Theory:Torchwood television discontinuity and plot holes/The Categories of Life


 * At least three times before (the severed head, the abused wife, and the crushed 'Dead is Dead' lady), it was made clear that even the 'dead' maintained conciousness -- and Jack remarked at how 'alive' everyone was. Yet the people held in the Modules all appeared to be comatose. Not sure how much more 'brain dead' one could be as nothing more than a burned skull severed from a body or crushed into a tin can, but both of those people were obviously awake and aware. Plus the need for boatloads of painkillers has been emphasized. So which is it? Brain dead and aware or brain dead and unconcious?
 * Excellent question; although I would accept the idea of shock (they've all just simultaniously fainted?) or chemically induced coma (instead of painkillers and as an aid to healing).


 * As much as these questions seem obvious to me, it kinda bothers me that none of the doctors "studying" the situation have mentioned the following, nor "reporters" (even the ones asking whether suicide was still possible): Death by Fire (building fire or volcano or "The Module"), carnivore (being eaten), acid (being dissolved), specific poisons (agent Peterfield tried to use arsenic on Jack, but lethal injections didn't work on Oswald Danes).
 * Apparently the author has decided that these specifics would detract from the overall story... I find the lack of answers somewhat distracting.
 * I don't think there's an interesting question there.
 * I do. Remember when in "Rendition" they had a scene of doctors standing over a moving detached hand talking about whether people still grow old (shortening Telomers) - that detached hand is pretty graphic for something that "isn't interesting"... Yes, I am also interested to know what Jack does about it all.
 * Yes, but watching them standing over an electron microscope looking at a ribosome dissolving in acid or something wouldn't be nearly as graphic or interesting. There are obviously thousands of scientists working full-time on all kinds of investigations, and there's only time in the episode to show a few of them, and then let us know the conclusion: that people cannot die, period.
 * For example, if someone is broken down to sub-cellular components, it makes no difference whether they're "alive" or "dead" (except in the sense that if there's an afterlife they might be trapped here instead of getting to go there, which nobody alive would be able to detect anyway). What exactly would you want the doctors and scientists to test for?
 * For example, if someone is broken down to sub-cellular components, it makes no difference whether they're "alive" or "dead" (except in the sense that if there's an afterlife they might be trapped here instead of getting to go there, which nobody alive would be able to detect anyway). What exactly would you want the doctors and scientists to test for?


