This is discussion archived from a time before the current discussion method was installed.
Gloating Swine: Cut
- Interestingly, the aforementioned law of series physics is somewhat of a Beam Me Up, Scotty!, at least within series Canon. While the idea that crossing Warp Ten is impossible is common in the Expanded Universe, its only onscreen mention is in the aforementioned episode. Star Trek The Original Series used a different system, where "Warp Ten" meant something different; the warp system was redone (without onscreen comment) in The Next Generation, but the future portrayed in the last episode of that series referred to "Warp Twelve" twice. (Arguably, that makes the focus put on Warp Ten in this episode even worse.)
It's actually All There in the Manual, the TNG Technical Manual has the warp scale they were using as a reference (albeit loosely), it's logarithmic based on the warp number, which gives a result of infinity for any whole multiple of 10.
Anonymous Mc Cartneyfan: Removed these from the Battlestar Galactica discussion because of the justifications. Of course, "Black Market" is already under Dis Continuity, so....
- In "Black Market"...well, let's put aside the issue of Apollo's heretofore-unmentioned pregnant wife for a minute. Apollo takes out the leader of an underworld smuggling operation that manages illegal trade and prostitution... and leaves the door wide open for their activities to continue (it's implied that Tom Zarek took over).
- As Apollo pointed out, actually eliminating the Black Market would be impossible. So long as demand outstrips supply — which is a permanent condition for the rag-tag fleet — someone will find a profit in selling supplies under the table. On the other hand, occasionally pruning the Black Market's worst excesses is possible, and Apollo's killing of the guy who was into child sex slavery and replacing him with the non-pedophile-enabling Tom Zarek was a net gain.
- "A Measure of Salvation" has the normally grounded Karl Agathon stop the Colonial Fleet from spreading a neuro-pathogen that will wipe out some of the pursuing Cylon forces. Why does he do this? To provide a counterpoint to President Laura Roslin's salvation policy... and to be a mouthpiece for creator Ron Moore's view on the subject.
- Actually, he did it because the virus was expected to (or at least hoped to) not just deliver mass casualties to the pursuing forces, but to exterminate the entire Cylon race. Being married to Athena, aka the living proof that Cylons are not inherently incapable of developing a functioning conscience and adopting human ethics, its not surprising that Helo would object. If Cylons were inherently evil and lacked any capacity to ever change that, he might have been able to sanction their genocide. As is, he's seen at least one Cylon be able to choose and change, and so he restrains himself to merely killing Cylon combatants individually, as they threaten him and/or the fleet. Granted, Helo was unique among the fleet in this opinion — but this troper considers that a measure of his quality, in that he could keep his principles clear at a time when literally every other member of the human race was thinking first with their anger and desire for vengeance.
- In "Black Market"...well, let's put aside the issue of Apollo's heretofore-unmentioned pregnant wife for a minute. Apollo takes out the leader of an underworld smuggling operation that manages illegal trade and prostitution... and leaves the door wide open for their activities to continue (it's implied that Tom Zarek took over).
Anonymous Mc Cartneyfan: Cut and moved this entry here because of the caveat. Unused script does not count as ((Canon)).
- In the 2005 episode "Father's Day", Rose inadvertently dooms Earth to be eaten by extra-dimensional vultures after saving the life of her father, partially out of her own self-interest, for which the Doctor quickly forgives her. Not necessarily a Wall Banger in and of itself - except that this episode was broadcast immediately after "The Long Game", in which a temporary companion called Adam inadvertently puts the Doctor and Rose in order to acquire futuristic information that he can transmit back to his own time (partly out of self-interest and, partly - from dialogue that was cut from the shooting script - to find information that might save his father, who suffers from arthritis) - and, for which, he stranded back in his own time with a piece of alien technology in his head that opens up whenever anyone clicks their fingers in his proximity to reveal his brain so that he'll be forced to life a life of mediocrity. Many fans consider this a Wall Banger moment given that Rose and Adam pretty much did the same sort of thing in essence, both were motivated at least partially out of self-interest, Rose's actions ultimately led to far worse chaos and destruction than Adam's did, and both were obviously contrite about their actions and the subsequent consequences, yet Rose is rather quickly forgiven with a hug whilst Adam is stranded and condemned with a self-righteous lecture about how the Doctor only takes 'the best, and I've got Rose' (itself adding to the potential Wall Banger value, since Rose's subsequent actions pretty much deflate any picture of her being 'the best').
- To be fair, this is relying on two things. That although removed from the script, Adam's dialogue is still canon, and that the Doctor knew his goal was to save his father.
- In the 2005 episode "Father's Day", Rose inadvertently dooms Earth to be eaten by extra-dimensional vultures after saving the life of her father, partially out of her own self-interest, for which the Doctor quickly forgives her. Not necessarily a Wall Banger in and of itself - except that this episode was broadcast immediately after "The Long Game", in which a temporary companion called Adam inadvertently puts the Doctor and Rose in order to acquire futuristic information that he can transmit back to his own time (partly out of self-interest and, partly - from dialogue that was cut from the shooting script - to find information that might save his father, who suffers from arthritis) - and, for which, he stranded back in his own time with a piece of alien technology in his head that opens up whenever anyone clicks their fingers in his proximity to reveal his brain so that he'll be forced to life a life of mediocrity. Many fans consider this a Wall Banger moment given that Rose and Adam pretty much did the same sort of thing in essence, both were motivated at least partially out of self-interest, Rose's actions ultimately led to far worse chaos and destruction than Adam's did, and both were obviously contrite about their actions and the subsequent consequences, yet Rose is rather quickly forgiven with a hug whilst Adam is stranded and condemned with a self-righteous lecture about how the Doctor only takes 'the best, and I've got Rose' (itself adding to the potential Wall Banger value, since Rose's subsequent actions pretty much deflate any picture of her being 'the best').
[Much later] Cut and placed here. There is a difference between Anvilicious and Wall Banger. We can't list episodes just because they're unpatriotic!
