Twenty-four hours in the Uncanny Valley.

(You may have to register/get a day pass to read the Salon article in the link. Sorry about that. Actually, I'm finding enough good stuff on Salon that I'd buy a subscription, if it didn't cost money, which I don't earn right now.)

I've been bothered by the plot problems in the current season of 24. This show has always stretched credibility, but somehow it's starting to get to me. Is it just piling up after almost 4 years? Am I so disgusted with the constant torture so now all I see is flaws?

It occurred to me that the plot of a story can also enter the uncanny valley, a place of fantasy so close to reality that it seems unnatural. When they get so many details right and it seems so real, each time they fabricate a plot device (pun intended), it looks more and more out of place.

Another example of this was the old board war games I used to play. When a cardboard counter was a tank division and a hex was twenty kilometers and a turn was a day, it was hard to argue with the physics. In a game with a counter representing one man, a hex two meters and a turn ten seconds, I can argue about movement rates since I can test them in my house. Abstraction is more noticeable on a small scale.

My suspension of disbelief works better in real fantasy or science-fiction environments. I can believe that laser swords work in Star Wars because so many other things there are sci-fi goofy. I can believe that the Mouth of Sauron goes the other way because there was a balrog and walking trees and other such things.

Maybe this is the problem that a lot of people have with superheroes, since they're in such a real-world setting and do such fantastic things. It still bugs me that the X-Men producers think we can believe in eye beams, claws, and telekinesis but colorful outfits are right out. But I digress.