 * Ah, it hadn't occurred to me that "The Modules" were really just "hiding" people (from everyone else) by atomizing them into smoke (hiding people by dumping them into the air). Exploring details is what scientists do (like decapitating people to see what happens, and vivisecting detached arms that are still grasping, and trying to kill living tissue "whatever that means").
 * No, they're not "hiding" people, they're disposing of them. Whether those component atoms are "alive" or "dead" makes no difference to the motivation or the end result.
 * I disagree, the initial condition, motivation and end result are important. Killing sick people may be called Euthanasia, and it is hotly debated (as you well know). Burning someone without killing them is just torture (as opposed to murder). Are the people pictured in "The Module" (who are comatose) in a different "Category of Life" than the suicide bomber or the squashed politician (who both seem to be aware / awake)?
 * The whole point is that the government has invented bureaucratic definitions of the "categories of life" so they can get away with what they want. Legally, it's not murder, by definition. And morally, what they're trying to do, literally, is to get away with murder. Scientifically, it may not be possible to determine whether it actually is or is not murder, but that hardly makes them less evil.
 * And yes, scientists explore details, but whether at atom that used to be part of a human skin cell is still alive isn't a question that even means anything, much less one they have any way to answer. Scientists stopped looking for the actual line between life and death (or non-life) over a century ago because they discovered that there is no such line. There is no "vital force" that makes the reactions in a living cell different from those in a dead one, it's all just chemistry either way.
 * In "Rendition" the first medical conference that Dr. Juarez passes (but doesn't enter) is discussing exactly this, and their overheard conclusion is that human skin cells do die.
 * Yes, cells can be alive or dead (even though there's no clear line, just as with most useful categories). But atoms cannot.
 * If you're looking for a sharp dividing line beyond which the question becomes irrelevant, there isn't one. That's really the whole point of 20th-century biology and the death of vitalism. And it's also an important theme in the show that no one should be trying to draw those lines.
 * As for the rest: we know that people have tried a wide variety of ways to kill themselves or others and obviously failed, or we would have heard about it. Do we really need a catalog of exactly which poisons have and haven't been tried, etc.?
 * I don't think it's obvious. There is a point at which one can't tell whether the suicide was successful. The viewer doesn't need a catalog of poisons, but otherwise you (nor scientists on the show) wouldn't know for certain.
 * It's obvious because they've said on-screen that nobody has died, period. There are news crawlers about a suspected death that turns out not be dead, etc.
 * It's not obvious, because there's a point at which you can't know the end result. Dead vs Destroyed. How would you know that a pile of ash is alive (as you insist it is)? The "News" only knows that they've not found anyone who is dead.
 * I never insisted that it is alive. The boundary between alive and dead is fuzzy, and at a certain point (somewhere around the level of things with metabolic processes, but that too is probably fuzzy) the distinction doesn't even make any sense.
 * Meanwhile, the news aren't just reporting on what their reporters have found; they're also reporting on what health experts, scientists, and governments have published and proclaimed. When the news tells you that only two people died from the E-coli outburst a few years ago, that doesn't mean that one of their reporters heard about two deaths; it means that one of their reporters read the article published by the DHS. Why would it be any different for Miracle Day?
 * The scientists on the show surely do have a catalog of poisons. The public health organizatons are still gathering and studying information from the hospitals, the molecular biologists are still working in their labs, etc. The Surgeon General and the head of the WHO have presumably got hundreds of pages of reports on their desks summarizing all of the studies. There are presumably preprints of survey articles on whatever the medical science equivalent to physics' arXiv.org is.
 * But there's no reason for RTD to spend his 45 minutes on camera scanning over those papers so we can convince ourselves that there's nothing that the scientists have forgotten. The science reporters and government officials have told the people that no one dies, period. If they're wrong, or lying, RTD will reveal that to us at the appropriately suspenseful moment in some dramatic way, not by making us read through thousands of pages of articles and realizing that nobody's yet tested some particular poison.
 * It doesn't take hardly any time to have a "Hermione Moment" where Dr. Juarez picks up a stack of papers and says, "Science hasn't found a working poison yet." (which calls agent Peterfield into question).
 * Only if you insist on assuming that Peterfield has perfect knowledge on what scientists have discovered (at a very early stage), but has no knowledge that Jack is special, both of which are at least open to question. It's incredibly far-fetched to assume that she had looked over a catalog of poisons and said, "Well, it looks like cyanide has been ruled out, but nobody's tried arsenic yet, so let me try that one."
 * And meanwhile, they don't have to say "science hasn't found a working poison yet" when they've already said "scientists haven't found a single confirmed death". If nobody can die period, obviously nobody can die from poison.
 * The scientists on the show surely do have a catalog of poisons. The public health organizatons are still gathering and studying information from the hospitals, the molecular biologists are still working in their labs, etc. The Surgeon General and the head of the WHO have presumably got hundreds of pages of reports on their desks summarizing all of the studies. There are presumably preprints of survey articles on whatever the medical science equivalent to physics' arXiv.org is.
 * But there's no reason for RTD to spend his 45 minutes on camera scanning over those papers so we can convince ourselves that there's nothing that the scientists have forgotten. The science reporters and government officials have told the people that no one dies, period. If they're wrong, or lying, RTD will reveal that to us at the appropriately suspenseful moment in some dramatic way, not by making us read through thousands of pages of articles and realizing that nobody's yet tested some particular poison.
 * It doesn't take hardly any time to have a "Hermione Moment" where Dr. Juarez picks up a stack of papers and says, "Science hasn't found a working poison yet." (which calls agent Peterfield into question).
 * Only if you insist on assuming that Peterfield has perfect knowledge on what scientists have discovered (at a very early stage), but has no knowledge that Jack is special, both of which are at least open to question. It's incredibly far-fetched to assume that she had looked over a catalog of poisons and said, "Well, it looks like cyanide has been ruled out, but nobody's tried arsenic yet, so let me try that one."
 * And meanwhile, they don't have to say "science hasn't found a working poison yet" when they've already said "scientists haven't found a single confirmed death". If nobody can die period, obviously nobody can die from poison.
 * Only if you insist on assuming that Peterfield has perfect knowledge on what scientists have discovered (at a very early stage), but has no knowledge that Jack is special, both of which are at least open to question. It's incredibly far-fetched to assume that she had looked over a catalog of poisons and said, "Well, it looks like cyanide has been ruled out, but nobody's tried arsenic yet, so let me try that one."
 * And meanwhile, they don't have to say "science hasn't found a working poison yet" when they've already said "scientists haven't found a single confirmed death". If nobody can die period, obviously nobody can die from poison.
 * And meanwhile, they don't have to say "science hasn't found a working poison yet" when they've already said "scientists haven't found a single confirmed death". If nobody can die period, obviously nobody can die from poison.