Answered questions about specific movies, TV shows and more

These are questions relating to specific titles. General questions for movies and TV shows are here. Members get e-mailed when any of their questions are answered.

Chosen answer: It's never explained. There are probably many fan theories, but none can currently be considered to hold any weight. With the catalyst lost when Arthur died (something confirmed by the writers), it is unlikely that the concept will be revisited at any point and thus the exact nature of the catalyst must remain a mystery.

Tailkinker

Chosen answer: Obi-Wan's lightsaber didn't fizzle out; he did that to sacrifice himself so that Luke and the others could escape.

RLN

Chosen answer: Few details have been revealed within the show itself, although Russell T Davies has given a few pointers in an article that he wrote for a Doctor Who annual. He suggests that the Daleks consider the War to have begun with the Time Lords sending the Fourth Doctor back to interfere with their creation, as seen in Genesis of the Daleks. The Daleks took this personally and first tried to replace prominent Time Lords with duplicates, in a similar fashion to their attempt to infiltrate Earth as seen in Resurrection of the Daleks. A peace treaty was attempted, with both sides offering compromise (the Time Lords, for example, handed over the Master for execution, as seen in the 1996 TV movie), but ultimately failed, leading to escalation and eventually the declaration of full-scale war between the races. The war apparently lasted for several years, if a war that takes place on a temporal level can really be said to have a set duration, before the Doctor brought it to its apocalyptic conclusion of destroying all Time Lords and Daleks, as seen in "Day of the Doctor."

Tailkinker

Question: How does Chuck collect his supply of drinking water? We see him drinking from a coconut and a curled up leaf on the ground. We also see a small drip in his cave, but these small amounts don't seem like enough water to sustain life. We don't see how Chuck may have collected the rain water for future use.

Answer: As you pointed out, Chuck used a combination of methods to get just enough water and fluids to survive. In addition to the ones you mentioned, he was also drinking coconut milk, and he could also distill fresh water from sea water (and even urine) by using a piece of plastic, broad leaves, etc. to cover the pooled liquid and catch the evaporation. Eventually he would have enough make-shift containers to collect rain water during thunderstorms that he could store in the coconut shells for later use. Any fruits on the island would also provide fluids.

raywest

Answer: In that area they have two seasons - the dry season and the rainy season. Dry season means it doesn't rain every day. The volcanic rock will provide many pools of rain water. It should be easy to make a catch basin of some sort if necessary. The hard part is not getting sick from drinking after crabs, amoebas and what have you, but there's plenty of sand and coconut husk to make a filtration system.

Chosen answer: It's principally related to the Time Lord's strict non-intervention policy, which stated that they should only observe events, not interfere in any way. The Doctor staunchly disagreed, believing that they had a moral duty to protect the universe from evil. That, combined with his own wanderlust and desire to see and experience the wonders of the cosmos, was what ultimately drove him to steal the TARDIS and take up the life of a renegade.

Tailkinker

Yes he has mentioned before why he left.

Dan23

Chosen answer: The Master has run out of regenerations - he's keeping his failing body alive through sheer willpower, but it's a losing battle, as his appalling condition shows.

Tailkinker

Chosen answer: No. Well, there are probably lots of people who have formulated theories of their own after watching the film, but there's been nothing from the filmmakers. The thing is, it doesn't matter who he originally was or where he came from - none of that is relevant to who he is now, so, in all likelihood, they never bothered to come up with any sort of backstory for him.

Tailkinker

Answer: According to comic book lore, the Joker came out of nowhere, but as time went on minor back stories were given. He was a mob enforcer working for Falcone. In another, he was part of the Red Hood gang but each one always ended with him facing the Batman at the ACE Chemical Co., falling into a vat of toxic waste and emerging as the Joker.

Question: Why does Daniel's karate skills regress in this movie? After fighting a Karate champ in the first movie and a Japanese fighter in the second, surely he must have gotten better as a fighter, not worse?

MovieBuff09

Chosen answer: First he could have just been out of practice, but the point they made in the movie was that his moves were old, so they knew how to counter the things he did in the past to win.

pross79

Question: Perhaps I'm missing something here but given what we see in the opening montage it's public knowledge from the get go that Sally Jupiter is the Silk Specter (given she's seen holding a certificate from the police with both names on it and the bomber plane we see has her actual surname painted under her portrait on its fuselage rather than her crime fighter moniker). While I'm aware this is a carry over from the graphic novel, the logic of this still makes no sense. She's supposed to be a masked superhero like the other Minutemen, reliant on her mystery and sexual appeal to subdue villains, why put herself at the unnecessary risk of being even more vulnerable to retribution by letting everyone know both of her identities?

Answer: The concept of "dual identities" is a convenient story device for comic books. However given the ways in which the "masked vigilante" phenomenon evolved in the Watchmen universe, it is often little more than a policeman on steroids with a mask. Given that mentality, it makes sense. Policemen do not work in anonymity. And while they may worry about repercussions on their families from time to time, in general most of their personal lives stay safely away from their professional lives, aside from the time they have to devote to being a keeper of the peace.

Garlonuss

Question: Surely a mothership as huge as the one depicted in the movie would have some sort of gravitational effect on Earth?

