I've got "Beast with a Billion Backs"

[Reply #280 on:]

 

Originally posted by hobbitboy:
How were the robot pirates able to aim their harpoons at Yivo when they couldn't see through the void, let alone pass through it?

Schkee's the size of a very large planet and was rather close to the portal. I think it would take more effort to miss schklim than to get a hit.

[Reply #281 on:]

Oh yeah? If skle's such a massive planet-like object then how are a couple of human-scale robots operating a manually powered winch [are] able to reel skler in to a vessel floating in space?

I mean, what are we to believe, that this is some sort of a magic winch or something?

[Edit: Replaced 'c' with 'k' in a sklouple of places.]

[Reply #282 on:]

 

Originally posted by hobbitboy:
How were the robot pirates able to aim their harpoons at Yivo when they couldn't see through the void, let alone pass through it?

Originally posted by hobbitboy:
Oh yeah? If skle's such a massive planet-like object then how are a couple of human-scale robots operating a manually powered winch able to reel skler in to a vessel floating in space?

I mean, what are we to believe, that this is some sort of a magic winch or something?

You've never heard of artistic license? 
My artistic license was suspended... 
 

[Reply #283 on:]

 

Originally posted by hobbitboy:
Oh yeah? If skle's such a massive planet-like object then how are a couple of human-scale robots operating a manually powered winch able to reel skler in to a vessel floating in space?

I mean, what are we to believe, that this is some sort of a magic winch or something?

[Edit: Replaced 'c' with 'k' in a sklouple of places.]

For one, they're robots, and have far greater strength capacity than humans. For two, Yivo is in space, so they're not technically fighting any real gravitational pull, making it exponentially easier to move shklim.

[Reply #284 on:]

I was just about to say those same things. Well done A_B.

[Reply #285 on:]

 

Originally posted by Anarchy_Balsac:
 For one, they're robots, and have far greater strength capacity than humans.

So? I don't recall claiming that the distance between them wouldn't decrease.

For two, Yivo is in space

  So is the pirate ship!

so they're not technically fighting any real gravitational pull, making it exponentially easier to move shklim.

Gravity aside, the tension on the ropes imparts a force to the objects at each end of the ropes. This force generates momentum, causing both objects to move toward each other (because, as you rightly point out, space is essentially frictionless). Momemtum = speed x mass. Hence

Speed(Y) x Mass(Y) = Speed(PS) x Mass(PS)

rearranging

Speed(Y) = Speed(PS) x [Mass(PS) / Mass(Y)]

Lets say Yivo has the same mass as Pluto (that doesn't even qualify as a planet these days, even the Moon is five times 'heaver') ie 1 x 10^22 kg. Lets say the Pirate Ship has the same mass as the Titanic (the 1912AD version) approximately 5 x 10^7 kg. And the robot-operated winch is pulling the two with enough force to get the Pirate Ship moving (towards Yivo) at 10 mph.

The speed that Yivo would be moving at is thus: Speed(Y)
= 10 mph x [5 x 10^7 / 1 x 10^22]
= 10 mph / 200,000,000,000,000
= 0.00000000000005 mph

Yivo is now drifting towards the Pirate Ship at a rate that would take him 36,000 years to travel one inch! (In the same amount of time the Pirate Ship would have travelled over three billion miles.) Who is being 'reeled in' to whom?

With no friction, speed resulting from attractive forces comes down to a battle of mass. If Yivo is (to quote a recent post) "the size of a very large planet" the only effect the winch would have is to pull the Pirate Ship toward Yivo.

[Sorry for not being clearer in my previous post.    ]

[Reply #286 on:]

 

Originally posted by hobbitboy:
So? I don't recall claiming that the distance between them wouldn't decrease.

So your point is nullified until you can prove that robots would not have sufficient strength to move shklim.

 

Originally posted by hobbitboy:So is the pirate ship

So? That doesn't effect what I said. The point was about The ease with which they could move Yivo, which whether or not he was effected by a gravitational source would be a significant factor. Whether or not the pirate ship is in space is irrelevant.

 

Gravity aside, the tension on the ropes imparts a force to the objects at each end of the ropes. This force generates momentum, causing both objects to move toward each other (because, as you rightly point out, space is essentially frictionless). Momemtum = speed x mass. Hence

Speed(Y) x Mass(Y) = Speed(PS) x Mass(PS)

rearranging

Speed(Y) = Speed(PS) x [Mass(PS) / Mass(Y)]

Lets say Yivo has the same mass as Pluto (that doesn't even qualify as a planet these days, even the Moon is five times 'heaver') ie 1 x 10^22 kg. Lets say the Pirate Ship has the same mass as the Titanic (the 1912AD version) approximately 5 x 10^7 kg. And the robot-operated winch is pulling the two with enough force to get the Pirate Ship moving (towards Yivo) at 10 mph.