- How about the episode where Archer and friends head down to a planet's desert and pal around with a noble, affable Well-Intentioned Extremist (who interestingly enough appeared rather Arabic and spoke with an accent) who's just doing what he must against an evil, cold-hearted, grey-jumpsuited bunch of bullies who live in high-technology cities and bomb his people for no real reason. All of this as the US was gearing up to go into Afghanistan. Gee, I wonder what the writers' opinion was?
Rann: We can't? Why not? Must've missed that one, considering that what constitutes a wall banger is subjective. We now have rules for what's off-limits in a subjective trope?
Withad: Took this out from the bit about "Spock's Brain" -
- Wasn't that written because someone was pissed off at Gene Rottenberry?
Thought I'd discuss this before removing from Wallbangers, since I'm new.
"The House season finale has [[The mystery woman in House's dream has the key to learning who House saw sick on the bush. She repeatedly asks House "What's my necklace made of?" The answer is so obviously Amber that I figured it out before her even asking. However, the good doctor just ignores her questions, and one time, although having some sort of genius intellect, he has the gall to say "resin".]] If that's not a wall-banger I don't know what is."
That's a plot point, and a crucial one. House is hypnotically commanded (earlier, by Chase) not to see Wilson or Amber in his attempts at recollection. So Wilson is replaced by Cutty, and Amber by the unknown woman, but House still knows she and her necklace are the key. You're supposed to figure it out well before House does; the conflict is whether or not he can overcome the post-hypnotic suggestion in time. He doesn't.
If nobody objects, I'll remove this from Wallbangers in 24 hours.
Fast Eddie: Hi. We usually sign discussion. It helps in knowing where one person's remarks end and another's begins. The entry just needs spoiler markup, as I've done above.
mhollingsworth: Thank you very much for fixing my malformed spoilers, Fast Eddie. As you can see, I'm still learning.
Anonymous Mc Cartneyfan: Cut this and put it here, for now. This is true for most of "The Parting of the Ways," but my understanding is, shortly before Nine needed to set off that Delta Wave, he fell victim to a Hannibal Lecture and decided that he didn't want to become a killer (at least not directly). There is at least one fanfic out there dealing with what would've happened if he had set it off just before Rose came...
- Not to mention that Nine had no problem with trying to genocide the Dalek fleet problem away in the first season finale. He was even hellbent on sacrificing himself and the entirely Earth population along with it if it wiped out the Daleks. Of course, Rose's Glowing Eyes of Doom moment saved Nine from bringing about the Time War 2.0.
Not sure the best way to bring this up, but I don't think the first part of House example isn't really a wallbanger. People can get lung cancer without having smoked (See Dana Reeve), smoking just increases the odds by quiet a bit. The bit with the sax is fine though, but more a Did Not Do The Research then anything
HeartBurn Kid:
- Justified in that by calling it "sports entertainment", they're not trying to break Kayfabe. They're trying to get around various state regulations regarding fighting sports, where "wrestling" is specifically mentioned by name. Until the "sports entertainment" loophole was found, some wrestling federations would purposely avoid certain markets because of particularly onerous regulations.
Cut for being a Justifying Edit that doesn't really justify anything.
Caswin: First: I won't say that the lonelygirl15 example needs to be pulled, but I don't like the way it claims they dumped Steve "just because Daniel doesn't like him." It's not as if Daniel wasn't making a laundry list of coherent reasons not to trust Steve...
Second: All of the Doctor Who season finales? Granted, fate has contrived that I only see "Doomsday" in its entirety so far, but the reasoning for its conclusion sounds horribly sketchy. Besides "Doomsday", based on what I've heard - and that includes the notes here - "Journey's End" sounds a lot more "flawed and laced with irksome moments" then "what is this, I find myself with an overwhelming urge to throw my TV against the wall."
Revolos55: There are several factual errors in the House season 5 entry "Last Resort"
- No, more needs to be said. This troper does wonder why they had to blow up Cuddy's office, especially when there were still hostages in there; what if House and Thirteen hadn't had Contractual Immortality? Couldn't the SWAT team have waited ten more minutes? And what did Thirteen think she was doing, being a human guinea pig?
First, it was the radiology lab, not Cuddy's office. There was one hostage and the bad guy in the room. House was safe outside the office, and Thirteen was inside and critically ill. Plus the hostage taker was about to force her to take more drugs. I'll concede that Thirteen turning herself into a human guinea pig was colossally stupid, but the whole point of the episode was that she's self-destructive to the point of being borderline suicidal.
I don't want to arbitrarily delete someone's wallbanger, but I also didn't want to throw up my justifications and have discussion on the main page.
Anonymous Mc Cartneyfan: Thanks. Oops...
Anonymous Mc Cartneyfan: Cut this and put it here, after reflection. If you mean at the end of the episode, Ten probably figured that, since Pompadour died without seeing him again, he couldn't risk visiting her in this incarnation because that would risk Clock Roaches. (He's not the most rational of Doctors, but still...)
- Why didn't the Doctor just use the TARDIS to visit Madame de Pompadour one last time when the fireplace gate didn't work? This was the sort of idiocy that drove this troper away from the new series long before other Wall Bangers arrived.
- Because a time traveller cannot change their own personal history; if they do, it could adversely affect their present or future (not to mention time itself). This was the reason the 5th Doctor couldn't go back in time and save Adric and why the universe was nearly destroyed when Rose prevented her father from dying in Father's Day. Reinette had died before she could see the Doctor again; if he had gone back in time, he would have changed both of their histories, which may have resulted in dire consequences.
- Which makes Ten's screwing with Harriet Jones's history all the more dickish.
- There was also the little matter of the TARDIS not always going where the Doctor wants it to.
- Because a time traveller cannot change their own personal history; if they do, it could adversely affect their present or future (not to mention time itself). This was the reason the 5th Doctor couldn't go back in time and save Adric and why the universe was nearly destroyed when Rose prevented her father from dying in Father's Day. Reinette had died before she could see the Doctor again; if he had gone back in time, he would have changed both of their histories, which may have resulted in dire consequences.
