Black Holes

I am not one of the worlds great physicist, I'm not even one of the worlds great spellers, but I like to think I have a brain. So when watching a documentary on Steven Hawking and his view on Black Holes I was painfully reminded why I didn't take up hard science as a career.

Black holes are amongst the most powerful forces in nature, capable of crushing whole stars and indeed solar systems while being no larger than a pea. This is thanks to the frankly silly amount of mass compacted, with a staggering amount of densely, into a small space. We use metaphors like "sucking" and "trapped" when in reality it's just another way of "falling". Now, according to Hawking, once matter has passed what is called the event horizon (a mathematical, not physical, edge to the Black Hole) it would be impossible to stop falling. The problem is what happens next.

Now according to most people there are two possible arguments. The first states that all the matter in the Black Hole eventually vanishes. Just that, vanish, cease to exist. According to Hawkins this is what happens and it breaks just about every rule in the book. Matter is simply organised energy and one of the basic rules out there is that energy (and thus matter) cannot be created or destroyed. only converted. The theory flat out tells us that in a Black Hole the forces involved supereed the laws of physics. Unfortunately, if this is true, it leads to a problem. Black Holes are so powerful and so immense that the universe just couldn't exist, as we know it does. It would have been sucked up long long ago. There are just that many of the blasted things out there. Now a good number of Physicists have also noticed that and come up with the only solution, Black Holes are finite and do eventually stop.

But what happens to the matter they sucked up? When those forces end, a good question itself is how, what happens. Now Hawking's theory tels us... nothing happens. After all if the matter and energy no longer exists then neither do the forces that they exert. It wraps up the problem in a nice little bow. The problem is, of course, without matter, little things like Existence itself would have been destroyed long ago.

Now a good number of other, less famous thinkers, suggest that doesn't happen. They suggest that the Black Hole eventually traps itself. With nothing escaping matter just continues to spiral deeper and deeper into itself and that's it. The Black Hole stops exerting forces and collapses. The key to this is a little loop hole in Hawkins math that points out that a Black Hole produces heat. Incredible amounts of heat that just bleeds off into space.

Now as this documentary tried to explain this I paused it got up and ranted at a wall for an hour. The reason for this is simple, either I'm seeing something 99% of the most brilliant people in the world haven't or I'm missing something fundamental. The problem is because I'm coming from it with the basics and not convoluted, unproven, math and vague imagery I don't think I'm tied up in the decades of linear thinking these people have caved out for themselves.

Heat, much like light and matter and anything else, cannot escape a Black Hole. If the forces inside are creating more and more heat in a denser and denser point there can only be one solution. The forces acting within would have to reach a critical point where there is more energy inside trying to get out than there is gravity pulling it in. The more a Black Hole absorbs the more energy that would be eventually produced. The result would be, what people once suggested could be called, a White Hole. Or, put more simply, kaboom. An enormous kaboom. The matter, once trapped, would break forth and well miniature big bang is the best description I can come up with.

There is obviously a complex and elaborate theory that states I'm wrong. If some one, anyone, has it please tell me. Otherwise I'll return to Sci-Fi reviews and fan fiction as soon as possible

Miracle Day.

A quick update on my past opinion of Torchwood:-

The first series was pure character assassination. Simple. While RTD was trying to make them diverse and flawed the end result was no one came out of that with an ounce of likability. The acting was nothing to write home about either. Heck, half the time it even seemed like Barrowman, a man that could give Shatner a challenge chewing scenery, was phoning it in that year. We had so much sex, gay innuendo and pointless bodily fluids that it came off like three teenage boys giggling behind the bike shed. It wasn't grown up, wasn't adult. Just some kid that found their dad's copy of FHM and thought it was the most graphic thing since Lemon Party . Org.

The second series approached things as if the first hadn't happened. We had reasonably adult humour, a few good storylines and the characters were the well rounded and down to earth, flawed, people they were supposed to be. We got some good back story and development for the team and opened up the can of worms that was Jack's backstory for the overall plot. It could have been a lot better, and I found killing off two of the gang rather pointless, but they were niggling doubts all in all it was leagues ahead. If the first year was scored one out of five, the second was a solid three.

Then came Children of Earth. This was a deal braker for me. Quite simply it had a lot of promise and would have made either a nice three parter all on its own, or an arc for a series. They knew these aliens were coming back, people all over the world would be beginning to panic and it was up to Torchwood to try and stop it from happening again. Jack could have been wracked with guilt over what he was forced to do and it could have been a nice Torchwood on the run against the conspiracy thing. The once proud, secret, organisation that had influence at the highest levels reduced to the end of it's rope. Old favours vanishing and allies turning on them. A real draconian menace from a corrupt and desperate cabal of officials trying to hide mistakes made fifty years earlier.

