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in_omnia
in_omnia
02 January 2010 @ 12:19 am
physicist...or superhero?
Due to a newly conceived, not-so-mild infatuation with Andrew-Lee Potts, I've been watching episode after episode of a British television show, Primeval. I'm rather enjoying the premise---temporal anomalies opening to allow past and future beasties to rampage through modern-day Britain---but it occurred to me that if this were in an American market, the crack scientific team wouldn't consist of just four zoologists of various specialties. Somewhere in there would be a physicist.

Is this an American thing, I wonder? Do we just really love our physicists? Or is it practicality---"temporal anomaly" just screaming a need for an astrophysicist or two? Or have I simply not seen enough non-American scifi shows to be drawing these kinds of conclusions, at all? At any rate, it's rather fun to ponder....

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[identity profile] insanedeity.livejournal.com on January 2nd, 2010 09:55 am (UTC)
Warehouse 13. and Eureka. eureka is better, but you would also like Warehouse 13.
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[identity profile] in-omnia.livejournal.com on January 2nd, 2010 09:10 pm (UTC)
I watch them both, actually. (And totally agree that Eureka is better, but Warehouse 13 is fun.) I guess I was thinking more about TV shows that aren't even marketed to American audiences. 'Cuz although Eureka and Warehouse 13 are technically, I guess, Canadian in origin, they're on the SciFi Channel, so they're still mainstream American. But shows like Primeval or Slings and Arrows (which isn't scifi) don't show up on American networks at all. And I wonder if those shows really have physicists in them where a physicist is clearly kinda necessary/important.

Of course, since they're not marketed to American audiences, it's rather hard to know about 'em.... :D
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[identity profile] insanedeity.livejournal.com on January 3rd, 2010 08:00 pm (UTC)
belatedly I have reread and now understand your entry. I agree that physics seem less present in British Televised Sci-Fi. You could look at the Doctor as a phyicist (sp) beyond all others, but I don't recall Torchwood ever being on the hunt for a consult. BSG was a co production with the BBC and no real physicists in sight despite the FTL travel capabilities and the stretching of their use that came up. The duty officer was expected to be cappable to practically violate the laws of physics.

Interestingly, I think the opposite is true of British PRINT sci-fi and fantasy. Arthur C. Clarke deals heavily in all things physics and physicist. ANd the Golden Compass books feature physicsts in both our world and Lyra's alternate world.
Charles Sheffield is a huge name in Brit hard Sci Fi and was an actual physicst.

Lastly, I can't spell physicist. There. I just spelled it. Oy.
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[identity profile] in-omnia.livejournal.com on January 5th, 2010 12:14 am (UTC)
"belatedly I have reread and now understand your entry"

It was pretty ambiguous when you first responded: I've tweaked the language to make it a little clearer. (I hope! :D) But I'm glad I'm not the only one who's noticed the lack of physicists...although I hadn't thought about the print scifi. That's another interesting point to ponder....
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