HeartBurn Kid: Transposing the Pro wrestling examples to Professional Wrestling, sans justifying edit.
Anonymous Mc Cartneyfan: Cut this and put it here for now. The justifying edit justifies things quite thoroughly.
- At the end of the first season, why THE HELL doesn't Peter just fly himself up into the air so he explodes? Why does Nathan have to do it? PETER CAN FLY ALL BY HIMSELF!!! Arg.
- Justified in that it was taking all of Peter's willpower to keep himself from blowing up. At that time, while he absorbed powers reflexively, his actually using those powers was dependent on him thinking "do this/don't do this" in order to keep them from going off by accident. And a lot of his powers DID go off by accident.
Anonymous Mc Cartneyfan: Philosophical question over the Doctor Who entries: how many individual reports of the Tenth Doctor's failures of judgement do we need before they shift from individual WallBangers to Character Development? Or to put it another way - can we either remove some of Ten's antics or consolidate all of them?
Caswin: More to the point, at least from where I'm standing, how many of the moments listed would seriously tempt somebody to (if it were a book) throw the book against the wall in anger? It sounds like someone's being a little liberal with the "beating your head against a flat surface" rule.
What She Said: I'd like to argue that the following is internally consistent, and therefore not a WallBanger: "Sara Sidle's sudden departure from CSI, shortly after she accepted a proposal from Grissom and transferred to another shift so they could be together without jeopardizing their careers, especially since her reasons for leaving (specifically "ghosts" from her past cropping up since the death of her father) fly right into the face of why she even hooked up with Grissom (him being a stabilizing point in her life that for two seasons helped her greatly)."
I think her departure was internally consistent because Sara is portrayed as having had a very narrow focus throughout. She went to Harvard at 16, possibly as much a means of escape from harsh circumstance as a source of intellectual fulfilment. She is shown to be so fixated on her work that even Grissom urges her to get a life. And yet she came to Vegas at Grissom's invitation, with his unacknowledged, unspoken, but still-implied promise of attachment a major motive (though she clearly had no real ties in San Francisco). He then proceeds to keep her on a string for eight years, first by denying his feelings for her and covering himself with misdirection, and then by keeping her in the closet for so long that she becomes noticeably uncomfortable with the secrecy. (Although that sounds critical, I'm not suggesting he did anything wrong, especially since there were external as well as internal motives for his doing all these things. I am saying that he was the one in control for a very long time.)
By the eighth season much of this insecurity was resolved. Not only were she and Grissom out of the closet, but he was even ready to make a public statement by marrying her. Arguably, having been rescued by her Nakama, Sara had at last found a foster family she could live with. But at the same time, the forced change to swing shift removed her from their constant companionship, leaving her alone to ruminate about the Miniature Killer's motives (which sprang from the killer's own history as a foster child) and to face everything that was ugly and depressing about a job which might otherwise have burned her out some time ago. With all her usual focal points taken away and many of her emotional needs met, Sara now has the resources to look certain things in the eye that she never did before (the "ghosts" she refers to).
Even though Sara has an irritable disposition, it's still been shown that, where deeper issues are concerned, pressure can build up in her with little warning until she erupts with behaviour that she knows is very likely to burn bridges, whether she wants to burn them or not. (Drink-driving to get negative attention from Daddy when positive attention isn't forthcoming? Mouthing off in career-ending ways when the carefully-calculated drink-driving doesn't work?)
And because the job was still so intimately bound up in her relationship with Grissom, it probably wouldn't have helped if she'd gone to him and said "I want to be with you, but I don't want to do this job, I don't want to be in Vegas with its escalating crime rate [cited by her protégée Ronnie as the very thing that attracted her to Vegas]. Maybe I don't even want to come home and listen to you talk about what you did at work every day." Of course he would have tried to make it better, but his expressions of concern and his attempts to take care of her "only make it worse" because what she needs is not a foot massage or a vacation, but a complete change of scenery, which she has no reason to believe would be an acceptable loss for him. So she just goes, before anyone has the chance to change her mind.
Additionally, squick or no squick, it's pretty obvious that Grissom had parental qualities that she needed, having been deprived of such earlier in life; but she's also reached a point where she's grown up enough to think about her life in relation to herself, not only in relation to her job and Grissom.
I would therefore argue that Sara's abrupt departure was internally consistent, however infuriating, and however not-well-acted.
Anonymous Mc Cartneyfan: Cut this and put it here. The justifications appear to justify. From both directions.
- Sex And The City, "A Woman's Right to Shoes". Carrie loses her $500 Manolo sandals at a friend's kid's birthday party, and when the mother says that she can't afford to replace them (and since when is it custom to offer to pay for something lost or stolen at your place through no fault of your own?) Carrie gets all indignant at the implication that she's living a frivolous lifestyle (Oh poor baby, that One-Hour Work Week and dating many handsome men must be so tough) She rants about how as a single woman she doesn't get wedding presents, so she badgers the cash-strapped mother into buying replacement sandals as a "gift" for being single. This is a woman with a fucking warehouse full of shoes, who lives this lavish lifestyle ALREADY, and who will promptly forget about those shoes once she gets another pair next week. In any other show this would be treated as a George Costanza-like Kick The Dog moment but we're supposed to be happy that a stressed out mother is out 500 bucks so Carrie Fucking Bradshaw can have another pair of fucking shoes.
- Partially justified in that Carrie is generally a greedy, narcissistic self-righteous bitch whose selfish, morally unjustified and often spiteful actions are always supported by the plot for some bizarre reason.
- Also partially justified because the woman required Carrie to take off her shoes when coming in. One could construe this requirement as the creation of a bailment. If there was indeed a bailment, then, as Miranda said, the mother WAS responsible for he theft of Carrie's shoes, regardless of how valuable they were. Also a Wall-Banger because this mother DID NOT CALL HER INSURANCE COMPANY TO FILE A CLAIM, which should have been the first step in a situation like this.
Jason: I'm not sure Buffy's having all the girls turned into Slayers counts as a Wallbanger. She was Cursed With Awesome, but part of it was how few people there were who were her equals. If all the Slayers work as a group, then many of the problems become less of a concern.