Unfortunately what we got was a disaster. An over bloated arrogant mess that needed someone with the guts to tell RTD to scale back, and stop trying to rewrite the end of New Doctor Who's third year

I've already outlined how I would have fixed this Here. Much to some people's dislike.

Now comes Miracle Day. It's either going to be a carbon copy of Children of Earth with some of the bad bits iron-ed out, some more development and a bigger punch to it. Or it's just going to be a damp, predictable, squib that lasts five more episodes than CoE. Dragged out to the point where even the most avid fan throws their hands up in disgust.

I've seen two episodes so far, and I have to wonder if it was written by a first year script writing student. A director that's qualifications were that they watched Twilight one time and an editor that has a YouTube account. I might be a bit harsh here, but it really feels like a Mickey mouse operation. The villains would be better hidden if they had top hats, moustaches and capes. Along with a neon sign flashing "smarmy gits" and their own marching band.

There is no real drama here. The acting is on par with the first year and it just feels like everyone with any acting skill are just working for pay checks.

Including Dichen Lachman, Dollhouse's Sierra. Just one of the many guest stars they've got coming.

Unlike Transformers 3 I have an open mind for this one, please RTD don't disapoint

Green Lantern

I want to make a point. I have ranted, twice now, about the third transformers film and how much it doesn't appeal to me.

I realise that you you might think I'm a prone to knee jerk reactions over very little evidence, or that I'm just a mean jerk that hates things for very little reason, so I think I better share my experience with Green Lantern.

Oh - Kay I did not have very high expectations for this film going into it. The umpteen million different trailers, the really bad CGI suit and the plot re-write rumours I knew going into it it was going to be a mess. It was, but in the film's defence it was a difficult birth. There was a lot of difficult things going on in the background and no one really knew where they were going.

The acting was ropy, the editing just bad, the plot holes so immense they rivalled the Matrix trilogy and the CGI was never fixed. Everything you hear about this thing is true it is that bad. But still, and this is a big but, you can just sit back and enjoy. It's not offensive, it doesn't out right insult the fans of the source materiel and it feels like a film.

If it had come out, maybe, ten years ago, even with the effects of the time, it would have been alright. That is because it's main problem was its formulaic structure. Every character, plot twist and development has been done before, ad infinitum. It comes across as if the writers just watched Iron man, the original Superman and then Van Helsing. Threw the scripts into a blender and then use a Find / Replace function to get the cast names right. There was nothing new or original here.

And again, as predictable as that is the film was an enjoyable way to spend an afternoon. I had fun in the theater, even all alone I sat back and watched. Coming out I didn't feel robbed or disappointed that I spent money on it. I liked it.

And this is my problem with not wanting to watch Transformers 3. My expectations are so low and even then I'm afraid I can be disappointed. That takes an epic amount of effort. If a critically panned film, accused of destroying the Comic Book movie itself, can entertain someone like me how bad must Transformers be?

In summation Green Lantern, if you know you're going to a generic comic book superhero movie and with everything you expect from that, is a fun way to kill a lazy afternoon. As long as you don't take it too seriously, and know a little about the comic.

Transformers 3 again

I am painfully aware that my last ramble made about as much sense as replying "monkey's are funny" to the question of "how meny fingers am I holding up?"

It had been a long day and I wasn't thinking straight, or beyond "Hate Hate, Kill Kill now please!"

Allow me to expand:-

I think the casting of Rosie whatever in Transformers 3 Dark of The Moon is the thing I am most dreading. I was not, in any way, inspired with confidence when I first heard she got the part because she was a Victoria secret model and turned up for the audition in her underwear. After seeing the promotional images and the couple of clips that have found their way onto the internet I just want this film to go away.

I didn't think it was going to be possible for Bay to find a worse actress than Fox, but he did.

I'd like to believe that I was a sensible young man, with the right priorities. If not necessarily in the right order, but I find both this blow up doll and the vacuous piece of wood that was Fox two of the most repulsive creatures on the planet.

Having to watch these two attempt to act is on par with having my wisdom teeth removed through my nose. While Fox wasn't given much to do but stand there and scream "SAM!" really loud and from the looks of things that's this girls job description too that's not a good thing.

It saves us from the painful acting, but sets the women empowerment movement back about two hundred years. For craps sake, hitting them with a frying pan would be an improvement.

Hell there was an episode of the original Transformers with Carly on Cybertron. She had her car disintegrated beneath her and then busted her ankle trying to run away. That version was more empowered. Hell, while Spike (read Sam) had to carry her a lot of the way it was her computer kills that was able to hack their way through the door.

When a cartoon from the 1980's, especially one that had episodes like The Girl who Loved Powerglide, treated women better than these films seem to, oh boy.

