Good storytelling is the art of suspending disbelief. This is helped immensely by writers doing their research properly so that, even if something occurs that the reader doesn’t expect, it makes more sense that way.
Good example: Firefly
All the exterior shots (in the series at least) of ships in space are silent save for bursts of radio communication and occasional incidental music. It’s an accurate portrayal of the absence of sound in a vacuum seen almost nowhere else and serves to underline the sheer loneliness of the wilderness the series is set in.
Bad example: Total Recall (2012)
What did the new film take away from the original Paul Verhoven adaptation of Dick’s work? Well there’s the dark sense of humour, the graphic violence and the joys of Schwarzenegger saying “Get your ass to Mars!”
What did it add? An improbably complicated transport system through the middle of the planet that may as well have the words “Action set-piece” painted on the sides in eighteen foot high letters of flame.
Firstly let’s look at the reason for “The Fall” being there. Supposedly this is to facilitate the daily movement of a large workforce from “The Colony” to the “United Federation of Britain” (wow guys, subtle). which doesn’t strike me as particularly cost-effective. I mean, given that the major industry in the UFB appears to be the manufacture of robots, wouldn’t it make more sense to use the local population? Especially if, as is implied, this place is so overcrowded that the most valuable resource is living space. But no, instead it makes more sense to build a tunnel through the planet.
Next is the simple geographical mistake that Australia isn’t on the exact opposite side of the planet to the UK. New Zealand is something of a better bet and, yes the computer graphics in the film do show the tunnel curving a bit, but this just raises more questions than it answers (of which, more later).
Let’s gloss over that for now and look at the most glaring problem.
If you were to make a hole through the middle of the planet, then add a few simplifying assumptions (uniform density, no air resistance, no change in temperature from passing through/near to the planet’s core) and drop something in; it would accelerate towards the centre, then decelerate on its way out, reaching the other side in a little over 42 minutes (not the rather optimistic seventeen portrayed in the film). The key thing is, if you were to do this with some kind of vehicle then, for everyone on board, they would be falling at the same rate, making them effectively weightless for the entire trip (like the zero-gravity training astronauts undertake on aircraft).
This is quite a cool idea and could’ve led to some very dramatic inception-style stunts. But instead the director seems to have decided that people won’t be able to get their heads around this and instead opts to portray everything as having normal gravity except for a minute or two as “The Fall” passes the planet’s core. This might not seem like much but the failings are painfully apparent, especially when the action sequence reached its end and objects couldn’t seem to decide whether they were going to behave in a realistic fashion, or stay stuck to objects by some kind of Hollywood super-gravity.
If they’d done it properly it would’ve made for a spectacular set-piece that stands up to at least an a-level physics level of deconstruction.
But it gets worse when you try to look closer. Firstly, the planet doesn’t have a uniform density. Odd though it may sound, the acceleration due to gravity actually increases inside the earth due to the greater density of the earth’s core (if you were to stand on the surface of the core you would actually be heavier than at the planet’s surface, despite having less of the planet beneath you). Now this wouldn’t make much difference in our scenario as whatever acceleration is being felt, it’s felt by the vessel and occupants equally, so they still remain effectively weightless. But if we look at a tunnel that skirts the outside of the planet’s core (like the info-graphic suggests) things get even weirder.
Firstly this means we’re no-longer free-falling, we’re instead sliding down a very steep slope. This is fine if we assume that “The Fall” isn’t just a fall but has some sort of high-temperature superconducting mag-lev system (along with the complete vacuum we’ve already assumed in the tunnel). First of all we’re no-longer dealing with an effective absence of gravity. instead what we have is a pull towards the planet’s core that starts off relatively small at each end, but gets suddenly very strong as the vessel passes the core, so much so that, at the moment is passes the edge of the core, the pull of gravity towards the core is actually stronger than when standing on the earth’s surface. So instead of weightlessness at the centre, this is when you’d feel gravity the most… and it’d be pinning you to the wall rather than either the floor or the ceiling.
But it gets worse when we look closer still. In order to achieve the transit time of seventeen minutes we’d have to accelerate the vessel more than gravity would do on its own. This would effectively stick everyone to the ceiling at either end, not to mention require a huge amount of energy both to push the vessel down hard on its drop towards the core, and then to decelerate it enough to stop it flying into the stratosphere upon its exit on the far side.
So, in summary, a contrivance that fails on every level.
To really put this into perspective; crime writers have been known to be given a hard time by readers over inappropriate use of SOCOs (scenes of crime officers) rather than CSIs (Crime Scene Investigators). Whereas errors on this level would be more akin to Rebus donning a super-hero costume, rugby tackling some muggers and then locking them up in his basement.
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