck? A soldier chased him off from the fighting? Who knows?
Robbie's survival is a movie all on its own.
The Sound of Drums (2) - S3-E12
Question: Why are young initiates taken to the Untempered Schism? What purpose does this serve?
Chosen answer: I think that looking into the Untempered Schism shows the young Time Lords infinity. It shows them everything, and it is like a test. If they can resist the urge to grab it and take it all for themselves, then they are worthy to be a Time Lord.
Question: If the piece of the All Spark is still locked up where Mikaela works, why don't the Decepticons go after it? It seems easier to obtain.
Answer: That's exactly what Wheelie (the small remote controlled truck) was doing. He was caught by Mikaela and didn't get word to the Decepticons that there was another shard they could use. After she captured him and threw him in the metal box he was more concerned with his own survival than letting the Decepticons know there was another shard of the All Spark.
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: 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: Why did the Tusken Raiders kidnap and torture Shmi Skywalker?
Chosen answer: They hate the moisture farmers, who they regard as having encroached on their territory. They kidnapped Shmi and tortured her to gather information for a future big raid on the local moisture farms.
The Sound of Drums (2) - S3-E12
Question: How exactly did the Time Lords resurrect The Master when he was consumed by The Doctor's Tardis?
Chosen answer: Well they are Time Lords, they can manipulate Time itself to some extent so bringing people back from death wherever or however it happens.
Question: During The Five Doctors, why did Borusa give The Doctor enemies to fight? Wouldn't he want The Doctor's journey to the Dark Tower to go as smoothly as possible without the threat of death and interference?
Chosen answer: They were a diversion to keep The Doctors focused on escape rather than thinking about who had collected them from time and why.
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: 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: Does anyone know why the BBC isn't showing these in the States at the same time they're released in the U.K.? The Christmas Special JUST aired on BBC America on the 27 June. I find it odd that they don't just release them on both stations at the same time.
Chosen answer: BBC America is a separate entity. It is not a "station" of BBC. It airs shows from other UK networks (ITV etc). So, for one reason, it must arrange its schedule to show the shows it wants to show. For another reason, the shows shown on BBC in the UK are paid for by taxes on UK TV sets. It wouldn't be very fair for BBC America not to pay for the rights to show the shows after all there are a lot more of us than them. All these payments and broadcast rights must be worked out for every show. In addition, BBC can sell to other networks as well (e.g. Dr Who and Primeval on SyFy, and Dr Who on PBS are generally another year behind BBC America)
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.
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.
Question: Why does AMEE prolong the death of the crew? Why not kill them all the minute they try and remove her power source?
Chosen answer: At first, she's assessing the threat level. After she determines them to be a threat, she then decides how to eliminate them. She decides on guerilla warfare because she can fare better in the environment than humans can. She was damaged, so if she tried to attack them all at the same time, she would likely lose the battle.
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Chosen answer: Scout ships exploring the area detected the gold on the planet and sent a report back to the nearest base or to the Psychlos' homeworld.
Phixius ★
If they knew there was gold there, they would have been there centuries ago and been easier to take control.