WW2, too many plot holes.

[David]

http://squid314.livejournal.com/275614.html

Stuff
As I mentioned in my last entry, I've been watching Babylon 5 lately. It's not a perfect show, but it has one big advantage: it's consistent and believable.

Contrast this with Doctor Who. Doctor Who is fun to watch, but if you think about it for more than two seconds you notice it's full of plot holes and contradictions. Things that cause time travel paradoxes that threaten to destroy the universe one episode go without a hitch the next. And the TARDIS, the sonic screwdriver, and the Doctor's biology gain completely different powers no one's ever alluded to depending on the situation. The aliens are hysterically unlikely, often without motives or believable science, the characters will do any old insane thing when it makes the plot slightly more interesting, and everything has either a self-destruct button or an easily findable secret weakness that it takes no efforts to defend against.

But I guess I'm not complaining. If the show was believable, the Doctor would have gotten killed the first time he decided to take on a massive superadvanced alien invasion force by walking right up to them openly with no weapons and no plan. And then they would have had to cancel the show, and then I would lose my chance to look at the pretty actress who plays Amy Pond.

So Doctor Who is not a complete loss. But then there are some shows that go completely beyond the pale of enjoyability, until they become nothing more than overwritten collections of tropes impossible to watch without groaning.

I think the worst offender here is the History Channel and all their programs on the so-called "World War II".

Let's start with the bad guys. Battalions of stormtroopers dressed in all black, check. Secret police, check. Determination to brutally kill everyone who doesn't look like them, check. Leader with a tiny villain mustache and a tendency to go into apopleptic rage when he doesn't get his way, check. All this from a country that was ordinary, believable, and dare I say it sometimes even sympathetic in previous seasons.

I wouldn't even mind the lack of originality if they weren't so heavy-handed about it. Apparently we're supposed to believe that in the middle of the war the Germans attacked their allies the Russians, starting an unwinnable conflict on two fronts, just to show how sneaky and untrustworthy they could be? And that they diverted all their resources to use in making ever bigger and scarier death camps, even in the middle of a huge war? Real people just aren't that evil. And that's not even counting the part where as soon as the plot requires it, they instantly forget about all the racism nonsense and become best buddies with the definitely non-Aryan Japanese.

Not that the good guys are much better. Their leader, Churchill, appeared in a grand total of one episode before, where he was a bumbling general who suffered an embarrassing defeat to the Ottomans of all people in the Battle of Gallipoli. Now, all of a sudden, he's not only Prime Minister, he's not only a brilliant military commander, he's not only the greatest orator of the twentieth century who can convince the British to keep going against all odds, he's also a natural wit who is able to pull out hilarious one-liners practically on demand. I know he's supposed to be the hero, but it's not realistic unless you keep the guy at least vaguely human.

So it's pretty standard "shining amazing good guys who can do no wrong" versus "evil legions of darkness bent on torture and genocide" stuff, totally ignoring the nuances and realities of politics. The actual strategy of the war is barely any better. Just to give one example, in the Battle of the Bulge, a vastly larger force of Germans surround a small Allied battalion and demand they surrender or be killed. The Allied general sends back a single-word reply: "Nuts!". The Germans attack, and, miraculously, the tiny Allied force holds them off long enough for reinforcements to arrive and turn the tide of battle. Whoever wrote this episode obviously had never been within a thousand miles of an actual military.

Probably the worst part was the ending. The British/German story arc gets boring, so they tie it up quickly, have the villain kill himself (on Walpurgisnacht of all days, not exactly subtle) and then totally switch gears to a battle between the Americans and the Japanese in the Pacific. Pretty much the same dichotomy - the Japanese kill, torture, perform medical experiments on prisoners, and frickin' play football with the heads of murdered children, and the Americans are led by a kindly old man in a wheelchair.

Anyway, they spend the whole season building up how the Japanese home islands are a fortress, and the Japanese will never surrender, and there's no way to take the Japanese home islands because they're invincible...and then they realize they totally can't have the Americans take the Japanese home islands so they have no way to wrap up the season.

So they invent a completely implausible superweapon that they've never mentioned until now. Apparently the Americans got some scientists together to invent it, only we never heard anything about it because it was "classified". In two years, the scientists manage to invent a weapon a thousand times more powerful than anything anyone's ever seen before - drawing from, of course, ancient mystical texts. Then they use the superweapon, blow up several Japanese cities easily, and the Japanese surrender. Convenient, isn't it?

...and then, in the entire rest of the show, over five or six different big wars, they never use the superweapon again. Seriously. They have this whole thing about a war in Vietnam that lasts decades and kills tens of thousands of people, and they never wonder if maybe they should consider using the frickin' unstoppable mystical superweapon that they won the last war with. At this point, you're starting to wonder if any of the show's writers have even watched the episodes the other writers made.

I'm not even going to get into the whole subplot about breaking a secret code (cleverly named "Enigma", because the writers couldn't spend more than two seconds thinking up a name for an enigmatic code), the giant superintelligent computer called Colossus (despite this being years before the transistor was even invented), the Soviet strongman whose name means "Man of Steel" in Russian (seriously, between calling the strongman "Man of Steel" and the Frenchman "de Gaulle", whoever came up with the names for this thing ought to be shot).

So yeah. Stay away from the History Channel. Unlike most of the other networks, they don't even try to make their stuff believable.

This is just :giggle: all at the same time!

 

[obtuseobserver]

Molotov-Ribbentrop didn't exist in a vacuum. The author's comments make it pretty clear that you are not familiar the the Brest Litovsk Treaty in 1918. A bit of background understanding is usually helpful when watching a program that shrinks such a major war into 40 minutes. The Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact was a German effort to stall the eastern front and allow Germany to consolidate in the east. In early 1940 Germany swept through the west. They established a natural border made up of miles and miles of water that any foe would need to cross in order to attack.

