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james_davis_nicollResurrectionist of Lethe Pt 1
Resurrectionist of Lethe Pt 2
A tragic accident leaves a scientist dead and his wife vulnerable to some psychological manipulation by disgraced* scientist Todmaster, who is now running the space graveyard where Earth's great are sent. Todmaster - oh, crap, I just got the significance of his name - has been experimenting in the Forbidden Arts of Look-Alike Androids and he uses them to convince the bereaved that he can bring their loved ones back to life. This in turn allows him to steal secrets (military secrets for the most part), presumably to sell them.
Spoilers for this and Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow
Alas for Todmaster, his complete lack of any attempt at preventing his victims from talking later on unexpectedly backfires on him and the ISA discovers what he is up to. Unfortunately by the time word gets to Starlab, Todmaster has left with the dead scientist and his widow, which means Todmaster has a hostage if the situation goes south.
As it turns out, Todmaster either isn't really worried about people sneaking onto the graveyard planetoid or just really sucks at security. In short order the widow has been rescued and the androids deactivated, which leads to the Big Twist; the actual Todmaster died years before and the conniving Todmaster was himself an android built to carry on Todmaster's research.
What are the odds that Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow would both have the same twist about the motivating scientist being dead and that they would have names as similar as Todmaster and Totenkopf?
I bet there's an interesting story behind why it's illegal to create realistic human duplicates (although the Narrator seems to think such things border on satanic practices, so maybe it's just an irrational prejudice).
* Glowstone smuggling. Reincorportation!
Resurrectionist of Lethe Pt 2
A tragic accident leaves a scientist dead and his wife vulnerable to some psychological manipulation by disgraced* scientist Todmaster, who is now running the space graveyard where Earth's great are sent. Todmaster - oh, crap, I just got the significance of his name - has been experimenting in the Forbidden Arts of Look-Alike Androids and he uses them to convince the bereaved that he can bring their loved ones back to life. This in turn allows him to steal secrets (military secrets for the most part), presumably to sell them.
Spoilers for this and Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow
Alas for Todmaster, his complete lack of any attempt at preventing his victims from talking later on unexpectedly backfires on him and the ISA discovers what he is up to. Unfortunately by the time word gets to Starlab, Todmaster has left with the dead scientist and his widow, which means Todmaster has a hostage if the situation goes south.
As it turns out, Todmaster either isn't really worried about people sneaking onto the graveyard planetoid or just really sucks at security. In short order the widow has been rescued and the androids deactivated, which leads to the Big Twist; the actual Todmaster died years before and the conniving Todmaster was himself an android built to carry on Todmaster's research.
What are the odds that Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow would both have the same twist about the motivating scientist being dead and that they would have names as similar as Todmaster and Totenkopf?
I bet there's an interesting story behind why it's illegal to create realistic human duplicates (although the Narrator seems to think such things border on satanic practices, so maybe it's just an irrational prejudice).
* Glowstone smuggling. Reincorportation!
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no subject
Date: 2012-11-27 08:30 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-11-28 06:55 am (UTC)Doctor Doom figured this out years ago, and I'm pretty sure at least a few Doombots have provided themselves with secondary Doombots to deflect attention from the primary Doombot. This regression series can go on as long as the robot budget holds out.
no subject
Date: 2012-11-28 09:34 pm (UTC)Oh--wait--it's Doom. There aren't any accounting problems.[1]
[1] At least, none any living accountants are willing to speak about.
no subject
Date: 2012-11-28 09:51 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-11-28 10:05 pm (UTC)Or finally get patents on technology in the Doombots; given what they can do, I'm sure they're an improvement on the Life Model Decoys in a number of areas. Still...I'm sure that those attempts could be blocked.
Dr. Strange heads the committee that is looking into patenting mystic items. He tells Doom that the incantations used to put the spells into the armor are clearly prior art, because they were used to create the levitating cloak he uses. ("It's right here, in 'A Method For Imbuing Normal Objects with Arcane Powers Derived from Non-Numenous Phenomena'.")
no subject
Date: 2012-12-03 03:57 am (UTC)--Dave, and I don't even LIKE cole-slaw