Patrick: It's definitely a subjective thing. From my point of view it's inconstant with the series' portrayal of the Slayer life as being one of incredible pain, hardship and early death. It came across at the time not as "sharing the power" but as "shifting the responsibility." In addition, the current comic books make it clear that Buffy and the Slayers are becoming full-fledged Knight Templers.
Caswin: Bearing in mind that my experience with the series is (currently) limited to the first season, most of the problems of being a Slayer lie in being the only one with those powers and responsibilities. With thousands of Slayers fighting evil as a group, the burden on any individual Slayer becomes much smaller than it was for Buffy. Their new role as Knight Templars is simply another dramatic development, and unless I miss my guess, not presented as a good thing.
fleb: The whole last season was very inconsistent with everything that came before. "Magic *isn't* an Anvilicious addiction metaphor," "Buffy's strength really isn't The Power of Friendship after all," etcetera.
Anonymous Mc Cartneyfan: Cut this and put it here. The season started in September, yes, but there were two or three months between America's recognizing that it was high time to get into Afghanistan and America starting the invasion. It does not take two months to film an average TV episode, even in the Star Trek verse, nor to pencil it into the UPN schedule; and since that entry is here for being a transparent pacifist tract, it probably didn't take that long to write. This episode was not part of An Arc, so it's possible that a script special to the occasion got written, filmed, and aired before the invasion.
- If this episode was aired before the invasion of Afghanistan, that means it had been written and filmed before the events of 9/11/01. Coincidence can be ugly—but it was a coincidence. More reminiscent of US support for Afghan rebels against the Soviet Union, actually.
fleb: These Battlestar Galactica things aren't Wallbangers. They're just Fridge Logic. (The Kara/Lee mountain of Justifying Edits needs editing, too. It is, after all, very obviously Extremely Fucked Up on purpose.)
- The confirmed existence of God proves only that he/she/it/whatever is either apathetic or cruel: his "Angels" could have quite easily stopped the conflict at any time. Head Six and Head Baltar appear only to Baltar and Caprica Six when they could have appeared to everyone simultaneously, stopping the violence (at any point in the story). Why only appear to a select few?
- Well, as Baltar said, "God" is a "force of nature", and good and evil are human designs.
- Starbuck's disappearance: WTF. What. Just...What?! And what the hell does Bill Adama do? Sit down and rot away?
- What do the Centurions do? Float off and...exist? And just forget about Earth?
- That's no Wall Banger. There is no need for the Centurions to care about Earth. They don't breathe oxygen, or feel need to live under open sky. All they need is mineral resources, and means to refine them to survive, and those are plentiful in the universe. They probably had the happiest ending of all.
Anonymous Mc Cartneyfan: Cut this and put it here. In a series where 99% of the procedural plotlines involve sex by definition, that title cannot say it all.
- SVU: Screwed: The title says it all, really.
Anonymous Mc Cartneyfan: Cut this and put it here. Either replace it without the justifications or leave it for examination. As it stands, it looks like the original complaints were Complaining about Subtleties You Don't Like.
- The Sarah Connor Chronicles are good, especially about maintaining Terminator canon, but wall bangers have occurred in the form of unnecessary episodes. Two examples come to mind:
- An episode in which Cameron spends the entire hour sneaking into a library at night and researching information with the help of a friend of hers, whom we have never seen before nor will likely ever see again. She spends the episode researching the history of the town and finds out that there is a terminator who was sent back to the wrong time and is hiding within the walls of an abandoned building, waiting to assassinate an important figure in the future. She hunts him down, destroys him, and goes back to business as usual. The episode did nothing to advance the plot and, in the end, there was essentially no change from the previous episode.
- It was a Breather Episode. Not every episode is required to advance the plot of a series even when the series has arcs. And there are references to the events in "Self Made Man" in later episodes: in "This is the Day" Sarah points out how suspicious it is that Cameron sneaks off at night and comes back battered and damaged.
- More important, that episode was clearly a character-building episode for Cameron; it showed her interaction with someone who wasn't a Connor, it showed her curiosities and interests, and it revealed quite a bit about Cameron's perceptions and thought processes, especially regarding suicide - which is a theme that's been with her since she went haywire and comes up again later in "Ourselves Alone." It may not have advanced the overarching plot, but it added tremendous depth to her character, which is just as good.
- Really, roughly half the episodes in the series thus far have been either standalones or didn't add much to the show's Myth Arc, so complaining about "Self-Made Man" is kind of baffling itself, because there's nothing to separate it from a half-dozen prior episodes in terms of plot development. Off the top of my head, "Heavy Metal," "Dungeons and Dragons," and "Vick's Chip" from the first season, and "Allision from Palmdale" and "Alpine Fields" in the second season were episodes that didn't push the Myth Arc forward very much, and all of those episodes were actually very well-written and brilliant character pieces. Personally, I though both "Self-Made Man" and "Some Must Sleep" were among the very best episodes of the second season. SCC is as much about developing these characters as it is about he overarching plot.
- Another recent episode is baffling. A three-episode long arc that was advancing the plot quite well is suddenly interrupted by an episode in which Sarah is inexplicably in a sleep therapy clinic; she is apparently having a recurring nightmare in which she is kidnapped by someone she had supposedly killed three episodes prior. The big reveal in the end is that the entire sequence of events in the clinic was the dream and that she really was kidnapped and being held hostage, making most of the episode pointless. The worst part, however, is how she executes the man who had captured her, despite her dwelling on his death at her hands for the past four episodes. In the end, how does all of this have an effect on her in the next episode? When asked where she was, she fleetingly replies, "I got kidnapped," in the same tone one would use to announce their trip to buy groceries. Arrrrrrrrgh!!!
- That episode and the prevous two were explorations of Sarah's extreme psychological problems; the entire dream sequence was an extended metaphor of all of her fears and worries and perceptions. Her execution of Eugene at the end of the episode was her hitting the tipping point; her comment in the next episode was clearly her trying to downplay it in her own eyes and keep herself sane in the process. And she's talking to Cameron, so deadpan snarkery is standard-issue for Sarah. And for this family, "I got kidnapped" is like buying groceries.
