2686: Space Adventure

|< < Prev Comic #2686 (October 17, 2022) Next > >|

Space Adventure

Title text: "Sir, it looked really cool." "Oh no--prestige TV. Okay, which of you has a terrible secret that's being slowly revealed to the audience through flashbacks? Just spit it out so we can escape this arc!"

Explanation

This explanation may be incomplete or incorrect: Created by a BUNCH OF WEALTHY PRODUCERS - Please change this comment when editing this page. Do NOT delete this tag too soon. If you can address this issue, please edit the page! Thanks.

Transcript

This transcript is incomplete. Please help editing it! Thanks.

[Against a black background, a white spaceship travels toward a space object, identified as a black hole. Two characters speak from within the spaceship.]

Ship officer: Sir, the enemy ship is closing in!

Captain: Helm, head for the black hole.

Captain: On my mark, fire torpedoes, phasers, and all our other weapons at different points around the event horizon.

Captain: Let's see what kind of budget these showrunners have.

[Caption below the panel:]

If I ever find myself in a space adventure, I'll assume I'm a fictional character and try to probe the studio's financial constraints.

 add a comment! ⋅  add a topic (use sparingly)! ⋅  refresh comments!

Discussion

Is “escape this arc” a pun on the craft’s course, or is that just me? Miamiclay (talk) 05:54, 18 October 2022 (UTC)

When I read the explanation (just before going to bed) it referred to the “Golden Age of Television” which confused me, because I always knew that phrase to refer to the period from the late 40’s to 1960 or so, ie, the era before the “Network Era.” This morning I did a little research and I see that the period from around 2000 to the present is now commonly referred to as simply the “Golden Age of Television” though some will prepend the adjective “New” or “Second” or even “Third.” The revised explanation, with its emphasis on the term “Prestige TV” seems much better, especially since that’s the phrase used in the hover text. John (talk) 11:12, 18 October 2022 (UTC)

This seems to reference the finale of She Hulk (spoiler alert) where she escapes into one of the MCU "making of" shows, and argues with K.E.V.I.N - whilst arguing with her K.E.V.I.N asks her to change back to normal "off camera", because "it's cheaper". 172.70.162.77 12:29, 18 October 2022 (UTC)

Isn't this a reference to Star Trek: Strange New Worlds S1E4? In that episode there was a black hole that they went right next to and it also included the shuttle Galileo. However, the Galileo doesn't fire at the black hole so probably not. Just some thoughts. 172.70.143.50 12:16, 19 October 2022 (UTC)

It's a generic mashup. I'd add in the whole starting-premise/series-opener for Andromeda (also a Roddenbury thing), in terms of (pre-wallbreaking)nconcept, even if not visuals (TOS-style vessel, Interstellar-style swirly-sucky thing). I'm not sure there's likely any direct and deliberate reference to any particular episode of anything. BICBW. 172.70.85.157 18:42, 19 October 2022 (UTC)

Also the premise for Farscape, where pulling a particular manouevre induces a black hole that drags the character to a whole different part of the universe, and much of the series subsequently revolves around studying and attempting to reproduce the physics of black holes for intergalactic travel. 172.70.91.54 08:23, 20 October 2022 (UTC)

Hm. Possible, but that episode had the exact same visualization of a black hole. It's probably just a small reference to that but not everything. 162.158.163.212 02:31, 20 October 2022 (UTC)

There's a dangerous amount of tvtropes links here. Despite the warnings, I still got sucked in (pun intended) at work yesterday, and lost like an hour of productivity. Not saying we should remove them, just mentioning it as a warning for anyone who has already opened some tabs, and is reading these comments before """"quickly"""" checking those pages. 172.71.98.97 07:08, 20 October 2022 (UTC)

The "showrunners" could also refer to the "reality is a simulation" hypothesis (so basically, Randall may be attempting to crash the simulation to escape his captors). I have no idea where to put this in the explanation, though.--FrankHightower (talk) 18:35, 20 October 2022 (UTC)

Anyone else see the mouse over text and immediately think of Star Trek Picard Season 2? 172.71.151.26 18:48, 23 October 2022 (UTC)

This is an example of a case where I oppose Randall's oft-used principles:

• The use of the ", and" in "On my mark, fire torpedoes, phasers, and all our other weapons at different points around the event horizon." creates confusion (Oxford be damned). The commas are 'clausal, list, oxford', but can be read (to generate confusion) as 'clausal, list (conjunctionless), clausal'.
• "On my mark, fire torpedoes, phasers and all our other weapons at different points around the event horizon." works sufficiently. That's 'clausal, list', with any list-comma being a conjunction replacer (but you don't have cause to replace or augment the last remaining conjunction).
• Alternatively, "On my mark, fire torpedoes, phasers, and all our other weapons, at different points around the event horizon." has some limited validity. It would be 'clausal, list (conjunctionless), clausal (start), clausal (end)'. Though with stilted grammar/implied conjunction.

Obviously, it's reported speech, so intonation can only be implied. But the OC doesn't even do a good job in that respect. (The stenographer's art is better tuned to picking up verbal breath-takings, etc, than clumsy English punctuation and a malformed style-'rule'.) 108.162.237.44 09:00, 18 September 2024 (UTC)