The speed that Yivo would be moving at is thus: Speed(Y)
= 10 mph x [5 x 10^7 / 1 x 10^22]
= 10 mph / 200,000,000,000,000
= 0.00000000000005 mph

Yivo is now drifting towards the Pirate Ship at a rate that would take him 36,000 years to travel one inch! (In the same amount of time the Pirate Ship would have travelled over three billion miles.) Who is being 'reeled in' to whom?

With no friction, speed resulting from attractive forces comes down to a battle of mass. If Yivo is (to quote a recent post) "the size of a very large planet" the only effect the winch would have is to pull the Pirate Ship toward Yivo.

[Sorry for not being clearer in my previous post.    ]

Some things you missed though:

1. There wasn't "one" wench, but rather one per cable.

2. There is still the matter that we don't know the strength at which the robots would pull(technically push actually).

3. You only factored in the mass of the pirate ship, not the robots.

4. Electromatter doesn't behave like regular matter. It may be that electro matter is made entirely of electrons, making it so that more mass is actually equivalent to far less regular mass.

[Reply #287 on:]

@hobbitboy:

Remember, just because Yivo is the size of a planet, that doesnt necessarily mean that he has the density of a planet.  Yivo seemed to be made of something like a giant ball of cotton, with the notable exception of a giant, beaked mouth of course.  And who knows what the laws of physics are in shkler own universe?  Shklee might only mass as much as a bowling ball (in Universe A terms) for all we know.  Also, although your math is correct, it assumes that the pirate ship has no means of station keeping.  The thing has engines to counteract the tension on the cables. 

[Reply #288 on:]

 

Originally posted by hobbitboy:

Lets say Yivo has the same mass as Pluto (that doesn't even qualify as a planet these days, even the Moon is five times 'heaver') ie 1 x 10^22 kg.

Wait... Yivo has mass? I didn't even know shklee was Catholic!

[Reply #289 on:]

Okay, if I stick a barbed point attached to a line into your flesh I seriously doubt that you would resist the pull on the line for long due to the pain.  Yivo was clearly able to move under his own power.  Shklee obviously was able to feel pleasure inversesly, shlee should also feel pain.  I don't think the pirates pulled shklim as much as they forced shklim to come to them.  This negates the entire mass and force argument.  So far as it goes, did the pirate ship use the same powerplant as Planet Express Ship?  If so then the pirates simply moved the universe.
P.S. Anarchy, it doesn't matter how many wenches were on the pirate ship,  the lines were reeled in by winches. 

[Reply #290 on:]

LOL, well I guess I've got a bit of a nasty mind there, eh?

[Reply #291 on:]

 

Originally posted by Xanfor:
 Wait... Yivo has mass? I didn't even know shklee was Catholic!

Classic Xanfor.

 

Originally posted by Anarchy_Balsac:
LOL, well I guess I've got a bit of a nasty mind there, eh?

Ha nice catch there. 

[Reply #292 on:]

Screw all the nay-sayers, I loved it.

This.

[Reply #293 on:]

I seen this episode on tv a few weeks ago. I thought it was really good. It was the first episode I seen in about a year. I seen part of BBS too. Though, I liked Beat with a Billion Backs better.

[Reply #294 on:]

The second best of the DVD movies. It was funny, and was on a pretty good role in the first and second acts. But as soon as Yivo came. the movie kind of fell down a downwards slope. The story just got stupid after then. I will admit, I laughed alot while watching this one though.

7/10

[Reply #295 on:]

I love this one.  It's probably my favorite of the movies, the story's funny and it makes good use of all of the characters in the show.  I really like the Scruffy deleted scene from the DVD.     9/10

[Reply #296 on:]

I just watched The Beast With A Billion Backs for the first time in a few years. This is probably the movie that I remembered the least. I had forgotten about a few parts of the story and mostly remembered the Colleen and Shivo story arcs -- which were on the weirder side of things, imo. As such, I tend to remember this as being my least favorite among the movies. There was a lot of great jokes throughout, and the animation was a treat to watch. It was much better than I had remembered.

[Reply #297 on:]

I thought it was the best movie.  I should go watch it.

[Reply #298 on:]

Though I have many, many qualms with how this movie completely disregards the developments of Bender's Big Score, what with its heinous abuse of the reset button in terms of Fry and Leela's relationship (like, why even did Lars have to be a thing, writers--was it just to create your stupid rift in space-time or whatever so some pervert alien could break on through?), I do think it is a.) the most visually-striking and well-animated of the movies and b.) the funniest (MY LEG FEELS FUNNY!).