- Its worth pointing out that the same episode also has implications that Eugene may have raped Sarah while she was unconscious. If there's anything that would trigger her shooting him, that would be it.
- An episode in which Cameron spends the entire hour sneaking into a library at night and researching information with the help of a friend of hers, whom we have never seen before nor will likely ever see again. She spends the episode researching the history of the town and finds out that there is a terminator who was sent back to the wrong time and is hiding within the walls of an abandoned building, waiting to assassinate an important figure in the future. She hunts him down, destroys him, and goes back to business as usual. The episode did nothing to advance the plot and, in the end, there was essentially no change from the previous episode.
Anonymous Mc Cartneyfan: Cut this and put it here for now. Remember, people: a successful justification cancels out the entry, leaving nothing.
- And then there's the one that started the whole show off: Janeway, rather than bringing her crew home along with the ship full of Maquis members whom she's effectively captured, blows up the Caretaker's array to protect the Ocampa from the Kazon. She does it without further delay, rather than setting it up for a delayed explosion, or asking for volunteers (or being a volunteer) to sacrifice themselves by staying behind as Voyager uses it to get back home and then blowing it up. Making it worse, throughout the rest of the series, Janeway is dead set against this kind of meddling in other cultures because of the almighty Prime Directive. The only excuse she gives this time is that they're already involved in the situation, which doesn't always stop her from invoking the PD later on.
- Haven't seen Caretaker for ages, but I assume a reason was mentioned as to why they couldn't use a time-delay explosive? Such as, not having the time to rig one? Or the chance that the Kazon would be able to disarm it after they had left? Ok, improbable I will admit, based on the portrayal of Kazon intelligence, but hey, there'd be no show otherwise.
- Also, the concept of Janeway asking for volunteers to die seems ridiculous to me. She was always upset when a redshirt died, and I just can't see her asking any of her crew to sacrifice themselves. And as for her not volunteering herself, would you really go to such extremes if there were another option?
- And then there's the one that started the whole show off: Janeway, rather than bringing her crew home along with the ship full of Maquis members whom she's effectively captured, blows up the Caretaker's array to protect the Ocampa from the Kazon. She does it without further delay, rather than setting it up for a delayed explosion, or asking for volunteers (or being a volunteer) to sacrifice themselves by staying behind as Voyager uses it to get back home and then blowing it up. Making it worse, throughout the rest of the series, Janeway is dead set against this kind of meddling in other cultures because of the almighty Prime Directive. The only excuse she gives this time is that they're already involved in the situation, which doesn't always stop her from invoking the PD later on.
Anonymous Mc Cartneyfan: Cut this and put it here. If the wallbanger never happened, it has to leave the main page.
- Let's start with an easy one - 22nd century Starfleet couldn't come up with communicators that worked properly in rainy or snowy weather, but they could make the transporter nearly flawless. The transporter! Working cell phones, that's a tough one. Converting both organic and inorganic matter into energy, flinging it vast distances, and having it reform perfectly; no problem. You MUST be kidding me! Made worse when you consider the transporters of the original series and first movie, which were unreliable. In the movie, someone died of a bad materialization. There's a reason McCoy hated them.
- Um, did you ever watch Enterprise? They hated and mistrusted transporters far more than Mc Coy ever did. They only used them in the most dire of emergencies, prefering to stumble around, narrowly avoiding death a minimum of three times as they tried to get back to the shuttlepod before the Baddie-of-the-Week caught up to them. And about the death from transporter malfunction, what about the guy in Deadalus? Or what happened to Hoshi in 'Vanishing Point'?
Anonymous Mc Cartneyfan: Cut this and put it here, for now. Lots of people like Thirteen - maybe not among tropers, but she has fans. Not many like "Foreteen," but it's true - it does have as much basis as Chameron, especially once the accursed Huntington's trial gets running. (When this gets reinstated, I ought to put in some of Chase & Cam's early romantic history. The meth-induced sex is dub-con of some sort. And Chase calculating exactly how far he can go "without stalking" at the beginning of the Tuesday stage, and telling Cameron that's what he's doing?)
- Fifth season, from "Lucky Thirteen" onwards, almost anything having to do with Thirteen, especially her unexplained romance with Foreman.
- It wasn't all that unexplained. They do have some chemistry (One moment I recall from near the end of season 4 showed Foreman knew/figured her out better that even House when he managed to pick up on the dact that she was bisexual even before House did. It's no more an Ass Pull that Chase and Cameron was.
Anonymous Mc Cartneyfan: Cut this justification and put it here. It's beautiful and eloquent, yes. But it doesn't matter how thematically fitting Buffy taking Dawn's place is, or how necessary it is for her sanity - she's still doing something that only Dawn is supposed to be capable of doing. Buffy is not the Key!
- It's explained by the theme of Season 5, especially prominent in "Fool For Love". There, Spike tells Buffy that the reason many powerful Slayers die is because the continuous pressure to fight evil alone and the corresponding loss/isolation from friends and family wear them down. By the end of Season 5, Buffy had lost two lovers thanks to her Slayer duties and had her mom die; if Dawn had also died, Buffy wouldn't have been able to live with herself, so she sacrificed herself in Dawn's place because she knew Dawn was less battered than she was, and thus more likely to live happily afterwards. Perhaps it's a Broken Aesop, and it's definitely a Tear Jerker, but it was in line with the character development and theme of the season.
Anonymous Mc Cartneyfan: Cut this and put it here. We're not supposed to post justifications on the main page. We correct errors, or we discuss them on the discussion page, or we bite our tongues hard. The point below the justification is Natter - it doesn't affect the original "was creating multiple Slayers a Wallbanger?" question either way.
- The reason why Slayer powers were considered so "cursed" was because there used to be only one Slayer each generation to bear the burden. Once Buffy releases the curse so there are thousands of Slayers at any one time, not one of them would have to deal alone. Thus, being a Slayer is easier.
