Roswell - RBI # 5 : The sci-fi in Roswell - Page 15

KenL · 10-16-2008, 12:36 PM

I have posted the portion of the script in which the base is destroyed.........as you can see the only conclusion you can logically reach is that Tess blew up the base.

Liz: So you're really going to go do this, huh?

Tess: [nods] At least I can do one good thing with my life.

Liz: You just did. [Tess opens the door.] Hey Tess, you're not going to let them throw you in the White Room, are you?

Tess: [shakes her head.] No.

[Tess walks out of the car to a chain fence. She uses her powers to make a hole in it, and walks through the hole.]

[Liz is still in the car. She hears men shouting, guns firing, alarms going off, more firing, and then the whole base explodes.]

[The explosion is so huge that everyone in Roswell hears it. Zan starts crying.]

xmag · 10-20-2008, 09:43 AM

Yeah, she knew what she was doing. Maybe she had some alien explosive to destroy the base, who knows? But she knew what she was doing.

Citrus and Vine · 10-20-2008, 09:47 AM

In the scene in which Tess returns to the base, the direct cause of the explosion isn’t shown.

Liz is shown in the car with her back to the base. Viewers could guess that Liz, who has alien powers, caused the explosion to make certain that Tess died. However, that idea is in conflict with Liz telling Tess that she isn’t a killer. Even though Liz has alien powers which she used against Tess, and even though Liz repeatedly said that she would kill Tess, the idea of Liz causing the explosion seems unlikely. Liz knew that there were many people on the base, and that Tess was walking into the base alone. Liz heard the shots fired. Isabel had nearly died from being shot. Liz causing the explosion on the base would be overkill and would kill many innocent people as well. Liz lacks motive to cause the explosion on the base.

Viewers could guess that Tess, who has alien powers, caused the explosion on the base. However, that idea is in conflict with the fact that Tess wanted to protect baby Zan. Causing an explosion on the base would destroy evidence of her death and wouldn’t help baby Zan. Tess had told the group that baby Zan could survive without her, so they could leave Roswell with him and protect him. Tess knew that Michael and Liz and Max had wanted her dead before. She knew that they could kill her, when she told them that baby Zan could survive without her. They didn’t kill her. Tess went to the base so that people on the base would kill her, have her body, which is identifiably alien, and stop looking for her, thereby protecting the group and baby Zan.

Viewers could guess that someone on the base accidentally caused the explosion. People on the base had torches that could ignite an explosion, either as they worked on Tess’ ship or by hitting a gas line or by igniting an explosive device.

Viewers could guess that the explosion occurred because of faulty equipment on the base.

Viewers could guess that someone intentionally caused the explosion on the base. Major Carlson murdered the hooded man in the guarded room, thinking that the man he was killing was Col. Griffin, in order to prevent Col. Griffin from telling people that the alien ship was real. Major Carlson also arranged for Connie Griffin to be killed. Major Carlson is a murderer, who murders innocent people. Major Carlson has motive to intentionally cause the explosion on the base to keep everyone on the base from telling people that the alien ship was real.

Viewers could guess that Kal Langley caused the explosion on the base to keep humans from learning alien technology and to keep Max from using parts of Tess’ ship for the ship he found in Utah. Kal has alien powers. He knows the military intimately. He can be anyone and he has motive to destroy the base.

Neither Liz nor Tess had motive to cause the explosion on the base. Major Carlson and Kal Langley each have motive to destroy the base.

After the explosion on the base, someone took the videotape of Isabel in a room with swirling objects, from the rubble of the explosion. A general took the videotape to a motel room, where he met with two former Special Unit agents. A General wouldn’t have reason to think that Isabel caused the explosion on the base. She hadn’t been on the base. She didn’t cause the explosion. She was in Roswell, when the explosion occurred. Isabel wasn’t shown harming anybody, but she was selected to be murdered at the graduation. A videotape of someone in a room with swirling objects isn’t reason to have that person murdered. The tape might have been a gag tape, using special effects.

Liz and Max were also selected to be murdered. Max had been on the base, but the General and former Special Unit agents don’t say or indicate that Max had been on the base. Max hadn’t harmed anyone on the base while he was there. Max, along with Michael, had rescued Col. Griffin, who brought down Tess’ ship. Max was in Roswell, when the explosion occurred. Liz had been outside the base in a car, when the explosion on the base occurred. However, the General and former Special Unit agents didn’t say that Liz had been outside the base, when the explosion occurred. Liz and Max were selected to be murdered, based on the fact that they saved a woman from being killed.

Even though Liz and Max saved a woman from being killed, they were selected to be murdered.