Now let me be clear I'm still about 12 hours away from seeing this turkey, and I'm actually trying to talk myself into it. Does that explain how I feel? I'm one of the biggest Transformers fans you're likely to meet and I'm so disillusioned by the trailers and spoilers I'm about ready to wash my hands of the whole thing. Not even the positive early reviews can convince me 100 percent.

I don't want to go into a film doubting if I'm going to like it. I'll take a risk on a DVD, when I can hit the pause button and take a break but the commitment behind a film in the cinema is a bit too much. Where I live its a fifteen min journey to the nearest theater, by bus. Then there's the time invested watching it (two and a half hours), getting back. It's a whole afternoon, an afternoon where I can't write, read or do anything else but sit in a darkened room watching an oversized TV.

To continue my sob story, there's no one to watch it with. If I'm going to do this I want to be sure I'm going to enjoy it. I don't want to come out of the cinema grumbling. The last film made me delusional to the point where I imagined there was something positive. I accepted that, just so I would go to see a film again.

So what positives are there. Leonard Nimoy. He's back in Transformers, this is a good thing. From what I've heard though... it's a cameo. Ugh. The backing cast are excellent, and are under used. How do I know they are under used? BECAUSE THIS IS A FILM ABOUT ROBOTS FIGHTING. They're not the stars of this film, they are cameos. Thats it. If they're not cameos then this isn't Transformers is it. Much like the last two the focus is on the humans, not the bloody robots we want to see. We've paid to see robots fighting, not humans.

I can just tell all the time is going to be spent on this guest cast, rather than establishing the Transformers. This is the third film, and new Transformers on both sides with no establishing facts.

I can take any of the positive points and show them to be crap, and I haven't even seen the film. This is bad. Extraordinarily bad people.

Forget it. I will catch this on DVD, but unless I hear a glowing review I can respect forget it.

Transformers 3. The warning signs.

Looking back on it I was incredibly kind to the second Transformers movie. It really was one of the worse films I've ever seen, I have over used the skip function on the DVD and it's just empty, soulless and pathetic

There is no hiding the fact that Transformers exist solely to sell toys, but the reason it's survived for so long and well loved by hard core fans like myself is the depth of work gone into it. Look at how well written Beast Wars and Animated was. A good group of writers can really access the potential Transformers has. Aliens, wars that have lasted millions of years, sacrifices, struggles, morality, the list is endless.

One of the more interesting points had always been, however stereotyped, everyone of the transformers, Autobots and Decepticons, had their own characters. The cowardly Starscream, the heroic Optimus, the overconfident Powerglide, the arrogant Skylynx, eminently logical Shockwave, monotone Soundwave, the list goes on. The point of that is everyone has their own favorites, every transformer looks and behaves differently.

The reason I mentioned those two important points is that is what people like about Transformers. Yes there's the whole giant robots beating the crap out of each other, but under that is the diversity and scale of this war.

On paper Bay should be the perfect person for this. His utter lack of subtly, over reliance on clichéd characters and love of really big explosions is exactly what is needed. And that's why these films haven't worked. Look at Kenneth Branagh as the director of Thor. Would you have expected that to work as well as it did? How about Simon Pegg's scene stealing performance as Scotty, the best thing about that movie, never would have called it. Peter Jackson's biggest film before LOTR was the Frighteners and Bad Taste. Breaking expectations like this has proven to be a good idea. It shows how someone can look deeper and produce something others wouldn't necessarily see.

This is why Bay is precisely the wrong person for these films, he churns this sort of film out in his sleep. It's like hiring Roland Emmerich to do another disaster movie or Shyamalan to do an episode of the twilight zone. There's nothing new they're going to bring to the table, just churn out the same old crap in a different wrapper.

Having this guy do the third one is rubbing salt on an old wound. What's worse is, reading rumours and spoilers show that he hasn't learnt anything. Even when he knows the second film failed on every level he misses why. Sure the Twins were bad, but so were the parents, and it was only after massive fan backlash that he backtracked on the whole Leo Spitz character and canned him.

Still there is one thing that really sets off alarm bells, the romantic interest. Megan Fox's Mikaela Banes was horrendous. She can't act for spit, the character was ignorant to the point of idiocy and was there simply as eye candy for horny teenagers. There was absolutely zero chemistry between her and Sam and just felt like a love interest shoe horned in for the sake of it. No secret there, but Fox has gone.

Leaving us with Carly, played by, god help us, Rosie Huntington-Whiteley. I did not think it was possible to cast someone worse than Fox, all we've seen is the trailer and it hurts. Physically painful. All we see is her in expensive and revealing dresses that aren't even close to practical.

She is going to destroy this film. and after everything we know that really worries me.

X-Men

With the new film X-men First Class doing quite well for itself in the Cinema I just want to mention something.

