Heroes season 1 thread (1 Viewer)

[TheLongshot]

Personally, I think it was a solid opening. Mostly, just establishing characters.

To be honest, I think most pilots suck, so having this being somewhat underwhelming to some people doesn't bother me.

I'm going to be interested to see how this all links together. We'll also see how this differs from The 4400, which is a similar concept.

Jason

 

[Holadem]

It was weird to see teleportation done without any audio/visual flourishes.

[geek]
Since the teleportation appears to be as instantaneous as it gets, at the very least, there should be some noise from the air rushing in the suddenly empty space. To be fair, the camera never did linger at the origin after the dissapearance. Similarly, a shockwave similar to a small explosion should occur at the destination, from the sudden compression of the air in the viscinity of the arriving body. It is curious that fantasy work like Harry Potter should be more realistic in this regard than a Sci-Fi show, as there is a loud "pop" when people "apparate" and "disaparate" in the books. Of course, realism was probably the last thing from Rowlings mind, far below the need to create a recognizeable signature for this activity.
[/geek]

All that to say, instantaneous silent teleportation is something of a departure from convention (the science is just me having fun, I don't expect them to go to such lenghts), and well... a bit weird.

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H

 

[Holadem]

More geekspeak: If anything, the these elements could be used to introduce limits or undesireable side effects to the character's abilities: The near-instantaneous increase following an appearance in a close space like a room should at least blow the windows out, and perhaps worse depending of the size of the room and proximity of anyone around, not to mention any effect on the guy himself (again, for all intents and purposes, it's an explosion). Similarly, dissapearing from such a space, like that subway car would cause an implosion.

Limits such as these are (among other things like secret ID) the conerstone of any superhero drama.

Anyway, let's see what they come up with. Me done.

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H

 

[Doug Schiller]

Oh, I can buy that a "radioactive spider" gives someone spider like powers.
And that getting hit with gamma rays, increases strength, etc.
Even though it was a comic book, I could follow the origin and suspend my disbelief.

But the teleportation thing had none of that.
Do you think Stan Lee could have gotten away with Peter Parker getting his powers just by staring at a spider long enough???

The perfect corollary is the guy in X-Men who teleports (NightStalker?). He can teleport short distances and through certain objects but he has to be careful he know where he is going to teleport to, etc.
I don't think someone can hand him a picture of the Grand Canyon and he just blinks and he is there.

And yes, I am way overthinking it, but its fun. And the show was the one that was trying to say they are the next step in "evolution".

 

[Greg_S_H]

Nightcrawler. I think Hiro was my favorite of the bunch. I liked his X-Men reference and the feeling of joy he has. I thought his segments were funny.


I didn't take that as him giving himself powers at that point. I thought he knew he had the ability and was trying to learn how to use it. Kind of like the other guy "knowing" he could fly and trying to find ways to bring it out.

By the way, my DVR started fritizing at the very end. Are we to take it that the one brother didn't have any powers at all, and it was the candidate brother who flew and saved him from accidentally killing himself?

 

[Everlasting Gobstopper]

Not sure if the sudden change in pressure would be that catastrophic. Yes, there would be some force exterted all around him (air being forced out at the destination or sucked in at the point of deaparture), but relatively speaking a man wouldn't have a lot of volume as compared to the space he's occupying, and air is very compressible. Even if the room were airtight, it would have to be pretty weak not to be able to withstand the pressure change. Now, if he teleported into water or something that was resistant to such compression, that would be another story.

 

[Holadem]

That's the question Greg. Perhaps young bro's power is er... prescient dreams? That would be redundant with the painter's.

--
H

 

[Inspector Hammer!]

I'd actually would like to see some of these side effects, like the blowing out of windows and the effect of it on people near him, that would at least make his teleporting interesting.

As it stands it was boring.

 

[Holadem]

Now in this scenario, I would expect our traveller to be turned into teleportation's equivalent of a roadkill. Water is not compressible, but the human body is.

--
H

 

[Everlasting Gobstopper]

Sure, if you want to get that technical, if the change in pressure were instantaneous, or near instantaneous, then time as a factor in your equation would equal 0, or be near to 0. The force exerted by the change in pressure would be astronomical, and blast through everything in its path. It would also flay the person alive, creating such a huge amount of friction that their skin would be ripped off. But then again, it's only a TV show.