MovieBuff09

Chosen answer: While that is a possibility, the fact that they don't mention it should not necessarily be interpreted to mean that there wasn't one. They had bigger things to talk about at the time. Of course the power of the effect would also depend on the distance from the earth as gravity is defined as proportional to the product of the masses and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between the centers of their masses.

Garlonuss

Answer: That ship is much smaller than the moon.

Question: At the end, how did they vanquish Vigo? As far as I could tell all they did was blast him with their Proton Packs and Slime gun.

MovieBuff09

Chosen answer: Yup, that's pretty much it. They were unable to defeat him with the proton packs alone because his power was being boosted by the mass of negative energy from the slime that had been building up beneath the city. By spraying him with their positively charged slime (as Ray mentions later) they are able to negate that effect. The proton packs then force him back through the dimensional gate that had opened within the painting.

Garlonuss

Chosen answer: Laura was killed by her father Leland, whilst he was apparently possessed by the spirit BOB. The exact manner of her murder is not clear, as several injuries found during her autopsy we later discover occurred during a separate incident before her murder. We know that she was beaten and killed in an abandoned train car, and her body was then wrapped in plastic and thrown in the river.

pinkwafer

Chosen answer: It is strongly implied that Lisa was murdered by her brother-in-law Hoyt, with whom she had been having an affair. When Nate confronts Hoyt about Lisa's disappearance, Hoyt shoots himself dead before the question is finally resolved.

pinkwafer

Chosen answer: Killer BOB is a demonic entity that emanates from a realm of pure evil known as the Black Lodge, a place that exists on an alternate plane of reality. BOB feeds on human pain and suffering and can travel on earth by possessing human beings and also as an owl. While possessing humans, he commits horrible acts to elicit pain, fear, and suffering from those who are around him, using that as nourishment. BOB possesses Leland Palmer, later forcing him to abuse, rape, and eventually murder his own daughter, Laura, and later to commit suicide.

raywest

Season 3 generally

Question: Why did Arthur Petrelli steal Peter's powers? Was it because he simply wanted them, to add to his collection as it were, or because he saw him as a threat?

MovieBuff09

Chosen answer: Both, really. Peter is undoubtedly powerful enough to cause a serious problem, so nullifying him makes sense on a tactical level. It's also understandable that a power thief like Arthur could hardly resist the temptation to obtain so many new powers in one go when he's used to stealing them one at a time.

Tailkinker

Chosen answer: He's certainly been shown to use it to levitate, so full flight is probably within his capabilities. His exact limits are unknown, but are undoubtedly pretty high - he throws a police van around with no obvious effort towards the end of season one and has shown himself to be skilled enough to manipulate many different objects at once, as when he used the glass fragments against the invisible Peter Petrelli.

Tailkinker

Question: During the scene where John has the conversation with the woman in the corridor, what does she mean when she says, "I knew I could rely on you", have they met before?

MovieBuff09

Chosen answer: No, she has not met Lennon before, and she's unsure if it is really him. The whole conversation is written so that their bantering does not make any real sense, and it humorously depicts how famous people are sometimes perceived by the non-famous. Basically, the woman doesn't know what she is talking about but wants to sound like she does.

raywest

Question: I don't know anything about identical twins, so this is why I'm asking this question: how likely is it that Louis and Phillipe would have the exact same speech pattern?

Answer: There would be both genetic similarities and individual differences, and their vocabularies would have developed differently by education and experience. However, Phillipe was heavily tutored before the switch took place, and as "king" he would be able to distance himself (physically, mentally, and emotionally) as much as needed from members of his court until he perfected his role, along with the continued help from those in on the deception. Also, the audience and readers of the novel are expected to employ a certain "suspension of disbelief" in order to allow the story to be told.

raywest

Question: After the scene where John has his "you look just like him" conversation in the corridor with that woman, George goes to the "canteen and production offices" and sits down in some sore of reception. The receptionist says, "Oh there you are". Could somebody please tell me what the hell goes on in the scene that follows, where George is given those shirts? Did he just stumble in accidentally?

MovieBuff09

Chosen answer: Yes, George just happened to wander into the office by accident. He is then mistaken for someone else they were expecting who was to give them his opinion as a "typical young consumer" about the latest trends and fashions they are test marketing. These "experts" are actually so out of tune with what is actually happening in the current youth culture that they do not even recognize someone as famous as George Harrison, who criticizes their products (the men's shirts) as being "grotty" and ridicules their model spokesperson, who he calls, "a well known drag." That is when George is thrown out.

raywest

Question: Ref. the switching of stilettos to flat soles during action sequences (as in Watchmen/Silk Spectre), is there really any way round this in practical terms? Even if the heels were to be put on as CGI, the actors' stance would have to be altered as well. Anybody got a way round this problem at the moment?

Answer: A good editor will catch shots that too clearly expose the flat heels. In this film, that simply didn't happen because they are woefully obvious throughout the jail fight scene. Another choice is to have the stunt woman wear high heels. This will limit her options during the action, but in this example, there was little shown in the fight that was very risky. Spectre threw a kick here and there, in slow-motion- no fast-moving sequence of multiple martial arts moves. The last option would be to CGI the fight- which is expensive and puts the stunt woman out of work.

johnrosa

Join the mailing list

Separate from membership, this is to get updates about mistakes in recent releases. Addresses are not passed on to any third party, and are used solely for direct communication from this site. You can unsubscribe at any time.

Check out the mistake & trivia books, on Kindle and in paperback.