Don't worry, it's harmless

Something one of my beta-readers said the other week kind of stuck with me. It was just a casual remark about a movie: “It’s Japanese, so of course they all die at the end,” or something like that. I don't watch a lot of Japanese media so I can't really comment.

Which made me think about the ending of Gatch F, which made me think about Ken and the hyper-thingy, which made me think about oncology,* which made me think about radiation, which made me think about the whole Bird Go transformation/transmutation/transmogrification** business.

And that made me wonder what sort of damage might be done to a person who regularly (and quite unnecessarily, really – I mean, the transformation process saves, what… ten minutes, changing your clothes?) exposes themselves to some pretty intense radiation in the workplace.

Which made me think about chromosomes and telomeres and DNA and stuff. (Which makes for some pretty complex mental imagery, let me tell you, especially when you start thinking about nucleotides and the translation thing.)

And THEN I thought, wow, maybe the Science Ninja Team was doomed to die of premature aging and cancer regardless of the hyper-thingy and Sosai Z anyway because of the damage they would have taken just from the first series with all the pretty glowy transformative stuff. And maybe the hyper-thingy just accelerated the process in Ken’s case. So maybe dying at the end of Gatch F was kind of a mercy in a way, because it meant they didn’t have to go through all the horrible shit they would have faced had they survived the third war.

And THEN I thought, would Nambu have known? Would anyone? Radiation-related cancer is a thing in Japan, for obvious reasons, so you’d think that it might have crossed their minds at some point. “Hey let’s save ten minutes per mission by giving these kids cancer instead of getting them to change their clothes!”

And then I thought, if that's true, then Nambu’s a bit of a bastard really, isn’t he? In his defence, he's not a medical doctor, although I think (from Katblu42's thread) he's a Biomedical Engineer. I suppose a person with the kind of mind that comes up with a Hurricane Spin Mop neurosurgery machine,*** an Archimedes burning glass, a giant horseshoe magnet (complete with poorly-cured quick-set concrete footings) and a ship that defeats its enemies by setting itself on fire every other week isn't going to win the Nobel Prize for Sane and Rational Reasoning any time soon.****

And then I thought, there's a story in here somewhere. (Because, you know...)

Discuss?












* Not my favourite subject. Smoking really can kill.

** I have to admit that I am very fond of the transmogrifier device from Calvin and Hobbes and would love to incorporate it into a story but have no idea how I'd go about it... Yet.

*** I think of Joe whenever I mop the floors.

**** Although he could have become a regular on Mythbusters, and not in a good way.

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If you see me talking to myself, just move along: we're having a team meeting.

Yeah, there's a lot of Fridge Horror in BotP. The word 'cerebonic' implies something to do with the brain, then I ask myself, what with Don Wade having been a 'former member of G-Force,' how many others were there? Are the five we see on screen the survivors?

Big Voice Narration Guy in the opening credits does mention that they've been trained 'almost since birth' or something along those lines. We don't actually know who trained them. A lot of fanfic writers (like me) put Anderson in charge to carry over the Nambu role, but canonically, it could have been Andy the Jolly Swagman for all we know. We also don't actually know who thought up the cerebonic implants and who did the implanting or what they are, or anything much about them, really.

More Fridge Horror: in canon, Zark uses 'thought probes' to gauge the emotional well-being of the team. Thought probes. Yikes.

Applied Phlebotinum is always a good out if you're looking at Sufficiently Advanced Technology. Heaven knows, I use enough of it that I should probably buy it in bulk.

Back to the radiation, though, and on the topic of applied Phlebotinum... Could it be possible that the numbered jeans and t-shirts provide some kind of radiation shielding? Wouldn't do much for the head or the thyroid (I hate wearing the heavy lead thyroid guard in the x-ray room, but, hey, it beats the alternative) but could the uniforms double as the equivalent of a lead apron? And if so, how would they continue to provide protection while they transform?

Ooooh, maybe they've got magic underwear!

Or maybe the kids are just expendable, like the Mark 1 pilots in Pacific Rim (Stacker Pentecost*: "The last thing we were thinking about was radiation shielding.")





* Stacker Pentecost is like, Awesome McCoolname, and he gave himself a case of future-cancer-terminal-nosebleeds with his lack of radiation shielding. However, I find it hard to believe that they simply "forgot" to include radiation shielding for the pilots when they were building the Jaegers. I mean, history shows that we should have learned that lesson in WWII with the Hawker Hurricane,** where the designers simply didn't think to include armour behind the pilot, which resulted in rather a lot of unnecessary casualties before someone at Fighter Command realised they really ought to have the stuff installed by the time the Battle of Britain came long.

