As I was 12 years old in 1982, I am contractually obligated to be a Transformers fan, GeeWun style. As an adult, though, it’s hard to look back on that cartoon and suspend your disbelief, especially in terms of scale. A robot that turns into a handgun? Sure. An F-15 having roughly the same mass as a Porsche 911 in robot form? Okay. One robot turning into a space shuttle large enough to carry several dozen of his companions? Yeah, I’m… I’m out, you guys. Sure, it’s for the dumb kids we used to be, but that’s not always something you can overlook when you’re the viewer, leading to today’s retrospective query…
The MS-QOTD (pronounced, as always, “misquoted”) has some issues with enjoying a fave-rave science fiction show since one of the main players is not best known for trolling and bad-faith internet attacks, asking: What problem, plot hole or blindspot in your favorite pop culture makes it hardest to suspend your disbelief?
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In franchises like Power Rangers and Super Sentai: The fact that there are giant robots not very far beneath the surface of the Earth (or just underwater in the ocean/sea) that have gone COMPLETELY unnoticed all this time.
I can buy magical robot-like entities that appear when needed (like the mecha of Dairanger being magical beings, or Magiranger where it is technically the Rangers taking a mecha-like form), more recently constructed mecha (like the Dekaranger’s mecha being tools of the Special Police) or mecha from space or a pocket dimension, but when you have a giant robot that has apparently been dormant for 1,000 years or so rising in or near a large city, I’m not buying it.
I learned to not think about all those inconsistencies too much, otherwise I wouldn’t be able to enjoy them anymore. One could nitpick anything, like how there’s apparently no vacuum in Star wars space, for starters. Or how in Star Trek ships move at faster than light speeds, yet captains still somehow have time to issue commands and crew launch weapons by pushing buttons in battle. In reality, none of the ships would even ever see each other. Some things you just need to accept.
Discovery and Enterprise take place before TOS but use more advanced tech.
Hate.
Or Starships can turn off their engine and come to a complete stop.
I can kind-of buy the technology level difference been TOS and ENT and Discovery because the audience wouldn’t ‘buy’ a show filmed in the 2000’s having a flip-clock display or a dial.
Midichlorians.