The Battle of Britain was over by the early fall (1940). The UK lost huge numbers of aircraft but were able to bait the Luftwaffe into targeting factories and population centers so they could keep a small number of airfields operational.

So, the Germans have consolidated the west and have decimated the UK Aircorps by late 1940.

The German experience from 1916-17 undoutedly played a major role in their confidence with invading the Soviet Union in 1941. The consolidation of the west, the isolation of the UK and the US being tied up in the Pacific were other important factors.

The Axis and Japan: My enemy's enemy is my friend even if he is subhuman. In war winning means everything.

Churchill was not a general during WWI and during the Gallipoli Campaign he was First Lord of the Admiralty. The easiest explanation is that tentative attacks and failures to reinforce captured groud gave the Turks enough time to resupply the high ground and slaughter the invaders.

Churchill was forced out of the government and served on the front with the 6th Royal Scots Fusiliers... infantry. Churchill was famous for his disregard of the obvious. He was reported on many occassions yelling back to his troops that he had found a hole in the enemy wire. God only knows how he didn't get killed.

The author's unfamiliarity with Neville Chamberlain and his policy of appeasement is apparent. Chamberlain resigned because he had secured a guarantee from Hitler that would give us "peace in our time." Chamberlain was a fool. Hitler had remilitarized the Ruhr and Essen prior. He took Austria (Anschlaus), the Sudetenland and then Poland before Belgium and France etc etc. Chamberlain made WLSC First Lord of the Admiralty in the new world war....After Hitler took Norway Chamberlain resigned and the King asked WLSC to form a government.

Churchill's leadership and between 9 and 11 millions dead Soviet troops won the war.

The holes the author thinks exist are holes in his fund of knowledge. He is woefully ill-informed about the war, its causes, effects and prosecution.

Roughly 70,000,000 people died as a result of that war. He should have the decency and respect to have an inkling of what happened before writing such a piece of absolute drivel again.



So, were your emoticon's mocking the author or offered as agreement?

 

[David]

Molotov-Ribbentrop didn't exist in a vacuum. The author's comments make it pretty clear that you are not familiar the the Brest Litovsk Treaty in 1918. A bit of background understanding is usually helpful when watching a program that shrinks such a major war into 40 minutes. The Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact was a German effort to stall the eastern front and allow Germany to consolidate in the east. In early 1940 Germany swept through the west. They established a natural border made up of miles and miles of water that any foe would need to cross in order to attack.

The Battle of Britain was over by the early fall (1940). The UK lost huge numbers of aircraft but were able to bait the Luftwaffe into targeting factories and population centers so they could keep a small number of airfields operational.

So, the Germans have consolidated the west and have decimated the UK Aircorps by late 1940.

The German experience from 1916-17 undoutedly played a major role in their confidence with invading the Soviet Union in 1941. The consolidation of the west, the isolation of the UK and the US being tied up in the Pacific were other important factors.

The Axis and Japan: My enemy's enemy is my friend even if he is subhuman. In war winning means everything.

Churchill was not a general during WWI and during the Gallipoli Campaign he was First Lord of the Admiralty. The easiest explanation is that tentative attacks and failures to reinforce captured groud gave the Turks enough time to resupply the high ground and slaughter the invaders.

Churchill was forced out of the government and served on the front with the 6th Royal Scots Fusiliers... infantry. Churchill was famous for his disregard of the obvious. He was reported on many occassions yelling back to his troops that he had found a hole in the enemy wire. God only knows how he didn't get killed.

The author's unfamiliarity with Neville Chamberlain and his policy of appeasement is apparent. Chamberlain resigned because he had secured a guarantee from Hitler that would give us "peace in our time." Chamberlain was a fool. Hitler had remilitarized the Ruhr and Essen prior. He took Austria (Anschlaus), the Sudetenland and then Poland before Belgium and France etc etc. Chamberlain made WLSC First Lord of the Admiralty in the new world war....After Hitler took Norway Chamberlain resigned and the King asked WLSC to form a government.

Churchill's leadership and between 9 and 11 millions dead Soviet troops won the war.

The holes the author thinks exist are holes in his fund of knowledge. He is woefully ill-informed about the war, its causes, effects and prosecution.

Roughly 70,000,000 people died as a result of that war. He should have the decency and respect to have an inkling of what happened before writing such a piece of absolute drivel again.



So, were your emoticon's mocking the author or offered as agreement?

You, sir, need to not take jokes seriously. :unsure:

 

[AK_ID]

And 70-plus million peaple dead is a joke? Too much Nintendo, youngster.

 

[David]

And 70-plus million peaple dead is a joke? Too much Nintendo, youngster.

He was poking fun at sci-fi, and used WW2 as a punchline. The joke wasn't actually about WW2. By his description of the Axis, it seems he was targeting Buck Rogers style sci-fi in particular.

 

[obtuseobserver]

You, sir, need to not take jokes seriously. :unsure:

And 70-plus million peaple dead is a joke? Too much Nintendo, youngster.

what he said ^

............................


and... you really have to brush up on your history. It is important stuff not to be as completely clueless about as squid134 clearly is. I take it very seriously and regard it as an obligation to be certain my children understand their history so the opinions they form about the world they live in are based on meaningful thought rather than some pinhead named after an invertebrate.

 

[David]

How a sci-fi joke in the humor section turned into a WW2 debate I'll never...

 

[obtuseobserver]

Which is exactly the point... you don't know.

And you should.

70 Million dead people isn't funny. The author's ignorance of history isn't funny and yours isn't either.

 

[myp]

...and that is why sarcasm/humor was annexed into it's own corner of the forum. Please let's all be respectful. Thread locked.