Howling:The Silurian Ark

The Silurian Ark is among my favourite of Doctor Who's spaceships.A space-ark with dinosaurs on board.... made by the Silurians. Nice looking too. I'm glad the Doctor and co. saved it and took it to a planet for the dinos to roam free. 83.223.121.252talk to me 18:09, December 6, 2012 (UTC)

Ummm, do you have anything to ask about? Because general appreciation for an aspect of an episode is not really what this forum is for. Imamadmad ☎  22:22, December 6, 2012 (UTC)

I'll ask it for him/her then, no point in getting a thread wasted since someone would open another one in the future anyway:

1. Space-faring Silurians...really? A small population escaped earth and the rest decided to just hibernate within a planet being crashed by a giant space object.

2. Ship's signature thingy...so any targeting missile from any enemy can be easily negated by throwing the signature signal thingy out the ship or launch it into space....

3. Bloodline operation thingy...it's like nothing we've seen from the Silurians; not only is the technology odd and seems unrelated to the Silurian technology we have seen, it's also kind of stupid considering that it's an ark, essentially a survival escape ship; you pretty much expect some of the people on the ship to die when its venturing into unknown space, programming a ship to return to a supposingly devastated planet when there are no relatives would certainly mean doom. If the passengers on the ship were all relatives, then there wasn't even a breeding population of Silurians, it would have been more like a suicide ship.

4. Homo...this bothered me since Moffat brought back Silurians; we know the name is a translation but how could the Tardis possibly translate some reptilian creature as something under the genus Homo? --222.167.191.105talk to me 18:39, December 8, 2012 (UTC)

1. No comment.

2. That's definitely a weak point in the story. They needed a technobabble explanation but they ought to have come up with better technobabble than that. If I had to explain it in retrospect for a future episode, I'd be inclined to say that those missiles had, on that occasion, been targeted on the "signature thingy" but the trick wouldn't work on missiles that had been targeted more sensibly. It's not good, though.

3. Another weak point.

4. This bothers everyone who knows anything at all about taxonomy (even if they're not familiar with the word "taxonomy"). It's crass. The only way I can think of to excuse the error would be to rely on the fact that the translation is telepathic & say that the TARDIS was making the name understandable to all the scientific illiterates who happened to be around at the time. That's pretty weak, too.

All of these seem to be the consequences of attempting science fiction without knowledge of basic science. TV (& film) does that too much. Someone in the DW team needs to develop the habit of checking the facts fairly early in the production process, preferably as soon as the script has been selected as a possible candidate for acceptance -- before the BBC is committed to using it.

1 & 3 could perhaps be "explained away" by giving some information about the history of the Silurians. 1 would be easier to deal with than 3. You could say that the Silurians had only enough spaceflight capability to launch that one ship. The combination of launching the ship, carrying as much of their ecosystem & population as they could put aboard, with most of the Silurian population going into hibernation on Earth could then be portrayed as a "belt & braces" approach. (For US fans, "braces" = "suspenders".) That actually makes sense if you're trying to preserve a species; you adopt as many different, independent methods as possible in order to maximise the chance that at least one will be successful.

Unfortunately, such a "belt & braces" approach requires you to make the gene pool as diverse as possible in each & every group of potential survivors. That only makes problem 3 even worse. It's not that the group of relatives on the ship wouldn't be a breeding population. It might be. However, the lack of genetic diversity would cause problems after a few generations -- possibly very severe problems.

However, you need to bear in mind that, if you exclude recent population movements ("recent" = the last few centuries), the non-African human population is descended from a fairly small group of individuals. There are districts in Africa that have greater genetic diversity than the whole of the non-African human population. --2.96.26.96talk to me 13:50, December 9, 2012 (UTC)

Okay after some thoughts, one possible explanation for 3 is that Silurians could be capable of pathenogenesis without compromising viability of breeding after the offspring reach another group of Silurians/Sea Devils.