 

[Patrick Sun]

Fine, suck the fun out of the show. sheesh!

 

[Ken Chan]

Japanese initially adopted Chinese characters as kanji which (usually) represent whole words; then they developed two syllable-based scripts, katakana and hirigana

 

[Everlasting Gobstopper]

Lol. Sorry Patrick. As I said, it's just a TV show.

 

[Patrick Sun]

Most of the problems go away if you give Hiro the "Bamf!" sound effect when he teleports. Haha!

 

[Everlasting Gobstopper]

I'd prefer if it had a "BAMF!" title card a la Batman. That would save on their effects budget.

 

[Joseph DeMartino]

I recorded this on the HD-DVR and sat down to watch it last night. That's when I found out that the trained gerbils in charge of HDTV down at my local NBC affliliate had completely bolixed up the Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround Sound. I got all of the sound effects and most of the music with startling clarity, but not one word of the dialogue. The same thing happened with our CBS affiliate early in last season but (a) I was watching live so I could switch to the standard def feed and at least hear what I was watching and (b) they had people who knew what they were doing. (I called the station while the show was in progress and talked to one of the engineers who diagnose the problem as a bad amp while we were on the phone.)

I should note that with my set-up using component video cables and digital audio cables from the DVD players and DVR to the receiver, then another set of component cables to the TV, the closed-captioning information is not passed to the TV.

No such luck with WPTV when I called them this afternoon to find out what had happened and if NBC were planning an encore of the episode. (When I asked the receptionist about the encore broadcast she seemed never to have heard of the concept. Then she suggested I call Bravo, as they would probably have the rights to that kind of rerun.)

Next she transferred me to an engineer. This was the approximate conversation:

Me: Hey guys. I just wanted to find out if you had figured out what went wrong with Heroes and if the problem was fixed.

1st Engineer: Well, we're still working on it. What did you hear at home?

Me: Just music and sound effects. Didn't get any of the dialogue, the center channel was mute.

1st Engineer: The show had some pretty good music, didn't it?

Me: Yeah. But I really couldn't follow the plot without the dialogue.

1st Engineer: Right. Well, it was really strange. It was almost like the music and the dialogue were on separate channels.

Me: Er, they are on separate channels. That's how Dolby Digital works. There are five completely isolated channels, and the .1 for low frequency stuff. Usually the music and FX tracks play on the left and right front speakers and the surround speakers, while the dialogue comes through the center channel unless someone moves across the sound field from left to right or a voice is supposed to come from "behind" the viewer.

1st Engineer: Really? You should talk to Dave. He's working on the problem, hold on.

I swear I'm not making any of this up. Dave proved to have a little more of a clue, he still couldn't figure out any way to test and adjust the 5.1 equipment except by working with a live feed that was in 5.1 coming in from the network and going out live over the air while he was tinkering. I think he's going to take another shot at it tonight during Conan O'Brien on the theory he'll piss fewer people off than in prime time.

Dave's quote of the year:

"That was a pilot? I didn't know. I don't watch much TV and I never watch this station."



It was sort of amusing to see Luke's nephew Jess from Gilmore Girls as one of the heroes. One more reason to root for this show. It will keep the actor too busy to make too many visits to Star's Hollow. I never thought Jess was good enough for Rory.

Regards,

Joe

 

[Malcolm R]

I'd have preferred a second season of Surface.

 

[Joseph DeMartino]

Right. Because, as we all know, the whole problem with teleportation in its various forms is the rate of increase in air pressure as expressed in the formula dP/dt - not that messy "mass being converted into energy and back" issue expressed in the formula E=MC2.

If we want to be "realistic" wouldn't the kid's real problem be dying and leveling whatever city he happened to be in the first time he tried this stunt? 'Cause if we're willing to let that howler slide, I dont' see how we can geek out on the air pressure thing and still keep a straight face.

Regards,

Joe

 

[Don S]

I thought it was great. I can't wait until the next episode. The Japanese dude to his friend (getting pulled back to his cube by his boss) ..."Use the death grip!" Hilarious.

Not sure why every detail has to be scrutinized so much. I thought it was well paced, intersting and funny at times.

 

[Steve Berger]

The easiest explanation would be that he exchanges himself for whatever is present in the new location. Air is fairly invisible (depending on where you live) but we could have a stone statue if he landed inside a mountain.