** The Hawker Hurricane is often under-appreciated in favour of her more glamorous cousin, the Supermarine Spitfire, but the Hurricane is a magnificent piece of machinery and deserves just as much love as the Spit.

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If you see me talking to myself, just move along: we're having a team meeting.

Yeah there's a lot of room for writing Anderson and Nambu anywhere as benevolent and caring to cold and manipulative. I've certainly done the whole range. Something about the voice acting definitely makes Anderson feel colder to me, that and some of the editing choices.

I would argue that 10 minutes is worth saving in their line of work if there's an emergency. Especially since it would never be just 10 minutes unless they were in an ideal location at the time, and didn't have to find someplace to change. Could be the difference between their survival or not, or the survival of other people or not. We certainly see them transforming in a wide variety of situations where stopping to find a secure spot to change and wrestle into incredibly tight suits wasn't really possible or wise.

It also means that they don't have to carry their uniforms around in a backpack or something and risk them being stolen. The transformation also might make it possible to make the uniforms harder for the enemy to remove.

All of that said, it's definitely possible that the transformation process could be damaging. How much they were told is a good question. And how much the people who developed it understand what the process can do is also a good question. In BOTP it might be a little better as you'd think that they could program the cerebonics to counteract the damage to a certain extent. Not so much in Gatch. Though, I suppose there could be something they're given in their medical check-ins to help.

If they're the first to go through this process (particularly in Gatch) then it literally may not be possible for the full set of side effects to be predicted, which could get ugly.

On the BOTP side with the cerebonics I always wondered if Don Wade still had fully active cerebonics after leaving, or whether his cerebonics were either removed or turned off. If they were turned off he could have asked Spectra to try and turn them back on and let Spectra collect data, etc, about them. Maybe he was concerned about becoming their lab rat instead of a scientist.

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Eagle Whisperer

Yeah you're totally right on the Y2K bug issue. People who say it was overblown drive me nuts. It was such a panic that it got FIXED.

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Eagle Whisperer

BOTP- Space travel in a day and you don't lose any time on Earth. Its like going on an international holiday... in space. What happened to light years???

I have the Condor into vintage cars in fics. It was his request to have a Skyline in 70s style. Secretly he has a full wardrobe of 70s gear he goes to ABBA bjorn again concerts in his spare time between racing and missions.

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Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once we grow up- Pablo Picasso.

Most of the Japanese anime I've seen have teenagers being the stars and saviors of mankind. I often wondered why the heroes weren't adults. Of course, the audience was teenagers, so that might be why. Or it could be those involved never made it to adulthood for many of the reason discussed above.

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I'm writing a book. I've got the page numbers so far...

Maybe Nambu had found a way to protect the team from radiation cancer, i.e., maybe their birdstyles were an advanced form of radiation-protection clothing? Okay, the fact that it took radiation to produce the birdstyles may have been a spanner in the works but... you know... suspend all belief all who enter the sci fi universe.

If we look a bit deeper (heaven knows, I shouldn't be doing this first thing in the morning), perhaps the whole Fiery Phoenix idea was meant to give the Japanese a way to overcome the horror of the nuclear bombs, a bit like Star Wars was also meant to boost US morale after the Vietnam War. Or is that reading too much into the scriptwriters' intentions?

Also, in a way 1970s sci fi could be compared with Jules Verne's books: some things came to be, other not, but both act as catalysts to the imagination.

About ten years ago, one TV show (I think it was "24") showed its heroes using handheld, tablet-like computers without any keyboards. Still in the realm of fantasy at the time. Okay, so we don't have flying cars yet... although... wait a minute... wasn't there a story in the news this week about a company testing a flying car?

ENOUGH rambling, DT!


Edited to correct typos.

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They were in the wrong place at the wrong time. Naturally, they became heroes -- Princess Leia Organa of Alderaan.

Apparently the tech for flying cars is already here. The problem is that people are bad enough drivers, do you really want the average driver FLYING around on manual?

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Eagle Whisperer

EW- thats a good point. But they don't really disclose the birdstyles secret??? I know the eps where Juns shoe goes under tests by some fortunate goons messing around.

But I don't recall radiation being mentioned as part of the process.

The detransmute gun... mmmm.... haven't watched those eps in ages.

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Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once we grow up- Pablo Picasso.

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They were in the wrong place at the wrong time. Naturally, they became heroes -- Princess Leia Organa of Alderaan.