Questions about specific movies, TV shows and more

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Question: Is Jonnie correct in his assumption that there are other Psychlo colonies out there?

Socks1000

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.

Grumpy Scot

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.

Chosen answer: I've watched a surgeon perform open-heart surgery, and the radio was on the whole time. Whether music plays is probably up to the head surgeon for the particular operation, but it is certainly allowed.

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.

Tailkinker

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.

Repo_Man

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.

Captain Defenestrator

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.

Phixius

Question: Do the Psychlos have spacecraft or do they simply rely on their teleportation technology to get them from planet to planet?

Socks1000

Chosen answer: Yes, they have spacecraft. They can't teleport from planet to planet without and teleportation device being on the planet.

Phixius

Question: What caused the original nuclear devastation depicted in the movie?

Socks1000

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.

Rob Halliday

Chosen answer: World War III.

Grumpy Scot

Show generally

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.

padfootrocksmysocks

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)

Myridon

Chosen answer: He likely means an empire where he, a Time Lord, rules over all creation.

Captain Defenestrator

Logopolis - S18-E7

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?

Socks1000

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.

Captain Defenestrator

Question: Why does AMEE prolong the death of the crew? Why not kill them all the minute they try and remove her power source?

Socks1000

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.

Knever

Question: In the movie, AMEE is shown to have various settings, such as 'Navigaton' and 'Military'. It is also stated that AMEE is on loan from the marines. My question is, before giving her to the crew of Mars-1, why didn't the marines remove the the military part of her programming? What possible use could it have been to the crew?

Socks1000

Chosen answer: It was disabled. The part of her program that was in effect was merely the survival instinct, given to it so it could protect itself.

Knever

Question: What exactly are those little bug things on Mars and how do they produce oxygen?

Socks1000

Chosen answer: They aren't given a name. They act like plants, except instead of absorbing carbon dioxide and expelling it as oxygen, they eat plants and release oxygen from their bodies. It's probably more effective than using plants since they weren't expecting to be able to breathe on the surface.

Knever

Chosen answer: Because he wouldn't be satisfied simply killing The Doctor when he's weak and infirm. The Master needs to outsmart him.

Captain Defenestrator

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?

Socks1000

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.

zendaddy621

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.

GalahadFairlight

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.

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.

Captain Defenestrator

Question: What happened to Wheels (the little remote controlled car that Mikaela was turning into a pet) at the end? The last time I remembered seeing him in the movie was him entering that one building in Egypt, where Bumblebee, Mudflap, and Skids can't get into. He mutters something about "stupid Autobots". But, after that, he kind of disappears? Or was he around and I just didn't notice?

Answer: After the tomb, he doesn't appear onscreen again. There's no indication as to what happened to him.

JAGwire

Question: If Mildred Kemp is in the mental institution under her real name, then why in the article does it say that she is still at large? Is this just part of the delusion that Anna is playing out?

scaryterri

Chosen answer: The newspaper article saying she was still at large was 20 years old. It can safely be assumed that she was caught and put into the institution during that 20 year time frame.

rswarrior

What? I'm still so confused. Are Rachel and Mildred the same person? Who killed the three children?

Anna has a disorder, which is another reason she was in a psychiatric institution and not jail. Her personality disorder is called dissociative identity disorder, where she takes on alters, aspects of her personality who handle stress, when she cannot. Alex and Mildred were alters of hers, which is why Anna thought Rachel was Mildred. The MIldred alter did the things she couldn't do, killing Rachel because she thought she was evil. And a Mildred alter can be thought of wanting to revenge her capture, so why not make a mini Mildred out of Anna?

So Mildred told Anna to kill Rachel?

No... Mildred was in the mental hospital with Anna and told Anna stories about her murdering the children I'm sure (since she asked when Anna left the hospital who she was going to tell her stories too). Anna wanted to kill Rachel to begin with and when she faked being mentally health enough to escape, her intention was to be home to kill her. She did and then goes back to the hospital, where the real Mildred Kemp is.

Answer: No they're two different people. The woman who spoke to Anna at the asylum is Kemp. Rachel just changed her name to escape an abusive ex boyfriend.

Rob245

Chosen answer: Starbug took 200 years to catch up with Red Dwarf, so Lister and Cat went into suspended animation while Kryten piloted Starbug after the ship.

Captain Defenestrator

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