Michael had been on the base, but Michael looked like someone else, while he was on the base. Neither the General nor former Special Unit agents said or indicated that Michael had been on the base. Michael wasn’t on or near the base, when the explosion occurred. He hadn’t harmed anyone on the base. Michael was in Roswell, at the time of the explosion. Yet Michael was selected to be murdered.

Michael, Max and Liz each had been arrested and stayed in jail, without escaping or causing anyone harm. Yet they weren’t arrested after the explosion to be questioned or tested to see if they were aliens or to find out if they caused the explosion. Instead Isabel, Max, Liz and Michael were selected to be murdered at the high school graduation, where other innocent people could be harmed.

Kal Langley is a murderer. He knows the government intimately. He can be anyone. He knows who Max, Michael, Isabel and Liz are, and he has motive to select them to be murdered.

Kal had Liz and Max arrested in Utah to keep Max from flying away the ship that flies. Kal tried many times to kill Max, but he wasn’t powerful enough to kill Max by himself. By arranging to have Liz, Max, Michael and Isabel murdered at the graduation, Kal would be eliminating four people who know about the spaceship that flies, and preventing them from flying away the ship in the future.

____________________

Reggie · 10-27-2008, 04:25 PM

Citrus and Vine could guess that all sorts of things happened.
(And has...)
Me, I'm going with what I saw on the show.

xmag · 12-04-2008, 10:18 AM

Amen with that, Reggie.

Roswell was far from being a great sci-fi show. For example, why couldn't Future Max and Present Max meet? The show gave some sort of vague answer but is it really credible? Or just convenient for the plot?

KenL · 12-05-2008, 12:31 PM

Why couldn't Future Max and Present Max meet?

JK, who wrote the script for that episode bought into the idea found in many scifi books and movies, that your future and present self cannot come into contact. Unfortunately he did not allow FM to explain that premise in the script.

The theory that your future and present self cannot occupy the same space is listed below..........(found on a science website)

The only problem is that you will be able to meet your past self, and if you touch him, you die. The reason for this is that you, Nolan, for example, are at point (x2, y2, z2, t2), and you are unique because no one else shares those same values. Your past selves can exist because they have a different value for t.

However, if you touch yourself in the past, the same matter cannot occupy the same space at the same time; in other words, all your values will equal, and thus, you cannot be different masses. Time will correct itself and your mass will morph with your past self's mass violently, effectively killing you both.

xmag · 12-10-2008, 11:10 AM

There were movies where future persons meet their past selves, right? So what was the theory on that?

KenL · 12-10-2008, 04:13 PM

There were movies where future persons meet their past selves, right? So what was the theory on that?

It is my opinion that what ever time travel principle you employ, that the audience should used understand what you are trying to do and that it should have some kind of logic to it.

xmag · 12-11-2008, 10:08 AM

You do know that Roswell and logic didn't go hand in hand, right

?

KenL · 12-11-2008, 04:00 PM

I have to agee with that............do we like the show because of its lack of logic or in spite of it.

xmag · 12-12-2008, 10:24 AM

In spite of it. Just like we like the couples and characters in spite of their flaws.

KenL · 12-13-2008, 12:22 PM

Roswell is alive and well in cyberspace because of the way the characters were put on the screen by JK and company.

xmag · 12-15-2008, 10:06 AM

Let's face it, the Roswell characters had something more. It's hard to define, but they still attract new people every day.

Reggie · 12-15-2008, 01:16 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by KenL (View Post)

Why couldn't Future Max and Present Max meet?

JK, who wrote the script for that episode bought into the idea found in many scifi books and movies, that your future and present self cannot come into contact. Unfortunately he did not allow FM to explain that premise in the script.

The theory that your future and present self cannot occupy the same space is listed below..........(found on a science website)[/i]

Well, not really. The material in FMax would be older (by the difference in their ages) than that in Present Max, so "t2" would be different.

The thing is that anything FMax would do which affects PMax, would affect FMax's history; in effect changing him. Any change would likely cause him to be different enough, that he didn't come back to be there to make that change. The usual example is killing your own grandfather: if you kill him, then you can't be born; so you couldn't kill him, so he's still alive, so you exist & can kill him, but then...

This is, BTW, one of the major arguments against the possibility of time travel: The past is fixed, your present self wasn't there, period.

FMax understood that he could make only one change in the past, before obliterating his history and therefore expunging himself. He needed that one change to be keeping Tess around. Therefore, he took pains to make sure that that was the only change he made. If PMax interacted with, or even suspected the existance of, FMax, that would make a change in him, instead of keeping Tess. So, FMax had to keep hidden from PMax and everyone else. Only by swearing Liz to secrecy (and she would of course understand why) could he reveal himself to her; and when the change in history's direction was made, FMax disappeared.

xmag · 12-16-2008, 10:53 AM

How do you explain that the roswellians had the "essences' royal 4"? If they had their past selves' souls, how do you explain this transfer?