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Things that went over your head...

Started by ming, 09 January, 2012, 11:00:01 AM

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Jacqusie

I know this has been mooted before, but at the time I never thought of it.

When Johnny Alpha got killed by the big flying thingy - why did no-one use the old time bomb or such device to sort the situation. I know it wasn't as simple as that, but time tricks have been used all over the early SD stories...

Still we have a reanimated Johnny now, which still feels rather ... odd

TordelBack

#886
No-one had any equipment in the Lyran dimension - other than a skateboard and Johnny's last scraps - so it would probably have to have used the Doghouse time machine, which was destroyed. Based on later events, a carefully-set timebomb should get you there, but you have the problem of how to programme co-ordinates for a mystical dimension - and the paradoxical issues of taking a trip to prevent a death which caused your trip. Note that all Johnny's timejobs are by way of retributive justice or fixing a problem caused by time travel, never prevention of an event that has already occurred.

Plus the Moses Incident sets a precedent for not using t-weapins to undo a death.

positronic

There's a scene in one of the stories where Johnny talks about how expensive those Time Bombs are -- just ONE of them would be far more expensive than an average bounty he could collect, so he can really only afford them when the bounty he's after is a huge payday for him, and he's already got the scratch to invest in equipment. You get the impression he's only got them with him for special high-paying tricky jobs.

A.Cow

Quote from: positronic on 27 May, 2017, 03:56:37 PM
There's a scene in one of the stories where Johnny talks about how expensive those Time Bombs are

I suspect that's storywriting logic to avoid an easy get-out.  (C.f. Dr Who sonic screwdriver vs. deadlock seal, Star Trek transporter malfunction)

Steve Green

Mork Whisperer - they come in at 300K creds a pop - earlier on Johnny chucked them around fairly freely but it made sense to make them expensive (Mork Whisperer), risky (Blood Moon), or illegal (Life and Death)

How they're used in Blood Moon doesn't really make much sense in the way they're traditionally used - Johnny manages to use it to travel interplanetary distances to a specific time, and back again.

The magic dimension thing could have been explained away - they have d-warp technology after all.

But it's too easy to just hand wave away death with no repercussions. In Life and Death, Feral paid a price and Johnny wasn't exactly undamaged by his revival.

Steve Green

Quote from: TordelBack on 27 May, 2017, 03:26:52 PM
No-one had any equipment in the Lyran dimension - other than a skateboard and Johnny's last scraps - so it would probably have to have used the Doghouse time machine, which was destroyed. Based on later events, a carefully-set timebomb should get you there, but you have the problem of how to programme co-ordinates for a mystical dimension - and the paradoxical issues of taking a trip to prevent a death which caused your trip. Note that all Johnny's timejobs are by way of retributive justice or fixing a problem caused by time travel, never prevention of an event that has already occurred.

Plus the Moses Incident sets a precedent for not using t-weapins to undo a death.

Yeah, the whole Schicklegruber Grab is not based around stopping Hitler but to bring him to justice when it won't affect the timeline.

I don't think it's made explicitly clear how the time drogues work, he's brought people back temporarily but switched it off again after he's got the info.

Or a dead guy's fate doesn't change, it's just postponed.

We tweaked it for the fan film, a drogue is just a localised (and temporary) reversal - which eventually collapses.

Technically someone could time bomb back to Stonehenge and stop the whole thing, but then you end up with a Max Bubba/Ragnarok situation.

Or even go back to Moondog Mountain and stop Bubba, and have similar repercussions on the future.

A price must be paid.

TordelBack

Quote from: Steve Green on 27 May, 2017, 06:44:53 PM
The magic dimension thing could have been explained away - they have d-warp technology after all.

Sure, but presumably all the effort that Sagan and the Lyrans went to with Malak Brood's bones and Stonehenge was to ensure a one-way trip.  If you could just use a D-jump in and out, technology available to the Stronts, that was an awful lot of bother.  And on the subject of Malak Brood, it was obvious that Johnny would have done anything to bring Moses back, and yet he had to resort to wizardry: just as Precious and Middenface did.  So I'd judge changing the past to bring someone back from the dead is a no-no in SD universe.

Steve Green

Yeah, in Blood Moon he says 'time could fold in on itself'

Although Max Bubba did an awful lot more than just saving one person.

Doesn't really explain the nebulous nature of the time drogue in the strip though.

In the first case Johnny actively switches it off, the second the guy playing cards is shot a second time.

