Post History

Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/25996
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/25996
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

It doesn't matter. The tech is a McGuffin. It's a device to drive the story.

The entire plot of Casablanca revolves around a pair of passes that cannot be revoked by the local Nazi authorities. The passes are a McGuffin. They are absurd on the face of it. Of course any such passes could be cancelled by the local Nazi authorities. "Yes, Obergruppenfuhrer, I knew they were enemy spies wanted by the Reich, but they had magic tickets so of course I had to let them get on the plane." Right.

Tech in Star Trek? All technical problems are solved by reversing the polarity of blah blah blah.

Tech in Dr Who? Make it up as you go along and change your mind half way through.

It doesn't matter. What matters is that you tell a good story. What makes a good story is not that it is technically plausible. So many stories could be so much more easily and safely resolved by another quite obvious course of action, or simply by a character asking an obvious question. What makes a good story is that it is emotionally true and that it brings the protagonist to a point of moral or emotional crisis that is resolved in a satisfying way.

Yes, there will always be people who nitpick the details. There is a rather entertaining series on youtube that picks holes in every major movie. The point being that these are major movies that told compelling stories and made millions at the box office. Their tech, and often their plots, make no sense, and is utterly lacking in scale. No one cares. They want to watch men in capes bash each other while having deep philosophical discussions.

Nitpicking the details is a sport for some people. It is part of how they enjoy a story. If there were no nits to pick, they would enjoy it less, not more. (Think about Amy's deconstruction of one of the Indiana Jones movies on Big Bang Theory in which she showed that Indy's actions made no difference to the outcome of the plot. That was fun. I but a whole bunch of people went out and rented it again just to see if she was right. Ka-ching. "Thanks for the residuals" say the screenwriters. )

It doesn't matter. The tech is a McGuffin. Focus on telling a good story.

Original score: 2