{"id":113,"date":"2002-09-18T15:45:18","date_gmt":"2002-09-18T21:45:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.zanthan.com\/wordsintobytes\/uncategorized\/lost-plot-device"},"modified":"2002-09-18T15:45:18","modified_gmt":"2002-09-18T21:45:18","slug":"lost-plot-device","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.zanthan.com\/wordsintobytes\/21st-century\/lost-plot-device\/","title":{"rendered":"Lost Plot Device"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\nLast night JQS was showing me an early episode of the <i>X-Files<\/i> on DVD. Our heroes, Scully and Mulder, were looking through old census records and birth and death certificates, on <strong>microfiche<\/strong>. Mulder even comments on how staring at all that microfiche whizzing by makes him seasick. The microfiche itself provides material for a little graphic montage, an interlude connecting two scenes while showing the passage of time and conveying a dreary necessity of investigative crime-fighting.\n<\/p>\n<p class=\"cont\">\nAnd I&#8217;m thinking, &#8220;Just <a href=\"http:\/\/www.google.com\/\">Google<\/a> it, baby.&#8221; But, of course, they couldn&#8217;t. That was then, in the time before internet search engines. It was barely five years later, on <i>Buffy the Vampire Slayer<\/i>, that Willow is able to pick up important clues by surfing the net or hacking into private databases.\n<\/p>\n<p class=\"cont\">\nPoor Scully and Mulder didn&#8217;t even have cell phones! Later in the show, when they are desperate to get in touch with each other, they can&#8217;t. They must resort to leaving messages on each other&#8217;s answering machines.\n<\/p>\n<p class=\"cont\">\nThink of how twentieth century TV shows and movies depended on the device of not being able to reach someone &#8220;in time&#8221;. A writer could strand a character in the middle of nowhere far from a phone, or have the bad guys cut the phone lines. Or the writer could let the phone ring unanswered, building tension and frustration as the two parties are unable to connect.\n<\/p>\n<p class=\"cont\">\nHow do we know the murderer is lurking outdoors if we don&#8217;t pick up the phone and realize that the dial tone is dead (and we&#8217;re next)? Where&#8217;s the drama?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Dialing M for murder is much easier now.<\/p>\n<div class=\"belowpost\"><a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.zanthan.com\/wordsintobytes\/21st-century\/lost-plot-device\/\">Read More<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[57,114,137,181],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zanthan.com\/wordsintobytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zanthan.com\/wordsintobytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zanthan.com\/wordsintobytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zanthan.com\/wordsintobytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zanthan.com\/wordsintobytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=113"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.zanthan.com\/wordsintobytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zanthan.com\/wordsintobytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=113"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zanthan.com\/wordsintobytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=113"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zanthan.com\/wordsintobytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=113"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}