- It's pretty much a moot point by now: Fray seems to be officially canon and it's back to one Slayer a generation (with the implication that Buffy's army is going to go down and go down hard.)
Anonymous Mc Cartneyfan: Cut this and put it here for now, though I might reinstate it shortly. We can't just say it's full of wallbangers - we need specifics. (Would seeing a nuclear explosion in Denver from Kansas count?)
- Jericho. It has its fans, but for this troper it's just a cascade of writing faux-pas. "this craze for explicitation, every 'I' dotted to death." as Sam Beckett put it. No, the other Sam Beckett.
Bring The Noise: Cut Captain Trek's Justifying Edits regarding Voyager.
Anonymous Mc Cartneyfan: Cut this and put it here. It's in character, and the justification justifies. If we didn't know this, we ought to.
- "I tried to save you." Now, let's reflect for a moment. With Time Lords and Daleks dying on every side, what possible reason could the Doctor have for trying to save Davros, who started the whole damn business? And, assuming he did manage to save Davros, what's he going to do? "Now, I hope you've learned your lesson and want you to know that I'm very disappointed in you. Run along and try not to take over the universe again, there's a good chap." (Then again, that might have been what Ten had in mind.)
- Actually that was both perfectly in character for the Doctor, who has a habit of saving his sworn enemies, and a sound tactical decision. Think about all the vital strategic data he could have extracted from Davros with his Time Lord Mind Meld-gimmick. Capturing the enemy leader is an extremely benefical thing to do in any war, often better than just to kill them outright.
- "I tried to save you." Now, let's reflect for a moment. With Time Lords and Daleks dying on every side, what possible reason could the Doctor have for trying to save Davros, who started the whole damn business? And, assuming he did manage to save Davros, what's he going to do? "Now, I hope you've learned your lesson and want you to know that I'm very disappointed in you. Run along and try not to take over the universe again, there's a good chap." (Then again, that might have been what Ten had in mind.)
Anonymous Mc Cartneyfan: Cut this and put it here, for now (I suspect in hindsight that it'll get reinstated.) Extra burden of proof is needed for personal interactions that are indisputably in character. Davros is like that, and Ten is like that; the only question is, how stupid is Ten right that second?
- Davros chiding the Doctor for letting people die for him indirectly just before flipping the switch to arrange THE DESTRUCTION! OF REALITY! ITSELF! That's okay; it's in character. But then the Doctor got all choked up at this being pointed out by Davros, of all people. Why should he care what that maniac thinks?
- Because the Doctor has been feeling guilty about all those things all this time, and Davros just called him out on them. It wasn't Davros' opinion, but the Doctor's own, which Davros happened to realize.
- Davros chiding the Doctor for letting people die for him indirectly just before flipping the switch to arrange THE DESTRUCTION! OF REALITY! ITSELF! That's okay; it's in character. But then the Doctor got all choked up at this being pointed out by Davros, of all people. Why should he care what that maniac thinks?
Anonymous Mc Cartneyfan: Cut this and put it here for now. (Though it probably should be reinstated soon.) This needs straightening out.
- The problem isn't the Doctor's actions. This established that this incarnation can be a merciless, Manipulative Bastard, and this isn't the last time Ten's been like that by a long shot. The problem is that his rumor could spread so QUICKLY. That same evening, Rose is watching a BBC newscast which is already saying that Harriet might face a no confidence vote. Apparently, none of Britain's lawmakers bothered spending Christmas day with their families - they were too busy conferring among themselves to remove the PM from office because some guy they never heard of said she was tired.
- It's not the "rumor" that's the problem, it's that what he said to the aide so unsettled her she started freaking out and getting a bit paranoid—as mentioned previously it was a sort of self-fulfilling prophecy.
- The problem isn't the Doctor's actions. This established that this incarnation can be a merciless, Manipulative Bastard, and this isn't the last time Ten's been like that by a long shot. The problem is that his rumor could spread so QUICKLY. That same evening, Rose is watching a BBC newscast which is already saying that Harriet might face a no confidence vote. Apparently, none of Britain's lawmakers bothered spending Christmas day with their families - they were too busy conferring among themselves to remove the PM from office because some guy they never heard of said she was tired.
Anonymous Mc Cartneyfan: Cut this and put it here. The Prime Directive only applies to civilizations that have not yet achieved interstellar flight. The Hirogen most definitely had that. As to why Janeway would trade with them — well, legally, the Federation doesn't consider holograms people, and so she figured they could keep their hunting traditions without hurting anyone. (The Hirogen proceeded to program pain into their holograms, natch.)
- Let's talk about the goddamn Hirogen for a minute. The entire species crosses the line, having developed murder, torture, and dismemberment devices solely to use on other sentient species. Why? For the thrill of the hunt and to mount people's organs on their walls. Putting this in perspective, Klingons, Jem Hadar, and even the KAZON have demonstrated an understanding and varying levels of respect for the concepts of honor, mercy, and killing out of necessity as opposed to recreation. But not the Hirogen: they're more remorseless about wanton killing than the Borg. From their first appearance they did nothing but shoot at Voyager, all for the sake of getting a trophy. And the whole time, Janeway is trying to negotiate with them, and be their friends. The last straw for me was when they succeeded in taking over her ship, forcing the crew to participate in simulations where they were hunted, killed, and then revived by the doctor. When Janeway takes the ship back, she gives them holodeck technology so they can continue these hunts on their own. OK here's the wallbanger: how many times have the crew run into some race or beings that would trade them something useful in exchange for some of Voyager's technology, only to have Janeway refuse because trading even 1 Starfleet issue flashlight could change the balance of power in the quadrant and is against the Prime Directive? However when it comes to a race that is out and out malevolent, has no redeeming qualities whatsoever, has actively tortured and killed her crew, and will most certainly use any technology it gains to become more destructive, Janeway has no problems with giving them one of the most powerful tools on her ship? Janeway you ignorant slut, this is just the kind of race that the Prime Directive was developed for, and you choose now of all times to ignore it? But wait, we aren't through yet: after the Hirogen manage to get themselves killed off by the Starfleet tech they shouldn't have had in the first place, Janeway tries to help them. Cue more threatening and shooting at Voyager. Does Janeway sit back and let the rogue holograms deliver karmic justice to the serial killers of the galaxy? No, she risks herself and her crew to stop holograms that were being hunted like animals (and as sentient as the Doctor), and were in self defense attacking the aliens that were also ACTIVELY SHOOTING AT HER CREW not 20 minutes earlier. If there was ever a time to mutiny on that ship, that was it.