Now over the years I've tried to get into X-men, one version or another. The comics, the 90s cartoon, the films and I have one thing to point out. It's incredibly dull. Sorry to all the Marvel fans out there who think its the best thing since sliced bread, but it's not.

The whole thing is a one trick pony. Mutants as a metaphor for those rejected by society. Congratulations Stan Lee that was slightly witty, and very risky for the time (1960's) what next? Urm? You have a vast cast of characters with a variety of social and personal disorders staring in what basically boils down to a Soap Opera.

Now I give the original concept a thumbs up, even if I can't get behind the science (and when I can legitimately question Comic book science, worry deeply) but a concept can only last so long. Sooner or later you have to develop it, fertilize it, let it grow. Where has the Concept gone? Sure the Characters have changed (then been reset, changed again and reset again, repeat as needed) but where has the single witty part of the story gone. Have Mutants been more or less accepted, has the hatred increased or wained? Nothing and that's my biggest problem with the whole stinking Marvel Universe.

Here, let me expand on that point. It's an established fact (sorry to say) that the people in the Marvel Universe are rock stupid, arrogant, bigoted, ignorant, fools. That is, if I was being kind to them. The only reasonable people seem to be the mutants. It's a very us verses them mentality, especially when most comic and science fiction fans feel alienated by certain members of society. Just once I would like to see someone form New York that supports, or is even on the fence, with Spiderman. seeing the good he does and point out that he's just a person. He can make mistakes. Or someone from the public argue that mutants can't help being born that way and just because they've got fantastic night vision doesn't mean they are the spawn of satan.

It's this very one sided and bias view that Marvel seems to have (and X-Men spearheads) that puts me off the whole idea. It's so predictable, whenever someone does eventually speak up for the minorities (that always seem to be around every corner and under every rock) they turn out to be a closet Mutant (read homosexual, dyslexic, jew or whatever). The whole attitude is incredibly dated. Just to make things worse, much like the horrendous One More Day debacle, there seems to be a status quo in the Marvel universe. While DC likes to reboot the whole franchise every few years (long story) to shake things up a bit (thats the short version) Marvel always hits the reset button, that or spawn a whole new universe hoping to draw people into reading.

So in summation I dislike Marvel, mostly because of X-Men and find the new movie pointless. Most importantly it seems that the X-men franchise is taking place outside of the Marvel movie universe. Meaning that other than a few references it doesn't look like Joss Whedon's going to be playing in that sand box in the upcoming Avengers movie (thank God).

Doctor Who Mid season

Okay, I hate to say this but that was predictable.

Every twist and turn I could foresee easily. I'm not going to give any spoilers here but come on, give me a break. There are still a lot of questions, and I'm going to ask one in a moment, but at just about every point I rolled my eyes.

It was well acted, produced and written, but sadly predictable.

That wasn't the only disappointment here. I was really looking forward to the Doctor going to war. Serious war, pulling out the weapons he used in the Time War. A Gauntlet, or a Rod. Hell something, He's peeved, seriously, can you thing of a better time to show that sort of thing off? It would be interesting, show just how deadly the Doctor could be. We know how dangerous he can be with just a screwdriver, imagine him armed! See what I mean by disappointing?

Okay, here we go. The real problem. Why? What was this all for? A war against the Doctor. First of all that's really, really stupid. Then again one man's hero is another's villain I get that but why go to war with him? That's more than poking a bear, its sticking your head into the Lions mouth, kicking it in the nuts and then blaming the bear. What could they possibly, possibly do that makes him that big a threat?

The big point of the Doctor is that he only comes after those that deserve it. He's not some psychopath that obliterates planets for a laugh. There has got to be a reason for this. Something. The bad guys (or should I say woman) even admit's that he's a good man. For fucks sake, no one wants to be the bad guy. Kidnapping pregnant women and stealing children from them my god in heaven, there is no moral right in that. Why were they so afraid of him?

I hope we find an answer to that. Another question I hope we get some sort of answer to is why the Doctor didn't check. It would be the first thing I would have done. Hell I'd have torn the computers and the child's DNA appart looking for the smallest thing. They had the child a month. A freaking month, not to mention the whole pregnancy. They could have done anything. Heck why not just plant a bomb, or a black hole, or something on the asteroid to kill everyone.

It's not that difficult. It's only the fact that these priests are militantly stupid, arrogant and so enamoured of a ridiculously complex and overwrote plan that they forget Occam's Razor (the logical idea that a straight line is the most likely path between to points). Just kill him. It's not that hard. As powerful as a Time Lord is it's not like he just regenerate in a god damn vacum. Detonate the whole asteroid and kill everyone. Leave the Doctor afloat in space, but no they have to be over complicated and make this predictably complex mess a solution.

Then again "Let's Kill Hitler" looks intersting, shame we have to wait four months