I guess the drogue is a temporary (and safer) solution, it just postpones things, doesn't change the future permanently?

positronic

Quote from: Steve Green on 27 May, 2017, 06:44:53 PM
The magic dimension thing could have been explained away - they have d-warp technology after all.

But it's too easy to just hand wave away death with no repercussions. In Life and Death, Feral paid a price and Johnny wasn't exactly undamaged by his revival.

Speaking of magic dimensions and "Get Out of Death FREE" passes, that's pretty much happened on Johnny's earlier Journey To Hell. I guess if you're trapped in a hellish other dimension where the plain-old nonexistence that follows real death might seem highly preferable, you might start being a lot more cautious with using both d-jump and t-jump technology afterwards, because you just never know where you might wind up. After escaping that place you might breath a sigh of relief and reflect that it was better than having died the real death that the panic-button d-warping avoided, but that's because you wound up escaping. While you were trapped there in that dimension at the time it sure mightn't have seemed like the better alternative, though.

Steve Green

I think there's some interesting stuff that hasn't been done with the time weaponry yet (at least as far as I know)

I was expecting Johnny to use it to transport a bomb in Dogs of War, a bomb within a bomb.

A more vicious stront could use a drogue to have someone straddled between life and death, rocking the device forwards and backwards.

Johnny's first use of it is 'talk or I'll make you die a thousand times' but he's not that vindictive.

Stix with a time drogue however...

Lobo Baggins

Quote from: Steve Green on 27 May, 2017, 07:26:08 PM
A more vicious stront could use a drogue to have someone straddled between life and death, rocking the device forwards and backwards.

That's pretty much what a Time Trap does - I suppose it would depend if the targets were aware they were trapped in a loop, though (it's never explicitly stated one way or the other, but Kreelman appears to recall being trapped in Outlaw.)
The wages of sin are death, but the hours are good and the perks are fantastic.

Steve Green

I was thinking more working like a vcr, where the operator could really pause someone in agony at the worse possible moment.

The time-trap is a bit of a weird one - originally it talked about them repeating until they starve to death but Kreelman was trapped for 2 years.

Jacqusie

Quote from: Steve Green on 27 May, 2017, 06:52:15 PM
Quote from: TordelBack on 27 May, 2017, 03:26:52 PM
No-one had any equipment in the Lyran dimension - other than a skateboard and Johnny's last scraps - so it would probably have to have used the Doghouse time machine, which was destroyed. Based on later events, a carefully-set timebomb should get you there, but you have the problem of how to programme co-ordinates for a mystical dimension - and the paradoxical issues of taking a trip to prevent a death which caused your trip. Note that all Johnny's timejobs are by way of retributive justice or fixing a problem caused by time travel, never prevention of an event that has already occurred.

Plus the Moses Incident sets a precedent for not using t-weapins to undo a death.

Yeah, the whole Schicklegruber Grab is not based around stopping Hitler but to bring him to justice when it won't affect the timeline.

A price must be paid.


This is more complicated than I first thought. I'm just reading the Schicklegruber Grab and pondering at the 'time room' with interest. It asks more questions than there are answers about how the Strontuim Dogs use the whole time flux. Alpha keeps popping up in Dredd and vice versa, but which version of Alpha?

I still find it hard to read the current SD stories with the resurrected Johnny, part of me thinks it would be better off if we kept the flashback tales with Wulf (He's very much missed as a partner and the film brings this home).

Johnny's new life needs a bit more time and strong stories I'm hoping and dare I say this, a new Artist such as Chris Weston who has always said he would like a go, might bring something new to the franchise for a spell to give Carlos a run on Dredd.

A price must be paid indeed...  :think:

Steve Green

I'm not sure it's that complicated?

Alpha's visits to MC-1 shift with Dredd, so in Top Dogs Wulf is alive, Judgement Day is later in both Dredd and Alpha's respective timelines (Wulf Dead), and By Private Contract it's later still with the post resurrection Alpha Gang.

I really enjoyed the untold tales - The Ragnarok Job and Rage were great and everything, but losing Wulf left a big viking shaped hole to fill.

Middenface worked well as a replacement in the Rammy, but yeah I really miss the big guy.

I wouldn't mind seeing him brought back for a story, in some temporary alt dimension version just to have him bickering with that shitlord Kid Knee Jr.

CalHab

Listening to the Mega-City One Book Club podcast, I suddenly realised Kid Knee is a pun, not just a wild-west themed nickname based on his mutation. I don't know how I missed that.