castaghast: I'll take out the part about the Prime Directive, as it doesn't apply here, but I think every other complaint I made was accurate. 1) If trading holodeck technology isn't against the prime directive, surely it's against some other directive, whatever one it is that prevents Janeway from trading certain pieces of technology, even if what they get in return will get them home. There's very little ON the ship that is more dangerous than the holodeck, and on top of that, it seems to be an excellent simulator: Janeway would be better off handing a limited quantity of weapons over to the Hirogen directly. In that case, there is a small chance that the Hirogen might fail to reverse engineer the weapons properly, and use the entire supply. However with a holodeck they can simulate new weapons designs until the end of time. 2) Even if Janeway doesn't consider holograms people (a wallbanger which has been addressed in other ST sections in wallbangers), the question of whether these aliens would put the technology to good or at least non harmful use should have been asked. Apparently it wasn't, because the answer is common sense: the Hirogen had no intention of using the holograms solely for hunting, I don't care what kind of informed motive the leader spouted in the episode. If that were the case they would have just taken the optronic core, beat someone into telling them how to use it, and went merrily on their way. They didn't do that: instead they took half the crew, genetically mutated them, and killed them at their leisure for two weeks straight. It's like someone took the best parts of rape (at least you weren't killed) and murder (at least you didn't get raped), removed them, and made an ultra concentrated mixture of atrocity. It's more a mental thing than anything, because the SFX people on Voyager didn't have the skills to show the grotesque nature of such a thing, and no one bleeds on the floor in sickbay, no matter how bad the injury is, but if that had been on Battlestar Galactica or any other competent sci-fi show, we might have seen the visual effects more. When Janeway got free the first and only thing she should have done was to butcher as many Hirogen as she could before escaping if possible.
Anonymous Mc Cartneyfan: If Janeway had given the Hirogen weapons, they would likely have used them on creatures Janeway would consider people. That's what she was trying to prevent — their hunting people that the Federation would recognize as people if it knew about them. (I agree that everyone's treatment of holograms leaves something to be desired...) Admittedly, gambling that the Hirogen would not be able to use holotech as ingeniously as either her own crew or parts of Picard's crew have is Xanatos Roulette going on Vizzini Gambit.
Anonymous Mc Cartneyfan: Cut this and put it here. Yes, Data is more like a human than an EMH is; but when Data was on trial, they highlighted the differences. And if Data had lost, then Soong-type androids would have become more common; Maddox wanted to dissect him so he could reproduce him. Data objected to the risk of amnesia; thus, the trial.... Guinan's inspirational speech to Picard before he made his defense was that, if Data lost, the Federation would have hundreds of strong, smart, expendable androids... Really, Federation history would be very different if Picard had had any sympathy for the holodeck's Moriarty.
- Well, the main difference between Data and the EMH (Aside from what they are made of) is how they were made. Data was found and reassembled by starfleet, and was the process of painstaking trial and error and growth from a scientist with no real affiliation, Data was almost completely unique sans his brothers in his construction, and a unique personality and therefore (amoung other things) considered living. The EMH on the other hand was the product of a scientist's goverment funded research and development which mass produced nearly 500 units for ships. His original personality was the product of such development therefore he had to be assessed differently.
Peteman: I think we should move the series with lots of Wallbangers to their respective series.
Anonymous Mc Cartneyfan: Please clarify. Do we make new pages for those series? Or do we just make separate folders for series that are currently consolidated in one folder? There are a lot of different Star Trek entries.... Then again, I'll try folder subdivision now, since that seems to be what we do in this index, and then we can try more drastic action later.
Peteman: I mean put the Voyager wallbangers in Star Trek Voyager and Buffy Wallbangers in Wallbangers/Buffy and etc.
Anonymous Mc Cartneyfan: Oh, like in the Narm index. I can go either way on that. General Wallbangers/StarTrek and Wallbangers/Buffyverse pages would make some sense.... While I'm making folders, maybe I should attempt the "rule of ten" being on Western Animation — that is, if the series has ten or more entries, it gets a folder...
Caswin: For what it's worth, I'm still bugged by how many of these "Wall Bangers" seem to be more like a second Just Bugs Me page, but with more vitriol and snap-judgment. (Y'know, on top of the "every scene I didn't like" phenomenon I've already done plenty of complaining about.) This is just me, but I think that if these sections get big enough that we have to start making separate pages for them, something's wrong.
Removed the 'Dial M For Martin' Frasier example. It's established in the episode that Niles' behaviour is subconscious desperation, not wilful sabotage.
Triassicranger: Now that real life examples are banned from Wall Banger shouldn't we cut the Big Brother section as it's a reality television series?
Anonymous Mc Cartneyfan: It's been done. I don't think it should've been — Reality Shows are not the same as Real Life; they're more like cinema verite, Game Shows, or pro wrestling. The constant presence of cameras and confessional booths change behavior, and the editing changes the appearance of behavior. Also, the producers sometimes actively intervene in events, both with the challenges and in subtler ways...