I prefer Into the Wild Green Yonder overall, but there's certainly something to be said for the madcap energy of TBWaBB. In particular, I really, really love the Zapp-Leela-Amy stuff about two-thirds of the way through. Slipshod characterization of Fry (and, to a lesser extent, Leela) aside, it's a fun 'n' breezy 90 minutes.

[Reply #299 on:]

I hated Lars stealing Fry's girl.  Dude was old enough to be my dad.  Other than that BBS was alright.  Except the name wasn't that good.

BwaBB has a cool name and it's a fun episode in its own right.  I really treat it more as a standalone really, that way I don't have to worry about the mechanics of continuity.

[Reply #300 on:]

I thought it was the best movie.  I should go watch it.

Yeah, continuity is my biggest qualm here. Every time I watch the movies, I am also thrown off by how the Fry-Leela-Lars story arc is basically ignored right away. Wouldn't Fry's natural response (especially as a highly impulsive person) at learning that he is Lars be to more forcefully pursue Leela? And yet, at the start of TBWABB (which only takes place a month following the end of BBS), Fry is already with Colleen, and Leela is advising him to further pursue that relationship.

[Reply #301 on:]

My thoughts exactly. And then Leela turns it around on Fry at the end of the movie ("You forgot me quick enough when you met Colleen"), rendering her initial, seeming okay-ness with the relationship perhaps the most phenomenal show of passive-aggression in the history of the series. Leela's my favorite character, hands down, but I do so despise when the writers resort to the Finicky Woman stereotype to manufacture conflict and prolong the inevitable Fry/Leela hookup.

That said, the movie does provide a built-in rationalization for all its Fry/Leela fuckery: at the very end, when they're fighting like the other established couples (Kif/Amy and, uh, Farnsworth/Wernstrom?), the takeaway seems to be that they are two people who care deeply for each other but have both made poor choices that keep them from ultimately coming together. Taking it a step further: in a very generous, between-the-lines reading of things, the events of the second movie actually set up one of the main conflicts of the fourth--namely, that Leela can't quite trust Fry. And Fry's pursuing Colleen instead of waiting Leela out after the oh-shit-I-am-Lars-and-Lars-is-me revelation of BBS is probably what knocked his credibility down a few notches in Leela's eyes in the first place.

Yeah, I know it's a stretch. The simpler explanation is just that the writers saw these four movies as distinct entities and didn't give much thought to an overall arc--but this interpretation makes me feel a little better about things, so...

[Reply #302 on:]

Or that Leela really is the stereotype she is portrayed as.

I don't know about any of the other fellas out there, but the moment my hot romantic interest dates some dude the age of my dad, who also turns out to be a time duplicate of me, I also go out and look for me a Colleen.

[Reply #303 on:]

Winna, that is somewhat unusual, but not vanishingly uncommon. And you just reminded me of a friend... whose wife left him after many years of ostensibly happy marriage... for his dad. Yes, she divorced him and married his dad. That's pretty tough.

The world is not a boring place.

[Reply #304 on:]

Or that Leela really is the stereotype she is portrayed as.

Ah, but isn't that a cop-out--especially for a show that seems to desire, at least occasionally, to upend or otherwise transcend the stereotypes of its science-fiction milieu (such as The Everyman Protagonist (Fry) and the Hot Alien Mutant Babe (Leela))?

Or, put another way: there are enough instances in the series of Leela reacting to situations in a nuanced, non-stereotypical way that I prefer to think of her more egregiously one-dimensional/cliched/trope-y reactions as mistakes, exceptions to the rule of well-drawn characterization.

In fact, what little we see of Leela's reaction to the Lars-is-Fry revelation at the end of BBS--which basically amounts to the shocked look she gives Fry upon glimpsing the tattoo on Lars's butt and her "Yeah, you were" response to Fry calling Lars a good man at the funeral--is pretty complex. She's mourning a man she loved who is fundamentally Fry but also fundamentally not Fry, and of course she has to sort that shit out (even if it happens off-screen); no right-thinking person, even one whose mind is a bit addled by the trauma of losing a loved one, is immediately going to "settle" for the original upon whom the beloved copy was based. I daresay falling immediately into Fry's arms at the end of BBS might've made Leela seem fickle, cold, and irrational--stereotypically "female," in other words.