Moreover, I'm quite confused about why the Silurians on board were said to be in hibernation before they were thrown off board. Quite an odd thing to do when you are venturing into the unknown and clearly food supply would not be a concerned if you were able to supply all these dinosaurs with food. It does make it look like the Silurians were asking to be robbed since their would probably be legally confiscated at some point in some where. Let's make this (5).

and there's another one that's a bit farfetched but possible, so it's not exactly 6 but still highly unlikely and confusing. Why exactly would dinosaurs be a precious cargo for Solomon? The scanner clearly implies that the technology used by Solomon is aware that time-travel exists, otherwise it makes very little sense the scanner could come up with a price and identity of Queen Nefertiti. If it's that advance, dinosaurs would probably have been something that any illegal pirate could get their hands on. But at the same time, Solomon's ship looks very "unadvanced", the whole thing with Solomon's technology is just awkwardly confusing.222.167.191.105talk to me 20:36, December 9, 2012 (UTC)

The parthenogenesis idea is intriguing. Some species do appear to be capable of it. Additionally, certain reptiles (I'm not sure if it's all reptiles) have a different genetic method of determining the sex of the individual -- not X & Y chromosomes. On top of that, reptilian genomes tend to be much more complex than mammalian genomes, so each individual carries far more genetic information. (The reason for that is that mammals have a fairly constant body temperature & don't need all the complexity of coding for enzymes &c that work at different body temperatures.) Parthenogenesis, or whatever, would only be needed as a solution if there were no or almost no males on the ark.

The hibernation thing does have a possible explanation that has nothing to do with food. If they had not hibernated, it would be the refugees' distant descendants who eventually disembarked. There would have been so many generations in the meantime that the original culture of the Silurians would almost inevitably have been lost. Hibernation would allow the original refugees to survive the voyage with their culture intact. Since animals don't have cultures, there'd be no reason to keep them in hibernation. I'm not sure that's a good reason for going along the hibernation route but it's at least a possible one.

The real problem with the episode isn't that the individual flaws can't be got round; it's that most of them could easily have been avoided, in the first place, so that there'd have been no need to get round them. As I said earlier, most of the flaws seem to be the result of failing to check the basic science at the scriptwriting stage -- which is when it ought to be done -- or, indeed, at any stage at all. There isn't an excuse for that.

Some "artistic" types claim that bothering to check the facts gets in the way of telling the story. It doesn't. Getting the basic facts right avoids the stupid, obvious howlers that really do get in the way of telling the story -- especially to an audience like DW fans! (I was 2 earlier but I'm 78 now.) --78.146.185.41talk to me 21:27, December 9, 2012 (UTC)

Agreed on the fact checking. Especially with a sci-fi show where the audience tends to be more, shall we say motivated by facts and knowledge than, say, the average Jersey Shore watcher. We expect there to have been effort put into the facts, and the writers should expect us to be the kind of people who will point out anything incorrect. I think the Doctor Who fandom has proven that it is especially pedantic about having facts correct. Imamadmad ☎  00:40, December 10, 2012 (UTC)

"Pedantic" isn't the word I'd have used -- though it may be fair enough. :) --78.146.177.57talk to me 17:46, December 10, 2012 (UTC)

I think part of the problem is that the writers are failing to cater to the DW Fans who post at this site and similar places on the web. Their main audience now is a new group of younger people who watch for entertainment purposes only. The Fans looking for the deeper meaning in every show and expect research to be undertaken are only a small part of the audience. The visuals and the interactions between the characters are more of what the majority are watching for. So our taste for accurateness in stories and abiding by the continuation of previous series are not high on the agenda of the writers. However as long as the story continues behind all these obvious weaknesses in each episode I will be content to continue watching for the next 50 years. Rasputin Oz ☎  23:28, December 13, 2012 (UTC)

Rasputin Oz: If, as you suggest, the makers of the show have lost respect for their audience, you won't be able to continue watching for the next 50 years -- not new episodes, anyway -- because the show won't last anything like that long. If they decide it's not worth bothering to get details right, they'll soon decide it's also not worth bothering about the story, either. Why pay for good writers, when you can get hacks to churn out formula scripts for half the price or less? (I was 2 & 78 earlier but I'm 89 now.) --89.241.76.233talk to me 13:45, December 14, 2012 (UTC)