Anonymous Mc Cartneyfan: Cut this (from Stargate SG 1 folder) and put it here:
- There are other problems that make this a questionable complaint one is that R&D is not directly related to manufacturing capability. China's ability to produce vast amounts of happy meal toys and nikes with cut rate unskilled workers is not particularly applicable to the task such as say designing from scratch an inter-galactic spaceship, just like no one else on the planet had the skills or money to build F-22s besides the US. I also don’t happen to think it’s unrealistic in universe for the US to be more then a bit reluctant to hand over massively advanced technology to a barely stable and systemically corrupt democracy and an openly autocratic communist regime with minimal regards for human rights and a track record of invading it’s neighbors. If in say a few decades China or Russia is the ruler of it's own little stellar empire built of the backs of less developed worlds using technology the US provided it then what? "Oh sorry guys our bad they said they'd only use their power for good!" What you seem to be ignoring is that despite the outside threat earth is not one big happy family now, and indeed since the threat has in the past few years in the universe progressively diminished; or at least the possibility of total enslavement/extinction has internal politics is probably MORE of a factor then ever.
Anonymous Mc Cartneyfan: This was intended as a Justifying Edit. I think there may be a valid Wall Banger in there, but I don't want to dig it out yet.
Be: Guys. I know the BSG finale was polarising, but man alive, clogging up this page with a bunch of long, spoiler-tagged arguments is a bad thing. Eye rape is not the answer!
- At least they gave the robot Cylons all their tech so they can, you know, form a peaceful Empire.
- The plan wasn't to "throw away" culture or history, per se. It was giving up an increasingly difficult life in space and dependence on their failing technology to try and build a new, better civilization on this "new Earth" (which is ours) by giving the next generations all the "best" that the colonials had to offer (culture, religions, and so on). The hope was that, without the technology and the burdens of the past (for example, the fleet of ships near Earth's orbit or the knowledge of the whole Cylon-fiasco), this new humanity (a mix of colonials and "primitives") could start anew without repeating the cycle of hate. So, no Wallbanger there.
- Except that it clearly did NOT work. It's our Earth — how well-adjusted do we look? And it STILL makes no sense.
- Especially since the Colonials were still throwing themselves to the wolves because they wouldn't be able to survive on an environmentally hostile planet without medicine or modern farming techniques. And what about all the sick and disabled people within the fleet? And what about the diseases they'd have carried all the way from the 12 Colonies? Aaaargh.
- Okay, first of all: It DID work. No cylons on "our" earth, no new cylon-war, and that after what, 150thousand years? The Earth before ours and the colonies lasted only a few thousand years, tops. So, even if the cycle didn't stop completely, it has already worked out better than Kobol, old Earth and the Colonies put together. And second - the sick and disabled people in the fleet: What about them? The Galactica wasn't going anywhere and the rest of the fleet wasn't in any better shape - hell, the only long-term space-ready craft left was the basestar itself. It was either New Earth or desperately trying to to get to another hospitable planet before the last ship couldn't fly anymore. And given the choice of dying in space or dying on a nice green planet, trying to build a new civilisation, the colonization makes all the sense in the world - especially when you remember the fact that these people have lived the last years in ever worsening living conditions in space and in war, with no escape-option and no real medicine-supply (most of it was gone after the year on New Caprica) OR farming equpiment to speak of (they basically lived of algea for the better part of their journey). I'd have chosen a primitive earth over that any time, hostile enviroment or not.
- This is not something we're going to agree on. The state of the Colonials' technology is beside the point: Lee Adama's argument was that they should reject technology and not even try to rebuild a technological civilisation, and turn to an entirely primitivist culture, with some kind of Ludd Was Right bullshit aesop, even if it was unintentional. Even considering the run-down state of the spacecraft etc. etc. it shouldn't be too difficult to create a civilisation with late-nineteenth century technology levels at the very least. Construction of tractors and other vehicles - hell, even steam engines - wouldn't be too hard for them. Yes, their stocks of medicine were probably pretty low by then - but with fleet doctors like Cottle around Colonial medical knowledge should at least have been kept intact, rather than dispersing the entire population around the globe to hope for the best.
- Which was pretty much the first plan, until Lee proposed his idea of going more primitive and screw the godsdamned technology - to which appearantly a vast majority of the fleet agreed, otherwise he wouldn't have gotten away with it (and hey, maybe some of the other groups did take some basic tech with them.. helped some south american tribe build pyramids or whatnot). But to make this short: The decision to leave behind their tech and ships may not be what others would have done in that situation, but it's reasonably explainable and it makes sense in context. You may not like it, but that doesn't make it a wallbanger. More of a downer ending.
- Someone's going to end up pruning this at some point. No, the point is that it DOESN'T make sense in context. The willingness of the fleet to go along with Lee Adama's "proposal" is madness and a wallbanger in itself. It is neither reasonably explainable, nor does in make sense in context, as I pointed out above - they're basically choosing suicide of their culture over survival, regardless of the writers' absurd Hand Wave that all their culture - including, inexplicably, the English language according to Word of God - gets passed down through to us, which makes my head hurt just *thinking* of the lack of logic.
- It's worth pointing out that Lee is even MORE of an idiot if this really WAS Earth 150,000 years ago - a lot colder than it is now, lots of giant mega fauna running around... You know what helps when you've got giant mega fauna running around? GUNS! Sorry but you really, really can't think this is a good idea. About all you can say is - hey, the Centurions didn't come back and glass the entire planet for a laugh. The notion that we haven't had a repeat of the cycle of revenge is for one very obvious reason. We threw our tech away and it took over 150,000 years to get back to something APPROACHING what the Colonials had and if anything, the flash forward to the present day seems to intimate that we're headed straight for the same predicament that we were trying to avoid. The notion of a fresh start is such a betrayal of everyone that fought and died, not to mention condemning billions of people for tens of thousands of years to life at little more than a survival level with sickness, intolerance and tyranny. Thus making Lee Adama the person responsible for literally ALL human suffering for the past 150,000 years. Still want to say he's a Big Damn Hero for fucking us all over?
Anonymous Mc Cartneyfan: Some genius has restored the whole mess, thinking it was deleted without reason. But it should be deleted; there is a good reason. That exchange is a justification war on a page that is even supposed to have justifications; it would be a headache to read even without the spoiler tags. If the justification is completely correct, then the whole block should be deleted; if there is any real doubt, everything but the initial Wallbanger should go (this is a Subjective Trope).