So I applaud the handling of her emotional life in BBS while thinking the writers dropped the ball--or at least missed an opportunity to eschew cliche and try for genuine pathos--in the second movie. Leela is a flawed character by design, and that's fine...but the writers' handling of those flaws is sometimes, likewise, flawed--and I'm less forgiving of that. (That's a fickle, cold, irrational woman for ya! )

[Reply #305 on:]

Those are fair points.  I would further suggest that the true complicated nature of people juggling relationships is also well represented in BwaBB.

For myself, I was once in a predicament where I had three individuals with which to seek romantic affection.  It took me awhile to logically make my decision in that regard, and once I did, I followed through on that to the full extent that I could.  In that way, Fry's relationship with Colleen in BwaBB seems plausible and organic to me.  And by the time the movies finished, it also seemed natural that Fry and Leela finally became a couple.  In fact, that relationship seemed to me one of the more refreshing, and natural conclusions I've seen on TV.  Refreshing because it eliminated the unnecessary push/pull of sexual tension most tv shows typically portray.

[Reply #306 on:]

What a humblebrag

[Reply #307 on:]

Aww, if you knew winna you'd know that he was simply being matter-of-fact—he doesn't have a gram of braggadocio in his body.

Leela is a flawed character by design, and that's fine...but the writers' handling of those flaws is sometimes, likewise, flawed--and I'm less forgiving of that.

Regarding the Lars -> Fry transition of her interest you mentioned—for some reason, the sense of it reminds me of her mostly unquestioning reaction to Fry's incredible transformation in Parasites Lost. Her astonishment was transient, after which he swept her completely off her feet.

[Reply #308 on:]

Oh, "Parasites Lost" is a big offender in the department of "Leela's Motives, As They Are Portrayed Here, Make Her Seem Like a Shallow, Selfish Wench." Like, I can totally understand why Leela would lose interest in Fry once he reverts back to his pre-worm self--she wants to be with someone who can express the depths of his affection for her in robust, artful ways, which is a perfectly valid way to prefer that love be expressed to you--but the end of the episode sort of frames Fry as the victim of Leela's shallow selfishness, which I don't like. That move has the dual, and contradictory, effect of 1.) making Fry an extremely sympathetic character with a clear goal the audience can root for him to achieve--and, 2.) making Leela seem like she's not really worth the effort in the first place.

I'm laying it on a bit thick here, but I so wish that episode had portrayed Leela's own conflict in a more nuanced fashion. Like, she clearly operates under the idea that love is only legitimate if it can be expressed in quantifiable, tangible, or otherwise visible ways; ergo, if Fry cannot properly verbalize or act upon his love for her, that love must not be genuine. This is obviously flawed thinking, but it's understandably flawed thinking, when you take into account Leela's upbringing--and, in a way, that's the whole problem.

I think the show sometimes coasts on the trope of Li'l Orphan Leela, the girl who never knew love and was actively tormented by her peers, but it takes for granted that viewers will infer from her present-day interactions with Fry (and any other man who fulfills the role of lover interest) that this is her own Childhood Trauma^TM rearing its ugly head to sabotage her present-day happiness. And I'd generally be fine with a show offloading that interpretive work on its viewers instead of being more explicit about why characters are behaving the way they're behaving--but, like, Futurama in general is not a show that asks us to do a lot of reading between the lines. It so often wears its creative heart on its sleeve, lays all its emotional cards on the table--except when it comes to Leela, to the point where I wonder if her character might have gotten a fairer shake if there had been more women in the writer's room...but that is another discussion for another day.

Anyway: I think the perfect counterpoint to "Parasites Lost" is actually "The Sting," which is hands-down the best Leela-centric episode of the series (and, you know, the best episode of the series, period). That's an episode that does a very smart thing, formally, to demonstrate the nuances of Leela's emotional state. The expressed reason for her descent into madness is guilt over having killed her friend Fry; however, the nature of her various dreams-within-a-dream ("I've never been treated so romantically by my own imagination before!") and the manner in which she responds to those things ("The only time I feel all right is in my dreams, with you") bespeak a deeper grief over having lost a person for whom she holds deep affection.

She is receptive to all the romantic things Fry is parrot-of-the-seaing at her, and she actively seeks out those gestures of love by going so far as considering living forever in her Fry-filled dreams. By exploring that interplay between Fry's own narrativizing at the comatose Leela and the manner in which her subconscious transmutes that jabber, we can infer that Leela might actually be pretty fucking in love with Fry, or at least fonder/more dependent on the guy than she'd like to admit. It's just...god. I know every episode can't be that brilliant, but "The Sting" is just a master class in how to write a conflicted, compelling, complex female character in crisis. That there is how it's done, kiddos.